Creation: Something out of nothing

http://www.tgdaily.com/general-sciences-features/52955-team-says-it-can-make-matter-and-antimatter-out-of-nothing

Nice site

http://orionspiritblog.blogspot.com/

Home from Egypt

Just home from two weeks to Egypt studying the ancient temples and pyramids with John Anthony West. It was a life-changing experience and I hope to return next year with a group of my own for West to guide.   It would be great to put a custom tour together with our meditation practice and a look into the practice of the Essenes, the Hebrew sect Jesus was part of. This is the foundation of my contemporary work with Joel Goldsmith.  

The ties to the past help make the present practices more clear and meaningful.  Those seeking illumination can find much in Egypt and the practice of the ancient Egyptians, who, like the Essenes, lived their faith and religious understandings.  Clearly, when one sees their work through Schwaller and West's symbolist view,  there is no question that the ancient Egyptians were illumined and more advanced than we are today.  There is much to learn from them to enhance our Goldsmith studies. I hope you all will join me.

Origins of Christmas

http://home.comcast.net/~pobrien48/origin_of_christmas.htm

On my way to Egypt

As I prepare for my trip to Egypt with John Anthony West, here are some articles to help those of you who want to "follow along."

http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/phar/hd_phar.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manetho

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hellenistic_Jews

Again we see the thread of Egypt in Christianity by way of the Hebrews. It is a fascinating study which supports us as we continue forward to do what the ancients knew how to do far better than we - live a God centered life each and every day.  This is the message taught by Ptah, Zoroaster, Moses, Lao Tse, Buddha, Jesus, Shankara, and Mohammed and countless other saints and sages of time:  Love God and love your fellow man.  Most prophets have not been understood or followed correctly.  Now it is time for the individual to take full responsibility for his humanity, his spirituality and his worship.  I hope I can help you in that pursuit.

Robert Eisenman: Redemonizing Judas: Gospel Fiction or Gospel Truth?

Huffington Post: Robert Eisenman: Redemonizing Judas: Gospel Fiction or Gospel Truth?

"Judas Reconsidered -- Betrayal: Should We Hate Judas Iscariot"?

These are the shout lines given the most recent article in the New Yorker magazine (8/3/09) on the Gospel of Judas by Joan Acocella (credentials unknown, though her specialty has mostly been dance), which burst upon the scene in 2006 via a National Geographic TV special and companion book. It had apparently been gathering dust since the discovery of the Nag Hammadi codices in the late 40's (alongside the spectacular Dead Sea Scrolls), but that it existed had been known since Irenaeus of Lyons pronounced a ban upon it in the late 2nd c. CE -- the probable reason for its disappearance thereafter only to re-emerge in our own time in the sands of the Upper Egypt where, presumably, it had been cached to save it from the effects of just such an interdiction.

While Ms. Acocella's New Yorker piece is tolerable as a quick summary of the twists and turns of the debate for the non-specialist and the books that ensued, it is basically one of the more temporizing, least edifying, and most equivocal of any preceding it, ultimately drifting off into a discussion of Caravaggio (1603), Ludovico Carraci (1590), and Giotto (1305) -- as if these could matter -- and ending with a critical discussion of a recent book by one Susan Gubar (Judas: A Biography, 2009), perhaps the reason for the whole exercise.

Ms. Acocella displays no sense of history or any critical acumen -- and this from a magazine as prestigious as the New Yorker -- being so simplistic as to make even the amateur blush. So naturally she can come to no conclusion about a "Gospel" which early on gave every promise of being interpreted as removing some of the stigma adhering to a character taken as representing the Jewish people. Rather she backtracks to the position, best epitomized a year and a half earlier in a New York Times feature article by Prof. April DeConick of Rice University. For her part, Acocella ends by concluding: "The answer is not to fix the Bible (i. e., don't try to get at the true history concerned, however pernicious its effect), but to fix ourselves."

To come to grips with her ahistorical approach, take the very first sentence: "At the Last Supper, Jesus knew that it would be the last, and that he would be dead by the next day." (She sounds as if she were actually there.) She continues in this vein in the next paragraph: "This is the beginning of Jesus' end, and of Judas's. Jesus is arrested within hours. Judas, stricken with remorse, returns to the priests and tries to give them back their money" (she had already pictured him in the previous paragraph "perhaps before the Last Supper -- "Last Supper," no quotes, no "purported," just absolute truth -- meeting with the priests of the Temple to make arrangements for the arrest and collect his reward, the famous thirty pieces of silver").

This is a perfect example of the dictum I have tried to illumine in all my books, "Poetry is truer than History;" that is, it doesn't matter what really happened only what people think or the literary works upon which they depend say happened. No wonder Plato, who lived closer to these times than many, wanted to bar the poets (whom he felt created the "myths" by which people lived and which he considered to be a world of almost total darkness) from his "Republic."

She goes on without the slightest hesitation as if there were not an iota of doubt about any of these things: "They haughtily refuse it. Judas throws the coins on the floor (hardly, this is a misstated quotation from Zechariah we shall also elucidate further below). He then goes out and hangs himself. He dies before Jesus does." What immediacy -- she states these things as "facts," yet doesn't even seem to know that Luke in Acts has a very different picture of Judas' end, that he "fell headlong into the Akeldama" or "Field of Blood," "his guts bursting open," though for what reason it is impossible to say. This is literature, after all. Nor does she wonder whether there ever was a "Judas Iscariot" or imagine that he might be the literary representation of some retrospective theological invective which, finding a Gospel of completely opposite literary orientation, might suggest.

One should perhaps be grateful, however, to Ms. Acocella because, even in such an exalted forum as the New Yorker, she demonstrates the lack of sophistication and general cloud of unknowing about these things even among those who should know better - scholars, writers, artists, film-makers, Jew or Gentile (in fact, Jews being less knowing, are often more inclined to accept these pretenses than some Gentiles even though they affect them more -- sometimes even mortally). For her part, in the end, giving credit to this Gospel scenario of Judas as the Devil incarnate and ignoring the real significance of a contrary Gospel in his name, Acocella returns to the picture of Judas being the harbinger of both classical and modern anti-Semitism.

