Top Ten of 2015

2015 seems to have been the most popular year for The Urban Mystic, accounting for 1/5 of all the lifetime visitors. As usual, here are the top ten stories of the year in order.



1. Integral Christ



In 2015 Easter took place on the same day as the first Easter in 33 AD. The last time this happened was 1942, and it won't happen again until 2026, so I took the time to create a very big, detailed piece about what an integral version of Christianity would look like, complete with miracles, the crucifixion, and resurrection. I explain why all three are necessary in any version of Christianity, first, second, or third tier, and why it is intellectually dishonest to claim otherwise.



2. The Myth of Cultural Relativity



All cultures are not equal. Most cultures accomplished little, or nothing, while others changed the world in spectacular ways.



3. The Dovekeepers



In April a made for TV movie about the massacre at Masada during the Jewish Revolt was produced by the same people who made the hit series The Bible. And they made the Romans look like the good guys. The movie is about two women who survive and tell Josephus what happened, and they are the biggest whores on the planet. The only thing they do is seduce married men and have sex with them, then those married men get killed and they seduce even more married men. They never once think to find a man who is single. They are adulterous whores who are glorified in this two part Harlequin softcore porn film.



4. Is Peace on Earth Possible?



Kriyananda explains why the yuga cycle gives him hope that peace on Earth is possible in the future.



5. Why "Taxing the Rich" Doesn't Work



Everyone wants to tax "the rich", but the definition of just who is "the rich" is totally dependent on whom you are asking. No one, no matter how much money they make, will admit to being rich. Similarly, just what is the "fair share" that "the rich" must pay? No one has a percentage or dollar amount, it's always just "more than they are paying now". I outline eight reasons why the rich pay no taxes, and why raising tax rates only ever hurt the poor and middle class.



6. Overpopulation is Officially Bullshit



The New York Times admits that there is no overpopulation problem! The real problems are below replacement birth rates and improper distribution of resources.



7. Meditation Problems and Benefits



Bullshit psychiatrists say meditation is evil and you should take a pill so that they can stay in business. I then explain how meditation works, the real reason you should meditate, the real reason people encounter problems with meditation, and how to overcome those problems.



8. The Pyramid Deception



There is a lie that is oft perpetuated by archaeologists who are members of the scientistic magisterium. It is claimed that prior to the invention of modern building techniques and materials the ONLY way to build tall structures was to build a pyramid, and that's why pyramids were built by many ancient civilisations. This is a lie on its face.



It was entirely possible to build tall towers with straight walls and I provide many examples in this masterpiece.



You can't explain away why ancient people all over the world built pyramids. Why did people all over the world build pyramids? We do not know. I am not here to propose an alternate hypothesis, merely to disprove the predominant hypothesis that pyramids exist all over the world because people were too stupid to build straight sided towers.



9. China Sends Aircraft Carrier to Syria



The balance of global power has shifted.



This September China, in alliance with Russia and Syria, sent a stiff rebuke to the US and the US created proxy ISIS. The US created ISIS, along with staging a coup in Ukraine, to destroy Russia by proxy. Well, Russia is not backing down, and neither is China.



10. Uri Geller's Tricks?



The subject that made The Urban Mystic famous! The question over whether Uri Geller uses trickery to bend spoons is left to the reader's interpretation, but a new video surfaced, starring our old friend Bob Couttie, that may show Geller fooling around. The video is of poor quality and I have not drawn any conclusions from it.









This year has been so big that a lot of really good stuff didn't make it into the top ten.





Richard Rose: Zen and Death

Richard Rose talks on everything. He talks about the four categories of mystical experiences, how society conditions us to believe lies regarding who we are and what death is, the near death experience, and the importance of finding the Truth and who we really are. We exist before we are born and continue to exist after we die. The purpose of life is finding this Truth out for ourselves through direct experience. Runs 1 hour 10 minutes.

The Worse Devils of Our Nature

Despite what Steven Pinker says, the 20th century was unquestionably the most violent in history, with more people killed than were even alive for most of human history (800 million people were killed in the 20th century, human population was usually around 400 - 500 million until around 1800), and with so many dead in 2015 and wars raging across the world, things don't look to be getting better any time soon.



A Tale of Two Rebirths



There are two models for how rebirth works. In the old model, adopted in some form by pretty much every major religion in the world, souls begin in ignorance and must grow through a series of lifetimes until they reach perfection. In the "new age" version, souls begin totally omniscient and incarnate on Earth for the lulz, to experience things that spirits can't experience, like cancer, war, famine, rape, and murder. Why a soul would want to experience these things is never explained. Human psychology seems to refute the notion, but some (far from all) channeled material suggests that enlightened soul psychology is totally different from human psychology. Of course, NDEs and most mediumistic communication indicates that the deceased pretty much think just like they did when they were alive, instead of being instantly enlightened. If I had to bet I would say that the very low level trickster spirits are the ones coming through saying we're all omniscient and we come to Earth to suffer, as it goes against all the evidence from enlightened sages on Earth, human psychology, reason, common sense, reports from NDEs and reports from other spirits.



Suffering and The Meaning of Life

God did not create the world to experience things, like suffering or separation, like some cosmic version of the TV series Jackass. God created a perfect world as an outpouring of love. We created this illusory flawed world of suffering out of pride, to prove we were more powerful than God, and we hide here until we overcome our pride and return to God.



Islam: The Untold Story



Tom Holland suggests that the true origins of Islam and Muhammad came not from Arabia, but from the Negev, and it was not until much later that the Mecca story was invented to further distance Islam from Christianity and Judaism. This could explain why the early sites are being destroyed, not because of the danger of idolatry, but because those sites were fakes, built centuries later, and the Wahhabis in the Saudi government don't want anyone - especially devout Muslims - from discovering that the buildings and cemeteries date from well after the life of Muhammad and his companions. It could also explain why the Quran makes more sense when read in Syriac (the language used in the Negev and Sinai at the time) than when read in Arabic.

Later on fragments of the Quran were discovered that were dated to a time before Muhammad was born.

This is more evidence in support of the hypothesis that the text of the Quran comes from Syriac Christian sources in the Negev that were altered by Muhammad or someone else to justify the Arab conquest of the region. This is why the sites associated with early Islam are being destroyed by the Saudi government and others, not to prevent people from worshiping at Muhammad's birthplace, but to hide the fact that the religion of Islam was created after the political movement had established itself, to to distance it from its Christian and Jewish roots.



Biblical Archaeology

The central dogma of biblical archaeology is based on a faulty chronology. Some scholars invented a chronology when events of the Bible should have taken place, and when they find the evidence of events that were described in the Bible they find those events happened a few centuries earlier than when the chronology says they should have. Instead of doing what any rational being would do, which is to revise the chronology, the biblical archaeologists become even more entrenched in the chronology. They proclaim the Bible to be myth and the artefacts that were discovered to belong to a new, previously unknown period in history. This is the exact opposite of how science works. If the data do not fit the hypothesis it is the hypothesis that must be revised to fit the data. Instead, biblical archaeologists revise the data to fit the hypothesis.