I loaned out my Bede books.  What was Fr. Bede's understanding of the
redemption and expiation of the crucifixion? Thanks.

Namastę
Pax et Bonum
wich the Christian mantras for Meditation, used in lineage of Bede
Griffiths and the Shantivanam Ashram ?

Om Shanti
Om Jesus
Mohan Deva

Hi Tom & all,

The historian Arnold Toynbee once stated, "The coming of Buddhism to the
West may well prove to be the most important event of the twentieth
century." He seemed to believe that the encounter would be mutually
beneficial. From my perspective the encounter between Buddhism and
Christianity has been progressing very well. I know of a lot of Christians
who find much of value in Buddhism.

"Christianity and the World Religions: Paths of Dialogue with Islam,
Hinduism, and Buddhism" by Hans Kung, Josef van Ess, Heinrich von
Stietencron, and Heinz Bechert provides a nice outline of how Christianity
and Buddhism can relate and understand each other. Thomas Merton in his "Zen
and the Birds of Appetite," a collection of essays on what Christianity and
Zen have in common, includes some of his dialogue with Zen master D.T.
Suzuki. It seems that they are able to discuss their religious views without
any confrontation, with what appears to be mutual delight.

I just today finished Bede Griffiths "The Marriage of East and West." It is
more about the relationship of Christianity with Hinduism, rather than with
Buddhism, but most of the major points would be similar. One of Griffith's
major themes is stated early in the book, " ...  in the West today the
masculine aspect, the rational, active, aggressive power of the mind, is
dominant, while in the East the feminine aspect, the intuitive, passive,
sympathetic power of the mind is dominant. The future of the world depends
on the 'marriage' of these two minds, the conscious and the unconscious, the
rational and the intuitive, the active and the passive.. In India and all
over the world today these two minds are meeting, but often the impact of
the West on the East is that of a violent aggression, whether by armed power
as in the past, or by the much more subtle aggression of science and
technology exploiting man and nature, as at present."

As for Buddhist having a problem with the term "God" I think that this might
also not be that big of a deal. When talking with atheist it is usually
instructive to have them describe the God that they don't believe in. Most
often it is a God which I also could not believe in. On the other hand
Merton and Suzuki find something very Zen like in Meister Eckhart's
conception of God.  I understand that the Dali Lama does not represent all
Buddhist, but here are some of his comments from his reflections on 9/11:

"So, talk with God today. Ask God for help, for counsel and advice, for
insight and for strength and for inner peace and for deep wisdom."
"Ask God on this day to show us how to show up in the world in a way that
will cause the world itself to change. And join all those people around the
world who are praying right now, adding your Light to the Light that dispels
all fear. That is the challenge that is placed before every thinking person
today."

Thanks for the thought provoking post Tom.

Dave Watkins


----- Original Message -----
From: "Tom" <tfaulkenbury@...>
Sent: Saturday, July 07, 2007 11:33 AM


> Someone once said the greatest spiritual transformation in world
> history will occur when Christianity and Buddhism encounter one
> another; when the world's largest theistic faith encounters the
> world's largest non-theistic spirituality.  However, I believe the
> transformation will result of encounter, not confrontation.  A
> contrast of doctrines will be unproductive.  Transformation will come
> not from religions clashing with one another but with spiritualities
> embracing each other; with Christ and Buddha embracing one another.
>
> The encounter is, certainly, not without its difficulties.  A small
> amount of those difficulties arose in recent discussion I had with a
> Zen Buddhist priest.  He, as a Zen Buddhist, rightfully had a problem
> with my use of the terms 'God' and 'Christ'.  I could only silently
> think if Siddhartha and Jesus met on some road, Siddhartha would bow
> to Jesus' Buddha-nature and Jesus would give Siddhartha the 'kiss of
> peace' in respect to Siddhartha's 'Christ-nature'.  They would find a
> tree on a mount and sit in its shade discussing koans and parables.
>
> The Christian-Buddhist encounter can be such an amicable event.  For
> example, the Christian can learn from the Buddhist that the
> Crucifixion, Resurrection, and Ascension of Jesus is revelatory of
> Enlightenment as well as Atonement.  Jesus suffers in the Garden,
> struggling with his attachment to his life and all to which it
> appertains.  It is only when he surrenders his will and attachments
> that he finds peace.  As he is being crucified that he experiences
> the ultimate detachment... the detachment from his God.  It is then
> that the old Jesus dies only to be resurrected as a new Jesus.  He
> appears to be the same Jesus but he has ascended to a higher
> consciousness and state of being.
>
> The Buddhist can learn from Christian doctrines, without accepting
> them as true.  The doctrines of the Trinity, the Virgin Birth, the
> dual nature (divine-human) of Jesus, and  the event of Jesus'
> Transfiguration can all be approached as koans.  The opportunities
> for sharing, interaction, fellowship, and spiritual encounter are
> innumerable.
>
> The most significant encounter will be dialogue about God.  Again,
> both perspectives can approach the concept as a koan... the Supreme
> Being who is non-being, the Great Something who is no thing.
>
> Of course, the only way the Christian-Buddhist encounter will be
> spiritually meaningful is if both perspectives sacrifice
> proselytization for the chance to see through the other's eyes.
>

I don't think difficulty comes so much from some Buddhists accepting
elements of Christianity and incorporating them.  I think the problem would
more likely come from SOME "Christians" who can't see the big picture and
want to be elite and exlusive chosen people.  They tend to look down their
noses at "pagans"  and "false religions".  Just was at dinner with one of
those types.  Lovely person, and evangelistic as hell.  Very fervent in her
beliefs. I told her I was glad she had found her path, and that I thought it
was good for her.  She's sorry I'm going to burn in a hell I don't believe
exists.

K


COPPERHEAD365 - DON'T TREAD ON ME

_________________________________________________________________
http://imagine-windowslive.com/hotmail/?locale=en-us&ocid=TXT_TAGHM_migration_HM\
_mini_pcmag_0507

Someone once said the greatest spiritual transformation in world
history will occur when Christianity and Buddhism encounter one
another; when the world's largest theistic faith encounters the
world's largest non-theistic spirituality.  However, I believe the
transformation will result of encounter, not confrontation.  A
contrast of doctrines will be unproductive.  Transformation will come
not from religions clashing with one another but with spiritualities
embracing each other; with Christ and Buddha embracing one another.

The encounter is, certainly, not without its difficulties.  A small
amount of those difficulties arose in recent discussion I had with a
Zen Buddhist priest.  He, as a Zen Buddhist, rightfully had a problem
with my use of the terms 'God' and 'Christ'.  I could only silently
think if Siddhartha and Jesus met on some road, Siddhartha would bow
to Jesus' Buddha-nature and Jesus would give Siddhartha the 'kiss of
peace' in respect to Siddhartha's 'Christ-nature'.  They would find a
tree on a mount and sit in its shade discussing koans and parables.

The Christian-Buddhist encounter can be such an amicable event.  For
example, the Christian can learn from the Buddhist that the
Crucifixion, Resurrection, and Ascension of Jesus is revelatory of
Enlightenment as well as Atonement.  Jesus suffers in the Garden,
struggling with his attachment to his life and all to which it
appertains.  It is only when he surrenders his will and attachments
that he finds peace.  As he is being crucified that he experiences
the ultimate detachment... the detachment from his God.  It is then
that the old Jesus dies only to be resurrected as a new Jesus.  He
appears to be the same Jesus but he has ascended to a higher
consciousness and state of being.

The Buddhist can learn from Christian doctrines, without accepting
them as true.  The doctrines of the Trinity, the Virgin Birth, the
dual nature (divine-human) of Jesus, and  the event of Jesus'
Transfiguration can all be approached as koans.  The opportunities
for sharing, interaction, fellowship, and spiritual encounter are
innumerable.

The most significant encounter will be dialogue about God.  Again,
both perspectives can approach the concept as a koan... the Supreme
Being who is non-being, the Great Something who is no thing.

Of course, the only way the Christian-Buddhist encounter will be
spiritually meaningful is if both perspectives sacrifice
proselytization for the chance to see through the other's eyes.

