[When I absorb wisdom from a mason teaching me the trade, I am only being practical. [...] They have advanced far beyond my steps—much more so than that master mason who taught me the trade in Scandinavia, back in 1850. [...] I need their help—as I required the help of that mason in Scandinavia 150 years ago—to get where I’m going. Re: Larger Issues of "The Lives of Sri Aurobindo" Controversy Rick Lipschutz Science, Culture and Integral Yoga]
[In practice the masons who built the medieval cathedrals, abbeys, and castles formed a craft or labor union with a system of passwords that set them apart from common workmen. Their worksheds were known as lodges. [...] Dr. James Anderson (1684–1739), a Scottish Presbyterian minister, in the Book of Constitutions (published in 1723 and 1738) maintained that the craft was founded by God and received the patronage of Adam, the OT Patriarchs, and the kings of Israel. Masons built Noah's Ark, the Tower of Babel, the pyramids, and Solomon's Temple. He identified Jesus Christ as grand master of the Christian Church. In 1738 Dr. Anderson added Alfred the Great, Cardinal Wolsey, and Sir Christopher Wren to the list of grand masters. Though these claims are not taken seriously today, popular Freemasonry places the founding of the lodge in the reign of King Solomon.
Freemasonry has incorporated bits of other systems in its initiations and higher degrees, such as the mystery schools, Mithraism, the Egyptian priesthood, the system of the Pythagoreans, Essenes, cabalists, Druids, the orders of knighthood, Rosicrucians, Arabic secret societies, and the Knights Templar. [...] While originally an offshoot of Christianity, its membership includes Muslims, Hindus, and Buddhists. FREEMASONRY New Catholic Encyclopedia]
[From Magical to Analogical Thinking: The System of Corrospondences Though Shankara's path of jnana yoga ultimately rejects the idea that the self has dimensions or a location, it does recognize the propaedeutic and metaphoric role such conceptions play within the Vedanta system of meditation-devotion (upasana). In other words, for those who require a form for meditation, such conceptions help provide a "place," an "object" upon which the mind may be focussed. The idea of relating various objects of meditation within a system of correspondences is also a central aspect of tantric theory and practice. Consider any chart of the cakras, in which each cakra has a color, a mantric vibration, a yantric design, a day of the week, an action-figure, etc. associated with it. In fact, this practice of constructing systems of correspondences goes back to the Upanishads and their reconstitution of the older Brahmanic ritual cult. Indeed, much of the more incomprehensible portions of the older Upanishads have to do with these systems of "correspondences." What they refer to are the older ritual identifications and equivalences that have been transposed into the domain of thought and imagination. Consider the opening passage from the Brhadaranyaka Upanishad concerning the ancient horse sacrifice: [...] These kind of ritual identifications occur throughout the older Brhadaranyaka and Chandogya Upanishads. In many ways, the tantric tradition is the inheritor of this older form of ritualized Vedanta, even though the Tantras are considered heterodox. At the very least we can see the "as above, so below" or microcosm/macrocosm conception in both. In tantric theory, the human individual is considered to be an exact replica, in miniature, of the cosmos. Eliade, for example, phenomenologically relates the central channel or nadi of the human individual to the axis mundi of the cosmos (Atlas holding the heavens in his shoulders in Greek myth, the "navel of the ocean" in Homer, Mount Meru in Indian myth, etc.). This Hermetic maxim, "as above, so below", is also a dictum of the West Indian sants like Jnaneshvar, who expresses it thus: "pindi te brahmandi," which means, what happens in the individual body (pinda) occurs in the cosmos (Brahmanda, literally, the "egg of Brahma"). Accordingly, in many traditions, the process of yoga is considered to be the individual enactment of the process of cosmic dissolution (pralaya) that occurs at the end of every cosmic age. Both kundalini yoga and shabda yoga can be seen as instances of this type, and in a general sense can be called versions of "laya-yoga," the yoga of dissolution. Here, the idea is that grosser and "lower" structures are to be "dissolved" in "higher," more subtle structures of being in a process known as "laya-krama" (krama means gradual or incremental). [...] To understand the basic features and mechanics underlying this analogical way of thinking we need to go back to the Vedic sacrificial cult itself. [...] These ritual and symbolic identifications, not only between man and god but between the various objects in the system of correspondences, are known collectively as "sampatti," which primitively means to "fall into" (as in good luck) and derivatively means to obtain, to attain, or to partake in, or unite with. The idea of sampatti