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Archive for the ‘Easter’ Category

The Transcendence of Resurrection

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THE WAY I SEE IT, Jesus was never not in complete and utter control of his physical body throughout the ordeal of His trial and conviction, the mockery of being crowned with thorns, spit upon and flogged, the carrying of his cross through the streets of Jerusalem and up to the hill of Golgotha, even through the crucifixion and apparent death of His physical body. The silver cord of connection with his body was never loosed or severed. In the end He simply transcended his physical body and rose in consciousness to what spiritual author Joseph Chilton Pearce describes as the “causal body”— with which He may even have had an NDE (Near Death Experience). At least this is the way I see it.

This was not unique to Jesus, as we each have a causal body, only it’s not so much a “body” as an essence of spirit. That spirit is who we are, and it is not a separate entity from God the Creator, any more than the Son of God was separate from His Heavenly Father. As He truly proclaimed in John10:30: “I and my Father are one.” So is it with each and every incarnate Being. To come to a conscious awareness and actual experience of that oneness with our Creator is the challenge of our earthly journey.

At the age of eighty-four I’ve become peculiarly and intensely interested in transcendence. I wasn’t aware of this interest until I inadvertently withdrew a book from off the shelf of our library and opened it to the author’s final chapters where he addresses what is now the very topic of this blog post: Jesus’s transcendent experience, otherwise called and celebrated as his “Resurrection” from the tomb — where, from all outward signs, his “dead” body was placed, wrapped in a shroud of white cloth, anointed with precious healing oils and laid to rest. What occurred after Joseph of Arimathea and a few women had laid his limp body to rest in the tomb, rolling a stone over its entrance, is a process I am compelled from within my heart to meditate upon and explore in a series of posts.

The Holy Shroud of Turin, with its scorched image of Jesus’s entire body imprinted on it, provides ample cause to contemplate what awful transmuting fire must have moved through His body to resurrect the living currents of vital energy that could lift it up to a higher vibrational level of manifestation. His resurrection was at the same time clearly a supernatural and a biological event of transcendence and transmutation.

RISE AND SHINE!

Yes, indeed, shine your light! But you first must rise! To “rise” is another matter altogether. It’s a required step toward shining. In a transcendent state, to which we all aspire, one’s light is found to have always been shining — only not outwardly — until one rises up in consciousness and identity to the level of one’s “causal” body where one’s radiance is the light of one’s world.

I can easily relate to Joseph Chilton Pearce’s perspective of “bodies within bodies”: physical, subtle and causal. From my own spiritual path the word “pneumaplasm,” coined by Lloyd A. Meeker (Uranda), serves my understanding best as descriptive of the “subtle” body. The “causal” body lives and moves independent of the physical and subtle bodies, whereas the subtle body, or pneumaplamic body, is generated out of the physical body as the causal body of spirit expresses its divine qualities with feeling, thought and action of a benevolent quality. Spiritual expression brings about the release of the transforming power of love — the only way open to human beings today as the physical and mental approaches failed miserably.

Again, my spiritual path defines the “causal body” simply as “spirit.” Spirit is divine in nature. Physical and subtle bodies are by nature human. The two are brought together when spirit incarnates and transmits its godly characteristics and benevolent qualities to the human person for expression. Patterns of design and control for the unfolding of one’s earthly journey are also established in the subtle body (pneumaplasm) for the execution of dominion over one’s world. Not domination but dominion.

The word “dominion” derives from the Latin for “lord”: dominus. Dominion is exercised by the lord incarnate whose “body” (of sorts) is causal by divine design, exercising dominion over the physical body, and by way of the body over ones world, in a benevolent, loving, non-imposing manner. Domination, to the contrary, is exercised by the human ego that has taken possession of one’s mental faculty in order to force its contriving and self-serving will upon one’s physical body and one’s world. It’s an apt model of David Hawkins’ Power VS Force –The Hidden Determinants of Human Behavior.” They’re not so hidden to one who has risen in consciousness and in identity to the level of spirit in one’s causal body — causal in the sense of creator and designer of the physical body.

“I HAVE OVERCOME THE WORLD.”

Prince of Peace

The Master Jesus spoke those words just before his passion and crucifixion on Calvary. His exact words as recorded in John 16:33 are, “I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.”  He transcended His physical body and maintained His identity with His causal body, which in his case was and is our Lord and King, the “Only Begotten Son of God.” Having complete control over His physical body via His subtle body, He did not let it die. The Only begotten Son of the Father was not sacrificed for the sins of the world, a rationalization Paul later contrived, nor for any other purpose rationalized subsequently in Christian dogma. He overcame death by not dying. He then proceeded to raise up his comatose physical body, transmute it to a higher vibration so as to fuse it with His causal body, His very Being, and return to His Father in Heaven — after spending forty days with His disciples eating and drinking with them and bestowing upon them His benediction of love and comfort. These things of spirit are beyond space and time. They are truly and literally timeless.

There is much to share along these lines revisiting Joseph Chilton Pearce’s THE BIOLOGY OF TRANSCENDENCE ~ A Blueprint of the Human Spirit — author of THE CRACK IN THE COSMIC EGG. The book is filled with quotable passages that have the ability to bring about a radical shift in perspective. His chosen character on which to shine light is Jesus himself and his passion and compassion, as the following excerpt demonstrates.

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RESCUING JESUS FROM THE CHRISTIANS

And so I say to all theologians who apologize away the resurrection and the miracles, and to the noise of literal fundamentalists who go to the opposite extreme beyond all common sense and so miss the point: It’s not that most of the reported miracles of Jesus can be found duplicated somewhere even today, in random, scattered fashion, but that they are actual examples of the human potential that we all possess. Deny them in Jesus and you surely deny them for us all. We quickly seal any cracks in our cosmic egg lest the unknown assail us, even when the unknown is an expression of our highest nature and what is known is killing us. To maintain our position of fear and victimization requires enormous expenditures of energy that could be employed otherwise.

Jesus and the intelligence of life did what they could to heal our fractured minds and hearts, and culture did what it had to do to squelch his magnificent gesture and make a religion of it, “a homeopathic remedy for his viral threat” to endure. Projected onto the mystical Christ floating in the heavens, we can dismiss the reality of Jesus and his cross and the unconflicted nature of his faith. The whole operation can be moved into the ethereal realm of marshmallow make-believe and culture will remain supreme. There, I suppose, we can at least all believe and go down together, no doubt as a good, praying congregation begging mercy from that tyrannical “moral governor of the universe” and his “only begotten son,” that equally victimized moral whip and judge of a victimized, fated species.

Or we can pick up that cross and reclaim our birthright; rescue Jesus from the Christians, bring him down from cloud nine, and find him reflected in our mirror, see him in each and every face on the street as Whitman did, find him in these the least of our brethren behind bars. We too can risk ourselves, throw ourselves to the wind as he did, drop our fearful defenses, judgments, self-justifications, shame and guilt; and embrace that life of greater gifts that he displayed, performing, as he promised, even greater works than his, and so rise and go beyond.

THE BIOLOGY OF TRANSCENDENCE by Joseph Chilton Pearce

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I like the way he speaks his truth. I’ll share more along these lines in my next post of this series. Until then, have a Happy Easter Day.

Anthony

tpal70@gmail.com

Category:

Ascension, Christianity, Crucifixion of Jesus, Death, Divine identity, Dr. Palombo's blog, Easter, Frequency Shifting, Good Friday, Healing Tones Blog, Holy Week, Jesus, Jesus's Agony, Love, Resurrection, Transcendence, Transformation, Transmutation

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“That their joy may be full.” –Jesus

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IN THIS POST I share with you one of the most touching and profound words of Uranda I’ve ever read anywhere. Words that bring me to tears of joy and of unspeakable love that rises up from the depth of my soul for this One that I am, and we all are, privileged to call Master, Son of God, LORD of Lords and King of kings — and, as George Frederick Handel called Him in his Oratorio Masterpiece, Messiah, “Wonderful, Counselor, the Mighty God, the everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace.”

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My thoughts turn to some of the words of the Master tonight: “Yet I am not alone, because the Father is with me. These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.” And we are, also, to overcome the world.

I was thinking that, in the conclusion of the activities of a blessed day such as this, we might well again give thought to the Master’s Prayer at the time of the conclusion of His Ministry. The conclusion of His Ministry was peculiarly the point where our Ministry begins. The time that has elapsed since has no meaning in that. He had been outlining the Principles of the One Vine and of the means by which we might let the Works of the Father manifest.

“Verily, verily, I say unto you, Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my name, he will give it you. Hitherto have ye asked nothing in my name: ask, and ye shall receive, that your joy may be full… For the Father himself loveth you, because ye have loved me, and have believed that I came out from God. I came forth from the Father, and am come into the world: again, I leave the world, and go to the Father.”

He had also outlined the Principles with respect to the work of the Comforter or Spirit of Truth. He had pointed the Way to Life. It remained for those who should follow after to prove that Life, to experience it according to His Word. And then, in the conclusion of that Ministry, He gave a prayer—a prayer that is our beginning point.