I'd like to invite you all to visit www.sanghaofthespirit.org and
invite male visitors to join the roles of Cadhan Monks.

Aidan,
Do you have a new e-mail address?  I'd like to write you privately.
Namaste,
/\Tom Faulkenbury+

The following was sent to me personally with a request to post it to
the group.

--- In BedeGriffithsCyberAshram@yahoogroups.com, "Tom"
<tfaulkenbury@...> wrote:
>
> I just finished reading a biography of N.V. Tilak, an Indian
Christian
> who died in 1919.  His life posedd an interesting question.  Does a
> Christian have to cease being Hindu?
>
I just finished reading that bio as well, but that's beside the point.
  Having been in India and talked with many Indian Christians, they
most decidedly say that one could falsely follow Christ and remain a
true Hindu, but one cannot continue in Hinduism and its idolatry and
truly follow Christ.  They all agree that there is a call to come out
from among them and go to Christ outside the camp bearing his
reproach.

2 Corinthians 6 should suffice:
What fellowship has light with darkness?  What accord has Christ with
Belial [the head of all demons--Satan]?  What agreement has the temple
of God [namely, we are the temple of the living God (vs. 16)] with
idols? (1 Cor 6.14-16)

So I guess this brings up the inevitable questions:  Are Hindus
worshipping idols (and therefore worshipping demons)?  Do Hindus
worship the One True God in the midst of their pantheon of gods?

If the question were "Does a Christian have to cease being an Indian?"
  emphatically we would say "By no means!"  But if being Indian by
culture is inextricably tied to worshipping many gods of Hinduism,
then we would say, "There might be some of being an Indian that you
should cease."

Interesting question.  If you had asked it the other way around, "Does a
Hindu have to stop being a Christian?", I would say definitely not.
Hinduism appears to me to be able to incorporate and accommadate
Christianity effortlessly.

As it is though, I'd say I don't see where a Christian would have to stop
being a Hindu, but I could see where a LOT of Christians would say that
indeed you would have to stop being a Hindu. One of the reasons organized
Christianity leaves a lot to be desired by Yours Truly.  Same bunch that
used to burn you for thinking that the Sun revolves around the flat Earth.

K


COPPERHEAD365 - DON'T TREAD ON ME

_________________________________________________________________
Laugh, share and connect with Windows Live Messenger
http://clk.atdmt.com/MSN/go/msnnkwme0020000001msn/direct/01/?href=http://imagine\
-msn.com/messenger/launch80/default.aspx?locale=en-us&source=hmtagline

That should've said,  "...the bunch that would burn you for believing the
Earth revolves around the Sun".

I'm a spaz, and probably SHOULD be burned.

K


COPPERHEAD365 - DON'T TREAD ON ME

_________________________________________________________________
Search for grocery stores. Find gratitude. Turn a simple search into
something more.
http://click4thecause.live.com/search/charity/default.aspx?source=hmemtagline_gr\
atitude&FORM=WLMTAG

As I have to see things I would have to say no...



Come check me out on MySpace at
http://www.myspace.com/whiteriverdharmacenter





>From: "Tom" <tfaulkenbury@...>
>Reply-To: BedeGriffithsCyberAshram@yahoogroups.com
>To: BedeGriffithsCyberAshram@yahoogroups.com
>Subject: [BedeGriffithsCyberAshram] A Question for Discussion
>Date: Tue, 30 Jan 2007 22:22:25 -0000
>
>I just finished reading a biography of N.V. Tilak, an Indian Christian
>who died in 1919.  His life posedd an interesting question.  Does a
>Christian have to cease being Hindu?
>

_________________________________________________________________
Get live scores and news about your team: Add the Live.com Football Page
http://www.live.com/?addtemplate=football

I just finished reading a biography of N.V. Tilak, an Indian Christian
who died in 1919.  His life posedd an interesting question.  Does a
Christian have to cease being Hindu?

Hello,

For those of you waiting for approval for membership I apologize for
taking so long. This week I have been very busy.The college where I
work has had 10 Tibetan Monks on campus. They have been creating a
sand mandala all week. Tomorrow night is the closing ceremony in
which they dismantle the mandala. I have taken off this week in
order to spend as much time with the monks as I can. This is a
rarity in this part of the country.. It has been a great blessing to
me to interact with the monks... so things you might find
interesting...

One morning I told them I would like to make some butter tea for
them... :) they suggested that have a coke to drink would be more
enjoyable... :) I went out and bought some 2 liters for them....

Yesterday they asked if there was somewhere that they could play
basketball and one of my co-workers got permission to use the local
High school gym last night... last night was also our weekly
Meditation session at the Center... I asked those who came to
meditate if they would rather go and watch the monks play basketball
and well we made a field trip over to the gym and played basketball
with the monks...  it was a good game and aggressive... I am not a
good player but I get into it when I play... at one point I was
defending the basket when one of the monks on the other team and I
both jumped up to get the ball... I ended up elbowing him knocking
him down with me falling on top of him.... Be both got up and gave
each other the High Five hand slap... It was great fun!

What was good for the who come to meditation weekly was to see that
the monks are human and enjoy life...

If you ever get the chance to do a retreat at either a christian or
buddhist monastery or simply interact with them I encourage you to
do so....

Namaste,

Brother John

Dear Kendiancard,
      There is a very interesting article on the Eucharist with a Hindu
viewpoint by Bede Griffiths at
www.bedegriffiths.com/sangha/san_9.htm
(article number two entitled 'The Ashram and the Eucharist'

      In this article Bede explains how the traditional view of the
actual, unique 'body' of Christ as being present in the Eucharist
differs from the Hindu perspective.

      As for the Trinity, it reminds me of the Hindu trinity of Brahman,
Vishnu and Shiva.  Like God the Father, Brahman is the creator of the
universe, Vishnu, like Jesus, is the sustainer of the universe--the
creative 'outgoing action' aspect of God, and Shiva is like the Holy
Spirit--the formless essence of the Absolute underlying all things
which destroys our sense of separation. This is just my understanding
and interpretation, not a definitive explanantion. Hope it helps.  Pam





--- In BedeGriffithsCyberAshram@yahoogroups.com, "kendiancard"
<kendiancard@...> wrote:
>
> HOW DO CONCEPTS SUCH AS THE REAL PRESENCE OF CHRIST IN THE EUCHARIST
> OR THE CONCEPT OF THE TRINITY FIT IN WITH THE HINDU PERCEPTION OF
> REALITY?  I HAVE THE IMPRESSION THAT WHAT IS BEING SAID, IN HINDUISM,
> IS THAT EACH THING IS IN UNITY, ALREADY, WITH EVERYTHING ELSE.
> WHERE IS THE UNIQUENESS OF THE EUCHARIST OR THE TRINITY IN SUCH A
> SYSTEM? I AM NOT CHALLENGING HINDUISM BUT I WOULD LIKE TO BE ABLE TO
> PASS ON AN EXPLAINATION IN THE EVENT I AM ASKED THIS QUESTION.
THANKS.
>

Through my stroke of last November I have found a personal connection
between a motto of the U.S. Marine Corps and aspects of Buddhist
philosophy.  I'm not going into the details of that connection,
merely how I have interpreted and applied "adapt, overcome,
perservere" to my post-stroke situation.  BTW, I was in the Navy not
the Corps.

Adapt - This has been the phase of adjusting to the physical aspects
of life confined to a wheelchair without use of ny left hand, left
arm and left leg.  It has been a phase of learning simple things like
bathing, shaving, going to the bathroom, eating, etc.  Things that we
all take for granted.  It has been a phase of adapting my
environment... wheelchair ramps, a wheelchair lift for the auto, a
chair for the bathtub, widened doors, moved furniture, etc.  You get
the picture.  It's a period of adjustment and adaptation to physical
praxis.

