January

In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.

The Book of Genesis

And so, before we set forth, let's talk some more about you.

Yeah ...

You.

Despite my gossamer-thin promise that if you read this you'll know how to live life by your own rulebook, and indeed save the planet, why would you accompany me on this trek? Why would you choose to leave the comfort of the fireside and venture out into the wasteland in the full knowledge that this journey is at best unpredictable and at worst liable to drive us to the edge of madness or beyond?

Two reasons:

First, the world we live in is fucked. Our terrorist governments and corrupt, self-serving politicians have propagated a vast disparity in the division of wealth; a semi-visible and perpetual World War III rages above and below ground, and we need to find a whole new value system if we are to survive as a species.

Then there's the second reason and that is all about you.

Because, like it or not, you are a Sinner.

And look, I know you try your best, OK? I know you're one of the good guys. I know you subscribe to Avaaz and you've got a standing order to the World Wildlife Fund. I applaud you for that, I really do.

But way, way back, when you were born, when you were fresh and pure and new, you had no notion of mortal Sin, or even morality; and unless your mother had experienced some kind of trauma when you were in the womb, the chances are you were largely a blank canvas, secure in the innate knowledge that you were loveable.

And you had no concept of Sin.

My belief, after working as some kind of therapist for over two decades now, is that there is essentially only one core wound that any of us have and that all presenting issues are but symptoms of that wound:

Do I belong? Am I accepted? And most of all ... Am I loveable?

As soon as you are admonished, bullied or shamed, you run naked in your humiliation from the Garden and do whatever you possibly can to cover your arse.

And so it goes on. You develop an inner radar like a soldier on sentry duty, peering into the darkness, eyes on stalks in a fixed 1000-yard stare; hyper-vigilant to any perceived attack, your armour becomes thicker and thicker. But still the messages penetrate, at first from your family: 'big boys don't cry, little girls should never get angry, children should be seen and not heard, you wait until your father gets home, don't be naughty or the sandman will get you, mummy won't love you if you do that, you'll never go to heaven if you do that ...'

Then comes school: 'you're too short, too tall, too fat, too thin, you wear glasses, you smell, you have greasy hair, you're stupid, you don't have the right clothes to be in the gang, you're shit at maths ...'

As you grow older, maybe you realise that all of this was nonsense. Maybe you get over it or maybe you get some therapy, but inside you're wounded and deep down uncertain as to whether anyone will ever really love you.

And still the messages come: 'you're too slow, too fast, too short, too tall, too bald, too hairy, not sexy enough, too sexual, you're arrogant, you're a failure, you're brash, you're under-confident, too bullish, too weak. ...'

And by the time you're fully-grown, you're going to have ingested a whole library of data that says, in essence ...

You're just no good.

And from that position you are very susceptible to the idea that you are a Sinner, not because of what you do or what you don't do, but because you inhabit this world; and part of the core of this world's very structure is that you, by default, are born morally depraved and therefore must plead for salvation.

How else would you be controllable? By your parents, your state, your church?

Now hold on. Before you throw this book away, this isn't just another conspiracy theory rant. Not yet, anyway.

Wikipedia defines Sin as:

The act of violating God's will. Sin can also be viewed as anything that violates the ideal relationship between an individual and God; or as any diversion from the perceived ideal order for human living.

However, rather than committing a wrongdoing, the original Hebrew word Sin meant 'to miss', to not be present, to be unconscious.

I apologise now if you don't like Osho because there's going to be a fair amount of his twisted genius in this book. He said:

The word 'Sin' is very significant; not in the way Christians interpret it, not according to the dictionaries, because they have been influenced by the religions, but according to its original roots: the word 'Sin' simply means forgetfulness. And that gives a totally new dimension to the word — a beauty. It is nothing for which you can be thrown into hell. It is something that you can manage. It is not concerned with any action in particular; it is concerned with your awareness.

To be aware is to be virtuous. And to remain in unawareness is the only Sin. You may be doing good things without awareness. But those good things are no longer good, because they come out of darkness, unconsciousness, blindness. And as far as awareness is concerned, a man who is full of awareness, alert, cannot do anything wrong. It is intrinsically impossible.

Awareness brings so much clarity, so much perception, so much understanding that it is impossible to do anything that can be harmful to anyone. It is impossible to interfere with somebody's freedom or somebody's life. You can only be a blessing to existence, nothing else. So, to forget that you are a seeker is dangerous. It is falling into Sin. This is the only Sin I accept as Sin.

Did you get that?

Spoiler alert.

The only true Sin ... Is that of unconsciousness. Boom!

There we have it and I'll tell you right now, that may well be the most important point raised in this book, so if you're just skim-reading you can quit here and still have got something profound.

But should you wish to persevere ...

We are born pure, we are told we are Sinners, we desperately adapt in order to be loveable and thus lose touch with ourselves, which makes us unconscious, and in so doing ...

We become Sinners.

What a rip-off.

Of course, the notion of Sin and its hellish consequences have been used as a vehicle for the last 2000 years to control the masses, as well as, I grant you, providing some kind of social guideline in the form of morality. But, as Osho said, 'morality is so that people don't have to think for themselves.'

If you want to control people — whether it is to keep them in 'order', to exploit or to manipulate them — the best way is to instil in them a deep sense of guilt, or better still scare the b'Jesus out of them.

Keep them fearful.

The war against terror is a contemporary example. By manufacturing or manipulating a...