Of the Religion of Deism Compared with the Christian Religion

By Thomas Paine, American Revolutionary Leader


Every person, of whatever religious denomination he may be, is a DEIST in the first article of his Creed. Deism, from the Latin word Deus, God, is the belief of a God, and this belief is the first article of every man's creed.

It is on this article, universally consented to by all mankind, that the Deist builds his church, and here he rests. Whenever we step aside from this article, by mixing it with articles of human invention, we wander into a labyrinth of uncertainty and fable, and become exposed to every kind of imposition by pretenders to revelation.

The Persian shows the Zend-Avesta of Zoroaster, the lawgiver of Persia, and calls it the divine law; the Brahmin shows the Shaster, revealed, he says, by God to Brahma, and given to him out of a cloud; the Jew shows what he calls the law of Moses, given, he says, by God, on the Mount Sinai; the Christian shows a collection of books and epistles, written by nobody knows who, and called the New Testament; and the Mahometan shows the Koran, given, he says, by God to Mahomet: each of these calls itself revealed religion, and the only true Word of God, and this the followers of each profess to believe from the habit of education, and each believes the others are imposed upon.

But when the divine gift of reason begins to expand itself in the mind and calls man to reflection, he then reads and contemplates God and His works, and not in the books pretending to be revelation. The creation is the Bible of the true believer in God. Everything in this vast volume inspires him with sublime ideas of the Creator. The little and paltry, and often obscene, tales of the Bible sink into wretchedness when put in comparison with this mighty work.

The Deist needs none of those tricks and shows called miracles to confirm his faith, for what can be a greater miracle than the creation itself, and his own existence?

There is a happiness in Deism, when rightly understood, that is not to be found in any other system of religion. All other systems have something in them that either shock our reason, or are repugnant to it, and man, if he thinks at all, must stifle his reason in order to force himself to believe them.

But in Deism our reason and our belief become happily united. The wonderful structure of the universe, and everything we behold in the system of the creation, prove to us, far better than books can do, the existence of a God, and at the same time proclaim His attributes.

It is by the exercise of our reason that we are enabled to contemplate God in His works, and imitate Him in His ways. When we see His care and goodness extended over all His creatures, it teaches us our duty toward each other, while it calls forth our gratitude to Him. It is by forgetting God in His works, and running after the books of pretended revelation, that man has wandered from the straight path of duty and happiness, and become by turns the victim of doubt and the dupe of delusion.

Except in the first article in the Christian creed, that of believing in God, there is not an article in it but fills the mind with doubt as to the truth of it, the instant man begins to think. Now every article in a creed that is necessary to the happiness and salvation of man, ought to be as evident to the reason and comprehension of man as the first article is, for God has not given us reason for the purpose of confounding us, but that we should use it for our own happiness and His glory.

The truth of the first article is proved by God Himself, and is universal; for the creation is of itself demonstration of the existence of a Creator. But the second article, that of God's begetting a son, is not proved in like manner, and stands on no other authority than that of a tale.

Certain books in what is called the New Testament tell us that Joseph dreamed that the angel told him so, (Matthew i, 20): "And behold the angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph, in a dream, saying, Joseph, thou son of David, fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife, for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost."

The evidence upon this article bears no comparison with the evidence upon the first article, and therefore is not entitled to the same credit, and ought not to be made an article in a creed, because the evidence of it is defective, and what evidence there is, is doubtful and suspicious. We do not believe the first article on the authority of books, whether called Bibles or Korans, nor yet on the visionary authority of dreams, but on the authority of God's own visible works in the creation.

The nations who never heard of such books, nor of such people as Jews, Christians, or Mahometans, believe the existence of a God as fully as we do, because it is self-evident. The work of man's hands is a proof of the existence of man as fully as his personal appearance would be.

When we see a watch, we have as positive evidence of the existence of a watchmaker, as if we saw him; and in like manner the creation is evidence to our reason and our senses of the existence of a Creator. But there is nothing in the works of God that is evidence that He begat a son, nor anything in the system of creation that corroborates such an idea, and, therefore, we are not authorized in believing it.

What truth there may be in the story that Mary, before she was married to Joseph, was kept by one of the Roman soldiers, and was with child by him, I leave to be settled between the Jews and Christians. The story however has probability on its side, for her husband Joseph suspected and was jealous of her, and was going to put her away. "Joseph, her husband, being a just man, and not willing to make her a public example, was going to put her away, privately." (Matt. i, 19).

I have already said that "whenever we step aside from the first article (that of believing in God), we wander into a labyrinth of uncertainty," and here is evidence of the justness of the remark, for it is impossible for us to decide who was Jesus Christ's father.

But presumption can assume anything, and therefore it makes Joseph's dream to be of equal authority with the existence of God, and to help it on calls it revelation. It is impossible for the mind of man in its serious moments, however it may have been entangled by education, or beset by priestcraft, not to stand still and doubt upon the truth of this article and of its creed.

