• Hoo
    415
    I've been using this phrase for my own purposes for a few years now. I must have heard it once, maybe in Hesse's Steppenwolf.) I've thought of it as a background noise that haunts our earnestness, certainty, and rightouesness --but eventually in a good way. Anyway, I thought I'd google it. I found a nice Einstein quote and a "mystic" text that I can really relate to in terms of content, even if the style is a little goofy.

    Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods. — Einstein

    Gradually, as you learn the Laughter of God and join in with the glory of the Sons of the Living God, then you will laugh at yourself. You will perhaps go back and laugh all the mistakes and faults and limitations out of existence You will stand with your glorious feet on the mountain-tops of Self-Revelation, laughing at your universe and with your universe, and laughing in words: "It is wonderful, it is wonderful, it is wonderful."

    "Let the filthy be filthy still." Some may read into the Laughter of God a belief in carelessness and indifference, and some consecrated souls may rail and tear their hair and say that it is encouraging license and making nothing of sin, in order that one may indulge in sin, and so on; and for them this message is not.
    — Walter Lanyon's The Laughter of God
    I'm not sure whether anyone is relating much to my themes lately, but I like this stuff too much not to share it....

    Any thoughts?
  • Hoo
    415
    This is too good. Is it over the top a little? Yeah. Un-hip? Prolly so. But here lies that radical old time "religion" I was sniffing around for.

    http://self-improvement-ebooks.com/books/tlog.php


    What of this race that speaks of the Kingdom and doing the Fathers work, and uses all the language of the Truth, and at the same time sows seeds of fear and hellish inventions? What is this race that is always seeking evil to destroy, like a weasel seeks out a rat? What is the hopelessness they preach that on one hand, you are the sons of God, and on the other, that you must fight against evil of every sort and nature? Ah, yes, but, if, and maybe they roll these stumbling-blocks under their tongues with a wise twinkle in their eyes, as much as to say, "Yes it is all true, but it comes only with hard labor and long study, and it is not for such as you, sinner and worm of the dust that you are, until you have purified yourself in the fount of my wisdom and paid me personal homage."

    It is then that the Magdalene hears the Laughter of God and is clean and free; and in an instant too; and it is when the cripple hears the Laughter of God that he leaps to his feet and runs away praising the living God. It is when you, no matter where you are or what you are, no matter what you have done or left undone, hear the Laughter of the God within and the God without, that you will crash through the gates of hell and find heaven, no matter what these gates may be—person, place, or thing.

    One moments recognition that you are the son of the Living God, and you have attuned your ear for the Laughter of God which will put to flight all the stupid ideas, of my and yours, free you into an expression that you have not dreamed of. How can you restrain the joy that fills you when you hear this laughter which, when it is heard, causes the winter of your discontent to break into full fruition, which causes you to see literally see that " before they call, I will answer," is not a bit of euphonious language, but a positive living, glowing fact.

    "I was afraid," and therefore you were driven out of the Garden of Life. You have been afraid that God will punish you, that it is too good to be true, that you are not ready, that it comes by great learning; and so you are still without the portals of your own kingdom, trying every way but the only way to re-enter. Many there be who try the way of violence, and many who expect to ride in on the skirts of another. There are some so foolish as to invite this.

    Why do you not stop trying to get things, trying to learn how to get power place? Why do you not come away from the man whose breath is in his nostrils? You who read this page, and go within and hear the Laughter of God, and know that " it does not matter"- that the things which gave you great concern are all swept away into the dump heap? The sooner you learn this the sooner you will see they have no value. Finally, one time, when you take away their value, they are possible of attainment to you. You profess to be a follower of the Master. If you in any way believe this, you will begin to listen for the Laughter of God through your whole being, and you will know that the Laughter of God sets you free from the snarling discontent of the tower of Babel in which you have been living.

    Presently, as you listen for this Laughter, you will hear it, and gradually you will begin laughing—billows of laughter, silently-audible laughter that will shatter one limitation after another; laughter filled with the divine indifference which knows that the Universe is filled with God and only God, and to recognize this will cause this laughter to flow into expression and shatter the belief in sin, sickness, and death. When this belief is shattered in you, the pictures of this on your universe are dissipated and are no more, and even the place thereof is no more. You will know how there can be naught but laughter in the Kingdom of Heaven. What good of words or arguments? What in humans’ sense is a lecture worth on the subject of Laughter, as compared to one glorious sudden peal of joy released by a God soul and picked up be all those in hearing distance?

    Gradually, as you learn the Laughter of God and join in with the glory of the Sons of the Living God, then you will laugh at yourself. You will perhaps go back and laugh all the mistakes and faults and limitations out of existence You will stand with your glorious feet on the mountain-tops of Self-Revelation, laughing at your universe and with your universe, and laughing in words: "It is wonderful, it is wonderful, it is wonderful."

    "Let the filthy be filthy still." Some may read into the Laughter of God a belief in carelessness and indifference, and some consecrated souls may rail and tear their hair and say that it is encouraging license and making nothing of sin, in order that one may indulge in sin, and so on; and for them this message is not.
    — The Laughter of the Gods
  • Barry Etheridge
    349


    Laughter is multi-faceted. Einstein clearly uses it in the sense of mocking laughter while Lanyon is clearly describing the laughter of delight. They are gods, after all. I think they're capable of a full range of laughters!

    As we're on the subject, here's one for your collection.

    God, we believe, accepts us, accepts all men unconditionally, warts and all. Laughter is the purest form of our response to God's acceptance of us. For when I laugh at myself I accept myself and when I laugh at other people in genuine mirth I accept them. Self-acceptance in laughter is the very opposite of self-satisfaction or pride. For in laughter I accept myself not because I am some sort of super-person but precisely because I'm not. There is nothing funny about a super-person. There is everything funny about a man who thinks he is. In laughing at my own claims to importance or regard I receive myself in a sort of loving forgiveness which is an echo of God's forgiveness of me.

    Harry Williams, Tensions
  • BC
    13.2k
    If you want to make God laugh, just tell him your plans.
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