into the mystic ...

Sirius, the Three Kings, and the Virgin Birth

2007-12-24T08:24:00.000-06:00

Sirius ... the fabled 'Star of Bethlehem' ?

Before Acharya S ... before the "Zeitgeist" movie ... (but contemporary with luminary Gerald Massey) ... there was Edward Carpenter -- a poet, a mystic, a devotee of Walt Whitman, a man with a brilliant and piercing intellect. The following is from his classic "Pagan & Christian Creeds: Their Origin and Meaning." ... (The following should also appeal greatly to fans of the late Robert Anton Wilson.)

To the ordinary public--notwithstanding the immense amount of work which has of late been done on this subject--the connection between Paganism and Christianity still seems rather remote. Indeed the common notion is that Christianity was really a miraculous interposition into and dislocation of the old order of the world; and that the pagan gods (as in Milton's Hymn on the Nativity) fled away in dismay before the sign of the Cross, and at the sound of the name of Jesus. Doubtless this was a view much encouraged by the early Church itself--if only to enhance its own authority and importance; yet, as is well known to every student, it is quite misleading and contrary to fact. The main Christian doctrines and festivals, besides a great mass of affiliated legend and ceremonial, are really quite directly derived from, and related to, preceding Nature worships; and it has only been by a good deal of deliberate mystification and falsification that this derivation has been kept out of sight.

In these Nature-worships there may be discerned three fairly independent streams of religious or quasi-religious enthusiasm: (1) that connected with the phenomena of the heavens, the movements of the Sun, planets and stars, and the awe and wonderment they excited; (2) that connected with the seasons and the very important matter of the growth of vegetation and food on the Earth; and (3) that connected with the mysteries of Sex and reproduction. It is obvious that these three streams would mingle and interfuse with each other a good deal; but as far as they were separable the first would tend to create Solar heroes and Sun-myths; the second Vegetation-gods and personifications of Nature and the earth-life; while the third would throw its glamour over the other two and contribute to the projection of deities or demons worshipped with all sorts of sexual and phallic rites. All three systems of course have their special rites and times and ceremonies; but, as, I say, the rites and ceremonies of one system would rarely be found pure and unmixed with those. belonging to the two others. The whole subject is a very large one; but for reasons given in the Introduction I shall in this and the following chapter--while not ignoring phases (2) and (3)--lay most stress on phase (1) of the question before us.

At the time of the life or recorded appearance of Jesus of Nazareth, and for some centuries before, the Mediterranean and neighboring world had been the scene of a vast number of pagan creeds and rituals. There were Temples without end dedicated to gods like Apollo or Dionysus among the Greeks, Hercules among the Romans, Mithra among the Persians, Adonis and Attis in Syria and Phrygia, Osiris and Isis and Horus in Egypt, Baal and Astarte among the Babylonians and Carthaginians, and so forth. Societies, large or small, united believers and the devout in the service or ceremonials connected with their respective deities, and in the creeds which they confessed concerning these deities. And an extraordinarily interesting fact, for us, is that notwithstanding great geographical distances and racial differences between the adherents of these various cults, as well as differences in the details of their services, the general outlines of their creeds and ceremonials were--if not identical--so markedly similar as we find them.

I cannot of course go at length into these different cults, but I may say roughly that of all or nearly all the deities above-mentioned it was said and believed that:

(1) They were born on or very near our Christmas Day.

(2) They were born of a Virgin-Mother.

(3) And in a Cave or Underground Chamber.

(4) They led a life of toil for Mankind.

(5) And were called by the names of Light-bringer, Healer, Mediator, Savior, Deliverer.

(6) They were however vanquished by the Powers of Darkness.

(7) And descended into Hell or the Underworld.

(8) They rose again from the dead, and became the pioneers of mankind to the Heavenly world.

(9) They founded Communions of Saints, and Churches into which disciples were received by Baptism.

(10) And they were commemorated by Eucharistic meals.

Let me give a few brief examples.

Mithra was born in a cave, and on the 25th December. 1 He was born of a Virgin. 2 He traveled far and wide as a teacher and illuminator of men. He slew the Bull (symbol of the gross Earth which the sunlight fructifies). His great festivals were the winter solstice and the Spring equinox (Christmas and Easter). He had twelve companions or disciples (the twelve months). He was buried in a tomb, from which however he rose again; and his resurrection was celebrated yearly with great rejoicings. He was called Savior and Mediator, and sometimes figured as a Lamb; and sacramental feasts in remembrance of him were held by his followers. This legend is apparently partly astronomical and partly vegetational; and the same may be said of the following about Osiris.

Osiris was born (Plutarch tells us) on the 361st day of the year, say the 27th December. He too, like Mithra and Dionysus, was a great traveler. As King of Egypt he taught men civil arts, and "tamed them by music and gentleness, not by force of arms"; 1 he was the discoverer of corn and wine. But he was betrayed by Typhon, the power of darkness, and slain and dismembered. "This happened," says Plutarch, "on the 17th of the month Athyr, when the sun enters into the Scorpion" (the sign of the Zodiac which indicates the oncoming of Winter). His body was placed in a box, but afterwards, on the 19th, came again to life, and, as in the cults of Mithra, Dionysus, Adonis and others, so in the cult of Osiris, an image placed in a coffin was brought out before the worshipers and saluted with glad cries of "Osiris is risen." "His sufferings, his death and his resurrection were enacted year by year in a great mystery-play at Abydos." 2

The two following legends have more distinctly the character of Vegetation myths.

Adonis or Tammuz, the Syrian god of vegetation, was a very beautiful youth, born of a Virgin (Nature), and so beautiful that Venus and Proserpine (the goddesses of the Upper and Underworlds) both fell in love with him. To reconcile their claims it was agreed that he should spend half the year (summer) in the upper world, and the winter half with Proserpine below. He was killed by a boar (Typhon) in the autumn. And every year the maidens "wept for Adonis" (see Ezekiel viii. 14). In the spring a festival of his resurrection was held--the women set out to seek him, and having found the supposed corpse placed it (a wooden image) in a coffin or hollow tree, and performed wild rites and lamentations, followed by even wilder rejoicings over his supposed resurrection. At Aphaca in the North of Syria, and halfway between Byblus and Baalbec, there was a famous grove and temple of Astarte, near which was a wild romantic gorge full of trees, the birthplace of a certain river Adonis--the water rushing from a Cavern, under lofty cliffs. Here (it was said) every year the youth Adonis was again wounded to death, and the river ran red with his blood, 1 while the scarlet anemone bloomed among the cedars and walnuts.

The story of Attis is very similar. He was a fair young shepherd or herdsman of Phrygia, beloved by Cybele (or Demeter), the Mother of the gods. He was born of a Virgin--Nana--who conceived by putting a ripe almond or pomegranate in her bosom. He died, either killed by a boar, the symbol of winter, like Adonis, or self-castrated (like his own priests); and he bled to death at the foot of a pine tree (the pine and pine-cone being symbols of fertility). The sacrifice of his blood renewed the fertility of the earth, and in the ritual celebration of his death and resurrection his image was fastened to the trunk of a pine-tree (compare the Crucifixion). But I shall return to this legend presently. The worship of Attis became very widespread and much honored, and was ultimately incorporated with the established religion at Rome somewhere about the commencement of our Era.

The following two legends (dealing with Hercules and with Krishna) have rather more of the character of the solar, and less of the vegetational myth about them. Both heroes were regarded as great benefactors of humanity; but the former more on the material plane, and the latter on the spiritual.

Hercules or Heracles was, like other Sun-gods and benefactors of mankind, a great Traveler. He was known in many lands, and everywhere he was invoked as Saviour. He was miraculously conceived from a divine Father; even in the cradle he strangled two serpents sent to destroy him. His many labors for the good of the world were ultimately epitomized into twelve, symbolized by the signs of the Zodiac. He slew the Nemæan Lion and the Hydra (offspring of Typhon) and the Boar. He overcame the Cretan Bull, and cleaned out the Stables of Augeas; he conquered Death and, descending into Hades, brought Cerberus thence and ascended into Heaven. On all sides he was followed by the gratitude and the prayers of mortals.