“Father, the hour is come; glorify thy Son, that thy Son also may glorify thee”. He was, of course, the manifestation of the Son of God, but He was returning to the Father and He had outlined the Plan by means of which the Son, the only begotten Son of God, should continue on earth. The interval of time that has elapsed before that Plan began to be of effect should be, in our consideration, forgotten, as it were, that it may be meaningless. The trials and the tribulations, the concepts, the efforts and the failures of that interval must not be allowed to have meaning in relationship to our function. From the standpoint of Reality, those things do not have meaning. The connecting thread, the unifying Current, is not less strong because of the passage of that time. Our attitude and our feeling and our function should be as if we had heard these words for the first time a few days ago, as if only a month ago He had stood with us upon the face of the earth, as if it were but yesterday that the vibrant sound of His Voice fell on our ears, as if we, in this flesh, had seen Him come forth Victoriously from the tomb, as if we had, in person, shared His final words of admonition and instruction, as if we had known that hour when He ascended to return no more until what He had begun should have been finished in the hearts and lives of men.

The human mind is so inclined to feel the distance of the intervening years, so that there is a loss in a consciousness of personal contact. The Son is the One Christ Body on earth, then and now. The meaning of the Word as He spoke it with respect to His own manifestation is not to be construed as the only meaning, for He spoke also of that Body that is—“Father, the hour is come”. His was the hour of departing; ours is the hour of beginning, of moving forward in fulfilment. The Father glorified the Son then. He is just as capable of glorifying the Son now. “The hour is come. Glorify thy Son”. Why? “That thy Son also may glorify thee”. The beginning and the end, or the end and the beginning, are the same.

He was here on earth. It seems but yesterday we heard Him speak. It seems but the passage of a moment since His prayer first ascended as sweet incense unto God. Time—these things transcend all time. It was but yesterday He gave the Promise. Today we let that Promise be fulfilled. We remember how our hearts were stirred at the sound of His Voice, and the passage of an hour or a day cannot quiet that stirring or end that surge of consciousness of the Power of God. It is now, in this hour, that the Spirit of His Word finds fulfilment in our hearts. It is now, in this hour, that we let His Promise be fulfilled. The excitements and the questionings, the fears and the doubts, have been stilled. We have ceased trying to make it be so, for in the vibrant Power of His Love we are not separate or apart and we know that the Father Himself loveth us because we have loved Him, because we do love Him Who has walked the earth before us, Who has revealed the Way, the Truth and the Life.

“The hour is come” for us to let the Father glorify His Son, that the Son may glorify the Father. We trembled, and were sad, that the hour had come when He should leave us, but we did not let such things prevent fulfilment of His Word lest what He did should be in vain. The hour of His going was the hour of our beginning, and it is so still, for though He went He has not departed, for His Spirit lingers in our hearts and His Word is as powerful as when it first fell from His lips, Words burned in letters of Fire upon our hearts, memorable occasions that could never pass from mind. Yesterday His hour came—today is our hour of fulfilment in beginning.

“Father, the hour is come; glorify thy Son, that thy Son also may glorify thee: As thou hast given him power over all flesh, that he should give eternal life to as many as thou hast given him. And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.”

“And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God”, and the Christ, the only begotten Son—then Jesus—now the One Christ Body Whom Thou hast sent. “I have glorified thee on the earth: I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do”. How truly is that our point of beginning. How seldom on this earth has the word reverberated in truth—“I have finished the work”. We have seen in the world the feeble attempts at doing some bit of work—human beings, like children, building castles in the sand to admire in one moment and to destroy in the next, and then to delude themselves into feeling that they had accomplished something. And how they brag about the mansions they builded in the sand; but we consider other mansions, Mansions in the Father’s House.

“I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do”—and in season the Son shall again speak these words, but before those words may be truly spoken once more, there must truly be the beginning, the opening up, that comes through the surging Power of His Spirit as we hear again, in memory, His Word, “And now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory which I had with thee before the world was. I have manifested thy name unto the men which thou gavest me out of the world: thine they were, and thou gavest them me; and they have kept thy word.” That was but yesterday, surely. It is but a dream that some did not keep His Word. There must now be fulfilment which gives meaning to His faith when He spoke that Word, that when these words sound in memory, and stir within our hearts, they shall not be as a mockery, a symbol of the faith of the Son of God that found no answering heart on earth, but a symbol of the faith of the Son of God that finds fulfilment here and now in His Son on earth.

“And they have kept thy word. Now they have known that all things whatsoever thou hast given me are of thee. For I have given unto them the words which thou gavest me; and they have received them, and have known surely that I came out from thee, and they have believed that thou didst send me. I pray for them: I pray not for the world, but for them which thou hast given me; for they are thine. And all mine are thine, and thine are mine; and I am glorified in them.” Yes, the intervening time when these words remained unfulfilled is surely but a dream. Twas only yesterday He spoke, and today His Word finds fulfilment. Today we prove His faith was not in vain.

“And all mine are thine, and thine are mine; and I am glorified in them. And now I am no more in the world, but these are in the world, and I come to thee. Holy Father, keep through thine own name those whom thou hast given me, that they may be one, as we are. While I was with them in the world, I kept them in thy name: those that thou gavest me I have kept, and none of them is lost, but the son of perdition; that the scripture might be fulfilled. And now come I to thee; and these things I speak in the world, that they might have my joy fulfilled in themselves.” What was His joy? It was the joy of Oneness with the Father. It was the joy of Being the Son on earth. That is the joy that must be fulfilled in us, the joy of Oneness with the Father, the joy of Being the Son.

“And these things I speak in the world, that they might have my joy fulfilled in themselves. I have given them thy word; and the world hath hated them, because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. I pray not that thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that thou shouldest keep them from the evil. They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth. As thou hast sent me into the world, even so have I also sent them into the world.” That is His Word. His Word is true, and we let it be so in us in this hour, and forevermore, for as the Father sent Him into the world, even so has He sent us into the world.

“And for their sakes I sanctify myself, that they also might be sanctified through the truth. Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on me through their word; That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that thou hast sent me. And the glory which thou gavest me I have given  them”—“And the glory which thou gavest me I have given them”. It is glory to be the Son on earth. “And the glory which thou gavest me I have given them; that they may be one, even as we are one: I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one; and that the world may know that thou hast sent me, and hast loved them, as thou hast loved me. Father, I will that they also, whom thou hast given me, be with me where I am”—not where I shall be, where I am.He, the Son of God, stood on earth in the hour of fulfilment. He had finished the work. That was where He was in the hour of fulfilment. And He said, “Father, I will that they also, whom thou hast given me, be with me where I am”—and so it is His Will that we should stand in that Oneness of the Son in the hour of fulfilment. “That they may behold my glory. Which thou hast given me: for thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world. O righteous Father, the world hath not known thee: but I have known thee, and these have known that thou hast sent me. And I have declared unto them thy name, and will declare it: that the love wherewith thou hast loved me may be in them, and I in them.”

Beloved LORD, we thank Thee that it is so, and we thank Thee for the Holy Privilege of sharing Thy Fulfilment on earth. In the Christ. Aum-en.

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Category:

Crucifixion of Jesus, Dr. Palombo's blog, Easter, Holy Week

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Rise and Shine

Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away. For, lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone; the flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land. —Song of Solomon

On this Easter morning I invite you to share Uranda’s Easter message:

I Have Finished the Work

I Come To Thee

Uranda, April 8, 1950

It is a joy unspeakable and full of glory to see you, according to your responses and according to the degrees of your letting go, coming under the Law of the Kingdom, that I may receive you Home in the Kingdom in the Name of my LORD. That self which has been crucified in you and which has been placed in the tomb shall surely, according to the faithfulness of your Polarity, come forth in the Resurrection and the Life, not the old self that it was, for the former things are passing away, and in the Name of my LORD and KING all things are being made new.

You are not now what you were, nor are you yet that which you shall be, for entering into the Kingdom you shall move from Glory unto Glory in the outworking of the cycles of Being which are ordained by the Creator; and you begin to know that the Creator is not far away but is at hand in the Kingdom that is at hand, and you are privileged to share in the wonder of His Creative Work whereby all things are made new. . . .

You can read the rest of Uranda’s Easter message in full by clicking on the link below.

 May your Easter morning and day be filled with joy and uplifting gratitude for the New Day. Until my next post,

Be love . . . be loved

Anthony

tpal70@gmail.com

Credits: Great Cosmic Story, David Barnes editor: HTTPS://GREATCOSMICSTORY.BLOGSPOT.COM/2023/04/I-HAVE-FINISHED-WORK.HTML 

Uranda’s Easter morning service: EASTER DAY IN THE KINGDOM OF THE PRINCE OF PEACE https://greatcosmicstory.blogspot.com/2023/04/easter-day-in-kingdom-of-prince-of-peace.html

Category:

Easter, Healing Tones Blog, Kingdom of Heaven, Resurrection, Uranda

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At The Crossover

Christ the Redeemer at Rio de Janeiro

“I am come that they may have life and have it more abundantly . . . that my joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full.” — Gospel of John

VICTORY OVER DEATH

While attending a memorial service for a departed friend recently, I sat down in one of the pews waiting for the service to begin. When I looked up toward the closed casket, my eyes were met by a large crucifix on the wall behind it with the graven image of the crucified Jesus. I felt a sudden pall of sadness; not for our departed friend and his family, but for our Lord and King whose crucifixion is still being celebrated by Christians two-thousand-plus years after his victory over death and his glorious resurrection.

