My favourite moral story

Source The pride and concept of the two foolish pundits Siddhamuni continued the narrative. Sri Narasimha Saraswati told the pundits that it was wrong, presumptuous and childish on their part to believe that they had mastered all the Vedas and gained all knowledge. It is indeed beyond the ken and capacity of anybody, even of gods, to have full and proper understanding of the Vedas. The Vedas are indeed countless and endless - "Ananta Vai Vedah", it is said. Even Brahmadeva could not gauge the extent of the Vedas. The Lord Himself had to incarnate on earth as Badarayana, .ie, Vyasa, and he collated a small portion of them into the four Vedas, which we have heard of. It is indeed a very very tiny portion of the original Vedic lore abstracted for the purpose of making a beginning and for paving the way for Dharmic life. Even Badarayana, in truth, could not find the beginning and end of the Vedas. As even these four Vedas, tiny portions from the original which is limitless, cannot all be studied and understood by anyone, even if he is allotted aeons of life. Vyasa Bhagvan taught each one of the Vedas (some little portion of each) to one student each, each of whom was specially blessed with the full extent of a Kalpa for their study, Paila learnt a small portion which goes under the name of Rig Veda, Vaisampayana learnt another small portion which goes under the name of Yajur Veda; Jamini learnt Sama Veda and Sumanta learnt Atharva Veda. These at least they could learn, only because of the special grace of their Guru, Vyasa Bhagwan. That being the case, how ridiculous it was for any man, whoose life span was so short to claim and boast that he had mastered the Vedas! In ancient times, Bharadwaja Rishi resolved himself that he should learn and master all the Vedas. As he proceeded with his study, he found that although decades and centuries were rolling by, the progress he could make was too little. He undertook penance to propitiate Brahma and when Brahma appeared before him, he prayed "Grant me as much life span as would suffice for my completing the study of the Vedas". Brahmadeva smiled, as if in derision, and said, "My child! I can make you Chiranjeevi (an immortal), but alas, it is beyond all my powers to help you to make a complete study of all Vedas. See there are infinite heights of the Vedas". As he said this, Bharadwaja Rishi could see the splendorous mountains of the Vedas, their peaks hardly visible, and penetrating into the highest skies. Their effulgence was like that of a million suns. Bharadwaja instantly realised his folly in hoping that he could master all the Vedas, which would never be possible even if he granted millions and millions of aeons as his lifespan. He was crest fallen and fell at the feet of Brahma, that he should somehow bless him with the Vedic wisdom. Brahma gave him three handful of material from the infinite mountain peaks and told him "If you can study and understand this much, you will be most blessed indeed." Bradwaja strove for all his life and he could not complete that much study even, of the three handfuls of material that Brahmadeva gave him. Guru Nath again said, that being the case, how fallacious it is for a mere mortal of he Kali age to claim that he has mastered all the Vedas, alas! Guru Nath now started speaking of the glory of the Vedas and their structure, which was unheard of before by any. Guru Nath said that this was what had been told Vyasa Bhagwan to each of his disciples regarding the respective Vedas he had taught them. Briefly it is as under; Rig Veda has its auxiliary Ayurveda, the Science of Life. It is presiding deity is Brahma. Its Gotra is Atryasa. Its chandas is Gayatri. The Rig Veda Purusha has red lotus like broad eyes, and a three feet long shapely neck. He has beautiful flowing locks of hair. Rig Veda has all in all 12 sections or divisions. It's systematic recital, with the correct inontation, endows greatest merit. Much of the portion of Rig Veda is not known to any in the Kali Age. Sri Narasimha Saraswati told the pundits that the Vedas are most profound. They are sole protection for mankind both in the world here and worlds thereafter. They are to be worshipped as Mother. Humility is the true mark of scholarship. He again emphasised that the knowledge, if at all anyone can gain and profess about the Veda, will be just no more than a grain of sand while the Vedic lore is like the unending stretch of the sandy shores of all seas of the earth. The pundits, in their pride, could not grasp the wise counsel of Sri Narasimha Saraswati and still kept up the air of arrogance. Thus ends the Twenty-sixth Chapter of Sri Guru Charitra giving "A brief account of the four Vedas and their infinite glory". Glory to the All merciful, the OmniPresent and the ever responsive Guru Nath.

Non-dualism: The Heart of Religion

Sufism

Rumi or Jelaluddin Balkhi (1207 – 1273), from the book “Rumi: Selected Poems”; Penguin; trans Coleman Banks, 1995.

“It's the man who was looking for treasure... He wants me to finish his story...

Don't think of him as a seeker, though. Whatever he's looking for, he is that himself. How can a lover be anything but the beloved?

Every second he's bowing into a mirror. If he could see for just a second one molecule of what's there without fantasizing about it, he'd explode.

His imagination and he himself, would vanish, with all his knowledge, obliterated into a new birth, a perfectly clear view, a voice that says, I am God.

That same voice told the angels to bow to Adam, because they were identical with Adam.

It's the voice that first said, There is no reality but God. There is only God.”

(from the poem In Between Stories)

Judaism

Kabbalah: The meaning of God

"An impoverished person thinks that God is an old man with white hair, sitting on a wondrous throne of fire that glitters with countless sparks, as the Bible states: “The Ancient-of-Days sits, the hair on his head like clean fleece, his throne–flames of fire.” Imagining this and similar fantasies, the fool corporealizes God. He falls into one of the traps that destroy faith. His awe of God is limited by his imagination.

But if you are enlightened, you know God’s oneness; you know that the divine is devoid of bodily categories — these can never be applied to God. Then you wonder, astonished: Who am I? I am a mustard seed in the middle of the sphere of the moon, which itself is a mustard seed within the next sphere. So it is with that sphere and all it contains in relation to the next sphere. So it is with all the spheres — one inside the other — and all of them are a mustard seed within the further expanses. And all of these are a mustard seed within further expanses.