Overcome - The second phase is not a matter of overcoming or
reversing the debilitating physical aspects of the stroke.  It is a
period of overcoming the negative psychological/emotional/spritual
aspects.  It is a matter of "letting go" of attachments to what was.
For example, I loved to play golf (albeit badly).  I would become
depressed when I passed a golf course or thought about good times
with my former golf buddies.  I was attached to what I could no
longer physically do.  Rather than cherish the good times I had with
friends on the course, I despaired that I no longer had that.  I have
to overcome that attachment (not to the memory but to the physical
ability) and the resulting sadness.  The same applies to other
aspects of ny former life... including simple things like taking a
walk.  Overcoming also involves understanding the karmic significance
of the stroke and my response to it.  Not so much why me?  Rather,
how do choose to respond and live?  What can I learn?

Perservere - This is the phase of "mindfulness"... living in the
moment, the now, not the past,not the future.  This is the period of
non-attachment, of acceptance (which is not the same as
resignation).  It is a time of samadhi, nivana, and grace.

Tom

Enter your vote today! A new poll has been created for the
BedeGriffithsCyberAshram group:

Besides your own private meditation discipline do you meet with others to sit?

o yes
o no

To vote, please visit the following web page:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/BedeGriffithsCyberAshram/surveys?id=2059642

Note: Please do not reply to this message. Poll votes are
not collected via email. To vote, you must go to the Yahoo! Groups
web site listed above.

Thanks!

Send instant messages to your online friends http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com

----- Original Message -----

From: Tom

Sent: Thursday, October 05, 2006 6:07 PM

"We have to try to discover the inner relationship between these different aspects of Truth and unite them in ourselves. I have to be a Hindu, a Buddhist, a Jain, a Parsee, a Sikh, a Muslim, and a Jew, as well as a Christian, if I am to know the Truth and to find the point of reconciliation in all religion." ~ Bede Griffiths

The above, which is the introduction to our group, has caused me personal problems with regard to “being Muslim.” So, I looked to Bede to try to ascertain where he discovered those inner relationships and points of reconciliation. My brief sudy is thus far limited to Bede’s Marriage of East and West. Page numbers are sited. Any additional sightings from Bede are encouraged and appreciated.

Bede pointed out that Christianity shares with Judaism and Islam a Semitic structure of language and thought.[11] He also noted Islam’s similarity with Syrian Christianity and drew on the example of Syrian theologian Bar Hebraeus and Muslim theologian Al Ghazali. He also compared the Syrian liturgy with Islamic concepts of moral righteousness, sin, forgiveness and compassion. [21]

Bede states, “God himself, in so far as he can be named, whether Yahweh, Allah, or simply God, is a sign, a name for the ultimate Truth, which cannot be named… In every religion, whether Christian or Hindu or Buddhist or Muslim, it has been recognized that ultimate Reality cannot be named…“[42]

On a somewhat negative note, Bede observed that Islam, Christianity, Judaism, and Hinduism (Shiva/Kali) must contend with the concept of a wrathful deity. [108]

On a more positive note, he posited that Islam shares a cosmic vision with Hinduism, Buddhism, and Christianity, stating that this vision is that “every material thing has a psychological aspect, a relation to human consciousness, and this in turn is related to the supreme spirit which pervades both the physical world and human consciousness.”

[51]

In this regard, Islam, along with the other religions, recognizes that there is a knowledge above reason [91] and, thus, shares intuitive wisdom [68] and a similarity of mystical experience. [178]

Bede seems to view the most significant point of reconciliation in the Islamic concept of Universal Man (al in-san al Kamil) which he compares to Purusha (Hinduism), Son of Man (Christianity), Adam Kadmon (Judaism), Dharmakaya (Buddhism). All of which he identifies as God’s revelation in the Cosmos and in Man. [14, 70,140]

Being a martial artists and having studied and taught a couple of
different systems I have always been a "fan" of Bruce Lee... and I
remember a movie "Enter the Dragon" in which instructs a student
about how spends to much time looking at the finger pointing at the
moon instead of gazing on the moon itself and misses out on all Its
glory.... I am not a scholar or do I pretend to be.... I am a simple
guy that wakes up in the morning and realizes that this day could be
my last in this present form... As a Christian I try and connect
with the sacramental element of my being.... acknowledging my
limited understanding of what God has completed for me and my fellow
human beings.... As a Buddhist I try and step aside and connect with
my Buddha nature.... both are the same for me..... ?! Whatever the
Church has censored or banished makes no difference for those
willing to make the journey without and within... moving past the
dung spread out before us...

I was recently talking with a young Independent Baptist man about
the scriptures and it be came evident that he would be lost
without "The Book".... King James by the way... He's missed the
point... he is so focused on the dung that he has missed the glory
of the moon.... He is satisfied with a set of rules and regulations
which in all honesty takes no faith to believe in...

I am rambling... Heck.... who cares what Rome or the Fathers of the
Reformation have banned or censored... You can never control the
movement of the Spirit.... the wind of God goes where it
will..................

Namaste,

Brother John the Hairy Tick

*~ The Original Teachings Of Christ BANNED By The Catholic Church ~*



Believe it or not, at the start of the 21st century we find ourselves
in the middle of more religious wars. Our enemy, who claims to
represent Islam, is attacking the West on multiple fronts. Islamic
terrorists have attacked America, Israel, Spain, France, and Russia
in recent years, and even the president of the mightiest nation on
Earth has openly doubted if the West can ever win this war against
these religious extremists.(2) Most perpetrators of suicide
operations in buses, schools and residential buildings around the
world for the past 10 years have professed to be devout Muslims, but
their claim to represent true Islam has been widely disputed. Still,
while their fellow Muslims around the world have not universally
united in support of this Jihad against the West, they have also not
done so in condemnation of it either. This should not surprise us,
because Islam was born with a warlike nature, and aggression will
probably always be in its blood. Although he preached peace, history
leaves no doubt that Mohammed supported the use of violence for the
advancement of Islam, and his followers have never forgotten that
injunction. This observation is not meant as a condemnation of Islam,
but only to distinguish it from other religious approaches, such as
Essenes, Buddhism, Hinduism, Sufism, Jainism and Taoism etc that are
not so warlike.

Constantinian Christianity, the foundation of Western civilization,
was also born of war, and will probably always have war in its blood
as well. By this, I do not mean the original religion Christ taught,
but rather that imposter which came later and modified His teachings.
This imposter shows no evidence of being the true offspring of the
Prince of Peace, but seems instead to be, much like Islam, born of a
warlike parentage. Constantine's Church has been in a fairly constant
state of war since its inception, fighting the Jews, the Gnostics,
the Muslims, the Protestants, and even a good portion of the
scientific community. However, unlike that imposter which came later,
it does not seem that true Christianity could have originally been a
warlike religion. Its gentle Founder never carried a sword, refused
to defend Himself when attacked, and taught His followers to "love
their enemies", "give to those who ask". "worship not money", "turn
the other cheek", and "resist not evil". Not only did the meek
Founder of Christianity go quietly like a lamb to His own slaughter,
but actually told His disciples that if they wanted to be saved, they
would have to follow His example and do the same.(3) There seems
little doubt -- that person is NOT represented by our Western
civilization today. He is not represented by our politicians or our
priests, not by Wall Street, Academia, or even Hollywood. He is
virtually unknown. And so are His true teachings. Jesus Christ's
original true teachings required His followers to embody loving
kindness to all creatures and to all of mother earth as divine; His
followers never ate nor wore nor used anything which exploited or
harmed or robbed the freedom from any creature. Jesus Christ and
his original followers were vegan Essenes whose teachings forbade
any flesh/fish/creature eating, and forbade all alcohol/wine
drinking, and held non~violence and loving kindness towards All Life,
as well as sexual purity and an ascetic pure celibate life as vows.
The Catholic Church is militant and filled with blood~lust and sin,
therefore they hated the Essenes and the true teachings of Jesus.
The Catholic Church tried to destroy all of the Essene Gospel Texts
of Jesus and His Apostles and followers. All modern Christian
churches are not aware of the true Jesus and His teachings.
Jesus Christ spoke of God as being the Mother and Father of ALL, as
well as being Genderless, Immanent and Transcendent, and Beyond.
Christ taught that ALL was indeed the Self and Fabric of God's
Consciousness SPIRIT ~ God Himself.
After aeons of reincarnations towards spiritual perfection, the
destiny of all manifestations without exception, is finally Union ~
Merging back into Divine Oneness with GOD the ALL ONE IMMORTAL
SPIRIT.