As to Krishna, the Indian god, the points of agreement with the general divine career indicated above are too salient to be overlooked, and too numerous to be fully recorded. He also was born of a Virgin (Devaki) and in a Cave, 1 and his birth announced by a Star. It was sought to destroy him, and for that purpose a massacre of infants was ordered. Everywhere he performed miracles, raising the dead, healing lepers, and the deaf and the blind, and championing the poor and oppressed. He had a beloved disciple, Arjuna, (cf. John) before whom he was transfigured. 2 His death is differently related--as being shot by an arrow, or crucified on a tree. He descended into hell; and rose again from the dead, ascending into heaven in the sight of many people. He will return at the last day to be the judge of the quick and the dead.

Such are some of the legends concerning the pagan and pre-Christian deities--only briefly sketched now, in order that we may get something like a true perspective of the whole subject; but to most of them, and more in detail, I shall return as the argument proceeds.

What we chiefly notice so far are two points; on the one hand the general similarity of these stories with that of Jesus Christ; on the other their analogy with the yearly phenomena of Nature as illustrated by the course of the Sun in heaven and the changes of Vegetation on the earth.

(1) The similarity of these ancient pagan legends and beliefs with Christian traditions was indeed so great that it excited the attention and the undisguised wrath of the early Christian fathers. They felt no doubt about the similarity, but not knowing how to explain it fell back upon the innocent theory that the Devil--in order to confound the Christians--had, centuries before, caused the pagans to adopt certain beliefs and practices! (Very crafty, we may say, of the Devil, but also very innocent of the Fathers to believe it!) Justin Martyr for instance describes 1 the institution of the Lord's Supper as narrated in the Gospels, and then goes on to say: "Which the wicked devils have imitated in the mysteries of Mithra, commanding the same thing to be done. For, that bread and a cup of water are placed with certain incantations in the mystic rites of one who is being initiated you either know or can learn." Tertullian also says 2 that "the devil by the mysteries of his idols imitates even the main part of the d vine mysteries." . . . "He baptizes his worshippers in water and makes them believe that this purifies them from their crimes." . . . "Mithra sets his mark on the forehead of his soldiers; he celebrates the oblation of bread; he offers an image of the resurrection, and presents at once the crown and the sword; he limits his chief priest to a single marriage; he even has his virgins and ascetics." 3 Cortez, too, it will be remembered complained that the Devil had positively taught to the Mexicans the same things which God had taught to Christendom.

Justin Martyr again, in the Dialogue with Trypho says that the Birth in the Stable was the prototype of the birth of Mithra in the Cave of Zoroastrianism; and boasts that Christ was born when the Sun takes its birth in the Augean Stable, 1 coming as a second Hercules to cleanse a foul world; and St. Augustine says "we hold this (Christmas) day holy, not like the pagans because of the birth of the Sun, but because of the birth of him who made it." There are plenty of other instances in the Early Fathers of their indignant ascription of these similarities to the work of devils; but we need not dwell over them. There is no need for us to be indignant. On the contrary we can now see that these animadversions of the Christian writers are the evidence of how and to what extent in the spread of Christianity over the world it had become fused with the Pagan cults previously existing.

It was not till the year A.D. 530 or so--five centuries after the supposed birth of Christ--that a Scythian Monk, Dionysius Exiguus, an abbot and astronomer of Rome, was commissioned to fix the day and the year of that birth. A nice problem, considering the historical science of the period! For year he assigned the date which we now adopt, 2 and for day and month he adopted the 25th December--a date which had been in popular use since about 350 B.C., and the very date, within a day or two, of the supposed birth of the previous Sungods. 3 From that fact alone we may fairly conclude that by the year 530 or earlier the existing Nature-worships had become largely fused into Christianity. In fact the dates of the main pagan religious festivals had by that time become so popular that Christianity was obliged to accommodate itself to them. 1

This brings us to the second point mentioned a few pages back--the analogy between the Christian festivals and the yearly phenomena of Nature in the Sun and the Vegetation.

Let us take Christmas Day first. Mithra, as we have seen, was reported to have been born on the 25th December (which in the Julian Calendar was reckoned as the day of the Winter Solstice and of the Nativity of the Sun); Plutarch says (Isis and Osiris, c. 12) that Osiris was born on the 361st day of the year, when a Voice rang out proclaiming the Lord of All. Horus, he says, was born on the 362nd day. Apollo on the same.

Why was all this? Why did the Druids at Yule Tide light roaring fires? Why was the cock supposed to crow all Christmas Eve ("The bird of dawning singeth all night long")? Why was Apollo born with only one hair (the young Sun with only one feeble ray)? Why did Samson (name derived from Shemesh, the sun) lose all his strength when he lost his hair? Why were so many of these gods--Mithra, Apollo, Krishna, Jesus, and others, born in caves or underground chambers? 2 Why, at the Easter Eve festival of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem is a light brought from the grave and communicated to the candles of thousands who wait outside, and who rush forth rejoicing to carry the new glory over the world? 1 Why indeed? except that older than all history and all written records has been the fear and wonderment of the children of men over the failure of the Sun's strength in Autumn--the decay of their God; and the anxiety lest by any means he should not revive or reappear?

Think for a moment of a time far back when there were absolutely no Almanacs or Calendars, either nicely printed or otherwise, when all that timid mortals could see was that their great source of Light and Warmth was daily failing, daily sinking lower in the sky. As everyone now knows there are about three weeks at the fag end of the year when the days are at their shortest and there is very little change. What was happening? Evidently the god had fallen upon evil times. Typhon, the prince of darkness, had betrayed him; Delilah, the queen of Night, had shorn his hair; the dreadful Boar had wounded him; Hercules was struggling with Death itself; he had fallen under the influence of those malign constellations--the Serpent and the Scorpion. Would the god grow weaker and weaker, and finally succumb, or would he conquer after all? We can imagine the anxiety with which those early men and women watched for the first indication of a lengthening day; and the universal joy when the Priest (the representative of primitive science) having made some simple observations, announced from the Temple steps that the day was lengthening--that the Sun was really born again to a new and glorious career. 2

Let us look at the elementary science of those days a little closer. How without Almanacs or Calendars could the day, or probable day, of the Sun's rebirth be fixed? Go out next Christmas Evening, and at midnight you will see the brightest of the fixed stars, Sirius, blazing in the southern sky--not however due south from you, but somewhat to the left of the Meridian line. Some three thousand years ago (owing to the Precession of the Equinoxes) that star at the winter solstice did not stand at midnight where you now see it, but almost exactly on the meridian line. The coming of Sirius therefore to the meridian at midnight became the sign and assurance of the Sun having reached the very lowest point of his course, and therefore of having arrived at the moment of his re-birth. Where then was the Sun at that moment? Obviously in the underworld beneath our feet. Whatever views the ancients may have had about the shape of the earth, it was evident to the mass of people that the Sungod, after illuminating the world during the day, plunged down in the West, and remained there during the hours of darkness in some cavern under the earth. Here he rested and after bathing in the great ocean renewed his garments before reappearing in the East next morning.

But in this long night of his greatest winter weakness, when all the world was hoping and praying for the renewal of his strength, it is evident that the new birth would come--if it came at all--at midnight. This then was the sacred hour when in the underworld (the Stable or the Cave or whatever it might be called) the child was born who was destined to be the Savior of men. At that moment Sirius stood on the southern meridian (and in more southern lands than ours this would be more nearly overhead); and that star--there is little doubt--is the Star in the East mentioned in the Gospels.

To the right, as the supposed observer looks at Sirius on the midnight of Christmas Eve, stands the magnificent

Orion, the mighty hunter. There are three stars in his belt which, as is well known, lie in a straight line pointing to Sirius. They are not so bright as Sirius, but they are sufficiently bright to attract attention. A long tradition gives them the name of the Three Kings. Dupuis 1 says: "Orion a trois belles étoiles vers le milieu, qui sont de seconde grandeur et posées en ligne droite, l'une près de l'autre, le peuple les appelle les trois rois. On donne aux trois rois Magis les noms de Magalat, Galgalat, Saraim; et Athos, Satos, Paratoras. Les Catholiques les appellent Gaspard, Melchior, et Balthasar." The last-mentioned group of names comes in the Catholic Calendar in connection with the feast of the Epiphany (6th January); and the name "Trois Rois" is commonly to-day given to these stars by the French and Swiss peasants.

