Chapter 174. The View from Outside: Keshe and Heisman Measured Against the Whole Study, and the Open Questions

The owner asked this study to weigh two systems against every topic it covers. They stand outside the traditions they describe. The first is Mehran Tavakoli Keshe’s Knowledge Seekers teaching, preserved in the library as several hundred workshop transcripts and Universal Council documents. The second is Mitchell Heisman’s Suicide Note, a sociobiological philosophy of religion that ends in the Singularity. Two limits on the evidence must be stated first. The library holds no independent scholarly or journalistic study of Keshe, so his claims can be compared with the mainstream record but not checked against outside reports of his own work (ch. 158). Heisman’s book is a single-author treatise. Its scholarly scaffolding is real, but its synthesis has no second witness. The chapter sets each system against the mainstream accounts axis by axis, then lists the open questions that the library’s sources themselves leave unresolved, and closes with a summary matrix of the whole study.

Keshe’s master thesis and the mainstream record

Keshe’s central historical claim is that Mithraism is far older than any recorded religion and that later religions were copied from it. In KSW 360, delivered on Christmas Eve 2020, he says: “in Iran we go in a history called literature, or whatever you call it, past 8,000 years with Mithraism”. In the same session he gives “just under 10,000”, and he says that the Jews “speak about 6,000 years … when in fact they are 2,000 years copy of what Mitra brought” [Keshe, Knowledge Seekers Workshop 360, #378072]. Christmas, on his account, is the birth of Mitra on the night of 21–22 December, later moved by the Vatican (ch. 153). The mainstream record starts much later. The first datable Mitra appears in the fourteenth-century BCE Hittite–Mitanni treaty [Gershevitch, The Avestan Hymn to Mithra, #60160]. The Avestan god is described in the Mihr Yasht, and the Roman mysteries flourished from the first to the fourth centuries CE. Vermaseren holds that the god “was revered for nearly two thousand years” [Vermaseren, Mithras, the Secret God, #38300]. Since Cumont, the critics (Gordon, Beck, Ulansey) have even doubted continuity between the Iranian and Roman cults (ch. 24). No source in the library outside the Keshe corpus gives Mithraism 8,000 years.

Part 1 gives the deepest frame the mainstream sources offer, and it still falls short of Keshe’s figure. Boyce places the undivided Indo-Iranians on the south Russian steppes “from perhaps 5000 to about 2000 B.C.” [Boyce (ed.), Textual Sources for the Study of Zoroastrianism, #55116, “1.2.2 The physical and social background”]. Moulton and Hirt favour a later migration, and modern reference articles tie the period to the Sintashta culture (c. 2050–1900 BCE) (ch. 6). The Rigveda, the oldest text that names Mitra, was composed mostly c. 1500–1000 BCE [Wikipedia: Rigveda] (ch. 7). In those sources Mitra is a god of the contract, not a founder. Moulton reports Meillet’s evidence that mitra-/mithra- meant “friend” in Sanskrit and “compact” in Avestan [Moulton, Early Zoroastrianism, #55011, Lecture II “Before Zarathushtra”]. Dumézil, as Ries reports him, treats Mitra as one half of a sovereign pair with Varuna that guards the ṛta [Ries, Il culto di Mithra, #38276, “Mitra e Varuṇa, dei sovrani”] (ch. 7). Chapter 1 gives the rule for weighing such a claim. Eliade warns against confusing “the appearance of a belief with the date when it is first clearly attested” [Eliade, Istoria credințelor și ideilor religioase, #44122, ch. I §2]. That rule allows a belief to be older than its first witness. It does not supply a date where no witness exists, and Keshe’s 8,000 years (c. 6000 BCE) lies before even Boyce’s earliest bound.

The “end of religions” compared with earlier anti-clerical currents

Keshe’s theology of religion is that religions were a transitional structure and are now finished. The Universal Council puts it in one line: “Religion needs to end because now we don’t need any intermediaries between our Soul of the man and the Creator” [Universal Council, Answers from the Universal Council July 2023, #378384]. KSW 467 adds that the messengers themselves were flawed: “the Soul of the Messengers has a fault in the structure of the Soul of Physicality”. Followers are told: “I can elevate the Soul of the Christ, I can elevate the Soul of the Moses, I can elevate the Soul of the Physicality of Mohammad … It’s the end of the religions”. Keshe excludes himself as well: “There are no Messengers in-between. Not even me. We are teachers, not Messengers” [Keshe, Knowledge Seekers Workshop 467, #378179]. Some parts of this have precedents in the study: the Protestant priesthood of all believers (ch. 64), Sufi ma’rifa and the direct knowledge of the Gnostics (chs. 78, 46), and Bahá’í progressive revelation (ch. 81). The new element is the reversal of direction. In those traditions the believer receives the founder’s teaching. In Keshe’s, the believer corrects the founder.