But this is not all. The second article of the Christian creed having brought the son of Mary into the world (and this Mary, according to the chronological tables, was a girl of only fifteen years of age when this son was born), the next article goes on to account for his being begotten, which was, that when he grew a man he should be put to death, to expiate, they say, the sin that Adam brought into the world by eating an apple or some kind of forbidden fruit.

But though this is the creed of the Church of Rome, from whence the Protestants borrowed it, it is a creed which that Church has manufactured of itself, for it is not contained in nor derived from, the book called the New Testament.

The four books called the Evangelists, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, which give, or pretend to give, the birth, sayings, life, preaching, and death of Jesus Christ, make no mention of what is called the fall of man; nor is the name of Adam to be found in any of those books, which it certainly would be if the writers of them believed that Jesus was begotten, born, and died for the purpose of redeeming mankind from the sin which Adam had brought into the world. Jesus never speaks of Adam himself, of the garden of Eden, nor of what is called the fall of man.

But the Church of Rome having set up its new religion, which it called Christianity, invented the creed which it named the Apostles's Creed, in which it calls Jesus the only son of God, conceived by the Holy Ghost, and born of the Virgin Mary; things of which it is impossible that man or woman can have any idea, and consequently no belief but in words; and for which there is no authority but the idle story of Joseph's dream in the first chapter of Matthew, which any designing impostor or foolish fanatic might make.

It then manufactured the allegories in the book of Genesis into fact, and the allegorical tree of life and the tree of knowledge into real trees, contrary to the belief of the first Christians, and for which there is not the least authority in any of the books of the New Testament; for in none of them is there any mention made of such place as the Garden of Eden, nor of anything that is said to have happened there.

But the Church of Rome could not erect the person called Jesus into a Savior of the world without making the allegories in the book of Genesis into fact, though the New Testament, as before observed, gives no authority for it. All at once the allegorical tree of knowledge became, according to the Church, a real tree, the fruit of it real fruit, and the eating of it sinful.

As priestcraft was always the enemy of knowledge, because priestcraft supports itself by keeping people in delusion and ignorance, it was consistent with its policy to make the acquisition of knowledge a real sin.

The Church of Rome having done this, it then brings forward Jesus the son of Mary as suffering death to redeem mankind from sin, which Adam, it says, had brought into the world by eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge. But as it is impossible for reason to believe such a story, because it can see no reason for it, nor have any evidence of it, the Church then tells us we must not regard our reason, but must believe, as it were, and that through thick and thin, as if God had given man reason like a plaything, or a rattle, on purpose to make fun of him.

Reason is the forbidden tree of priestcraft, and may serve to explain the allegory of the forbidden tree of knowledge, for we may reasonably suppose the allegory had some meaning and application at the time it was invented. It was the practice of the Eastern nations to convey their meaning by allegory, and relate it in the manner of fact. Jesus followed the same method, yet nobody ever supposed the allegory or parable of the rich man and Lazarus, the Prodigal Son, the ten Virgins, etc., were facts.

Why then should the tree of knowledge, which is far more romantic in idea than the parables in the New Testament are, be supposed to be a real tree? The answer to this is, because the Church could not make its new-fangled system, which it called Christianity, hold together without it. To have made Christ to die on account of an allegorical tree would have been too barefaced a fable.

But the account, as it is given of Jesus in the New Testament, even visionary as it is, does not support the creed of the Church that he died for the redemption of the world. According to that account he was crucified and buried on the Friday, and rose again in good health on the Sunday morning, for we do not hear that he was sick. This cannot be called dying, and is rather making fun of death than suffering it.

There are thousands of men and women also, who if they could know they should come back again in good health in about thirty-six hours, would prefer such kind of death for the sake of the experiment, and to know what the other side of the grave was. Why then should that which would be only a voyage of curious amusement to us, be magnified into merit and suffering in him? If a God, he could not suffer death, for immortality cannot die, and as a man his death could be no more than the death of any other person.

The belief of the redemption of Jesus Christ is altogether an invention of the Church of Rome, not the doctrine of the New Testament. What the writers of the New Testament attempted to prove by the story of Jesus is the resurrection of the same body from the grave, which was the belief of the Pharisees, in opposition to the Sadducees (a sect of Jews) who denied it.

Paul, who was brought up a Pharisee, labors hard at this for it was the creed of his own Pharisaical Church: I Corinthians xv is full of supposed cases and assertions about the resurrection of the same body, but there is not a word in it about redemption. This chapter makes part of the funeral service of the Episcopal Church. The dogma of the redemption is the fable of priestcraft invented since the time the New Testament was compiled, and the agreeable delusion of it suited with the depravity of immoral livers. When men are taught to ascribe all their crimes and vices to the temptations of the devil, and to believe that Jesus, by his death, rubs all off, and pays their passage to heaven gratis, they become as careless in morals as a spendthrift would be of money, were he told that his father had engaged to pay off all his scores.

It is a doctrine not only dangerous to morals in this world, but to our happiness in the next world, because it holds out such a cheap, easy, and lazy way of getting to heaven, as has a tendency to induce men to hug the delusion of it to their own injury.