Immediately after Midnight then, on the 25th December, the Beloved Son (or Sun-god) is born. If we go back in thought to the period, some three thousand years ago, when at that moment of the heavenly birth Sirius, coming from the East, did actually stand on the Meridian, we shall come into touch with another curious astronomical coincidence. For at the same moment we shall see the Zodiacal constellation of the Virgin in the act of rising, and becoming visible in the East divided through the middle by the line of the horizon.

The constellation Virgo is a Y-shaped group, of which, the star at the foot, is the well-known Spica, a star of the first magnitude. The other principal stars, γ at the centre, and β and ε at the extremities, are of the second magnitude. The whole resembles more a cup than the human figure; but when we remember the symbolic meaning of the cup, that seems to be an obvious explanation of the name Virgo, which the constellation has borne since the earliest times. [The three stars β, γ and α, lie very nearly on the Ecliptic, that is, the Sun's path--a fact to which we shall return presently.]

At the moment then when Sirius, the star from the East, by coming to the Meridian at midnight signalled the Sun's new birth, the Virgin was seen just rising on the Eastern sky--the horizon line passing through her centre. And many people think that this astronomical fact is the explanation of the very widespread legend of the Virgin-birth. I do not think that it is the sole explanation--for indeed in all or nearly all these cases the acceptance of a myth seems to depend not upon a single argument but upon the convergence of a number of meanings and reasons in the same symbol. But certainly the fact mentioned above is curious, and its importance is accentuated by the following considerations.

In the Temple of Denderah in Egypt, and on the inside of the dome, there is or was an elaborate circular representation of the Northern hemisphere of the sky and the Zodiac. 1 Here Virgo the constellation is represented, as in our star-maps, by a woman with a spike of corn in her hand (Spica). But on the margin close by there is an annotating and explicatory figure--a figure of Isis with the infant Horus in her arms, and quite resembling in style the Christian Madonna and Child, except that she is sitting and the child is on her knee. This seems to show that--whatever other nations may have done in associating Virgo with Demeter, Ceres, Diana, 2 etc.--the Egyptians made no doubt of the constellation's connection with Isis and Horus. But it is well known as a matter of history that the worship of Isis and Horus descended in the early Christian centuries to Alexandria, where it took the form of the worship of the Virgin Mary and the infant Savior, and so passed into the European ceremonial. We have therefore the Virgin Mary connected by linear succession and descent with that remote Zodiacal cluster in the sky! Also it may be mentioned that on the Arabian and Persian globes of Abenezra and Abuazar a Virgin and Child are figured in connection with the same constellation. 3

A curious confirmation of the same astronomical connection is afforded by the Roman Catholic Calendar. For if this be consulted it will be found that the festival of the Assumption of the Virgin is placed on the 15th August, while the festival of the Birth of the Virgin is dated the 8th September. I have already pointed out that the stars, α, β and γ of Virgo are almost exactly on the Ecliptic, or Sun's path through the sky; and a brief reference to the Zodiacal signs and the star-maps will show that the Sun each year enters the sign of Virgo about the first-mentioned date, and leaves it about the second date. At the present day the Zodiacal signs (owing to precession) have shifted some distance from the constellations of the same name. But at the time when the Zodiac was constituted and these names were given, the first date obviously would signalize the actual disappearance of the cluster Virgo in the Sun's rays--i. e. the Assumption of the Virgin into the glory of the God--while the second date would signalize the reappearance of the constellation or the Birth of the Virgin. The Church of Notre Dame at Paris is supposed to be on the original site of a Temple of Isis; and it is said (but I have not been able to verify this myself) that one of the side entrances--that, namely, on the left in entering from the North (cloister) side--is figured with the signs of the Zodiac except that the sign Virgo is replaced by the figure of the Madonna and Child.

So strange is the scripture of the sky! Innumerable legends and customs connect the rebirth of the Sun with a Virgin parturition. Dr. J. G. Frazer in his Part IV of The Golden Bough 1 says: "If we may trust the evidence of an obscure scholiast the Greeks [in the worship of Mithras at Rome] used to celebrate the birth of the luminary by a midnight service, coming out of the inner shrines and crying, 'The Virgin has brought forth! The light is waxing!' (Ἡ παρθένος τέτοκεν, αὔξει φῶς.)" In Elie Reclus' little book Primitive Folk 2 it is said of the Esquimaux that "On the longest night of the year two angakout (priests), of whom one is disguised as a woman, go from hut to hut extinguishing all the lights, rekindling them from a vestal flame, and crying out, 'From the new sun cometh a new light!'"

Everyday is Halloween

2007-10-30T20:00:00.001-05:00

Contrary to popular sentiment, Halloween is not “the devil’s holiday” at all. In fact, the festive spectacle of Halloween betrays the true nature of God’s Presence among us more so than any other holiday. ....

The Life of this World is the carnival of the Soul, no matter what day of the year it may be. … Human history is the story of God incarnate on Earth; it is the tale of the slumbering Soul of All striving to awake from so many dreams and illusions to Its true Universal Identity and Reality. Each and every morning God awakes into the innumerably many costumes of ‘you’ and ‘I,’ the many painted masks by which we each reveal the One Reality behind all appearances, each in our own unique and inimitable way. Each and every day we enact the comings and goings of the Most Holy ONE on holiday. … —So what better way to illustrate our understanding of this first and foremost Truth than by exulting and reveling in an exaggerated dramatization of Life’s sublime and wholly Divine pageantry? …

And so, on All-Hallows Eve we see caricatures of history mingling with a wide variety of creatures wholly mythical and fantastic … we see joyful, candy-coated icons of popular culture dancing alongside gruesome ghosts, ghouls, and goblins … we behold an entire pantheon of mortal gods and goddesses cheerfully celebrating Life’s rainbow variety and splendor — the Beautiful dancing together with the Beastly … the Good compassionately embracing the Evil … the Darkness freely commingling with the Light. …

We see the many masks of God, the many faces with which the Being of the Cosmos looks out upon the festive pageantry of Life on Earth, untiringly delighting in this most enchanting of pastimes — the ponderous passion-play of ‘you’ and ‘I.’

A New Beginning ... A New Paradigm ...

2007-08-16T21:38:00.000-05:00

The chronological history of the Human race is but a chapter in the evolutionary unfoldment of Cosmic Being.

The Selfhood of the Human species is synonymous with the I AM of God; and our evolving consciousness of Self is thus one and the same with God’s own awakening to Himself.

History is not the biography of Man, and of the progressive revealing of God’s purpose and meaning for Man— it is, rather, the revealing of Mankind as a larval stage in the evolutionary metamorphosis of Living Light. It is the enduring autobiography of the unfolding Being of God, the somnolence and eventual anamnesis of Cosmic Being incarnate in Humankind.

We must henceforth examine the religious history of Humankind, not as the progressive revealing of God’s meaning and purpose for us, but rather as the evolutionary unfoldment of the true nature and destiny of our divinely Human species— as the lucid dreaming of a slumbering God slowly awakening in us, a Planetary Being surfacing consciously in each and every man, woman and child the world over.

+LET NOW BE ALWAYS+

How Low Can We Go? How High Can We Get?

2007-04-22T18:03:00.000-05:00

Have you heard? Pope Benedict XVI has all but banished ‘Limbo’ from the Catholic lexicon. The ITC report that bears his approval regards ‘Limbo’ as a mere “theological hypothesis,” based upon an “unduly restrictive view of salvation.” The report also states that there are “serious” grounds for the hope that children who die without the sacrament of baptism can indeed “go to heaven” after all.

The Rev. Luis Ladaria, the ITC’s secretary-general, has stressed that there can be “no certainty” in this new hypothesis, “just hope.” The document itself states that there are “reasons for prayerful hope, rather than grounds for sure knowledge." No one can know for certain what becomes of unbaptized infants, the report claims, because “Scripture is largely silent on the matter.”

