Perennis

As some readers may be aware, the Shroud of Turin has been an interest of mine for many years. This morning I received a fascinating link from my bishop, Lewis Keizer of the Home Temple regarding new information on the Shroud. Dr. Keizer has been a Shroud scholar for many years and this new information vindicates his previous theories on the Shroud.

There have been several problems facing those who feel that the Shroud is an authentic relic from the time of Jesus. First has been the infamous 1988 radiocarbon dating, which showed an apparent date for the Shroud of between 1260 and 1390 CE, making it a medieval forgery. A number of researchers have cast doubt on the dating procedure. In one of my earlier posts linked below, Raymond Rogers of Los Alamos labs gave convincing evidence that the samples that were submitted to radiocarbon testing were actually part of the medieval patches which were used to repair the cloth after a fire damaged it. Other tests, such as the absence of vanillin in the cloth, show its age to be much greater.

The second problem is a gap in the apparent history of the Shroud between the sack of Constantinople in 1204 and the Shroud’s sudden appearance in Turin in the middle of the 14th century. Before the Crusades, there is legendary record of a cloth containing an image of Jesus which was traced to the city of Edessa, where it was brought to King Apgar by a mysterious disciple of Jesus after Jesus’ death. The cloth was eventually brought to Constantinople by the Emperor, but connecting it with the Shroud and its appearance in Europe was conjectural.

But according to the new article linked below, researchers in the Vatican Secret Archives uncovered such a connection in the testimony compiled at the heresy trials of the Knights Templar. The Knights Templar were present at the sack of Constantinople, where the Edessa cloth disappeared. When the Shroud appeared in Turin, it was in connection with the DeCharney family – Geoffrey DeCharney having been the second in command of the Knights Templar. Some historians speculated that the Kights Templar had made off with the Edessa cloth, and that it became a secret relic in their possession, possibly used in their initiations.

The newly released testimony of a young French recruit of the Templars is that he was brought to a secret room during his initiation into the order in 1287, and shown a long linen cloth with the figure of a man impressed on it. He was instructed to venerate this relic. This gives strong support for the Templar connection and strengthens the historical chain of evidence linking the Shroud back to Constantinople, to Edessa, and finally Palestine.

Links:

News Item:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article6040521.ece

My previous posts on the Shroud

http://pathstoknowledge.com/2006/07/27/shroud-of-turin-dating-error/

http://pathstoknowledge.com/2006/07/27/second-image-on-the-shroud/

Bishop Keizer’s presentation on the Shroud

http://www.wisdomseminars.org/Sh/Presentation_Files/index.html

Bishop Keizer’s links:

www.hometemple.org

www.wisdomseminars.org

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How should the spiritual person look upon nature? Is it a manifestation of the divine, full of numinous energy, in which everything is a marvelous, harmonious whole? Or is it nature red of tooth and sharp of claw, where life is painful, brutish and short, and where death and entropy eventually destroy everything?

In general, Gnosticism has been accused of having the second approach. After all, most Gnostics believe the world was created by a “demiurge” – an evil or incompetent creator whose domain must be transcended by the children of light. In seeming contrast to this are the pagans, who find the highest divinity in the natural world and the forces that animate it.

One of my initial objections to Gnosticism was this reputation of animosity for the material world. After all, most of us have had experiences of “nature mysticism”. We have felt numinous, almost religious awe at a starry sky, or the perfection of a flower, or the miracle of the human body. Small wonder the pagans find their connection to the divine in nature.

On the other hand, there are parts of nature that aren’t quite so “nice”, at least when judged from a human perspective. Are parasites and viruses really part of the greater good? What about bizarre genetic mutations or terminal cancer? What about the tremendous amount of death that is fundamental to natural selection – the thousands who must die so that the “fit” can survive to improve the species? Perhaps we can rationalize and come to terms with this on an intellectual level. But try to feel that way when watching a pack of predators tear apart a baby animal screaming for its mother. Try it when looking at an infant born with harlequin baby syndrome – a grotesque and fatal genetic defect that will slowly strangle the baby to death in its own hardening skin. And try to reconcile an uplifting view of nature with the overriding cosmic principle of entropy – which tells us that the entire universe is doomed to slowly wind down into a lifeless darkness of absolute cold.

