In January of 1954, just a year before his death, Albert Einstein wrote the following letter to philosopher Erik Gutkind after reading his book, “Choose Life: The Biblical Call to Revolt,” and made known his views on religion. Apparently Einstein had only read the book due to repeated recommendation by their mutual friend Luitzen Egbertus Jan Brouwer. The letter was bought at auction in May 2008, for £170,000; unsurprisingly, one of the unsuccessful bidders was Richard Dawkins.
Source: David Victor; Image: Albert Einstein, via.
Translated Transcript
Princeton, 3. 1. 1954
Dear Mr Gutkind,
Inspired by Brouwer’s repeated suggestion, I read a great deal in your book, and thank you very much for lending it to me. What struck me was this: with regard to the factual attitude to life and to the human community we have a great deal in common. Your personal ideal with its striving for freedom from ego-oriented desires, for making life beautiful and noble, with an emphasis on the purely human element. This unites us as having an “unAmerican attitude.”
Still, without Brouwer’s suggestion I would never have gotten myself to engage intensively with your book because it is written in a language inaccessible to me. The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weakness, the Bible a collection of honorable, but still purely primitive, legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation, no matter how subtle, can change this for me. For me the Jewish religion like all other religions is an incarnation of the most childish superstition. And the Jewish people to whom I gladly belong, and whose thinking I have a deep affinity for, have no different quality for me than all other people. As far as my experience goes, they are also no better than other human groups, although they are protected from the worst cancers by a lack of power. Otherwise I cannot see anything “chosen” about them.
In general I find it painful that you claim a privileged position and try to defend it by two walls of pride, an external one as a man and an internal one as a Jew. As a man you claim, so to speak, a dispensation from causality otherwise accepted, as a Jew the privilege of monotheism. But a limited causality is no longer a causality at all, as our wonderful Spinoza recognized with all incision, probably as the first one. And the animistic interpretations of the religions of nature are in principle not annulled by monopolization. With such walls we can only attain a certain self-deception, but our moral efforts are not furthered by them. On the contrary.
Now that I have quite openly stated our differences in intellectual convictions it is still clear to me that we are quite close to each other in essential things, i.e; in our evaluations of human behavior. What separates us are only intellectual “props” and “rationalization” in Freud’s language. Therefore I think that we would understand each other quite well if we talked about concrete things.
With friendly thanks and best wishes,
Yours,
A. Einstein
intellectual traps
One famous insight from an LSD trip says: All matter is merely energy compressed into slow vibration. We are one consciousness seeing reality subjectively; Death does not exist, Life is just a dream. And we are just the imagination of us.
We dare to explain here what is it all about, so you get an extra chance to wake up from your imagination of you. Intellect is living a little bit different life than the rest of our bodies, especially those of us dealing with technology, science, art or literature. Computer science is generally based on discrete mathematics, which literally means that there is nothing between number one and number two – a vacuum if you please. Our mind is an analogue creature which makes images out of the pixel screen world, and digitally compressed sound, thinking out missing fields of audio, and video data perceived from speakers and screens synchronising between the two, which means that our intellect constantly creates reality for us.
Before the computer and science worlds there were myths, fairy tales and religious dogmas, giving food to our imaginations, again feeding humans’ world with illusions of “reality”. If you think of any word, your intellect, incredibly quickly, finds meaning of it. Take the word “God”, for example: It sounds differently in every language, but most of you, religious or not, will look up, reflecting His presence in the sky. Yes, it exists when spoken about, but it does not exist in a deaf or a blind human incapable of hearing or perceiving the concept. Why so much about the same? A way to wake up from the illusionary world does not matter, but the need is living within some humans – suffering consequences of this illusion really is overwhelming.
Tools for awakening – Let’s propose that our mind creates electrical circuits projecting reality into our consciousness, thus in order to shut down the source of information – internet, television, radio news, political agendas, religious dogmas, family traditions, etc – we have to create a short circuit for those streams to jumpstart other electrical circuits.
Music is one of the effective tools that creates instant chemistry within our bodies, helping to dissolve illusions and jump out of dreams, for a while. But, once you go to work, unless you are in the music industry, you are forced into common life with it’s dress code.. the matrix if you will.
Drugs – Some just lead humans the shortest way to death, which, according to the cover statement, does not exist until spoken about. “Drug” is also a word, branded by Law of society, utilized to control obedience of masses. Just spend another thought here: alcoholics are real, but they are never called drug addicts for a very simple reason – alcohol is legal and well-taxed due to its properties. Drunk people are easy to influence, easy to control and very easy to direct. For example, sports events are accompanied by alcohol; viewers drink alcohol, watch commercials about alcohol and are inspired by spirits, that are sold in sports bars. Drunk violence is thus supported by sports events.
The number one killer in the world – Sugar – does not fall into illegal drug lists anywhere. Casino addiction does not take casinos out of law, but when it comes to Cannabis – ding-ding! In some countries possession of it will put you in jail or even execute you. Cultivation of cannabis is illegal in most of the world.
The Sassafras tree gets extinguished due to its exceptional medicinal properties to be the origin of Safrole, illegal in most of the modern world, used to free intellect of the matrix of social laws, and connecting it to our natural selves. MDMA – widely known for its ability to heal post-traumatic syndrome and other psyche disorders – was created from Safrole. The Sassafras’s juice is processed into oil and then synthesized in a lab – illegal today, together with the tree, which the DEA (Drug Enforcement Agency) extinguishes all over the world.
The Coca plant is forbidden in most of the world, creating special interest and attracting crime to its chemical called cocaine, which is in trend. Best-grade cocaine is consumed by most politicians, corporate executives, stock exchange brokers and other society vampires. They dictate surreal rules and operating laws, which incorporate extinction of natural medications and promote sales of prescription drugs with multiple side effects. They install widespread fear of “drugs” into masses, which creates inadequate opposition to awakened life.
Free of constant intoxication with legal drugs like sugar, coffee, salt, alcohol, pharmaceuticals, news feeds, beer advertisements layered onto sports events, so-called tobacco, made mostly of industrial chemicals, manifest social addiction. So, the industry prospers, supporting another criminal industry: pharmaceutical companies, who pay corporate cash to the medical industry to incorporate their synthetic drugs. They pet doctors in exceptional resorts, pay-rolling prescription drugs from one hand, sponsoring politicians, banning plants one-by-one on the other hand, making money on our fears by imposing insurance (another criminal industry) into our lives.
You are under threat of extinction! Wake up! In another case you are as good as dead. Use plants to wake up, use your body to wake up! Use mushrooms to acquire first-hand knowledge directly from nature! Go hiking to wake up, go surfing to wake up, go swimming to wake up, get back in love with nature so it won’t hate you back to death! Stop being a chicken in an industrial incubator – they’ll fry you! Engage intellect to save your life from the corporate mind. Help yourself build your own perception of reality, different from religious behavior of a muppet, to make sure it votes for another idea to destroy and control, extinguishing all that is natural to incorporate synthetic lifestyle. Be alive and free, dream your own dreams, free from installed concepts and fears that are so popular among international powers dictating hater rage and extinction of misfits, extinction of natural resources and revoking freedom of self determination.
Happy surfing,
You, crazy diamond..