Issue #1 Spring 2017
LIGHT ON TRUTH
Figure 1 The Sun, God’s creation, rising, not setting, over the watery shores of the Ganges River, as seen, looking at it from one of the many ghats in Benares.
Varanasi and the River and Finding Jesus
Trip to the Holy City of Varanasi, India to walk in the footsteps of the 400-500BC souls of His Holinesses the Lord Buddha and the Lord Vishnu
First of all, thanks to our many long time prayer friends here in Vicksburg, MS and Jackson, MS, my niece Patty Calohan Hoenig and her family in Texas, for receiving prayer letters, prayer emails, and calendars, meditating about them, praying with God and us during this period, our friends at Silent Unity in Missouri, Gordon College in Massachusetts and the soul of my great grandfather Adoniram Gordon who I see as being that of the ancient Christian Jewish prophet Abraham, the Vatican in Italy, in particular Pope Francis who took a risky and dangerous trip to Egypt to demonstrate solitary with our often persecuted and terrorized Christian brothers and sisters there, some people in the White House I have been praying with through two administrations now, President Carter and his wife whom I have been praying with for forty years, some people in the Alumni Travel Department of UC Berkeley, Madhu and Jermey of what is hopefully a Christian Jewish “Dark Lotus Yoga” in Benares, India. the souls of my father Gordon Harrell who I see as being that of the Christian Jewish Father Jacob, my step father Henry Lewis McKnight whose soul I see as being that of the English King Henry VIII, and mother Virginia May Calohan Harrell who has the soul of the Hindu Goddess of prosperity Laksmi, consort of the Lord Vishnu inside of her, the soul of my grandmother Alma May Calohan, which is connected to that of Mother Teresa and the Hindu Goddess Durga, the soul of Dr. S. Feurst, father of my friend in high school Irving Feurst, who invited me over to their house for Jewish Sabbath in the 1960s, which started me studying Judaism, and who I see as being that of the ancient Christian Jewish Father Isaac, that of the Rev. Thich Nhat Hanh who I see as being that of the Christian Jewish man of God Noah, the souls and spirits of Swami Vishnu and Swami Sivananda, Swami Chidananda, others in the Divine Life Society in India, most importantly the soul of God’s Only Son Jesus Christ dwelling in them. Dear long time prayer friend and friends, you are “my St. Francis” in prayer and I hope I AM can always be your “St. Andrew”in prayer.
For Indians, the worshipping of images as Divine is a key to enlightenment. As a Protestant Christian Jew I believe that there is a lot to learn studying these images, while not worshipping them.
We now know by dating some relics in various Catholic Churches that St. Thomas, or somebody associated with him came to the South of India in the 1st or 2ndCentury AD. Thomas, we know, of the disciples was a Christian who knew the meditative tradition of the Eastern Wise Men. We know this from studying the “Gospel of Thomas” who some consider a “Fifth Gospel”. These wise men returned from the nativity “by a different route” afterwards in order that the Jewish ruler of the time Herod, who if you take the Jewish teaching that you have to have a Jewish mother to be a Jew was not a Jew, conducted the slaughter of the newborns in an attempt to prevent Jesus from fulfilling his destiny. Later he was successful in crucifying Him, but only after Jesus had fulfilled his destiny by instituting the beginning of what later became the Christian religion as we know it today. But this religion became, perhaps, not as He was practicing it Himself. There may be over 6 million of these Hindu Christians in the Southwest of India out of a total of about 28 million or 2.3 percent of total population in the whole country. Many of them, being also part Hindu, travel to Benares to be cremated in the Ganges. They believe their souls get “resurrected” or “re-incarnated” in the Ganges River and its surrounding cities and villages. Pope Francis, I believe, even issued a Papal bull in 2016 allowing cremation as a form of Christian burial as long as the ashes are not scattered. What an enlightened thing to do. My own father, Gordon Judson Harrell, grandson of the famous Baptist Evangelist Adoniram Gordon died an agnostic. I finally was able to track down what happened to him, not being able to see or talk with him after my Mother took me and ran away from him when I was 1 year old. He had his body cremated and ashes scattered from the air over the Houston, TX area where his some of his few friends lived. These friends included his China friend, the Episcopalian George H Bush. I have talked to him, my family father, in prayer and dreams about things several times since then, so I am pretty sure it didn’t hurt his soul. The recent CNN program, “Finding Jesus” on TV in March and the one on the “Believer” series on the Aghori’s discusses this. My long time prayer friend Pope John II realized that the Christian Church needed to make up for its past persecution of people in this region by Jesuits of that period and neglect by others in the Church throughout history of these Christians. He travelled to the region during his pontificate and blessed us all in them and them in us again. Protestant Christians have an evangelical heritage in India in the Northeast of India in the Calcutta area due to the Protestant English Episcopal Saint of the late 18th Century William Carey. Perhaps Protestant Christian need to send more evangelists to the Southwest areas and Banares of India? It won’t be easy as I was to discover in my visit to New Delhi, Jaipur, Agra, Banares. The Indian Hindu are deeply rooted in their religious practices and complicated and fascinating mystical tradition of theology which has much to recommend it for those interested in a common human God for mankind. It is one that goes back to a time needed to understand Him or Her before us Christians created that part of our own theology that was newer than the part of the Old Testament is connected with. But, perhaps it does not go back to a time before us Jews.
Our Cal Berkeley, Odysseys International trip to India this March included a visit to Varanasi, or Kashi (City of Light), or Banares India.
The group attendees were Roger and Susan Bogard of Carmel, CA, Louis and Amy Eber of Walnut Creek, CA, myself Andrew Harrell of Vicksburg, MS, Alan and Joann Kilpatrick of Dublin, CA, Faye and Chao-Mei Huang of El Cerrrito, CA., Christine Lauer and Geraldine Uesugi of El. Cerrito, CA, Alex and Elizabeth Matson of Cooperstown NY, Peter and Janice Melnicoe of Placerville CA, Professor of History at Cal Berkeley Dr. Thomas Metcalf our guest lecturer , Richard and Mariko Roberts of Berkeley CA, and Sally and Jay Smith of Santa Barbara, CA.
Our Odysseys Unlimited tour director was Mr. Arvind Singh of Varanasi, India where he taught Hindu Tantra at Banares University for several years before becoming a tour guide. Mr Singh was willing to discuss any questions about Yoga, Meditation, Vedantic theology. We were lucky to have him as a guide. He is a householder with a fine wife and family he is educating and still raising children and a Guru with 7 students who meet with him once a year to discuss things.
You might want to read the excellent books by Diania L. Eck, “Darshan, Seeing the Divine in India”, “Banares, City of Light” and “Encountering God, A Spiritual Journey from Bozeman to Banares”, “A New Religious America”, and the U-Tube interview with her by a U. of Calif. Professor to accompany this article. She is a liberal Methodist teaching at Harvard University in the liberal social justice side of the Methodist theological spectrum.
What is Truth?
The best answer to someone who asks you this question is the one Jesus gave to Pilate before he was crucified….no answer. Jesus decided to let His Father God answer this question to Pilate for him at a later time. For in general there is no definitive answer to this question. Are we talking about scientific truth? Or religious truth? Psychological truth? Logical Truth? Moreover, trying to define what Truth is can lead to deeply felt scientific, religious, logical disagreements and arguments, even fighting and wars, that I hope we can all agree aren’t any good for us. For instance, as I write this Pope Francis and President Trump, each having different religious faiths, one Catholic Christian, another Protestant Christian Jewish, are arguing about whether God wants us to build walls to protect our countries. Each of them is calling the other “ungraceful” and trying to justify this with their different religious faiths. The Pope said that for the US to build a wall facing Mexico would be “Un-Christian” and there are verses of what Jesus said in the Bible that support this. President Trump said that “any religious leader who criticizes another’s faith” is ungraceful. And, the Catholic Church certainly has a long history of “ungraceful” criticism of Protestant faiths. In criticizing another’s faith, in order to help them, humans, even God, often are “ungraceful”. But, also, sometimes He, God, also wants us to have walls. Humans beings, even God, often don’t know what the “Truth” is until long after it has been spoken by them and they have thought about what happened later. Also, in another sense, God, and even some humans though what us Methodists call “prevenient grace” do have foreknowledge of what the “Truth” is.
Considering all of this, I dare to suggest however, that, now is a good the time to talk about it, and that even if we agree that we aren’t going to reach a definitive conclusion about this, it is very much worth talking about and discussing among ourselves.
Here is the type of Truth we are going to be talking about in this blog …
Truth is a unified correspondence between a mental consciousness that has a material body or material soul associated with it and itself, its
Figure 2 The beautiful Garden of Eden like grounds of Jai Mahal Palace Hotel, Jaipur
body, its soul, and the material body of the physical, astral, heavenly World it lives in.
Thus Truth in this sense is prophetic, the main part of it is going to happen or be realized in us all later, if it hasn’t already up to this point where it is just consciousness or thought by itself in the present moment [yes, it is a deep Yogic meditative teaching secret that healing Truth starts and comes not from the past or the future, but from the Divine Present] …now.
Of course, the question of whether the mind and the body are completely separate ,now, or at any given time, won’t be decided on upon before going any further with this definition.
Truth is not just an action verb, a Shakti or river of consciousness. It is a subject and a verb, a Shiva and a Shakti, a Power and a Presence. And if it is Eternal it is a subject and a verb “with seed and with a rational principle indwelling in and with it”. It is as the Hindu Saint Patanjali said in his four books of carefully written, sandhi-ed or connected together, thought out, realized, and spoken in Sanskrit sutras “sambija” not “nirbirja”. And, if it or He or She is spoken as Jesus Christ the Only Son of God Indwelling in us as a The Logos and as a Holy Spirit, it is “savitarka” not “nirvitarka”.
In Sanskrit the word HARI which means the infinite energy of the breath of God. SAT means reality in the infinite eternal realm. SATTWA means reality beginning to be realized as Divine Will in two realms, the infinite eternal realm and the day to day reality realm we live in. SATYAM means reality in the infinite eternal realm of absolute consciousness realized as a three part Truth in the relative realm of day to day reality we humans live in. TAT means the day to day sense consciousness knowledge we see or hear, as experienced from outside of us. RRITAM. In Sanskrit matrika the doubled letters ‘RR’ and ‘LL’ are intention and doubled intention. So ‘RR; means Divine Will realized as absolute will and consciousness inside and outside. OM is the Hindu Christian name of God as a Word Shakti using feminine vocal power as vocally articulated realized physical world objective experience speech, masculine and feminine as unrealized Nadam or absolute realm vibration and speech thought.
We cannot OM the Name of God YHWH, but the Name of God YHWH can OM you! As God, not myself, not me, not this, and not not…has said to me many times: “I AM the Name of God, whosoever glorifies me, in him or her shall the Name of God be glorified.”
Thus, a Hindu Christian mantra for the realization of Divine Prophetic Truth would be HARI OM TAT SAT, TAT SATWA, HARI OM TAT SATYAM, TAT RRITAM. SHANTI SHANTI SHANTI which finishes with an affirmation for Divine Peace to exist inside of us, outside of us, and both outside and inside of us.