But there are times when men have serious thoughts, and it is at such times, when they begin to think, that they begin to doubt the truth of the Christian religion; and well they may, for it is too fanciful and too full of conjecture, inconsistency, improbability and irrationality, to afford consolation to the thoughtful man. His reason revolts against his creed. He sees that none of its articles are proved, or can be proved.

He may believe that such a person as is called Jesus (for Christ was not his name) was born and grew to be a man, because it is no more than a natural and probable case. But who is to prove he is the son of God, that he was begotten by the Holy Ghost? Of these things there can be no proof; and that which admits not of proof, and is against the laws of probability and the order of nature, which God Himself has established, is not an object for belief. God has not given man reason to embarrass him, but to prevent his being imposed upon.

He may believe that Jesus was crucified, because many others were crucified, but who is to prove he was crucified for the sins of the world? This article has no evidence, not even in the New Testament; and if it had, where is the proof that the New Testament, in relating things neither probable nor provable, is to be believed as true?

When an article in a creed does not admit of proof nor of probability, the salvo is to call it revelation; but this is only putting one difficulty in the place of another, for it is as impossible to prove a thing to be revelation as it is to prove that Mary was gotten with child by the Holy Ghost.

Here it is that the religion of Deism is superior to the Christian Religion. It is free from all those invented and torturing articles that shock our reason or injure our humanity, and with which the Christian religion abounds. Its creed is pure, and sublimely simple. It believes in God, and there it rests.

It honors reason as the choicest gift of God to man, and the faculty by which he is enabled to contemplate the power, wisdom and goodness of the Creator displayed in the creation; and reposing itself on His protection, both here and hereafter, it avoids all presumptuous beliefs, and rejects, as the fabulous inventions of men, all books pretending to revelation.

Globalists To Formally Propose Merger Of U.S., Canada, Mexico
July 6, 2007
Globalist political heavyweights are preparing to formally propose to Congress the merger of the U.S., Canada and Mexico into a North American Union at the end of summer after they held secret meetings to devise a plan that will be presented to representatives of all three governments. "A powerful think tank chaired by former Sen. Sam Nunn and guided by trustees including Richard Armitage, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Harold Brown, William Cohen and Henry Kissinger, is in the final stages of preparing a report to the White House and U.S. Congress on the benefits of integrating the U.S., Mexico and Canada into one political, economic and security bloc." Full Story

Rainforest Villages Unify to Protect and Preserve their Land, Traditions and Way of Life

Deep within the Amazon Rainforest in Peru lies a river known as the Rio Pisqui. This isolated river begins at the foot of the Andes and flows to the Rio Ucayali. Along its banks live a number of native communities. For these communities, the future has been changed forever by the official formation of the Rio Pisqui Federation, also known as FECONACURPI, an acronym for Federaction do Communidades Nativas de la Cuenca del Rio Pisqui, and translated as “Federation of Native Communities of the Pisqui River Basin.” The federation consists of 10 communities along a 100-mile stretch of the Rio Pisqui, and is a major step in the unification and empowerment of these communities.

The establishment of this federation legally empowers these 10 villages to have greater sovereignty over the region. It grants them greater authority to protect and preserve the land, plants, animals and bodies of water there, as well as their traditional knowledge and way of life. Part of their objective is to also provide better education for their children and advocate for laws favoring native communities.

April 26, 2006 - The Founding Decree of the Rio Pisqui Federation is Established

The process of establishing the Rio Pisqui Federation was initiated by six native leaders from the region, and involved years of careful consideration and discussion. The first, major milestone in the process was reached on April 26, 2006 when the Founding Decree of the Rio Pisqui Federation was composed. This document, under rights clarified in Peru’s political constitution, established 10 Indigenous communities along the Rio Pisqui as comprising a unified body. The objectives and goals were set forth and a 17-member board of directors was elected on this day.

The Objectives and Goals of the Rio Pisqui Federation

The Founding Decree outlines the specific objectives and goals of the federation. These include, among others:

• Protect and promote the integrity of the region while conserving its natural resources
• Promote bilingual education while maintaining ethnic identity
• Renew and strengthen traditional and spiritual medicine, including medicinal plants, healers, practices and songs
• Protect traditional knowledge.
• Watch over the social dignity and integrity of the native community and its members, food, shelter, health, education and labor
• Strengthen ties between the communities of the Rio Pisqui, as well as with other native communities and national and international sectors.
• Work toward a constitution of a native Amazonian organization
• Promote the organizing of multi-communal enterprises creating a consciousness of solidarity and efficiency.
• Promote community work and participation through incentives.

The Ten Communities of the Rio Pisqui Federation

Neuvo Eden, La Cumbre, Manco Capac, Charasmana, Tupac Amaru, Vencedor, Irazola, Santa Rosa, 9 do Cotubre, Tres Unidos

June 24, 2006 - Amazon Herb Representatives Help Celebrate the Founding of the Rio Pisqui Federation

After the creation of the Founding Decree, Amazon Herb Company Founder and CEO John Easterling was invited to Nuevo Eden to “swear in” the 17-member board of directors of the new Rio Pisqui Federation. Easterling was invited due to the contributions Amazon Herb Company has made to several native communities in the area including sustainable business partnerships, solar radios and a radio station, naturopathic health care, water filters, and legal support against tree poachers. Upon his return to the USA, Esterling received a formal letter of appreciation from the Rio Pisqui Federation.