I long for the day when Christians take down the crucifixes in their churches and elsewhere — ideally, do away with “Good Friday” altogether and only celebrate Jesus’s victory over death and His Resurrection from the tomb. It’s not that He didn’t make the best use of what was imposed upon Him by the world. He did ask His Heavenly Father to take that cup from Him in the Garden of Gethsemane, yet He yielded to His Father’s Will. He knew well what was ahead and yet embraced it fully and used it for a higher purpose: a victory over death and the opening of a portal to eternal life for all of mankind.

His victory is what I celebrate during Holy Week . . . and I invite all of my Christian readers and friends to celebrate with me. Let the joy that was His be fulfilled in our hearts and souls this day.

THE CRUCIFIX AS A CROSSOVER SYMBOL

The crucifix can be seen as a crossover symbol, with its vertical and horizontal aspects joining and crossing at the point of the Golden Mean, the Divine Proportion (1.618) — the vertical representing Heaven and the horizontal representing Earth. The Spirit of God descends from Heaven and touches the Earth. Angels descend from the Realms of Light and incarnate in earthen forms in order to extend that Spirit below the horizontal into the world; to serve the Creator on Earth and bring Heaven here. By extending your arms, like the statue of Christ the Redeemer in Rio de Janeiro demonstrates, you assume the posture of a cross, signifying that your body temple provides a crossover point between the invisible and visible realms — between Heaven and Earth.

This is the true meaning and significance of the Cross of Jesus. He came to Earth not to die but to demonstrate for us how to live in union with His Father and bring the experience of Heaven on Earth into our lives. Sadly, the world rejected Him and redacted His teachings to align with the traditional religious concepts held sacred in the human mind . . . then crucified His body on the cross at Golgotha, the “place of the skull.”

We are a death-oriented people. We worship death as a necessary evil; a way of escape from pain and hardship, as well as the way to enter Heaven. Truth is, HERE on earth is where the ultimate experience of life take place. Angels in the realms of Light long to have the experience of living on this beautiful planet where Mother God, the Queen of Heaven, creates a Paradise of Edenic beauty and bounty on Earth — Her Queendom. Where delicious fruits and crisp vegetation can be tasted and lifted up in flesh temples as loving tithes to Her Lord and King.

THE “PLACE OF THE SKULL”

It is said that Martin Luther threw an inkwell at the devil upon awakening one night, and that he was plagued by many demons. My mentor used to cite this incident and then would suggest that he must have smashed the inkwell against his own skull, making and bringing home the point that our demons are in our own heads and projected out there; that the crucifixion of the Christ Spirit is taking place in the skull of human beings where the self-active mind of man shuts out the Kingdom of God from being experienced, by the priesthood and by the faithful. Christians pray unceasingly “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven” but they do not allow it to be done. They have their own wills to exercise and fulfill in their lives, individually and collectively.

Am I being too harsh or irreverent? I don’t think so. After all I include myself among those who once recited the Lord’s Prayer daily in seminary while studying to become a Catholic priest. I, too, believed that Jesus died for my sins and that we had to die in order to go to Heaven. How well I recall the many times I knelt at the foot of a large crucifix in the seminary chapel gazing up into the eyes of the image on the cross depicting the brutal crucifixion of Jesus and feeling a deep sadness while trying to get in touch with the anguish and pain He must have felt, abandoned by His world He came to save, with hands and feet nailed to a wooden cross. As I recall those formative days of that fourteen-year-old young man’s life — responding to a calling, a “vocation,” to serve the Lord as His priest — words come to mind the Master spoke to the weeping women of Jerusalem as he carried His cross up the “Via Dolorosa” in the “Holy City” of Jerusalem on the way to Golgotha:

“Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not for me, but weep for yourselves, and for your children. For, behold, the days are coming, in the which they shall say, Blessed are the barren, and the wombs that never bare, and the paps which never gave suck.“

There’s so much prophecy encoded in that response to the weeping women. Those days have come for millions in war-torn countries such as Ukraine, and where earthquakes and torrential floods have displaced millions from their homes and devastated villages leaving mothers nothing to bring their children home to and raise a family; husbands and fathers gone off to fight their country’s battles and defend their homelands from enemy invaders; too many never to return home, dead or alive.

I feel in my gut that those days have arrived for the entire world and they will be apocalyptic for the human race and for all life on Earth — unless we turn away from our self-centered destructive ways and return to our LORD and KING of Heaven and Earth. This is His world, after all, as are we His body.

A passage from the Book of Malachi (3:7) in the Old Testament wants to be brought forward here:

“Ever since the time of your ancestors you have turned away from my decrees and have not kept them. Return to me, and I will return to you,” says the Lord Almighty.”

OUR CATACLYSMIC PAST

There have been six documented mass extinctions, the last one being at the end of the last ice age 12,800 years ago with the Younger Dryas meteor impact that melted the ice cap and caused an apocalyptic deluge that washed away entire advanced civilizations in North America and in parts of Europe and Asia, raising sea levels and sinking the great civilization on the island of Atlantis. Evidence of this massive rush of waters over land can be seen here in the scablands of Washington State and the region around the Great Lakes and the lakes themselves. We may well be headed for a seventh mass extinction.

I highly recommend Graham Hancock’s “Ancient Apocalypse” now streaming on Netflix. It’s a well documented series on our cataclysmic past, a topic well worth visiting at this time — as it seems humanity needs a sobering splash of cold water in the face in order to wake up to reality.

It could well happen again as conditions in the heavens are similar in the Winter Solstice of today as they were in the Summer Solstice 12,800 years ago when Earth wandered into the thick debris tail of the Taurid comet and got showered by a raining mass of meteors. The Zodiacal science of Mazzaroth is an exact science, and our absence from the crossover point of dominion over the whole earth has allowed our planet to be knocked off of its appointed orbit and start wobbling on its axis. Like the Children of Israel, we are wandering in the wilderness of the cosmos into dangerous areas where cataclysms have happened in times past. The Taurid comet observes a 26,000-year cycle, according to Graham Handcock’s documentary. That’s approximately the length of two precession cycles of the earth’s axis around the 12 Zodiac constellations, each cycle being 12,700 – 12,800 years.

I don’t mean to be a prophet of doom and gloom here. But, based on our cataclysmic past, we earthlings would do well to take heed — or as my parents would say “You better straighten up and fly right!”

I will close with those uplifting words from Psalm 24 immortalized in Handle’s Messiah:

“Lift up your heads, O ye gates; even lift them up, ye everlasting doors; and the King of glory shall come in. Who is this King of glory? The Lord of hosts, he is the King of glory. Selah.”

Happy Easter

Anthony

Category:

Ancient Apocalypse, Angelic Incarnation, Apocalypse, Ascension, Beliefs, Catholic Church, Christianity, Dr. Palombo's blog, Easter, Healing Tones Blog, Holy Week, Jesus, Lent, Love, Resurrection, The Jewish Zealots, The Messiah, The Mind, Transformation, Transmutation

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The Mystery of Consciousness: Conveyor of Light and Love

Where your heart is, there also is your treasure. 

A LINE FROM A POPULAR POEM BY RUMI about a field “Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing” has been repeating in my head since I published my previous post: “When the soul lies down in that grass, the world is too full to talk about.”  And it truly is. There’s just so much going on in our world today for one to crowd into one’s thimble-size mind.  Another saying that Rumi penned from his home in Konya, Turkey, speaks of the heart’s treasure: “I looked in temples, churches and mosques. But I found the Divine in my heart.” 

In the movie “The Sound of Music,” Maria (Julie Anderson) sings “I go to the hills when my heart is lonely.”  Today, amidst the devastation in Ukraine and the repercussions the sanctions levied against Russia are having on the economy here and globally, I go to my heart to find peace and sanity.  Peace, because love abides here; sanity, because in my heart I know and understand that all is well in the Hands of God. 

By divine design, we human beings are the hands of God here on Earth.  Whatever happens, let me be a beacon of light in the darkness of human consciousness . . . and human consciousness is truly filled with darkness.  But darkness is simply the absence of light.  It’s not something of itself.  It’s nothing.  Light is something! Let there be light! 

A large mass of humanity has withdrawn from the light of love and hunkered down in the shadows of fear and uncertainty.  But let the Spirit of Love move upon the face of the waters of human consciousness and, Voila! There is light! And the light shines in the darkness, but the darkness does not comprehend it. “How can you be so calm and peaceful amid such atrocities and violence?! Where is your outrage!? Your condemnation of Putin and his murderous foot-soldiers who have exterminated tens-of-thousands of their fellow countrymen, women and children included?!” Such reactions are only incapacitating spiritually and contribute nothing but fuel to the fires raging in human hearts and minds, clouding and darkening vision.  If there’s one thing needed at this time it’s clear vision.

Whatever happens, let me be a beacon of light in the darkness

I find it somewhat challenging to refrain from outrage and remain non-judgmental in all of this death and destruction being heaped upon Ukraine and her citizens.  But that doesn’t mean I have blinders over my eyes.  I see clearly what is happening—at least what the news is telling and showing us—but only with my eyes. 

“A thousand shall fall at thy side, and ten-thousand at thy right hand; but it shall not come nigh thee, for only with thine eyes shalt thou see and behold the reward of the wicked.” (Psalm 91:7). 

I looked up the word wicked and it has several connotations and applications: vicious, depraved, (wicked habits); mischievous or playfully malicious (a wicked joke); obnoxious or offensive (a wicked stench); formidable or excellent (a wicked tennis player).  The Psalmist most likely would characterize the wicked as “vicious” and “depraved.” Who, then, are these “wicked” ones who are reaping their rewards? I think we all have had some part in wickedness; surely any and all who have lived for the material treasures of the world rather than the spiritual treasures of Heaven. 

