(NOTE: This weblog creates, for us all, a chance to meet at the interaction of Life and the New Spirituality. It is written by the author of Conversations with God, the worldwide best-selling series of books. The “New Spirituality” is defined by the author as “a new way to experience and express our natural impulse toward the Divine without making others wrong for the way in which they are doing it.”)
MASS GRAVES FOUND IN IRAQ
A mass grave and torture chamber have been discovered in Iraq by coalition forces there. Some 26 bodies were discovered there, and a room, stained with blood, was also found, containing chains hanging from walls and ceilings, and a bed connected to an electrical system. The death chamber was located in an area believed to be a base for al Qaeda terrorists operating in Iraq.

When I hear about such things, I am, as we all are, repulsed. The thought that any human being could deliberately and slowly torture another human being is beyond my ability to comprehend. Causing another person to die by such means is unimaginable by me. And yet, we know that this happens in our world — and it may not always be the “bad guys” who are doing it…
Such behaviors could only be exhibited by a race of beings believing absolutely in the separation of all things. Conversations with God says that most of the world’s people adhere to a Separation Theology. I have named the God of this theology Iohayot. That is an acronym for I’m Over Here And You’re Over There.
This is as valid a name as any of the others that humanity has come up with, including Allah, Brahmin, God, Jehovah, Krishna, or Yahweh, and it’s far more descriptive of the actual concept of God held by most humans. Religion is not noted for producing widespread agreement among people, yet whatever else the fervently religious may disagree on, most concur that God says: “I’m Over Here And You’re Over There.”
God then adds, “You may come over here if you wish, but there are certain things that you have to do.” God then gives us the list of those things. That list has been read by many people in many different ways, and those different ways are sometimes called religions.
There is only One List, each of our religions assert, and we must not be confused into thinking that there are many, nor so perplexed by the False Lists put out by others that we pick the wrong one.
This description of human theologies is simplistic in the extreme, yet it is not that far from being an accurate, if very basic, summary of our beliefs. And these beliefs are killing us.
Separation Theology—worship of the God Iohayot—could, if it continues much longer on our planet, bring an end to life as we know it on the earth. It has already begun to do so.
Many people believe that this is because, while God is, indeed, “over there” and we are “over here,” God has to sometimes come “over here” to teach us a lesson. And so God comes down to punish us for our sins, make us pay for our offenses, or do whatever else is necessary to reestablish the natural order of things and bring Right into proper balance with that which is Not Right.
Under this philosophy the AIDS epidemic, the increasing violence on the earth, the degradation of our social systems, the erosion and destruction of our collective morals, the pestilence and rampant poverty afflicting millions, are all signs of God’s anger, punishments from on high brought on by humanity’s increasingly evil behavior.
This belief in a God who is “over there” and who wants and needs or desires or demands something from those of us “over here” is what allows humans to grant themselves the moral authority to inflict punishments of their own upon those who ignore God’s Word and disobey God’s Commandments. We imagine and understand and declare ourselves to be acting in God’s name as we throw the switch on the electric chair, or throw people behind bars for 20 years, or throw our weight around in whatever other way we have bestowed it upon ourselves to do in retribution for the sins that others have committed.
This idea is what allows humans to fly airplanes into buildings, killing thousands of innocent civilians all the while shouting, “Allah is great!” It is what allows humans to preemptively strike a nation that they imagine is going to strike them if they don’t do it first, killing thousands of innocent civilians with bombs paid for by coins on which it is written, “In God We Trust.”
If we thought we were doing these things to God, we would, of course, never do them. Yet there is nothing could make us think that we are doing these things to God except the thought that We And God Are One, and that is a thought a majority of us have summarily rejected.
Separation Theology produces a Separation Cosmology. That is, a cosmological way of looking at all of Life which holds that everything is separate from everything else. Separation Cosmology produces a Separation Sociology. That is, a way of socializing the human species that separates every person from every other person by declaring their interests to be separate. Separation Sociology produces a Separation Pathology. That is, pathological behaviors of self-destruction/
This is exactly what we are seeing on the earth today.