So there we have the facts. Nature is cruel and depressing, yet nature seems to have divinity peeking through it. William Blake sensed this dichotomy in a pair of his poems. In the Songs of Innocence he praises the lamb, who is a picture of the peaceful kingdom of God, and seems to echo the goodness of his Creator:

Little Lamb, who made thee?

Dost thou know who made thee?

Gave thee life, & bid thee feed

By the stream & o’er the mead;

Gave thee clothing of delight;

Softest clothing, wooly, bright;

Gave thee such a tender voice,

Making all the vales rejoice?

Little Lamb, who made thee?

Dost thou know who made thee?

Little Lamb, I’ll tell thee,

Little Lamb, I’ll tell thee:

He is called by thy name,

For he calls himself a Lamb.

He is meek, & he is mild;

He became a little child.

I a child, & thou a lamb,

We are called by his name.

Little Lamb, God bless thee!

Little Lamb, God bless thee!

(From the Songs of Innocence – William Blake)

But then he seems to re-think the situation in a later poem:

Tiger, Tiger, burning bright

In the forest of the night,

What immortal hand or eye

Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies

Burnt the fire of thine eyes?

On what wings dare he aspire?

What the hand dare seize the fire?

And what shoulder and what art

Could twist the sinews of thy heart?

And, when thy heart began to beat,

What dread hand and what dread feet?

What the hammer? What the chain?

In what furnace was thy brain?

What the anvil? What dread grasp

Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

When the stars threw down their spears,

And water’d heaven with their tears,

Did He smile His work to see?

Did He who made the lamb make thee?

Tiger, Tiger, burning bright

In the forests of the night,

What immortal hand or eye

Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

There are certainly plenty of forms of life abounding on the planet that strain our belief that any sense of beauty resembling our own had anything to do with their creation. (Have a loot at some of the candidates at http://listverse.com/nature/top-10-ugliest-creatures/ )

So which is it? Is this, as the pagans would prefer, a wonderful and harmonious world of natural beauty and balance? A place of infinite natural wisdom through which we can reconnect to a golden age of enlightenment? Or is it a black-iron prison of pain and fear and death from which our only hope is a quick escape?

Perhaps it is both.

Woven into some of the Gnostic myths, particularly the Valentinian, is the idea that the purpose of the higher God is not simply to redeem the divine sparks that are trapped in evil matter – but to transform the world of matter and make it a place where the spirit is supreme.

Paul seems to allude to this in one of his more Gnostic verses:

For the creation waits with eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to vanity, not of its own will, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself also will be delivered from the bondage of decay into the liberty of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groans and travails in pain together until now. Not only so, but ourselves also, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for adoption, the redemption of our body.

(Rom 8:19-23 WEB)

The Gospel of Thomas, a document with early gnosic elements, seems to say the same thing in verse 113:

His Disciples say to him: When will the Sovereignty come? || (Yeshúa says:) It shall not come by expectation. They will not say: Behold here! or: Behold there! But the Sovereignty of the Father is spread upon the earth, and humans do not perceive it.

Perhaps, then, the beauty and numinous energy that we seem to feel from nature isn’t something native to it. Perhaps what we feel is the kingdom of heaven which is the higher God’s power beginning to infiltrate and transform the earth in a tremendous act of transubstantiation. Perhaps, when we feel the harmony of nature, what we are sensing is not the material world AS IT IS, but rather how Spirit INTENDS it to be.

“Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”

This is, in effect, the Bodhisattva version of Gnosticism. We may recognize the corrupt elements of the material world as evil. But we are committed to raising the vibration of the material world and all the divine sparks in it.

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It gets harder every day to explain my spirituality to others. I am a follower of the Master Jesus, and an independent priest. But am I a Christian? Many would say no, because I have unorthodox beliefs.

C. S. Lewis argued, in Mere Christianity, that “Christian” should mean someone who claims to hold to the “Christian doctrine”. He was arguing against those who prefer to use “Christian” as a word meaning someone who is loving and charitable. Lewis would prefer us to say of a baptized scoundrel, “he’s a bad Christian” rather than “he’s not a Christian”.