CONVEYOR OF SPIRIT

Perhaps it’s a bit of a stretch, although a good segue to the theme of this post, the word “wicked” has the word “wick” as its root—which is a woven chord for conveying liquid, like the wick of a candle which is designed to convey the melting candle wax up to fuel the flame for light.  Consciousness is a conveyor of Spirit, given to us by the Creator as a means of connecting with Heaven and for conveying the Light of Truth and Love into the world.  By design, we are much like the whirling dervishes of Turkey who spin ’round and ’round, with one hand pointed upward toward heaven and the other hand turned downward toward the earth, as they provide a channel for bringing Love down from God into the world.  

There’s a wise saw that says you can’t fix a problem at the same level as the problem, but from a level above the level of the problem.  And so it is with the problems that plague human consciousness.  The solutions are to come from above and not from below.  The design for the New Earth descends from Heaven above into the heaven of human consciousness . . . but only as there is room to receive it.  Filled with wickedness, there’s no room for the Truth of Life, which is Love.  We need to cast the devil—literally the divider—out of our heaven, as Jesus did: “Get thee hence!”  Then there will be room for the Truth of the New Earth to emerge from the New Heaven and replace the old earth. 

A large part of the old heaven is occupied by the Christian belief that Jesus came down to earth from Heaven to die for our sins and redeem “us sinners” from the hands of the Devil.  That is a redaction and a lie conjured up by Saint Paul and the Council of Nicaea, the most grievous of lies ever perpetrated upon human beings. 

The truth is that Christ, the Son of God, incarnated in Jesus and came to show us how to love God and one another.  That’s the truth, and I think it’s time that Christians, and particularly Catholics, do away with their crucifixes and repent for having worshiped the murderous crucifixion of the Son of God all these centuries.  I am certain that He doesn’t want nor like that his crucifixion is still being celebrated as the purpose for his visitation to this planet.  We can celebrate His life and victory over death by His resurrection without dragging him through that ignominious ordeal in our memories and our Holy Week liturgies.  Please, take him down from the cross and worship the Father in spirit and in truth, which is all He asked.  His true passion was and is the return of Love of God and love for one another to humanity and to His Father’s world. 

If a cross is needed, one can replace the crucifix with the balanced cross of St. Benedict, which is a plus ⊕, symbolizing a cross-over point between Heaven and Earth, which is what Jesus was and what we are designed to be.  (This cross is believed to protect one from the Devil and was used in exorcisms to cast out demons.)

I’ll leave you with the beautiful and rich Russian choral music of Grechaninov’s Passion Week, Op. 58:1, Behold the Bridegroom, performed by the Phoenix Bach Choir, Kansas City Chorale, conducted by Charles Bruffy.  Enjoy this first track of the album.

https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=65aDlqi4KQI&feature=share

Have a Happy Easter Sunday. Until my next post,

Be love. Be loved. 

Anthony

tpal70@gmail.com

 

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Paradise Remembered: Tending the Garden of Consciousness

HAPPY EASTER

“There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.” Einstein 

The miracle of life lies in the alchemy it creates to manifest forms from out of “nowhere” to “now here”—out of an invisible Heaven and into a visible Earth. “As above so below.” We invoke this alchemy, consciously or unconsciously, each time we recite the Lord’s Prayer and pray the will of God in heaven to manifest on earth. How this works is by Divine Alchemy — only it can’t and won’t work in human affairs without Man’s/our participation.

Words of the Teacher speak to this order of creation: “Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you”– counsel my passionate father imparted repeatedly, and for which I am most grateful.

ALCHEMY Vs CHEMISTRY

In our scientific approach, we employ elemental interactions in chemistry, and physical labor, to manufacture products.  We even view conception and embryonic development as a biologically driven process. We till the ground to grow our foods and rape the earth for our fuel and building materials.

Forms may appear to rise up from out of the earth, and they do, as my sprouting beans in the garden magically demonstrate.  However, it is the subtle energy of life that creates the irresistible force of attraction that draws form up from out of the earth.  Man uses chemistry to make things.  Life uses Divine Alchemy to manifest Creation.  Everything is a miracle, including the chemistry. Even this coronavirus!

What is it that drives these alleged “lifeless” germs, made of RNA messaging molecules with protein mooring apparatuses, held together with fat, to attach themselves to cells so they can steal their DNA to reproduce themselves?  As Krishna exclaims in the Gita: “Life it is! Life’s urge it is! . . . man’s enemy or friend!” A harbinger of death, perhaps, nevertheless a miracle of life!

Consolation may be found in words penned by Charles Eisenstein in an excellent online article entitled The Coronation: “Remember, death is no ending. Death is going home.” Why, then, do we fight it and stave it off? Seems we would be happy to be going Home.

That said, my heart goes out to those who are mourning the loss of loved ones and dear friends, and to those special souls, heroes all, who are taking care of the afflicted, putting their lives on the line while struggling with fear and uncertainty, yet passionately going about their tasks caring for the sick. God bless and protect them each one. 

ORIGIN MYTHS ABOUND 

There are many myths about the origin of our species, including the Creation Story of Genesis.  In the previous post I excerpted passages from The Book of Grace in which its author, my dearest late friend Grace Van Duzen, offers insights into the biblical account of the Creation and Fall of Man from grace, stature and dominion.  I also shared excerpts from Richard Heinberg’s MEMORIES and VISIONS of PARADISE, and I’ve received several comments, one from a friend and fellow wayfarer, Donald White, who offered this critique and encouragement:

While I agree with much of your treatise here, I’m still wondering why the “story of man” as presented by the most ancient cultures known to have lived upon the planet with actual written records (the Sumerians and the civilizations that followed) are not part of your consideration of our origins on planet Earth. Atlantis (and Lemuria) may have existed…I don’t dispute that they MIGHT have…but we really don’t know (with apologies to the late Edgar Cayce!).

(True, even the Greek philosopher Plato used the Atlantis legend in his Socratic Dialogues as a fictitious tale, a mythical parable about the cultural and political deterioration of life in the state — casting a shadow onto our modern day.)

The biblical texts regarding these ancient times are highly mythologized, having been translated several times so that we have a version in English (King James Bible), but they still allude to more substantive, extant ancient writings in cuneiform from Mesopotamia (Sumer, Assyria, Akkadia & Babylonia). It just seems that what these ancient scribes had to say about their ‘gods’ and the origins of their culture (attributed to their gods) should have at least equal validity to any of today’s lucid dreamers, biblical pundits, and scholarly professional authors on this subject.

Are we as a species the product of a ”magical’ divine Creation or a design-driven, divine Evolution? Are we still evolving (with fits and starts from proto-human to Neanderthal to Cro Magnon) where angelic consciousness emerges as a whole in the world, or do we need to experience a resurrection from a fall from a place of divine identity where we already knew that identity in human form? These questions are key to your subject matter and I welcome your current focus in this area as it has allowed some deep meditation on my part about where we are today as God’s vessel and representation for this world. This I agree with wholeheartedly, beyond belief!

THE GARDEN OF HEAVEN 

In the Beginning, Man was given a garden called Eden to dress and to keep. No tilling was required because this garden was, and still is, an invisible one.  It was the Consciousness of the Creator, who was willing and eager to share with Man its care and creating magic, along with its material manifestation — a desire that awaits fulfillment.  That’s why we are here today.  Eden awaits Man’s return to dressing and keeping it — the topic of my next post.  

In this series I have also been sharing some of Peter Watson’s commentaries, which have actually provided thought-provoking upgrades for my own understanding of things hidden in the Creation Story handed down to us in the Book of Genesis, for which I am profoundly grateful.  Here is an excerpt from his most recent dialogue:

As the heaven – the realm of preform – must logically precede the realm of form, as with invisible life that designs and then grows the forms it inhabits, the idea of debris from dead suns being drawn together by gravity, so that under the right circumstances, with water air and earth, and a safe distance from the fire of a sun, the collection of debris would be suitable to support animated ecosystems is far-fetched to say the least. Such a materialistic view is clearly in denial of heavenly preordination, and is therefore flawed inasmuch as it cannot account for our invisible animating force, life, nor its origin; i.e. the Father and Mother of Life.

Fortunately Jesus foresaw the scientific dilemma that would eventually surface as men of intellect probed only the heavens, and the past, for mankind’s meaning and origins, instead of looking within, and perceiving the kingdom-of-heaven as instructed. His remedial advice, and blueprint for the way life works, are contained concisely in the so-called Lord’s Prayer, portraying the simple outline of the order in which life works (i.e. from the heaven and then into the earth; “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven”), which must be complied with if our latent human potential is to be realized and made manifest. All of this he liberally demonstrated in working with the four forces, starting his ministry in a water cycle, and miraculously healing those who responded appropriately to his presence, “Wilt thou be made whole?”

(His brief earthly life and ministry ended in a Fire cycle with his celebratory entrance into Jerusalem, commemorated in the Christian world on Palm Sunday, and his crucifixion and victory over death that led to his resurrection from the tomb and ascension back into Heaven from whence he came — commemorated during Holy Week and Easter Sunday throughout the Christian world.)  