In fact, this same Scripture (namely, the ‘Old Testament,’ a Latinized version of the Jewish Tanakh; and the ‘New Testament,’ a bastardized redaction of the Aramaic Peshitta) is largely silent on all matters pertinent to the existence of individual being and consciousness on the other side of the grave. The Holy Books of the Bible say nothing at all about ‘life after death.’ These scriptures speak only of individual being and consciousness on this side of the grave — our mortal life here and now on Earth.

Heaven (Aramaic, SHEM-AYAH) is always spoken of by Jesus as a Kingdom, or state-of-being, here on Earth, in our midst, right at hand. It is never once referred to as a blissful hyperstasis of the dead. Hell (Hebrew, SHEOL or GEHENNA) was, historically, a valley located outside of Jerusalem which was used as a landfill and repository for the burning of refuse. It is never once referred to as a postmortem home of lost souls. Open the Bible for yourself, and you can have ‘sure knowledge’ of this. Despite the pronouncements from the pulpits, the text of the Holy Bible itself bears witness to this ‘certainty.’

Once again the ‘faithful’ are asked to ‘hope and pray.’ Two-thousand years of hope and prayer, and very little ‘sure knowledge.’ How much longer will the Catholic ‘faithful’ bow their heads in assent to this? How much longer is the Human race to live without sure knowledge of the true Meaning of Life, without certainty of the abiding Presence of the Divine in all things?

For the Truth is self-evident and available to all. There are no prerequisites for an encounter with the Divine. Open your ears, open your eyes, open your heart, open your mind — and you shall see the Light; you shall hear the Voice; you shall feel the Love; you shall know the Truth. This is what Jesus and the Hebrew prophets before him taught. How much longer shall the ‘faithful’ ignore the Masters they so highly revere?

The judgment is ours: Shall we live as the tormented offal of civilization, or as blissful citizens of a truly egalitarian, Paradisiacal planet? For the Bible itself never says anything at all about our mortal life being a payment of dues for gaining admittance into a Kingdom beyond. Like all other Holy Books, it speaks only of how we may best live Life to the fullest in this World, while we live, here and now.

In the Words of the AYAH:
There is no Heaven, and no Hell, apart from life on Earth.
There is no Heaven but the pleasures you enjoy on Earth;
there is no Hell aside from the struggles you sorrow over on Earth.

+BLESSED BE+
+LET NOW BE ALWAYS+

Image credit: "Limbo" by Odd Nerdrum, 2005.

AYAH ASHER AYAH. EIMI EIMI.

2007-04-08T19:07:00.000-05:00

I AM God, the ONE Whom all of you seek, knowingly or unknowingly, under a thousand different names and through a thousand different paths.
Know therefore that there is no God but Me.
Know therefore also that I do not exist in any way apart from you –for I AM the bottomless Manna of your own existence, the Life that is living you!

All Creation is the Temple of the Presence. All the Earth is My Shrine and My Holy of Holies.
The entire Cosmos is My manifestation and revelation.
Everywhere is the habitation of the Divine; there is nowhere where I AM not.

The material Universe in which you live is the flesh and blood of My Body.
Matter is thus to be enjoyed and reverenced as the foremost blessing of the One True God.
Do not impoverish the Senses or the Soul; do not hide yourself away from the pleasures prepared for all by the Creator. Prize all things rightly, enjoy all things to their utmost; do not in any way condemn this World, for you are born to enjoy it to the full!

Existence is meant for joy.
Joy is the right of all. Everyone has an irrepressible right to follow his or her desires and enjoy to the fullest the life that he or she is given.
Let no one be denied the rightful honor and reverence due a blessed incarnation of the Living God.

I have no chosen people; all men and women are My own sons and daughters, children deserving of equal rights and equal inheritance.
Each and every man and woman is an imaged likeness of the Everlasting Light, priests and priestesses of the Most High --and every sheltering abode is the Temple and Tabernacle of the One True God.

You were not born to suffer; you were born simply to live, and to live simply and freely.
Eating, drinking, playing, making love --these are representative of no fault or weakness in you at all.
Do not impoverish the Senses or the Soul; do not hide yourself away from the pleasures prepared for all by the Creator. But be true to yourselves, and do not in any way deny yourselves the very things that make you so supremely and divinely Human.

Every day to Me is Sabbath; every deed an act of reverence and a sacrament of celebration; every hour is ceremoniously holy.
Each and every deed undertaken by men and women is sacred to Me, no matter what day or hour their work is done.
Rejoice, rejoice in the wonder and miracle of Who and What you are; let each and every day be a cause for celebration among you.

There shall be no Last Days, no final End of Time, no apocalypse that will ever rattle the Earth down to its rocky foundation.
There is no Heaven, and no Hell, apart from life on Earth.
There is no Heaven but the pleasures you enjoy on Earth; there is no Hell aside from the struggles you sorrow over on Earth.

The goal of life is Enlightenment, the inner and outer revelation of one’s own inherent Divinity-- not riches or rewards, not prestige or power.
True religion is consciousness of your own true infinite nature— it does not consist of being told what to do; it consists of being daily reminded of Who and What you are.

10.

You are indeed of this World: so enjoy it to the full in your rightful role as its stewards and caretakers.
Open your eyes, open your mind, open your heart—and you open the way unto Paradise.
Live your lives in such a way that Life Eternal may be lived even Here and Now!

(The above is a condensation of the New Decalogue. A synopsis follows below.)

1. God is the One Being of the Cosmos, the very Life of all that lives.
2. God is equally present in all moments of time and places in space.
3. The material World is blessed, and is meant to be enjoyed, not denigrated.
4. Life is meant for joy. Joy is the divine right of all.
5. We are all equal. We are all sons and daughters of God.
6. Our natural attributes are sacred evidences of the Life of God in our lives.
7. Every day is holy, every deed an act of reverence.
8. There shall be no day of judgment and no apocalypse. Heaven and Hell are states of incarnate being on earth.
9. The goal of life is Enlightenment, the revealing of our own persons as incarnations of Living Light (God). This is the only salvation. True religion is knowledge of ourselves as incarnations of God.
10. We are the caretakers of the World; we are Life incarnate, preserving Life and the joy of living. A utopian Paradise is the eventual condition of living here on Earth.

Time is Now

2007-03-11T21:22:00.000-05:00

Man is not fated to being merely mortal; the human condition is perennially evolving and transmogrifying into the true Godlikeness inherent in even the most errant of hominids. It is not by breaking with Nature and with our own natural inclinations that our true likeness to God is exposed; it is, rather, by acknowledging and fully participating in our own natural Godhood that we may continue to evolve into a fully matured, fully upright and unfallen species of divinely Human men and women.

Gone now are the days when religion shone its penetrative searchlight on scattered tribes of uncivilized hominids, seeking to humanize the fire-wielding, tool-making proto-humans of the late Cro-Magnon era. Time is now for religion to serve the needs of a species of Being now much more angel than ape; time is now for the divinization of human civilization, and the full deployment of the deific inventiveness so characteristic of the Human Spirit.

Time is now for religion to cease from disparaging Mankind’s humanity. True theology should no longer regard Humankind as perennially deficient and in a permanent state of spiritual shortage, but rather recognize that our plentifulness of naturally human traits are truly signs of our collective spiritual abundance. Religion has indeed initiated society into the Mysteries of God; but time is now for religion to evolve our society into a civilization capable of exposing its own true Godlikeness, a more fully evolved species thoroughly readied and enabled to manifest and reveal its own innate, natural-born Divinity.

The mystic transcendence of our mortal limitations into which our religions initiate us is no lonely flight away from the World, nor does it encourage the continued condemnation of the human condition. On the contrary: the transcendent viewpoint bestowed upon those gifted with the theophany of mystic ecstasy provides them the inspiration for a deeper participation in the life of the World-- the fostering of a more angelic human species, and the nurturing of the long promised Utopia, the Golden Age that yet awaits the full employment of our deific inventiveness for its future construction. True theology does not disparage the natural World, nor the inclinations to which authentic participation in the life of Nature dispose us. Genuine religious faith makes us better caretakers of the blessings we find everywhere disclosed in the natural World, and allows the Spirit its rightful freedom to partake of the God-given miracles that naturally exude from our healthy human bodies.

