The Dawn: East-West

After nine leagues he felt the North wind on his face, but the darkness was thick and there was no light, he could see nothing ahead and nothing behind him.
After ten leagues the end was near.
After eleven leagues the dawn light appeared.
At the end of twelve leagues the sun streamed out.

There was the garden of the gods; all around him stood bushes bearing gems. Seeing it he went down at once, for there was fruit of carnelian with the vine hanging from it, beautiful to look at: lapis lazuli leaves hung thick with fruit, sweet to see. For thorns and thistles there were haematite and rare stones, agate, and pearls from out of the sea.

. . . . .

The Gilgamesh said to Utnapishtim the Far-away, "I look at you now, Utnapishtim, and your appearance is no different from mine; there is nothing strange in your features. I thought I should find a hero prepared for battle, but you lie here taking your ease on your back. Tell me truly, how was it that you came to enter the company of the gods and to posses everlasting life?"
Utnapishtim said to Gilgamesh, "I will reveal to you a mystery, I will tell you a secret of the gods."

The Epic of Gilgamesh, Penguin Classics, N. K. Sanders, 1960

In studying myself and my own story, going over images and symbols and metaphors in my mind, I found Jung's archetypal subconscious emerged in me. Joseph Campbell's mythic world and its meaning was surfacing as well. I lived out the past of mankind as well as my own. I had slowly entered a realm on the border of myth and suddenly I had come into a story which began long ago. Reality checking is difficult at times.

In my own small way, I saw God, I spoke with him, he seemed to reply. Through life I was conducted by what I used to hold in complete skepticism, omens and signs, or even wonders. through speeches of my friends, through dreams and events I slowly entered a channel which led me to conclude that God lives. In the process I opened onto God and could not but admit that, despite my own unfailing doubt, God does speak to us through his nature in a way we can personally understand and that he can interact in history directly. I know everyman's history is some version of God in history and this happens every lifetime. But it seemed to me that my story is not my creation but can only be that of the master story teller who is God. I really wanted to know and studied hard, spent a lot of time at it, and yet it is a "gift of understanding." The deity is a self motivating, self organized Being in itself, an integral implicate order, over and above the mundane but not separate from human nature. While not having gender and not an entity, it appears in consciousness as if to be a person and to some to be ultimate ground.

In the Judeo-Christian tradition generically The deity is morally persuasive, a lawmaker, and fosterer of whole people. He said, that is the One who is nameless (= YHVH 'I am who I am') says:
Leviticus 19:1
For the Lord said to Moses,
"Speak to all the congregation of the people of Israel and say to them: You shall be holy for the Lord thy God am holy."

He {nameless} said, generically,  "for you shall be a people", my people among others, "and I will give you my blessings and my power and my judgments." It is important to understand that in this way that God cannot be invoked by name (by the power of mantra and names) but must be apprehended as simply the divine space.

In India (historically) the single deity is de-emphasized among the Vedic and the moral code is more closely related to intra- and intertribal relations. Knowledge is preeminently concerned with the realization of a personal individual's unity with an abstract absolute, and pooja (ceremonial worship) and levitical directions (caste rules) are the main body of the foundation texts— the subject of moral persuasion and reasoning being ignored. Revelation is not between the personal God and the community it is between an abstract metaphysical order and the sage (the shruti and its reflection mantra- the Rik Veda for example. The tapaswin is thought to be able to make demands on his own God (Brahma) even though it is quite unjust. There is little distinction between the man of God, the gods, and the god-man (the gurudev for example). Justice is achieved (if at all) through a war of the gods against the demons.

While overall analysis of biblical tradition and its views God appears to be somewhat cognitively dissonant ("why does God kill his own creation (the flood) and start over; didn't He make a mistake?") Indian tradition appears to be quite schizophrenic or multiple personality disorder.

The problem is that in the view of SCS and many others the soul is astro-mechanical item. The are so many chakras, and hita, there are so many praanas and so many thoughts or vasaana, and so on all leading to a view that the soul is just so many compartments and channels that for all intents and purposes is a subtle machine.

Not only but any particular of saadhana goes along with a particular siddhis. even patanjali does not elucidate yaam and niyaam except to give it some siddhi. Satyaa for example gives one the power to "make it so" rather than the social benefit of telling the truth to each other and worship in the spirit and the truth.

I have found Buddhism to be very much more intelligible than Hinduism. It is very accessible and gives fairly good accounts of the person-in-the-world. Where it fails is that the life and death of the soul is not accounted for. Seeing souls destroyed by Swami Shyam has driven me back into the radical stance of Jesus v.s. Devil. What I didn't think so important before was of paramount importance now, what really happens to my soul. For this I needed to overcome my objection to the resurrection. There are two kinds of resurrection and the first is the rescue of the body before necrosis, the second the resurrection of the soul in a soul body — this is ascension. When Jesus says he is the resurrection and the life, he doesn't plan on bringing all the dead bodies back to life. As when Steven is taken up after being stoned to death, he didn't go in the flesh. Discovery of the bones of James would seem to prove this.