Your awe is invigorated, the love in your soul expands."

"The essence of divinity is found in every single thing — nothing but it exists.... Do not attribute duality to God. Let God be solely God. If you suppose that Ein Sof emanates until a certain point, and that from that point on is outside of it, you have dualized. God forbid! Realize, rather, that Ein Sof exists in each existent. Do not say, “This is a stone and not God.” God forbid! Rather, all existence is God, and the stone is a thing pervaded by divinity."

- Rabbi Moshe Cordovero

God is that which Is — YHVH, one of the main Hebrew terms for this Reality, might even be translated “Is.” God is not an old man;God is What Is. The Infinite is everything. It is the only thing.

“God” is an imprecise name for the only thing in the universe that actually exists.

Christianity

"Christ has each within him, whether human being or angel or mystery" (Gospel of Philip 56:14-15).

"People cannot see anything in the real realm unless they become it...if you have seen the spirit, you have become the spirit; if you have seen Christ, you have become Christ; if you have seen the Father, you will become the Father" (Gospel of Philip 61:20-32 cf. 67:26-27)

Buddhism

Padmasambhava said:

My father is the intrinsic awareness, Samantabhadra (Sanskrit; Tib. ཀུན་ཏུ་བཟང་པོ). My mother is the ultimate sphere of reality, Samantabhadri (Sanskrit; Tib. ཀུན་ཏུ་བཟང་མོ). I belong to the caste of non-duality of the sphere of awareness. My name is the Glorious Lotus-Born. I am from the unborn sphere of all phenomena. I act in the way of the Buddhas of the three times.

Hinduism

Shankara, the eight-century Indian saint, whose insights revitalized Hindu teachings, said of his own enlightenment:

"I am Brahman… I dwell within all beings as the soul, the pure consciousness, the ground of all phenomena... In the days of my ignorance, I used to think of these as being separate from myself. Now I know that I am All."

The Beak of the Finch: Dawkins vs Gould

I had the opportunity to take pictures of a Kingfisher from my living room and was fascinated by its beak design solution. The Japanese Bullet Train which was designed is a form of Bio-mimicry in engineering and the train traveled 10 percent faster, consuming 15 percent less energy and it no longer created a sonic boom after adopting this design into the Bullet Trains.

Birds are always an interesting genera of organisms to study evolution from Ring species (on how mating songs among a population change over time and induce reproductive barriers and there by induce speciation) to their adaptations of beaks for different environmental niches. These examples of finches show that evolution can occur in our life time which we call as micro-evolution. Even though everyone agrees that evolution is happening there are minor disagreements on how it happens and what are the mechanisms that underlie it and this brought me to The Beak of the Finch: A Story of Evolution in Our Time

This seems to be an important study for both neo-darwinists as well as proponents of punctuated equilibrium theory and I think both the 'gene-selectionist view' as well as many of the tenets of the punctuated equilibrium view of the paleontologists should be considered seriously because natural selection acts at both the gene level as well as at the ecological level and also on local scales and also on longer time scales of hierarchical evolution.

The current battle between these two different schools of thought can be rightly summed up as Dawkins vs Gould and Sterelny clearly summarizes the different points of view of these two evolutionary biologists where Dawkins identifies more with the gene-selectionist view and Gould and others identifying themselves with punctuated equilibrium.

This particular study like some of the many other studies seem to question the cumulative nature(cumulative selection) of how evolution was normally thought to operate by the neo-darwinists i.e. a gradual series of accumulation of good designs but as said there are cases where this is normally not how evolution seem to work and this is where species selection comes into picture for the accumulation of novel design solutions. One such case is this -

Kim Sterelny (2007) cites this rapid natural selection as illustrating an important point about periods of relative stasis in the punctuated equilibrium hypothesis of Niles Eldredge and Stephen Jay Gould: "In claiming that species typically undergo no further evolutionary change once speciation is complete, they are not claiming that there is no change at all between one generation and the next. Lineages do change. But the change between generations does not accumulate. Instead, over time, the species wobbles about its phenotypic mean. Jonathan Weiner's The Beak of the Finch describes this very process".


The Grants observed that drought conditions led to larger average weight, wingspan, and bill size, whereas flooding experienced a few years later resulted in reduced measurements: "Everything the drought had preferred in size large . . . the aftermath of the flood favored in size small" (Weiner, p. 104). Rather than continuing "to shoot like an arrow in the same direction" (p. 104), evolution had turned back. "Natural selection had swung around against the birds from the other side. . . . Selection had flipped. . . . Not only can evolution push a species fast in one direction. Evolution can reverse direction and push it back just as swiftly" (pp. 104, 106).


It is indeed an wobbling over its phenotypic mean within a generations of species lineages where suddenly the large beak sizes where replaced by smaller ones and hence showing that novel designs doesn't necessarily accumulate over time with in a species and that certain species specific characteristics need to be transferred to daughter species and only then the novel design might have a chance that it gets accumulated over time.

I think species selection, non-adaptive change, uncoupling of macroevolution and microevolution and species stasis and mosaic evolution which are some of the main views of Gould on evolutionary biology along with the functional constraints of the phenotypes in developmental biology should be seen as well accepted tenets of evolutionary biology.

And there will always be people who still doubt evolution by natural selection without understanding how it works.

"Darwinism in the West is in much the same condition as was Soviet Marxism in its last days. Its power and prestige rest not on any real scientific accomplishments but on the theory's role in upholding the ruling philosophy. Obscure scientists who go to a remote island to measure finch beaks can become the subjects of television documentaries and Pulitzer Prize-winning books, because the intellectual elite relies on finch-beak variation to convince the public that materialism is true."

- Philip Johnson, a proponent of ID              

Christology

If one preserves these statements then Christianity will live forever.

Colossians 2:9 and Ephesians.

"Christ has each within him, whether human being or angel or mystery" (Gospel of Philip 56:14-15).

