Chaitanya Jyothi Museum Opening, 2000
RAMANAM
In the Name of The Father, and of The Son and of The Holy Spirit, Amen.
Countrymen,
ORBIS NON SUFFICIT
SOLUS DEUS SUFFICIT
Deposition I: Curriculum For A Theological Education
Deposition II: Delusion And The Doctrine Of Original Sin
Deposition III: A Festival Composition For The Feast Of The Holy Trinity
D e p o s i t i o n I
Curriculum For A Theological Education
Introduction … General Considerations … Finance … Start Early
Start Agriculturally … Academic Departments … Conclusion
Introduction
The gist of this composition is the principle, start early and agriculturally. The aim is an awareness, a seeing, of the entire human endeavour — which is the definition of nature per se — subsisting absolutely in six inches of top soil. By this we mean synonymously with Calvin “that our very being is nothing else than subsistence in God alone.”(1)
Theological or spiritual literacy and competency is incumbent upon all citizens. Theological or spiritual leadership is the responsibility of individuals called to and trained for discharging that office. This composition deals with the training of individuals called to discharge the responsibility of theological or spiritual leadership. The office of theological or spiritual leadership is the education of all humanity in the modes of earning peace and establishing prosperity.
Broadly speaking, there are four essential areas of responsibility for the human endeavour. One is that of labor. One is that of production. One is that of governance. And one is that of teaching. Individuals having the responsibility of theological or spiritual leadership have the responsibility of teaching.(2) However, the nature of this responsibility places upon these individuals an unique incumbency: that since they are to teach all, they must be relevant to and learned for all. Theological or spiritual leaders must be significantly proficient in all areas of responsibility for the human endeavour: labor, production, governance and teaching itself. For one who is to the manner born,(3) this is a reasonable and attainable expectation. However, it requires long and difficult training.
Theological education(4) makes individuals proficient in these four essential areas of responsibility for the human endeavour. It qualifies individuals to educate humanity in the modes of earning peace and establishing prosperity.
General Considerations
The elevation of morale is directly proportional to the stiffness of humane discipline. Humane discipline can only be in terms of the eternal verities, the which applied in practice, long experience guarantees, alone produce contentment and prosperity in this and all other worlds.
1- Secure and upgrade where necessary the plant utilities: gas, electricity, water, sewage, Inter/Intranet in every dorm, office and class room, etc.
2- Institute random drug testing for all faculty and staff, to have entire employee roster tested within one year. Testing to continue indefinitely. Zero tolerance with respect to a drug list, procedures and standards at least as extensive as those used for the federal Commercial Driver’s License.
3- Immediately clear alcoholic beverages from the campus and from all school functions, on or off campus.
4- Faculty and staff prohibited from intimate relations with students.
5- Tenured faculty and staff who cannot achieve this discipline will be relieved of duty with pay, barred from the campus and stripped of title. If legal staff can find a way to humanely terminate their financial compensation, that will be done as well.
6- The Theological School will regard itself as the intersection of the mundane university with the great university, the University of Life. Spirit is the center of life, its source and destination. Theology is the Queen of the Sciences.(5)
7- The Theological School will focus on two requirements of the new world order, its basis: first, monastic clarity, and second, spiritual preaching. From this will emerge the third requirement: ecumenical zeal. These three are the basis of life in the coming millennium.
8- Physical plant will be restored in proper engineering procedure, starting with the “humblest” buildings and proceeding finally to the most “exalted.” In effect, the servants’ quarters will be restored first and the president’s home last.
9- Endowment will be increased to fully support all students during their term of full-time study at the Seminary.
Finance
Money follows on proper activity. It is never an issue. When we are resolved to do what is right, which is merely what God wants, all necessary resources come to support our efforts without our even asking. Dharma(6) supports those who support Dharma. However, money follows on proper activity, not on planning and certainly not on wishing. The Red Sea parted when Moses put his foot in with intent to cross. Action is the initiator of support and, therefore, success. “The Lord helps those who ….”(7)
An individual is ready to begin theological education at the age of sixteen years. Their schooling will be supported fully from that age until completed so long as their commitment to the process is full-time. This support will occur whether the individual is single, married or married with children. It will come from the school an individual attends. An individual will graduate from Theological School unencumbered, ready to work.
Start Early
A theological curriculum will engage an individual between the ages of sixteen and twenty six or twenty eight years. The first two years (16 to 18) will be a harrowing period. The next four years (18 – 22) are for planting and the final four years (22 – 26) are for winnowing. Alternatively, instead of a 2-4-4 pattern, the regime may comprise a 2-5-5 pattern or a 2-6-6 one. The latter would be used, for example, to accommodate a student with a family.
Schweitzer notes, and correctly, that an individual appropriately spends the first thirty years of their life in personal development, preparing for the next thirty years, which will comprise selfless service.