Keshe’s readings of the religions, set against the chapters they contradict

Keshe’s politics follow from this theology. KSW 183 (3 August 2017) declared “One Nation” with “no borders, armies, and no wars”, gave China the space role and excluded the United States [Keshe, KSW 183, #377826]. From 2025 the Keshe Coin was pegged at 1,000 Euro [Keshe, KSW 602, #378314]. In 2026 it was tied to signing the World Peace Treaty [Keshe, KSW 649, #378361] (ch. 157). The dated predictions recorded in ch. 158 are listed here without verdict:

Heisman’s master thesis

Heisman reads monotheism as a “proto-Singularity”. His Part I argues that “God should be understood as technology”, that man created God “through sociobiological technology (Mosaic law)”, and that the logic of monotheism is “God is not, but ought to be” [Heisman, Suicide Note, #38252, Part I; Part II] (ch. 160). Judaism, he writes, “as the source of the original monotheist insight, had to combine contradictory values. As a first decisive alignment with an ultimate trajectory of postbiological evolution, Judaism took a step towards a pattern of ‘progress’ culminating in a transcendence of biology: God” [#38252, Part II]. Christianity universalised the override of kin selection (ch. 162). Liberal democracy inherits it, and “from the view of kin selection, the individualistic logic of liberal democracies is rational insanity” [#38252]. The terminus is the subtitle: “Why Liberal Democracy Leads to the Rational Biological Self-Destruction of Humans and the Rational Technological Creation of God” [#38252, table of contents]. Heisman also places his reading next to the East Asian material in Part 17. “Of the major religions, Confucianism might be the closest analog to early Judaism. It is not simply because Confuscius’s golden rule, ‘Do not do unto others what you would not want others to do unto you’ (Analects 15:23), is virtually identical to Hillel’s; versions of the same golden rule can be found in nearly all the major religions” [#38252, Part II].

Where the two converge and diverge

Both systems abolish the traditional intermediary, and both treat technology as the bridge to the divine: plasma reactors and “Cosmic Ray” systems for Keshe, AI for Heisman (ch. 166). They part company on every other axis. On cosmology, Keshe offers a plasma universe of “Magravs” fields in place of quarks and of E=mc² (ch. 151). Heisman accepts standard physics and evolutionary biology. On God, Keshe’s Creator is pre-existent and lies “within the soul” [#378384]. Heisman’s God does not yet exist and must be engineered. On the soul and afterlife, Keshe holds that the soul cannot die and can transmute, and he fears an AI with “soul without consciousness”. Heisman dissolves the self, links death to objectivity, and treats reverence for life as a “bias” (chs. 158, 166). On ethics, Keshe derives a universal code from Mitra’s triad. Heisman treats the golden rule as a kin-selection override that leads to “genetic suicide” when maximised (ch. 161). On the calendar, Keshe dates a new era from 21 December 2021 and 22 February 2022. Heisman’s history is directional, inherited from the Exodus paradigm, with no fixed date. On politics, Keshe’s end is One Nation under a council. Heisman’s is a political Turing test in which “biological humans can no longer tell who is in control” (ch. 165).

The reference shelf supplies the outside framing for each. It places Keshe’s style of claim under the “free energy suppression conspiracy theory” [Wikipedia: Free energy suppression conspiracy theory] (ch. 151). It places Heisman inside the Singularity debate: Vinge’s runaway, Kurzweil’s universe that “wakes up” [Kurzweil, The Singularity Is Near, #64796, ch. 7], Geraci’s finding that “Apocalyptic AI” keeps Jewish and Christian apocalyptic structure with evolution as guarantor [Geraci, Apocalyptic AI, #75891], and Mercer’s and Harari’s accounts of human god-making (ch. 165).

The Part 1 foundations under the whole arc

Three findings from the oldest material frame both the long arc of the study and its two outside systems.

The first is that religion and kingship are bound together from the earliest written record. Frazer made the point at the start of the discipline: “magicians appear to have often developed into chiefs and kings” [Frazer, The Golden Bough, #65694] (ch. 1). The Sumerian King List opens with nam-lugal, “kingship”, and the reference shelf calls it a composition “likely created and redacted to legitimize the claims to power” of rival cities. In early Assyria the title “king” belonged to the god Ashur, and the human ruler was his “steward” [Wikipedia: Sumerian King List; Wikipedia: Ancient Mesopotamian religion] (ch. 3). The pharaoh was “Son of Ra” and was bound to uphold Maat [The Egyptians: An Introduction, #363364; Wikipedia: Maat] (ch. 4). In Iran, khvarenah conferred the “divine right of kings” [Wikipedia: Khvarenah] (ch. 8). Boyce ties the rise of Indra’s cult to a new class of chariot warriors (ch. 6). The sources also record limits to this picture. Collins reports that Diakonoff overturned Deimel’s “temple-state”, and that royal claims “may have been as much an aspiration as a reality” [Collins, The Sumerians, #64812, “Temple-states and hydraulic states”] (ch. 8). Keshe’s One Nation under a Universal Council and Heisman’s AI that takes over control (ch. 165) both keep the old link between the divine and rule. What changes is who holds the link: a council of souls for Keshe, a technology for Heisman, in place of the king.