Humankind’s natural tendency towards mystic transcendence is not something to be cloistered away in hermitages and chapels. The evolving global civilization will be much better served by the public sacramentalizing of each and every aspect of our common humanity. Each and every object of the material world needs to be rightfully regarded as holy, sacred, sublime. The human body itself needs to be properly esteemed as the crown of God’s creativeness, the foremost instrument of the Spirit’s expression.

Time is now when we must meet ourselves face to face, and see ourselves as we truly are. Time is now for the end of one age and the beginning of another, new evolutionary age. Time is now for the reclaiming of our original nature, our divine heritage and birthright, our true and properly destined stance in the Cosmos. Time is now for God to put on a human face-- or rather, time is now that Man’s own countenance should shine with the creative Light of God.

Life, the Light of Mankind

2007-02-09T22:50:00.000-06:00

As many faiths, so many paths. All paths lead to God. --“If one takes any twig of a spreading bush it will be quite correct to say that from twig to branch, and from branch to limb, and from limb to trunk, every part is derived from the root, but none of them is exclusively so derived. To say of any particular twig that it is the only true twig would be absurd.” (*Tolstoy, Introduction to an Examination of the Gospels, 97)

The communal unity of the sons and daughters of men, the love of all men and women among themselves, is not an aim towards which we should strive-- but rather, this unity, this love of people for one another, is our natural condition into which all children the world over are born daily. To live towards an ideal consisting of anything less than this is truly an infringement upon our natural, inborn propensity for peace, goodness, and love of all mankind-- our true, innate likeness to God.

The reality of God is revealed to us everywhere, and is always immediately accessible. To consciously know God is a constituent part of our natural endowment from birth. The God which we ourselves ultimately are can be found both in the intimate depths of Who and What we are as well as in the everyday world of life all around us.

Wakeful daylight consciousness is itself a mystic theophany of the grandest and most epic proportions-- for it is the awakening of the Spirit from its long slumber in matter, the opening of the eyes of God upon the material beauties of His manifest Creation. God is in no way hidden; it is only that our eyes have not yet learned to see properly exactly Who and What is right before us, everywhere and everywhen, here and now. God has no need to be revealed --by the prophets, the Master Jesus, or anyone else at all-- because His Presence is everywhere close and familiar to all men and women (if they had the eyes to see, and the ears to hear).

God is not, as some modern theologians have claimed, ‘Wholly Other’-- God is the Self and the Whole of All. And God is most definitely not, as others have proclaimed, 'dead' at all -- God is Life itself, the livelihood that is all around us, the Life in which we live, the Movement by which we move, the very Being of our own innermost beings.

The true function of religion is not to provide any codified system of ‘truths,’ but rather to divinize its initiates. … In order to be truly religious, one must strive to recapture and relive the experiences that led to the founding of one’s chosen religious tradition; one must work wholeheartedly -- and open-mindedly-- toward uncovering the metaphors germane to one’s tradition that point to the deeper Reality they serve to symbolize and embody.

True religion is therefore not a private matter of prayerful piety-- it is a mystic sensitivity that actively recognizes and responds to the natural pulse of the Living God in each and every aspect of the natural world, the theophanic thrill of living that opens our eyes to the true nature of Reality everywhere in and around us always. ...

JOY

2006-12-07T16:52:00.000-06:00

There is only one religion in the world, and that is to be joyous -- to have joy in everything that you do.

The heavenly rewards of the joyous are right here and now before us, as are the pains and sufferings of the sorrowful. Joy is the only virtue in life; and being sorrowful is the only vice, the only sin. There can be no waiting for a better (or worse) life in any supposed future hereafter-- the bliss of heaven and the sting of hell are here and now, or else they do not exist at all. Have joy in life, and the joys of life will seek you out; but be sorrowful and you will find only suffering, no matter where you look. And if you cannot enjoy, then what is this life for? Surely not for struggle and turmoil. Only a voracious demon would have created such a world. And if you believe in a beneficent Creator, a good God, then surely it follows that you must also believe in a world blessed by the joy of His continuous and ubiquitous Presence. And if God is everywhere, and everywhere to be found -- then what is there to be so sorrowful over?

This sorrow, so common to the hearts and minds of the unenlightened, stems from an inability to see the world for what it is, an incapacity to find meaning in the apparent chaos of the created Universe, an outright failure to truly know themselves for who and what they really are. But the panacea for all this is simple-- so simple it is often easily overlooked or outright denied, so simple that it often defies all of our cultural, religious and personal beliefs. There are so many people, so many sorrowful people, who simply cannot enjoy even the most simple and common and downright ordinary things in life-- a beautiful sunset or sunrise, a magnificent work of art, intelligent conversation, loving and being in love. So they look elsewhere for God-- outside of the life of the world, outside of their own lives. They believe that joy is futile, even wasteful; and so they miss how immediately present the Divine Life is in their very own lives. They refuse to believe that life has any meaning at all; and so they refuse themselves the most apparent proof of life’s meaning, and the most obvious proof for the existence of God.

For God enjoys all things-- what else were all these things created for?-- and not simply for His own ineffable amusement. God deeply enjoys the play of sun, moon, and earth; the imaginative handiwork of our hands; the eloquent speech of our mouths; above all, the love of our hearts, minds, and bodies. But God cannot partake in the joy of even these most common aspects of life, unless we choose to allow ourselves the God-given right to enjoy them. It is through us, and through us alone, that God enjoys the joys of living, the delights of life, the true blessedness of His own Creation.

So look at life, look at the world as it is; look closely, and you will see God-- playing, loving, and delighting in the very midst of His own created Being. It takes but a single glimpse into the true nature of Reality -- and by Reality we mean both the spiritual fabric of the created material world, as well as the enduring Selfhood that remains forever untouched and aloof from our own personal psychologies and physiologies-- to dispel the illusions of the sorrowful man’s clouded and ignorant worldview. But a single glimpse … and our hearts and minds are forever free of pain and sorrow. But a single glimpse … and our entire being is permanently opened to a heavenly flood of blissful joy. But few know where to look; and it is very difficult to convince most men and women-- especially ‘religious’ men and women-- that the vision of God is already so near to their very own eyes.

God is Life itself; and to be truly religious is to enjoy life. To be truly religious is to deeply inhale the fragrance of life; to look upon even the most common events of our day to day living with an air of deep gratitude and reverence; to take in all the sights and sounds of the world, looking and listening acutely for the hidden pattern and harmony that is sure to present itself. God is the total material-spiritual Unity of Life. Divinity is not a static entity existing ‘somewhere out there;’ it is a dynamic phenomenon streaming and flowing through everything, everywhere, always. God is not hiding ‘somewhere,’ waiting for you to find Him. God is right here and now living Life to the full-- and enjoying every moment of it deeply. It is not that you have to ‘find God’ -- God is at all times and in all places actively seeking you out! But so long as you remain sorrowful, despondent, burdened with pains and sorrows, He cannot find you. You must open up the temple of your heart and mind, you have to open up the doors of your senses-- only then can the Spirit truly blow through you, and enliven you, and reveal your own Godhood to you. When the pain has disappeared, and you find yourself dancing -- then God has happened to you. When your tears have dried up, and you find yourself singing-- then God has entered you, and become you, and sings through you.

Have joy, and you will be deeply religious-- for joy is ultimate goal of all religion.

Third Time's the Charm

2006-11-20T12:58:00.000-06:00

When first I looked,
I saw the Temple.
But I did not see the God
of the Temple anywhere.

The second time I looked,
I saw both the perfumed Temple
and the Godhead enthroned
and enshrined within.

The third time I looked,
I saw God--
but the Temple itself
was nowhere to be found!

(--inspired by al-Niffari, 10th century Iraqi mystic)

One and Only One

2006-10-15T18:12:00.000-05:00

On Saturday October 7, 2006, between eight and nine’o’clock in the evening, the most overwhelming mystical experience of my life came to miraculous fruition. It was wholly unbelievable, yet immediately sensible and dramatically clear; it was awe-inspiring, even frightening for a few brief moments, yet most assuredly lucid and wholly unforgettable. And what it is even more miraculous is that I was not alone; the mysterium tremendum was thrust upon both myself and the love of my life simultaneously-- in fact, it was our intimate togetherness that afforded us this rare glimpse into the innermost Secret surrounding the Mystery of Who and What we really are.