During the first two years of theological education, an individual will discover, if they are not aware of it already, whether or not theological or spiritual leadership is their calling. During the next four [five or six] years of theological education an individual will discover to what extent theological or spiritual leadership is their calling. There are many offices and kinds of training appropriate thereunto.(8) During the final four [five or six] years of theological education an individual will bring forth the unique inner necessity which God has planted in their soul and desires therefrom a sweet and savory nourishment.
Thus, in each year of theological education the fact will be recognized and accommodated that individuals now may have fulfilled their need of theological education and, therefore, are free to quit the formal process without prejudice and with certification appropriate to their achievement. Academe is made for humanity, not vice-versa. The needs of the students — but not the students themselves — will govern the operation of the school and the students will be rewarded accordingly.
The Theological School will have academic and personal standards that are far higher than and very different in kind from those used at secular institutions. The idea that Theological Schools will submit to the certification of secular academe is absurd: the dog wanting to be wagged by its own tail? Unseemly. Theological Schools will set the standards for the human educational enterprise across the board, not vice-versa. This is how Pythagoras organized the enterprise.(9)
Start Agriculturally
In Sanskrit we have the compound word, annugraha.(10) It means Grace in the same sense as that in which Christianity employs the word, with the same nuances of aspect and purpose. Two words compose it, the word for food (anna[11]) and the word for house (graha[12]). Annugraha means house of food in the sense of household of food, an environment of plenary nurture as indicated by the presence of food.
To be useful, a resource must be canalized. Electricity exists naturally, but until it is subjected to discipline — canalized — it remains wild and only generally rather than specifically employable. So, also, with the fundamental power of the cosmos: until it is canalized in bodies such as rocks, plants, animals and, par excellence, human beings, it is non-fructuous. The container (the body), though itself ephemeral, is yet necessary to the work resolved upon by the Contained (the Resident). The ladder, though discarded once the summit is attained, is yet essential to the ascent. This is the realm of Ethics.(13)
The human body is the only instrument in all creation which is suitable for the achievement and gifting of liberation. It is the only channel and the only locus of discipline for gaining the Uninterrupted Presence of God. Angels look with envy on those having the human birth. It is that great a chance, that superlative an opportunity, that Bon-a-ventura. The human body, with all of its incomparable equipment, is the ship we must use to cross the sea of delusion and to reach the harbor or haven of Reality (Real-ization). It is the container — the only container — we have for getting us safely along this journey, transiting this transitory world, back to our home in God. Therefore, this body must be kept fit and trim.(14) Being the only capable instrument for the work at hand, it is supremely precious for that purpose and that one alone. If it gives out before the journey is complete — or if we use it to an unintended or unnatural purpose — what recourse have we from consequential damage or grounds for complaint?
Food (anna of annugraha or lehem of bethlehem) is purposed to keep the body fit and trim for the journey its Resident will make by means of it. The body is the result of food, and not only of food from the ground but also of food from the mind and food from the Ground, which is Grace.
Alternatively, we may say that the human body is the harmony of a myriad vibrations(15) which should concatenate thereas to constitute a straight and hollow reed God will want to employ as a flute for forming mellifluent melodies. And the basis of all is food, anna, or more precisely, Grace, annugraha, the Household of Nurture. The spiritual journey begins as a result of food, is maintained because of food and emerges in a happy presentation as food. Food is Grace. Grace is Food. God is Grace and Food.
This is the obvious reason the curriculum of theological education is oriented agriculturally. There is also a subtle reason. It is that the fundamental metaphor for life is botanical.(16) This is not generally appreciated, but it is fact.(17) Activities proceed from words and words from thoughts. But thoughts are organized by hierarchies of metaphors which represent aspects of a single, central, all-inclusive metaphor.(18) That central metaphor is botanical. It is the tree. The critical thing in education, therefore, is the acquisition and application to all realms of life of this central metaphor, just as Psalm 1 long declares it.
Academic Departments
The areas of study which comprise the curriculum for a theological education are the following. These are the academic departments of a Theological School.
The Department of Professional Schools
The School of Philosophy (Grammar)
The School of Philosophy (Grammar) comprises studies in Mathematics, including Logic, Systematics, including Cosmology, Chronology, Ontology and Epistemology, Exegesis and Diet.
The School of History (Science)
The School of History (Science) comprises studies in Piety, Anthropology, Linguistics, Paleontology, Chemistry, Physics, Oceanography, Geography, Geology, Botany, Zoology, Biology, Atmospherics, Medicine, Warfare, Astronomy, etc.
The School of Government (Sociology)
The School of Government (Sociology) comprises studies in Banking, Legislatures, Diplomatics, Military, Police, Physical Education, Law, Intelligence, including News Media, Politics, etc.
The School of Industry (Economics)
The School of Industry (Economics) comprises studies in Agriculture, including Plant and Animal aspects, and Business, including Manufacturing and Service aspects.
The School of Art (Composition)
The School of Art (Composition) comprises studies in Labor Unions, Cooking, Cleaning, Sewing, Writing, Painting, Sculpture, Music, Drama, Dance, Architecture, Engineering, Construction, etc.
