As Above, so Below

I have a desire to express several things today. I'm going to start with a quote from the Gospel Of Thomas, for those familiar, it's a book found in the Nag Hammadi Library that was a Gospel that may have been contemporary with Mark.

" Jesus said, "Know what is in front of your face, and what is hidden from you will be disclosed to you.

For there is nothing hidden that will not be revealed. [And there is nothing buried that will not be raised.]"

His disciples asked him and said to him, "Do you want us to fast? How should we pray? Should we give to charity? What diet should we observe?"

Jesus said, "Don't lie, and don't do what you hate, because all things are disclosed before heaven. After all, there is nothing hidden that will not be revealed, and there is nothing covered up that will remain undisclosed.""

I have often lamented the fact that I am not "psychic". Until I realize something, which can essentially be described by this verse. Know what is in front of your face, and what is hidden will be disclosed to you. I know that everyone has purposes in life. People have certain conflicts within their psyche. They project these conflicts unto the outside world. A person who becomes aware of their own life will realize them. Questions, why do I always get obstacles when looking for a job, why does a certain type of situation keep appearing before me again and again?
Those who do not understand the spiritual nature of life have more difficulty coming to grips with them. When you realize that conflicts are subjective projections of your psyche into the outside world, and that metaphysical, meaningful patterns are everywhere, that the universe is alive, and if you understand the following quotations from the gospel of Thomas.

"Jesus said to them, "When you make the two into one, and when you make the inner like the outer and the outer like the inner, and the upper like the lower, and when you make male and female into a single one, so that the male will not be male nor the female be female, when you make eyes in place of an eye, a hand in place of a hand, a foot in place of a foot, an image in place of an image, then you will enter [the kingdom].""

"Jesus said, "If your leaders say to you, 'Look, the (Father's) kingdom is in the sky,' then the birds of the sky will precede you. If they say to you, 'It is in the sea,' then the fish will precede you. Rather, the (Father's) kingdom is within you and it is outside you.

When you know yourselves, then you will be known, and you will understand that you are children of the living Father. But if you do not know yourselves, then you live in poverty, and you are the poverty."

The kingdom of god is within you and without you. As Above, So below. Brahman is Atman.

You need to make the inner like the outer and the outer like the inner. Make below like above and above like below.

Brahman is Atman. Make no distinction between the world outside of you and the world inside of you. Existentialism, the philosophy of modern desperation over their belief in a meaningless, chaotic, dead universe, pits you as alone in the universe and yourself meaningless. The opposite is true. The world is absolutely teeming with meaning, meaning goes deeper than things themselves. Your subjective experience of the world is a mirror of what is inside of you; yet the world itself is not simply of you. If is rather, the collective subjective conciousness of all mankind, for all mankind is god, co-creators, yet any one is indeed the whole, for god is indivisible just like each soul is indivisible.

The loving of the world, the loving of yourself, the respect for the beauty even of pain, and faith, not because simple disbelief in a book will damn you to hell, but because god is loving and all-pervading, and he can provide the eternal spring of love and spirit to his subjects. The most important commandment is to love your neighbors like yourself, for, as a Veda points out, truly, your neighbor IS yourself. Love is exponential in awakening others, each action as well is indivisible for it's effect on the world,

For indeed, all is one.

Aquarius, the Internet, and Power to the People

Let me go out on a limb here and say that for anyone who is interested in to any degree politics, that internet is an amazing, powerful, pervading entity. I have had a renewed appreciation for this fact by going to this website www.techpresident.com, which publishes a live graph of the number of myspace friends, eventful demands, youtube subscribers, and other statistics of each candidate.

I'm easily amused sometimes, and it's become a little hypnotic to see the graphs change every couple of hours. Of particular interest is the meteoric rise of previously obscure Barack Obama, and the formidable internet presence of the largely ignored Ron Paul.

Yep, it's the Aquarian age.Now, I've often advocated astrology as an awesome, powerful metaphor, and even for those who don't believe in Astrology per se, need not deprive their hungry right brains of the powerful psychological and societal metaphors present in it. Art students may not realize that astrological symbols are present throughout art ever since ancient times, all the way through the renaissance. And the reason is obvious: Astrology is a system, a lens through which to view the world.

If all of the information of the world, psychology, and people's personalities are pure light white, astrology is a prism through which we can see it's core components: color. We see how colors mix to make different colors, and how all colors can then combine again to form white. Even a relatively crude device like a TV can display a wealth of information by combining a few of these basic colors. Same with the world.
So, without assuming whether or not astrology "works", we can take the sign of Aquarius and come up with a multitude of powerful descriptors for what is happening now in the world. I'm going to seperate Aquarius into it's component aspects: Element, Quality, and sequentiality, and use them to build the sign of aquarius.

Aquarius is an air sign. Air signs are concerned with knowledge, communication, ideas, and objectivity. Aquarius is a fixed sign. Cardinal signs are concerned with incarnation of energies, and patience. It is association with crystalization. Aquarius is a transpersonal sign. The people of it often appear as an enigma, because they are more societal than person.
Connecting these things gives us an crystallizing sign of objectivity and society. It opposes the sign of Leo, who is associated with monarchy, and famous people. Aquarius is associated with democracy and the everyman.

And, if you open your mind, you should realize what is occurring now in the world is well described in this way. The internet is indeed taking power out of the hands of the few and giving it to the many. People are watched constantly, there are fewer secrets anymore. We live in an age of technology, and of the universality of knowledge. The world is interconnected now as well, and quickly injustice in the world is becoming realized and discouraged throughout the world.
The internet, perhaps the paragon of Aquarius, brings all things out. All people are equal in the eyes of the internet. The words of the lowliest blogger are equal to that of the most famous politician, both render as html text just the same, and people increasingly don't care how fancy your site is, there's a rise in minimalism.

The words "All men are created equal" was not a religious statement, it was a social statement, a natural statement. It was always true, but only now is this statement being realized.

Science and Life

I have realized, finally, a single, deeply fundamental difference between the purely "scientific" existentialism that we live today; and the religious lives that our ancestors have lived for thousands of years.
In the book I'm reading, "Secrets of the Jaguar", the earth is considered to be alive. Everything on earth is just as well alive, the classical elements, even various objects such as sand are themselves alive. Many who studied astrology were also convinced that the planets were themselves alive. Today, we need to remove from our minds the way we treat something as being a "god". Polytheism and paganism has for years been considered satanic. What many don't realize is that indeed many of what we consider "polytheistic" religions were actually more accurately defined as "henotheistic". The Hindu Upanishads, reserved for the initiated, stipulates a clear, deep belief in a single, all-powerful god, with the other gods simply being a part of all creation. The early mayans are also believed to have held a similar view. Either way, it is useful to understand that many of them, having believed that all things had consciousness, felt that it was obvious that the planets themselves would influence humans beings. Modern theorists clarify this by speaking of an aether, and consciousness units comprising the very fabric of space.
However, mainstream science, in deep contrast to the view that everything is alive, essentially believes that everything is dead. It needs no explanation that they do not believe that the planets, elements, or earth are alive, but in a sense, they imply that humans themselves are not alive. The basic view is that humans are merely a "biochemical machine", with the implication that we are basically robots and devoid of any meaningful notion of conciousness or free will.
I beg to differ, in my belief that all is alive, and at some level, all is one.