Read My Country Is Called Earth Online
Authors: Lawrence John Brown
My Country Is Called Earth
By Lawrence Brown
Free Edition fom OBOOKO
Copyright 1994, 2010 by Lawrence Brown
Dedicated to the Exellon in all of us
I want to thank Robert Butts, the husband of Jane Roberts, for his permission to quote from Jane’s Seth material.
Notes for the OBOOKO Edition
I have decided to make
My Country Is Called Earth
available for free as an ebook so that more people will read it and also because I hope the readers will be encouraged to buy my new book,
The Education of a Messiah
.
Almost sixteen years have passed since the publication of
My Country Is Called Earth
and there are some things I would write differently today. But there are also many things I’ve written that I still think hit the nail on the head, so I’ve decided to leave the text in its original form. However, I have moved the Introduction in front of the Foreword and have added the acknowledgement above. I have also corrected the spelling and typing mistakes and have changed the formatting to fit the requirements of ebook publishing.
Now I would like to say a few things about terrorism, which was not a major problem when I published
My Country Is Called Earth
in 1994.
To have any chance of ending terrorism, we have to stop giving Muslims reasons to hate us. But when we support Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and its inhumane policies in Gaza by sending Israel weapons and money and by defending Israel at the UN, when we invade Iraq and Afghanistan and abuse, injure, and kill innocent people, how can we expect Muslims not to be angry with us?
By applying the principles of the Declaration of Independence to everyone, by acting as if other people have the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness that we demand for ourselves, we’ll be able to bring to an end much of the hatred directed against us.
I‘m not saying that we have to love Muslims, but we must respect their human rights, their religion, and the sanctity of their homes. And we must stop thinking that we are special, chosen, or God’s gift to the human race.
I hope that this book will help readers understand that the world’s problems (or challenges, as Exellon calls them) do have solutions, but the solutions require that we have the courage to open our eyes to the truth and that we then change our beliefs and actions. No one can make us change and if we do not change, we will not solve our problems. Period.
One final note: All of our major problems—war, injustice, terrorism, poverty, unemployment, overpopulation, pollution, global warming, the extinction of species, and the destruction of rain forests—are involved with our failure to recognize that we are connected to the earth and each other and that we are responsible to the earth and each other.
Lawrence Brown
Gwangju, South Korea
March 1, 2010
**********************
Bill Moyers:
There’s that wonderful photograph you have of the earth seen from space. It’s very small, and at the same time it’s very grand.
Joseph Campbell:
You don’t see any divisions there of nations, or states, or anything of the kind. This might be the symbol for the new mythology to come. That is the country we are going to be celebrating, and those are the people we are one with.
The Awakening: June 27, 1992-July 3, 2076
The Awakening: July 4, 2076-June 28, 1992
My Country Is Called Earth
contains three books. The first is the narrative of a man who falls asleep in 1992 and awakens in the year 2076. In his report he describes a future civilization in harmony with nature and without war or poverty. He explains how man had changed and how society had been reformed to make the world of 2076 possible. The second book is within the first, and is a manuscript written by one of the people the narrator meets in 2076. The third is an assortment of parables and dialogues I have been working on since 1980, which I have placed in the Appendix.
The theme of
My Country Is Called Earth
can be stated in four sentences: Capitalism, big government, powerful nations, and the mythologies of Christianity and science must share a large part of the responsibility for the problems of today. If we are going to enter a new age, we must replace capitalism with true communism, reduce the power of government, and return proper government functions to the local level. We should eliminate standing armies, create a world government to keep the peace and protect the rights of men and nature, and remove Christianity and science from their positions of authority and influence in our culture. At the same time we need to construct a new mythology based upon love for the earth and cooperation between men.
I believe my readers can easily see that Christianity is a mythology; they may not understand why I consider science to be one. There are three reasons why I believe science is a mythology. The first is that science performs the basic function of a mythology: It tells us who we are and where we came from. In its theory of evolution, science says that man is a primate and a descendent of the first life on earth. My second reason is that science answers the important religious question, “What is the purpose of life?” Science says life has no purpose because it occurred by accident. My third reason is that a man or woman must have faith to be a scientist, just as an individual must have faith to be a Christian or a follower of any other mythology. (Faith is trust or belief without proof.) The primary faith of the scientist is that all the wonders of the universe were designed by chance—that nonphysical reality either does not exist or cannot affect the physical plane.
Former Secretary of Education and drug czar William Bennett wrote in the
Wall Street Journal
last year, “The real crisis of our time is spiritual.” I agree. My analysis of the crisis is different than his, however. I think the main cause of our crisis is the failure of our two mythologies to provide us with truths we can use to build a healthy world.
Christianity says we are born sinners unworthy of God’s Love and encourages contempt for people of other religions by teaching that only believers can be saved. The Christian God deserves to be feared, not loved: He will condemn a man to everlasting suffering for the mistakes of one lifetime. Christianity also tells us that God made man the master of the earth. Western man’s catastrophic impact on the environment is a consequence of this teaching.