The Department of Homiletics
The Department of Homiletics comprises studies in communication and control, or, Cybernetics. The root meaning this word, cybernetics, is communication and response by means of number. In other words: preaching. Cybernetics and preaching are dialectical phenomena, as is life generally.
The curriculum will attend each of the media through which preaching does or should occur: speech, film, radio, Internet, plastics, silent example, etc. The entire theological or spiritual leadership is a preaching, an exercise in communication and response utilizing the dynamics of number. The Department of Homiletics is present to ensure the congruence of thought, word and deed — mind, mouth and hand — in the total life if its graduates.
The Department of Topography/Congruities
The mission of this academic department is to demonstrate the validity and purposes of the great religions, of which there are five: Hinduism, Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, Islam and Christianity. Six other religions are valid but not major: Taoism, Shinto, etc. There are mancies employing several objects and these claim to be religions, but of course they are not.(19) The Department of Congruities will train students to recognize the legitimate and shun the illegitimate.
The Department of Topography will accomplish its mission through three primary activities. First, it will foster awareness and appreciation of common spiritual genetics.(20) Second, it will acknowledge the primary holy days of the great religions. And third, it will encourage and facilitate students to live at major sites of the great religions and to engage there in selfless service. Since considerable flexibility would be adduced for carrying out these three activities, an attempt to detail the same will not be made here.
One point needs special attention. Recognizing the validity and purposes of the great religions does not mean that one selects and encourages others to select a bit of this, a bit of that, as if we attend a smorgasbord of spiritual opportunities called religions. A great many feeble individuals today parade themselves as tolerant, beneficent beings because they promulgate the smorgasbord metaphor, supporting it, apparently, with reference to the truism that “all paths lead to the same God.” Such people are insane. A smorgasbord of spiritual opportunities called religions does not in fact exist. The several paths that lead to the same God are miles apart. Or, ton the dining metaphor, tables spread with spiritual nourishment are in different houses. So that, besides mixing metaphors, these insane individuals promote something neither they nor anyone else can ever accomplish: tread distinct paths simultaneously, or, upon the other metaphor, eat at once from tables located in different houses.
While each of the great religions is valid, one gains salvation by means of just one of them. Nor is choice much of a factor. The religion most suited to enhance one’s unique destiny is that in whose cultural milieu one has taken birth. Saying that each religion is valid is saying that each has puissance sufficient for getting its children to the Goal.(21) However, gaining the Goal requires, in effect, threading the eye of a needle or entering through a very narrow gate. There may be several needles and several very narrow gates, but one is going to go through only one of them — the one one is born to transit. To imagine that one can transit several such openings — or travel separate paths or dine at tables in different houses — is an insanity guaranteeing disaster in this life and the next.
Spiritual practice is single-pointed. One sticks to one point through thick and thin just as a well is dug at one point continuously until water is struck or until one recognizes that one began at an improper starting place, an ersatz religion, and should find a proper starting place. If one imagines that transit through several points — or transit along several roads, or ingestion at several tables — is possible, one will wreck in the ditch of false unity.(22) The Department of Congruities will train students to attend this important point.
Conclusion
Individuals trained for theological or spirit leadership will be significantly proficient in all areas of responsibility for the human endeavour: labor, production, governance and teaching. This means they will be grounded in Over-view or what is here called The School of Philosophy (Grammar). Philosophy is mathematics. Therefore, competency in mathematics is a quid pro quo and sine qua non of admittance to the education of theological or spirit leaders. The competency in mathematics of students admitted to such education will equal or exceed that of students admitted to undergraduate military education.
The curriculum of the Department of Professional Schools for each of the Professional Schools will comprise both classroom and on-the-job learning. This curriculum will occupy students throughout their career at the theological school. Always they will be learning in all five Professional Schools. The image of a tumble-down, cloud-dwelling pedant no more characterizes a theological or spirit leader than it does a military one. The hands will be labored so the mind can be strong and the heart clean.
Spring, summer and autumn will be times for field work, in the fields, with plant and animal husbandry. Plants will be raised for food and medicine and animals for by-products which can be acquired without diminishing their health or longevity. Especially important will be the cultivation of fruit-bearing trees and grain-bearing grasses and the breeding and care of large animals such as horses.(23) The cultivation and use of medicinal herbs is central to the curriculum of The School of History (Science). Summarizing:
- Students will begin theological education at age sixteen;
- They will address all aspects of the curriculum here described from that age onwards. The presentation of material will be plenary and simultaneous rather than incremental and sequenced excepting in a few cases where sequencing is unavoidable;(24)
- Thorough grounding in mathematics and philosophy — Hegel, Tillich, Origen, Plato, Parmenides, Plotinus, Aristotle, Duns Scotus, Abelard, Leibnitz, Spinoza, Archimedes, Bergson, Teilhard, Nicholas of Cusa and, a fortiori, Vedas — is expected of matriculating students and all faculty.
One picture at the top of this deposition was drawn by Mary Graham and colored by her, also. Its title is The Ascension of Mary and it belongs to a Coloring Book which is from Adwaitha Hermitage and in formation.