Here are the contents of that letter:

June 24, 2006

Mr. John Easterling
Amazon Herb Company

Dear Sir,
As soon as we returned from our business trip to the city of Iquitos, the first thing I am doing is to take the pleasure in writing you these few words of gratitude and to once more express our deepest gratitude for the many attentions received from your worthy company. Words do not suffice to express that your kindness and supportive spirit have eternally sealed our gratitude.

Thank you for all that you and your worthy company have done for us. My only desire and good fortune game me the opportunity of having you in our Native Communities of the Pisqui River, and I know that we will never be able to repay the exquisite care of which we have been the object.

Your friend, Hidelfonso Del Aguila Flores, President of the Federation fo the Rio Pisqui, affectionately greets you.

Reprinted from Amazon Spirit, August 2006 issue, published by The Amazon Herb Company.

Following serious FDA failures, Congress may reward the agency with even more money, regulatory power

by Jerome Douglas

(NewsTarget) Various consumer and patient groups joined with a leading cardiologist to urge quick action from Congress to allow the FDA to gain more power than it has now in order for it to require new warnings on medicines and drug post-approval studies. In addition, witnesses from these groups lobbied for a boost to the FDA's budget.

Sheila Burke, co-chair of an Institute of Medicine panel, said "The absence of that [budget increase] would leave the agency starved for resources ... with unclear authority in terms of being able to deal with the industry." Burke indicated that major reforms to improve the FDA's oversight of medicines after they reach the market was needed in light of recent drug safety concerns similar to Merck's pulling of arthritis pill Vioxx from the market in September 2004.

After Vioxx and other safety controversies, "the American people no longer trust the FDA to protect their health," said Cleveland Clinic cardiologist Steve Nissen. Nissen added that Congress needed to act in order for the FDA to rebuild public trust. FDA spokeswoman Kristen Neese said, "The FDA has done considerable work over the past two years to improve our approach to drug safety, and we are committed to taking additional steps."

"Giving the FDA more money without serious reforms and new accountability is like giving crack to a drug addict," said Mike Adams, a consumer health advocate and frequent critic of the FDA. "This agency's utter disregard for public safety poses a threat to the lives of Americans that far exceeds the threat of any terrorist group.

"FDA-approved prescription drugs have killed over half a million Americans since 9/11, and now this Congress wants to give it even more money and power. It indicates just how utterly corrupt our government has become when it comes to making decisions that impact the profits of Big Pharma.

"The problem at the FDA is not a lack of funding," Adams said, "It's a lack of honesty and ethics."

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Amazon Herb Company review: John Easterling, rainforest herbs and more

by: Mike Adams

In this report, I'm going to share with you why I'm so excited about the Amazon Herb Company and what it means for you, your health, our community, and our planet. Recently I had the honor of attending a live presentation by Amazon John, also known as John Easterling, the founder of the Amazon Herb Company I've been watching this company for some time, reading their materials and interviewing a few of their distributors, but I've wanted to meet the founder and find out what kind of character and energy he brings to the equation.

Here's why this is important (and it's also why I am now such a strong advocate of the Amazon Herb Company, even though I'm in no way affiliated with it). When we consume nutritional supplements, we're actually consuming more than the chemical constituents found in those supplements. Foods are more than just the sum of their parts. Foods actually carry a homeopathic element. This element is present in all foods, herbs, supplements or anything you ingest into your body.

It is imprinted onto those foods and supplements by the people who come into contact with them during harvesting, production and marketing. And so it is the intention, mindset and character of these individuals that become imprinted in these products that we ultimately absorb into the cells of our body. Therefore, if we consume nutritional supplements that are manufactured by companies with nothing more than a profit motive, then we absorb the energy of greed (along with the chemical constituents of those nutritional supplements).

In contrast, if you take an herb that has grown in its native natural environment, that has been harvested with care and with sacred intention by those who consider that land to be their home and by people who impart positive intentions onto that plant, and then if that plant is prayed over and imprinted with even more positive intention, and then finally packaged and marketed by a company that also has positive intentions because of the character of its founder, then you have a very different nutritional supplement than the supplement from the greedy company, even if these two supplements contain the exact same chemical constituents. There's a lot more to supplements than just what's listed on the label.

The science behind vibrational nutrition

If you're interested in the science behind this, take a look at a book called, "The Hidden Messages in Water," which discusses the ability of intention and emotion to alter the crystalline shape of frozen water crystals as photographed under a microscope. This book, authored by Japanese researcher Masaru Emoto, shows photographs of various water crystals after having been exposed to different emotions. As the book demonstrates, you can make water look chaotic and dysfunctional by imprinting it with the emotions of hate, greed, anger, or fear. In a similar way, you can make water take on a structure of organization, symmetry, and balance by imprinting it with emotions such as compassion or love. And it is indeed these emotions that are imprinted into the Amazon Herb products.