That being said, the real climax in this interpretative revision and turn-around was first expressed publicly in print on December 1st, 2007, the beginning of Hanukkah season that year and, of course, a prelude to the Christmas, when the New York Times, obviously purposefully, featured a centrally-positioned article on its editorial page, entitled -- perhaps facetiously, perhaps not -- "Gospel Truth" (my counter to this, "Gospel Truth or Gospel Fiction," ignored by the Times, was published in The Huffington Post about three weeks later -- 12/18/07).

In it, Prof. DeConick alluded (quite flatteringly, one might say) to the monopoly I and some colleagues broke concerning the Dead Sea Scrolls and compared the situation regarding the editing of "The Gospel of Judas" to it. Directly referring to the difficulty of "overturning" entrenched translations and "interpretations...even after they are proved wrong," she also went on to cite the Society of Biblical Literature's "1991 resolution holding that, if the condition of the written manuscript requires that access be restricted, a facsimile reproduction should be the first order of business." This, persons familiar with the sequence of events relating to the freeing of the Scrolls will know, Prof. James Robinson (a party to the present debate over the Gospel of Judas) and myself did in the same year (A Facsimile Edition of the Dead Sea Scrolls, B.A.S., Washington D. C.,1991).

The problem was that Prof. DeConick did not stop there. What she did (abetted by the appearance of this piece, so prominently positioned at such a time and in such a venue) was was to check the heroicization of Judas that had ensued after the National Geographic Society TV program featuring it, seemingly exonerating him, and return to portraying him in the traditional way as the Demon (Daimon) incarnate (in Gnostic terms, "the Thirteenth Apostle").

My own encounter with this situation actually occurred two weeks earlier in San Diego, California at a National Meeting of The Society of Biblical Literature (the premier organization in this field). My visit coincided with the exhibition of the Dead Sea Scrolls during the same period there, when Ms. DeConick appeared on a panel on the Gospel with some eight other scholars, including James Robinson above (The Secrets of Judas), Elaine Pagels of Princeton (The Gnostic Gospels), Karen King of Harvard (Reading Judas and the Shaping of Christianity), and Marv Meyer of Chapman University (who was allowed a very short response to Prof. DeConick in New York Times Letters a week later, 12/8/07, but nothing of any real substance regarding the points at issue here).

And here is the key point for everyone: the upshot of this necessarily-brief discussion was how few "orthodox Gospels" (meaning, Matthew, Mark, Luke, etc.) had come to light from the Second Century (the single example cited being a possible fragment of the Gospel of John from papyrus trash heaps in Egypt) but, on the other hand, how many heterodox. Did this mean that more people were reading "sectarian Gospels" at that time, not "orthodox" ones? The answer of the more conservative scholars on the Panel (Chair Michael Williams of the University of Washington, DeConick, Robinson, et. al) was, "Not really but that, in any case, the Gospel of Judas was less historical than they" -- a conclusion echoed by Ms. Acocella above.

At that point, as there seemed to be no further questions, I gathered my courage, stood up, and asked, "What makes you think any are historical and not just retrospective and polemical literary endeavors of a kind familiar to the Hellenistic/Greco-Roman world at that time? Why consider one gospel superior to the another and not simply expressions of retrospective theological repartee of the Platonic kind expressed in a literary manner as in Greek tragedy? The Gospel of Judas was clearly a polemical, philosophical text but, probably, so too were most of these others. Why not consider all of them a kind of quasi-Neoplatonic, Mystery Religion-oriented literature that was still developing in the Second Century and beyond, as the Gospel of Judas clearly demonstrates?"

A sort of hushed silence fell on the three hundred or so persons present in the audience, because there was a lot of interest in this Gospel at that time, as I continued: "Why think any of them historical or even representative of anything that really happened in Palestine in the First Century? Why not consider all Greco-Hellenistic romantic fiction or novelizing with an ax-to-grind, incorporating the Pax Romana of the earlier Great Roman Emperor Augustus, as other literature from this period had and, of course, the anti-Semitism and anti-Jewish legal attachments which were the outcome of the suppression of the Jewish War from 66-73 CE?"

"The Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans were masters of such man/god fiction and the creation of such characters as Osiris, Dionysus, Asclepius, Hercules, Orpheus, and the like as the works of Hesiod, Euripides, Virgil, Ovid, Petronius, Seneca, Apuleius, et. al. demonstrate. Why not consider all of this literature simply part of this man-God/ personification literature, in this instance incorporating the new Jewish concept of "Salvation" -- "Yeshu'a"?"

At this point Chair Williams finally cut in, gave an answer on behalf of what he claimed to be (and I believe him) "the whole panel" -- that, "Tradition affirmed they were." This he seems to have considered sufficient for me -- one of the few non-Christians in the room who might have enough knowledge to say something meaningful or precise enough to matter.

But the reason I write about these things now is that Jews, in particular, must not just leave them to well-meaning Christians to sort out. In view of the suffering of the last century -- in fact, the last nineteen centuries -- they too should take an interest in and become knowledgeable about these issues. Especially now, in view of the informational turn-around and retreat in the New Yorker, a magazine traditionally aimed at people of sophistication and urbane intellectuality; it is all the more relevant to raise the issue of this "Judas" and not allow it to go by the boards again and, now that we have more tools, incumbent upon one to do so.

Regardless of predictable outcries from "the left" or "the right" or the impact on anyone's "Faith" -- as if this could matter in the face of all the unfortunate and cruel effects that have come from taking the picture of the "Judas" in Scripture seriously as "history" -- especially in the post-Holocaust Era, one must go beyond the inanities and superficialities to the core issue raised by the Gospel and not allow it to be just blandly dismissed -- that is, all are works of literature. None are really historical works in the true sense of the word, which the appearance of Gospels such as this and an earlier one, the Gospel of Thomas, drive home with a vengeance.

Having grasped this, one must move beyond all this artfulness ("the poetry" as it were) and confront the issue of whether there ever was a "Judas Iscariot" per se (to say nothing of all the insidious materials circulating under his name), except in the imagination of these Gospel artificers. Nor is this to say anything about the historicity of "Jesus" himself (another difficult question, though the "Judas" puzzle likely points the way towards a solution to this one as well) or another, largely literary or fictional character, very much -- in view of women's issues -- in vogue these days, "Jesus"'s alleged consort and the supposed mother of his only child, "Mary Magdalene," in whom Ms. Acocella along with Mss. Pagels and King above are very much interested.

