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

Question: Were not the Knights Templar also tasked with protecting the Holy Grail?

Anwer: Not directly. Their main task was keeping open lines of communication. With respect to artifacts, they were tasked principally with retrieving the Ark of the Covenant from under the Temple.

The Holy Grail (the cup used at the Last Supper) was understood at the time, rightly, to be in England, whence it was carried by Joseph of Arimathea. The Grails’ presence there established the preeminence of the English Throne among the thrones of Europe, North Africa and the Middle East as these developed from the decentralization and diversification of the Roman Empire.

The Grail’s presence in England also engendered the Arthurian legends, which are just that, legends, popular fiction of the day. Arthurian legends were so popular they were passed on as romances and are as reliable as historiography as any modern romance literature is. They deal with real events and people in speculative/imaginary terms, deliberately sexed-up, and therefore they are nearly bereft even of symbolic value.

The Templar artifact of interest was the Ark. Personally I think they got the Ark and stashed it and that it was moved a couple of times or so and likely now resides, forgotten, under Chartres Cathedral or at Roslyn in Scotland. It could also be in Switzerland. That’s just personal speculation, educated guessing.

But the issue of the Ark’s whereabouts really is moot, unimportant, and has been for long. The Ark’s importance, like that of the Grail’s, was for the hierarchical ranking of European, North African and Middle Eastern thrones and since these are all decentralized and diversified except for a few to whom it does not matter — because the preeminence of the English throne is universally accepted, the location of the Ark notwithstanding — the location of the Ark is of no concern. In addition, the Ark’s former puissance as a concretization of transcendent power, the power of being-itself, is long dissipated and surpassed and will not return.

There exist masses of conspiracy babble surrounding the Knights Templar, Grail, Ark, Mary Magdalene, etc.

Knights Templar have numerous legacies — Swiss banking is a major one — but they do not exist as chartered by St. Bernard and so they do not exist. Or better, they diversified and decentralized.  They did not continue as an organization after 1307. Boys and girls who go about claiming to be Knights Templar are members of societies for reminiscence and/or drink. They are as far from warrior monastics — Knights Templar — as one can get.

Templar legacies persist and always will, but Templar organizations — formations of warrior monastics — are long gone and will not rise again because there is no need for them as they were chartered and named and are now remembered. Their legacy has new charters and new names distributed among the great nations of the world.

Question: Was there really a chalice? Or, as I have seen commented on, that the Holy Grail was something else symbolic?

Answer: Sure, there was a chalice, the meal occurred and drink is taken from a cup. Whether the cup that made it to England is the cup used at the meal — undoubtedly many cups were present and the meal had nothing of the sacramental significance its replication took on soon after — is a question only God can answer. I think he would say the question is moot because the cup’s puissance as a symbol ( = the ability to participate in and point to the infinite) is attenuated or gone — or better, diversified and decentralized.

Vast and varied puissance as a symbol is attributed to the cup as The Chalice (Holy Grail) during the past two millennia and these attributions are legitimate or not depending on the cup’s actual puissance as a symbol at a specific time, place and circumstance. The subject of symbols and their puissance is beyond what I want to articulate here.  A symbol is puissant only in a specific context.  It is not puissant in just any context.

My estimate is that but for a very few monastics — and getting fewer all the time, with a complete phase out predictable — the Holy Grail/Chalice does not have puissance as a symbol. Rather, it is an occasion for unrelieved and perhaps unrelievable mental disease, endless confusion. Ergo, to think about it is bad yoga.

Question: Was Paul of Tarsus a member of King Herod’s family?

Answer: Barbara Thiering — and I agree with her on this — places Paul in the Hellenistic missionary Order (Essenes, Pythagorean base) that Herod supported, especially from his properties in Provence, but not in his biological family. Jesus and his first wife (Mary Magdalene, who divorced him, which calls forth Paul’s analysis of the subject, to allow the marriage of Jesus with his second wife, Lydia) were likewise members of this Order.

Jesus’ and Paul’s — and some others’ — expansion beyond what was acceptable to leaders of the Essene Order — where all were called brothers and sisters — impelled a fresh religion, later called Christianity. So goes Thiering in part. Jesus’ twin brother was Thomas, which means “Twin” in Aramaic.

St. Bernard and the Knights Templar are not tied to “the Prieure de Sion and the Bloodline.” These are modern assertions. Trying to tie them so — along with trying to tie Paul to Herod’s biological family — is “judaizing” Christianity, an ancient, impossible and irresponsible effort, construing Paul and Jesus — and then Jerome — as rebels against “true religion and truth.”

The Dead Sea Scrolls are pre-Christian, elements of the Essene pietistical and liturgical foundations. Christianity expanded beyond these foundations and indeed beyond Pythagoreanism as received and practiced at Qumran and Provence by Herod and Essenes.

Christianity is fresh, freshly based on the Seers of Buddhism, universal (and therefore true), infusing and suffusing the Mediterranean world, and later the entire world, expanding them beyond their previous conditions. The fresh universality of Christianity resolved the Roman Empire. Politics had nothing to do with it.

Since the rise of Christianity, Judaism is a unitarian Christian denomination. Christian monastics transformed Pythagoreanism into Benedictine monasticism and then Cistercian and later Franciscan monasticism. In other words, Pythagoreanism carried on, as Paul and Jesus did, as iterations of Christian monasticism.

AUM NAMAH SHIVAYA