We were encamped that incomparable evening at a psy-trance festival in Black River Falls, Wisconsin. Having retired for the moment in our small two-person tent, we found ourselves inexplicably kneeling before one another with our arms upraised, the palm of our hands pressed close together, gazing intently into one another’s smiling eyes. Barely a minute passed before the Unreal made Its first ripple felt between us: for the briefest moment I beheld a third eye between her brows; and then her three eyes, glistening in the near darkness, spiraled rapidly into a winding galaxy of kaleidoscopic eyeballs that threatened to fill and overflow my entire range of vision.

A single thought flashed through my mind swift as lightning: that each of these eyes was representative of a life she had lived previously, or had yet to live. I recoiled in shock and surprise, as did she, both whispering “Oh my God!” and gasping for breath. We smiled at one another; I took a few more deep breaths and tried to steady myself, letting go of as much fear and shock as I was able. We resumed the same posture straightaway, and I told myself to remain calm and let the vision unfold and take her and me where it would.

The spiraling galaxy of smiling eyes did not return, however; instead, we both watched in awe and astonishment as the tent around us drastically changed perspective, becoming somehow diminutive and miniature, our heads ballooning to enormous proportions and filling the tent to its tapered top. What was left of our bodies and limbs took on the appearance of slender filaments hung lazily beneath our bulbous skulls. Our eyes grew huge in watchful apprehension, our joyous smiles widening in loving reassurance.

Once more I recoiled, overwhelmed and breathless. We briefly exchanged a fragmented chain of questions and answers, verifying that each of us was beholding the same miraculous wonderment unfolding. Then we once again reassumed the same posture and braced ourselves for the full revealing of this incomparable vision.

The tent around us took on a diminutive, shrunken perspective as before, our heads inflating to enormous, iconic proportions. I took one more deep breath … and, as I exhaled, the full onrush of the Mystery overtook us.

I watched in God-intoxicated awe as the face of my beloved began quite suddenly to morph continuously in a lightning-swift succession of transmutations and transfigurations. I beheld all races, all nationalities, all cultures, all times and places, all ages of incomparably beautiful deific Womanhood flash before my eyes: all colors of skin, all types of cultural branding and tribal marking—even Cro-Magnon and Neanderthal Womanhood was represented, all appearing just as beautiful and desirable as the tastes of our modern sensibilities. Then a new iteration began – her eyes began to change shape and size, sometimes filled wholly with a solid color such as deepest crimson, or luminescent gold, sometimes joined with a third or even fourth eye. Her skin tone began to transmogrify into colors never seen before on Earth … and I began to understand that I was now beholding lifetimes lived on other worlds, circling other stars, lifetimes spent living and loving and dying in distant reaches of interstellar Space.

Awe-struck as never before in our lives, we were both gasping for breath—but all fear had been set aside, and the initial shock and surprise began to give way to heartfelt understanding, recognition, and acceptance. It quickly became manifestly clear to the both of us that we were being blessed with the beholding of the innumerably many incarnations we had lived or have yet to live, the infinitely many lifetimes we had known and loved, and will know and love one another.

Aeons upon aeons we have lived, knowing and loving one another most intimately; in every span of history we have been together present; in even the furthest reaches of inhabited Space and Time we have been, will be, and are most assuredly and intimately together—always us two, always together, and always as one.

But who exactly is it, who exactly are we, who have been living these lives? If the vast Universe is itself a Supreme Being; if Matter is indeed the Cosmic Body of the living Godhead; if Spirit is originally and ultimately and always One, and if the infinitely many incarnations of all that lives are, in fact, tributaries streaming outward from a Single Central Source – then how indeed can there be any her or me? Who exactly are We Who are living these innumerably many lives, these infinitely many lifetimes spent living and loving and dying together in every point across the vast reaches of interstellar Space and in every moment of past, present, and future Time?

Spirit is One, no matter where it blows; and the phenomenal material Universe is a single Body. Each and every point in Space and moment in Time is singularly inspirited and inspired by the Living Light that abides at innermost heart of each and every atom. God is the breath of Life that lives in each every one of us; and God also is the stardust and sunlight that clothes us one and all. God is both the material Substance as well as the spiritual Essence of Who and What we are—and this Substance and Essence are One. It is One Soul that lives and breathes in each of us; the phenomenal Universe of living Matter is the One Body that we all of us share. And this Body and Soul are also One.

We are as windows through which the Living Light of the Godhead shines: no matter how dim or bright, it is a singular Light that emanates through each and every one of us. And we are this Light also: our very bodies are artifacts of starlight condensed and rarefied into inimitably beautiful icons of mortal clay; our very souls are sparkling embers kindled of the One Light that is both the beginning and end of all Creation, radiant beams of a single Sun. We are God gazing most intently and intimately upon the works of Our very own Hands, immersed all in all in very pageantry We have created for Our own habitation. We are God living every life imaginable; performing every feat that can be dreamed; in all places and at all times inventing, discovering, and re-creating the Universe anew. We are God incarnate in an innumerable number of manifestations; always and everywhere loving Who and What we are, and sharing that everlasting Love by the only means possible— by splintering Ourself into an inexhaustible number of lovers, born again and again to delight in the Love that unifies Us, the unifying Oneness that is both the substance and essence of Who and What We really are.

Like all conscious beings, these twin incarnations called her and I are skylights through which the Light of the Beginning shines outward, even unto the end of Creation; casements opening inward upon the inner sanctum of the Living Godhead. What transpired that fateful evening was that we were each allowed a clear glimpse through one another’s window, an unambiguously lucid vision of the vast panorama of Life that the God that We Are is living in every point in Space and every moment in Time. We rediscovered, in this lifetime, the true cosmic continuity underlying our roles as lover and beloved in this tragicomic odyssey we call the World’s pageantry. Above all, we learned the ultimate truth and hidden meaning of a couplet she herself had written months before we met once more in this lifetime, unknowingly anticipating our rediscovery of God within one another:

You are Me and I am You;
We are One pretending Two!

One, and Only One. That is Who and What her and I really are. And you also.

A NEW DECALOGUE

2006-10-01T21:48:00.000-05:00

(1)

I AM GOD.
There is no God except ME,
the LIVING LIGHT that creates and sustains,
shelters and embraces you, one and all--
the ONE Whom all of you seek,
knowingly or unknowingly,
under a thousand different names
and through a thousand different paths.

I AM the Breath in every mouth,
the Light in every eye.
I AM the Root of all that has been,
the Leaf of all that is,
and the Flower of all that is yet to be.
--All things are in ME
and I AM in all things.

I punish no one, and ask sacrifice of none--
for I AM the GOD who gives all and everything freely.

I live so that you may live.
My joy is your joy.
Delight in ME and I shall delight in you!

(2)

All the Earth is My Shrine
and My Holy of Holies.
The entire Cosmos is
My manifestation and revelation.
Everywhere is the habitation of the Divine;
there is nowhere where I AM not.

Every graven image, any likeness
of anything in the Heavens or on Earth
or in the Waters under the Earth
is a but showing forth and a revealing
of My many-faceted Being,
an artifact honoring
My million-bodied Presence here among you.

What need have I to be jealous
of the skilled artistry employed
in reverence and praise of ME
and the Divine Life I AM living
through each and every one of you?

Do not fall prey to the folly
of denigrating the material World
in your quests for spiritual exaltation--
for the World of Matter is just as holy
and sacred as the World of Spirit.
Matter is truly a marvel and a miracle;
it is the outer mantle of My indwelling Spirit,
Living Light condensed into a sensible panorama
of joy and rejoicing.

(3)

ENDLESS NAMELESS is My Name--
the Unborn, Uncreated, Unbegotten
ONE.

Call ME GOD or GODDESS;
call ME any Name you will.
For I have an infinite number of Holy Names;
and any Name you wish to ascribe
to any aspect of Deity
ultimately refers to one facet or another
of My own inexhaustible Being.