"People cannot see anything in the real realm unless they become it...if you have seen the spirit, you have become the spirit; if you have seen Christ, you have become Christ; if you have seen the Father, you will become the Father" (Gospel of Philip 61:20-32 cf. 67:26-27)

"10. Of the simple and unchangeable Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, one God, in whom substance and quality are identical. 

There is, accordingly, a good which is alone simple, and therefore alone unchangeable, and this is God. By this Good have all others been created, but not simple, and therefore not unchangeable. "Created," I say,--that is, made, not begotten. For that which is begotten of the simple Good is simple as itself, and the same as itself. These two we call the Father and the Son; and both together with the Holy Spirit are one God; and to this Spirit the epithet Holy is in Scripture, as it were, appropriated. And He is another than the Father and the Son, for He is neither the Father nor the Son. I say "another," not "another thing," because He is equally with them the simple Good, unchangeable and co-eternal. And this Trinity is one God; and none the less simple because a Trinity. For we do not say that the nature of the good is simple, because the Father alone possesses it, or the Son alone, or the Holy Ghost alone; nor do we say, with the Sabellian heretics, that it is only nominally a Trinity, and has no real distinction of persons; but we say it is simple, because it is what it has, with the exception of the relation of the persons to one another. For, in regard to this relation, it is true that the Father has a Son, and yet is not Himself the Son; and the Son has a Father, and is not Himself the Father. But, as regards Himself, irrespective of relation to the other, each is what He has; thus, He is in Himself living, for He has life, and is Himself the Life which He has. 

It is for this reason, then, that the nature of the Trinity is called simple, because it has not anything which it can lose, and because it is not one thing and its contents another, as a cup and the liquor, or a body and its colour, or the air and the light or heat of it, or a mind and its wisdom. For none of these is what it has: the cup is not liquor, nor the body colour, nor the air light and heat, nor the mind wisdom. And hence they can be deprived of what they have, and can be turned or changed into other qualities and states, so that the cup may be emptied of the liquid of which it is full, the body be discoloured, the air darken, the mind grow silly. The incorruptible body which is promised to the saints in the resurrection cannot, indeed, lose its quality of incorruption, but the bodily substance and the quality of incorruption are not the same thing. For the quality of incorruption resides entire in each several part, not greater in one and less in another; for no part is more incorruptible than another. The body, indeed, is itself greater in whole than in part; and one part of it is larger, another smaller, yet is not the larger more incorruptible than the smaller. The body, then, which is not in each of its parts a whole body, is one thing; incorruptibility, which is throughout complete, is another thing;--for every part of the incorruptible body, however unequal to the rest otherwise, is equally incorrupt. For the hand, e.g., is not more incorrupt than the finger because it is larger than the finger; so, though finger and hand are unequal, their incorruptibility is equal. Thus, although incorruptibility is inseparable from an incorruptible body, yet the substance of the body is one thing, the quality of incorruption another. And therefore the body is not what it has. The soul itself, too, though it be always wise (as it will be eternally when it is redeemed), will be so by participating in the unchangeable wisdom, which it is not; for though the air be never robbed of the light that is shed abroad in it, it is not on that account the same thing as the light. I do not mean that the soul is air, as has been supposed by some who could not conceive a spiritual nature; but, with much dissimilarity, the two things have a kind of likeness, which makes it suitable to say that the immaterial soul is illumined with the immaterial light of the simple wisdom of God, as the material air is irradiated with material light, and that, as the air, when deprived of this light, grows dark, (for material darkness is nothing more than air wanting light,) so the soul, deprived of the light of wisdom, grows dark. 

According to this, then, those things which are essentially and truly divine are called simple, because in them quality and substance are identical, and because they are divine, or wise, or blessed in themselves, and without extraneous supplement. In Holy Scripture, it is true, the Spirit of wisdom is called "manifold" because it contains many things in it; but what it contains it also is, and it being one is all these things. For neither are there many wisdoms, but one, in which are untold and infinite treasures of things intellectual, wherein are all invisible and unchangeable reasons of things visible and changeable which were created by it. For God made nothing unwittingly; not even a human workman can be said to do so. But if He knew all that He made, He made only those things which He had known. Whence flows a very striking but true conclusion, that this world could not be known to us unless it existed, but could not have existed unless it had been known to God. "

- Saint Augustine, City Of God (excerpt)

The Gnostic Paul is a book by Elaine Pagels, a scholar of gnosticism and professor of religion at Princeton University. In the work, Pagels considers each of the non-pastoral Pauline Epistles, and questions about their authorship. The core of the book examines how the Pauline epistles were read by 2nd century Valentinian gnostics and demonstrates that Paul could be considered a proto-gnostic as well as a proto-Catholic. 

Her treatment involves reading the Pauline corpus as being dual layered between a Pneumatic, esoteric Christianity and a Psychic, exoteric Christianity.

Restoration to Fullness is inevitable

The Vedas in Light of Sri Aurobindo

"I seek not science, not religion, not Theosophy, but Veda, the truth about Brahman, not only about His essentiality, but about His manifestation, not a lamp on the way to the forest, but a light and a guide to joy and action in the world. I. believe that the future of India and the world to depend on its discovery and on its application, not to the renunciation of life, but to life and the world and among men. .. The Veda was the beginning of our spiritual knowledge; the Veda will remain its end. These compositions of an unknown antiquity are as the many breasts of eternal Mother of knowledge from which our succeeding ages have all been fed. The recovery of the perfect truth of the Veda is therefore not merely a desideratum for our modern intellectual curiosity, but a practical necessity for the future of the human race. For I believe firmly that the secret concealed in the Veda, when entirely discovered, will be found to formulate perfectly that knowledge and practice of a divine life to which the march of humanity, after long wanderings in the satisfaction of the intellect and senses, must inevitably return."