It’s now up to a precious few of us who are remembering and enacting the instructions of Jesus, so that what he initiated may be brought to fruition as intended. I rejoice in sharing these words with you and seeing the seeds planted by Jesus replace the superstitious seeds of religious fear, and bring the Garden-of-God, Eden, back to life on earth. “I am come that they may have life, and have it more abundantly.”

MAKING SENSE OF IT ALL

Having followed up on Don’s encouragement to at least expand my research to include the Sumerian and other ancient mythical stories of the formation of the human species, and having meditated on Peter’s commentary on the two accounts of the Creation story in Genesis 1 and 2, as well as on Grace’s insightful interpretation of the biblical Creation Story, I have finally come to terms with my own inner struggle to make sense of it all — and it all comes down to the first paragraph of this post: the Heaven gives form and birth to the Earth.

In Genesis 1, God, Elohim, created Man male and female, in their own image and likeness and placed them in Eden, a Paradise where everything they needed in the way of food and sustenance was freely provided, requiring no tilling but only a thought form to manifest what they needed to sustain their heavenly forms. God blessed them and gave them dominion over all the life forms in Eden, instructing them to be fruitful and multiply and “replenish the earth.” We’ve done a lot of multiplying of our species, but very minimal replenishing of the earth.

In Genesis 2, “The LORD God” (a conclave of God Beings, as Grace explained) is said to have “formed” man (male only) from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man “became a living soul.” Life, the originating and organizing force of Creation, is given to this man after he is formed by matter — the heaven and the earth in reversed order — “when the earth and the heaven were created”— contrary to the way the Law of One works to bring forth Creation out of Heaven.

Here we again have a committee of God Beings, not creating but forming a man out of clay, as many myths describe their various “gods” did.  As for woman, well, she was an after-thought by the rogue creators seeing as how the man was alone and in need of a “help mete”— not an equal partner but a helper.  So, it’s been a man’s world ever since the Fall.

This conclave of God Beings “planted a garden Eastward in Eden, and there they placed the man whom they had formed.” Here we have the first division, that of Man, created by God male and female in His own image and likeness, divided into a man and a woman, a pair of opposites — from oneness to duality.  One myth describes the First Man as being male on one side and female of the other.  Hmm?

Peter’s Comments:

Let it be said that any compromise, or reversal of the principle of cause-and-effect, heaven-and-earth in that order, would inevitably result in a state of decay, and eventual death. We cannot deny or ignore the way-of-life; i.e. what Jesus demonstrated admirably, with impunity.

Let’s say, in Genesis chapter one, we have a true account of creation, with Man, male and female, designated to share God’s dominion . . . .  Alongside, we have chapter two that denigrates mankind (not Man) to have come from the dust-of-the-ground, subject to externals and a tree-of-the-knowledge-of-good-and-evil, a tree-of-death, with no mention of dominion, only subjection, and we have a reliable perspective of how humanity has been coerced into falsely interpreting God’s will.

Earlier on in this commentary:

Fortunately, death and decay can only spread so far in either direction in the microcosm and the macrocosm at a form (material) level, beyond which life reclaims waste and renews it in the mineral kingdom and on up. As is recognized by physicists, no energy is ever lost; you cannot have a ‘dead’ (motionless) atom, or indeed a motionless galaxy. Where there is motion there is evidence of life; where there is life there is the ever-present origin-of-life.

We cannot separate matter from motion. Even using negative numbers, Euclidian geometry, or quantum mechanics, matter and motion are inseparable except in human imagination. However, designed as it is to participate in the furtherance of creation, imagination of the human mind can and will manifest if concentrated over a sufficient period of gestation. Beyond a certain point it becomes questionable as to what human imagination manifests is of any practical value; we may use disease and weaponry as examples of negative manifestation.

Stephen Hawking asks, “What place for God” in his imaginary universe.  Einstein said “There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.” Observational science limits itself to the analytical view of “nothing is a miracle.” Participatory science (ontology) expands its parameters to see “everything is a miracle.” Einstein’s vision extends the reach-of-science beyond the grasp of mankind.

The grasp of mankind is limited to material observation and measurement, a phenomenal mental approach to understanding the universe, but which denies or otherwise ignores the essential encompassment of a motivating force, such as that which makes vegetation grow, human digestion allocate protein where it belongs, and guides the constellations along their celestial paths.

And from an earlier commentary:

So there’s the so-called Fall-of-man in a few lines, sustained by, but not initiated by Eve — the cloned after-thought companion of a simple gardener when it was noticed, “It is not good that the man should be alone”. Unfortunately, Sunday-school translation has made them both appear to have been the original sinners, upon which religion has capitalised in using a ‘sinner’ identity to cover up the rogue’s role of Godlessness, and at the same time keep congregations in the dark regarding our true identity in original Man, male and female, not made from the dust-of-the-ground, but by the male and female spirits of God incarnate. “BIG mistake!” as Schwarzenegger would say.

ANCIENT MYTHS 

Now, the Sumerian, Babylonian and other ancient myths tell of many gods flying in the heavens and roaming the earth making things they needed, which included laborers — more like slaves — to till the ground; and warring with one another over the manner in which things were being done, especially in the slave-making department.  They also created “giants” to do the heavy lifting. 

Donald’s Commentary:

Here’s a short summary of the story of mankind’s creation as told in the Sumerian ‘Enuma ‘Elish’ (deciphered from clay tablets uncovered when ancient Ninevah was excavated circa mid 19th century):

“… What is extremely interesting in the ancient Sumerian Creation Story is the fact that initially, man created by the Gods was not able to reproduce on their own. This is why the Gods ‘MODIFIED’ mankind with the help of Enki and his sister Ninki. After the Gods had modified mankind, Adapa was created as a fully functional human being which had the ability to reproduce. However, this ‘modification’ was done without being approved by Enlil, brother of Enki and Ninki, which created a conflict among the Gods.

The conflict made Enlil the first adversary of human beings and according to ancient Sumerian texts, mankind went through an extremely difficult time while serving the gods.”

As you can see, there are numerous similarities between the creation story of Ancient Sumer and other ancient cultures and religions around the globe, but interestingly, in all of them, we learn that mankind was literally CREATED by the GODS in their own image.”

Perhaps the beginning of religion and slavery imposed upon our earliest ancestors? What an awful implication (and indictment) on our false ‘god/creators’!

I think Don is onto a hidden truth.  Here’s an interesting side-story I came upon in my limited studies of ancient cosmology. The word El, as in Elohim, is feminine in gender, indicating that it was a Goddess who created Man — or at least the Elohim may have been a group of feminine deities who were commissioned by the Godhead to create the world and Man in it.  Heinberg cites a man’s near-death-experience in which the God he saw was a woman.  I rather like this kind of musing about God being both male and female and how this works in the invisible order of angelic and creator beings.   

RECLAIMING OUR ORIGINAL INNOCENCE

So, Don, I trust I have adequately addressed your queries about who we are and were we are in our evolution of consciousness — our heaven out of which our earthly forms and world continually and momentarily materializes.  I’m right in there with you meditating on our current role as representatives of God on Earth, and as co-creators and keepers of the Garden — and with you Peter, in uncovering the clarifying truth of the Creation of Heaven and Earth, in that order, and of Man and mankind, hidden in myths until a time when we can bear to hear it — realizing that we can correct the “Original Sin” of Adam by reclaiming our Original Innocence.

In our innocence — not by faith and belief in an unknowable God, but by conscious knowing of our own divine identity as Sons and Daughters of God, co-creators with God — we can intelligently engage the Law of One that governs Creation to create Paradise on Earth.  As we hold the image and likeness of God in our consciousness as the template of our outer forms, letting love radiate without concern for results, our bodies will continue to evolve and be transformed, ultimately transmuted into angelic light forms. “As above so below.”

It was Man’s concern for results and his self-determination that reversed his polarity, repelling our first parents from God and ejecting them from Paradise.  We are here to “repent,” literally turn around, restore our polarity in God, in Love, and allow a resurrection and ascension to take place.  All we have to do is dress and keep the Heaven.

I’ll leave it there for your meditation. Until my next post,

Have a Happy Easter and/or a Joyous Passover.

Anthony

tpal70@gmail.com

 

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“The Hero’s Journey”. . . . part 3: Dark Night of the Soul

Every hero’s journey has a dark night of the soul, when all seems lost with no path forward in life. A sinking feeling of hopelessness fills one’s heart. The specter of ending one’s life may even loom large in one’s thoughts. Of course, that is an option. There’s light at the end of that tunnel. Suicide among war veterans, even youth, is on the increase.

Today is “Good Friday” in the Christian world when the crucifixion and death of the man Jesus is once again mourned in a most peculiarly celebratory way.  One cannot even imagine what his dark night of the soul was like. His prayer to his heavenly Father gives but a hint: “Father, let this cup pass from me. Yet, not my will, but thy will be done.” The Gospels — though highly redacted by the political factors at work under the hand of the Emperor Constantine at the Council of Nicea — tell how he sweated drops of blood during his passion.  Assuming this is an unredacted account, I don’t believe anyone in the depth of their darkest night of soul can relate to such a depth of dread and fear.  In that sense, I don’t see where there is any “good” to celebrate on this day, except perhaps in the fact that he didn’t end his own earthly journey by taking his life.  He rather faced his nemesis, his greatest fears: failure of his mission by rejection, and death by crucifixion . . . and won the battle to go on and claim the Elixir of Immortality.  He rose above death to find eternal life, setting a precedent for all of mankind to draw strength and courage from while in the depth of despair and hopelessness. If we’re honest about it, suicide is a royal cop-out from facing life’s challenges . . . and we all  have them. 

