Interfaith Reconciliation in Heaven on Earth : an Introduction
 
The Definitive Multifaith Charter
Heaven on Earth is the definitive multifaith charter. I am confident this slim volume reveals the common metaphysical origins of all our major world faiths : the science, the metaphysics, behind the theology. It presents a compelling case for the recognition that all faiths acknowledge the same God, portraying different faces.

A Solution To Dissolve The Great Stumbling Block
While this thesis may seem self-evident and a mere truism to many within the multifaith community, Heaven on Earth offers a potential solution to dissolve the great stumbling block for those millions who place loyalty to their own faith alongside antagonism to other faiths. This natural instinct should not be underestimated or disparaged. It has a venerable history and a practical tradition enshrined in many scriptures.

A Radical Redefinition of Faith
Only a radical redefinition of faith can overcome this stumbling block. Heaven on Earth achieves this while fully endorsing each faith in its own right and forms and in its own terms. This is remarkable although, as we have observed, it is only endorsing the instinctive intuition which has been the privilege of more enlightened minds in the west but particularly in India, for some time.

Dramatic Science and Popular Theology
The achievement of Heaven on Earth is to present this redefinition in a dramatic, original and yet objective, scientific way which is completely new and has the potential to seize the popular modern mind with its bent to rational, scientific understanding. Previous multifaith understanding has been founded on profound intuitive and emotional resonances between faiths which are open only to relatively few, the enlightened minds, perhaps, and do not always strongly engage the popular mind.

A Certainty Beyond Faith
I believe this startling revelation has the power to seize hearts and minds on a global scale and to unite different faiths in an entirely new and revolutionary understanding and tolerance. When we can supersede faith with facts and hope, even confidence, with scientific certainty, a new day will indeed have dawned to arouse us from our dreams.

Rational Isn’t Bad
The thesis and theology of Heaven on Earth equally carries the potential to bring back into the flock of all faiths those who have been persuaded by modern rational values into doubt; missing an objective explanation for faith.

The Language of the Lost Sheep
There is a serious weakness in any faith, the Christian faith, for example, which was ‘designed’ and presented for a very different age, over two thousand years ago. The most sophisticated minds can happily translate this ancient faith into a modern understanding, for instance on the question of the Creation. Yet this does not offer the clarity and modernism most people demand.

It is utterly unsatisfactory for Christians to say, “Well, this faith is fine for me, so unbelievers simply aren’t trying hard enough : take it or leave it.” This is a fundamental dereliction of duty by any who claim to lead faith. We must find new ways to present Christianity which demonstrates a God who is there for everyone, unconditionally.  A faith offering unconditional love.

A Changing Church
Equally we must recognise it was the failure of the Jewish priesthood to accept the challenge to change which Crucified Christ. This is the fatal flaw in all faiths which the New Testament seems keen to highlight.

Few would argue, if Christ returned with a similar challenge, criticising instead of congratulating, he would invite a similar fate. Heaven on Earth suggests, after the Christian age of the Fish, such a renewal is due.

Equally it is only our failure to properly understand the origins and even object of our faith which insists, “Faith cannot change after two thousand years.” Faith has always changed, often dramatically, pragmatically and politically, not always for the better. What we have now is to some extent the hand-me-down of all these alterations. If we are paralysed now in the face of modern challenges, it is a problem of terminal senility. But God is a living God and his faith a living faith inspired momently by the Holy Spirit.

Retreating into Simplicities
It is this same weakness in our faiths globally, outdated old age, which has, I believe, promoted the brittle simplicities of fundamentalism which are so often confrontational and inimical to a multifaith understanding. They will not be addressed by well-meaning wishful thinking and hand wringing. I do not make these criticisms gratuitously. I make them to suggest we must and can do much better.

Back to Our Roots : Treasure Buried Under the Tree
Heaven on Earth offers the fabulous spiritual prizes of a renewal of faith and a profound inspiration in our understanding of God which embraces all faiths in an unequivocal unity. One God in many glorious visions. Proven true. Inevitably this comes at a profound price. Particularly for the committed believer. Although Heaven on Earth vigorously endorses the orthodox principles of all faiths, especially recognising their common spiritual principles, it does so by conventionally unorthodox methods.

Yet this thesis makes a strong claim its astrological and Kabbalistic foundations are not unorthodox at all but the original source of all faith. Rediscovering the worldwide tradition behind all faiths, the metaphysics behind the mythological pantheons and theology.

In truth Heaven on Earth is ultra-orthodox and looks back, particularly in Christianity, to many of the original principles which have been discarded over the centuries, or more recently. Predestination or predetermination, fate, and reincarnation are both doctrines which are clearly supported by the New Testament but have fallen out of fashion. By returning to the original well-spring of metaphysical knowledge, these basic spiritual principles can be firmly re-established. Not for the sake of originality or new age fashion but for the sake of truth.