We have dire problems here now. While the Islamic militants attacking
us today are at least being honest with and loyal to their own
personal beliefs in fighting this war, we find ourselves in apparent
conflict with our religion's peaceful Founder if we fight back. In
order to fight back, we must actually fight on two fronts -- we must
fight both our outer enemy and also our inner faith. And so, while we
are divided within ourselves, our enemy is whole, and would thus seem
to hold a significant advantage over us.

Islam is visibly growing stronger and more robust around the world,
even as mainstream Christianity seems to be dying the fabled "death
of a thousand cuts". In Europe, once the stronghold of a vast
Christian Empire, an increasing percentage of the population now
considers religion completely irrelevant to their lives. Meanwhile,
in America, Christianity's supposed new center of gravity on the
planet, we find a corrupt ministry and priesthood whose sexual and
financial scandals have managed to make the vulgarities of popular
television seem tame by comparison. And in science, more and more
evidence is piling up in support of reincarnation, an idea which, if
true, spells doom for conventional Christian theology.(4)

Nonetheless, the only way we will win this war, the only way we can
survive this onslaught, is to be whole ourselves as well, to be true
to our religion (whatever that may be) at least as much as our enemy
is to his. If we embrace our faith halfheartedly, our hearts, and
thus our strength, will be divided already, leaving us likely to lose
our battles before they even begin. If we are to be in a religious
war, we cannot expect to win by betraying our religion while our
enemy is loyal to his.(5) Unfortunately, this is easier said than
done. It has become more and more clear from the last century's
archaeological finds that what the world follows today is not
Original Christianity, but a heavily edited, modified, and incomplete
substitute. People around the world are realizing that even if we
try, it may not be possible for us to be true to Christ's original
teachings today, simply because we have been misled about what they
were. This, of course, has been argued before. Right from its
inception, sects began splitting off from the main trunk of
Christianity, accusing the church of betraying and corrupting
Christ's original teachings. In a virtual orgy of finger-pointing,
this accusation has been repeated by every single denomination of
Christianity. Now that the many banned and unedited, Original sacred
texts Gospel's teachings of Jesus Christ the Essene and His Essene
direct disciple followers are being published, we have a divine
treasure chest overflowing with the true wisdom to follow and
practice. Thanks Be To God!

While all these sects don't agree what the true teachings of Original
Christianity actually were, they all do agree that those original
teachings were eventually betrayed and corrupted. Of course, we
didn't have any solid proof to back up those claims until 1945, when
a large cache of previously-unknown early Christian scriptures were
unearthed in Egypt. In Nag Hammadi, a small southern village on the
west bank of the Nile, we found 52 early Christian writings that had
once so threatened Constantine's Church that it sought out and
destroyed all existing copies. And then, for good measure, that same
church also murdered any poor soul who happened to be caught in
possession of one of these illegal scriptures.(6) The only reason any
copies of these works remained to be found at Nag Hammadi is because
Constantine's Church never knew they were buried there.



The Lost Gospels



Never before had such a collection been recovered; this twentieth
century find brought the first serious defeat in the church's ancient
and ongoing war against these records. For nearly 2000 years, the
church's censorship campaign had been successful, alienating the
world from some of the earliest flowerings of Christian thought.
Thanks to that censorship, some of the teachings and recurring themes
in these early scriptures now seem totally alien to Christianity, not
making any sense at all to conventional theology. In the Gospel of
Thomas, for example, we are repeatedly instructed to "make the two
one"; in the Gospel of Philip, we are told that Jesus
Himself "divided" in two when He died; in the Secret Book of James,
we read that salvation revolves around the relationship between one's
own soul and spirit; in the Gospel of Mary, we are warned against
having a divided heart; and in the Gospel of Truth, we learn that
Jesus' mission was to repair a great division. This theme of division
and duality obviously permeated early Christian thought, but was
later erased from the canvas of history, making it as alien to the
church as a flashlight to a caveman.

A great many of these lost scriptures have been dated to the first or
second centuries, making them some of the earliest Christian
literature ever written. Despite that, however, these teachings were
meticulously erased from the church's legacy; we never inherited them
because the church didn't want us to. For 1500 years, the church
burned these books, along with their owners. This campaign to destroy
all but a carefully chosen set of early Christian teachings began
with Constantine's conversion in the 4th century, and lasted all the
way until the end of the Spanish Inquisition in 1834.

It was the longest censorship campaign in human history.

There's no way to calculate how much we lost. Although a few listings
of titles of missing early Christian scriptures still exist, we know
these listings aren't inclusive. They are just the only listings that
managed to survive the editing process of the church. Still, they are
enough. They make it clear that many more early Christian scriptures
once existed than do today. In the first centuries of the church, the
faithful once also read all the following Original Gospel's
scriptures of the vegan Essenes of Jesus Christ The Essene which are
the direct in~person words and deepest mystical teachings of Jesus
Christ, right alongside the familiar titles in today's much changed
and re~written and edited Bible:



The Acts of Andrew

The Gospel of Andrew

The Gospel of the Twelve Apostles

The Gospel of Barnabas

The Gospel of Bartholomew

The Gospel of Basilides

The Gospel of Cerinthus

The Revelation of Cerinthus

Epistle from Christ to Peter and Paul

The Gospel of the Egyptians

The Gospel of the Ebionites

The Gospel of the Encratites

The Gospel of Eve

The Gospel of the Hebrews

The Book of the Helkesaites

The Gospel of Hesychius

The Book of James

The Acts of John

The Gospel of Jude

The Acts of the Apostles by Lentitus

The Books of Lentitius

The Acts of the Apostles by Leucius

The Acts of the Apostles by Leontius

The Acts of the Apostles by Leuthon

The Gospel of Lucianus

The Gospel of Marcion

The Gospel of Matthias

The Traditions of Matthias

The Gospel of Merinthus

The Gospel of the Nazarenes

The Acts of Paul and Thecla

The Acts of Paul

The Preaching of Paul

The Revelation of Paul

The Gospel of Perfection

The Acts of Peter

The Doctrine of Peter

The Gospel of Peter

The Judgment of Peter

The Preaching of Peter

The Revelation of Peter

The Acts of Philip

The Gospel of Philip

The Gospel of Scythianus

The Acts of the Apostles by Seleuccus

The Revelation of Stephen

The Gospel of Titan

The Gospel of Thaddaeus

The Epistle of Themison

The Acts of Thomas

The Gospel of Thomas

The Gospel of Truth

The Gospel of Valentinius





While today's official New Testament only offers its readers the four
gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, along with a handful of
letters from Paul, Peter, James, and Jude, early congregations also
read dozens of other gospels and holy scriptures that no longer
exist. All we have left today are these empty titles, which stand as
mute witness to the power and thoroughness of the church's censorship
campaign.(7) Although only eight authors are represented in the
official New Testament, in the earliest years of Christianity the
faithful read the work of at least 38 additional authors (that we
know of). The earliest disciples spent their lives teaching a
literate culture about Christ, and, as Luke himself testifies, a
great many written works emerged from their passionate commitment to
that mission :



"Many have taken pen in hand to draw up an account of the things that
have taken place among us, just as they were handed down to us from
the first eyewitnesses and ministers of the word. Since I have
perfectly followed all these things from the very beginning, it
therefore seemed good for me to also write you an orderly account."
- The Gospel of Luke 1: 1-3



In the earliest years of the faith, before Luke got around to writing
up his version of events, many others had already done so.
Constantine's Church, however, condemned all of those early reports,
all except the 27 books that made it into the New Testament. And as
it was making those decisions, the church demonstrated special
favoritism towards one author in particular -- Paul -- who wrote more
than half of all the books in the New Testament. Of its 27 books,
Paul, a man who never even met Jesus in the flesh, wrote 13 of them.
Today, of course, Constantine's Church embraces Paul's letters as the
standard by which all other Christian scripture is to be judged,
primarily because his work seemed to be, at least before the
discovery of the Gospel of Thomas, the oldest surviving Christian
literature. However, in Philippians 3:10-14, Paul himself confessed
that his familiarity with Christianity was imperfect and limited,
which would seem to cast doubt on the full accuracy of His
representation of Christ's original teachings. He admitted that he
did not yet "know" Christ and still wished to accomplish this, and
that he was not yet "perfect" in the faith. Despite these
shortcomings, however, Paul's writings were not only chosen to be in
the Bible, but given preference over a great many other scriptures,
including many allegedly written by some of the actual Twelve
Apostles, such as Peter, James, Andrew, Thomas, and Philip. Of
course, the church's only possible defense of this would be if all
those writings are falsely attributed, and were not actually written
by the true Twelve. For if they were authentic, then the testimony of
those who spent a year or more being instructed by Christ during His
ministry would surely be preferred over someone who had only had
visions of Him after His resurrection.