There’s a lesson to be learned from the proverbial bar of soap, which, when squeezed, will go up or down depending on which direction you point it.  When your circumstance caves in and the pressure of life seems to be pushing you down, if you look down, you’ll go down. Look up and you’ll go up. This is what the man Jesus did. He never stopped looking up to his Heavenly Father — which, according to his own words, was not up but within.  Look to your Father who is within you and go up into life, which is eternal.  Find courage and strength in these words: “You are loved more than you can ever imagine.”

DEPRESSION OF LIFE

I had an interesting dream last night.  I was giving a talk in a seminar about finding one’s path to a creative expression of life. The metaphor I used was that of a wall, of all things — but not a wall to keep undesirables out; rather a wall preventing one’s spirit from coming forth into expression of love and creativity. This, at a vibrational level, I believe is a root cause of mental and emotional depression, and there’s no drug for the dissolution of this wall. A vibrational, spiritual wall can only be dissolved vibrationally and spiritually. Love is the vibration and Life is the Spirit that, when expressed with joy and thankfulness, alone can dissolve the wall inside depressing one’s life energy.

There is a collective wall in the heart of the body of Humanity with many windows and doors created by individuals who are coming forth through it by expressing love and joy in their living. Because there are so many these days who are walking on through the illusory barriers in their lives and finding new life by dying to the old, this collective wall is crumbling and falling down, bringing the old world of deception we have known for eons down with it.

FIRE IN THE BELFRY TOWER

I feel certain that the fire that destroyed the ceiling, roof and the cross-bearing spire of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris this past week is a poignant symbol of this crumbling wall . . . a wall which exists only in the upper cranium of human beings as a mental concept and belief that heaven is “up there” somewhere, and one gets there by suffering through life’s “vale of tears” and dying a “good Christian death”– whatever that is.  Such nonsense and deception has prevailed on earth for too many centuries, even after the proclaimed “Messiah” spent his entire public ministry preaching that the Kingdom of Heaven is within us and all around us. He was crucified for proclaiming his divinity, and not by the Jews, as Christians believe and hold in prejudice against them, but by the people, the mob gathered in that public square on that fateful day who cried out “Crucify him! Crucify him!” To this day that cry is maintained by human beings who continue to crucify the expression of their own divine and authentic Self and adhere to the teachings of the Council of Nicea over those of the Master himself.  We continue to crucify our own expression of Divinity at Golgotha, the place of the skull. It’s ironic that the Cathedral fire started in the attic. 

With all that is coming to the surface and being exposed in the Catholic Church today, I believe the Church is headed into its dark night of the soul.  A billion dollars were raised in just a few days to rebuild Notre Dame Cathedral in France, a nation whose people are out in the streets in protest against economic inequality and social injustice.  Yet none of that can rebuild the social and economic collapse in France, nor stave off the dark night of the soul of Christianity. 

There’s a vibrational connection between the riots in the streets of Paris, as well as the scandalous pedofile activities in the Catholic Church, and the conflagration at Notre Dame Cathedral, the geophysical centerpiece of the city and the Mother of the French nation. Conditions in America and elsewhere are ripe for such a conflagration.  Only radical change in our beliefs and behavior toward one another can alter the course we have set for ourselves and our world. We will have our dark night of our nation’s soul. It will take that to wake us up and face our nemesis: ourselves.

Have a Happy Easter.  

Anthony 

 

 

 

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The “Jesus of Faith” Vs the “Jesus of History” Part 5:4 “Take us down to the river”

“Jars of spring water are not enough anymore. Take us down to the river.” –Rumi

I will conclude this series of considerations of the Jesus of faith versus the Jesus of history with Michael Baigent’s own words summarizing the journey we have taken through his provocative book The Jesus Papers — Exposing the Greatest Cover-Up in History, words and thoughts that I fully embrace as resonant with my own spirit of understanding of the life and ministry of Jesus.

Here are Baigent’s final words from his book:

DURING THE COURSE of writing this book, I have sought out knowledge of a very special context – that of Egypt and Judaea in the first century of the modern era, a period about which there are few facts that we can be certain of. We have seen how the context can be controlled and forced to support a story that simply can’t be true. The Jesus of history cannot have been as the theology of the Jesus of faith presents him.

During the course of our journey, we have discovered that Jesus rejected the political activity of his Zealot supporters. This is a crucially important piece of information that has been missed. We have seen too that there is no evidence that he died on the cross; in fact, what evidence survives suggests otherwise. And if he didn’t die on the cross, where does that leave the resurrection? His divinity? His equal­ity in the Holy Trinity? These claims all disintegrate once the spin stops.

We have discovered that all these assertions about Jesus came much later, the result of a glossy gift-wrapping of some historical events that were deliberately distorted in order to serve a strict theo­logical agenda, one that maintains to the present day a number of ex­tremely odd and eccentric notions. Foremost among these is the belief that only men were Christ’s closest disciples and so women cannot serve as priests, bishops, or popes. With this discovery, the male domination of the apostolic succession crumbles away, along with the Rome-centered concept of the succession itself.

And crucially, we have also discovered that there is no evidence to suggest that Jesus intended to be worshiped as a god. On the con­trary, his teachings indicate that he wanted each person to have the opportunity to travel to the Far-World to find the Divine for himself or herself — or as he put it, to travel to the kingdom of heaven and be filled with the “Spirit of God.”

Where did Jesus learn all this? Not in Galilee, we have concluded, but much more likely in Egypt, where the Jewish community appears to have been more diverse than the Jewish community in Palestine and to have nurtured a more mystical approach to religion.

Furthermore, nothing in our findings suggests that Jesus ever planned to start a religion, let alone encourage others to write down his words and organize them into an official collection of sayings. In fact, quite the reverse is more likely I suspect that he wouldn’t have minded at all if people forgot him; what was more important to him was that people should not forget the way to the kingdom of heaven, a notion not restricted to Christianity and Judaism: “To be ignorant of the divine is the ultimate vice,” proclaim the texts attributed to the Egyptian sage Hermes Trismegistus.

It should be clear now that history is malleable: we have our facts, but we never have enough of them to be able to put our hands on our hearts and say, in all honesty, that we know for certain what hap­pened. All history is a myth, a story created to make some sense out of the few events we can know. The past is a hypothesis erected to ex­plain and justify the present.

In some ways this does not matter, for myths exist to communicate meaning, not history. But in this scientific age we want to know that the myths we live by are, if not true, at least based upon some approximation of the truth. We want to know that Jesus was really crucified, that Caesar was truly murdered by Brutus, that Paul did have a mystical experience on his way to Damascus. All these events are plausible, and there is no intrinsic reason why they might not be true.

But what do we do with beliefs such as Jesus walking on water?  Jesus having been raised from the dead? Peter founding the Roman Church with infallible popes? None of these beliefs is plausible, and there is no intrinsic reason why any of them should be true. Yet there are many who equally believe both sets of assertions.

Our modern world is dominated by the “religions of the book”­ Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. We can see that to base truth upon a written word makes it vulnerable to all the problems of interpreta­tion and translation, to say nothing of religious distortion. The danger is that books foster a dependence upon belief rather than knowledge; if there has been one underlying theme of our journey, it has been that we need to travel the road for ourselves and experience its hardships, pleasures, and insights directly rather than secondhand or vicariously. (Bold emphasis mine)

And with that plea I must bring our journey to an end, not be­cause there is no further to travel, for of course there is, but because we have traveled much already and it is now time to pause and reflect on just how far we have come.

As we halt, it only remains to quote the great Persian Sufi Jelalud­din Rumi, who, cutting straight to the heart of the matter, as was al­ways his way, cried out to all who would listen: “Jars of spring water are not enough anymore. Take us down to the river!'”

To drink from the river is our birthright. Let no one deny us that freedom!

There is no argument that the impact upon the entire world of humankind that the presence and ministry of this one man made is nothing short of a profound transformation and elevation of the human spirit and of human consciousness. I know this is true for me personally. Just to think of him and to read his words in my red-letter Bible stirs my soul and quickens my spirit. Jesus is alive today in the heart of humanity as truly as he was alive and physically present on earth two-thousand years ago.

I’ll leave you with this five-minute video clip by Dr. Bruce Lipton on how our beliefs direct our lives 95% of the time and how religious beliefs are programs and not reality. Believing in God is not the same as knowing God. To know God is to go beyond belief and to know your Self. That is the only reality we can know for certain: that I AM.

In my next post I will consider the Aramaic Prayer of Jesus and the direct access to Father and Mother God available to all human beings on Earth. Until then,

Be love. Be loved.

Anthony

Read my HealthLight Newsletter online at LiftingTones.com.  Current post: Humble Honey Kills Bacteria.

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The “Jesus of Faith” Vs the “Jesus of History” part 5:3 – Resurrection

 

Good morning and Happy Easter!

I feel the burgeoning wave of joy and happiness that is resurrected from the womb of human hearts every year at Easter in the wake of the fasting season of Lent and just on the heels of passion Holy Week and sorrowful Good Friday — at least in the Christian sector of the world’s seven-plus billion population. With spring bursting out all over, this is a most appropriate time of the year to celebrate Easter.