The other picture at the top of this deposition was drawn by Mary Graham and colored by her, also. Its title is The Holy Trinity and it is part of a coloring book from Adwaitha Hermitage which is in formation. The coloring books from Adwaitha Hermitage are available for download here.
D e p o s i t i o n II
Delusion And The Doctrine Of Original Sin
The power of delusion is unconditioned and uncondition-able. Delusion is the power to take something for what it isn’t. Illusion is the “thing” so taken. Delusion is self-original and self-sustaining. About delusion none can say, “I choose to have nothing to do with it.” The fact of human embodiment involves one willy-nilly in delusion along with incessant, myriad illusions consequent thereunto. The greatest Sages have not the least control of delusion. The only strategy one may adopt respecting delusion is that of coping with it. And it had better be an appropriate coping because delusion does not wait on anyone’s inefficiency, lack of skill or ignorance.
Delusion is the greatest power known to man and it is absolutely beyond his control. It is one aspect of the structure of being referred to by the Christian doctrine of Sin.(25) God is the only doer.
The world is not an illusion. But taking it as the world is. Seer, seen and sight are real, but taking them as different isn’t. Illusion is illusion. The triple thread of life is not three but one. In the taking is the problem. In the act is the delusion: thinking one did it.
Each generation must solve for itself a set of mathematical problems which are in the nature of proportions or relationships. Algebraic solutions of these problems are possible, but geometrical ones are preferred because they are tantric (visual) and show the dynamic resonance or activity of the thing found.
One of the problems each generation must solve is the relationship of the circle and the square (the numbers 1 and 2). Another is the relationship of the plane and the volume (the numbers 3 and 4). Another is the relationship of the triangle resting on its base and the triangle resting on its vertices (the numbers 3 and 6).(26) And another is the relationship of the tetrahedron and the cube (the numbers 3 and 8).(27)(28) Relationships involving the number 3(29) are the most common problems a generation must solve. However, all of the problems a generation must solve are subsumed in a single compound proportion: 3 : 2 : : 1 : X, where X is unknown and must be found. The tantra of his proportion is, take your choice, the Golden Section, the Golden Rectangle or the Spira Mirabilis.
Christian eremitical writers during the Patristic period of Christian development were Pythagorean-trained to various orbits of number competency. Their early discussions towards a Doctrine of the Holy Trinity were about number and specifically this compound proportion, 3 : 2 : : 1 : X. The sophistication of their inquiry cannot be overestimated. The issue then, as it is for each generation, is a theological/spiritual one: how is the triple thread of life (body-mind-spirit, the number 3) relating to the world (duality, the number 2) in direct and dynamic proportion with fundamental reality or Being-Itself, Non-Duality, the number 1 (esse ipsum), as that is relating to the phenomenon of delusion (represented algebraically by the letter X)?
In solving for X, these eremites developed a Christian terminology(30) to account for the phenomenon of delusion (maya). Their terminology came to be called the Doctrine of Original Sin. This Doctrine(31) was a verbal correlate of a geometrical figure, the Spira Mirabilis (Miraculous Spiral), which is a presence of the Golden Section or Divine Proportion.(32) For these eremites, the words theology and geometry were synonyms, as they were for Spinoza and Leibnitz and as they are in fact for all times and climes.(33)
If we solve the compound proportion 3 : 2 : : 1 : X for X algebraically, the answer, of course, is .666 or two-thirds, which is an irrational number. If we solve for X geometrically, the answer, as we have said, is the Spira Mirabilis, which expands indefinitely. This can be looked into as follows.
The numbers 3 and 2 are adjacent Fibonacci numbers(34) and, ipso facto, indicate the Golden Section or Divine Proportion. The Golden Section is called by the Greek letter phi and has the numerical value of 1.618. phi is an irrational number, just as pi is. phi, however, is the only number the reciprocal of which is equal to itself minus 1. Thus, the reciprocal of phi is .618.
Now, 3 and 2 are adjacent Fibonacci numbers signifying the Golden Section. And when we solved our compound proportion we got the irrational number .666 (2 over 3). But 2 and 3 are early adjacent Fibonacci numbers and therefore only rough approximations of the Golden Section. Actually, .666 (2 over 3) is on the way to becoming .618, the reciprocal of phi, the Golden Section number. Therefore, when we solve the compound proportion 3 : 2 : : 1 : X for X algebraically, the thing actually indicated is the Golden Section. Geometrically it is the Spira Mirabilis, the Golden Section in the form of a spiral.
And that is not all. The pythmen(35) of our number, .618, is 15. 15 is the number of humanity.(36) The Avathar of the Lord(37) has the number 15, of humanity, plus one more number, one humanity does not have: the number 1. This is the quality of All-Knowing or Omniscience (OM-Science). The Avathar’s number is 16.(38) The Avathar is human plus 1, making It the Lord of Delusion. Humanity is never in control of delusion. The Avathar of the Lord always is. Thus, the chance to draw near an Avathar of the Lord is the most precious opportunity any existence — angelic, human, demonic, animal, plant, stone or liquid — can have. The chance to be guarded by an Avathar is an indescribable Grace.