Our Christian Jewish God considered as a metaphysical being, is a Threefold Person or a Trinity just like the Hindu God, Brahma, Vishnu, Shivam, and second time around as Shiva, Brahma, Vishnu Is. He is Our One God in Three, and Three Gods in One. For Christian Jews we know Him by his mystical four-letter Name, YHWH, created and given to us by the Greek Pythagoreans and enshrined by the Israelis, those who struggle to understand Him in us, and as I would define Jews as those who not only struggle but also praise Him and His Name dwelling in us, even if they lose the struggle against Him or Her. Those of us who keep on trying forever to understand God and His Name as the highest metaphysical representation of what Truth is in the Old Testament. This form of His Name is not what the Hindu’s call a Shakti or Power of movement, but a static Presence. Because we Christian Jews do not want people to think about God’s name as a “sound” or an “image” we don’t add vowels to those four consonants or pronounce it in public very often. But, we do meditate and pray to it, that it may be sanctified in our bodies, souls and spirits, almost daily. That is we do this, if we are correctly practicing our religion, be it Judaism or Christianity, some combination of both, or Hinduism, or even some other religion.
Figure 3 Photos in Varanasi India from a boat in the Ganges River of some Ghats on the west bank of the river floating between the Gaya Ghat and the Brahma Ghat.
God created the World out of Chaos and Emptiness, first with Words and other means in a three step, three part, three-fold, seven stage, one step, one part resting process I have described vocally in my comments on Genesis I and II, November, December 2016 postings and my comments on visual kundalini, nada, bindum thought in my blogged about trip to Japan November 2015 . Then as the same person, and along with His Son, the One manifestion and realization of His Words as a Person, He created us, who along with Himself and Herself, even today are responsible for keeping things going and even improving them.
We arrived in New Delhi on Saturday March 4, 2017, met in the lobby
of the Taj Palace Hotel, which is located in the Diplomatic Enclave of the city, for a sightseeing tour of Old Delhi including visits to the Gandhi Memorial, the Jama Masjid Mosque, and a rickshaw ride in the Chanru Chowk, a poor neighborhood of small shops around the huge Mosque.
On March 5 we visited Humayon’s Tomb, the Qutub Minor, which is the ruins of an ancient part of the city, drove past India Gate, Parliament House and visited the vibrant Sikh Temple Bangla Sahib.
On Monday March 5 Arvind said that he does not believe in Gods or God except as those he sees in us, his guests. In my opinion this is similar to saying, Arvind that you believe God Our Father in Heaven has a Son that we can know inside of all of us, but that He is not God’s Only Son. I showed him the important Yoga books on meditation and chanting I bought “Yoga and Meditation by Swami VishnuDevananda and “The Mandukya Upanishad” by Swami Sivananda. These books do not necessarily avoid the above mistake either, if you leave out any mention of the Divine Person called the Supreme Lord Narayana, and don’t connect His Name to that of Our Father God in Heaven’s Name YHWH. He said he was very familiar with Swami Vishnu’s book and considered Swami Sivananda everybody’s guru in India but had not read that one. I pointed out to him at this point the important teaching
Of Swami Vishnu “If you cannot find God inside of the human heart (as not just an individual but something we all have in common) then you cannot find Him or Her anywhere”. He thanked me for this teaching to supplement his beliefs and seemed genuinely impressed by it.
Later on he shared with the group his important thinking, “The soul is like a mirror it reflects itself into itself.
On March 6 we drove in a bus from New Delhi to Jaipur and checked in at the beautiful, garden of Eden like, Jai Mahal Palace Hotel.
Figure 4 Palace of the Winds Street Snake Charmer wraps a cobra around my neck in Jaipur
Is my soul connected to the spiritual family of the Founder of Judaism Moses who raised his healing staff with a serpent on it to lead Israel out or bondage, and his predecessor the Egyptian Pharaoh Ikhnaton usually pictured with a Cobra snake around his head.? Probably from blood and spiritual ancestors. and many much loved friends. But, also because I have been practicing Judaism as a Christian for about 50 years now.
March 7 We travelled to the Amber Fort with a photo stop at the Hawa Mahal in which the strange thought to let a snake charmer wrap his cobra around my neck gripped me.
The Amber Fort was misnamed by the British who changed the name of Shiva’s wife “Amba” to “Amber” It is strategically located on the terrain dominating the several avenues of approach into the area.
According to Swami Vishnu whose Vedantic mantra schemes in Sanskrit for deity generation are given in his book Mantras and Meditation and to go with some others at the end of this blog: the Supreme Lord Narayana is his True Self. So what does the word “Self” mean to Hindus (see the Japan trip blog for what it can mean to Christians)? According to Swami Muni Narayana Prasad IT is “Applied Knowledge”, a precise tonal letter translation of the Sanskrit word Atman or Divine Self” contemplated and realized according the Tantric scheme given down to us in the Tattiriya Upanishad… of which he has written a commentary published by D.K. Printworld publishers New Delhi.
On pages 56-57 of this useful commentary for Sanskrit Vedic meditators there are “two sets” of five-fold groups of conditions in which the Self is realized. The 1st set can be arranged in an AUM Cross:
Moon – Sun
Sun – Heaven
Air – Middle Region
Fire – Earth
( Luminaries) – (The Worlds)
U———————————————–A
(Knowledge) – (Vital Functions)
Rk. – Prana
Sama – Apana
Yajus – Vyana
Brahmin – Food
M
Belonging to the generic material world
The 2nd set refers to the self-existence of man as an observer:
1) 5 pranas
2) 5-fold senses
3) seven dhatus condensed to 5
Truth is either Rrtam referring to Divine Dharmas (object of divine mind on divine conditions of thought) as explained in the four Holy Vedas or Scriptures which I have elsewhere described as:
1) Light of the One Increasing
2) Light of the One without a Second
3) Light of the One Transforming and Glorifying Itself in Itself
4) Light of the Discrimination Knowledge of the human and the Divine .
This Dharma describes the way God Knows Things, not necessarily the way we humans do.
When this Light of the way the Divine Dharma manifests itself in us and becomes “One Way, One Truth, One Life” then the Name of God [the Lord God YHWH] is One God One Lord inside of us and His Truth is One Holy Spirit even as the Christ Mind is becoming One in us. This is the Truth, Jesus Christ spoke about in His, Our Gospels that sets us free. Amen
I see Swami Vishnu in my scheme of “types of Christ” as the soul of the Pharoah Ikhnaton of Egypt who gave humans the idea of “A One God” and which later became that of the Prophet Moses, the found of Judaism as we know it today, from what we Christians would call the “Old Testament” not necessarily consisting of rabbinic Talmudic “add-ons”.
For me, as well as Saint Paul, we do not see Christian Jews as needing much of the Talmud. But, as opposed to Saint Paul I see us as needing most of the “Old Testament. Of course, most rabbis would argue that all of the Talmud is derived as a necessary follow on from the Torah or Old Testament. I do not agree, especially in light of what Jesus has taught us about it.
Why was Swami Vishnu’s yoga and Vedanta teacher, Swami Sivananda [1] not included in my scheme of the seven types of Christ in our prayer Menorah, that is mentioned later? Because I believe He is part of the four primary and ruling archangels seated on the Throne of Our Spiritual Father in Heaven, Our Creator Himself. These four angelic beings would be 1) St. Peter, 2) St. Andrew, 3) St John (aka Pope John Paul II), and 4) St. James. And, according to recent prayer conversation I had with St. Andrew’s brother, St. Peter… “He (Pope John Paul II) is still in charge.” …At the present time….Spring 2017
[1] (who has written many good books on meditation, my favorite is the short one: “Meditation on OM and the Mandukya Upanishad”, founded “The Divine Life Society” in Rishikesh and considered by most Hindus to be a Saint)
This terrain in the above photos is a series of hilltops with signaling stations located on them so the defensive commander can relocate his units (columns of elephants) between the various chokepoints in the network of attacking routes. Ganesh, the Elephant God, whose image is above the doorway entrances in the Amber Fort is one of the Indians favorite Gods. He is the “troubleshooter”, “remover of obstacles”, He is the One who guards the gate of the Kundalini (infinite energy of God’s Holy Spirit in us) as it comes up like a snake sometimes from the 1st chakra at earth and below to the higher truth 7th chakras in heaven. Here again I warn the reader that animals cannot be Gods, because they don’t have an human intellect inside of them. However, some people consider our human “animal natures” to have divine aspects to them. And, of course, as Christian Jews we pray that God’s will be done from “Heaven” to “Earth” and not from “Earth” to “Heaven” So when we start out our contemplative praying we pray to Our Father in Heaven first, and not our selves down on earth to guide our souls downward from his better viewpoint in heaven and not our souls to first ascend to heaven
Figure 5 The Amber Fort, long time defensive military ruling Palace of the Raj of Jaipur
from wherever we happen to be. Arvin asked me what I thought about some Indian Christian teachings that Jesus spent 6 unaccounted for years of his life in India. I said I do not know much about this, if in fact it happened, but I do know that, now,….right now in time, he is here in India. To teach that God is in a thousand places, has a thousand names, is true in some sense since he is omnipresent. But, this does not necessarily sanctify his name as teaching for sure He or She was, is, and will be in One particular
places in space and time. This is the mystery of who Jesus Christ is, and if we keep faith in believing in Him, that wherever He is, or was, He is always very near.
But, do we really know who Jesus was and is? This started me thinking about the question we have talked about in previous blogs. Is Jesus a Jew now, as well as a Gentile.
After praying about it some more, and receiving an email at andrewharrell@yhwhschofchrist.org with an urgent request for Passover donations to them, I put up on twitter the following postings for my rabbinic Jewish followers:
Important 2017 Passover Easter teaching request:
Being a Jew depends either on having a Jewish Mother, or practicing the religion, or both.
Being a Christian depends only on believing in Jesus Christ.
We at YHWH School of Christianity hope you will take time to celebrate both Passover and Easter this year of our Lord 2017.
Then I turned on the TV and watched the program “Finding the Historical Jesus” on CNN about Mary’s house in which she raised Jesus in in Nazareth. It has now been re-discovered underneath an old Christian nunnery abandoned in the 11th century AD. Why would the Roman Catholic Church not want to preserve this… if, in fact, they abandoned it voluntarily? It contains evidence supporting the historical view that Jesus’ family and family perhaps was not as poor and isolated there in Nazareth from relatives in Jerusalem as has been generally portrayed.
Consulting the nativity narratives in Luke and Matthew I found they listed different lines for Mary’s Jewish heritage I found it listed Heli for Mary and Mattan for Joseph. What were their lines? Searching the internet I found the wondelful internet site “BibleSearchers.com” which two whole free online books on the subject:
“The Ancestors of Jesus in First and Second Century Judea BCE”
and
“Yahshua HaMassiach (Jesus the Messiah) of the House of David”
by Robert D. Mock MD
I especially recommend the chapters
“The Davidian and Levitical Ancestors of Jesus through Jesus’ Father Joseph, the Scion of David”
“The Gospel of Luke lineage to Jesus through His Mother, Mary”
“Heli, the Davidian Prince-The Father of the Maiden called Miriam.”
“Hannah, the Levite, the Mother of the Maiden called Miriam”
“The High Priest Yehoshua III(Jesus III)- The Maternal Grandfather of Mary”
“Chanukah and the Conceptionof Yahshua (Jesus)”
“Sukkot-the day Yahshua came to Dwell with Man”
“Born of a Virgin”
This collection of historical documents reveals much more about the “Jewishness” of Our Lord Jesus than we find the Gospels and the histories of Josephus the reference used by most researchers up to this time.