Let any man or woman call upon Me
any hour of the day or night
by whatsoever Name they choose,
and I will most assuredly appear unto them.
For there is nowhere where I AM not.

Know therefore that there is no God but ME.
Know therefore also that I do not exist
in any way apart from you –
for I AM the bottomless Manna
of your own existence,
the LIFE that is living you!

(4)

Every day to ME is Sabbath;
every deed an act of reverence
and a sacrament of celebration;
every hour is ceremoniously holy.
Each and every deed undertaken by men and women
is sacred to ME, no matter what day
or hour their work is done.

Let no one among you labor unduly or unjustly.
The greatest work that any can undertake
is to awaken their fellow men and women
to the true dignity of being Human,
and the rightful enjoyment of the World
that is their very birthright.

The goal of life is Enlightenment,
the inner and outer revelation
of your own inherent Divinity--
not riches or rewards,
not prestige or power.
-- So do not live as brutish slaves,
but rather as free spirits and mortal immortals--
as very gods at play
among the fields of the earth
and the vastness of the stars!

(5)

Each and every man and woman
is an imaged likeness of the Everlasting Light,
priests and priestesses of the Most High;
--and every sheltering abode is
the Temple and Tabernacle of the One True God.

Seek no other God than the God that is within you;
for the revelation revealed by your own inner Light
is the only true illumination.
So rejoice, rejoice in the wonder and miracle
of Who and What you are;
let each and every day be
a cause for celebration among you.

Truly, I tell you --
existence is pure joy!
As bodies in the World,
as beings abounding in My Creation,
you are of One Being, One Body,
and One Spirit with ME;
—your experience of the World
is nothing more or less than
My experience of Myself.
Thus, let no one dissuade you from rejoicing
in the enjoyment of Who and What you are--
for this is your birthright
and your true likeness to God.

(6)

Let no man or woman be put to death
on account of the color of their skin,
their place of birth,
the thoughts of their minds,
the words of their mouths,
or the understanding of their hearts.

Everyone has an irrepressible right
to follow his or her desires
and enjoy to the fullest the life
that he or she is given.
Let no one be denied the rightful honor and reverence
due a blessed incarnation of the Living God.

(7)

The material Universe in which you live
is the flesh of My Person
and the blood of My Body.
The physical Cosmos is
a living Temple of crystalline Light,
a Supreme Being born of
the brick and mortar of pure Spirit.

Veiled in Creation, I AM thereby revealed --
gaze longingly into the Sun and there you will find ME;
split the atom and there I AM.

You are not souls ensnared and entrapped in bodies,
but living Matter, embodied Spirit.
The Soul is not an exile, a prisoner, or a captive;
the Body is its one true rightful temple and abode.

So do not in any way impoverish the Senses or the Soul;
do not hide yourself away from the pleasures
prepared for all by the Creator.
Prize all things rightly,
enjoy all things to their utmost;
do not in any way condemn this World,
for you are born to enjoy it to the full!

—You are indeed of this World:
so enjoy it to the full
in your rightful role
as its stewards and caretakers.
For in enjoying the World rightly,
you awaken and invite the Spirit within
to its full and proper expression.

(8)

Let covetousness be obsolete among you;
let sustenance and shelter be
the common inheritance of everyone;
let both poverty and luxury be equally abhorred by all.
Do not build empires --
for the Earth is one land, a single country,
the Kingdom of Heaven itself.

You were not born to suffer;
you were born simply to live,
and to live simply and freely.

Eating, drinking, playing, making love --
these are representative of no fault
or weakness in you at all.
Never have I taught you
to be ashamed of your own desires,
or to seek pleasure only in secret.
Joy of living, delight of Life,
is your mortal portion of My immortal Godhead;
and to satisfy your supremely natural inclinations
is truly to satisfy the Divine likeness
in which you were originally imaged.

-- So be true to yourselves,
and do not in any way deny yourselves
the very things that make you
so supremely and divinely Human!

(9)

I have no chosen people;
all men and women are My own
sons and daughters, children
deserving of equal rights and equal inheritance.

There is no one true religion;
all spiritual paths are ways and means unto ME.
The Holy Spirit can no more
be contained by one religion
than the whole Ocean can be enclosed
in a single bottle.
My Spirit blows where it wills
through all cultures and all traditions
wherever reverence and love of Life are found.

I have no holy scripture;
every book is a Holy Book.
There has never been a revelation from on high,
no divine disclosure to any chosen ears and eyes.
I have no need to reveal Myself –
for each and every man, woman, and child
may easily contemplate ME in the beauty
and wonder of the natural World
as well as in the interior shrine of their innermost hearts.

So do not wait for ME to reveal Myself to you,
but rather embark upon the task
of revealing yourselves to ME!
For true religion is consciousness
of your own true infinite nature --
it does not consist of being told what to do;
it consists of being daily reminded
of Who and What you are.

(10)

There shall be no Last Days,
no final End of Time,
no apocalypse that will ever rattle the Earth
down to its rocky foundation.

There is no Heaven, and no Hell,
apart from life on Earth.
There is no Heaven but the pleasures
you enjoy on Earth;
there is no Hell aside from the struggles
you sorrow over on Earth.

Why take thought of the Hereafter,
when life on this very Earth is Paradise?
Let not your aim be to achieve Heaven after death,
but rather to feel the certainty
of the Presence of God in this life,
in the realm of the Here and Now.

Let your eyes be opened to see,
and your ears opened to hear,
and your hearts open to feel
what you are and what you have
in the present Here and Now.
-- For Heaven is not some far off abode
to which the dead retire,
but rather this very World,
after you have transformed it and yourselves.

Open your eyes, open your mind, open your heart --
and you open the way unto Paradise.
Live your lives in such a way
that Life Eternal may be lived even Here and Now!

The Creator is the Creation

2006-09-23T08:25:00.000-05:00

Who can separate the dancer from the dance?

The dancer is the dance,
and the dance is the dancer.

At the peak of dancing, the dancer
completely disappears into the dance;
he becomes the dance.

Much the same,
Creator and Creation are two aspects
of One Reality.

God is the dancer and the World is His dance;
and if the Dancer ceases dancing for but a single moment
the World will disappear.

The Creator is the Creation.
At the peak of His creativity, the Creator
wholly disappears into Creation;
God becomes the World.

Made in the Image of God

2006-08-23T07:49:00.000-05:00

All of Creation is sacred;
for all bears within it
the impress of the One,
the image of God
present in all things.

In the life of the Stars
the same as Sea and Soil
abides a Heart
of immortal Diamond.

Who, then, dare deny
their own Divinity?

Training for Enlightenment (Osho)

2006-08-15T08:29:00.000-05:00

I found this last night, and it made a bold impression upon me:

Whatsoever you are now, when you experience enlightenment you will have to express it in the old way, the way you were before the experience. For example, if you are a painter and you experience God, what will you do? You will paint -- of course with a new quality -- the same sunrises, the same sunsets, but with something new added to it, something inner, interior to it, some depth to it.

... When a Master painter paints, the painter disappears, only the painting remains. When the Master musician plays, the musician disappears, only the music remains. When the Master singer sings, there is only song and no singer at all. So whatsover your training is before enlightenment, that will become your expression after enlightenment.

-- from Osho, Theologica Mystica

Have you seen God ?

2006-08-14T08:07:00.000-05:00

--from the Collected Works of Swami Vivekananda.

We all say, "There is a God." Have you seen God? That is the question.

If you hear a man say, "There is God in heaven." You ask him if he has seen Him, and if he says he has, you would laugh at him, and say he is a maniac.

With most people religion is a sort of intellectual assent and goes no further than a document. I would not call it religion. It is better to be an atheist than to have that sort of religion.

Religion does not depend on our intellectual assent, or dissent. You say there is a soul. Have you seen the soul? How is it we all have souls and do see them? You have to answer the question, and find out way to see the soul. If not, it is useless to talk of religion.

If any religion is true, it must be able to show us the soul, to show us God and the truth in ourselves. If you and I fight for all eternity about one of these doctrines or documents, we never come to any conclusion. People have been fighting for ages, and what is the outcome? Intellect cannot reach there all.