Certainly, the church does deny that these scriptures were written by
members of the original Twelve; however, there are two things wrong
with that argument. One, if these scriptures were not originally
written by the Apostles, then where are the scriptures they would
have written? In a literate civilization, a sizable percentage of the
Apostles probably would have scratched out some sort of written
recollection or teaching over the course of their lives, and Luke
confirms that this in fact did occur. If these recently discovered
scriptures are not the ones they wrote, then where are the ones they
did write? And two, very good cases can be made that both The Gospel
of Thomas (found at Nag Hammadi Egypt in 1945),(8) and The Gospel of
Peter (found in Akhmim Egypt in 1886)(9) actually do date from the
mid-first century, which is exactly when the Twelve would have been
most likely to produce written works.

We know our lists of lost works are incomplete, because the Nag
Hammadi find contained no less than 41 early Christian scriptures
that we'd never even heard of before. Their titles had previously
appeared in no list, no correspondence, no surviving document of any
kind. These scriptures were considered so dangerous to the church
that not one single mention of them was allowed to survive the
passage of time. In the last century, for example, we discovered that
there had once been a Gospel of Mary. We never knew that before, and
the only possible explanation why we never did is because the church
didn't want us to. If the church had wanted that text to survive, no
power on earth could have erased it from our heritage.

Not only were all these texts themselves to be rooted out, the church
decided, but all trace of them as well. History was to be wiped
completely clean of any memory or mention of the ideas in these
works. And until their texts were finally unearthed again in Egypt,
all we had left were empty titles, and lots of questions about what
kind of ideas had once been inside them.

How many more were there? Were there yet another 41 scriptures
written in the earliest years of the church that we still don't know
anything about? Were there a hundred? Two hundred? There just doesn't
seem to be any way to know. If the church could successfully erase
all memory of these 41 scriptures, it could do anything. 1500 years
is a long time to get a story straight.


Truth Through Censorship



Constantine's Church openly admits this censorship. It claims that
all these lost texts were erroneous representations of Christianity
and so deserved to be destroyed; and in support of that position, it
points to some extant writings of early church figures which say as
much. However, this argument is disingenuous, for the church is
arguing its case with evidence it itself has admitted tampering with.
For all we know, the vast majority of Christians in the first two
centuries preferred these forbidden scriptures over those
Constantine's Church canonized, but now that all evidence which might
have reflected that has been erased, we will never know. As soon as
Constantine's Church began tampering with the evidence, it lost all
credibility.

Over the years, many have accused the church of betraying its
original integrity in order to gain political strength and stability,
and such a motivation would be easily understandable. Christians
suffered horrific persecution in the first 300 years of the church.
Many of the original apostles endured beatings, stonings, and
imprisonments, and anyone who accepted a public position as a
Christian leader was asking for a short and troubled life. For
example, in 235 AD the Roman Bishop Pontian was arrested almost as
soon as he was ordained. Rome sent him to the lead mines of Sardinia,
where prisoners were forced to toil 20 grueling hours per day on
nothing but one meal of bread and water. Most died within months.
Like Pontian, many high-ranking Christians were sent to the Sardinian
mines in those years, or persecuted in other equally miserable ways.
Less than a century later, however, after the Roman Emperor
Constantine converted to Christianity, everything changed.(10) In 314
AD, the new Roman Bishop found himself showered with prestige,
wealth, pomp, and the favor of the Emperor. Instead of facing
persecution, he was now living in the lap of luxury, with a beautiful
palace, a glorious cathedral, and all the trappings of power.

After suffering so much grief from all those centuries of
persecution, it was only natural for Christians to welcome a more
politically approved status for the church. But ever since that
status was granted, historians have been asking if accepting it was a
mistake. Before Constantine, the church had been a pure fellowship of
selfless heroes, people so committed to serve Jesus that they endured
any hardship. There was no question of their personal dedication to
the church's ideals and teachings, since they were putting their
lives on the line just to be a member. But after Constantine's
conversion, the newly "politically correct" church became an
attractive career option for the average person. Simply claiming to
be a Christian could bring power, prestige, and promotion, where it
had previously only brought persecution. This placed the church at
risk of being infiltrated by unscrupulous people seeking nothing more
than worldly power and political advancement. Such people, if they
succeeded in securing a foothold in the ecclesiastical hierarchy,
could ascend to positions where their ambition could compromise the
church.



The Emperor's New Sword



As Constantine came to power in the fourth century, the Roman Empire
was struggling with a dilemma. After centuries of persecutions, it
had become obvious that the flood of Christians refusing to pay
religious homage to the Emperor was not going to end, even under
penalty of death. Constantine knew a radically new approach was
needed to deal with the Christians. The continuing sociological
phenomenon of civil disobedience meant just one thing to Rome: the
masses had become unacceptably unruly, and the Empire needed to find
something to render them servile and cooperative again. Until
Christianity entered the picture, state and religion had always
operated in tandem in Rome; the Emperor had always enjoyed being
viewed as a god, and exercising a god's unlimited control over his
subjects. The entrance of Christianity into Roman culture was the
first real interruption of that privilege. This strange new religion
gave its followers the courage to defy the state, as they so famously
did during the Christian persecutions. This open defiance made a huge
impression on Rome. It left the Emperor looking weak, which
threatened the stability of the whole Empire.

But the Emperor eventually realized that this new faith might be made
to work for him instead of against him, just as all the former
religions had done. Constantine tried to increase his control over
the population by reunifying state and religion, two social forces
which had recently been wasting their energies against one another.
With Christianity working for the state, the Emperor reasoned, he
could re-establish his traditional control over the populace, giving
commands the masses would again be too afraid to disobey. Indeed,
Christianity seemed to hold the potential to make the Emperor's power
over the masses greater than it had ever been before. With a renewed
alignment of church and state, the people would no longer merely fear
the ability of the state to take one's life, but would then also fear
its ability to condemn one's soul to eternal damnation in the
afterlife as well. If a government could get the population to truly
believe it had such power, it would possess the most successful
populace control system imaginable.

But some adjustments would be needed first. As it was, the Christian
religion showed a lot of potential; the courage and dedication it
inspired in men's hearts must have seemed a very attractive commodity
to the Emperor. What power a man would have if he could control such
faith! But that religion would still need to be shaped and
manipulated somewhat in order to fine tune it into the best possible
political tool. The state's claim to religious power would have to
rest on one assumption -- that earthly authorities could irreversibly
damn one's soul into eternal punishment. That, of course, would
require the people to believe that a single, eternal afterlife
immediately followed one's present earthly life. There was no room
for reincarnation in this picture, or any idea that a person might
have more than one life, or more than one chance to get things right.
Reincarnation, if it was there, would have to go.