In the Gospel of Matthew it turns out that Joseph’s father Joachan ben Mattin was involved with some of the Jewish rebels already crucified in Sephorus before Jesus died and that Barabus who was crucified on the cross next to Jesus was related to this group and Jesus. The fact that after being Baptised by John, that Jesus preached Peace and not rebellion may have been the reason he had to leave Nazareth start a more global ministry and go on to Jerusalem to fulfill his Biblical destiny.
And, it turns out, for instance, that Mary’s relatives in Jerusalem that they went to visit for the Divine birth were connected with Joseph of Arimathea a descendant of Cleopatra’s Jewish marriages in Jerusalem. And, when they had to leave town to go to Egypt because the Jewish King Herod was envious of Christ’s royal status, they went to live with a whole group of Egyptian Jews there who believed in Mary’s royal heritage as a result of this part of her families’ connections. The Gospel writer St. Luke was a student of the famous Jewish Rabbi Gamaliel who Paul studied with also. And, is it possible that considering the different schemes of Jewish interpretations of the Torah and prophecies, literal and figurative, that Jesus was conceived “Spiritually” on the 25th of Kislev after standard Hanukkah prayers, the actual physical event of the birth coinciding with the shepherds being in the fields during summer and not winter? There was already a group of Jews who later became Christians and who believed that Miriam herself was a “spiritual” heir of Joachim and Anna during these Holy day prayer feasts of our Father God the Name of God YHWH, as she was later to be both spiritually and physically the Mother of Jesus.
Then we visited the Jaipur City Palace.
Figure 6 Royal military dancers performing for us as the flag of the Raj was raised to the top of the adjoining building signalling the importance of fact of his arrival and presence in his residence.
and in the afternoon the fascinating astronomical observatory called the Jantar Mantar.
Figure 7 In Rajasthan, King Jai from Banares (Varanasi), City of Shiva built five astronomical observatories. The best one is in Jaipur.
It is an example of naked eye celestial observatories used before the construction of telescopes. The mathematics involved go back to the Egyptian Plolemaic positional theory of epicycles used before Newton showed how to map celestial two-body problem positions using conic sections, eclipses, parabolas, circles. There are nineteen stone and brass “yantras” or “instrument that measure”. The top photo shows the Laghu Sanrat Yantra inclined at 27 degrees to measure time as a “sundial”. A lower photo shows the much larger (in fact the world’s largest gnomon) sundial type Yantra the Vrihat Samrat yantra. On the grounds are also the “Rama Yantra” a double cylinder instrument used to measure altitude and azimuth of celestial bodies, The “Raj Yantra”, a 2.43 meter bronze astrolabe which calculates the Hindu calendar. Astrolabes were the main navigational instrument used by sailing ships to explore long distances over the ocean before the invention of the mariner’s sighting sextants which calculate the star or planets or sun zenith distance and his the latitudinal position of the ship on the earth’s surface. The theory of the astrolabe is also based on Ptolemaic mathematical positional theory of epicycles. Sines and Cosines were used but not Conic sections, although they had already been studied by the Greeks long before this. It’s just that it took a genius of Isaac Newton’s caliber, Nicolus Copernicus’s detailed measurements and world view, Galileo’s experimental determination of how velocity and acceleration of body movements are represented algebraically, and Rene Descartes invention of coordinate axes in order to plot algebraic equations before this fundamentally world changing mathematical philosopher and theological genius could figure out the connection between the beautiful ancient ruler and compass, Euclidean, Greek mathematical theory of conic sections and the newly and more precisely determined (by means of the telescope) movement of the planets in the solar system around the earth. And, next to the Ram Yantra is the Rashivalaya Yantra, a group of twelve instruments with graduated quadrants on both sides used to measure star and planet positions, and hence signs of the Zodiac, in the sky as they stay same with respect to Jaipur’s location and change during the night. This has many applications to Hindu astrology which has long been widely believed by Indians to signal changes in karma, affect fate, determine auspicious times for important actions, etc.
It is an example of naked eye celestial observatories used before the construction of telescopes. The mathematics involved go back to the Egyptian Plolemaic positional theory of epicycles used before Newton showed how to map celestial two-body problem positions using conic sections, eclipses, parabolas, circles. There are nineteen stone and brass “yantras” or “instrument that measure”. The top photo shows the Laghu Sanrat Yantra inclined at 27 degrees to measure time as a “sundial”. A lower photo shows the much larger (in fact the world’s largest gnomon) sundial type Yantra the Vrihat Samrat yantra. On the grounds are also the “Rama Yantra” a double cylinder instrument used to measure altitude and azimuth of celestial bodies, The “Raj Yantra”, a 2.43 meter bronze astrolabe which calculates the Hindu calendar. Astrolabes were the main navigational instrument used by sailing ships to explore long distances over the ocean before the invention of the mariner’s sighting sextants which calculate the star or planets or sun zenith distance and his the latitudinal position of the ship on the earth’s surface. The theory of the astrolabe is also based on Ptolemaic mathematical positional theory of epicycles. Sines and Cosines were used but not Conic sections, although they had already been studied by the Greeks long before this. It’s just that it took a genius of Isaac Newton’s caliber, Nicolus Copernicus’s detailed measurements and world view, Galileo’s experimental determination of how velocity and acceleration of body movements are represented algebraically, and Rene Descartes invention of coordinate axes in order to plot algebraic equations before this fundamentally world changing mathematical philosopher and theological genius could figure out the connection between the beautiful ancient ruler and compass, Euclidean, Greek mathematical theory of conic sections and the newly and more precisely determined (by means of the telescope) movement of the planets in the solar system around the earth. And, next to the Ram Yantra is the Rashivalaya Yantra, a group of twelve instruments with graduated quadrants on both sides used to measure star and planet positions, and hence signs of the Zodiac, in the sky as they stay same with respect to Jaipur’s location and change during the night. This has many applications to Hindu astrology which has long been widely believed by Indians to signal changes in karma, affect fate, determine auspicious times for important actions, etc.
In the evening there were Rajashthani Dances at the hotel.
March 8 Jaipur is famous for many different craft shops. Today we visited the main Hindu temple, a large White Marble Building to observe an idol worshiping ceremony. This turned out to consist of the priests playing enchanting music, waving, called Arati, seven levels of light on candelabras around, pulling back a curtain to show the idol, with Holy water and sweet smelling flowers and presenting offerings for the worshippers to the doll, possibly with other meats and sweets present and then at the end of the ceremony everyone is “dowsed” together with the Holy Water from the ceremony. You are a Hindu if you worship and study the Veda’s not if you worship idols. But, for some reason most Hindus worship idols. Veda means “the four-fold knowledge of God” The Vedas teach a progressive worship of God starting with his presence in 33 Gods in nature (which includes his presence in idols I guess) and then narrowing things done from 33 Gods to One God. But, what does this “Oneness” of God mean that we are ending up with? Is it an absorption of our souls in the “Light of the Divine One without a Second” never to progress and improve ourselves any further? Or, is it also, hopefully and faithfully, the “Light of the Divine One Transforming and Glorifying itself forevermore inside of our human Divine hearts” as men and women of God every trying to go on helping people by first improving ourselves then them? What we wish in our life: light, music, and happiness we offer to God in order to get it back… But, why offer it up to an idol? Why not give it up, from the start, to a Holy Spirit of God inside of us all (which cannot be an idol). Is this not a more permanent gift to God than thinking of him as an idol and giving him something as we keep faith while suffering up to the illusion of Him or Her being an idol?
And then we travelled in the bus to walk through a Handmade Paper factory in the morning and the Saraf carpet factory in the afternoon. In the evening had a wondelful dinner in the home of a local Rajashtani family. The man of family is a rather weathly retired Indian civil servant, The family has three daughters, two adopted, the two adopted daughters want to be Bollywood dancers and treated us to a amateur Bollywood performance.
Figure 8 The kitchen in the poor farm home we visited consisted of this makeshift table and pots.
Figure 9 Family in the farm home, by the side of the road that we visited. They graciously allowed us to take their picture.
March 9 Departed Jaipur for the Ranthambhore Tiger Preserve. Checked in at the Taj Sawai Madhopur Lodge and took jeeps to do some game viewing in the Park. As we entered the park we observed a fresh leopard kill by the side of the road. After travelling into the park on a very bumpy road we parked the jeeps by some wetlands near a main lake and waited to see the Tiger who had been reported to be resting in the reeds there in order to ambush deer. In the evening we had a talk on wildlife by the hotel naturalist.
Tigers can smell you up to 800 meters away in a not too dense forest (compared to a Grizzy bear who can smell you 17km in the mountains). But, they have six times better vision at night than humans. The deer have evolved so they don’t sleep much at night because of this. Each of the different members of their group faces a different direction in order to optimize the effectiveness of the group’s defenses.
Figure 10 Wild rose bush on the hotel grounds in India
Figure 11a My veteran’s service memorial brick, second to the right on third row, and along with similar ones from others commented by the U.S. Army military order of the purple heart and another rose bush in the City of Vicksburg Veteran’s memorial square
Figure 11b Some more memorial roses influencing my memories in an spiritual ,eternal, beyond the normal space/time manner in which we define “reality”, This time the brick is next to the entrance of the Vicksburg, MS YMCA where I have donated a brick saying “Yes we can.”
As a Protestant Bible believing student of Christianity and Judaism, for me the main source of our human failures are our inability to be able to know God, and hence understand and obey Him or Her, as someone constantly available to save us, help us throughout our lives from our human condition of original sin. According to Christian doctrine as explained in the book of Genesis this original sin comes from our ancestors, God’s ideally created original images of us that He wanted us to be like, Adam and Eve’s eating from the “Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil” while they were in the Garden of Eden.
Most Hindu’s and many liberal Christians, some Reform Jews, do not accept this teaching believing that if we just try to understand things better by “being still” and with our own human practice and efforts to know the good in everything that we are enlightened and thereby saved, healed, justified. This is fundamentally incorrect because our own inheritance of correct human knowing of God and obedience to his will has been lost, by an excessive over studying and self production of our own thinking and trying to know things ourselves, as the Bible teaches.
Hopefully this blog is not too much of an example of that.
But, that also does not mean that we should give up trying our whole lives trying to “be still” with our own human practice and efforts to know the good in everything. It is there, we just need God’s help, along with our own efforts and God’s Son, Jesus Christ’s efforts in order to know it. Many people go too far in giving up and not doing there own part in order to start the process going.
Many people, say “The world is too much with us” and give up being a part of it or “We live in difficult times” and quit trying to be a part of it. In the Bible, God says to us through His Only Son, “Be in the World but not of it.” Now, I AM saying to you “The times are difficult, but only if you are attached to them”. Take time to be silent and through the gifts of God’s Holy Spirit, of patience and integrity dwelling inside of you(in Hebrew netzach), of obedience to God’s will for you as he reveals it to you, and the righteousness and faith and hope with and against the odds in and for the Mind of God as Christ dwelling in our Divine life as you live it for us and Him or Her, victorious overcoming(another translation of the Hebrew word netzach) will grow toward becoming Truth and integrity and patience in Christ that sanctifies and justifies your whole life, not just in your own eyes, but also others and God’s.