The religion of science, by preaching an accidental, godless, and mechanical universe, has taught us that life has no value. By preaching a theory of evolution that says our brains have been programmed by our heredity, science has given man an excuse for every crime: “My genes made me do it.”
Our new mythology should recognize the unity and value of all life on earth. I believe these three truths belong in our new mythology: God is all there is. Man is part of nature. All men and women are responsible for their actions.
I could not have written this book if Giordano Bruno, Galileo, and Spinoza had not defied the authorities of their time. This book could not have been written without the Protestant Reformation and the American Revolution. Bruno, Galileo, Spinoza, and the Protestant Reformation asserted a man’s right to express his opinions about the universe, God, and the Bible. The American Revolution proclaimed the individual’s rights to freedom of press and religion, to fight for justice, and to criticize the powerful.
Lawrence Brown
Sacramento, California
July 4, 1994
The President in Washington sends word that he wishes to buy our land. But how can you buy or sell the sky, the land? The idea is strange to us. Every part of this earth is sacred to my people. Every shining pine needle, every sandy shore, every mist in the dark woods, every meadow, all are holy in the memory and experience of my people. We are part of the earth and it is part of us.
The perfumed flowers are our sisters. The bear, the deer, the great eagle, these are our brothers. Each ghostly reflection in the clear water of the lakes tells of events and memories in the life of my people. If we sell you our land, remember that the air is precious to us. That the air shares its spirit with all the life it supports. The wind that gave our grandfather his first breath also received his last sigh.
This we know: The earth does not belong to man; man belongs to the earth. All things are connected like the blood that unites us all. Man did not weave the web of life—he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself.
Your destiny is a mystery to us. What will happen when the buffalo are all slaughtered? What will happen when the secret corners of the forest are heavy with the scent of many men, and the view of the ripe hills is blotted by talking wires? The end of living and the beginning of survival. When the last red man has vanished with his wilderness, and his memory is only the shadow of a cloud moving across the prairie, will these shores and forests still be here? Will there be any spirit of my people left?
We love this earth as a newborn loves its mother’s heartbeat. So, if we sell you our land, love it as we have loved it. Care for it as we have cared for it. Hold in your mind the memory of the land as it is when you receive it. Preserve the land for all children and love it as God loves us all. One thing we know, there is only one God. No man, be he red man or white man, can be apart. We are brothers after all.
I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past.
Thomas Jefferson
Saturday, June 27, 1992
To Sunday, June 28, 2076
I remember talking with a friend that day about the kind of world we would be leaving to our children. He said, “The national debt is now four trillion dollars and it is growing at the rate of three hundred billion dollars a year. How big will it be when our children become taxpayers?”
I said, “Unless we change course soon, they will inherit a sick, crowded, and violent world polarized into two camps: the haves and the have-nots.”
I dreamed that night that I was fishing in a deep pool of water formed from a spring. After I caught a fish, I would throw it back into the water. There was another man fishing next to me, but he could not catch anything.
The sound of a door closing awakened me from the dream. When I opened my eyes, I saw a short, gray-haired man and two women standing by my bed. One of the women spoke to me.
“I’m sorry. Did we startle you?”
“Who are you? How did you get in?”
“My name is Mary, and with me are Elizabeth and Edward,” the woman replied. “You should be asking, ‘How did I get here?’”
I sat up and looked around. She was right—I was not in my bedroom.
“Would you mind answering a couple of questions?” she asked.
“OK,” I said.
“What is your full name? When were you born?”
“My name is Lawrence John Brown. I was born on July 4, 1950.”
My three visitors looked at each other, and then Mary said, “We’ve been expecting you.”
“Where am I?”
Edward stepped forward and said, “You are the guest of the First Gandhi village commune located near San Jose, California.” He paused. “Today is Sunday, June 28, 2076. You’ve arrived one week before we celebrate the tricentennial of the Declaration of American Independence.”
I almost fell out of bed. Collecting myself, I decided to play along with them. I asked, “How did I get here?”
“Your desire to find solutions to the challenges of your time brought you here,” Mary replied. Then she said, “We will leave you now, but Edward will come back later to take you to lunch.”
This had to be a dream too, I thought. I lay back in the bed and shut my eyes, but I could not fall asleep.
I spent the morning speculating about the kind of future I was in. Did I awaken to a nightmare—a world where bands of armed men roamed the land, plundering as they went? Where the rich lived in walled towns protected by guards ordered to shoot to kill? Where death by starvation or violence was the norm, and where the old and the weak were quickly trampled underfoot by the young and the strong? I remembered the suggestion Jonathan Swift had made in his essay “A Modest Proposal,” and wondered if it had been adopted. Swift recommended that the children of the poor, at the age of one year, be sold to the rich so they could be eaten for dinner. He said this would reduce theft, the number of abortions, and the public expense of caring for poor children.