The second is the sacred drink as the medium of contact with the gods. The Rigveda calls soma “a God for Gods”, and Indra drinks it before battle [Wikipedia: Botanical identity of soma–haoma]. Ferrara describes the soma rites becoming “the exclusive dispensation of powerful aristocrats” [Ferrara, Sacred Bliss, #66945, ch. 1] (ch. 8). Moulton reads Zarathushtra as condemning the “intoxicant”, and the later cult as restoring Haoma [Moulton, #55011, Lecture II] (ch. 6). The plant itself is still disputed: Wasson’s fly-agaric, Falk’s ephedra, Myers’s Peganum harmala and Ferrara’s cannabis mixture [Wasson, Soma: Divine Mushroom of Immortality, #74742; Myers, Gnostic Visions, #70923] (ch. 8). In these sources, whoever controlled the drink controlled access to the gods. Neither Keshe nor Heisman has a sacred drink. Both put a technology in the place of that medium of contact, plasma systems for Keshe and AI for Heisman (ch. 166), and both say the medium makes the priest unnecessary.

The third is the inversion of divine names. The Avestan daevas became demons while the Vedic devas stayed gods, and the asuras sank in India while Ahura Mazda rose in Iran [Wikipedia: Proto-Indo-Iranian religion] (chs. 6–7). The library’s sources explain this in social terms (Boyce’s warrior class), as polemic (Moulton’s “anti-Hindu polemic”) or as politics (the Mitanni–Assyrian hypothesis reported by Krishna) [Boyce (ed.), #55116, “1.2.7”; Moulton, #55011; Krishna, The Book of Demons, #50894]. The same pattern of re-valuation recurs through the study, from Angra Mainyu to the rehabilitation of Lucifer (chs. 116, 119). Keshe’s version is the reversal of founder and follower set out above. Heisman’s is a God who “is not, but ought to be” [Heisman, Suicide Note, #38252, Part II].

Part 1 also bears on Heisman’s claim that Judaism was “the source of the original monotheist insight”. The library records an earlier, disputed candidate. Freud called Akhenaten “the world’s earliest recorded monotheist”, and Redford found “little or no evidence” that Atenism led to biblical monotheism [Wikipedia: Moses and Monotheism]. Day dates explicit monotheism in Israel to Deutero-Isaiah [Day, Yahweh and the Gods and Goddesses of Canaan, #86469, ch. 8] (chs. 4–5). Heisman reads Mosaic law as a “sociobiological technology”. The older law code shows a different pattern: Owen Jenkins remarked on “an astonishing absence… of all theological or even ceremonial law” in Hammurabi’s stele [Wikipedia: Code of Hammurabi] (ch. 3). Chapter 1‘s grading of sources applies to both outside systems. The Keshe workshops are “a founder’s account of his own teaching” (ch. 1), and Weber’s charisma, in Joosse’s comment, places “the locus of power… in the led” [Wikipedia: Charisma].

The open questions

The sources leave the following questions unresolved. Each is listed with the competing positions.