In praying with each other’s souls through time, using sound and images the way is to first concentrate on the not yet vocal or visual nadam or sound vibration in the throat chakra, then the bija thought in the ajna chakra which starts with the knowledge of the present moment as it is externally presented to you, then the unconditional love vibration, sometimes like a drum beating through the spiritual body down in the heart chakra, then upward with your breathe back into the “effusive” divine light in the various chakra bija’s (seed thoughts that appear);
if you continue to go upward, crossing the river of God’s Eternal life found in your human soul toward eternal Divine life you will reach the masculine, without vowels, Name of God YHWH in the top chakra, in order to sanctify it and redeem yourself (with His and Her’s help) in it with your and God’s meditations, thinking inwardly and together, we climb the mountain of God’s, His and Her Divine Truth already experienced by all of us and which we will be expected to know before we can truly realize our own glorified eternal part in it.
This realization when it happens, after a series of stages leading up to it, is faster than light, than a speeding bullet, because it starts from knowledge of unrealized, partially realized, completely realized sound, which, being not composed of matter, or even light material particles, is a non-material spiritual quantum field, made up of thought Nadam or Divine Sound, which precedes the manifestation of human and Divine light as God and us create the world and ourself in terms of it.
In our Yogic sound Eternal Truth the “conditions” of this realization occur spontaneously and concurrently in semi-eternal time. So, it happens, than I am on the other side of the world from Vicksburg, see, stop, take a picture, meditate on, what looks like to be the same rose bush I am familiar with and have thought about previously, and the creative connection happens.
March 10 Game viewing in the Park. During the night one of the Tigers had picked up the scent of the dead deer we saw yesterday and was eating on it as the armada of jeeps arrived when the park opened. We however could only see his white hind portion from the road. Spent the rest of the morning observing the fascinating species of birds around the forested and lake area of the preserve we were visiting… the Blue Ibis, Storks, Blue Antelopes, Blue Herons, social Spiders, 3-eyed Spotted Owlet Eagle, Eastern Honey Buzzard
Figure 12 Blue Antelope
Figure 13 Local Village Dance outside the Dera Village. Performer is stepping and turning around to divine religious music.
March 11 Departed for the Dera Village Retreat in Kalaho. After arrival took a short camel safari to the surrounding villages where we were privileged to participate and observe a local village, folk dance and music performance.
Figure 14 Musicans, village elders, who played for the dancer while the village children watched.
March 12 Drove to Agra, enroute stopped at the Abhaneri Stepwells. Checked into the Courtyard Marriot at Agra and visited the Baby Taj, the Itmad-ud-Daulah.
March 13 Left the hotel early in the morning to see the Taj Mahal. It was worth it, quite a building. In afternoon visited the Agra fort, where the same Moghul ruler who built the Taj for his wife ruled the area. Had a cooking demonstration, Holi celebration, in a local families’ bed and breakfast hotel . Owner a retired Indian Army Engineer.
Figure 15 Early morning Yoga class at the Varanasi Taj Ganges hotel tennis courts. Dark Lotus Hatha Yoga Teacher Madhu from the South of France, now Benares, India and my Cal Berkeley alumni friend Alan Kilpatrick of Dublin, CA,
March 15 Private Yoga session in the morning at the hotel with Madhu from Dark Lotus Yoga in Varanasi. She turned out to be a French lady who is expert in Surya Namaskar. I really enjoyed the session.
Figure 16 Another posting of this blog’s first picture, of the Sun, God’s creation, rising, not setting, taken from the Tulsi Ghat area along with some pictures of my house and the Sun rising, not setting, in front of my house, 3000 Drummond St., Vicksburg, MS The Tulsi Ghat as well as my house overlooks many possible views at different times of the year of the sun rising from across on the other shore of the Ganges. My house, a Reform Jewish rabbi’s house or Ghat in Vicksburg in the 1930s and now, along the Mississippi, if you jog over toward the Washington St. Overlook (see the last year’s blog calendar for photos of this area). Vicksburg is a historic river town located on bluffs overlooking a large river, the Mississippi, and in this sense situated topographically and perhaps religiously like Varanasi, India.
Hebrew Omer Count and Kabalistic Messianic prayers, said for 49 days after Passover with verses and a Messianic Psalm 67 (usually said while meditating on the Menorah, Christmas Tree lights) from on the internet. Most Orthodox Jews and many Conservative Jews add prayers for the reestablishment of the HolyTemple in Jerusalem here. Of course I don’t think anyone is suggesting reestablishment of the the old animal sacrifice system, that clearly never worked very well and it is in questionable whether God himself and not Moses established it. The current rabbinic argument is, I believe, that our prayers and their fulfillment would be the sacrifices. I do not believe that prayers should be “sacrifices”. This implies they will be perfunctorily listened to, then burned and forgotten, left for what is said to be for God to fulfill, but actually tossing them away who knows where before you have to keep faith with them.
To improve the performance of us all, with God helping us, in this situation I have created a prayer posting website in order that we can post prayer intentions together to be keep there until they are answered, and then be able to meditate on them, think about later how time has changed our desires about having them answered, and later if we still believe we need to have them answered, use what we have already understood about them to revisit them with our renewed continued thoughts and requests. A computer database program can help us with this, not as much as God can, but still to some greater extent.
cf. http://www.yhwhschofchrist.org/prayers/index.cgi
Jesus Christ, if your Father in Heaven cares about what happens to the little young sparrows outside His House in the yard, He certainly cares enough about the prayers offered by You and others in Your Name to post them, to reply to them in a semi-public forum and others who are praying with you and Him about them and keep them in order to allow us all to comment about how they have been answered or not on His website.
And, I am with the Mormons, who also have a Christian Jewish priesthood, and the Reform Jews on this and do not pray for this to happen. For, at the present time, I believe it could only happen at the expense of the destruction of the Muslim sacred site there and of Peace in the area and the World. If, at a future time, Judaism and Christianity and Islam, with the blessing of all the people in the democratic nation of Israel see fit to create a common three religion worship area at this site it would be helpful to us all and God Himself who exists, prays with and try to help, I believe, all current religions. I prayed about this with “He who establishes Peace in High Places and in us”, and represents God’s Name faithfully inside of us all and I believe I have His agreement with me on this.
Why would our Father in Heaven want to set up priests again in the same place where too harsh judgements by the Roman ruler Pilate, and Herod, the self-appointed Jewish ruler of the time, sacrificed His Only Son for a cruel death and to be reborn without the need for any repeating of this type of sacrifice in front of overly harsh and self-serving religious teachers? Well, to have it happen for the benefit of all of us, Christian’s, Jews, Muslims, Hindu might help the area to be known as more of a Holy site in “God’s Great Plan of continual giving and forgiving grace” instead of His desire to take our hopes and dreams away from us by favoring some of us over others. Isn’t this the type of Holiness and Peace we all want to the World to have more of?
Blessed are You, Lord our God, King of the Universe, who has sanctified us with His commandments, and commanded
us concerning the counting of the Omer.
us concerning the counting of the Omer.
Today (the day I am posting these prayers) is twenty-two days, which is three weeks and one day of the Omer.
You can begin counting here only saying the above blessing twice.
We implore You, by the great power of Your right hand, release the captive. Accept the prayer of Your people; strengthen us, purify us, Awesome One. Mighty One, we beseech You, guard as the apple of the eye those who seek Your Oneness. Bless them, cleanse them; bestow upon them forever Your merciful righteousness. Powerful, Holy One, in Your abounding goodness, guide Your congregation. Only and Exalted One, turn to Your people who are mindful of Your holiness. Accept our supplication and hear our cry, You who knows secret thoughts. Blessed be the name of the glory of His kingdom forever and ever.
a song with instrumental music; a Psalm,
Psalm 66
God be gracious and merciful to us and bless us,
May He cause forever His face to shine upon us and among us,
Selah[pause and think calmly of that]
That Your way be known on earth,
Your saving power, deliverances, and salvation among all nations.
Let the peoples praise You, O God;
Let all the peoples praise and give thanks to you, O God.
The nations will rejoice and sing for joy.
For You will justly judge the peoples, guide them, lead them and drive them, all the nations on earth forever.
Selah [pause and think calmly of that]
The peoples will praise You [turn away from their idols], O God;
All the peoples will praise You,
For the earth will have yielded its produce and the fruits of our purposes for it in God,
Our own God, will bless us. God will bless us;
And all of us, from the ends of the earth, shall fear Him [or Her].
What are some Christian Jewish prayers and meditations that
we can pray with The Name of God I AM WHO I AM and I AM THAT I AM this time of year after Passover and before Shavuous in order to for the Messiah, God’s Only Son to help us to “Be Still and Know”…”Be still and know that we will be who we will be and we are that we are.”…that we might have a spiritual “Victory [Netzach] in Jesus”?
Seven Thoughts About Patience and Integrity
(Netzach)
1st day of the weekly count,22th day of the omer
count
Chesed of Netzach
“Let not mercy and kindness forsake
you.”
Sanctify the name of God
with our love
“Withold not good from those to whom it is due, when it is in the power of
your hand to do it.”[Romans 13:7; Gal. 6:10]*
2nd day of the weekly count, 23 day of the omer
count
Gevurah of
Netzach
Exalt and lift up the name of God*
“Keep sound and godly wisdom and discretion.”
“Be not afraid of sudden terror and panic.”
“For the Lord shall be your confidence, firm and strong, and shall keep your
foot from being caught.”
3rd day of the weekly count, 24th day of the omer
count
Tiferet of
Netzach
Bless the name of God
bring it into our consciousness
“Be not wise in your own eyes; reverently fear and worship the Lord.”*
4th day of the weekly count,25th day of the omer
count
Netzach of Netzach
“Lean on, trust in, and be confident in the Lord with all you heart and mind
and do not rely on your own insight or understanding.”
*
Rest in the name of God
(with patience)
5th day of the weekly count, 26th day of the omer
count
Hod of
Netzach
Give glory to the name of God
“Happy is the man who finds skillful and godly Wisdom, and the man who gets
understanding. For the gaining of it is better than the gaining of silver,
and the profit of it better than fine gold…more precious than rubies; and
nothing you can wish for is to be compared to her. [Job 28:12 -18] Length of
days are in her right hand, and in her left hand are riches and honor. Her
ways are highways of pleasantness, and all her paths are of peace “* #
6th day of the weekly count,27th day of the omer
count
Yesod of
Netzach
Praise the name of God
(in eternal life)
“Do not despise or shrink from the chastening of the Lord; neither be weary
or impatient about or loathe or abhor his reproof. For whom the Lord loves,
he corrects, even as a father corrects the son in whom he delights.” *
7th day of the weekly count, 28th day of the omer
count
Malkuth of
Netzach
Honor the name of God
“Honor the Lord with your capital and sufficiency [from righteous labours]
and with the firstfruits of all your income; so shall your storage places be
filled with plenty.” *
* Most of these thoughts are contained in the 3rd chapter of the Book of the
Proverbs of King Solomon
# For those who gain wisdom, will eventually learn to have peace of mind,
and, as my Buddhist prayer partners teach, peace of mind is, dear friends,
our most precious attainment and highest happiness. For if we have this, God
can supply us with the rest of the riches of the glories in Christ he has
prepared for us through the divine order of his providence and the hidden
protections that the small, but important, parts of each of us play in his
great plans for all of us (the contributions of each of us being tied
together in a huge and complex network of salvation, the stronger for the
fact that the temporary loss or transformation of any part of it can be made
up by the reserve forces contained in the rest).