(Another great book on the subject of homeopathy, by the way, is, "The Memory of Water: Homeopathy and the Battle of Ideas in the New Science" by Michel Schiff. It describes how conventional medicine has pulled out all the stops to discredit homeopathy through deceit and distortion rather than facing up to the hard science that quite solidly proves homeopathy to be a real phenomenon.)

A company leader with the right intention

What I saw recently, in watching John Easterling, demonstrated to me beyond any doubt that these positive, healing intentions are pursued and shared by the founder of the Amazon Herb Company. That's quite remarkable, because I've seen other companies (especially those who use a word-of-mouth distribution model) get lost in the quest for material gain. All too often, some organizations are only about making a buck and growing a bigger organization in order to generate more revenues.

That's the wrong mindset to be ingesting into your body. Greed is a derivative of fear, and fear creates contraction and restriction. Fear causes your body to tense up and restrict its natural flow, and that's part of the cause of a lot of disease we see today. Many diseases are actually the result of stagnation from an energetic point of view. When things aren't moving correctly, whether it's lymph fluid, or your blood, or energy through your nervous system, then you are experiencing disease. But when things are moving well, you're experiencing a state of health. And what causes things to move? Openness, sharing, love, compassion. These kinds of intentions. And these are the emotions that are imprinted in the Amazon Herb products.

So, yes, I'm an advocate of the Amazon Herb Company. But not for the reasons you might have supposed. It's not that they have a great product line, even though they do. It's not that the company is doing a lot of good things for the rainforest, even though that's also true and that's a very important part of their success equation. But I think the primary reason is because it creates a product that has energetic qualities that far surpass any other commercially available nutritional supplement I've ever encountered. What that means is that these products have the ability to alter the way your body metabolizes energy.

Your body is made of energy

If all of this begins to sound a little bit New-Agey, don't fret, it's actually easy to understand from a technical point of view as well. That's because your entire body is nothing but vibrating energy. In fact, if you ask any physicist, he or she will tell you that even the apparent mass in your body is nothing more than probability waves of orbiting electrons that actually have no particles whatsoever. From a technical point of view, your body is 99.999% empty space. There's almost nothing really there!

We also know that homeopathy is very real; this has been scientifically proven through randomized, double-blind placebo-controlled studies, and it has been repeated again and again in various trials conducted on populations around the world. (Recent anti-homeopathy headlines you may have seen in the news were based on a meta-study that cherry-picked unsuccessful homeopathic clinical trials while ignoring successful ones.)

Energetic shifts are accelerated by Amazon Herbs

The implications of all of this are immense. I believe this helps explain why so many people who are using the Amazon Herb products describe the shifts in their health being not just physical but also emotional and energetic in nature. You hear this time and time again if you actually sit down and listen to the people who are using the Amazon Herb products. They will tell you, yes, their aches and pains vanished, and, yes, they were able to overcome chronic disease with these herbs, but more importantly they will describe how their emotions changed. Suddenly they began to feel happy or they felt calm for the first time in years, or they felt grounded and in touch with themselves. These are the kinds of things you hear from people that have undergone an energetic shift, not just a biochemical shift. Thus, it all makes sense, because that's the way in which these herbs are harvested, and that's the intention being imprinted throughout the Amazon Herb organization.

I'm a fairly good judge of character. As an owner of a software company, I've dealt with a lot of people over the years. I've also done a fair amount of work in vibrational medicine, healing through intention, Reiki and so on. I've also learned to listen to my intuition. So I have a fairly good sense of what dominant intentions people are carrying around when I have the chance to observe them and interact with them. One of the most obvious negative energetic postures I notice in people from the conventional medical community is their lack of humility. All too often, their egos get in the way and they carry a belief that they are the most intelligent people in the world, therefore they're the only people qualified to talk about anything related to health.

Sadly, this is a dominant mindset in the conventional medical community, and it's one of the first things I watch out for in assessing whether an individual is coming from a place of personal credibility. With this in mind, I was quite intrigued to watch Amazon John and to recognize that he's a person who is not at all driven by ego. In fact, he's quite humble and he understands full well, just as I do, that we are mere messengers and all we can do in our lives is serve as conduits for the healing gifts of nature. John understands that we are not the originators of these healing gifts, and we deserve no credit for creating them, because it is nature that created them. John sees himself as a facilitator, a bridge between the rainforest and Western civilization, and he explained that role with a great degree of honesty and forthrightness about his own journey.

Honoring a person's life journey and life purpose

The other thing that's important to note in assessing the character of people you'd like to have around you is to learn about their personal journey. What difficulties did they go through and how did they arrive at their current beliefs? How did they acquire the paradigms under which they presently operate? The kind of people that you want to be around, at least in my experience, are people who have been able to confront their own distortions and replace them with new beliefs about their role in the universe.