as "union" or identification is the metaphysical idea underlying the system of ritual equivalences; the idea of union with deities; and the idea in meditative theory that identification with a structure of being can be attained through the mental effort of concentration. In the Visuddhimagga and Yoga Sutra, the various jhanas and samadhis are called "samapatti," attainments, a term that is clearly a cognate of the earlier "sampatti. In meditative theory, the idea is that as one meditates upon an object, the sense of separation from the object gradually diminishes; eventually, identification with the object is achieved. Accordingly, Feuerstein, in his work on the Yoga Sutras, says that "samapatti" describes what he calls the "inner process" of meditation, and he translates the term as "coincidence". The theory of sampatti, as both "identification" and "union," is the basic presupposition underpinning the meditative theory found in the Patanjali's Yoga Sutras, Buddhaghosha's Visuddhimagga, and Asanga's Abhidharmasamgraha. A Geneological Commentary on The Play of Consciousness from Gaia Community: kelamuni's Blog 5:16 PM ]
[The Galactic Dimensions of Vedic Astrology
Vedic scholar and teacher David Frawley assessed Yukteswar’s model and adds some clarity: “When the Sun is on the side of its orbit wherein its dark companion comes between it and the galactic center, the reception of that cosmic light appears to be greatly reduced. At such times there is a dark or materialistic age on Earth.” David Frawley (Vamadeva Shastri) is qualified on many levels to make this statement. As a respected Vedacharya (Vedic teacher), he is one of the few Westerners recognized in India as an authentic teacher of the ancient Vedic wisdom. [...]
Norelli-Bachelet is a devoted disciple of Aurobindo and The Mother, and in 1968 was a founding member of Auroville, a spiritual center in India. She worked closely with The Mother (Aurobindo’s partner and an enlightened founder of the movement) on the design and symbology of Matrimandir, a temple shrine designed to replicate the Godhead on earth. It was strategically situated at the 12° latitude in India so as to synthesize the local zenith-passage date with the Grand Center. Immediately this jumped out at me as a reflection of what the Maya did at Chichen Itza, when they unified the Zenith/Pleiades Cosmology with the Galactic Cosmology. Very briefly, the way this works is that the Matrimandir was built at the latitude at which the sun passes through the zenith on August 22; on that date the sun is at 29° Leo, passing into 0° Virgo. These degrees are exactly opposite 29° Aquarius and 0° Pisces, which indicate the present location of the equinox axis as we move into the new Age of Aquarius. As with other systems we’ve described, the implied (and more important) reference here actually involves the solstice axis, 90° away, which will therefore be at 0° Capricorn-Cancer—or 6° Sagittarius-Gemini when we adjust to the actual sidereal position. This position is the Galactic Center-Galactic Anticenter axis. To state this simply: Matrimandir indicates the zenith center and the Galactic Center at the same time. In addition, polar symbolism is also integrated into descriptions of its meaning. Thus, as with Maya cosmology, three cosmic centers and axial directions were combined into one fully integrated conception. Img12-3. The Matrimandir
The Gnostic Circle is a deep, intuitive, and complex work. Norelli-Bachelet draws from a great reservoir of Hindu wisdom, obviously combined with personal insights into the nature of time and human spirituality. It was written in 1974, published in 1978, and it is interesting to me that it contains an almost matter-of-fact description of the evolutionary implications of our periodic alignments with the Galactic Center: Chapter 12 of Galactic Alignment: The Lost Knowledge of the Ancients]
[Re: Corrections to textual excerpts of The Lives of Sri Aurobindo by Peter Heehs: Taking Stock
by Debashish on Sun 26 Oct 2008 01:04 AM PDT Profile Permanent Link
On the question of partiality of representation, there is nothing extraordinary about that. This is the human condition and we are expected to grow from partiality to integrality. This is quite true of the cultural history of humanity. The same being is represented by Greeks as Zeus and by the Vedic seers as Indra and each culture sees a certain set of qualities which characterizes this being. According to the cultural proclivity, this set becomes the door of more familiar entry to the being. Krishna points out in the Gita that it is impossible for humans to see the divine as the divine is. But he enters into our attempts to describe him and leads us from there into the truth of his self-experience. DB Science, Culture and Integral Yoga]
The Mother and Sri Aurobindo represent nothing if not the meeting of the East and the West. The Solomon’s seal vouches for our Judeo-Vedic legacy and prods us to take a leap towards the global integral treasury of "coincidence" and correspondences. [TNM]
0 comments:
Post a Comment