Delusion is the Golden Section or Divine Proportion. 666 (2 over 3) is the Mark of the Beast in the Johannine Vision. But the pythmen of 666 is 9, the number of circularity, or, unity.(39)
The Doctrine of Original Sin, therefore, is a great legacy of the Church deriving from eremitical writers of the Patristic period for whom it was a way of indicating the phenomenon of delusion. It is today still entirely suitable and appropriate to that end and always will be. Original sin is not such a bad thing after all. It is the phenomenon of delusion by another name. From its number and geometry we observe that original sin or delusion is irrational and therefore intrinsically dynamic and non-regulate-able as well as self-perpetuating — all things the Christian eremitical writers noted regarding it.
We should not demonize delusion. It is an ontological reality, an element of the structure of being. Whatever is “thrown”(40) out of dreaming innocence or the realm of potentiality into existence or the realm of actuality participates in delusion as condition of its existence.
Delusion is useful, the motivator of life itself, life’s engine. In fact, delusion is the feminine aspect of Divinity. Without Delusion (maya) there would be no eternal duet, no drama — and no life. It (She) has to be in order for there to be not nothing. As the Fathers said, She is Original, meaning, She is there from the beginning and nothing gets done without Her active participation. She carries Herself forward right through the generations, as an element of the genetics of life itself. She is neither sin nor sinful. However, thinking She is the Truth is sin and sinning both. Delusion is delusion: useful and beautiful but untrue because related. Nothing in truth is related because God has no second. Delusion merely points to Her Lord, the Truth, which has no second, no relationship.
He puts on She in order to enact the Eternal Duet. She has no independent existence. She is based on He, the Base.
Modern church and academic leaders by the droves have distorted(41) or left out of their calculations, ministrations and professions just this phenomenon of delusion or Original Sin, the Feminine Aspect of Divinity, the Inseparable Other. And their improper inclusion or omission of this phenomenon is the weakness in them which causes unbelievers to scoff at the religion, the Grace and the God they are charged to glorify.
During the Neo-Orthodox period of Barth and to some extent Niebuhr, we went out into the blue from one direction, saying that original sin is of such ubiquity and puissance that nothing in this world can ever be good or true or proper and so we must fix our attention on the transcendent world, where alone such qualities exist. This allowed foul and bitter activity in this world to run unremarked: this world is impossible and passing anyway so why bother up-building or correcting it? To some extent, Niebuhr at Union and his brother H. Richard at Yale successfully broke through the isolationist tendencies of Barth(42) and convinced a generation or two that, although original sin is prepotent, it is not plenarily so, and thus there is a window of opportunity for moral action to succeed. The impossible possibility is how Rheiny phrased it, deriving the thought from Kierkegaard.(43) However, the total tone of Neo-Orthodox theology was Marcionite and disinclined to temporal involvements, which were taken for trivial and, therefore, frivolous.(44) Only Tillich, of that generation, stood to represent informed spirituality, which typifies great founders and inheritors. Ecclesial and academic leaders publicly labeled him a dangerous man for his troubles.(45)
During the last 30 years of Harvey Cox and other Ivy League anarchists, we went out into the blue from another direction, saying that original sin is a myth and that anything we want to do is good, true and proper so long as we can do it and make or convince others to let us to it. Original sin is a quaint notion of ignorant forebears,(46) nothing more.
“Today we know that ….” or “We now know that ….” were the ludicrous premises of low-minded careers not a few, such as Cox’s and Carl Sagan’s. Malcolm Boyd, a closet homosexual in the Episcopal Church, delighted to announce that, “Jesus had a penis.” So this petulant rebelliousness – “down with Daddy” – characterized church and academic leaders trained since the late 1950s. From Barth’s and Niebuhr’s Marcionite “this world is all evil” we went to Cox’s and Boyd’s Sybaritic “this world is all and so do all so long as all can’t stop you doing it.” We did a 180 and got nowhere.(47)(48)
The thing will be brought back to quiet appreciation of our forebears and their Doctrine of Original Sin plus other of their key doctrines.(49) We will apply this appreciation to the mounting of academic and other curricula for training leadership:
- to discern truth from delusion, imbibing only truth, leaving aside delusion,
- to recall continuously that delusion can turn them upside down without their knowing it or having a way to right themselves
- and to pray for Grace in order that seeing occur and a good example set of the superiority of spirit living.
When the observation, “You know so much that just ain’t so.” is stripped of personal opprobrium, its meaning is that delusion hides even its own presence, and that, therefore, one should be vigilant, examining everything for origin, for bona fides.(50) Does it proceed from truth or from delusion? Or more likely, does it proceed from a mixture of truth and delusion from which truth alone must be extracted by the scrub of filtering or the heat of refinement.(51) The world is neither good nor bad but a mixture to be filtered or refined — or both.