Reincarnation in the Early Church



Reincarnation was there. There's really no questioning the presence
of reincarnation in early Christian theology. In fact, the doctrine
of rebirth was so mainstream in the earliest years of the church that
one of its most prominent teachers, Valentinus, almost became Pope.
Born in Alexandria around A.D. 100, Valentinus claimed to have been
personally initiated by Theudas, a disciple and initiate of the
Apostle Paul, who had passed down secret teachings and rituals from
Christ Himself. Like Paul, Valentinus also claimed to have had a
vision of the risen Christ. Following this mystical experience, he
began teaching in Alexandria, but migrated to Rome around 135 AD,
where he quickly became an influential and widely respected member of
the Orthodox Church. His pro-reincarnational teachings were so well
received there, in fact, that he was actually a candidate for the
papacy. After losing what is said to have been a very close election,
he continued to teach in Rome for many years, and his theology
attracted a large following, especially in Egypt and Syria.

Constantine's Church openly admits that some portion of pre-Nicene
Christianity believed in reincarnation, and the recovered gospels
from Nag Hammadi, preserved in their original unedited condition for
1500 years, say the same thing. In fact, it would have been
surprising if reincarnation had not been a part of the original
teachings of the church, since the world in which Christianity arose
was utterly saturated with the idea.(11) In Egypt, that massive
cultural force on Israel's Western border, the doctrine was so
ancient that a number of Pharaohs even had the idea incorporated into
their very names.(12) And towards the East, rebirth was the
foundation of India's entire culture. But by far the most direct
influx came through Hellenistic thought. Ever since Alexander the
Great conquered the Mediterranean world in the fourth century BC, the
pro-reincarnational teachings of Plato and Socrates flowed like water
through the Holy Land. By enforcing the spread of Greek language,
Alexander and his successors brought everyone into communication in
an unprecedented way.

Many ancient reports coming out of Egypt insisted that the belief was
common among the earliest Christians, being imparted in secret to the
faith's most advanced initiates.(13) According to tradition,
Christianity was originally brought to Egypt by Saint Mark in the
second half of the first century. While we possess no records
describing the theology of Mark besides the canonical gospel, he may
have also authored a Secret Gospel of Mark that contained more
advanced teaching for those being initiated into the Christian
mysteries.(14) Excerpts from that "secret gospel", which were
rediscovered in the 20th century, seem to portray Jesus initiating a
student into secret mysteries of the church. From the very beginning
of the Egyptian church, then, a 'secret doctrine' seems to have been
taught to those who were deemed worthy.



The Alexandrian Catechism



The intellectual center of the Roman Empire at the time was in
Alexandria Egypt, and the Catechetical School, an official
institution of the church, was founded there sometime in the second
century. Before the establishment of that school, however, the
Christian sects of Carpocrates, Basilides, Isidore, Valentinus and
Heracleon all flourished in Alexandria. These groups all taught a
form of Christianity that included reincarnation, which put them in
familiar company in that corner of the world. The famous Jewish
philosopher Philo, also an Alexandrian, taught a version of Judaism
that included reincarnation, and back then, Christianity was widely
thought of as another Jewish sect. Alexandria's JudeoChristian
reincarnationist schools have been dated as far back as 117 AD.

The original founding date of the Catechetical School is unknown; any
documents that might have provided that information have been deleted
from the historical record. In any case, we know the school dates at
least as far back as 175 AD, when it was headed by a man named
Pantaenus. Although this school became very famous and influential,
history has left no record of the teachings of Pantaenus. All we know
is that he eventually passed along the leadership of the school to
Saint Clement(15) in 190 AD, who ran the institution until he in turn
passed the reins to Origen in 203 AD.

Born about 150 AD, Clement of Alexandria was deeply respected in the
early Christian community; in addition to being the head of the most
prestigious theological college of his day, he was also a presbyter
in the church of Alexandria. He was exceptionally well-read, holding
a comprehensive knowledge of JudeoChristian literature, including
both orthodox and heretical works. Clement used and honored many
scriptures that Constantine's Church later condemned, including The
Gospel of the Egyptians, The Gospel of the Hebrews, The Traditions
of Matthias, The Teaching of Peter, The Epistle of Barnabas, the
Apocalypse of Peter, and The Preaching of Peter, all of which he
seems to have considered authentic. He claimed to have received a
secret esoteric Christian tradition from Pantaenus, which had been
passed down directly from the Apostles Peter, James, John and Paul.
These mysteries had to remain hidden, Clement insisted, and could
never be written or taught publically :



"...the wise do not utter with their mouth what they reason to
council. 'But what ye hear in the ear," says the Lord, "proclaim upon
the houses," bidding them receive the secret traditions of the true
knowledge, and expound them aloft and conspicuously; and as we have
heard in the ear, so to deliver them to whom it is requisite; but not
enjoining us to communicate to all without distinction, what is said
to them in parables."
- Clement of Alexandria, "The Mysteries of the Faith Not To Be
Divulged to All"



Did those secret teachings include a belief in reincarnation? The
ninth century Greek theologian Photius thought so, accusing him of
teaching reincarnation in his work "Outlines" (Hypotyposeis).(16)

Although he possessed an extraordinary education and was hailed as
a theological pioneer, Clement was dwarfed in all of these by his
student Origen, who is widely recognized as the most prominent,
distinguished, and influential of all the early church fathers. The
most prolific theologian of early Christianity, he is said to have
written over 6,000 works, although the vast majority of those
ultimately failed to survive the church's later censorship. Still,
in Origen's extant works, we seem to catch a far more substantial
glimpse of the esoteric teachings passed down to him from Pantaenus
and Clement. And one of Origen's contemporaries -- Saint Jerome --
also publically accused him of teaching reincarnation in his writings
as well. However, Origen makes a curious distinction. While he
enthusiastically condemns belief in the reincarnation of the soul, he
seems to openly support belief in the reincarnation of the spirit.
(17) Origen taught that the living are born into this world after
having already experienced previous lives :



"The soul has neither beginning nor end... [They] come into this
world strengthened by the victories or weakened by the defeats of
their previous lives." (18)



Constantine's Choice



In addition to Valentinus, Clement, and Origen, we also know that
many other prominent figures in the early church taught a form of
Christianity which included reincarnation. But we know too that
reincarnation did not mesh with the Empire's political needs. And, of
course, we know that the church subsequently edited and modified the
literature of the time to suit its purposes. Knowing all that, only
one question remains : did Constantine intentionally compromise
Christ's original teachings to further his political ambitions? Of
course, our knowledge of the history of these first centuries is far
from perfect, and scholars still dispute various details of the early
church councils. Because of the insufficiency of our information,
there cannot help but be some confusion and obscurity. Nonetheless,
it is quite clear that like all the Emperors who came before him,
Constantine didn't think anything was forbidden for him to do.
Although he paid lip service to Christianity, Constantine
demonstrated virtually no loyalty to Christ's teachings. Over the
course of his life, he murdered his own wife, his eldest son, and
many of his closest friends, and reveled in the mutilation and
torture of political enemies and prisoners of war. Despotic and
ambitious, Constantine seemed ruthlessly determined to achieve
complete dominance over the Empire regardless of the cost. And
although he claimed to be a Christian, he at the same time also
worshiped the traditional Roman sun god. Such a life would seem to be
a far cry from the ideals and teachings of Christ, but it does seem
to have a lot in common with the subsequent history of the Church of
Rome and all its descendants, a parallel which has led many over the
centuries to suspect that the true founder of the Roman Church was
not Christ at all, but Constantine himself.

Shortly after acquiring control of the united Empire and ending the
Christian persecutions, Constantine almost immediately found himself
facing yet another domestic crisis over religion. The east was
rioting in one city after another; bishop was now contending against
bishop, and people were fighting in the streets. Although Constantine
did not fully comprehend what all the fuss was about, he resolved to
put an end to it. He needed a united church for his united Empire, so
for the first time in the history of the church, the state intervened
in a dispute about belief. It wouldn't be the last time.

By Constantine's orders, 1,800 bishops from all corners of the Empire
were invited to attend a great church council at Nicaea, but only
about 300 answered the imperial summons, perhaps because they
realized that Constantine intended to chair the meeting himself. The
thought of a Roman Emperor presiding over church affairs must have
been very intimidating and troubling to the Christians of that era;
many of the attendees still bore scars of torture from previous
Emperors.