(click on the picture to enlarge it)

A study in 2012 estimated “Christianity was the largest faith at 2.2 billion adherents or 31.5 percent of the world’s population. The Roman Catholic Church makes up 50 percent of that total, with Protestants — including Anglicans and non-denominational churches — at 37 percent and Orthodox at 12 percent.”  So, nearly a third of the people on earth celebrate the Resurrection of Jesus. Little wonder the day is so bright, even as bright as the Sun rising in the East. 

Hmm. I must look up the origin of the word “Easter.” And I did. Here is one item that stands out among all of the hoopla over the pagan roots of this annual Christian celebration:

Because the English Anglo/Saxon language originally derived from the Germanic, there are many similarities between German and English. Many English writers have referred to the German language as the “Mother Tongue!” The English word Easter is of German/Saxon origin and not Babylonian as Alexander Hislop falsely claimed. The German equivalent is Oster. Oster (Ostern being the modern day equivalent) is related to Ostwhich means the rising of the sun, or simply in English, east. Oster comes from the old Teutonic form of auferstehen / auferstehung, which means resurrection, which in the older Teutonic form comes from two words, Ester meaning first, and stehen meaning to stand. These two words combine to form erstehen which is an old German form of auferstehen, the modern day German word for resurrection.

It was the Emperor Constantine at the Council of Nicea in A.D. 325 who “ordained that Easter shouldn’t be connected with the festival of another faith. It should stand on its own in connection with the natural world. Hence he ordained that Easter should be celebrated on the Sunday after the first  new moon of Spring.” (David Potter of Oxford University Press.)  So, Easter Sunday’s final resting place is somewhere between March 21 and April 25. The date of Easter Day is usually the first Sunday after the first Full Moon occurring on or after the March equinox.

An issue was also settled at this council concerning the celebration of the Passover by the Jewish Christians, as Jesus’ crucifixion was said to be associated with the Passover. Obviously, Christianity emerged out of Judaism. Thus the consolidation of the two celebrations by Constantine.

Now the Easter egg can be traced back to practices in pre-dynastic Egypt as well as amid the early Christians of Mesopotamia.  From there it spread into Russia and Siberia through the Orthodox Churches. In Christianity, for the celebration of Easter, the Easter egg symbolizes the empty tomb of Jesus. An ancient tradition was the staining of the Easter egg with the color red in memory of the blood of Christ shed during his crucifixion. The egg is also a symbol of fertility.

Significance of the Resurrection

I will now return to my consideration of the Foreword of Stevan Davies’ book The Gospel of Thomas – Annotated & Explained, written by the his Series Editor Andrew Harvey. I will continue from where I left off in my post of April 7th on the theme of “Kingdom-consciousness.”

If all the Gospel of Thomas did was relentlessly and sublimely cham­pion the path to our transfiguration and point out its necessity, it would be one of the most important of all religious writings — but it does even more. In saying 22, the Gospel of Thomas gives us a brilliantly concise and pre­cise “map” of the various stages of transformation that have to be unfolded in the seeker for the “secret” to be real in her being and active though all her powers. Like saying 13, saying 22 has no precedent in the synoptic gospels and is, I believe, the single most important document of the spiritual life that Jesus has left us.

Jesus saw infants being suckled. He said to his disciples: These infants taking milk are like those who enter the Kingdom. His disciples asked him: If we are infants will we enter the Kingdom? Jesus responded: When you make the two into one, and when you make the inside like the outside and the outside like the inside, and the upper like the lower and the lower like the upper, and thus make the male and the female the same, so that the male isn’t male and the female isn’t female. When you make an eye to replace an eye, and a hand to replace a hand, and a foot to replace a foot, and an image to replace an image, then you will enter the Kingdom.

When Jesus says in saying 19 “If you become my disciples and listen to me, these stones will serve you,” in saying 24 “There is light within a man of light, and he lights up all of the world,” and in saying 106 “When you make the two into one, you will be called sons of men. When you say ‘Move, mountain!’ it will move,” he was not speaking in incandescent poetry; he was describing the actual powers that God gives those who risk becoming divinized, powers that can alter natural law and “burn down the house” of the oppressive power structures of the world.

Fourth and finally, we see in saying 22 the final cryptic sentences of the saying: “When you make an eye to replace an eye, and a hand to replace a hand, and a foot to replace a foot, and an image to replace an image, then you will enter the Kingdom.” What these lines describe is nothing less than the physical transformation that mystical union makes possible, the bringing up of ordinary matter into the living truth of the Light.

The ultimate sign of the Christ is the victory of the Resurrection, which is the marriage of matter and spirit to create a wholly new and eternal substance. Those mystics who follow Christ into union come to know and taste the glory of the Resurrected Body in their own bodies. The pow­ers available to the human being willing to undertake the full rigor of the Jesus-transformation are limitless. What could not be done to trans­form this world by a group of seekers who allowed their whole beings­–psychological, spiritual, and physical–to become increasingly transfigured by the living light?

The greatest of all modern philosophers–Sri Aurobindo — saw that only an “integral” transformation could provide the force and inspiration to change that must occur if humanity is to survive and evolve. Jesus in saying 22 has anticipated Sri Aurobindo’s vision and provided the map to its realization.

There may be very little time left to take the adventure into total being that the Gospel of Thomas advocates with such astringent brilliance and pre­cision. In such a terrible age as ours, it is easy to believe that the dark powers, the powers of that corpse of the world that the Jesus of Thomas so fiercely denounces, have won already, and there is nothing even the most passionate of us can do to turn around a humanity addicted to violence and destruction.

Despair, however, is the last illusion. The Gospel of Thomas and the Jesus who gave it to us continue to challenge us to dare to become one with the Divine and start living the revolutionary life that streams from union and that can transform all things. This worst of times needs the clearest and most unflinchingly exigent of visions to counteract and trans­form it; in Jesus’ words in the Gospel of Thomas and in his living out of their reality through and beyond death itself into the eternal empowering glory of the Resurrection, we have the permanent sign of the Way, the Truth, and the all-transforming Life that, even now, can build here on earth the reality of God’s Kingdom.

As this series  The “Jesus of Faith” Vs the “Jesus of History” winds down, I will return to my desk to write, edit and publish my final post of the series. Until then, I wish you each one a Happy Easter and offer my thanks to you for sharing these considerations with me over the past several weeks.  Until my next post, then,

Be love. Be loved.

Anthony

Photo credit: Craig Burrows “The Invisible Light that Flowers Emit”   Click on the link to see more of Craig’s flowers.

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The “Jesus of Faith” Vs the “Jesus of History” – part 5:2 The Crucifixion Plot

I remember when I was fourteen and studying for the Catholic priesthood kneeling in front of a large carved image of Jesus hanging on a cross above the altar in the chapel and struggling to get in touch with feelings of guilt and sorrow for my sins, sins for which this man is said to have died an ignominious death. I was actually able to bring myself to sorrowful tears of repentance. Such memories serve me today as motivation to write about the deception that has been created and maintained for two-thousand years by the Catholic Church and by Christianity in general.  I truly believe that, if Jesus were to come back today, he would have all the crucifixes taken down and destroyed. It is his life of love and compassion, his “good news” about the Kingdom of Heaven being right at hand, that I believe he wished to be remembered by and not his crucifixion.

That said, I would like to share religious historian Michael Baigent’s perspectives on the crucifixion of Jesus from his controversial book The Jesus Papers – Exposing the Greatest Cover-Up in History. The chapter heading from which the excerpts are taken, “SURVIVING THE CRUCIFIXION,” speaks for itself.

Jesus’ crucifixion was politically motivated, and Jesus was well aware of the political reality of the time. The main contention between the Jews and the Romans was their refusal to pay taxes. This played a pivotal role in both Jesus’ betrayal by the Zealots, as well as in a survival plot orchestrated by Pontius Pilate himself. I’ll let Michael Baigent detail his scenario.

If the Sadducee priesthood wanted to be rid of Jesus because they saw him as a messiah and a threat to their power, and if the Zealots too, for different reasons, wanted to be rid of Jesus, then word of this would have reached Pilate. And this intelligence would have put him in a very difficult position. Pilate was Rome’s official representative in Judaea, and Rome’s main argument with the Jews was that they declined to pay their tax to Caesar. Yet here was a leading Jew — the legitimate king no less — telling his people to pay the tax. How could Pilate try, let alone condemn, such a man who, on the face of it, was supporting Roman policy? Pilate would himself be charged with dereliction of duty should he proceed with the condemnation of such a supporter.

The New Testament represents “the Jews” as baying for Jesus’s blood. And this apparent guilt of the Jews stuck for millennia — it was only acknowledged as fraudulent by the Vatican and excised from the teachings as late as 1960. But as should now be clear, it was not “the Jews” in general who were calling for Jesus’s arrest and execution, but the militant Zealots, those who hated the Romans and would sacri­fice even one of their own for their political aims. In the scenario presented here, Pilate would have found himself in a serious dilemma: to keep the peace he had to try, condemn, and execute a Jew who was supporting Rome but whose existence was causing public disorder, the flames of which were being fanned by the disgruntled Zealots. Pilate needed to try to square the circle on this; he desperately needed a deal.