Grace alone stands between us and confusion wrought by the unconditioned and uncondition-able power of delusion. Christian eremitical writers during the Patristic period of Christian development remarked this set of facts for the edification of their spiritual progeny inside and outside the Church.
One day, Rama asked the great Brahmarishi Vashista what boon he would have of Him. Vashista replied, “Lord, no matter how many births I must yet succeed to, let me always be devoted to You.” Only a Brahmarishi would make such a request of the Wish-Fulfilling Tree, merely for the Grace of It’s Continual Presence, because only a Brahmarishi would understand the need always to prevent one’s being blind-sided and turned over by the power of delusion. Only the Lord of Delusion can keep one upright in the great University of Life, and so the pedagogy of Grace and Love flowing liberally along the highway of devotion to Him alone is the singular guarantor of success in the enterprise of learning and living.
Who can handle horses can handle life.
The picture at the top of this deposition was drawn by Mary Graham and colored by her, also. Its title is The Son and it is part of a coloring book from Adwaitha Hermitage which is in formation. The coloring books from Adwaitha Hermitage are available for download here.
D e p o s i t i o n III:
A Festival Composition For The Feast Of The Holy Trinity
Hommage à Johann Sebastian Bach
For The Prelude and Fugue in E Flat Major (“St. Anne”)
I
Christian spirit is inherently eremitical: renunciation is the foundation of life. Christian spirituality is the elimination of everything from the mind except the Name of Jesus as the Christ. Christian spirituality is the Bible, wherein Heaven means Kashmir and Hell Phoenicia.
II
Christian religion bridges between the primness of Benedict and Scholastica and the insouciance of Francis and Clare. Christian religion bridges between Mounts Carmel and Sinai. Christian religion bridges between the unitarian monotheistic Vaishnava of the North, represented by Persia and Abraham, and the trinitarian monotheistic Saivism of the South, represented by Egypt and Moses.
III
The Roman Church is the cultural milieu of Celts, Greeks, Italians, Franks and Sephardim whose ancient homeland extends inland along the Mediterranean Sea from the Iberian Peninsula through France to Northern Italy with outposts in Great Britain, Bohemia, Sicily, Israel and the Southeast Coast of Italy. The Roman Church is Hieronymean in character, Ambrosian in liturgy and Gregorian or Benedictine in organization. The Roman Church is the Knights Templar, the Protestant Reformation and the Anglican Communion.
The picture at the top of this deposition was drawn by Mary Graham and colored by her, also. Its title is YHWH Appears to Elijah and it is part of Isa, a coloring book from Adwaitha Hermitage which is available for download here.
Footnotes
1 Institutes of the Christian Religion (and here), John Calvin, tr. Henry Beveridge, Esq., opening paragraph.
2 In fact, they have the final responsibility. They are responsible for the teachers and the teaching that occur in a society. If things are going well or badly, the teachers and, par excellence, the theologians are accountable. The greatest responsibility — and the greatest authority — resides with theologians. This is the reason the first concern of those bearing the responsibility for governance is in general the education of all citizens and in particular the happiness of theologians. While the condition of its women is the measure of humanity’s welfare, the condition of its theologians is the measure of humanity’s vital longevity.
3 One called to theological or spiritual leadership.
4 By which we shall mean here the education of theological or spiritual leaders.
5 Its designation by the great Medieval sages who, under influence of certain warrior monastics of Celtic/Frankish/Sephardic origin, united all human endeavour to a single, sunny Canticle of Gracious Delight in and for the human condition.
6 Righteousness, proper conduct.
7 Vera Armacost, wife of University of Redlands President George Armacost, mother of a distinguished banker and a distinguished diplomat and luminary of any society deserving her presence, had the reputation of never forgetting a student’s name once she had met them at the Tea she hosted annually for freshmen. She had a saying which reflected the stout Baptist tenor of her heritage. She would introduce this saying with a rhetorical question: “Do you know the ten most important two-letter words in the English language?” One always felt compelled to admit not having the benefit of that particular knowledge. Whereupon Vera would deliver her mantra, which is just that and a profound truth: “The ten most important two-letter words in the English language are: ‘If it is to be it is up to me.’” Vera tended to make a very deep impression on her auditors, this writer included. She had presence, elan, or as it is remarked today, gravitas.
8 Each of the kinds of training that is needed by students will be provided. Some kinds require less time to complete and some more. Theological education can be lengthy for this reason, therefore, among others: that the callings of students require that they undergo many or even all of the kinds of training that are provided.
9 The United States service academies were founded by chaplains.
10 Compare the Hebrew word, bethlehem, which means House of Bread, Nourishment.
11 As also in Annapurna, the Himalayan peak named for the Goddess of Food who is Athena in Greece, Ceres in Rome and Isis in Egypt.
12 As also in Graham, Franco-Celtic for householder, for which the equivalent Sanskrit is grahastha, one of the four principle stages of life — the one which supports the other three (student, recluse, mendicant).