At the heart of the matter to be addressed was a simple question: had
Jesus always been God, or had He once just been a man who at some
point became God's Son? Was there, in other words, a time when the
Father alone existed, but not the Son? This was no mere academic
question. If Jesus was originally a man who later became God's Son,
that implied that other men could potentially also become Sons of
God. And if others could become Sons of God, then no one would
necessarily need the church for their salvation, but could instead
achieve that goal on their own, the same way Christ did. This
question was ripping the church apart, just when Constantine needed
it to hold the empire together.

In the end, it was decided in that meeting that Jesus had always been
God, and that other men could not follow in His footsteps to achieve
the same result. Instead, the council declared that the souls of men
were not like Jesus' soul, and did not, in and of themselves, possess
any inherent potential for divinity. While Christ's soul had always
existed, the council decided, man's soul was a created thing, and did
not come into existence until the person was physically born. There
was thus a huge gulf between God and man, and the church was the
only bridge between them. In short, man had to rely on the church to
acquire eternal life. In denying the soul's divine origin, the
council implicitly ruled out all possibility of pre-existence and
reincarnation, while emphasizing the power and authority of the
church over the individual.(19) In the end, one definition of
Christianity was chosen in that meeting, and all others were
rejected. Shortly after, the dreaded Christian persecutions began
anew, this time orchestrated by the church itself.



Return of the Christian Persecutions



Some things never change. Since the earliest days of the Roman
Empire, anyone refusing to pledge allegiance to the Emperor was put
to death, and this attitude did not suddenly disappear just because
Constantine converted. After the Council of Nicaea, all who practiced
those rejected versions of Christianity were labeled enemies of the
state, and started to be hunted down. These new persecutions involved
unprecedented literary censorship, starting with the Emperor
Constantine's order that all writings of the Christian theologian
Arius had to be delivered up to the authorities to be burned, and
that anyone found concealing them would be put to death. But that was
just the beginning. When Emperor Theodosius made Christianity the
official state religion a few years later, the Roman government
published an edict requiring all subjects of the Empire to profess
the faith of the Bishop of Rome, and those who refused found
themselves the enemies of the state all over again. Much as before,
everyone was again forced to either pledge allegiance to the official
state religion, or suffer harsh punishment. The church went through
an amazing transformation in the fourth century. Instead of being
prey, Christians were now the hunters. Instead of being martyrs,
church leaders became "heretic" hunters, mercilessly killing any who
dared disagree with them. All writings inconsistent with the official
teachings of the church were outlawed, and those who read them risked
being burnt at the stake. And that, historians think, was just about
when all those texts started to be gathered up and buried at Nag
Hammadi. For the next thousand years, the church continued to hunt
and kill "heretics". Curiously, Jesus seems to have predicted all
this:



"The time is coming when whoever kills you will think he is doing God
a service."
- John 16:2



With the church deciding what could and could not be read, all
authors who challenged the teachings of the church had their works
erased from history. Thousands of books were burnt, and hundreds of
thousands of "heretics" along with them. Less than 100 years after
Constantine's conversion, the church burnt the entire contents of the
famous Library of Alexandria in Egypt, and it continued to launch
similar campaigns for the next 1000 years. It massacred tens of
thousands of Christian "heretics" in France in the Albigensian
crusade of 1209-1255, and possibly hundreds of thousands more during
the Inquisition.(20) Like George Orwell's imaginary "Big Brother",
Constantine's Church sought complete control over both public and
private opinion. When the printing press was invented in the
fifteenth century, the church demanded the right to approve all
manuscripts before publication. The church even refused to let people
read its own book. As unlikely as it seems today, it was actually
illegal to possess the Bible, and simply reading it was considered
proof that someone was a heretic. Men and women were actually burned
at the stake for reading the Roman Catholic Bible.

Obviously, something had gone horribly wrong. Christianity had taken
a wrong turn. What had started out as love had warped into hatred and
fear. Prior to Constantine, however, the church had been different, a
pure fellowship of selfless heroes filled with the love, courage, and
fruitfulness that only comes from authentic health and wholeness.
Even though the original church contained the disparate elements that
would later become known as the Roman and Gnostic Churches, they were
originally very successful together. Prior to Constantine, Christians
had been known throughout the Empire for their remarkably advanced
social innovations. Christian communities had been very organized,
cohesive, and creative, introducing artisan associations, charitable
groups, and retirement and funeral insurance agencies that supported
all members regardless of social class. They not only introduced
these modern social innovations, but executed them so well that the
Roman government tried to emulate their new social systems. However,
Rome fumbled the job so badly that all it ended up doing was
emphasizing how well the Christians had done.



Orphans of War



After the Council of Nicaea, however, everything changed. There then
seemed to be two separate churches, the Constantinians and the
Gnostics, which were suddenly alienated from and at war with one
another. Each of those surviving halves sincerely believed that it
alone represented the true Church, the original teachings of Christ,
but, as we will see from the recovered scriptures from Nag Hammadi,
they were both wrong. Neither half was the whole. What had originally
been filled with a dynamic and creative complexity had been
shattered, and from its ashes, two equally crippled halves crawled
forth. Constantine's Church became a powerful dictator, murderer and
thief, waging endless wars of conquest both at home and abroad, while
the gnostic church became a disorganized and ineffective dreamer that
receded into the shadows of history, occasionally reappearing with
new names like Manichaeism, Bogomilism, and Catharism. Each time it
resurfaced, it taught an otherworldly version of Christianity that
incorporated reincarnation, and each time it was hunted down anew by
Constantine's Church. Both halves are the orphaned offspring of
Christianity's first war, and neither has known any peace since.

These two halves are very different, but their difference is not an
unfamiliar one. One exhibited the characteristics of one half of the
human psyche, while the other behaved more like the other half of the
mind. Constantine's Church focused more on objective "left brain"
issues like discrimination, order, and authority, while the gnostic
church paid more attention to subjective "right brain" issues like
intuition, imagination, and personal experience. Like the conscious
mind, Constantine's Church was more dominant and out-in-the open,
while the gnostic church was more like the unconscious, carrying out
its activity in the background. We will run across this pattern again
and again in our search for Original Christianity.

The divorce between the orthodox and gnostic factions of Christianity
did not actually begin in Nicaea. Instead, they seem to have started
differentiating from one another almost as soon as Christ was lowered
from the cross. All the Council of Nicaea did was bring this process
to fruition. And since that first climactic division in Nicaea,
Christianity has just continued on the same self-destructive course,
fracturing ever further with each new century. Where there had
originally been just one church, there are now, according to the
World Christian Encyclopedia, over 34,000 different Christian
denominations.(21) Each has its own unique teachings and practices,
but none, the lost gospels suggest, reflect the original teachings
of Christ.

And so, at the dawn of the first great religious war of the third
millennium, the West finds itself unarmed. The world today is in much
the same situation the Roman Empire was just after Constantine's
conversion: a single monolithic power is again struggling to maintain
and reinforce its dominance over the rest of the globe. When Rome
tried to use religion to achieve that end back in the 4th century,
Christianity's early history ended up getting erased and rewritten.
It is curious that we find ourselves at such a point in history once
again, because at this crossroads, we find that what we need most
now -- our original religion -- is precisely what we lost the first
time we came around this corner.





1. "Falsehood in Wartime", 1928.

2. In a "Today Show" interview broadcast August 30th, 2004, President
Bush said the United States could never win the war against
terrorism.

3. Matthew 10:38-39, Matthew 16:24-25, Luke 14:26-27, John 12:26.
Certainly the martyrs of Christianity's first three centuries
understood this.

4. Dr. Ian Stevenson, a psychiatrist from Charlottesville, Virginia,
has spent virtually his entire distinguished career researching
reincarnation. This former head of the Department of Psychiatry at
the University of Virginia has devoted the last 40 years to the
scientific documentation and verification of past life memories,
accumulating over 3000 cases in his files. And while many feel that
Stevenson's numerous scholarly books and articles offer the best
scientific evidence yet for reincarnation, he is not alone in this
pursuit. Numerous other scientists around the world, such as Dr.
Erlendur Haraldsson of Iceland, are now also investigating cases of
reincarnational memories. Meanwhile, the last 30 years have also seen
an explosion of popular interest in reincarnation as well, as
millions have begun to explore their own memories through past-life
regression.

