I’ve been thinking about how the spirit world dramatically influences the politics of our lives, as most indicators point to massive manipulation of our politics from the realm best articulated in the traditional Bible.  I found myself in Japan visiting some of the best-known temples in Kyoto with friends and comparing them to what we know about the Temple of Solomon.  Even though there have been over three thousand years of evolution in them, I couldn’t help but see massive similarities and notice how a religious relationship with the politics of a nation has either a positive or negative effect.  The gods worshipped aren’t even the same; in the case of Solomon’s Temple, it was Yahweh.  In the temples of Kyoto, it was Buddha, but as I have been saying for a while now, even including the way that the original Hebrew Bible was written from back to front, right to left, just as Japan writes to this day, it is obvious that the influences along the Silk Road, even in ancient times were a massive culture of uniformity that has its influences even now.  It might be uncomfortable for many people to consider their regional specificity, but there is a common theme that is easily verified when visiting these religious places, and that is the use of incense to establish a relationship with spiritual entities for assistance in the here and now.  Watching people interact with incense in Japan by washing it over themselves and then stepping into the temple to pray to Buddha reminded me almost identically of the tabernacle rituals of Solomon’s Temple and many others worldwide.  However, the same approach to these sacred precincts established by the Jewish people was more than just a coincidence.  There was a science to the approach that worked at some unconscious level, and it had been established long ago and is still in use to this very moment. 

We don’t get to see such a spiritual alignment in the United States because we have allowed ourselves to be suckered into a church versus state argument that discourages public displays of religious value, which the Japanese people have no apprehension over.  As a direct result, you can travel the streets in downtown Tokyo at 2 AM and see nearly no litter and experience very little crime.  People are overwhelmingly respectful of each other, and much of the root of this behavior is their relationship with the spirit world, which they are very open about.  Visiting temples in Kinkakujicho, the Kinna-ji Temple, the magnificent Kiyomizu-dera Temple, and several others, the use of incense smoke to provide a place for the spirit world to manifest in our three-dimensional world is a foundation for establishing a relationship with those characters.  It is common for people to regionally associate their deities of worship with the specificity of their culture and give them names like people name their goldfish.  But in truth, there is much more than just mimicry across multiple cultures over vast periods.  There was a cause and effect that couldn’t be ignored and was at the root of all successful societies.  Much of the Bible deals specifically with the nature of having a relationship with God, as the purpose of the Tabernacle even before the Temple of Solomon was built, was so that God could exist with his people, to manifest upon the Mercy Seat over the outstretched wings of the Ark of the Covenant.  I often think of the Ten Commandments as being the key to a prosperous society, in having rules that work and structure people to work together with shared assumptions.  But even more than that, this relationship with God through incense smoke is unmistakably productive. 

When people stopped worshipping God, as chronicled in the Bible and stepped back into the worship of the high places with human sacrifice to Baal, those societies quickly crumbled into a heap of madness.  And that has been the same story of all cultures who stepped away from God over the many years, the God Yahweh, as the Jewish people came to know him.  As I watched people in Japan interacting with the smoke and washing it over themselves, I kept thinking that the smoke itself was something anybody could produce anywhere, from simple incense burners from Walmart.  There was nothing specifically special about the smoke.  It was only made at a place meant to take the participant’s mind away from the noise of their daily life and have a relationship with the spirit world and whatever Gods might answer.  They have their names for them.  Just as most religions around the world do as well.  But that the intent was the same was more than a coincidence.  If you wanted to see what temple life was like for the Hebrew people in the Near East and understand what a thriving culture looked like, Japan had its finger on it.  Whereas modern Israel is war-torn and under contention, purposely trying to suppress a successful religious experience, much of the world is in conflict over this essential relationship, I would argue.  This is not just for the regional aspects of nation-building but also for the soldiers of the spirit world themselves.  They are at war with each other, and they use the minds of men to corrupt them into conflict by interrupting a positive experience of chaos and maniacal lunacy, such as the church and state arguments. 

By eroding the values of a culture, people allow themselves to be manipulated like pawns in a grand chess game from rivals beyond the world of the living.  And in places in the world where that relationship is positive, they also have a political culture that is functioning correctly.  The best way to destroy a person is to destroy their relationship with the spirit world, no matter what they call their gods, whether those gods are the same character with different names or a pantheon of different characters sometimes called the same name.  It’s the relationship that matters and how it carries over into a political society.  And what about the smoke of incense that carries a relationship with God?  It’s a common theme we can learn from the longest-running, prosperous society of people, the Jewish people because they have been doing it for a long time.  In Japan, as I visited many temples last week in Kyoto, the functionary relationship with the spirit world is alive and well.  And it’s working for them successfully.  Few places on earth today are more successful culturally than what is witnessed in Japan, especially Kyoto, the old capital.  People had a relationship with the more significant aspects of dimensional confinement, and they were happy about it.  The incense smoke appealed to that relationship, which was tangible and precisely like the Tabernacle of the Hebrew people.  When people fell to Baal worship, they turned to appeasement of those gods through the sacrifice of the living.  Whereas to Yahweh, and eventually the Buddha, who came 500 years later, and then the influence of Christ from India, we see an approach that worked along the Silk Road many thousands of miles apart.  It can be shown that a successful relationship with the spirit world creates an opportunity for a prosperous society.  But the temptations to shortcut or abandon that relationship are all too common and involve politics beyond our lives, yet very much at the center of everything we do. 

Rich Hoffman

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