That 'virtue is its own reward' can only be true if we safeguard the immortality of the soul after death. That the samsaar is an illusion is the main drawback of the SCS movie and the consequence is that they can never successfully reply to the West about their destiny being trashed by demented Siddha of India. It was to this that Jesus has responded that whatever the apparent destiny the survival of the person in the "other world" or aakash is the payoff. Freedom from demons is a part of that. But if you understand by demons something that is created apart from the human race there can be no knowledge of the safeguard. Demons in my story are the demented yogic types who have tremendous powers and use them for all the wrong reasons -- for one thing samaadhi is as good for the Devil as it is for God. That is the shock of it. How much more work we have to do as individuals to get to a safe place and where will it be?. There are many questions to be raised about this, but one of the first is "If India has such great talent for Samaadhi why is it they don't even consider the deeper things of the life of the soul?" the assumption of karma and reincarnation is false. I have seen souls destroyed and those souls were not the evil creeps -- they were they innocent youth of our culture and India's.

Thus the verse,

Nainam chhindanti shastraani
Nainam  dahati paavaka |
Na chainam kledayatyaapo
na shoshayati marutaH ||
Weapons cannot cut it, not can fire burn it; water cannot wet it, not can wind dry it. (Gita Press, Gorakhpur)
Bhagavada Gita Ch2 Verse 23

Part of this analysis should be an understanding that the heat in India is so intense sitting-still means surviving. To sit and not breath heavily can be a life and death situation. Hence the development of, and acquiescence to, the philosophy of meditation. In Canada it can get so cold that moving fast is the way to survive. Where vegetarianism is the greatest principle in India because of the need to reduce movement, and because meat rots so fast in the heat, the opposite is true here (in Canada) in the North. Eskimos cannot be vegetarian. Moving fast and hunting during the winter is the answer. That is the ecological principle of philosophies. But in a global unity the differences have to be recognized.

If actual Self-realization is the only safe place then the people have been abandoned because nirvaana or Self realization is so rare that many don't even agree that is the reality. Besides that fact that many people would like to believe that reincarnation is true there is very little evidence for it -- not withstanding past life regressions -- and certainly more people have reported near death experience, out of body experience and peak experience. Given this it is a good bet to count on one life, one next life, as it gives better value to those who live in the body. India has counted so much on earning better lives in the next round by good works in this one, that in fact they haven't improved their world much and have remained with a philosophy that is almost prehistoric -- it is unevolved. The social injustice of caste and the propensity for tantra has created a hell there -- and with the advances of transportation in recent times, the gates of hell are open. North Americans and Westerners in general, however are so given to living within the skin that they had lost sight of the web of life as inclusive of the spirit, and since so few people actually practiced their faith as self transformation, fewer and fewer people either reported "paranormal" experiences or actually had them that Christians themselves didn't believe Jesus as in the faith of old -- they became Christian humanists.

Aspects of ascension for the rabboni

The point is that "ascension to the father" is going to happen soon and of course she is free to hug him at that point. To be ascended then does not mean going bodily to heaven as was proposed by Luke after the fact. It was to be realized of God.

The Lost Fragment indicates that Jesus had initiated disciples in the same way
we currently believe to be that of exclusively eastern traditions.

The Complete Gospels, Annotated Scholars Version, Robert J. Miller, Ed.;  Poleridge Press, Sonoma, California, 1992

"And they came into Bethany, and this woman was there whose brother had died. She knelt down in front of Jesus and says to him, "Son of David, have mercy on me."

40 Then Jesus said, "Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?"
41 So they took away the stone. Then Jesus looked up and said, "Father, I thank you that you have heard me. 42 I knew that you always hear me, but I said this for the benefit of the people standing here, that they may believe that you sent me."

And Jesus got angry and went with her into the garden where the tomb was. Just then a loud voice was heard from inside the tomb. Then Jesus went up and rolled the stone away from the entrance to the tomb. He went right in where the young man was, stuck out his hand and grabbed him by the hand and raised him up.
43 When he had said this, Jesus called in a loud voice, "Lazarus, come out!" 44 The dead man came out, his hands and feet wrapped with strips of linen, and a cloth around his face.
Jesus said to them. "Take off the grave clothes and let him go."

The young man looked at Jesus, loved him, and began to beg him to be with him. Then they went left the tomb and went inside the house. (Incidentally he was rich.)
Six days later Jesus gave him an order; and when the evening had come, the young man went to him dressed only in a linen cloth. He spent that night with him, because Jesus taught him the mystery of God's domain.

The Complete Gospels: Lost fragment:

From there (Jesus) got up and went to the other side of the Jordan.
(later)
2. The sister of the young man whom Jesus loved was there, along with his mother and Salome, but Jesus refused to see them.