That's a bit nebulous, so let me explain it a little further: to confront your own illusions means to question your current beliefs about the world around you. Each of us has our own constructs, our own version of reality in which we live and operate, and none of those versions of reality are actually real. They are stories that we tell ourselves, they are patterns in which we function and get along with our lives. But people who are true healers and wise, mature adults are people who are able to face those distortions, question them and arrive at a new, expanded understanding. It doesn't necessarily mean they arrive at the "truth," it just means they expand their awareness and are able to continue on their life journey with this new awareness in an ever-expanding spiral pattern, much like the shell of a marine creature.

This spiral grows and expands as the person's awareness expands. And what I learned about Amazon John was that, early in his life, he was a treasure hunter -- a literal treasure hunter! He would travel to Peru and search for gems, stones and ancient artifacts, and bring them back to the United States to find buyers. At the time, his belief was that these were the treasures of the rainforest. But what we see in John today is a man who recognizes that those treasures were illusions -- that the true treasures of the rainforest were hidden in the plants all this time. These are the treasures of nature, the wealth provided by the healing potential of these plants. And he was able, through a personal transformation process requiring several years, to question his own distortions and arrive at a new understanding of what treasure really means. Today, through the Amazon Herb Company, he is able to communicate that new vision of what treasure really means to the Western world.

That kind of shift in thinking requires a tremendous amount of courage, self-honesty and humility. This is not the kind of personal transformation that you will typically find in the conventional medical community. To many in organized medicine, credibility comes from passing the right exam and graduating from the right school, taking the right tests, getting the right credentials, and so on. But to me, credibility comes from taking a journey and demonstrating that you have the character necessary to be an adult, to grow up, mature, expand your awareness and question your present beliefs. And then, if you're really good, to be able to form new beliefs that better serve the interests of yourself, your community, and the world at large. And that, as I see it, is the path along which Amazon John is traveling.

(By the way, for many people, this sort of empowering shift in beliefs only emerges following a health crisis. All too often, we aren't willing to change our beliefs unless we're facing imminent death, it seems.)

The Amazon Herb products

You'll notice I've said all of this and I haven't even mentioned the Amazon Herb products. Most people who talk about the Amazon Herb Company are focused on the products, and there's nothing wrong with that: they are outstanding products and I'll get to those in a minute. But I consider it to be most important to look at the founder of the company and what that means for the character of the organization and the energy of its products. This is a man who understands the economics of sustainable revenue models for the rainforest; he understands what it means to give back to a community and he understands the business challenges of bringing this to a population here in the United States.

But let's talk about the products for a minute, because that's what gets most people excited about this company. And when it comes to these products, I can speak far more freely about them than Amazon John can. That's because the current regulatory environment in the U.S. does not allow any principal of a company that manufactures these products to make health claims about these products. For myself, on the other hand, since I have absolutely no financial ties with this company whatsoever, and I'm not a distributor of the company, and I'm not being paid to write any of this, I can tell you what I honestly think about these products. And here it is: based on what I've learned from spending more than 5,000 hours studying nutrition and the healing gifts of nature, I believe that these products can not only help prevent nearly every major chronic disease we are seeing in modern society today, but that they can also reverse many of those diseases, especially the early stages of those diseases.

Beyond that, I believe that these products have the potential to even alter the mindset of our population, to bring greater calm and reduce aggression in our population. You see, these products operate at many different levels: the biophysical level, the biochemical level and the bioenergetic level.

Amazon Herb products operate at three levels

At the biophysical level you have products like Fiberzon, which help support peristaltic action in the digestive tract and help clear out waste products that far too many people have sitting around in their large intestine for days at a time. If you can't eliminate waste products from your body, then you are essentially poisoning yourself by reabsorbing your own waste rather than getting rid of it.

At the biochemical level, there are a great many phytochemicals and phytonutrients in the Amazon Herb product line. You'll find a variety of herbs like chanca piedra, una de gato (also known as cat's claw), graviola, jatoba and a great many other herbs that are biochemically active. They demonstrate anticancer activity, immune system enhancement, protection of the liver, the pancreas, the endocrine system, the nervous system, and so on. These phytonutrients help eliminate toxins and protect the body from parasites, bacteria and viruses, and other invaders. These biochemical effects are well-documented if you actually look at the scientific literature on these herbs. This is where most of the potency of these products gets recognized: the biochemical level.

Then there's the bioenergetic level, and that's what I spoke about earlier. And that's what sets these supplements apart from practically everything else on the market. Sure, you can buy cat's claw at any health food store, but where else can you buy cat's claw that has been harvested from its natural environment, that has been blessed by the native peoples from Peru who are harvesting this as part of a sustainable revenue model to protect their homeland, that has been packaged and marketed by a company headed by a person who imparts the intention of healing into his company and product line? Where else can you find an herb like that? Yes, you can find that from local herbalists who make their own healing remedies in small batches, but I don't think you can find it commercially available on a large scale anywhere other than the Amazon Herb Company.