But while this latter kind of storytelling did little specifically-identifiable harm, except to confuse literature with history or call into question one's truth sense; the case of "Judas Iscariot" is quite another thing both in kind and effect. It has had a more horrific and, in fact, totally unjustifiable historical effect and, even if it happened the way the Gospels and the Book of Acts describe it, which is doubtful, effects of this kind were and are wholly unjustified and reprehensible.

In fact, there are only a few references to "Judas Iscariot" in orthodox Scripture -- all of which probably tendentious. In John 12:5, he is made to complain about Mary's "anointing Jesus' feet with precious spikenard ointment" (another of these ubiquitous "Mary"s in the Gospels -- this time "Mary the sister of Lazarus" and not "Mary Magdalene" or "Mary the mother of Jesus" or even "Mary the mother of James and John" or "of John Mark") in terms of why was not this "sold for 300 dinars and given to the poor" -- a variation on the "30 pieces of silver" he supposedly took for "betraying" Jesus later in Matthew 27:3-7, and which Ms. Acocella makes so much of.

For their part, Matthew and Mark have the other "Disciples" or "some" do the "complaining," not specifically "Judas Iscariot" (the episode is ignored in Luke in favor of other mythologizations -- see my New Testament Code); but I say "made" because this is certainly not an historical episode, but rather one which one would encounter in the annals of Greek tragedy with various "gods" demanding the obeisance due them.

Moreover, anyone remotely familiar with the vocabulary of this field would immediately recognize the allusion to "the Poor" as but a thinly-veiled attack on "the Ebionites" -- that group of the followers of "Jesus" or his brother "James," according to Eusebius in the Fourth Century, who were probably the aboriginal "Christians" in Palestine who did not follow the doctrine of "the Supernatural Christ," considering "Jesus" as simply a "man"/"a prophet," engendered by natural generation and exceeding other men in the practice of righteousness only.

In fact, Luke's version of Judas Iscariot's death in Acts 1:16-19, as noted, and Matthew's version do not agree at all -- a normal state of affairs where Gospel reportage is concerned. In Matthew, Judas goes out and "hangs himself" (thus) after throwing the "30 pieces of silver" -- "the price of blood" as Matthew terms it -- into the Temple (whatever this means -- more imaginatively, Ms. Acocella has him "throwing the coins on the floor" before the "haughty" priests!) This is supposed to fulfill a passage from "the Prophet Jeremiah" but, in fact, the passage being quoted is a broadly-doctored version of "the Prophet Zechariah" (11:12-13) which does not really have the connotation Matthew is trying to give it anyhow.

To continue -- in Acts, Judas "falls headlong" into "a Field of Blood" ("Akeldama"), reason unexplained. This is the description used in an "Ebionite" document called the Pseudoclementine Recognitions to picture the "headlong fall" James takes down the Temple steps when the "enemy" Paul physically attacks him leaving him for dead; and, as also noted, "he burst open and his bowels gushed out" (thus). Most conflate these two accounts but, as just suggested, they are really only a parody of the death of James as reported in early Church literature (so is the stoning of Stephen in Acts) and the other three Gospels do not mention how "Judas" died at all.

The point, however, is that the entire character of "Judas Iscariot" is generated out of whole cloth and it is meant to be. Moreover, it is done in a totally malevolent way. This, the Gospel of Judas was obviously trying to ameliorate; but now, if we are to take the words of Prof. DeConick in the New York Times' "Gospel Truth" column seriously, and Ms. Acocolla in the New Yorker, about "not fixing history but fixing ourselves" -- after the first blush of excitement over its discovery, the scholarly pendulum has swung back the other way and we are, once again, in the business of "demonizing" Judas, not "heroicizing" him. Moreover, according to both, we should in effect downgrade the Gospel and consider the "orthodox" Gospels, in some manner, superior to it and more historical.

The creators of this character and the traditions related to him knew what it was they were seeking to do and in this they have succeeded in a manner far beyond anything they might have imagined and that would have astonished even their hate-besotted brains. Contrary to what Ms. Acocella imagines, Judas Iscariot was meant to be both hateful and hated -- a diabolical character despised by all mankind and a byword for treachery ("Betrayal" according to the New Yorker) and the opposite of the all-perfection of the perfect Gnosticizing Mystery conceptuality embodied in the person of the "Salvation" figure "Jesus" ("Yeshu'a," of course, meaning "Salvation").

But in creating this character, the authors of these traditions and these Gospels (often, it is difficult to decide which came first, "the Gospels" themselves or the traditions either inspired by or giving inspiration to them) had a dual purpose in mind and, in this, their creation has done its job admirably well. His very name "Judas" in that time and place (forget the fact that it is a byword for "Jew" even to this day) was meant both to parody and heap abuse on two favorite characters of the Jews of the age: "Judas Maccabee," the hero of "Hanukkah" festivities even today, and "Judas the Galilean," the founder (described by the First Century Jewish historian and turncoat, Josephus -- someone who really was a "Traitor") of what one might call either "the Zealot" or "the Galilean Movement" even "the Sicarii."

Moreover, the name "Jew" in all languages actually comes from this Biblical name "Judas" or "Judah" ("Yehudah"), a fact not missed by the people at that time and not misunderstood even today. So, therefore, the pejorative on "Judas" and the symbolic value of all that it signified in the First Century, not only as a by-word for "treachery," but a slur on the whole Jewish people, was not missed either by those who created this particular 'blood libel' or by all other future peoples even down to the present -- and how very successful over the last two thousand years.

But there is another dimension to this particular 'blood libel' which has also not failed to leave its mark, historically speaking, on the peoples of the world. This is "Judas"' cognomen "Iscariot." No one has ever found the linguistic prototype or origin of this curious denominative, but it is not unremarkable that in the Gospel of John he is also called "Judas the son" or "brother of Simon Iscariot" and, at one point, even "the Iscariot" (cf. John 6:71, 14:22, etc.).