Figure 17 Ruins at Sarnath, a few miles north of Benares.
Visited Sarnath, the ancient city where Buddha turned the wheel of the Dharma [divine order of realization of righteousness and truth] inside of us. There is a temple there next to a Banyan tree where taught enlightenment. A descendant of the Banyan tree where he became enlightened is in his home city of Gaya, to the southeast of Varanasi in the Bihar state of India. It is not the same tree but a 3rd generation tree from the one which was there. Buddhism was “wiped” out in India by the Brahmins.
Figure 18 Pictures on the wall over a door and around the walls and ceiling , taken from inside the memorial chapel next to the Buddha Tree of Enlightenment in Sarnath.
They did it the same way the Chinese are now trying to do it in Tibet, by wiping out the monasteries first. But, in the 19th century the British rediscovered and excavated the ancient city of Sarnath outside of Varanasi where he preached and started the Buddhist religion around 400 BC or so. The Brahmins wiped out his religion, but now they say that he is the ninth incarnation of Vishnu.
Figure 19 Statues on a platform in front of the Englightenment Tree. It is important for Christian Jews to note that these statues are not the Buddha Himself, but He, the One Buddha who is God’s Son, Christ Jesus, dwells inside of you and not the statue.
Hebrew Omer Count and Kabalistic Messianic prayers, said for 49 days after Passover with Two-fold Truth, (When God is Two, His Truth is Two) verses of the resurrection and glorification in Christ of our souls according the Torah-New Testament prayers 35-days after Passover
29th day of the Omer count:
Chesed of Hod
B’arachot v’hodaot
Blessing and thanks
Chasin Kadosh
Holy Hasidim (pure hearted human angels who dwell along with God in our minds
and hearts)ABK
30th day of the Omer count
Gevurah of Hod (the strength of obedience)
K’dehshah v’malchot
Holiness and dominion
31st day of the Omer count
Tiferet of Hod (the Beauty of Obedience)
T’ehllah v’tiferet
Psalm singing and beauty BHS
32nd day of the Omer count
Netzach of Hod (patience inside of obedience)
Rest,eternally in the name of God
B’rov Tuvuch’ach
With your abundant goodness ABK
33nd day of the Omer count
Hod of Hod
Az v’mem/shalah
Strong help and power
34th day of the Omer count
Yesod of Hod
Hallayl v’zim’rah
Praise and veneration of melodies
Nahayl aydatehach
Guide your flock (congregation) ABK
35th day of the Omer count
(Chol Hamoad)
Malkuth of Hod (Kingship of obedience)
Song and praise Hebrew Omer Count and Kabalistic Messianic prayers, said for 49 days after Passover with verses
I believe the current incarnation of the One Buddha Who is God’s Son, Christ Jesus is the Rev. Thich Nhat Hanh. I believe his soul is at the root of God’s sacred Christ soul tree (the menorah we pray with every Hanukkah), the #1 type of progressive mediation of Christ on Christ in us:
1) Noah (Rev. Thich Nhat Hanh)
2) Abraham
3) Isaac
4) Jacob
5) Moses
6) Joshua
7) Jesus
I have sent him a poem I wrote help him and his soul continuation society make progress in Christ.
Daily mindfulness teaching for the Buddha
(poem written to tie us all in love and trust, for as long as we are
true to God and He to us)
Truth is a heart that listens[5]and is faithful and aware,
Along with a mind that believes what is right for all of us.
Goodness[6] is a heart that loves and gives
Beauty is a reflection of what is good
And, a mind that is open[7]
[1] Awareness of mental Awareness, the world around us, and our bodily actions
[2] Substance of things hoped for, evidence of things not seen
[3] God is a mind that knows no limits (is faithful) yet still is what it is (aware) until that knowledge blossoms (becomes true)
[4] Or, alternatively toward two truths
[5] The Holy Spirit is a heart that listens, eyes and ears that see and hear what is good, a mouth that speaks what is true, and strong arms and legs that lift up the fallen, walk with them and led them in the right direction
[6] Jesus Christ is he who is the Princeof Peace, heals and saves us all (being what we need him to be) and sanctifgies the name of God, God has no Son but him or her.
[7] Rearrangement of words in a Buddhist Gatha (daily mindfulness saying)
“Awareness is a reflection of the four elements.
Beauty is a heart that gives,
And a mind that is open.”
Quoted with permission, from Parallax Pres, Present Moment Wodelful Moment by Thich Nhat Hanhy 1990, page 6.
[9] See an earlier http//www.ourprayergroupblogspot.com posting about how to use the age of Kings in the Books of Genesis and Kings to compute the coming of the end of the present 6000 year Biblical creation cycle.
In the 2015 book “This moment is full of wonders”, The Zen Calligraphy of Thich Nhat Hanh I believe Rev. Thay has given us a brief summary of the Divine Order of his Tantric scheme of soul continuation and further realization as a Three Person Trinity.
1) Conscious Breathing
Here are my suggestions for Christian Buddhists soul continuation additions to this sequence:
@thichnhathanh
1) Be here,
2) breathe deeply,
3) listen,
4) look deeply
5) do not let go
6) go to the other shore
7) be who God and you and I want you to be.
Getting Back to Hinduism and Vedanta, it seems that there is something inconsistent in some sense of the full realization of Christ in these religions. But the religions did not last this long if there wasn’t a whole lot of consistency elsewhere in them. If you say you see God everywhere He becomes in some sense less important wherever He happens to be at the moment. Perhaps the Brahmins are now trying to do the same thing to Christianity by now saying that Jesus was the ninth incarnation of Vishnu and yet not obeying the commands that God and Moses left Him not to worship idols? We visited the historical museum in Sarnath where there is four-fold mystic symbol of Buddhist teaching as a four-faced lion below four bells with a dagger inside, Marjan art, stone statues and thangkas (pictures) representing the Buddhist Dharma. Anyone can be a Buddha, but the Buddha has said that he is the “last of my line”. Is this not saying that one can only “try” to be a Buddha, but never be one.. You have three bodies, the 1) Dharma kaya, or “truth body” which contains your Buddha inherent soul or nature, the Sammbodkaya or “bliss” body which contains the rewards of your actions, and the nirmanakaya or “immanation” body which is born, walks on the earth, and dies. Did you mean to say, dear Buddha that you will never have again another nirmanakaya? I don’t think so, As a Christian Jew, I believe that “there will be another one of you” dear Buddha
In evening went to the Ganges River to watch an Aarti (evening light waving above the cremation pyres) ceremony.
Figure 20 Evening cremation ceremony in the funeral pyres of the Manikamika ghat, photo taken from a boat floating along the Ganges
Interlude on Swami VishnuDevananda
Although I do not believe in worshiping idols as God, I do believe in studying them, in order to understand them better, with a “worshiping heart.” as important symbols in time and eternity, and part of an overall scheme of God’s creation.
In the 1980s and 1990s, even after his death, although I never met him in person, I exchanged letters, studied, meditated and prayed a lot with a Swami Vishnu-Devananda one of the many disciples of Swami Sivanananda who founded the Divine Life Society in Riskhikesh, India.
You can find and study the essence of most of his teachings in the book, “Meditation and Mantras” by the Swami. The Book “Hatha Yoga Pradipika with commentary by Swami Vishnudevananda” is also a good more advanced teaching in Hatha Yoga that begins to explain the difficult areas to master in the final stages of nada yoga. Also you can read his life story in the Amazon Kindle book “The Yogi: Portraits of Swami Vishnu-Devananda by Gopa Krishna”. The Lord Vishnu, or so many Hindu’s believe was with Brahma God in the Beginning, and helped him create the World as the second step in the three step process mentioned above. In this step God’s Truth is Two, indwelling separatedly in “me and you”. And, in fact, the Swami called his own society of Yogi followers “TWO”, an acronym by which he meant to convey to us a “True World Order”
.
Vijayanagaram Ghat, which is named for a princely state of South India. It was built in 1890 and has temples dedicated to the Lord Shiva and Nishpapeshvara.
Swami, meaning my or our Self in Sanskrit, believed he was, and I believe he still is a “River of Eternal Life”. This river is believed by many Hindus to be the Ganges which flows down from the Absolute Consciousness of God which lives in the Himalayas, through several “tirthas” places of “becoming” or crossing points in and near Varanasi, and finally empties into that part of the Absolute Consciousness of us all which we call the Indian Ocean.
Hindu’s believe that the Lord Vishnu had nine incarnations, the highest of the nine being Jesus Christ, our Christian Jewish God.
1) Matsya (a fish),
2) Kurma (a tortoise),
3) Varaha (a boar),
4) Narasimha (a man lion),
5) Vamana (a dwarf),
Figure 18 Sunset on the Ganges looking away from the Ghats
6) Parashurama, (an angry man)
Figure 21 Morning bathing in the Ganges from the step of a Ghat.
7) Rama (an ideal human, a man of God, the will of God),
A Treta yuga Avatar
The prince and king of Ayodhya. Rama’s life and journey is one of adherence to dharma despite harsh tests and obstacles and many pains of life and time. He is pictured as the ideal man and the perfect human. For the sake of his father’s honour, Ram abandons his claim to Ayodhaya’s throne to serve an exile of fourteen years in the forest.
While in exile from his own kingdom with his brother Lakshman and the monkey king Hanuman, his wife Sita was abducted by the demon king of Lanka, Ravana. He travelled to Ashoka Vatika in Lanka, killed the demon king and saved Sita.
However, a search of the Internet reveals that there is fascinating evidence that the person who was and is Rama was not only an Indian mythical tribal hero born in Ayodha India,but is a real historical person, mentioned in the Bible, Rama the King of Sumer, Elam and Indus[8]and a hero of the Medians and Iranians. He appears on the authenic “Sumerian King List” in the Bible as “Rim Sin” ruling around 1800 BC, roughly the same time we think the Biblical Abraham lived[9]. According to this list he was the longest reigning monarch of Mesopotamia, ruling for 69 years during this Biblical historical period.
Figure 22 Traveling by in a boat the flow of the river Ganges can affect your view of the Ghat.
Genesis 14
Then they turned back and came to En-mishpat (that is, Kadesh), and conquered all the country of the Amalekites, and also the Amorites, who lived in Hazazon-tamar. 8And the king of Sodom and the king of Gomorrah and the king of Admah and the king of Zeboiim and the king of Bela (that is, Zoar) came out; and they arrayed for battle against them in the valley of Siddim, 9against Chedorlaomer king of Elam and Tidal king of Goiim and Amraphel king of Shinar and Arioch king of Ellasar– four kings against five.…
Cross References
The territory of the Canaanite extended from Sidon as you go toward Gerar, as far as Gaza; as you go toward Sodom and Gomorrah and Admah and Zeboiim, as far as Lasha.
Lot lifted up his eyes and saw all the valley of the Jordan, that it was well watered everywhere– this was before the LORD destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah– like the garden of the LORD, like the land of Egypt as you go to Zoar.
All these came as allies to the valley of Siddim (that is, the Salt Sea).
against Chedorlaomer king of Elam and Tidal king of Goiim and Amraphel king of Shinar and Arioch king of Ellasar– four kings against five.