- Aurobindo

Realized Eschatology - Christianity (Gnosticism)

"Valentinians insisted that they described something that is very real. They insisted that what the myth described was in fact MORE real than ordinary reality! As it says in the Treatise on Resurrection, "Do not suppose that the resurrection is an illusion. It is not an illusion; rather it is something real. Instead, one ought to maintain that the world is an illusion, rather than resurrection" (Treatise on Resurrection 48: 12-17).

They believed that the experience expressed through the myth was real and that through visionary experiences (gnosis) and ritual one could experience the events it described. Thus the "myth" is not merely a teaching story. It is a metaphorical description of the experience of redemption."

What's wrong with orthodox Christianity?

The Pleroma of the Gnostics is equivalent to the Agnisoma Mandala of the Vedic Aryan Religion.

Gospel of Thomas says, "The kingdom of heaven is spread out upon the earth, but men don't see it."

Its true that men don't see that the Mediterranean Religions of the Near East and the Eastern Religions of the far east were able to access the same ultimate reality and describing the same ultimate reality. Only unwise men see the differences between religions and quarrel with each other killing each other without seeing the common esoteric knowledge hidden in Hinduism and Christianity.

We must, therefore, distinguish the qualities of the pleroma. The qualities are pairs of opposites, such as— 

The Effective and the Ineffective.

Fullness and Emptiness.

Living and Dead.

Difference and Sameness.

Light and Darkness.

The Hot and the Cold.

Force and Matter.

Time and Space.

Good and Evil.

Beauty and Ugliness.

The One and the Many. etc. 

The pairs of opposites are qualities of the pleroma which are not, because each balanceth each. As we are the pleroma itself, we also have all these qualities in us. Because the very ground of our nature is distinctiveness, therefore we have these qualities in the name and sign of distinctiveness, which meaneth— 

1. These qualities are distinct and separate in us one from the other; therefore they are not balanced and void, but are effective. Thus are we the victims of the pairs of opposites. The pleroma is rent in us. 

2. The qualities belong to the pleroma, and only in the name and sign of distinctiveness can and must we possess or live them. We must distinguish ourselves from qualities. In the pleroma they are balanced and void; in us not. Being distinguished from them delivereth us. 

- Seven Sermons to the Dead, the Summary of the Red Book, Carl Jung

This union or oneness of two seemingly mutually opposite qualities is the root (or source) of all birth and this exists everywhere and in everything. 

- Devudu Narasimha Shastry, the Summary of MahaBrahmana. 

Does the Universe only exists when we're looking at it?

Many believe that the Big Bang theory and the discovery of God particle have confirmed creation out of nothing. But that's not how the story ends.

"To track down a theory of everything, we might have to accept that the universe only exists when we're looking at it" - Michael Brooks, New Scientist.

This is about what science is and how it should be taught. We need to abandon the notion of an objective reality.

"So does the universe exist independently of measurements? That is a question we will have to face. May be it is time to revisit Einstein’s lost quest, if we are serious about uncovering the basic laws of the universe; the money spent on particle smashers such as the Large Hadron Collider certainly suggests we are. Perhaps we need to move quantum entanglement and the nature of reality to the centre of the quest to find a theory of everything. What was once a quirky side show may yet prove to be the main event."

The answer to the question "where do we come from?" not only lies on particle smashers but also on quantum entanglement and the nature of reality and drastically changes our view on science. Science is not a description of an objective world of things independent of human minds instead it is just a set of predictive rules to predict the possible values that we can assign to a physical system and it cannot in any way claim anything on the nature of the physical objects itself.

Are particles even things? An extreme view of the plasticity of electrons and other particles is expressed in this famous quote of Heisenberg: “The invisible elementary particle of modern physics does not have the property of occupying space any more than it has properties like color or solidity. Fundamentally, it is not a material structure in space and time but only a symbol that allows the laws of nature to be expressed in especially simple form.”  

Are you satisfied with viewing science as a set of predictive rules or do you prefer to see science as a description of an objective world of things—in the case of particle physics, tiny, scaled-down things? What problems are associated with each point of view? 

- Modern Physics - Serway, Moses and Moyer.

This is what should be taught and there are serious problems or you'll get into lot of troubles if you view science as a description of an objective world of things, physicists don't have an objective account of reality. It is the business of science to explain an objective world as it is independent of a human mind but physicists just don't have it and other branches of philosophy which can give an objective account of reality should be considered very seriously.

This lecture by David Mermin sums it up quite nicely.

Now you replace those Red and Blue color properties with the property of an object called the spin, say spin up and spin down and those A, B and C with the X, Y, Z spin components of an object then as Mermin shows these properties cannot exist in prior to the measurements and the observed correlations are infact instantaneous. Its not that one physicist was right or the other one was wrong but instead their intellectual arguments and facts established from experiments have concluded that we need to abandon the notion of an objective reality. Einsteinian realism or the commonsense view of the world is simply unattainable.

As Bohr says "There is essentially the question of an influence on the very conditions that define the possible types of prediction regarding the future behaviour of the system". According to Bohr the polarisation of a photon is an idealistic concept extrapolated from the results of our observations and no greater reality should be attributed to it. There is no element of physical reality corresponding to a physical quantity and Einsteinian objective world or his mathematical realism is just isn't out there. What ever is out there science cannot know what it is.

As Bernard D'Espagnat writes in his paper 'Reality and Physicists' pleading the physics community that there should be a philosophy with in science guiding the debates of physicists and says,

"Unless we discard altogether the very idea of reality that is independent of our knowledge, we have to accept that such a reality cannot be identified with the ensemble of phenomena. This in turn means that we cannot escape what I claim is the fundamental distinction between reality in itself or as such - reality independent of the human minds - and the ensemble of phenomena - or empirical reality. As we shall see, this distinction is not for the use of philosophers alone. Scientists seeking to understand in depth the nature of certain debates internal to the scientific community will also find it useful."

Bernard d'espagnat nicely puts it this way that "what we call empirical reality is only a state of mind".

"We have always had a great deal of difficulty

understanding the world view

that quantum mechanics represents. 