Of course, the closest cognate to any of these rephrasings is the well-known term Josephus uses to designate (also pejoratively) the extreme "Zealots" or Revolutionaries of the time, "the Sicarii" -- the 'iota' and the 'sigma' of the Greek having simply been reversed, a common mistake in the transliteration of Semitic orthography into unrelated languages like English and well-known in Arabic -- the 'iota' likewise too generating out of the 'ios' of the singular in Greek,"Sicarios." There is no other tenable approximation that this term could realistically allude to. Plus the attachment to it of the definite article "the," whether mistakenly or by design, just strengthens that conclusion.

Furthermore, Judas' association in these episodes with the concept both of "the poor" as well as that of a suicide of some kind in Matthew -- suicide being one of the tenets of the group Josephus identifies as carrying out just such a mass procedure at the climax of the famous last stand on Masada -- to say nothing of the echo of the cognomen of the founder of this party, the equally famous "Judas the Galilean" (also a "Judas the Zealot" as "Judas Maccabee" certainly would have been), just strengthens this conclusion.

Equally germane is the fact that another "Apostle" of "Jesus" is supposed to have been called -- at least according to Luke's Apostle lists -- "Simon Zelotes"/"Simon the Zealot" which, of course, also translates out in the jargon of the Gospel of John as "Simon Iscariot" or "Simon the Iscariot." Moreover, he was more than likely a 'brother' of the curious Disciple in the same lists called "Judas of James," that is, "Judas the brother of James" (the way the designation is alluded to in the New Testament Letter of Jude/Judas). In a variant manuscript of an early Syriac document known as The Apostolic Constitutions, this individual is also designated "Judas the Zealot" -- thereby completing the circle of all these inter-related terminologies which seem to have been coursing through so many of the early documents in this period.

Of course, all these matters are as difficult for the non-specialist as they have been for the specialist, but once they are weighed together, there is hardly any escaping the fact that "Judas Iscariot "/"the Iscariot"/"the brother" or "son of Simon the Iscariot" in the Gospels and the Book of Acts is a pejorative for many of these other characters, meant to defame and polemically demonize a number of individuals seen as opposing not only the Imperium Romanum but also the new 'Pauline' or more Greco-Roman esotericizing and pacifist doctrine of the "Supernatural Christ." The presentation of this "Judas," polemicizing as it was, was probably never meant to take on the historical and theological dimensions it has, traveling through the last two thousand years and leading up to the present, but with a stubborn toughness it has endured.

Nevertheless, its success as a demonizing pejorative has been monumental, a whole people having suffered the consequences of, not only of seeing its own beloved heroes turned into demonaics, but of being hunted down mercilessly - to some extent the frightening result of its efficacy. If anything were a proof of the aphorism "Poetry is truer than history" with which we started, then this is. It is worth repeating that I believe its original artificers would have been astonished by its incredible success.

Even beyond this, not only is there no historical substance to the presentation or its after-effects, but if "Jesus" were alive today -- whoever he was, human or supernatural, historical or literary, real or unreal -- he would be shocked at such vindictiveness and diabolically-inspired hatred and he, perhaps more even than all others, would have expected his partisans to divest themselves of this historical shibboleth, particularly in view of the harm it has done over the millennia, especially to his own people.

This is what the initial appearance of the Gospel of Judas gave promise of achieving, but now the rehabilitation of the character known to the world as "Judas" -- so greatly in order in the light of the incredible atrocities committed over the last century, some as a consequence of this particular libel -- seems to be reversing itself, particularly among theologically-minded persons, as scholars like DeConick and journalists like Acocella rethink and represent these things; and the process engendered by this historical polemic and its reversal now seems to be ending, the downplaying of its historicity relative to alleged "orthodox Gospels" and the "demonization" of Judas (deserved or undeserved) being evidence of this. It is yet another deleterious case of literature, cartoon, or lampoon being taken as history.

Still, it is time people really started to come to terms with the almost completely literary and ahistorical character of a large number of figures of the kind of this "Judas" in whatever the "Gospel" and in whatever manner he is portrayed -- positively or negatively -- and, in the process, admit the historical malevolence of the original caricature and move forward onto the higher plain of the amelioration of rehabilitation. This is what Christians of good will have always said they were interested in doing and this is what Jews must learn to do for themselves, if they are ever to escape from its pernicious effects and the re-emergence of the traditional picture.

No one else is going to do it for them and ignorance is no excuse. They must first of all stop repeating the platitudes that these things reflect historical truth. One allows this to continue at one's own peril and this the Gospel of Judas illumines with a vengeance, which is why the rush to reinterpret and discredit it. It is ignorance that allows this and Jews must be the first to take off the blinders regarding this particular embodiment of it. As the coming of yet another High Holy Day atonement period approaches, no healthier, happier, or higher hope could be wished for or expressed.

Robert Eisenman is a professor of Middle East Religions and Archaeology at California State University Long Beach. He is the author of James the Brother of Jesus and The New Testament Code.

Interesting History, More New Information We Did Not Know

http://www.saudiaramcoworld.com/issue/198001/piri.reis.and.the.hapgood.hypotheses.htm

Huxley vs. Orwell

Huxley Vs. Orwell: Infinite Distraction Or Government Oppression? | Prose Before Hos

Creation

Abiogenesis - Can Life Be Initiated Without a Creator? - a knol by Zvi Shkedi

"Darwin's theory of evolution is often used as an anti-religious political weapon, to refute the account of creation in the Bible. Learning evolution, in many schools, is connected with denial of creation by God. The following citation from Darwin's book ("On The Origin of Species", 6th edition, p.429, the closing paragraph of the Conclusion) sheds interesting light on this controversy:

"There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one."

Darwin himself knew that life on earth was initiated by "the Creator". Everything else is minor details. As it says in the Bible: "...and He (God) breathed into him a breath of life." (Genesis, ch.2, v.7)
Richard Dawkins, one of the most aggressive anti-creation evolution biologists, admits that life appears abruptly in the fossil record. He says:

“We find many of them already in an advanced state of evolution, the very first time they appear. It is as though they were just planted there, without any evolutionary history”. ("The Blind Watchmaker", 1986, p. 229).

The English Professor Anthony Flew was, for half a century, the world's leading authority on atheism. When he learned, in 2004, about the breaking of the genetic code in DNA, he changed his mind and announced that he believes in God as a first cause. The structure of DNA, he explained, was so awesomely complex that it could not have just evolved. It must have been designed and created by God."