How can I give you up, O Ephraim? How can I surrender you, O Israel? How can I make you like Admah? How can I treat you like Zeboiim? My heart is turned over within Me, All My compassions are kindled.
Treasury of Scripture
And there went out the king of Sodom, and the king of Gomorrah, and the king of Admah, and the king of Zeboiim, and the king of Bela (the same is Zoar;) and they joined battle with them in the vale of Siddim;
same.
in.
“Amraphel is interpreted by moist scholars as a contraction of Huammurabi-ilu but the names of Arioch King of Lars and Kedolaomer king of Elam need careful study. The name seems to correspond to Kudurlahgumal which occurs in three late Babylonian legends, one of which is in poetical form. Beside Kudurlahgumal, two to these tablest also mentio Eri-Aku, son of Durmah-ilani, and one of them refers to Tudhu or Tidal which prove the veracity of the Biblical tradition, the name Durma is an echo of Dharma and cannot but be realted to Indian history.” Ranajit Pal http://www.ranajitpal.com/rama.html
8) Krishna, (slave boy)
A DwaparaYuga Avatar
During the last DwaparaYuga, which was predominantly an age of Rajas (passion/power) the earth was filled with Rajasic people and there was chaos and war everywhere. Fight for power was destroying the earth. On the plea of mother earth Lord Vishnu incarnated as Lord Krishna and killed many demons and evil kings.
His mission was not only to destroy the evil but also to give the pious people with true Dharma so that the true spirituality is understood by the people of the age.
9) Buddha (Prince of Peace or Jesus Christ),
Buddha an historical enlightened man reiterated the importance of self-realization and self-effort in realizing oneself around 500 BC.
He was responsible for changing the course of Hinduism towards a Jnana/Karma Yogic philosophy of self Liberation away from the philosophy of heaven and hell
And yet to come
10)Kalki.
Kalki is the final incarnation of Vishnu in the current Mahayuga, foretold to appear at the end of Kali Yuga, the current epoch. Religious texts called the Puranas foretell that Kalki will be atop a white horse with a drawn blazing sword. He is the harbinger of the end time in Hindu eschatology, after which he will usher in Satya Yuga.
Sometimes, Krishna replaces Vishnu as the source of all avatars and Balarama takes Krishna’s place in the list. And, for Christian Jews, the incarnations of Vishnu as animals cannot be God as a human being, for we know that animals do not have intellects like us humans.
Here is an important question for students of comparative religion…Are the Souls of the Lord Buddha and the Lord Vishnu really different people?
If these incarnations of Vishnu are God then we Christian Jews have an immediate theological problems. God incarnated as Moses (Joshua and hence Jesus’ teacher) told us all not to worship idols as Him, as a Trinity God of the Father, A Son, and a Holy Ghost.
Man Mandir Ghat, I think. It was built in 1600AD by Raja Man Singh and is known primarily for its magnificent 18th century astronomical observatory. See the wikipedia article on Ghats for a complete listing of them with pictures and the great adventure travel website “pathismygoal.com” for a fine travel blog posting with pictures of 20 important ghats to see in Benares.
For a Christian Jew, Eight incarnations or graduated “types” of Christ can be thought of as the “Eight shepherds of Israel” that we meditate with as we light the eight bulbs of the Hanukah menorah:
1) Noah Christ
These are eight God incarnated human beings, not just angels. In terms of the Yogic seven chakra system they all exist in one chakra, the third up from the bottom or the Heaven on earth chakra, Swah… Chakra’s 5,6,7 being Brahma Loka which are reserved for Our Creator as separate and in addition to the normal earthly, #1Bhur, #2 Bhuvah, #3 Swah. and #4 reserved for the Holy Spirit, Our Creator dwelling inside of us in our human hearts. So we have a “Jacob Ladder” of eight levels of divine, human incarnation inside of chakra #3. For in Jacob’s dream he saw these levels appearing in the physical sky or heaven of God’s creation. The question of whether it is physically possible for there to be eight levels of spiritual incarnation, or eight levels of angels dwelling at one spatial one in space and time has recently been answered affirmatively and explained if you believe the new quantum unified theories of gravity and elects-magnetism which explain the reality of where we are “formed” and “instantiated” by God as individuals in space and time is discrete, and not a continuous manifold of 4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11 dimensions as previously taught and believed by Einstein and other physicists until recently.
If you have the background in mathematical physics to understand this you will want to read Carlo Rovelli and Francesca Vidotto’s clearly written introduction to this in
“Covariant Loop Quantum Gravity: An Elementary introduction to quantum gravity and spinfoam theory.”
If you have the background in mathematical physics to understand this you will want to read Carlo Rovelli and Francesca Vidotto’s clearly written introduction to this in
“Covariant Loop Quantum Gravity: An Elementary introduction to quantum gravity and spinfoam theory.”
29th day of the Omer count:
Chesed of Hod
Chesed of Hod
B’arachot v’hodaot
Blessing and thanks
Chasin Kadosh
Holy Hasidim (pure hearted human angels who dwell along with God in our minds
and hearts)ABK
30th day of the Omer count
Gevurah of Hod (the strength of obedience)
K’dehshah v’malchot
Holiness and dominion
31st day of the Omer count
Tiferet of Hod (the Beauty of Obedience)
T’ehllah v’tiferet
Psalm singing and beauty BHS
32nd day of the Omer count
Netzach of Hod (patience inside of obedience)
Rest,eternally in the name of God
B’rov Tuvuch’ach
With your abundant goodness ABK
33nd day of the Omer count
Hod of Hod
Az v’mem/shalah
Strong help and power
34th day of the Omer count
Yesod of Hod
Hallayl v’zim’rah
Praise and veneration of melodies
Nahayl aydatehach
Guide your flock (congregation) ABK
35th day of the Omer count
(Chol Hamoad)
Malkuth of Hod (Kingship of obedience)
Song and praise
Here in this tantric scheme we see our Saviour Jesus as the One who Jews call the Messiah Ben Joseph, not the Messiah Ben David. Where is David, the author of the Psalms in this scheme? I see him participating in it like the rest of us, but not a as personage similar to Jesus Christ for His name means “Beloved of God”. There are many other people whom God has lifted up and made Kings and who do not ask God in prayer to be a King forever. But, they only ask to help and serve others forever and do what is right forever not be so specific in the request. We know as St. Francis has taught us the way God reincarnated Jesus in all of us, “It is better to love, than to be beloved.” After we have reached the mountain top of our prayer goals in life, it is better to leave this part of the happiness we want for ourselves behind and let if catch up with us later…even as Jesus Christ has done by offering himself up as a sacrifice for our prayers, so they, our prayers to God, would not have to be sacrificed any more to God or whatever priests were claiming to be able to listen to them and answer them. Benjamin, Jacob’s Son of the Right hand is a Buddha, not an incarnation of the second person of the Trinity, our Saviour, but a representative of God, a man of God, who turns the wheel of God’s Righteous Truth, what Buddhist’s call the Dharma forward and backward in time for us.
Perhaps Shakyamuni Buddha thought himself different from the God of his time, the Lord Vishnu and his idol worshipping followers when he retreated from the crowded city of Varanasi with all its complicated designs of religious pilgrimage walks and idol worshipping temples to sit under His famous Tree, upriver from all of this in Sarnath, and become enlightened. But, Hindus think he was, despite of his attempts to declare himself and think of himself as just a human being living apart from all of this, that he was just a different incarnation of Vishnu. I travelled to Varanasi to walk in the ancient footsteps of both of these men, not to worship their images as idols, but to try and find out the answer to this question and maybe to help a little bit God recreate and resurrect their souls .
Figure 22 Evening chanting ceremony on the river concurring with the cremations
What would Noah, Moses and Joshua, be named now if they were reborn as human angels today?
In the Bible God told Moses that He, God inside of him, Moses, was to be named I AM Who I AM, or I Will be Who or What I Will be.
God, Our Father in Heaven, has a Presence as Absolute Consciousness dwelling in us all, It is His Will that It is also be Absolute Being as well as physical Reality.
In order to bring Biblical Prophecy into a kind, peaceful, joyful, setting nowadays this Absolute Consciousness as a Presence of the Great I AM, Existence and Being Itself wants all of this to happen Eternally for us. But, this form of His or Her Presence (the Great I AM), a form of UNITY or ONENESS without a second is not Who God told Moses that he put inside of and indwelling in him in order that he could speak our blessed shared Freedom of our souls as God’s Truth to the Pharoah.
God in Moses then, and now, if he is to be reborn as a human inside of us all nowadays is Divine Truth name I AM Who I AM, I AM What I AM which is occurring now all in the present time.
For the Name of God says He Will be Who I, His or Her Only Son or He Will be. He or She is speaking here in the present and the future, not the past.
A Google search on the internet for the meaning of Moses’ name itself reveals the following found on the “Behind the Biblical Name” website:
Meaning and History of the Name Moses
From the Hebrew name מֹשֶׁה (Mosheh) which is most likely derived from Egyptian mes meaning “son”, but could also possibly mean “deliver” in Hebrew. The meaning suggested in the Old Testament of “drew out” from Hebrew משה (mashah) is probably an invented etymology (see Exodus 2:10). The biblical Moses was drawn out of the Nile by the pharaoh’s daughter and adopted into the royal family, at a time when the Israelites were slaves in Egypt. With his brother Aaron he demanded the pharaoh release the Israelites, which was only done after God sent ten plagues upon Egypt. Moses led the people across the Red Sea and to Mount Sinai, where he received the Ten Commandments from God. After 40 years of wandering in the desert the people reached Canaan, the Promised Land, but Moses died just before entering it.
In England, this name has been commonly used by Christians since the Protestant Reformation, though it had long been sacred among Jews.
Also if you study the Bible you will discover that Moses was found in a basket put in the River Nile by the Pharoah’s daughter. So, symbolically this means that the soul of Moses comes from the every flowing God’s River of Eternal Life flowing inside of the World and us.
I will be Who I will be as a part of his name tells us that God is not just a verb (or a noun) in a sentence that He is speaking, but that He lives as Truth itself coming forth from that sentence. To be Truthful as sentence must usually have a subject, a verb, an object before it becomes a realization or Presence, a Truthful representation, a fulfillment of some underlying Presence which is also known to us to be a Truth Presence itself. It happens when we realize that we really are him or her who God has all along wanted us to be.
Saint Joshua’s name mean YHWH saves, the same as Jesus’ does.
Meaning and History of the Name Joshua
From the Hebrew name יְהוֹשֻׁעַ (Yehoshu’a)meaning “YAHWEH is salvation”. As told in the Old Testament, Joshua was a companion of Moses. He went up Mount Sinai with Moses when he received the Ten Commandments from God, and later he was one of the twelve spies sent into Canaan. After Moses died Joshua succeeded him as leader of the Israelites and he led the conquest of Canaan. His original name was Hoshea.
The name Jesus comes from a Greek translation of the Aramaic short form יֵשׁוּעַ (Yeshu’a), which was the real name of Jesus. As an English name, Joshua has been in use since the Protestant
If Joshua was to be reborn today he would probably be Jesus Christ dwelling in us all again. What as blessing this would be! Maybe He already has been reborn this way? Maybe He has already been reborn in a lot of Christian Jews who already have, as we say, believed in Him.