13 Today we feel bereft of stability because, imagining ourselves all-capable (a simple delusion), we have discarded the ladder (the realm of ethics) while in the midst of the climb — and with ourselves still on it!
14 This is not to imply that the human body’s natural estate is to exist forever. Being composed of elements, and therefore conditioned, it is as transitory as the elements from which it is made. The human body is a tool with a definite life-span, not an indefinite one. Nothing can prevent the return of what is elemental to its constituent elements. The bodies of Saints and Sages and even of Avatars illustrate this simple phenomenon.
15 Pythagoras’ “Music of the Spheres.”
16 … and, ipso facto, for all thought, word and deed.
17 Our self-authenticating intellectuals have spent nearly a century trying to imagine a fundamental metaphor — a GUT or Grand Unified Theory — to replace Sacred Literatures the world over. They have not succeeded. In fact, the Hubble Space Telescope recently shattered such elements of a GUT as had been thought stable by demonstrating that the universe is older than envisioned by the current GUT — and by a large factor. One recalls the words of the Hymnist: “… He hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts.” One recalls, also, that whereas theologians and church leaders bemoan the public’s decline in religiosity, the public is aware that most of these moaners, in effect, conspire to ignore Reimarus in the same manner and for the same reason that most physicists and scientists conspire to ignore Godel: job security at the expense of truth and the public’s welfare. So their moaning is unjustified and even bathetic because theologians’ and church leaders’ own affairs are slatternly from their own inefficiency of Life, neglect of Truth and subversion of Faith.
18 This central metaphor may also be referred to as fundamental or primal metaphor, or better yet, as ur-metaphor, a sort of Greco-Germanic redundancy that may get across the point of what this thing, this primal botanical metaphor, really is and does: it establishes the stochastic structure and governs the operation of personality and, therefore, of culture.
19 They are means of inflicting harm upon perceived enemies and ultimately, therefore, upon oneself. In this class today we have Voodoo, the traditional African maliciousness derived from inebriation and free association of the sexes, plus its public face, called Reggae, and WICCA, a Voodoo-inspired mancy aiming to supplant Christianity and the Church.
20 Humanity’s five great religions derive from India, from the Vedas. The Sanskrit name for India is Bharat, which means, Land with Attachment to God. In the back of our mind today is the thought that things could be better, that life and mankind could be happy and prosperous. This is a memory we are having of the Rama Age, when the Lord Himself, as Rama, ruled the world in perfect peace and men everywhere enjoyed being polite and kind. Our yearning for a better day attests our remembrance of the world-wide rule of Rama from India. All of our spiritual leaders since then, such as Gauthama, Zoroaster, Abraham, Moses, David, Jesus, Mohammed, Baha’ullah, descend from the Solar Dynasty of India, the Line in which the Lord takes human birth. Krishna, too, was of this Line, which descends through Rama’s brother Bharatha. When we yearn for better times, we are remembering the Light and Grace shed by the Rama Avathar upon the whole world, which He ruled.
21 There are Seven Mothers: Mother Veda, Mother Religion, Mother Language, Mother Nature, the Natural Mother, Mother Cow and Mother Country.
22 In Vedic parlance this is called superficial vedantha.
23 The Spanish word for gentleman is caballero which means horseman. The significance is that a person who can handle horses is a mature adult who is gentle, fearless and decisive. Robert E. Lee is often and rightly regarded as the epitome of a gentleman. He was a splendid horseman. Horses are primal courage and power. Who can handle horses receives respect without asking.
24 A principle reason for boredom-caused rebellion among today’s students is the regime of scope-and-sequence to which they are forced against their natural abilities and needs. Scope-and-sequence is necessary in some few and obvious areas, but as a general tenet of pedagogical regime it is inappropriate and destructive. By age sixteen, students are ready to learn anything we expect of graduate students under the regime of scope-and-sequence as currently operated. Where there is ability there is need and where need deservedness. Therefore, students will be let and encouraged to do what they can do — which is practically anything in the academic regime — when they enter theological education at age sixteen. And they will be treated to such a regime for as long as their career in that study persists.
25 Christian doctrine distinguishes between Sin and sins. The one is an ontological condition, not mutable, inescapable. The other is a moral mistake, mostly but never entirely mutable, partially and sometimes fully correctable.
26 This is the relationship of the fixed and the dynamic, Aristotle’s energia and dynamis.
27 This is the relationship of the constructive and the degenerative.
28 9 and 7 do not appear in this detail because they are used inwardly as ordering schemes rather than outwardly as referents, as are their sister digits.
29 The Holy Trinity or Triple Thread of Life.
30 Or, stochastic structure.
31 Or, stochastic structure.
32 The Spira Mirabilis is a famous figure which occurs naturally in constructions as varied as the face of the sunflower and the shell of the chambered nautilus. Oliver Wendell Holmes composed a poem, Build Thee More Stately Mansions, Oh My Soul, upon inspiration he derived from that sea creature. Jacques Bernoulli had the Spira Mirabilis engraved on his tombstone along with its verbal equivalent in Latin: Eadem Mutata Resurgo (Though Changed I Rise Again The Same). The great north rose window at Notre-Dame-de-Chartres, The Rose of France, is built on the Spira Mirabilis.