Hanuka - Sunlight, Candlelight

Sunlight, Candlelight

By Mendel Weinberger

Hanukah. The Festival of Lights. It is perhaps the most beloved of the Jewish Festivals. No soul searching, no fasting, no shivering in plywood huts fishing pine needles out of your soup, no breaking your teeth on unleavened bread, no drinking until you drop. Just a few quiet moments with your family sitting around the multi- colored candles singing "Rock of Ages", eating potato latkes (USA, Europe) or jelly doughnuts (Israel), and watching your kids spin the dreidel. Just a few moments of peace and tranquility gazing at the flickering flames in your living room while outside the flashing colored lights, fake snow, and tinsel adorn every storefront and the frantic gift giving season is playing full blast.

You retell the heroic tale of Judah Macabee and his fearless men, the wondrous victory of the weak over the strong, the few over the many, the righteous over the wicked. And of course, you tell of the oil that miraculously burned for eight days. But it is the lights that draw you, that hold your gaze, that remind you of the mystery - the mystery of Jewish history, the mystery of G-d's Will, the mystery of life. As you gaze into the flames, think about light - physical light and spiritual light. Where does it come from? And where is it going?

The sun. Radiant orb, emanating light and warmth. A luminous king who rules the day, shining a blinding light at noon, and a soft glow at sunset, blistering heat in July and a welcome, comforting warmth in January. It is the most consistent element in the world, appearing each day in the east, where is begins its daily march across the sky to set in the west - a symbol of G-d's benevolence. In Hebrew sunlight is called ohr hashemesh (the light that serves). It bursts forth from the sun as a new creation, yet is constantly connected. Sunlight surrounds us, but we cannot grasp it. We feel its presence, measure its heat, harness its power, but we cannot possess it. The light belongs forever to the king - that blinding, blazing inferno hanging 95 million miles up in the sky.

Inside the body of the sun there is no light only essence, an element that defies description. Is it a fire? Yes and no. Is it a gas? Yes and no. It's a flaming sphere of hydrogen and helium that never goes out. In its source, light is without substance, no beginning and no end. But as it leaves its origin, the essence of the sun is hidden, and a new generated light is born. As the light travels farther and farther away from the sun, it becomes limited, defined, and restricted. It can shine through your window but not through a brick wall. Its power can make electricity, heat water, create photosynthesis, and give you a tan.

You can put sunlight through red, green, or blue glass but it won't change the light. It only changes the way you see it. And it certainly doesn't change the sun, because the sun doesn't care how we see the light. Sunlight doesn't discriminate. It shines on the flower as well as the garbage dump, the mountaintop and the valley floor, the righteous and the wicked. Sunlight's one major flaw is that it never, ever unites and clothes itself in the physical world. It cannot. For if it did, it would have to disengage from the sun and that would be its end.

Candlelight. Drawn from primordial fire, the most spiritual element in creation. Forever striving upward to unite with its source above, yet held down by wick and oil. It consumes its fuel with an endless hunger, radiating a soft, friendly glow that dispels much darkness. A light that is a comfort to the lonely, a seductress to the lover, a ray of hope to the downtrodden, and a symbol of the striving spirit to the seeker. As opposed to the sun, fire does unite with physical matter to the point where it needs creation in order to reveal itself. Yet the light produced comes from a higher place. One can possess candlelight as long as it remains connected to its source. Its limitation is that it depends on and is directly affected by the material that feeds its fire.

The sun and the candle - two sources of light holding deep meaning for humanity.

But for the Jew these two symbols hold the key to creation and our partnership in perfecting it. Consider now that sunlight and candlelight are metaphors for the spiritual light that creates and maintains the universe. G-d created the light by an act of tzimtzum (contraction). He so to speak removed His presence and produced a light that could be at the same time connected to Him yet far away from His Essence.

A light that could create worlds but would never be affected by them, could enliven existence yet never unite with it. This light is like the light of the sun, generated from the place of G-d's infinite benevolence, the highest spiritual world of atzilut (emanation). It is the foundation for every world below it including our material world. Like the sun we cannot gaze directly into it, for this would blind us. Yet we can sense its presence, as the spiritual source of our lives and of all creation. It is a power that transcends all limitations, all definitions, all actions, feelings, and thoughts. It is the ultimate Truth of G-d's Being.

This light encompasses all existence, physical and spiritual, from a single celled ameba to an African elephant, from a grain of sand to the planet Jupiter, from the demons and angels to the souls of the prophets. For this source of creation no act of man makes the slightest bit of difference. It is the force of unlimited giving without consideration of a human response. You can be a practicing Jew or an atheist. It makes no difference - G-d's light will shine on you and keep you alive. It is called in Hebrew Ohr Yashar - the straightforward light.

The symbol of candlelight is G-d's immanence. It is how He clothes Himself in creation and reveals himself as the living soul of the universe. This light is forever striving upward toward its spiritual source, yet is held below by the fine thread of material existence. This is the caring, personal side of G-d who desires man's service and regards keenly what we do. For a Jew this service means using the physical world and our own talents and abilities to fulfill His Will.

Giving charity, helping a friend, and keeping the Sabbath fuel the flame of G-d's light and make it shine ever brighter in one's soul and in the world. Eating matzah on Passover, shaking the lulav on Succot, and lighting the Hanukah menorah generate the oil that nourishes this godly light and sends it heavenward to find it's home in G-ds's Being. It is called Ohr Chozer, the returning light, and it is our opportunity to participate in the dynamic of creation.

Most people would prefer to bask in the bright sunlight of G-d's benevolence all their lives and never have to give anything back. But as sure as night follows day, there comes a time - the dark night of the soul - when G-d's kindness is hidden and one must light a candle to see the way forward. In the path of the spirit, lighting a candle doesn't depend on what you know or what you believe. It doesn't depend on your title or position. All it takes is to strike the match of humility and to "do" a good deed, not because you want to, but because this deed will light up your soul and send the flame up to the Throne of Glory. In turn G-d responds with a revelation of something even greater than the light of the sun. He gives you Himself. We serve G-d because He is the source of our life and the goal of our passage through time and space. And in the end there is absolutely nothing else.

The Hanuka lights flicker and sputter out and with a sigh you get back to the business of living. But a trace of memory remains. A memory that is engraved in the Jewish soul - a memory of holiness, of revelation, of service, a memory of where we come from, and where we are going. It is a memory of a nation proud of itself. Don't let it go.