And the deal, I suggest, was this: that he try Jesus and condemn him as a political agitator, thus appeasing the Zealots, who threatened widespread disorder. This was the last thing Pilate needed on his watch, especially since he was aware that he was falling out of favor with the Roman authorities. But while he condemned Jesus and had to go through with the required sentence of crucifixion, he could not dare have it reported to Rome that Jesus had actually died. So Pilate took steps to ensure that Jesus would survive. He spoke with a member of the Sanhedrin and friend of Jesus, the wealthy Joseph of Arimathea.

Technically, how could a crucifixion have been faked? Just how could Jesus have survived? Was it possible at all to survive a crucifix­ion of any length of time?

Crucifixion was not so much an execution as a torturing to death. The procedure was very simple: the victim was tied, hanging to the crossbar, while his feet were supported on a block at the base of the cross. His feet were also usually tied at the block, although at least one example recovered by archaeologists reveals that a nail might be driven through each ankle. The weight of the hanging body made breathing very difficult and could be managed only by constantly pushing upwards with the legs and feet to relieve the tension in the chest. Eventually, of course, weariness and weakness overcame the ability to keep pushing. When this happened, the body slumped, breathing became impossible, and the crucified person died — by as­phyxiation. This was reckoned to take about three days.

As an act of mercy — only the brutal Romans could come up with such a definition — the legs of the victim were often broken and so deprived of any strength whatsoever to maintain the weight of the body.  The body would drop, and death by asphyxiation rapidly followed. We can see this in the New Testament. John reports that the legs of the two Zealots crucified beside Jesus were broken, but when they came to break Jesus’s legs, “he was dead already” (John 19:31-33).

On a side note, a statement in the Koran, “They did not crucify him,” could be translated as “They did not cause his death on the cross.” More relevant is the teachings of a heretical Egyptian Gnostic that Jesus had been substituted by Simon of Cyrene on his way to Golgatha and died in Jesus’ stead.

But if Jesus survived without being substituted, how could it have happened? Hugh Schonfield, in his The Passover Plot, suggests that Jesus was drugged — sedated on the cross such that he appeared dead but could be revived later, after he had been taken down. This is by no means such a wild idea, and it has received a sympathetic hearing. For example, in a television program on the crucifixion broadcast by the BBC in 2004 called Did Jesus Die? Elaine Pagels referred to Schonfield’s book, which, she noted, suggested that Jesus “had been sedated on the cross; that he was removed quite early and therefore could well have survived.” And, she concluded, “that’s certainly a possibility?”

The hypothesis forwarded was that Jesus was drugged with a sponge soaked in a sedative mixture of opium and other compounds such as belladonna and hashish when he cried out “I thirst.” Vinegar would have revived him whereas the drink from the sponge apparently caused him to die. Such a drug concoction, which was available and used in the Middle East for medical procedures, would have rendered Jesus unconscious and therefore spared much of the trauma and mental anguish crucifixion surely inflicted upon him. Then there was the incident of the spear thrust into Jesus’ side, not his heart or vital organ, where it is reported that blood and water poured out, indicating that Jesus was still alive.

All that remained then was for Jesus to be taken down from the cross, apparently lifeless but in reality unconscious, and taken to a private tomb where medicines could be used to revive him. He would then be whisked away from the scene. And this is precisely what is described in the Gospels: Luke (23:53) and Mark (15:46) report that Jesus was placed in a new tomb nearby. Matthew (27:6) adds that the tomb was owned by the wealthy and influential Joseph of Arimathea. John (19:41-42), who generally gives us so many extra details, adds that there was a garden around this tomb, implying that the grounds were privately owned, perhaps also by Joseph of Arimathea.

John also stresses that Jesus was taken down quickly and put into this new tomb. Then, in a very curious addition, he reports that Joseph of Arimathea and a colleague, Nicodemus, visited the tomb during the night and brought with them a very large amount of spices: myrrh and aloes (John 19:39). These, it is true, could be used simply as a perfume, but there could be another equally plausible explana­tion. Both substances have a medicinal use – most notably, myrrh has been used as an aid to stop bleeding. Neither drug is known to have a role in embalming dead bodies. Mark (16:1) and Luke (23:56) touch obliquely on this theme as well, adding to their story of the tomb that the women — Mary Magdalene and Mary, the “mother of James,”­ brought spices and ointments with them when they came to the tomb after the Sabbath had ended.

. . . . But there is yet another oddity that we need to note: in the Gospel of Mark, Joseph of Arimathea is described as visiting Pilate and requesting the body of Jesus. Pilate asks if Jesus is dead and is surprised when told that he is indeed, for his demise seems very rapid to Pilate. But since Jesus is dead, Pilate allows Joseph to take the body down. If we look at the original Greek text, we see an im­portant point being made: when Joseph asks Pilate for Jesus’s body, the word used for “body” is soma. In Greek this denotes a living body.  When Pilate agrees that Joseph can take the body down from the cross, the word he uses for “body” is ptoma (Mark 15:43-45). This means a fallen body, a corpse or carcass. In other words, the Greek text of Mark’s Gospel is making it clear that while Joseph is asking for the living body of Jesus, Pilate grants him what he believes to be the corpse. Jesus’s survival is revealed right there in the actual Gospel account.

If the writer of this Gospel had wished to hide that fact, it would have been very easy for him simply to use one word for both state­ments — to have both Joseph and Pilate speaking of the ptoma, the corpse. But the writer chose not to be consistent. Could this be be­cause it was too well known a fact for him to get away with any manipulation of it? This had to wait for the translation of the New Testament from Greek into Latin: in the Latin Bible – the Vulgate – the word corpus is used by both Pilate and Joseph of Arimathea, and this simply means “body” as well as “corpse.” The hiding of the secret of the crucifixion was completed.

Again, it takes only a slight shift of perspective, a standing aside from the theological dogma, to see the crucifixion in a new way. That is, to see how Jesus could very well have survived.

Jesus alive in A.D. 45?

Then there’s this: Jesus is reported to have been alive in A.D. 45, twelve years after his crucifixion. When this tidbit of historical information came into Michael Baigent’s hands in the form of a letter from an undivulged source, he immediately set out to find “incontrovertible evidence that Jesus survived and was living long afterwards.” But his efforts were to no avail.

Then there’s the Stations of the Cross plaque still on the wall of the church at Rennes le Chateau.

“. . . an image that reveals something very heretical indeed. . . .  One image, for example, shows a woman with a child standing beside Jesus; the child is wearing a Scottish tartan robe. . . . But the most curious of all is Station 14. This is traditionally the last of the series illustrating Jesus being placed in the tomb prior to the resurrection. At Rennes le Chateau the image shows the tomb and, immediately in front of it, three figures carrying the body of Christ. But the painted background reveals the time as night. In the sky beyond the figures, the full moon has risen.”

This indicates that the Passover had begun — and no Jew would have handled a dead body after the Passover had begun as it would make him ritually unclean. The scene also suggests that the body of Jesus was not being placed in a tomb but was being carried out secretly under the cover of night.

The significance of this story lies in the fact that the priest of Rennes le Chateau, Abbe Sauniere, discovered the story of Jesus’ survival in documents he found while renovating the church in the early 1890’s. His bishop, upon seeing the documents, sent him to Paris to meet with experts at the Seminary of Saint Sulpice, where he spent three weeks. He returned with access to considerable wealth, sufficient to completely renovate the church and build a road to the village up the hill. The implication is that his silence was bought.

It is important to note that the Stations of The Cross at Rennes le Chateau were painted under the direct supervision of Abbe Sauniere. He appears to be telling us that he knows — or a least believes — that Jesus survived the crucifixion.

As a final note to close this post, I will tell you about a most interesting event Michael Baigent discloses in this chapter. In researching the origin of the letter he had received mentioned above, he came upon Canon Alfred Lilley (1860–1948) who was Chancellor of Hereford Cathedral in Oxford, England. He was an expert in medieval French and was often consulted on difficult translation work.  He was invited to Paris to the Seminary of Saint Sulpice to assist in the translation of a “strange document (or documents).” The scholars working on the translation asked for help because of the outrageous nature of the text which they thought that perhaps they were misunderstanding. His friend, a Rev. Bartlett, who had invited him to go to Paris, reports on the outcome:

“They didn’t know that it was close to the bone . . . . Lilley said that they wouldn’t have a long and happy life if certain people knew about it. It was a very delicate matter. Lilley laughed over what was going to happen when the French priest told anyone about it. He didn’t know what happened to them [the documents], but he thought that they had changed hands for a large sum of money and had ended up in Rome.” In fact, Lilley thought that the Church would ultimately destroy these documents.

Lilley was quite certain that these documents were authentic. They were extraordinary and upset many of our ideas about the Church. Contact with the material, he said, led to an unorthodoxy. . . .  “By the end of his life,” Bartlett explained, ” Lilley had come to the conclusion that there was nothing in the Gospels that one could be certain about. He had lost all conviction of truth.”

A group of “Modernists” that included Lilley wanted to “revise the dogmatic assertions of the church teachings in the light of the discoveries made by science, archaeology, and critical scholarship.” Baigent concludes with this observation.

Many theologians were realizing that their confidence in the historical validity of New Testament stories was misplaced. For example, William Inge, Dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral, was once asked to write on the life of Jesus. He declined, saying that there was not nearly enough solid evidence to write anything at all about him.”

I will leave it there for now. Until my next post Easter Sunday morning, then,

Be love. Be loved.

Anthony

 

 

 

 

 

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