Reversing chronic disease with Amazon Herbs

So you have herbal products that operate on all three levels. With that in mind, you might ask, "What can these products really do? How can they really help me?" And that's a multipart answer. My belief is that these products can actually reverse early stage cancers; they can reconfigure your nervous system; they can eliminate toxins from your system, they can boost immune system function and protect you from viruses; they can boost the antioxidant level in your tissues and circulating in your blood; they can even help reverse heart disease.

They can do all of these things and many more, including providing health benefits for diabetics via blood sugar regulation, reducing insulin resistance, supporting the pancreas and so on. And yet there is a danger in looking at the miracle class properties of herbs like this and relying on them alone to solve your health problems.

Don't get caught drowning in a victim mentality

This is something I've mentioned frequently even when I get excited about herbal products, and that is: to truly heal, you have to look at what decisions in your life got you to the point where you are today. If you're suffering from a chronic disease like heart disease or cancer or diabetes or osteoporosis, then you got there by making a series of decisions over a period of years or decades that had a specific outcome. This outcome is what you are living today. These decisions typically involve how much physical exercise you wish to pursue, what foods you choose to consume, what beverages you drink, what prescription drugs you choose to put into your body, what environments you choose to live in and so on.

These choices got you to where you are today. Along those lines, it is self-deception to suppose that one product or one line of products is going to release you from the responsibility of making good decisions from this day forward. This is where a lot of people get distracted with any herbal product. They think that they're going to be "saved" by these products. What they're thinking, perhaps, at a subconscious level is "Gee, I've spent my whole life damaging my body and now I have this cancer, but thank God this new anti-cancer product is going to come along and save me, and so I'm just going to take that and keep doing all these other bad things in my life that gave me cancer in the first place."

I strongly encourage you to avoid adopting that victim mentality. I encourage you to challenge yourself and begin the healing process (if you haven't already) by altering your lifestyle at the same time that you begin taking a line of nutritional products like these from the Amazon Herb Company. Because what you will find is that no product can replace your choice, no product can make decisions for you. In fact, that thinking is probably what got you into a health problem in the first place, because you may have thought that prescription drugs were going to be the miracle cure for you, and now you've found out that drugs don't cure you, they actually kill you (60,000+ Americans killed by Vioxx alone, according to a study published in The Lancet. And that's just one prescription drug out of thousands...).

The cure for all disease starts within

So now you're looking for a real cure, but if you're looking outside yourself for that cure, that's a mistake. The cure to your health problem is inside you, starting with your beliefs and self responsibility. If you address your own distortions, your own beliefs and your own behavioral choices, and start with that as your foundation, and then add these healing herbs from the Amazon rainforest, you will find that these two strategies multiply each others' effects. And then you will have initiated a sequence of healing effects in your own body that are multiplied by the biophysical, biochemical and bioenergetic healing potential of these herbs and you will be able to overcome practically any disease or condition imaginable.

I don't care if it's chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) or fibromyalgia or Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), or any of these other so-called diseases that are actually nothing but illusions -- they're just names given to a pattern of symptoms because doctors don't know what's wrong with you. I've met so many people who say "I have CFS" and they feel so comfortable that they've been labeled with this disease... they identify themselves with having that disease. What they need to do is get rid of that label and challenge it by saying, "You know, maybe I don't have these diseases. Maybe these are just a bunch of symptoms caused by eating foods containing a lot of toxic ingredients and not taking care of my health."

If you've read any of my work, you know that I study food toxicology and share a lot of information about that, and I can tell you that if you're eating the conventional foods in America, you are poisoning your body. You don't have chronic fatigue syndrome, you have a toxic biochemistry because you've been consuming toxic foods with those ingredients like sodium nitrite, artificial colors, and hydrogenated oils ... the list goes on and on. (See GroceryWarning.com for more.) If you truly want to heal yourself and you want to be successful with the Amazon Herb Company, it's time to get honest with yourself and stop consuming these poisons. Start questioning your beliefs and reformulating them into ones that serve your long term health interests, and then supplement with good nutrition, with healing herbs and with healing foods (garlic, broccoli, berries, raw nuts, etc.)

The Amazon Herb product line can be a very successful part of that transformation. But even those products, as potent as they are, and as much as they are blessed with the energy of healing, even they cannot overcome your own self-sabotage if you choose to pursue the mindset of conventional medicine and American food consumers.

The Amazon Herb product line is a great way to initiate the health transformation process, partly because of the energetic component of these herbs. You will find your energetic shifts to be far easier when you are supported by these herbs.

A community of healers and leaders

If you want to join a community of true healers, people who have a calling to healing themselves and helping heal those around them, then I invite you to get involved with the Amazon Herb Company. This is a company with an energy like no other company I've ever witnessed. I've experienced it first-hand in meeting so many of the people who are involved in this company and talking with Amazon John in person. And if you're really ready for a change that goes beyond just losing weight, eliminating pain, ending inflammation or overcoming some symptom in your body, if you're ready for a true transformation that involves your body, your mind and your spirit, then this is the company for you.