---

Mendel Weinberger is an English teacher and freelance writer who lives in Jerusalem with his wife and six children.

~~~~~~~ from the December 1999 Edition of the Jewish Magazine

http://www.jewishmag.com/27mag/candle/candle.htm 

The Hidden Story of Jesus

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhef6wa2Mpc&feature=related

Important to know

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mspn_7p8sVM&feature=player_embedded

GMO

http://www.hippocratesinst.org/avoid-genetically-modified-food

MUST SEE

http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=5889

Spirituality in College

latimes.com/news/local/la-me-beliefs-college-20101120,0,2997425.story

latimes.com

Spirituality finds a home at college

Students, searching for meaning in life, often enhance their inner lives, long-term study finds.

By Rick Rojas, Los Angeles Times
November 20, 2010

advertisement

....for many students, college is a time to develop spiritually in ways that can endure after they've finished school, a new long-term study has found.

"It kind of opens the student's mind," Alexander Astin, one of the study's authors and a professor emeritus of higher education at UCLA, said of the college experience. He called it a period "stimulated by exposure to new people and new ideas."
.... College is a safe haven in which they can explore their spirituality and challenge it.

The spirituality study, launched in 2003, was based on an initial survey of 112,000 American college freshmen, then a follow-up survey of more than 14,000 of the students after they completed their junior year at scores of colleges and universities nationwide. The researchers published their findings in a book released last month, "Cultivating the Spirit: How College Can Enhance Students' Inner Lives." Astin's co-authors were his wife, Helen S. Astin, who is also a professor of higher education at UCLA, and Jennifer A. Lindholm, director of the university's Spirituality in Higher Education project.

The study found that many students struggled with their religious beliefs and became less certain of them during their college years.

It also found that many young people eschewed the rituals of organized religion but embraced what the researchers defined as the cornerstones of spirituality: asking the big, existential questions; working to improve one's community; and showing empathy toward other people.

"These spiritual qualities are critical and vital to many things a student does in college and after," Astin said.

The researchers also found that students who were more spiritual typically performed better academically, had stronger leadership skills, were more amiable and were generally more satisfied with college.


.....College courses on religious subjects help teach students how to read sacred texts with an intellectually curious eye.....


rick.rojas@latimes.com

Copyright © 2010, Los Angeles Times

Ron Paul on TSA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qwsdq69AHnw&feature=player_embedded

Time and Death

Robert Lanza, M.D.

Scientist, Theoretician

Posted: November 4, 2010 08:52 AM

Is Death the End? 

              Experiments Suggest You Create Time

When I was young, I stayed at my neighbor's house. They had a grandfather clock. Between the tick and the tock of the pendulum, I lay awake thinking about the perverse nature of time. Mr. O'Donnell is gone now. His wife Barbara, now in her nineties, greets me with her cane when I go back to visit.

We watch our loved ones age and die, and we assume that an external entity called time is responsible for the crime. But experiments increasingly cast doubt on the existence of time as we know it. In fact, the reality of time has long been questioned by philosophers and physicists. When we speak of time, we're usually referring to change. But change isn't the same thing as time.

To measure anything's position precisely is to "lock in" on one static frame of its motion, as in a film. Conversely, as soon as you observe movement, you can't isolate a frame, because motion is the summation of many frames. Sharpness in one parameter induces blurriness in the other. Consider a film of a flying arrow that stops on a single frame. The pause enables you to know the position of the arrow with great accuracy: it's 20 feet above the grandstand. But you've lost all information about its momentum. It's going nowhere; its path is uncertain.

Numerous experiments confirm that such uncertainty is built into the fabric of reality. Heisenberg's uncertainty principle is a fundamental concept of quantum physics. However, it only makes sense from a biocentric perspective. According to biocentrism, time is the inner sense that animates the still frames of the spatial world. Remember, you can't see through the bone surrounding your brain; everything you experience is woven together in your mind. So what's real? If the next image is different from the last, then it's different, period. We can award change with the word "time," but that doesn't mean that there's an invisible matrix in which changes occur.

At each moment we're at the edge of a paradox described by the Greek philosopher Zeno. Because an object can't occupy two places simultaneously, he contended that an arrow is only at one place during any given instant of its flight. To be in one place, however, is to be at rest. The arrow must therefore be at rest at every instant of its flight. Thus, motion is impossible. But is this really a paradox? Or rather, is it proof that time (motion) isn't a feature of the outer, spatial world, but rather a conception of thought?

An experiment published in 1990 suggests that Zeno was right. In this experiment, scientists demonstrated the quantum equivalent of the adage that "a watched pot doesn't boil." This behavior, the "quantum Zeno effect," turns out to be a function of observation. "It seems,"said physicist Peter Coveney, "that the act of looking at an atom prevents it from changing". Theoretically, if a nuclear bomb were watched intently enough -- that is, if you could check its atoms every million trillionth of a second -- it wouldn't explode. Bizarre? The problem lies not in the experiments but in our way of thinking about time. Biocentrism is the only comprehensible way to explain these results, which are only "weird" in the context of the existing paradigm.

In biocentrism, space and time are forms of animal intuition. They're tools of the mind and thus don't exist as external objects independent of life. When we feel poignantly that time has elapsed, as when loved ones die, it constitutes the human perceptions of the passage and existence of time. Our babies turn into adults. We age. That, to us, is time. It belongs with us.

New experiments confirm this concept. In 2002, scientists carried out an amazing experiment that showed that within pairs of particles, each particle anticipated what its twin would do in the future. Somehow, the particles "knew" what the researcher would do before it happened, as if there were no space or time between them. In a 2007 study published in Science, scientists shot particles into an apparatus and showed that they could retroactively change whether the particles behaved as photons or waves. The particles had to "decide" what to do when they passed a fork in the apparatus. Later on, the experimenter could flip a switch. It turns out what the observer decided at that point determined how the particle had behaved at the fork in the past. Thus the knowledge in our mind can determine how particles behave.

