When Paul writes (Ephesians 5:14): “Thus God speaks through the scriptures: ‘Awake, you who sleep, arise from the dead, and Christ will give you light,’”which scriptures is he referring to?
The King James Version simply has: “Wherefore he saith, Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light.” And so does the Greek text. (Most “modern language” translations are interpretive to the point of dishonesty.)
Saint Paul quotes words of Jesus not found in the Gospels and Saint Jude cites a prophecy of Enoch. So we can be sure that the Christians in the early days had access to writings now lost through persecutions, wars and the deliberate destruction by those who thought their own version of Christianity was the only right one.
All the Christian world read the more than three hundred books of Origen until a Church council declared them heretical and they were destroyed. Today we have only a few of them still existing.
Q: Is Krishna the Supreme Personality of Godhead or just a teacher like Jesus?
Krishna is not Parabrahman, the Absolute Being, and Jesus is not the Godhead, either. Nor are they “just teachers,” either.
Both Krishna and Jesus were perfect siddhas, thoroughly deified persons, truly god, having evolved through all the worlds of relative existence and transcended them in total union with the Absolute. Though finite, their consciousness and power is infinite. And this is true of all incarnations of God (avatars) such as Rama and Buddha. (See the book Robe of Light.)
A totally liberated being, a siddha, is far beyond the concept of God held by human beings, for being finite humans cannot at all even begin to correctly conceive of God. This is why the truly God-realized never attempt to describe or explain the nature of God.
Words from a Master
Sri Ramakrishna
As Sri Ramakrishna said,
“What Brahman is cannot be described. All things in the world–the Vedas, the Puranas, the Tantras, the six systems of philosophy–have been defiled, like food that has been touched by the tongue, for they have been read or uttered by the tongue. Only one thing has not been defiled in this way, and that is Brahman. No one has ever been able to say what Brahman is.
“A man had two sons. The father sent them to a preceptor to learn the Knowledge of Brahman. After a few years they returned from their preceptor’s house and bowed low before their father. Wanting to measure the depth of their knowledge of Brahman, he first questioned the older of the two boys. ‘My child,’ he said, ‘You have studied all the scriptures. Now tell me, what is the nature of Brahman?’ The boy began to explain Brahman by reciting various texts from the Vedas. The father did not say anything. Then he asked the younger son the same question. But the boy remained silent and stood with eyes cast down. No word escaped his lips. The father was pleased and said to him: ‘My child, you have understood a little of Brahman. What It is cannot be expressed in words.’
However, with attraction and aversion eliminated, even though moving amongst objects of sense, by self-restraint, the self-controlled attains tranquility (Bhagavad Gita 2:64).
The words translated “desire” and “hatred” are raga and dwesha. Raga is both emotional (instinctual) and intellectual desire. It may range from simple liking or preference to intense desire and attraction. Dwesha is the opposite. It is aversion/avoidance in relation to an object, implying dislike. This, too, can be emotional (instinctual) or intellectual, ranging from simple non-preference to intense repulsion, antipathy and even hatred.
We must keep in mind that anything can grow and change. Therefore simple liking can develop into intense craving, and mild dislike can turn into intense aversion or hatred. And since opposites are intrinsically linked to one another and can even turn into one another, the philosophical and yogic texts frequently speak of raga-dwesha, the continual cycling back and forth between desire/aversion and like/dislike.
Obviously, this makes for a confused and fragmented life and mind, something from which any sensible person would wish to extricate himself.
Finding the right cure
There are a multitude of supposed cures for what ails us. The vast majority do not work because they are not really aimed at what truly ails us. The rest usually do not work because they are based on a miscomprehension of the nature of the problem, or because they are simply nonsensical and time-wasters. This is true of most religion and of a great deal that is called yoga [see the article What is Yoga?].
Q: Is there an esoteric meaning of Bhagirathi doing intense tapasya to bring Ganga to earth? Also, what is the significance of Lord Shiva and the redemption of Bhagirathi’s ancestors in this episode? There is a symbolic, esoteric meaning to this, but that does not … Continue reading
Q: What is “possession” by spirits? It is the same as “obsession”? This is a most important subject. Possession by negative entities is absolutely possible, although obsession is much more common. Let us look at both phenomena. What possession is Possession occurs when an entity … Continue reading
Q: Can you comment on the continuous sexual scandals in the Catholic Church, and why it is that western people and the Catholic Church never understood what celibacy is about? First, such scandals are not just in the Catholic Church, but in Protestant churches as … Continue reading
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When Paul writes (Ephesians 5:14): “Thus God speaks through the scriptures: ‘Awake, you who sleep, arise from the dead, and Christ will give you light,’” which scriptures is he referring to?
This article on Raga and Dwesha is an excerpt from