(Jn12) Then the detachment of soldiers with its commander and the Jewish officials arrested Jesus. (Mt56b) Then all the disciples deserted him and fled. 51 A young man, wearing nothing but a linen garment, was following Jesus. When they seized him, 52 he fled naked, leaving his garment behind.

"Even an individual's feeling of being a separate, isolated, and bounded self is a mere substitute for one's own true Nature, a substitute for the transcendent Self of the ultimate Whole. Every individual correctly intuits that he is of one nature with Atman, but he distorts that intuition by applying it to his separate self. He feels his separate self is immortal, all-embracing, central to the cosmos, all-significant. That is, he substitutes his ego for Atman. Then, instead of finding actual and timeless wholeness, he merely substitutes the wish to live forever; instead of being one with the cosmos, he substitutes the desire to possess the cosmos; instead of being one with God, he tries himself to play God.

This is what we call the subjective wing of the Atman-project. Since the Atman-project is created by the split between subject and object, the Atman-project can be played out through a manipulation of both the subjective and objective sides of awareness (we will return to the objective wing shortly). The subjective wing of the Atman. project is the impossible desire that the individual self be immortal, cosmocentric, and all-important, but based on the correct intuition that one's real Nature is indeed infinite and eternal. Not that his deepest nature is already God, but that his ego should be God — immortal, cosmocentric, death-defying and all-powerful — there is his Atman-project. And there is either Atman, or there is the Atman-project."
The Atman-Project: A Transpersonal View of Human Development, Ken Wilber, Theosophical Publishing House, Wheaton, Ill, USA, 1980

Conclusions

Where I started this inquiry in a search for faith and had tried to set down a dialectic between the mystic and the church I have ended with a realization that the metaphysical foundations of the West first have to be extended. Finally, rational arguments can be made that the foundations of consciousness are in what is called the Bose-Einstein condensate (see Quantum Self- Danah Zohar) and if so one can close on the argument of ground of Being and Ontological Unity. That is the foundation or life and sentience and the consciousness of God are the same implicate order (see also The Conscious Universe, Kafatos and Nadeau, and The Turbulent Mirror, Briggs and Peat). From my own experience, barring charges of conspiracy, I could argue from evidence of synchronicity (the meeting in the park), powers of mind (the experience of many yoga students), precognition (Lucy's dreams and mine), while I for one will attest to the fact of revelation, though not necessarily specific content. While I failed to find any evidence of Self-Realization I am presented with evidence of God's existence. While the processes of yoga or saadhana are scientifically validated, the ultimate ends are mere theory.

When we refer to God we refer to the "oceanic" cosmic and universal, we refer to the human person as the particular or the "drop" in the ocean. Hence the drop merging in the ocean does not make a man God, but was already made of God stuff, and the merger is but, in the first part, transformation of person and knowledge and, the second, to pouring more god energies into the cup. The man vanishes into God or unites with God while God pours himself as energies and intelligence into the person. It is like our situation with air. We stand at the bottom of a sea of air. While we sit and talk we don't notice the weight of it (about 1 kg per cubic meter), but when the wind blows hard it pushes us over. Similarly when the spirit moves we notice. Such a field has the natural properties of unity and therefore love. At the moment this concept of the Bose-Einstein condensate is just a metaphor and a reduction, but it suffices to reduce the antagonism of materialism. While the argument from physics seems to be a revolting desacralization it actually isn't because although the manner of speaking has changed, the ethical or moral choices remain the same. Secondly it doesn't account for the life in the bodiless or spiritual dimension, a life that has its own spiritual body and where the individual is still making conscious choices and has a will of his/her own.

The argument is something of an illusion. Hence "I am God" (al-Hallaj) or "Aham(I) Brahm(God) asmi(am)"(the Vedantin) are onerous statements, basically resembling the statement "all men have red blood, I have red-blood, so I am all men". Conversely "man is made in God's image" equally onerous because God does not have a body or a personality like we do, however as God-being reflects in the explicate order (the outer or material world) there does seem to be personification through human awareness as a function of that implicate order. The resolution of this is in understanding Bose-Einstein condensate as bosons or unified field while fermions are particles, bodies. The essence of humanity is in sentience and sapience, awareness, consciousness and conscience, while the essence of that is in a unified field-God's Being. As such the question of ontological unity and hypostatic union is something of a bogey. There is no exact point at which one can discriminate the man being from the god being.

Therefore, is Jesus the Christ God's Only begotten son? well yes and no. Yes, because no one else has had such a powerful meritorious effect on humanity, and because it is divine. And no, because the argument is quantitative and and not qualitative.
1 John 4:7-8

"My people
let us love one another
since love comes from God
and everyone who loves is begotten by god and knows God
Anyone who fails to love can never have known God,
and because God is love."