At least I do,

because I’m an old enough man

that I havent’ got to the point

that this stuff is obvious to me. 

Okay, I still get nervous with it…. 

You know how it always is,

every new idea,

it takes a generation or two

until it becomes obvious

that there’s no real problem. 

I cannot define the real problem, 

therefore I suspect there’s no real problem,

but I’m not sure

there’s no real problem." 

- R.P.Feynman, Int. J. Theor. Phys. 21, 471 (1982)

Scientists are simply quite hesitant to state the obvious the universe is inevitably anthropocentric. Only God can give an objective account of reality.

The conflicting worldviews of a theist and a non-theist

The allegory of cave from Plato and Socrates clearly depicts the funny battle that is going on between the religious people and the non-theists.

Here is a small dialectic of my thoughts.

Atheist: You're broken, you use faith to accept something as valid which is inconsistent.

Theist: You're the one who is in ignorance, you're like those prisoners in the cave who ridicule and make a mockery of those prisoners who were set free and who have achieved enlightenment and had seen the light.

---

Athiest: You don't question the existence of god and just accept it on blind faith.

Theist: You don't question the experience from your senses and you just accept it as real. For me anything or anyone outside of it is god.

---

Atheist: Religion has not contributed anything to the progress of humanity and you're self deluded and the idea of god is an infectious meme which needs to be minimized.

Theist: The natural world is ever changing, there is no point in investing our time in something which will eventually turn into a star dust. The world of forms is eternal and unchanging and truly worthy of knowing. You're the one who is deluded.

---

Atheist: We need to minimize the impact of religion and our political leaders should make rational decisions which affects all our lives in turn.

Theist: No, the world should be run by philosopher-kings who can give the right justice based on their knowledge in lofty things.

---

Atheist: We have explanations from pyschology as to why you hold such childish beliefs.

Theist: We have theistic explanations as to why some people don't believe in God.

---

Plato - Wikipedia

Carl Sagan said of Plato: "Science and mathematics were to be removed from the hands of the merchants and the artisans. This tendency found its most effective advocate in a follower of Pythagoras named Plato." and: "He (Plato) believed that ideas were far more real than the natural world. He advised the astronomers not to waste their time observing the stars and planets. It was better, he believed, just to think about them. Plato expressed hostility to observation and experiment. He taught contempt for the real world and disdain for the practical application of scientific knowledge. Plato's followers succeeded in extinguishing the light of science and experiment that had been kindled by Democritus and the other Ionians."^[86]

I am just too ignorant of many things to call anyone broken.          

Mithras Liturgy - Mithraism

According to Max Muller, the proto Indo-Iranian religion started off as sun worship and later branched into independent religions of the Persian god of Mithra and the Vedic god of Mitra. Mithraism was one of the most popular religions of the roman imperialism along side Christianity and the origin of Mithraism in Rome is still under dispute (See - Mithraic Mysteries and Mithraism and Christianity ).

What is Mithras Liturgy?

The Papyrus 

The text is a segment of the "Great Magical Papyrus of Paris", sandwiched between two sections of Homeric quotations. The Papyrus was acquired by the Bibliothèque Nationale in 1857. It most likely originally came from Thebes in Egypt. It can be dated on paleographical grounds to early fourth century, but the text presupposes a much longer process of development. The origin is most likely around 100-150, then it was used in a ritual context in an Egyptian Mithras Cult from 150-200. This is followed by a period of adaptation and development by magicians from 200-300. As it is now "the text is thoroughly Hellenistic-Egyptian without any traces of Christian, Christian-Gnostic, or Neo-Platonic influences, although traditions of Middle Stoicism are apparent, as is a certain closeness to Hermeticism"(9). The author was most likely an expert on magical materials and had expertise as a literary scholar and writer. He has examined several versions of the text and offers learned comments on it.

A review of Hans Dieter Betz, The "Mithras Liturgy". Text, translation and commentary.

It was first coined as Mithras Liturgy by the german scholar Albrecht Dieterich. The Germans were always interested in these things and they are still interested in it even to this date. It was later translated into english by Hans Dieter Betz who also a german scholar. Here is an abstract pdf review of his book.  Hans Dieter Betz PDF.

Marvin Meyer - About Marvin Meyer who was interviewed in various TV channels like the National Geographic for the documentary of Gospel of Judas is a strong proponent of this view.

Marvin Meyer is certain that the text has connections to Mithraism and believes that it "contributes a great deal to the study of magic, miracle, and ritual in religions in antiquity and late antiquity, including Christianity, and the stories of miracles attributed to Jesus and others may profitably be studied with texts like the Mithras Liturgy at hand."

Marvin Meyer argues that "early Christianity ... in general, resembles Mithraism in a number of respects – enough to make Christian apologists scramble to invent creative theological explanations to account for the similarities".

So there is evidence that these varieties of Mithraism which were being practiced in Egypt and in the Greco-Roman religions had its roots in the orthodox Mithraism of the Iranians and of the Aryans of the far east.

Marvin Meyer has translated the text. Marvin Meyer's original Translation of Mithras Liturgy

As you can see the text of Mithras Liturgy appears from no where in between a section of Greek homeric writings about Zeus. The egyptian scholar seems to have had an habit of collecting religious rituals and clearly mentions about Helios-Mithras-Aion, the god to whom the text and the ritual is addressed to.

The ritual is about achieving immortality by ascension of the soul into different realms, an epiphany which is a common feature in orthodox Mithraism where Mithras appear to help the initiate to guide him into a safe passage to the highest pleroma of the supreme God and these similar experiences have been documented by the later gnostic traditions where the term Aeons appear instead of Mithras to guide them into a safe passage upto the pleroma of God. This is a common feature to be seen in the orthodox Mitraism of the Vedic period and is still very much alive up until this age.

