Ancient scriptures were meant to be HEARD as healing sound, NOT INTERPRETED as meaning.
Energizing the nervous system as pure vibration, the sound of Vedic
Sanskrit, Biblical Hebrew, and Qu'ranic Arabic is an objective power.
But the "meaning" of the words is subjective, always reflecting the
relative conditions and karmas of individual minds. You and I can hear
exactly the same word, yet give it two completely different
interpretations.
However, if we simply listen to
the vibration of the word in its ancient language, our bodies are
healed, our intellects stunned into silent beauty. This is the power of
the mantras, the sound impulses of ancient scripture.
When we lose that original language, and our fickle intellect
translates or interprets the sounds into mental images,
doctrines, beliefs, they can be very dangerous. The so-called laws
and commandments derived from scripture are really superimposed by the
interpreter's mind, and may be used to justify all manner of oppression,
prejudice, and violence.
The sound of the scripture comes
from the text, but the interpretation comes from the reader. The
reader's mind is changeable. But the original text is the subtle,
unwritten, eternal structure of creation in boundless space (akasha).
The scriptures were not composed, but heard in deep meditation by the
ancient seers. Their verses and mantras are the fluctuations of silence
in the quantum vacuum at the source of creation.
If, instead
of arguing about the meaning of scripture, we spent half an hour every
morning and evening simply listening to the sound, bathing in the music
of the un-translatable un-interpretable Veda, Torah, and Qu'ran, wars
would cease, and humanity would blossom.
"On mighty waters floated the universal egg of the Golden Womb, Hiranyagarbha, which gave birth to the flame of life, the One Spirit of all the Gods." ~Rig Veda (X.121) And now I tell you this: the golden egg is the center of your soul. As the Vedic scriptures speak of Hiranyagarbha, the Golden Egg, so many of the world's creation myths contain the image of a primal egg floating on the waters of absolute Being, floating on the waters of consciousness prior to the creation of matter. Yet this Golden Egg is floating inside you now. The image is even embedded in the Bible's creation story. In Genesis 1, "the Spirit-Breath of God was stirring the deep." The word for "stirring" is a Hebrew root, "rakaf," describing the ruffling movement of a mother bird sitting on its egg in the nest: a very feminine image of the Biblical Creator. The Golden Egg is a very real experience in deep meditation. Hiranyagarbha is made of pure ineffable Lig...
A true story of grace and transformation, originally published in the Quaker journal, 'What Canst Thou Say.' I share it again for the Feast of St. Mary Magdalene, which begins at Vespers on July 21. In all wisdom traditions, she is here in the anahatta chakra. Her secret name is the Unstruck Sound. She personfies our yearning for divine Beauty. For Longing and Beauty ceaselessly merge, separate, and merge again. This is the eternal pulse in the whirling heart of the universe. Radha yearning for Krishna, a Sufi's ecstatic dance with Ruuh, Magdalene longing for Jesus: all creation is a likeness of their lila, the divine play of "bhedabheda," which in Sanskrit means, "two, not-two." Dear friend, do not be troubled by this resonant play of reflections. Just rest between two breaths, and become the mirror... I know there are many of you who embody this same rhythm of longing and union, who yearn for Divine Beauty. So I share this story of my quest with y...
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