But what, exactly, constitutes “Christian doctrine?” At one time, we could identify the earliest Christian creeds and doctrines and insist that a Christian must claim to believe them. But with the emergence of early Christian writings such as the Nag Hammadi texts, our view of what early Christianity looked like is changing. Early Christians were a much more diverse bunch than originally thought. From the very beginning, there existed apostolic groups with radically different notions of what Jesus message was.

I would tend to call myself a “gnostic” Christian, but this is misleading also. No Christian group actually called itself “gnostic”. This was a catch-all phrase for several groups that differed considerably with each other. There are a few common features of “gnosticism”, such as the emphasis on individual enlightenment, that are appealing. Then on the other hand are the strange cosmologies and a very negative attitude toward the material world.

“Mystical Christian”, “Esoteric Christian”, and “Hermetic Christian” are also possibilities, but seem to conjure up strange images in the modern mind.

So, what do you think is the best self-label for an “inner” Christian in the modern world?

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In the previous article I mentioned that remembering and journaling your dreams is a good way to begin lucid dreaming. Consciously remembering and writing down your dreams has the effect of programming your mind to stay more conscious during the dream state. Sometimes this exercise alone is enough, after some time, to start lucid dreams. But there are other tricks that you can use to hurry the process along a bit.

Some people find pre-sleep programming effective. You simply repeat to yourself,just before going to sleep and any time you awake at night, “I will be lucid in my dreams”. Repeating this for as long as possible before going to sleep will often help.

Another system that is successful for many, but requires some discipline and time, is to program a cue for checking your state of wakefulness. For example, you might wear a ring, and make it a habit that every time you notice your ring, you will ask yourself, “Am I awake or asleep?” This has to revolve around some sign that you will see several times a day. Once asking yourself this question repeatedly becomes an ingraned habit, you will begin to ask the question in your dreams. And when you do, it can snap you into the realization that you are dreaming and begin a lucid dream.

Anything that changes the sleep cycle seems to increase your chances of lucid dreams. Going to bed when especially tired, or when not really tired at all sometimes helps. Various herbs or suppliments which affect sleep, such as valarian root, kava kava, catnip, or B vitamins has been known to have an effect. In the home temple, gardina and jasmin essential oils, applied to the crown, forhead and throat chakras are used to incubate vivid dreams.

Finally, you can go high-tech with machines that will use cues, such as flashing lights or sounds, to partially awaken you when you begin to dream. If done properly, this can induce lucid dreams. The more expensive of these devices, such as the Nova dreamer, actually detect when you are dreaming by detecting your eye movements under your closed lids. You can also find information for constructing these devices yourself. Often the home-made versions forgo trying to detect dreams, and simply fire off at regular intervals. You can pretty much count on it eventually catching you while dreaming.

I’ve also tried a simple computer program, DreamScape, which is somewhat effective for me. You simply leave your laptop on near your bed, and the program will play a sound at a programmed interval, either through the speakers or (if you need to keep it silent) thorough earphones. It is a bit awkward to get used to having an earphone in your ear while sleeping, but eventually it works out.

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My wife completely surprised me by becoming intensely interested in Oprah Winfrey’s recent webcasts in collaboration with Eckhart Tolle. What was puzzling is that up till now, she has not liked Oprah at all and has shown no interest in Eckhart! For some reason the combination “clicked” for her.

For those who aren’t aware of him, Eckhart Tolle is, in my opinion, the most direct, no-nonsense teacher on the subject of enlightenment walking around today. His teaching is generic and non-religious ,while using illustrations from several religions. His concepts are profound but simple. Eckhart is a true mystic as opposed to an esotericist (more on that later perhaps).

I enjoy both his books and his audio and visual seminars. I remember that it took me a few minutes to get used to his lecture style. Eckhart is not afraid of silence, and at several points I thought there was something wrong with my CD or that the lecture was over. My impatience for the next piece of information was very revealing.

I quickly came to enjoy the style he uses, and luxuriated in the intervals of silence. For the type “A”‘s out there who need a brisker pace, the Oprah webcasts mentioned above might be a good intro.

His first book is The Power of Now, and the follow up (the subject of the Oprah webcase) is A New Earth. If you haven’t been exposed to his work, I highly recommend it. Amazon has a nice page with all his work featured here. I’d be interested to know if anyone else is a Tolle fan (or critic) and what your thoughts are.

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