Of course, we live in the same world. Critics claim that this behavior is limited to the quantum world. But this "two-world" view (that is, the view that there is one set of laws for quantum objects and another for the rest of the universe, including us) has no basis in reason and is being challenged in labs around the world. Last year, researchers published a study in Nature suggesting that quantum behavior extends into the everyday realm. Pairs of ions were coaxed to entangle, and then their properties remained bound together when separated by large distances ("spooky action at a distance," as Einstein put it) as if there were no time or space. And in 2005, KHCO₃ crystals exhibited entanglement ridges half an inch high, demonstrating that quantum behavior could nudge into the ordinary world of human-scale objects.

In the Oct. 2010 issue of Discover, theoretical physicists Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow state, "There is no way to remove the observer -- us -- from our perceptions of the world ... In classical physics, the past is assumed to exist as a definite series of events, but according to quantum physics, the past, like the future, is indefinite and exists only as a spectrum of possibilities."

That night, while lying awake at my neighbor's house, I had found the answer -- that the missing piece is with us. As I see it, immortality doesn't mean perpetual (linear) existence in time but resides outside of time altogether. Life is a journey that transcends our classical way of thinking. Experiment after experiment continues to suggest that we create time, not the other way around. Without consciousness, space and time are nothing. At death, there's a break in the continuity of space and time; you can take any time -- past or future -- as your new frame of reference and estimate all potentialities relative to it. In the end, even Einstein acknowledged that "the distinction between past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion." Life is just one fragment of time, one brushstroke in a picture larger than ourselves, eternal even when we die. This is the indispensable prelude to immortality.

"Time and space are but the physiological colors which the eye maketh," said Ralph Waldo Emerson in his essay "Self-Reliance." "But the soul is light; where it is, is day; where it was, is night."

"Biocentrism" (co-authored with astronomer Bob Berman) lays out Lanza's theory of everything.

Nocebo

Like the placebo...our thoughts affect our material world, body and mind.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nocebo

Four Psychological Fads

latimes.com/health/la-he-psychology-fads-20101115,0,481706.story

A look at primal therapy, Transcendental Meditation, EST, and lucid dreaming.

Edgar Cayce on Astrology - an Excellent Explanation

Think on This ...

Then all of these influences astrological (as known or called) from without, bear witness--or are as innate influences upon our activity, our sojourn through any given experience. Not because we were born with the sun in this sign or that, nor because Jupiter or Mercury or Saturn or Uranus or Mars was rising or setting, but rather:
Because we were made for the purpose of being companions with Him, a little lower than the angels who behold His face ever yet as heirs, as joint heirs with Him who is the Savior, the Way, then we have brought these about because of our activities through our experiences in those realms! Hence they bear witness by being in certain positions--because of our activity, our sojourn in those environs, in relationships to the universal forces of activity.
Hence they bear witness of certain urges in us, not beyond our will but controlled by our will!

Edgar Cayce Reading 1567-2


This email was automatically generated by the Association for Research and Enlightenment.

Ancient Greece

http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2010/nov/07/ancient-world-greece

Our Infinite Universe

http://www.flixxy.com/hubble-ultra-deep-field-3d.htm

Dead Sea Scroll News

http://www.gnosis.org/library/dss/dss_book_of_giants.htm

Spiritual Conspiracy

A SPIRITUAL CONSPIRACY

On the surface of the world right now there is
war and violence and things seem dark.
But calmly and quietly at the same time,
something else is happening underground.
An inner revolution is taking place,
and certain individuals are being called to a higher light.
It is a silent revolution.
From the inside out. From the ground up.
This is a Global operation.
A Spiritual Conspiracy.
There are sleeper cells in every nation on the planet.
You won't see us on the T.V.
You won't read about us in the newspaper.
You won't hear about us on the radio.
We don't seek any glory.
We don't wear any uniform.
We come in all shapes and sizes, colors and styles.
Most of us work anonymously.
We are quietly working behind the scenes
in every country and culture of the world.
Cities big and small, mountains and valleys,
in farms and villages, tribes and remote islands.
You could pass by one of us on the street
and not even notice.
We go undercover.
We remain behind the scenes.
It is of no concern to us who takes the final credit,
but simply that the work gets done.
Occasionally we spot each other in the street;
we give a quiet nod and continue on our way.
During the day many of us pretend we have normal jobs.
But behind the false storefront at night
is where the real work takes a place.
Some call us the Conscious Army.
We are slowly creating a new world
with the power of our minds and hearts.
We follow, with passion and joy.
Our orders come from the Central Spiritual Intelligence.
We are dropping soft, secret love bombs when no one is looking
Poems ~ Hugs ~ Music ~ Photography ~ Movies ~ Kind words ~
Smiles ~ Meditation and prayer ~ Dance ~ Social activism ~ Websites
Blogs ~ Random acts of kindness...
We each express ourselves in our own unique ways
with our own unique gifts and talents.
Be the change you want to see in the world.
That is the motto that fills our hearts.
We know it is the only way real transformation takes place.
We know that quietly and humbly we have the
power of all the oceans combined.
Our work is slow and meticulous,
like the formation of mountains.
It is not even visible at first glance.
And yet with it entire tectonic plates
shall be moved in the centuries to come.
Love is the new religion of the 21st century.
You don't have to be a highly educated person
or have any exceptional knowledge to understand it.
It comes from the intelligence of the heart,
embedded in the timeless evolutionary pulse of all human beings.
Be the change you want to see in the world.
Nobody else can do it for you.
We are now recruiting.
Perhaps you will join us -
Or already have.
All are welcome
The door is open
~ author unknown

Final 2010 Class

Our final class for 2010 will begin Nov. 5 through Nov. 7 in Los Angeles.   The class enrollment is full, however you can join us in consciousness if you wish.

The topic is Sons of God vs. Sons of Man and will incorporate Ancient Egypt, Dead Sea Scrolls, Essene Practices, Archeology, Geology with Joel's Principles.  This will be the launching of my new work, which I hope will make Joel's message even more profound and practical for all serious students, those devoted to the meditative life as Joel taught it.

As this is my personal work, there may be materials available after class.

Latest in Dead Sea Scrolls News