In the Upanishads and the Hindu scriptures, God as the Presence of Our Father in Heaven who has Created us, is named, Brahma (not YHWH Elohim, YHWH Adonai, YHWH Saboath as Genesis I and II and later in the Bible it tells us). My long time prayer friend Swami Sivananda* has explained to us in his book on the Brahma Sutras published by the Divine Life Society of the Himalayas, that our knowledge as humans of Brahma is made up of five parts:
1) Absolute Consciousness
2) Love (which is the communication of this Absolute Consciousness in a graceful and giving way among us)
3) Will
4) Knowledge
5) Action
 |
Figure 23 Women having an early morning jog, running in same direction as our boat, and near the Dashashwamedh Ghat where we witnessed the evening Arati festival connected with the cremations up river. It is located close to Vishwanath Temple and is probably the most spectacular ghat. Two Hindu legends are associated with it: According to one, Lord Brahma created it to welcome Lord Shiva. According to another legend, Lord Brahmasacrificed ten horses during Dasa-Ashwamedha yajna performed here. Her appearance reminded me of the “Parable of the Two Runners” discussed earlier in this blog series. There are 84 Ghats built along the riverfront of Banares. It takes about 3 hours to walk from Assi Ghat in the South to Rajghat in the North. cf. Banares, “Walks through India’s Sacred City” by Nandini Majumbar. |
In order to know the God Shiva, who is not Brahma or YHWH, as a Presence thought of as I AM we must know Him or Her as God’s Absolute Consciousness dwelling of Himself and us dwelling in us Eternaly in our past, present, and future parts of our souls. This, as it happens in a five-fold scheme of God’s Presence ( I AM) and Power (Shakti) occurs as God’s river of Eternal Life flows in us happily ever after….hopefully and faithfully. To know Him, Brahma, as Shiva and as God’s will for Shiva and us is to know Him as God knows Shiva and Moses in terms of the Name of God, I Will be Who I Will be, I Will be What I Will be.
To know Brahma as Shiva, and as human will power helped by the Divine Will, Rama is to know Him as a Truthful realization that I AM That I AM. It is to know Him as the Hindu God Narayana, as Vishnu Krishna.
In terms of the famous Sanskrit Upanishads Mahavakya sayings this is to know
1) Aham Brahmasi I AM BRAHMA
2) Tat Tvam Asi THAT THOU ART
3)Ayam Atma Brahma THIS SELF IS BRAHMA
In terms of the famous Sanskrit Upanishads Mahavakya sayings this is to know
1) Aham Brahmasi I AM BRAHMA
2) Tat Tvam Asi THAT THOU ART
3)Ayam Atma Brahma THIS SELF IS BRAHMA
To know him in the Present Time is to know him as Shakyamuni Buddha. Although sometimes the Buddha says “I AM just a man” we know who he really is. For in God’s creation there is no single person on earth who is “just a man”.**
· By what Name would we know Hindu Saint Swami Sivananda if he was to be reborn in us today? Why not Swami Sivananda II or perhaps John Paul III?
**By what Name would Shakyamuni Buddha be know if he were reborn on the earth today as a human angel? I believe the Buddha is the person who Christians and Jews call Noah. Noah, like Moses’ soul is associated in the Bible with being near water and God’s river of Eternal Life flowing in this area of water. Noah’a name as discussed on the Christian Biblical website, “Behind the Name” on the internet means:
36th day of the Omer count
Chesed of Yod
watchfulness
“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they are the children of God.”
Yachayd geehh
Unique and exalted one
37th day of the Omer count
Gevurah of Yesod
“Blessed are they that hunger for righteousness, for they shall find it.”
38th day of the Omer count
“Blessed are the merciful, for they shall find mercy”
L’am’ach p’neh,
To your people turn ABK
39th day of the Omer count
Netach of Hod (Patience and obedience)
“Blessed are you who are persecuted for my sake, for great is your
Reward in heaven.”
40th day of the Omer count
Hod of Yesod (obedience as the foundation of righteousness)
“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.”
zoc’ray k’duhshtehach
who remember your holiness ABK
41st day of the Omer count
Yesod of Yesod (the foundation of the foundation of righteousness)
“Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted.”
42nd day of the Omer count
Malkuth of Yesod (The Kingship of righteousness)
“Blessed are the meek and poor in Spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of
Heaven.”
“For in this hope we were saved. But hope [the object of] which is seen is
not hope.
For how can one hope for what he already sees?
But, if we hope for what is still unseen by ys,
We wait for it with patience and compromise.
So, too the Holy Spirit comes to our aid and bears us up in our weakness;
For we do not know what prayer to offer nor how to offer it
Up worthily as we ought.” St. Paul
Meaning; History of the Name Noah
Derived from the Hebrew name נוֹחַ (Noach)meaning “rest, comfort”. According to the Old Testament, Noah was the builder of the Ark that allowed him, his family, and animals of each species to survive the great Flood. After the Flood he received the sign of the rainbow as a covenant from God. He was the father of Shem, Ham and Japheth.
As an English Christian name, Noah has been used since the Protestant Reformation, being common among the Puritans. A famous bearer was the American lexicographer Noah Webster (1758-1843).
So, why, not Noah, or Thich Nhat Hanh II?
Figure 24 Preliminary waving of the Incense during the Morning Arati Resurrection Ceremony at this stage of the Arati the performers are waving incense toward the guests
Figure 25 Choir of singers at the top of the Ghat steps chanting a memorial service.
March 14 Departed hotel to drive by bus to Delhi and then fly to Varanasi. Checked in at Varanasi at the Gateway Hotel Ganges.
Figure 26 Waving the menorah like Christmas tree lights in a cyclic motion to the South and perpendicular to the Ghat steps
According to Hindu tradition the layout of the City of Varanasi, or Benares, or Kashi ,city of Light of India, was designed by Lord Shiva Himself. This would have been sometime between 800 and 400 BC. Which makes it, along with some of the Egyptian Cities with temples perhaps the oldest Holy Religious City designed in a theological scheme in this way in the World. There are 144 shrines.
.
The main shrine today is the still active shrine of different reincarnations of Vishnu in the middle of city which we did not visit. There are 468 temples, 54 yearly religious festivals over a 12 month liturgical year. Light goes out from the city in 4 directions and contained in Shiva’s absolute eternal divine consciousness of the main 5 material elements…Water, Earth, Fire, Air. Space or Ether. On every day in Kashi 40 to 50 bodies are burnt on the Ghat steps, the energy from the bodies’ souls being forcefully ejected toward the river and then back toward the city or over to the other side of the river.
Figure 27 Another waving of the incense
The human body is 72% water and when it is cremated there is a cleansing and purification of material elements in it. It takes 12 days for the death, rebirth ritual cycle to complete itself. While the body is being cremated on the steps of the Ghat, Each soul hears a its own mantra from Shiva as it dies in order to help it cross over human life toward the divine. One such mantra is Hae Ram (which can be found on the Gandhi memorial in Delhi as a remembrance of this Indian Saint’s last words) or the five part OM Namah Shivaya. It is believed that where Shiva and Vishnu is present here in Benares there is the ultimate creation, resurrection machine of the universe. Vedic priests wave or “Arati” in forward turning motion the element of fire located on seven leveled Christmas tree like menorahs through the aerial part of the process. The mere presence of anyone in the city should be enough that with the rituals occurring continually healing and rebirth in mass can take place.
Figure 28 A waving of the Christmas tree like lights toward the other shore of the Ganges
Those interested in a further study of the city Benares will want to read Dr. Diana Eck’s interesting book; “Banares, City of Light”. Dr. Eck who turns out to be an well known Liberal Protestant Christian teacher at the Harvard Divinity School has also written the books on India “Encountering God” and “Darshan, Seeing the Divine Image in India.”
Figure 29 The Gaya or Earth ghat, sometimes called the “cow” ghat, just north on the river to the panchaganga ghat (five-limbs of time ghat, commemorating lunar, solar months, week days, two waxing and waning fortnights of each month through which auspicious times, seasons, and festivals are calculated), going toward the Brahma ghat. At the ghat there is a metre high image of a cow (Gaya/ Gaia), symbolising the earth, thus the name Gaya Ghat.In the upper side of the ghat in a huge temple compound containing images of Hanuman, Lakshmi Narayana, Mukha Nirmalika Gauri, several Shiva lingas and a chamber of Shitala, and also a newly added image of Santoshi Mata.
.
Figure 30 Lal Ghat built in 1912 by the King of Rajasthan along with a mansion there for himself. There is a distinct ghat on top chichis a rest house for pilgrims. In one of the nearby buildings there is a Sanskrit school. Food and shelter are provided there free of cost to students and ascetics from the Birla Trust. The northern and southern portions of the ghat are used as a site for washing clothes by the washermen. In the months of January and February the ghat attracts a good mass of devout Hindus for sacred bath and worship in the temple.
The physical structure of the city of Kashi or Benares circles around a spiritual center which is not on the ground, but in sitting on Shiva’s trident in space, according to Hindu belief. It is easier to get connected to the cosmic energy of reincarnation here.
March 16 Vedic chanting followed by a Sunrise boat ride on the Ganges River, took a short walk to visit the mud wrestlers living above the Ghat steps, and a visit to the Bharata Mata Temple. Here is one mantra I heard that day while the sun rised in front of us across the river.
SHANTI YHWH HARI RAM OM TAT SAT OM SHANTI
I translate it to mean, The infinite energy, HARI, of our purposeful God, RAM the will of a Man of God, is transmitted through the Name of God YHWH and fulfilled righteously * (OM) peacefully and according to Divine Order contained in the Divine Name of God (OM).
Amen, It means, that heaven is on earth, or that everyday reality, TAT is reality in the Eternal realm, or SAT. All correct Christian Jewish prayers are preceded and followed by a prayer for Peace so I have add SHANTI twice to the mantra.
A very roughly equivalent, but different and without the Peace invocations, Christian Jewish sequence of three prophetic pronunciations of three different combinations of God’s Christian Jewish Biblical names would be:
YHWH ELOHIM, YHWH ADONAI, YAH YHWH SABAOTH see the book of Genesis chapters 1 and 2 and the Jewish Kabbalistic book Sefer Yetzerah, Book of Formation.
You cannot OM the Name of God YHWH, because YHWH being A Consonant Male Name, He has created the female vowel or Shakti Name of God OM. However, you can say YHWH OM and some chants that begin forward in the human heart, after descending from the crown chakra at the top of the head, because if you cannot find God there you cannot find Him or Her anywhere.
SHANTI
YHWH NARAYANA
YHWH SHIVA, YHWH VISHNU….YHWH VISHNU YHWH SHIVA
YHWH NARAYANA
The main primary Four-Letter Name of God is one one the Five-Letter and Eight-Letter Names of God and they are Him and Her also.
SHANTI
SHAMBU, SHAMBU,SHAMBALAYA… GOD AND PEACE AND JOY AND SHIVA AND VISHNU ARE THE DISSOLUTION OF ALL OUR PROBLEMS AND CARES BY THEM AND HIM AND HER HELPING US KNOW THE ETERNAL HAPPINESS OF WHERE OUR SOULS AND SPIRITS ARE HEADED…HEAVEN ON EARTH…DYING LORD JESUS CHRIST YOU DESTROYED OUR DYING. RISING YOU BRING NEW LIFE AGAIN…
SHANTI
GOD IS NADAM, VIBRATORY STILL SILENT INNER THOUGHT SOUND, BIJAM, SEED THOUGHT, SHIVAM, ETERNAL THOUGHT CONSCIOUSNESS AND DIVINE INTELLECT*
* This contrasts to the Buddhist Tantra here. At this point they recommend mindful, hopeful thinking about a healing emptiness, aimlessness, signless, void or nothingness and don’t mention the faithful, divine intellectual substance of God’s spiritual body dwelling in us which Christians and Jews base everything on.