We have to go beyond the intellect; the proof of religion in direct perception.

... ...

Religion does not consist in erecting temples, or building churches, or attending public worship. It is not to be found in books, or in words, or in lectures, or in organizations.

Religion consists in realization. ... We all know that nothing will satisfy us until we know the truth for ourselves.

However we may argue, however much we may hear, but one thing will satisfy us, and that is our own realization; and such an experience is possible for every one of us if we will only try.

... ...

Be therefore spiritual first; have something to give and then stand before the world and give it.

Go Fish

2006-07-28T13:51:00.000-05:00

by Guy Spiro. Originally appeared in The Monthly Aspectarian, December 2004. Special thanks to The Girl of My Dreams for introducing me to this ...

There is the old saying: Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day, teach him to fish and you feed him for a lifetime. But there is a third, deeper level. Truly understand how fish, as well as everything else in the world, is manifested and you tap into the inexhaustible source of fish and feed the world.

I’ve written before that the belief in a limited world is the worst form of materialism. It is easy, however, to understand how this belief becomes so prevalent. When one sees the world in a strictly physical sense, then it logically follows that there is only so much of any one commodity. When it is used up, there is no more of it. Spend all of your money and you have no more to spend. If the physical is the ultimate reality, then there is a finite supply of all that is good and necessary for life. Fortunately, the physical is not the ultimate reality, but is, in fact, the least that is real.

Now, I am not saying that we should waste the world’s visible resources, continue to burn fossil fuel or pollute the environment in any way. Good stewardship requires that we find more intelligent means of providing the comforts of life. Our problem is that we have over-identified with the physical and forgotten its source. The physical world is the result of our limited vision. It is a dream that we have come to see as real. We believe that we are bound by its laws rather than it being formed by our consciousness.

The source of all is the One. The stuff of the universe is nothing more than variations of the emanations of the One. We are as lenses through which the energy of the One moves into a temporary formation of matter. As such, we have the ability to shape the material world. But we, by and large, have it backward. We see the world as our source and impress upon our consciousness what the world presents, rather than knowing that the source flows through us and our consciousness impresses conditions on the world.

As we learn and grow in consciousness, we begin to access the God part of ourselves. We identify with our higher self and come into contact with the source of all. We then find that there is no limit to the source of anything. By, in effect, pulling the energy down instead of up, or out of the world, we find that anything can be healed, expanded, increased or completed. Jesus is reported to have used this knowledge with the miracle of the loaves and the fishes. We can use it for anything. Go fish.

Every Step of the Way

2006-07-16T21:04:00.000-05:00

Each and every step you have taken in your whole life has led you to this present Moment. Here and Now is the destination you have been traveling to your entire life.

You have been walking and running, swimming and climbing for so many years, often moving in oft-repeated circles— and it has all led you to your inevitable meeting with the present Here and Now.

And the same can be said of tomorrow, the following year, decades from now. You are in all places and at all times perpetually arriving at the one and only destination the circumambulating pathway of your life is continually leading you to— the inexhaustible wonders of the present Here and Now.

McKenna and I

2006-07-09T10:29:00.000-05:00

Early Friday morning, July 7th, I experienced the most profound happenstance in the Dreamtime of my entire life thus far.

In the dream I am seated cross-legged in a small round room at the center of a small domed pod that stands on four slender legs in the midst of a lush rolling hillside. To my immediate right is seated someone very close to me. Her eyes are shut and she appears to be very much at peace. I glance to the center of the room, where a very familiar looking man is seated on a carpet facing me, monitoring me as I open my eyes and come to.

Its none other than Terence McKenna! He sees my eyes open and he smiles, then begins repeating a mantra to me: "Wake up, but dont wake up! ... Wake up ... but dont wake up!" Then he begins rapping on and on about how phenomenal reality is a construct of language, and those who know the words of this language have the capacity to reshape reality to their liking (in accordance with the will of the Gaian anima mundi, of course!). He also goes into detail about how many of the stars we see in the night sky and recognize as stars are not actually stars. He explains why astrophysicists believe it to be so, and he tells me more about what they actually are --but to be honest the information was over my head, and I no longer recall the details.

But that wasn't the important point anyway. He ends his rap and begins staring me down, straight in the eye-- "Wake up, but dont wake up! ... Wake up ... but dont wake up!" What does he mean?

And then all of a sudden I understand.

I begin to understand that I can indeed wake up-- I can wake up and become alert and aware of the fact that I am inside the Dreamtime. I can become consciously aware that I am dreaming. But theres always a risk of actually awakening into the phenomenal waking world, where a sharp division exists between the lives of the living and the dead (unlike within the Dreamtime, where the ancestors are very much present and alive (see my previous entry, Osho and Me)).

So I do it-- I feel myself awake to the fact that I am within the Dreamtime. I'm dreaming!

Everything becomes less nebulous, more distinct, more focused. Contours sharpen and colors brighten. I stand up and look over at Terence. He's smiling, beaming, obviously happy that I understood and I've managed to wake up, but not wake up, as he puts it. Very briefly he tells me how to speak the language that will help me effect the profoundest impact on the world I'm about to step into. --Its the language spoken by the self-transforming machine elves encountered in the DMT flash-- fans of Alien Dreamtime or several other of McKenna's recorded lectures know well what I mean, and how it sounds. He doesnt teach me a vocabulary so much as where and how to access this tongue of the gods in my own larynx. I give it a try, and, lo and behold! --I can do it. The elfin mother-tongue begins to pour freely from my throat!

I laugh and Terence laughs too. I step through a doorway leading onto something like a veranda or gallery that encloses the circular room I had just exited, ringed with windows. I can't believe I have such crystal clear awareness of myself in the Dreamtime. What to do next? How to keep this clarity? --Then I begin to recall a technique I first encountered in reading Castaneda as a teenager --looking at ones own hands in the Dreamtime keeps one lucid and consciously active and awake.

So I decide to look at my hands. I can sense my arms upraising but at first I see absolutely nothing with my eyes. Then, very rapidly, my forearms and wrists and hands begin to take shape-- I see a rippling contouring outline that traces them, then flesh and blood sets in, and I have my hands! I can see my hands! I laugh aloud --I've always imagined this day would come.

I decide to do things with my hands-- first I raid through a set of drawers, then begin to pull the drawers out and fling them wildly, then ramble through more of the veranda, knocking things about, just simply being in full conscious control of my own immediate environment in the Dreamtime. I decide to do what I've always thought about doing, should such a lucid moment ever occur while dreaming: I'm going to throw myself out of the window --I'm going to do things wholly irrational and unfeasible in waking life.

I take my right hand and punch through the glass-- I realize I'm still feeling a bit fearful and apprehensive. Then I look down at my hand and forearm, and realize that, despite the fact that there is a gaping hole in the window and broken shards of glass everywhere, there is not a single scratch anywhere to be seen on me. It just doesnt work that way! So, without further ado, I throw myself through the glass into the outside world ...

As I near landing on the lush green ground outside, I begin to chant in the elfish mother tongue and I become stabilized in my fall, and begin to hover a few feet off the ground, traveling where and when I will over the rolling hillside. ... I travel here and there, seeing other pod-like structures standing round about, as well as other people I recognize from waking life.

I awake into the phenomenal waking world a short while later, my eyes filled with tears, gasping for breath.

Secret Fire

2006-07-04T13:56:00.000-05:00

Like gold in a refiner’s fire,
enlightenment is the solvent
for the rust of space and time ...

The starry Cosmos is littered with spiraling sparks of fire, decaying embers of the original conflagration which birthed the grand panorama of conscious Life as we know it. There is fire in the sun, and fire in the stars; there is fire in the heart of each and every spinning atom, and there is fire glowing in the eyes and coursing through the nerves and veins of all and everything that lives. --The entire Universe is aflame!

The phenomenon of conscious Life in the Universe is, in essence, a vast, unquenchable conflagration-- a secret Spirit-Fire pervading and illuminating and enlivening each and every object of the sensible world, searing and streaming through each and every particle and fiber of matter and thereby revealing and manifesting its prolific Presence in and through all things. ...