Similar experiences of the ascent to heaven is claimed by Paul (Corinthians). Ascent to heaven by the Gnostic Paul

The text's immediate context is a magical handbook, but it "stands out like an intruder from another world" with no parallel in other magical papyri. The wider context is Hellenistic mystery cults. Not much Egyptian religion appears and there is no evidence of Neo-platonic influence. The philosophy, being Stoic, could indicate an origin in the milieu prior to Neo-platonism. The ritual of rebirth is based in processes of generation and regeneration. The cosmology is Greek in origin, not Egyptian. It seems to reflect a nascent Hermeticism of the first or second century, but it has not developed into Gnosticism.

Similar parallels can be seen in the works of a scholar from Bangalore named Devudu Narasimha Shastry(1920-1970's) who was well versed in these mystery religions and clearly describes the ascent of an initiate into higher realms. What is more interesting is that he too lived his life based on stoic principles and that confirms the stoic philosophy inherent in all varities of Mithraic religions.

The scholar seemed to have behaved with a calm mind even after hearing the news of his son's death which came through a letter while he was away with his wife for a religious program and on that particular day he seemed to have given the most outstanding speech of his life and later when his wife came to know about this she had fell down unconscious and the scholar didn't even attended his son's funeral.

An example of extreme stoicism in these traditions

The stoic philosophy is quite inherent in these religions.

Now these things do deserve explanations and challenges our accepted worldviews and these things are bothering me from quite some time. The ritual might look magical to us but to those who have understood its deeper meaning knows the rational importance of such rituals. A collaborative work is needed to reconstruct the practical knowledge of such rituals and I don't even know where to begin searching for it. These claims do suggest that a God hypothesis is an equally competing hypothesis to explain our origins in the cosmos, its not the job of scientists to figure out this, this is a completely different numinous world and has nothing do with science, its the job of theologians and theists and they need to scratch their heads. There is an equal possibility that religion might provide us with true immortality. There is lots of evidence for god and one can see how silly it is for one to demand empirical evidence for god when the very realm of god is non-empirical.

We have already lost a lot of knowledge and by suppressing such thinking we will lose it forever and New Atheists and people who directly attack faith have to address such things if they ever want to succeed in their campaign of intolerance towards religions.

How to worship the Sun God?

This is one of the ways to worship the sun god which is easier and effective for the modern people who go through hectic working hours and for those who don't have time to sit and do meditation for long hours. Meditation never worked for me, you cannot do meditation and gain something in a busy area like New York, Tokyo or any other capital cities and hence people travel to Himalayas to lose all contacts from the people around them to find a lonely and a silent place for personal investigation.

There is no need to travel anywhere to know god giving up your loved one's, god is personal and he will reveal himself to you where ever you are if you're preparing yourself to see him. Many people in the west and across the world perform yoga just for the sake of keeping their body fit and healthy but they don't realize that these are the same methods which was used by the sages of ancient traditions to have revelations about god, they were gnostic theists, they believed that the absolute truth or god can be known.

One has to pray the following verse in the begining of the method.

hiranmayena patrena satyasyapihitam mukham
tat tvam pushannya apavrino satya-dharmaya drishtaye

Isha Upanishad, Verse 15 from the scripture

It means that the truth is hidden behind God's pleroma of light rays and those light rays are preventing us from seeing him clearly and the ultimate truth, so we should plead him to remove those impeding light rays and show us the path of righteousness

SURYANAMASKAR

* Om Hraam Mitraya Namaha (Mitra - friend)

1. Stand facing the Sun with palms folded and both the thumbs touching the chest.

Breathing: Inhale while raising the hands and exhale as hands are brought down to chest level.

* Om Hreem Ravaye Namaha (Ravi - radiance)

2. Raise hands upward, with feet firmly on the ground, bend backwards, stretch arms fully.

Breathing: Inhale

* Om Hruum Suryaya Namaha (Surya dispeller of darkness)

3. Slowly bend forward, hands touching the earth with respect, head touching the knees.

Breathing: Exhale.

* Om Hraim Bhanave Namaha (Bhanu Shining with luster)

4. Set both hands with the palms down firmly on the ground, pull the left leg backward, raise the head looking at the Sun, full weight resting on the two palm and ten fingers.

Breathing: Inhale

* Om Hroum Khagaya Namaha (Khaga all pervading)

5. Bring right leg back close to left leg, keeping hands and legs straight, bend the body at the hip forming an arch, just like a mountain, known as 'parvathasan or mountain pose'.

Breathing: Exhale

* Om Hraha Pooshne Namaha (Pushan mystic fire which gives)

6. Stretch yourself fully on the ground in the Saashtanga Namaskar pose (all eight 'anga' or parts of the body on the ground head, thigh, eyes (sight), mind, word, feet, hands and ears (hearing)). In reality, feet, knees, thighs, chest, forehead touch the ground with the hands stretched out and in folded position, with your mind and thoughts on the full namaskar, then slowly turn the head to the sides first to left and then to right so that each ear touches the ground.

                                                        Breathing: Inhale first and then Exhale fully.

* Om Hraam Hiranyagarbhaya Namaha (hiranyagarbha golden colored)

7. Slowly raise the head, bend backward as much as possible, hands straight, in the cobra pose.

Breathing: Inhale

* Om Hreem Marichaye Namaha (Marichi Ray of light)

8. Parvathasan same as Step 5.

Breathing: Exhale

* Om Hruum Adityaya Namaha (Aditya Sun, aspect of Vishnu, Son of Aditi.)

9. Same as Step 4 with the difference that the right leg is brought forward.

Breathing: Inhale

* Om Hraim Savitre Namaha (Savitru Light of enlightenment.)

10. Same as Step 3

Breathing: Exhale

* Om Hroum Arkaya Namaha (Arkah a ray of light, a flash of lightning, Sun)

11. Same as Step 2

 Breathing: Inhale

* Om Hraha Bhaskaraya Namaha (Bhaskara Shining Light)

12. Same as Step 1

 Breathing: Exhale, Inhale and Exhale.