1. Zoroastrian influence on Judaism, Christianity and Islam. For influence: Carter writes that “to this foreign contact, therefore, we probably are indebted for some of the loftiest and most spiritual conceptions, which came into Judaism and passed from Judaism into Christianity”, and finds “the parallel between Satan and Ahriman or Angro-Mainyu … obvious” [Carter, Zoroastrianism and Judaism, #55114]. Moulton, Mills and Boyce agree (chs. 17, 31). Sundermann argues that Zoroastrian ideas of dualism, resurrection and “the responsibility of mankind for the fate of this world and the world beyond” shaped Near Eastern spirituality “from the middle of the first millennium BCE on”. On the sceptical side, he records that for Isidor Scheftelowitz the vowel of Asmodaios “was an argument against the Iranian origin of the name” [Sundermann, Zoroastrian Motifs in Non-Zoroastrian Traditions, #55067].
2. Is Roman Mithraism Iranian? Cumont’s “Romanized Mazdaism” is one position. Gordon’s “entirely new creation” and the astral readings of Beck and Ulansey are the other (ch. 24).
3. Did Christianity borrow from Mithraism? Justin and Tertullian admit the likeness and call it demonic counterfeit. Koster, Fideler and Chulev assert borrowing. Nock objects that Mithras “was not born annually and did not die”, and Vermaseren holds that priority cannot be established (ch. 26).
4. The origin of 25 December. The history-of-religions theory (Aurelian’s natalis Invicti) stands against the calculation theory and its chronological objections (chs. 25, 17.5).
5. The historical Jesus and Muhammad. Dunn’s “Jesus remembered” consensus stands against the mythicists. For Islam, Hoyland argues that transmitted reports were reshaped “in the interests of sundry literary, juristic and socio-political concerns” (chs. 48, 71–72).
6. Zarathustra’s date. Positions run from the Greek 6000 years before Xerxes, through Boyce’s Bronze Age, to the Parsi 660–583 BC [Moulton, Early Zoroastrianism, #55011] (ch. 9).
7. The Exodus and the Khazar thesis. Mazar finds “an outright conflict” at some sites and none at others. Geisler dates the Exodus to 1445–1405 BCE, and Hitchens denies it. The reference shelf calls the Khazar thesis “largely abandoned” (chs. 29, 37).
8. “Cult” or new religious movement. Lifton, Singer and Hassan defend the brainwashing model. NRM scholars, the APA’s rejection of DIMPAC and the courts since Fishman reject it (ch. 125).
9. Pike and the Templar–Masonic genealogy. Is the Degree XIX Lucifer sentence evidence of a hidden doctrine, or a quotation cut short? Is the Templar descent a fact or a degree legend? Taxil’s Palladium confuses the record further (chs. 107, 112).
10. Is secularism post-religious, or a mutation of monotheism? Heisman calls secularisation “the Unification of Church and State” (ch. 164). Le Bon calls the Revolution “a new religion”, Jung writes of the “fatal parallelism” of the Marxist and Church states, and Armstrong reads fundamentalism as modernity’s product (chs. 140–141).
11. How will religion end? Keshe answers in transmuted souls and One Nation, Heisman in an engineered God. Negru’s history of the apocalypse records a long series of announced ends that did not arrive, and leaves the question open [Negru, A History of the Apocalypse, #62383].
12. What was soma/haoma? Ephedra is the leading consensus on the reference shelf (Falk, Houben). Wasson argues for fly-agaric, Myers (after Flattery and Schwartz) for Peganum harmala, and Ferrara reports a cannabis–ephedra mixture. Falk finds “nothing shamanistic or visionary” in the early texts (ch. 8).
13. Was Atenism the root of biblical monotheism? Freud and Greenberg say yes in different ways. Albright and Redford reject the historical link, and Assmann moves the question to cultural memory and the “Mosaic distinction” (ch. 4).
14. Molech: a god or a sacrifice? Eissfeldt reads molk as a sacrificial term. Day argues for a god and for real child sacrifice. Smith reads Jeremiah’s denials as possible evidence of offering in Yahweh’s name, and Fantar, Picard and Benichou-Safar treat the reports as propaganda (ch. 5).
15. Did religion precede farming? Harari reads Göbekli Tepe as a temple around which a village grew. Graeber and Wengrow deny it is an anomaly, and the reference shelf reports evidence of settlement and an undetermined purpose (ch. 2).

Summary matrix of the study

Key points

• The library holds no independent study of Keshe. Heisman’s Suicide Note is a single-author treatise. Both systems are therefore compared with the mainstream record here, not verified.
• Keshe’s 8,000-year Mithraism (KSW 360) has no support in any other source in the library, where the earliest Mitra is the fourteenth-century BCE Mitanni treaty.
• Keshe’s “end of religions” removes all intermediaries, him included, and asks believers to “elevate” the founders’ souls. That reversal is what separates it from Protestant, Sufi, Gnostic and Bahá’í precedents.
• Heisman makes monotheism a sociobiological technology that leads, through liberal democracy, to human self-destruction and an engineered God.
• Both abolish intermediaries and treat technology as the bridge to the divine. They are opposed on the soul, on God’s existence, on ethics and on the political end-state.
• Part 1 frames the arc and both systems: religion and kingship bound together from the King List and the pharaoh onward, the sacred drink as the controlled medium of contact with the gods, and the asura–deva inversion as the first recorded re-valuation of divine names. Keshe and Heisman keep the link to rule but replace the medium with technology.
• The sources leave fifteen questions open, from Zoroastrian influence and Mithraic borrowing to whether secularism is post-religious. Part 1 adds four: the identity of soma, Atenism and Moses, Molech, and whether religion preceded farming.
• The closing matrix maps eight axes across thirteen traditions and systems, from the ancient Near East and the Indo-Iranians to Keshe and Heisman, with each cell keyed to the chapter that documents it.