YHWH SHIVA, SHIVA SHAMBU, SHAMBU SHIVA YHWH (Absolute Eternal Consciousness is Happiness and Happiness is Absolute Eternal Consciousness for knowing about God should not begin with pain and sacrifice, but with knowledge of our long time happiness of our souls and spirits and the peace of mind and soul it brings to us)
SHANTI
YHWH NARAYANA
YHWH SHIVA, YHWH VISHNU….YHWH VISHNU YHWH SHIVA
YHWH NARAYANA
The main primary Four-Letter Name of God is one one the Five-Letter and Eight-Letter Names of God and they are Him and Her also.
SHANTI
SHAMBU, SHAMBU,SHAMBALAYA… GOD AND PEACE AND JOY AND SHIVA AND VISHNU ARE THE DISSOLUTION OF ALL OUR PROBLEMS AND CARES BY THEM AND HIM AND HER HELPING US KNOW THE ETERNAL HAPPINESS OF WHERE OUR SOULS AND SPIRITS ARE HEADED…HEAVEN ON EARTH…DYING LORD JESUS CHRIST YOU DESTROYED OUR DYING. RISING YOU BRING NEW LIFE AGAIN…
SHANTI
GOD IS NADAM, VIBRATORY STILL SILENT INNER THOUGHT SOUND, BIJAM, SEED THOUGHT, SHIVAM, ETERNAL THOUGHT CONSCIOUSNESS AND DIVINE INTELLECT*
* This contrasts to the Buddhist Tantra here. At this point they recommend mindful, hopeful thinking about a healing emptiness, aimlessness, signless, void or nothingness and don’t mention the faithful, divine intellectual substance of God’s spiritual body dwelling in us which Christians and Jews base everything on.
YHWH SHIVA, SHIVA SHAMBU, SHAMBU SHIVA YHWH (Absolute Eternal Consciousness is Happiness and Happiness is Absolute Eternal Consciousness for knowing about God should not begin with pain and sacrifice, but with knowledge of our long time happiness of our souls and spirits and the peace of mind and soul it brings to us)
SHANTI YHWH OM RAM TAT SAT SHANTI
which I translate to mean, The ineffable, absolute dimension Name of God YHWH is the ideal man RAM and what he will be (is trying to accomplish). It means roughly if you think of ourselves as the Lord God of Hosts, “We will be who we will be, and are that which we are.”
· As discussed previously in this blog The Dharma or Divine Order of Righteousness and Truth in Divine Light occurs in four steps:
1)The Light of the One Increasing
· 2)The Light of the One without a Second
· 3)The Light of the One transforming and glorifying itself in us
· 4)The Light of the discrimination between the human and the Divine in us.
·
This mantra can also be translated roughly in Christian Judaism as
YHWH, Man of God, Andrew, WILL I AM, Name of the Presence of God as I AM, Mountain God of Prophecy and Truth
Figure 29 Morning worshippers and bathers at the boat dock and in front of the Brahma Ghat.
As we reach the mountain top purposes of our life-long praying we begin to realize that the purpose of life is not necessarily to become a King or Queen among people, to be powerful, although God dwelling in us is all powerful, to be happy, although God dwelling in us is happiness, to be wealthy, although God dwelling in us is Eternal health and wealth. the purpose of life, after we have sanctified, glorified, blessed, praised God Name in us and to help Him or Her bring a little more of heaven down here on earth, the purpose of life is to help others and do what is right.
Seven Ways We Serve Others
(Malkuth)
1st day of the weekly count, 43rd day of the omer
count
Chesed of
Malkuth
By generosity:
“Give till it hurts”. Saint Teresa of Calcutta
“Never lag in zeal and in earnest endeavor;
be aglow and burning with the Spirit, serving the Lord.”
Romans 12:11
Kabel shavatenu
Accept our entreaties ABK
2nd day of the weekly count, 44th day of the omer
count
Gevurah of
Malkuth
By Friendliness:
A friend in need is a friend indeed.
“Contribute to the needs of God’s people[sharing
in the necessities of the saints]; pursue the practice
of hospitality.”
Romans 12:13
3rd day of the weekly count, 45th day of the omer
count
Tiferet of
Malkuth
By seeing good in others:
with God’s help,We see the Christ in you.
“[Let your] love be sincere (a real thing).”
Romans 12:9
us’ma tzakatenu
Hear our cries ABK
4th day of the weekly count, 46th day of the omer
count
Netzach of
Malkuth
By standing by our friends:
We will walk with you till the Son of God always shines.
“hate what is evil [ loathe all ungodliness, turn in horror
from wickedness], but hold fast to that which is good.”
Romans 12:9
“Rejoice with those who rejoice [sharing other’s joy]
, and weep with those who weep [sharing other’s grief].”
Romans 12:15
5th day of the weekly count, 47th day of the omer
count
Hod of
Malkuth
By loving our enemies:
we are the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the World.
“Bless those who persecute you [who are cruel in their attitude
toward you]; bless and do not curse them.”
Romans 12:14
“Repay no one evil for evil, but take thought for what is honest
and proper and noble [aiming to be above reproach] in the sight of
everyone.”
Romans 12:17, Proverbs 20:22, II Samuel 16:12
“Love one another with brotherly affection [as members of one family]
giving precedence and showing honor to one another.”
Romans 12:10
6th day of the weekly count, 48th day of the omer
count
Yesod of
Malkuth
By setting a good example:
we are the holiness of what is holy
Inside of those who are holy.
“Rejoice and exult in hope; be steadfast and patient
in suffering and tribulation; be constant in prayer.”
Romans 12: 12
Yodeha ta’alumot
Knower of the mysteries of God’s worlds of creation ABK
7th day of the weekly count, 49th day of the omer
count
Malkuth of
Malkuth
By taking responsibility
“We are servants of the servants of the Lord.
Is Shiva the Creator of the Tantra in the City of Varnasi, God Our Father in Heaven whom Jesus and His disciples pray to? I think not for Our God in Heaven has told us that Tantra involving worship to idols is strickly forbidden.
Shiva, like YHWH, not being born of human mother, is being absolute consciousness, omnipresent, and hence omniscient, and hence omnipotent, and also by the way self-generated but not incarnated except through his co-creator of the Universe Vishnu. That is why we do not say “Swami Shiva” but “Swami Shivananda, the bliss of Shiva”.
In afternoon we visited the home of internationally known sitar player and teacher to witness an extraordinary performance on the classic Sitar along with a Kathak Shiva Dance Recital.
As mentioned above, the Lord Shiva, like the Lord Vishnu is believed to be self-generative***. For Christians and Jews, He couldn’t be divine if he wasn’t. Unlike Vishnu He does not incarnate. We Christians and Jews believe that the Holy Spirit, the 3rd person of the Trinity, as well as God’s Only Son, Jesus Christ do incarnate, and in fact, They incarnate in us. Some churches or synagogues will have you believe that the Bible or Torah, or the Pope is our One Holy Spirit, but I do not think a book, even if it is the Bible, can be all there is to a Divine person, nor can a person, the Pope, be all there is to a divine book.
As mentioned above, the Lord Shiva, like the Lord Vishnu is believed to be self-generative***. For Christians and Jews, He couldn’t be divine if he wasn’t. Unlike Vishnu He does not incarnate. We Christians and Jews believe that the Holy Spirit, the 3rd person of the Trinity, as well as God’s Only Son, Jesus Christ do incarnate, and in fact, They incarnate in us. Some churches or synagogues will have you believe that the Bible or Torah, or the Pope is our One Holy Spirit, but I do not think a book, even if it is the Bible, can be all there is to a Divine person, nor can a person, the Pope, be all there is to a divine book.
Kathak is one of the ten major forms of Indian classical dance. The origin of Kathak is traditionally attributed to the traveling bards of ancient northern India, known as Kathakars or storytellers. The hand gestures of the dancer have meaning and there were various tinkling bells in his hands and on his feet.After the Shiva dance, we asked the accomplished Sitar player to play his favorite piece for an encore. He chose a hymn to “Mother Ganga”.
*** For a simplified diagram and discussion of how this happens see pages 288-289 of Swami Vishnu’s “The Complete Illustrated Book of Yoga”.
The Name of God YHWH is self-generative in a four-fold, four-dimensional sense (five by five if you consider them as connectors between dimensional thought instead of inside of) its letters meanings or “autiots” are recursively defined in themselves in terms of themselves. For example, we have V= VAV in which the letter V appears inside of itself twice.
We have H=HEH in the same way. And, Y=YOD in which the letter Y appears inside of itself once. Thus all four letters of the Divine Name YHWH are self-generative on out to infinity and beyond and are mental trees of eternal life like the positive integers. In this sense the four-letter Name of God YHWH is omnipresent, and hence omniscient, and hence omnipotent in a way the three letter Feminine Name of God AUM or OM isn’t.
Hence it is not possible to say, but it is possible to think, with God’s help, silently, “YHWH NADAM BINDU SHIVAM” or most precisely “YHWH NADAM BINDUM SHIVAM” since there are multiple souls dwelling in God’s Eternal Tree of Life inside of His or Her Holy Spirit dwelling inside of you.
The Name of God YHWH is a mental self-generative four or five dimensional source of “Nadam”, Divine vibratory sound which comes before Divine Light and Divine Life as a Quantum spiritual field and as such having no mass traveling outside of space and time and hence faster than light in the same way, it is as the Mandukya Upanishad teaches us, neither continuous nor discrete, neither inside nor outside, neither consciousness nor a mass of consciousness, it is not unreal illusion, but Peace, Eternal Mindfulness and Faith, Love, Hope as a Truthful, Good, Righteous Oneness all of which are the Ground of our Being and Reality Itself. It is Faith as generated from God’s Word as a Oneness of Presence and Power****.. a One Presence and a One Power a Shiva and a Shakti, the stage after Sadi-Shiva, where the One Power and One Presence are still mixed, or the third circle down in Swami Vishnu’s complete illustrated Yoga book with a five-circle diagram of the Lord Shiva’s self-generation. This third circle corresponds to the situation the Tai-Chi Yin Yang symbol in which Shiva, the Yin is separately out from Shakti, Yang which each part, Yin and Yang inside of each other and developing further out as in the scheme of the third, fourth and fifth circles of Swami Vishnu’s and Swami Shivananda’s diagrammatic self-generation… perhaps the highest mystery of all of God dwelling in us.
**** Romans 1:11 “Faith comes from hearing and hearing from the Word of God” Saint Paul
March 17 Flight to Delhi from Varanasi, check into Crowne Plaza today Hotel Gurgaon for lunch and rest before and return to US. Arvan honored me at the last evening get together before departing at the hotel. He said he would write and send pictures of his family. I said I would pray for, maybe also, from him and them. But, he said he did not want my prayers, but my blessing. I reached down into myself to come up with:
“May your years be long…
May your days be happy as dancers,
And may you be blessed.” This is my blessing to you and your family Arvind…Amen