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oF51V-jh-z4&feature=player_embedded

Third San Francisco Lecture

"Now, here is a strange thing - strange if it had not been a somewhat similar experience of one’s own - that even the people who saw Lazarus raised from the dead, even those who had been fed in the wilderness, even the multitudes who were healed, didn’t believe at this particular point.  They all were willing to walk away.  The moment the test came, the trial came, the minute there was something not quite regular, even those who had benefited by this healing work were willing to walk away.

"Now, don’t think for a moment that this applies only to the people of that age.  No, it applies to the people of this age, as well.  At all times when you enter upon this work as a practitioner, or teacher, or lecturer, remember this: YOU ARE PRESENTING CHRIST – CHRIST LIVING – CHRIST OMNIPRESENT – in Christian language; IMMANUEL, in Hebrew language; TAO, in Chinese language.  You are presenting the idea of the very Imminence [sic] [Immanence] of God.  And therefore no one can build you up, since you had nothing to do with It except to become aware of It, and then become willing to share It.

"Those who do permit themselves to be built up, to develop into personalities, end up on the cross.  There is no way to prevent this because that is the nature of human experience.  We should not be here, as we shall see later, to glorify the personal self, since the personal self, whether by taking thought or by any other means, can of itself do nothing.  “I can do all things through Christ,”  That is true.  And Jesus said, “I can of mine own self do nothing.”  He knew that it was the Father within who did the work."

 - Chapter Three

NY Times Monday Nov. 1, 2010

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/01/us/01monks.html

---

October 31, 2010

On an Indian Reservation, a Garden of Buddhas

By JIM ROBBINS

ARLEE, Mont. — On a rural American Indian reservation here, amid grazing horses and cattle, a Buddhist lama from the other side of the world is nearing completion of a $1.6 million meditative garden that he hopes will draw spiritual pilgrims.
“There is something pure and powerful about this landscape,” said Gochen Tulku Sang-ngag Rinpoche, the 56-year-old Tibetan lama, as he walked down a gravel road on a sunny fall day. “The shape of the hills is like a lotus petal blossoming.”
Richard Gere has not been seen house shopping here — yet. But on the land of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai tribes, a 24-foot statue of Yum Chenmo, the Great Wisdom Mother, has risen in Mr. Sang-ngag’s farm field. Nearby, in his old sheep barn, amid rubber molds and plaster, some 650 statues of Buddha sit in neat rows, illuminated by shafts of light pouring in through broken boards.
It seemed the perfect setup for a clash of two cultures when Mr. Sang-ngag, a high-ranking Buddhist lama, came to this remote part of Montana a decade ago, liked the landscape feng shui and bought a 60-acre sheep ranch. At the foot of the towering, glacier-etched Mission Mountains — not unlike his native Tibet — he and a band of volunteers began building a Garden of 1,000 Buddhas to promote world peace.
The arrival of the exotic culture here in cowboy country, with multicolored prayer flags flapping in the breeze, made some from the Salish and Kootenai tribes uneasy, to say the least.
An unusual land ownership pattern was partly to blame. While most Indian reservations are majority-owned by the tribes, a 1904 law allowed nonmembers of the tribes to homestead land. And as a result, there are four to five times as many non-Indians on the reservation as there are Indians.
Mr. Sang-ngag called his place Ewam Sang-ngag Ling, or the Land of Secret Mantra, Wisdom and Compassion. It turns out that it was sacred to the tribes as well, a place where, oral traditions hold, a coyote vanquished a monster and drove out many bad spirits so the people could live here.
Julie Cajune, the executive director for American Indian Policy at Salish Kootenai College and other Indians began working to build bridges between the tribes and the Buddhists. They suggested that the Buddhists bring traditional gifts, prayer scarves and tobacco, to the tribal council, which they did.
“Many people move here without recognition they are a guest,” Ms. Cajune said. “None of the mainstream churches or the Amish have done that.”
Buddhists in Japan, Taiwan and China have sent money for Buddha statues. The Dalai Lama has agreed to come and consecrate the Garden of 1,000 Buddhas after the project it is finished, perhaps in 2012.
But the patchwork of Indian and non-Indian land holdings within the reservation remains contentious. Some tribal members are worried that groups drawn to the Buddhist garden will buy up nontribal land, driving prices further out of the reach of Indians, and ignore tribal rules and customs.
They point to the case of Amish families who have bought farmland within the reservation, said Ms. Cajune, who is Salish.
“It’s ironic, but many Indian people can’t afford to buy land on their own reservation,” she said. A typical acre for building a home here might cost $30,000 — an enormous amount in rural and tribal Montana.
But Ms. Cajune said there was also an uncanny kinship between the tribal and Buddhist cultures, based on understandings of sacred landscapes, and even notions of honor and respect.
The biggest driver of rapprochement here is a shared history of subjugation and displacement — for the Tibetans, at the hands of the Chinese (Mr. Sang-ngag spent nine years in a Chinese labor camp) and for the tribes, by the American government.
“There is a shared vision of cultures being under pressure and surviving,” Mr. Sang-ngag said through a translator.
The heart of the 60-acre development is the 10-acre Garden of 1,000 Buddhas. When tribal elders came and blessed it, the two groups found they both used juniper and sage as purifying incense for ceremonies, for example, as well as similar prayer cloths and ritual drumming.
After much outreach by the Buddhists, including asking permission from the tribe to have the Dalai Lama consecrate the ground, Ms. Cajune said, “I think local people are feeling more comfortable.”
The sheep are gone from the green hills here now. “They achieved Buddhahood,” joked Mr. Sang-ngag, as he walked through the garden, designed in the shape of the dharma wheel, which symbolizes the core teachings of Buddhism. The Great Wisdom Mother statue contains sacred vases and holy texts. Swords, guns and other symbols of war are buried underneath, to symbolize a triumph over violence.
In the Buddha barn, meanwhile, is a Norton motorcycle, which members here jokingly refer to as the sacred chopper. It will be raffled to raise money to finish the garden. About half the money has been raised.
Last week the Buddhists began planning with the tribal officials about managing pilgrimages to the site, a possible headache for the tribe. “Some people want to keep the reservation a good, quiet secret,” Ms. Cajune said.
But Mr. Sang-ngag says good karma, or spiritual energy, is ebbing from the earth, and the garden will help enhance it. “It’s designed to awaken the Buddha nature” of wisdom and compassion in anyone who gazes upon it, said Lama Tsomo, a student who lives nearby.
A potential cultural clash has become cultural reconciliation. “It’s two cultures honoring each other in peace,” Ms. Cajune said. “That’s a powerful story people need to hear.”