If the Facts Fit
It is an impressive measure of the truth of this book’s revelations that they so strongly endorse the original principles of these faiths : the spiritual principles originally defined by the science of metaphysics, astrology.

‘Courage, Mon Brave’
It has not always been wise to stand up for truth. Now it is our only hope. Fond accommodations with fashion will not serve us in recognising our common origins and common principles. Only a radical reassessment will return us to our true roots and escape the dead wood of redundant dogma.

Swallowing Astrology
The bitter pill which members of all faiths have to swallow to rediscover the ‘lost pearl of great price’ is astrology, so long anathematised by Christianity in particular. Yet if we look at Christianity’s history we find astrology has long been held in great esteem by the leading intellectuals of all ages and it is not only the beacon cathedral of Chartres which proclaims this spiritual science quite publicly. The Magi’s presence at the birth of Christianity is steadfastly ignored by a Protestant tradition which is almost philistine in its prejudice against this venerable art.

The Good Muslim
(The lost pearl is love, love of our neighbour who Christ describes as the despised Samaritan : the modern day Muslim, Jew, Hindu, atheist. This is the New Testament teaching on multifaith understanding and we never notice.)

Seeing Stars
Those who would denigrate modern astrology by the measure of popular press columns fall to the same trap as those who denigrate Christianity by the measure of its more popular nonsense or worse.

No Astrology, No Religion, No Science
My work involves a serious attempt to reach out to modern material science to insist it cannot continue to seek a ‘Unified Field Theory of Everything’ without dropping its inveterate prejudice against the spiritual realm which is clearly inseparably integrated with the physical realm. The classic theory of metaphysics shows remarkable parallels with the subtle realm of sub-atomic physics while modern physics is speculating on the ‘ELEVENTH dimension’ while ignoring those parallel dimensions empirically recognised by astrology for four millennia and more.

There has always been this narrow prejudice, these very human limits, in the human intellect : whether it is the Churches’ historical dogma which threatened to burn Galileo and did burn other brilliant, bold minds or science’s reciprocal dogma of materialism, still excommunicating heretics. These blinkers have got to go.

Ancient Faiths, Ancient Ideas
Astrology was clearly the foundation of the major faiths of ancient times and it should be no surprise to find compelling evidence it is at the heart of ancient faiths we still maintain today. These faiths were built on metaphysical knowledge supported by spiritual experience and revelation. We need to rediscover this.

Astrology in the Garden, Astrology Mends the End
The Tree of Life makes its first appearance in the Bible at the centre of the Garden of Eden in Genesis (3 v.22) where its metaphysical knowledge is said to guarantee immortality, to guarantee the spirit within.

Its final appearance is in the last chapter of Revelation (22 v.2) where its astrological character is unequivocally confirmed, referring to the monthly circuit of the moon around the zodiac. The next line is even more telling, prophesying just such a multifaith reconciliation, for what else could it mean ?

‘The Tree of Life which bare twelve manner of fruits and yielded her fruit every month : and the leaves of the Tree were for the healing of the nations.’

Astrology : Buddhism’s ‘Golden Road to Enlightenment’
In Hinduism and Buddhism we find the five metaphysical elements of astrology are at the heart of religious wisdom and astrology is recognised as the highest spiritual science. There is rather the reverse of the prejudice we encounter in the west where at best it is ignored while often it is anathematised.

Islam : a Tradition of Tolerance
Islam has a proud tradition of astrological wisdom but I do not know what current views are. I was extremely impressed visiting Andalusia and particularly the great historic cities of Cordoba, Granada and Seville to discover the rich and fertile tradition of tolerance which prevailed under the Moors, when Cordoba became perhaps the leading centre for the development of the Kabbalah. Although the conquest of Ferdinand and Isabella ushered in the Spanish Inquisition and the emigration of the Jewish community, these cathedrals still celebrate the Tree of Life quite prominently.

Holiday Snaps : the Kabbalah in Spanish Christianity




The Trinity in a Kabbalistic Definition : Illustration from an Illuminated Manuscript in Seville Cathedral
The Sephiroth read Pater, Filius, Spiritus Sanctus, Deus : Father, Son, Holy Spirit, with God in the centre.  An artistic variation on Heaven on Earth's Christian Tree of Life and the full Tree of Life.  Note the position of the Sun in the centre.
Full page image of the Trinity




The Tree of Life in the Cathedral of Cordoba (1523)
Cordoba was a great centre for Kabbalah studies under the Muslim Moors and Christians before the introduction of the Spanish Inquisition and the expulsion of the Jews in 1492.