( Caution: This exercise has to be performed under the guidance of a master I am not responsible for any side effects on your body if you do not do it correctly and approach it with egoistic mind and the verses given in asterisk should be silently uttered in mind while one is performing the exercise and this has to be performed two times in a day morning and evening)

Are we living in an Immersive Virtual Reality?

1. Virtual reality applications can be of two types. In non-immersive virtual reality such simulations are used to simulate destroyed cities or other things like Titanic etc where as in Immersive virtual reality individuals see the world through the eyes of a virtual body which exists in a virtual reality environment. See Immersion (virtual reality)

   
   

   
   

   With the kind of advancements that is taking place in developing new synthesizing haptic, visual and auditory physical models achieving realism which is indistinguishable from the actual reality we are not far away from having our own virtual bodies in cyberspace.

   Natural Interactive Walking Project- video clips.

   
   

   While such advancements are inevitable the question arises are we living in an Immersive virtual reality itself?

   
   

   Simulated Reality - Wikipedia

   
   

   Simulation Hypothesis - New Scientist

   
   

   Simulation Hypothesis - Wikipedia

   
   

   
   

   The same hypothesis can be used as a God hypothesis since there are many religions who teach that we are living in an virtual reality.

   
   

   I think such a hypothesis is outside of science.

What we call reality is only a state of mind?

Bernard d'Espagnat a French theoretical physicist best known for his work on the nature of reality wrote a paper titled The Quantum Theory and Reality according to the paper: 

"The doctrine that the world is made up of objects whose existence is independent of human consciousness turns out to be in conflict with quantum mechanics and with facts established by experiment." 

The observations are in agreement with quantum predictions but there are some correlations in nature and we need to explain why and how such correlations arise in nature. More over these correlations have violated Bell's inequality and there by in violation of local realistic theories. So normally in Science if we find some unusual observed phenomena and confirm such a phenomena by repeated experiments we deduce that something might be wrong with our assumptions and we go back to the drawing room to discuss which assumptions are more likely to turned out to be false.

Templeton Reports

Bernard d'Espagnat, a French theoretical physicist, a winner of Templeton prize for his works in Quantum Physics wrote an article called the "Quantum theory and Reality" where he addresses these issues and his arguments are very much in line or in tone with my arguments. I didn't knew about his article, I read it just few days back.

Here is his excellent article on Scientfic American. Please care to read and hear it from himself and in particular page 20 where he discusses about the positivism approach of science.

Scientific American Paper by Bernard d'Espagnat

Anyone with a few knowledge of the scientific method and quantum physics or a layman can easily see that there is something seriously wrong with the positivist approach of science.

As Bernard says that the violation of Bell's Inequality implies that one of the three basic assumptions of science must be wrong.

1. The Three premises of Scientific Realism.

2. The free use of Induction.

3. Einstein separability.

Stanford encyclopedia - Scientific Realism

Scientific Realism is the belief that the objects described by physics exist independently of the mind of the Observer or exists in the external physical world. The accepted consensus by the scientific community is to reject realism and retreat towards positivism and hence physicists do not assert that the external physical world do not exist instead they say that any attempt to understand the physical nature of the quantum system must be rejected as meaningless since it is highly metaphysical.

According to this positivist approach science cannot give an objective account of reality and the aim of science is just to make predictions about the possible values of the quantum system and we shouldn't demand an explanation as to why and how such a correlation arises in nature. If science has to explain how entanglement works then it is inevitable that it has to penetrate into the objective account of the quantum system but the positivist approach of science cannot penetrate into such a system.

This is not a problem of nature this is more of a problem of the scientific method and its basic assumptions.

Therefore I am asserting that the assumption of Scientific realism and its epistemology is false, physical objects don't exist in the outside world.

In an article in the Guardian titled Quantum weirdness: What we call 'reality' is just a state of mind .

d'Espagnat wrote that:

"What quantum mechanics tells us, I believe, is surprising to say the least. It tells us that the basic components of objects – the particles, electrons, quarks etc. – cannot be thought of as "self-existent". He further writes that his research in quantum physics has lead him to conclude that an "ultimate reality" exists, which is not embedded in space or time."

Guardian - Quantum Entanglement by Bernard d'Espagnat

The Good news is that we already have methods in other eastern schools of philosophical thought which can investigate that ultimate reality which is not embedded in space and time and these methods help us to perceive nature in a different state of mind, this opens up new observation and new ways of epistemology and this gives us an objective account of reality. We can know the noumenon, the things in itself and not as they appear to us.

Who is our True God and What is our True Religion?

Valentinian theology

Brief Summary of their teachings.

Valentinus- A Gnostic for All Seasons.

The analysis of Isha Upanishads- Aurobindo.

'V' refers to Valentinians and 'B' refers to Brahmans.

V.

The Godhead manifests itself through a process of self-unfolding in the subsequent multiplicity of being while maintaining its unity. He is the unknown true God or the Father.

B.

"The Purusha there and there, He am I." It is He who has become all things and beings. The Inhabitant of all forms. The Lord, the Purusha who both contains and inhabits the universe. He is called as Isha or Savitru.

V.

Valentinians believed that God is androgynous and frequently depicted him as a male-female dyad. This is related to the notion that God provides the universe with both form and substance. The feminine aspect of the deity is called Silence, Grace and Thought. She is also the active creative Thought that makes all subsequent states of being (or "Aeons") substantial. The masculine aspect of God is Depth, also called Ineffable and First Father.He is essentially passive, yet when moved to action by his feminine Thought, he gives the universe form.

B.

Samkhya recognizes two ultimate entities, Prakriti and Purusha. While the Prakriti is a single entity, the Samkhya admits a plurality of the Purushas in this world.

Samkhya Philosophy - Nature of Duality - Wikipedia

The male aspect is the Purusha and the female aspect is the Prakriti. It shouldn't be taken literally as male and female, it only means they are forms and substance.