Did I mention that you can earn an honest living with this company? Frankly, the financial component should be the last thing you consider. That's why I haven't even brought it up until now. But this company has a word-of-mouth marketing compensation plan that's very generous and rewards people who share the good news about these products. What a great deal -- you can actually make a living, a good living, while you are sharing information that can help heal and transform the lives of people around you. At the same time, the side effect of all of that is that your actions help create a system of economic renewal for the rainforest that make it more valuable alive than dead. It's a win/win situation for everyone involved. You win, the people around you benefit, the rainforest benefits, the native populations in Peru benefit by being able to earn an honest living by harvesting native plants in their natural environment, and you also win by sharing the energy and intention of healing at many levels.

Is this right for me?

If you're out there reading this and you don't know if the Amazon Herb product line or business opportunity is right for you, then keep reading (and remember, I am not involved with this company in any way, so this is not some clever solicitation). Perhaps you're skeptical about all the good news. I think you're right to be skeptical because it's important to be a discerning, thinking person who intelligently evaluates each opportunity. Let me share something very personal. I wouldn't be spending hours of my time writing about this with absolutely no compensation if I didn't feel passionate about what this can do for the world. This information is something of tremendous value to my readers and to society at large.

The Amazon Herb Company is making a lasting difference. I've been to Peru, I've hiked through the Andes Mountains, I've seen the dwellings in which the local people live -- houses made of mud bricks, basically. I've been approached by children in poverty on the streets of Lima and Cuzco who are desperate to sell me anything as long as they can earn a few cents for the day. The Amazon Herb Company helps give these people new choices, new freedoms and a new future.

I've walked through parts of the Amazon rainforest and I've admired the engineering of nature, up close and personal, one plant at a time. There's a miracle at work in nature. And the Amazon Herb Company helps deliver that miracle to the people in the Western world who need it most.

I've seen people suffering from chronic diseases, spending their life savings on conventional medical treatments, forfeiting their quality of life and time with loved ones. And I've seen others reverse those diseases with medicinal herbs, healing foods, and a transformation in personal beliefs and personal responsibility. The Amazon Herb Company can help people overcome chronic disease and expand their understanding of the true healing potential found inside each of us.

I want to see the Amazon Herb Company succeed

Part of the reason I'm doing this is because I want to see the Amazon Herb Company succeed. I want to see this product in the hands of 10 million Americans in the next 3 years. I'd like to see tens of thousands of acres of rainforest in Peru as part of this program to grow and harvest herbs and bring them to the United States where they can help save lives. And frankly, I'd like to see Amazon John and the other principals of his company receive tremendous rewards for having the courage to step forward and do this, and I don't mean just financial rewards, I mean recognition -- the kind of global recognition that says these are pioneering people who have done something deeply significant for mankind. Nobel Prize recognition.

If I can have a small role to play in this, in multiplying the reach of this company, then I'm more than happy to take on that role. Nothing would make me happier than to have this article read by 10 million people. Nothing would make me happier than to see the smiles on the faces of Peruvians, knowing that their native lands are being protected and that they have a sustainable economic revenue model that not only brings them financial wealth, but that also allows them to share their healing wisdom with a society that desperately needs it -- and that society is ours.

In our modern society, if we want to have any hope whatsoever of overcoming chronic disease, we have to get in touch with nature. We have to embrace companies like the Amazon Herb Company, companies that are doing everything right to recognize and leverage the healing gifts of nature. And that, ultimately, is why I have decided to openly endorse this company. It is a company whose values I share, it is a company with a vision that is aligned with global healing, and it is a company that I think is already accomplishing tremendous good in the world. And yet it has only begun to grow. That's why I invite you to get involved. Be part of it. Be part of something that's bigger than any of us individually. Be part of something that can significantly change the planet at many levels: our cities, societies, our mindset, our sustainable ecosystems... even in our economic thinking and free market theories about what it takes to be financially viable. This is a company that's expanding the paradigms in all those areas, and if you miss out on this opportunity, you'll miss what might be the most exciting and transforming experience of your life.

By the way, if you're already a distributor with the Amazon Herb Company, feel free to use this entire article as part of your educational material. You can run off copies, if you like, or copy this in an email.

I also have a free downloadable ebook about the Amazon Herb Company. Click here to read 3 Steps to Success With the Amazon Herb Company. This is a 3-step guide I wrote to help AHC distributors be more successful. It's yours free.

If you're interested in getting involved with the Amazon Herb Company, you should talk to the person who told you about this article. Or, if you don't know anyone with the company, here's who I recommend [existing AHC distributors, you can replace this entire paragraph with your own contact information]:

Brad Chappell, phone: (520) 808-9022, or email AmazonHerbs@cosmicbear.ws

Finally, let me add in a couple of legal notes. This article was unsolicited and is not endorsed in any way by the Amazon Herb Company. Anything mentioned here about their products is simply my own opinion, and not their official position. I received no funds or free products in exchange for writing this article, and I am not a distributor of the Amazon Herb Company, nor is any person in my family a distributor. I receive no commissions of any kind from the sale of Amazon Herb products. This article is offered as an exercise of my Free Speech rights, through which I am offering information and views on products, people and organizations that I feel are important to cover for reader interest.

Thanks for reading!