5. We may no more want to engage in a religious war without religion
in our heart than we would want to get into a knife fight without a
knife in our hand.

6. After having been hunted, persecuted, and killed for centuries by
the Romans, the authorities of Constantine's Church embraced the same
strategies against its own enemies as soon as it had the power to do
so. Shortly after Christianity became the official religion of the
Empire, being a Manichee, or gnostic, carried the death penalty.

7. A few of these ancient works, such as The Gospel of Thomas and The
Gospel of Truth, were finally recovered again at Nag Hammadi, after
being lost to history for over 1500 years.

8. Among scholars of Thomas, the view that Thomas preserves the
earliest sayings of Jesus is almost universally accepted. However,
other NT scholars have been slower to accept this conclusion, as the
discussions that went on for decades among Thomas scholars are only
just now beginning to filter out to the rest of the fragmented and
parochial world of biblical scholarship.

9. "The original stage of Peter may well be the earliest passion
story in the gospel tradition." See The Complete Gospels, Robert J.
Miller, ed., p. 400.

10. Historians disagree if Constantine really ever converted to
Christianity at all. He worshiped the Roman sun god at the same time
he professed to be a Christian. After his 'conversion', he built a
triumphal arch in Rome that featured the sun god, and a statue of the
sun god for Constantinople. All his coins featured the sun. He made
Sunday (the day of the sun god) into a day of rest when work was
forbidden. Christianity incorporated worship of the Roman sun god
into its rites during Constantine's reign, praying towards the rising
sun, worshiping on Sunday, and celebrating Jesus' birth on December
25 (the birthday of the sun god). Constantine's character never
reflected Jesus' teachings, even after his so-called 'conversion'. He
remained vain, superstitious, and violent, with little respect for
human life. He reveled in slaughtering the enemy during military
campaigns, forced prisoners to fight wild beasts, and even had a
number of his own family members executed. Constantine supposedly
waited until just before he was dying before asking to be baptized,
and, in fact, historians disagree as to whether or not he actually
was baptized at that time.

11. The Jewish historian Josephus reported that reincarnation was
widely taught in Judea in the first century, and was even taught by
the Pharisees. See his Jewish War, 3, 8, 5 and Antiquities of the
Jews 18, 1, 3. This historical report is given even greater credence
by the fact that Judaism went on to officially incorporate the
doctrine of reincarnation as 'gilgul' in the Zohar, a classic of
Jewish mysticism purportedly written in the 2nd century.

12. The ka-name of Amonemhat I was "He who repeats births," the ka-
name of Senusert I meant "He whose births live," and the ka-name of
Setekhy I was "Repeater of births." Pharaohs sometimes claimed to
have more than one ka (soul), claiming, in effect, to possess
multiple selves, identities, personalities, and so on; this suggests
that these ancient Pharaohs claimed, just as 'holy men' of the East
do today, that they remembered their past lives and identities.

13. A great many biblical passages seem to refer to reincarnation.
See The Division of Consciousness and The Lost Secret of Death for
more.

14. See Clement of Alexandria and a Secret Gospel of Mark by Morton
Smith.

15. Clement was venerated as a saint down to the seventeenth
century .

16. Clement's Hypotyposeis is no longer extant, but numerous
fragments have been preserved in a handful of Greek works. Photius
argued in his work Bibliotheca that Clement taught reincarnation in
Hypotyposeis. While he softpeddled reincarnation, Clement may have
been more open with other elements of the esoteric tradition he
inherited from his teachers. In Clement's day, the distinction
between orthodox and gnostic was not nearly as defined as it would
become later. Even though Clement was a towering leader of the church
in his day, he referred to the most advanced and purest Christians
as 'gnostics'. There was a huge difference, Clement insisted, between
the faith of the ordinary Christian and the knowledge of the perfect
Christian. The perfect Christian, he maintained, receives profound
insights into the mysteries of the religion which ordinary Christians
must accept on faith alone. Emphasizing the moral worth of religious
knowledge, Clement extolled Christian perfection, referring to the
perfect Christian as "the true gnostic". Despite all this, however,
Clement had no notable or lasting influence on the subsequent history
of Christian theology, except for his influence on the young Origen.
Most of his works, including On First Principles, On Prophecy, On
Angels, On the Devil, On the Origin of the Universe, On the Unity and
Excellence of the Church, On the Soul, on Resurrection, On Marriage,
and others, have been lost to history. We can only imagine what other
early Christian insights Clement might have tried to share with us in
those works

17. See Origen's Commentary on John 6:7 and Commentary on Matthew
10:20

18. From his De Principiis

19. Even so, the current of reincarnational thought in Christianity
was so strong that the church was eventually forced to more
explicitly condemn reincarnation a few hundred years later, at the
2nd Council of Constantinople. See Appendix 1 for more.

20. No one really knows how many people were put to death during the
Inquisition, because, of course, the Roman Catholic Church was the
only entity that had any chance to keep records. Estimates range all
the way from a low of 7,000 victims to a high of 67 million.

21. David Barrett et al, editors, World Christian Encyclopedia: A
Comparative Survey of Churches and Religions - AD 30 to 2200, Oxford
University Press, 2001. More conservative surveys still list over
660 distinct Christian denominations.


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Hello everyone,

I have created two polls. Please participate. I created the polls
because since the start of weekly practice at the White River Dharma
Center I have found that it has greatly enhanced my daily discipline.
Its just nice knowing that there are like minded individuals in the
local area.

Namaste,

Bro John

Enter your vote today!  A new poll has been created for the
BedeGriffithsCyberAshram group:

Besides your own private meditation discipline do you meet with others to sit?

   o yes
   o no


To vote, please visit the following web page:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/BedeGriffithsCyberAshram/surveys?id=2059642

Note: Please do not reply to this message. Poll votes are
not collected via email. To vote, you must go to the Yahoo! Groups
web site listed above.

Thanks!

Enter your vote today!  A new poll has been created for the
BedeGriffithsCyberAshram group:

How Often do you practice Meditation

   o Once a day
   o More than once a day
   o Not at all


To vote, please visit the following web page:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/BedeGriffithsCyberAshram/surveys?id=2059641

Note: Please do not reply to this message. Poll votes are
not collected via email. To vote, you must go to the Yahoo! Groups
web site listed above.

Thanks!

I like the idea of a journey from 'I' to 'We'. I also agree that it is a subtle journey and not to be confused with mere mass conformity.

 

Dave Watkins

----- Original Message -----

From: VENUGOPAL RAMAMURTHY

Sent: Wednesday, September 13, 2006 8:02 PM

Human life is a journey from 'I' to 'We'. This journey is subtle and the goal is very near, but man takes many births to reach the destination. Just as you change your dress, so too you have to change your body one day or the other.

----- Original Message -----

From: VENUGOPAL RAMAMURTHY

Sent: Wednesday, September 13, 2006 8:02 PM

Human life is a journey from 'I' to 'We'. This journey is subtle and the goal is very near, but man takes many births to reach the destination. Just as you change your dress, so too you have to change your body one day or the other.

For most of us,our CONCEPTION of "ourselves"-and "others"-is certainly a figment of the imagination. A couple of Bible verses are compelling in this respect:

1. Henceforth, we know no one after the flesh, but rather by the spirit.
2. We know we will be like Him (LOGOS)when we see him as HE IS (I AM),

If our conciousness were extinguished,we would cease to perceive the self in the form that we learned was the "real deal". This is not to say we cease to exist but we discover who we really are!     Ken


Tom <tfaulkenbury@earthlink.net> wrote:

As Andrea Bocelli sings "Misirere" in the background, I wonder, do you
cease to exist if my consciousness is extinguished? Are you a figment
of my imagination or am I a figment of yours?






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As Andrea Bocelli sings "Misirere" in the background, I wonder, do you
cease to exist if my consciousness is extinguished? Are you a figment
of my imagination or am I a figment of yours?






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