Scripture is a curated collection of descriptions of participation in divine experience, both in the sense of directly experiencing divinity and in the sense of divinity directly experiencing itself. Although scripture mediates descriptions of experience, the experience description of which scripture mediates is direct, unmediated experience.
What Forensic Scientist Abby Sciuto reports to Special Agent Leroy Jethro Gibbs is sensory experience, albeit enhanced by her machines. What Special Agent Leroy Jethro Gibbs reports from his famous gut is direct experience, albeit enhanced by years of observing people.
Because both direct and mediated experience occur in this world of four categories, four directions, five principles, five dimensions, and five senses, scripture reflects and is reflected in moments temporal and places geographical. Scripture mediates in history unmediated, trans-historical experience: experience by, of, and as God.
Four Categories: Space, Time, Causality, Substance
Four Directions: North, South, East, West
Five Principles: Ether, Air, Fire, Water, Earth
Five Dimensions: Inorganic, Organic, Mental, Spiritual, Historical
Five Senses: Hearing, Touch, Sight, Taste, Smell
Because it is curated and because it describes experience that has occurred and does occur over millennia, scripture shines forth characteristics, yearnings, and habits of individuals and groups. By virtue of its withstanding, in this way, the ravages of time, scripture self-guarantees as legitimate inspiration.
Scripture distinguishes itself from great writing by its ur-typical content. Moments temporal and places geographical become actors in an improving drama scripted by The Almighty.
Jacob is no longer a man, he is a nation who fights God.
The Red Sea is no longer a body of water, it is a warning: break your word and you will drown in your own perfidy.
Commandments are no longer laws, they are indictments.
Jeremiah is no longer a Priest and Amos is no longer a Peasant, they are Prophets.
Jesus is no longer straitened aristocracy, he is harbinger of a purifying bloodbath.
Scripture reminds, among many improving admonitions, that, although His actions speak patterns, God can take any person or situation to make a point, and who or what He takes most likely will surprise. The point will come out as paradox, not as expectation. And it will be a point well-worth pondering.
Scripture describes ur-typical human experience, the really big and important stuff. Scripture references direct experience of divinity as moments of time and places of geography, not as reproducible data points derivable from sensory experience.
Scripture is improving history, not historiography. Drama lessons, not data points. If you want the veracity and viability of scripture to rise or fall on reproducible sensory measurement for positivist scientific evidence, you have not grown up.
Lash a man to sensory experience, beat the milk of human kindness out of him, and you have a university professor, jack-the-ripper in cardigan and bow tie, with a pipe, tucked away inside a bottle of the 12-year Ardbeg.
That said, there is this: that there is more data — in the sense of whole-of-person satisfaction — inside direct experience than there is even available, much less to be had, inside sensory or even emotional experience. Far, far more.
Most data points exist inside direct, not sensory experience. Comparatively few data points exist inside sensory experience. Furthermore, data points from sensory experience are minuscule compared to those from direct experience. Also, data points from direct experience are inspiring, satisfying, strengthening, and relish-able.
Sensory experience has its time and place, namely, all times and all places. But to think it the be-all and end-all for all times and places is just childish.
Scripture is a plural. Every religion– there are some eleven of them, five major ones — has at least one scripture unique to it. Some religions have several scriptures.
All scriptures are under constant curation. The process never stops. Deciding what is scripture and what is not, as well as deciding how to organize it is curating scripture. St. Paul and others, the Council of Jamnia, Athanasius, Jerome, Luther, Calvin, and even I did this.
Translating scripture is curating scripture. Scripture undergoes constant curation.
However, there is more. Periodically a great personality comes along and really cleans up scripture at the code level, so to speak, repristinating, collating, perhaps even recasting scripture for current and future needs.
Such a personality is rare. They bear their own authority. No one save God Himself can give someone authority to do this to scripture. They will do this work without anyone’s asking them to, often under derision or worse from custodians of extant scripture, and they will gift out their labor for the welfare of their fellow humanity.
In this capacity, Sages Valmiki, Vyasa, and Shankaracharya come to mind. Avatars of the Lord also have done this service for humanity’s improving scriptures, sometimes as an animal, sometimes as a human.
Members appear to be confused about the true meaning of this programme of ‘Ceiling on Desires’ decided on at the Tenth All India Conference of Sathya Sai Organisations. There are four components in the term ‘Ceiling on Desires’. They are – curb on excessive talk, curb on excessive desires and expenditure, control of consumption of food, and check on waste of energy. Man needs some essential commodities for his sustenance and he should not aspire for more. We can learn a lesson in this respect from Nature. Only if air is available in sufficient quantity will it be comfortable and good. If it is excessive and there is a gale, you will feel uncomfortable. When you are thirsty, you can consume only a limited quantity of water. You can’t consume the entire water of the Ganga! We take only as much as is needed for the sustenance of the body.
- Sathya Sai Baba – Divine Discourse, January 19, 1983 / Daily Email, Sai Inspires: Subscription
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