33 Most of the world’s great mathematicians have been clergy or sons of clergy. European mathematics was formulated by an order of vegetarian monastics tradition refers to as Pythagoreans. The studies of philosophy, mathematics, medicine and music are integral, their canons in Latin culture formulated by these Pythagoreans, some by Pythagoras himself.
34 Fibonacci is the name of the Italian mathematician who receives credit for discovering the number series which bears his name. He obtained it from Arabs who had gotten it from India along with their number scripts. The series is built by deriving each succeeding number from the addition of its immediate two predecessors. For example, starting with the number 1 — which is where all mathematics starts and ends — the Fibonacci Series builds as follows: 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34. 55, 89, 144, etc. Vast realms of elegant study are eagerly devoted to the Fibonacci Series by savants the world over and time without end. One of those realms emanates from the fact that as the numbers of the Series increase, the relationship of any two adjacent numbers more and more closely approximates the proportionality and the numerical value of the Golden Section or Divine Proportion or its reciprocal, which is the Golden Section minus 1. (The Golden Section is the only number having a reciprocal equal to itself minus 1.) The Fibonacci Series is a synonym for the Golden Section because any two of its adjacent numbers which occur in a relationship produce the Golden Section or its reciprocal.
35 The pythmen of a number is obtained by adding its digits until a single digit is produced. For example, the pythmen of the number 144 is 9, obtained by adding 1 + 4 + 4. Each digit is an active character. The pythmen of a number reveals its operational nature by revealing its primal digit.
36 Five elemental principles, five inner senses and five senses of action (5 + 5 + 5 = 15).
37 The Godhead incarnate in the world — not necessarily in human form but often so — for the purpose of protecting the righteous, punishing the wicked and reestablishing the Pillars of the World, Truth, Righteousness, Peace and Love.
38 The Avathar’s Rectangle is the famous Pythagorean 27:4 rectangle. This is the 108:16 rectangle where 108 is the Vedic number of the Names of God and 16 is the Vedic number of the Avathar of the Lord. This rectangle is used to sight the lower visual field of the Nave of Notre-Dame-de-Chartres.
39 All multiples of 9 and any number multiplied by 9 or a number with a pythmen of 9 have a pythmen of 9. 9 is the only number which always reproduces or returns to itself through multiplication.
40 Heidegger’s felicitous verb to describe the condition of existence. Christian doctrine adds the sense of fallen, making it “fallen down,” which is the actual character of the experience of existence, a falling out of dreaming innocence into struggle and conflict.
41 Which is the nature of the thing.
42 Which tendencies gave Bonhoeffer indigestion. Neo-Orthodoxy even as practiced by Niebuhr and certainly as practiced by Barth was essentially Marcionite in disposition.
43 It was Niebuhr who wrote: “Man’s capacity for justice makes democracy possible. Man’s capacity for injustice makes democracy necessary.”
44 Their regard for Original Sin also inclined Neo-Orthodox theologians to discount mysticism. Barth, especially, was adamant in this regard and Brunner followed.
45 This writer has been similarly referenced by the same sources.
46 Cox was especially cheap and snotty in his estimate of Tillich.
47 As the French proverb has it, Plus ca change, plus c’est la mem chose. A convenient symbol for the insanity of our leaders is their lionization of a defective confined to a wheelchair whose tense, feverish mind restlessly probes the endless corridors of delusion imagining itself becoming informed about the truths of physics. To get up one bright morning and say you’re going to go out and try to understand the summation of the inner workings of the universe shows that you have some defective wiring. To try to live within a finite set of rules is lunacy. You’re excluding yourself from a great many very interesting things. The law is an ass. How Madam Guyon would shake her head and say, very softly, “Quit this world, quit the next world and quit quitting.”
48 And we wonder why lay people desert the church? They are fed up with the antics of the leadership and they will not consent to be led by homosexuals, which the leadership are to a majority extent and which are sub-human entities.
49 The word doctrine derives from the Greek word docta, which means learning — as in something genuinely true and therefore certain and useful for myriad applications.
50 The Office of Compline includes the words:
Brethren, be sober, be vigilant,
For our Adversary the Devil,
As a hungry lion, walketh about
Seeking whom He may devour,
Who resist steadfast in the Faith.
51 Refinement is hot, painful and nasty work but unavoidable, necessary and ultimately satisfying.
Update 1: 0 Speaks, The Heart Sinks.
Update 2: Global Divestment Day
Update 3: George Handlery: The Structure Of Education Is The Structure Of Faith
Update 4: First space, then auto—now Elon Musk quietly tinkers with education
Update 5: We Will Never Fix Campus Indoctrination Until We Cut College Subsidies
Update 6: Elon Musk: Graduating from a college ‘not needed,’ ‘they’re not for learning’
AUM NAMAH SHIVAYA