V.

The origin of the universe is described as a process of emanation from the Godhead. The male and female aspects of the Father, acting in conjunction, manifested themselves in the Son. The Son is also often depicted by Valentinians as a male-female dyad. The Son manifests himself in twenty-six spiritual entities or Aeons arranged into male-female pairs. The arrangement and names of the Aeons will not be discussed here. They represent the energies immanent within Son and were seen as part of his personality. Together they constitute the Fullness (pleroma) of the Godhead.

B.

Even in Samkhya it is stated that Prakriti and Purusha transformed into twenty four constituents.

Samkhya Philosophy - The twenty six constituents - Wikiepdia

The Godhead of the Vedas can be worshiped in two ways i.e the Samshti swaroopa and vishruta swaroopa. In vishruta swaroopa they worship his individual sons (or Aeons) or part of his divine luster. In samashti swaroopa they worship his full pleroma or the complete fullness of Godhead including all his sons.

V.

Sophia sows the spiritual seed in all who hear the message. In some people the seed "falls on the path" and they do not respond at all. Such people are carnal by nature. In others the seed is choked by the thorns which are worldly concerns. They are hesitant and are unable to go beyond the level of rational explanations. Such people are dominated by their rational element or soul. In others, the seed was planted "in good earth" and they bear spiritual fruit. Such people are Gnostic or spiritual Christians.

B.

Even here they say that the seed to become "Sarvajnya" exists in all and everyone can achieve omniscience.

V.

Such a person is "in the world but not of it." They have already attained a spiritual existence such that, for them, the world has become the Fullness.

B.

Such persons are jivanmuktas, they are completely free and they are no longer bound to the forces of prakriti, they can leave their body whenever they want or they can live here for 100 years if it is required or even can reborn again by entering into a mother's womb without any fear of losing their spiritual knowledge once again.

V.

They believed that it was possible to lead a sinless existence through perfect knowledge (gnosis) of God's will. Sin was seen as an expression of ignorance. As it says in the Gospel of Philip, "The one who has knowledge is a free person. But the free person does not sin, for the one who sins is a slave of sin ".

B.

Ditto, same here. Only perfect knowledge & sympathy can give perfect help and these are impossible without oneness. He is equal in soul to honor & dishonor, respect & insult, because both come from himself to himself & not from another. Success & failure are equal to him, since he knows that both are equally necessary for the fulfillment of the divine intention. He will no more quarrel with them than with the cold of winter or the breath of the storm-blast. Neither will events bring to him grief or disappointment, fear or disgust with things, because he follows that divine will & purpose in himself & in others. He shrinks from no actions which the divine purpose demands or the divine impulse commands. He has no wish to kill, but he will not shrink from slaying when it is demanded.To men who are not free a conventional morality is an absolute necessity, for there must be a fixed standard to which they can appeal.

V.

Valentinians never rejected marriage and raising children. According to the Alexandrian teacher Theodotus, marriage was necessary so that those with the spiritual seed might be born.

B.

Same here. All this is for habitation by the Lord, whatsoever is individual universe of movement in the universal motion. By that renounced thou shouldst enjoy; lust not after any man's possession.

Doing verily works in this world one should wish to live a hundred years. Thus it is in thee and not otherwise than this; action cleaves not to a man.(This is how the Isha upanishad starts by stating the above.)

---

They both have a different transpersonal psychology and they both don't believe in scientific realism and assert that the material world is only a state of mind.

The Gnostics took most of their ideas from the Neoplatonists and Plato. Neoplatonism and Gnosticism

Valentinian Monism

It is worth noting that Valentinianism shows an astonishing degree of similarity to another monistic system, the Advaita Vedanta school of Indian philosophy. In Advaita, the material world is an illusion (maya) attributed to ignorance (avidya) of the true reality. Through knowledge (jnana) of the ultimate reality (brahman), the world of multiplicity vanishes. True redemption (moksha) is the knowledge of one's true nature.

This raises the intriguing possibility of some kind of connection between the two. There was some awareness of Indian thought in the ancient Roman world. However, at the time of Valentinus, there was no systematic statement of Advaita thought. It is possible that Valentinus came into contact with some form of early Advaita Vedanta teaching. Advaita philosophy as it now stands was given its definitive form by Shankara in the 6th or 7th century AD. There also exists the possibility that he was influenced by Valentinian thought. Valentinians are known to have been active in the Middle East as late as the seventh century. It is possible that Valentinian missionaries or refugees may have made their way to India and come into contact with Shankara or his immediate predecessors. However, any connection between the two remains purely hypothetical. 

If mythology is strictly introduced and its importance is taken seriously then we cannot make a reconciliation between these two monistic systems and the Clement of Alexandria was right in distinguishing and separating Gnosticism from Brahmans and Sharamanas without making any connection it to Gnosticism.

But the similarities and commonalities are so compelling that it seems that in terms of transpersonal psychology and of the anthropomorphic Gods they are talking about the same thing.

It is inaccurate to think that the view espoused by Valentinians is similar to the view of Advaita by Shankara infact the view of the Valentinians go back to the view of the world as it existed when the Isha Upanishad was revealed and formulated, its the most ancient view of the world. Not a view which was formulated by Shankara in th 7th century, this view predates way before him.

What is interesting is that the secret teachings of Jesus are similar to the ancient monistic systems by which we can speculatively say that there exists a true supreme Godhead with his own numinous world.

Buddhism, Jainism, sikhism are divergent forms of this ancient monistic system and they all can be reduced into it. Now it appears that even the Judeo-Christian-Islamic religions of the middle east can be reduced to this monistic religion.

The other deities like Ahura Mazda of Zoroastrianism, Egyptian Gods, and other Gods can be thought of as Gods of the other worlds who might not be aware of their origins from the supreme true Godhead due to ignorance.

This is purely hypothetical and related to comparative religion and leads to paganism.