Understanding ScripturesCompiled By: Pardeep

Understanding Scriptures• If you read Holy Bible or any other Scripture you

will notice that accounts are similar, only characters are different. These Scriptures have been recorded for our benefit so that we can know our past as we carry that experience with us as conscious faculty of mind.

• Hindu Scriptures contain maximum details because it is a record of collective experience of so many people and most of inner experiences were recorded in their lifetime.

• Our soul is endowed with real knowledge called Intuition. But when we (as soul) started experiencing His creation with outer body covering through senses it got covered by intellect.

• Intellect is subjective and hence we have to be very careful of what we learn.

Old Testament• Old Testament is a record of life as it proceeds

after dissolution but there have been countless number of dissolutions. So imagine the amount of experience that we carry with us.

• It is a huge record lying in seed form at causal for each one of us. We carry that record with us as conscious faculty of mind.

• Some of us may consider Old Testament (OT) as horror movie.

• OT should not be shunned because it carries the record of our past and if we don’t like it now then we must look for a way to get rid of this record.

Elaboration of ‘Ten Commandments’

• We perform actions by thought, speech and deed. • At the time of Moses it was mainly deed but as our

intellect increased we started planning our actions by thought and speech.

• That is why elaboration of Ten Commandments was necessary through Christ.

• Through Christ we learnt that actions by thought and speech are also binding.

• Intuition (real knowledge) is faculty of soul while Intellect (apparent knowledge acquired through senses) is faculty of mind.

• Job is a wonderful example of right use of intellect and he realized Him through his guide angel Eli’hu.

Spiritual Healing

• We have to look beyond good fortune and accomplishment of spiritual healing and or worldly goods if we wish to know our real-self.

• Job could ask for end of his sufferings but he refrained from doing that as his main interest was to gain real knowledge.

• If we are comfortable now with huge experience that we carry with us, we have no real need for God.

• We are free to act and no limitation can be applied on us. This creation is a bottomless pit and we are free to expand downwards. Putting a limit on us is putting a limit on God while being limitless is one of His attributes.

• But if we are not comfortable with our current situation with all the comforts that we may have then we have to pray to God for help.

Rebirth – explained:

• All forms of life including matter owe their existence to light within. Light is embodiment of Truth as there is no change in it. It is only the outer covering that changes from one life to another.

• According to Saint John: • In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was

with God, and the Word was God.• The same was in the beginning with God.• All things were made by him; and without him was

not anything made that was made.• In him was life; and the life was the light of men.• And the light shineth in the darkness; and the

darkness comprehended it not.

Maharaj Charan Singh in ‘Light on Saint John’

• ‘The Word to which Christ refers has both Sound and Light.’

• Elsewhere in the Bible he alludes to the Light of the Word: “If therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light.”

• This means that we will be able to experience and enjoy the Light of that Word when we withdraw our consciousness to the eye centre.

• There is nothing in existence that was not created by this Word of God and that is not sustained by it.

• Before the creation, only He had life, because only He existed.

• At the time of creation, the Lord, in the form of Light, entered within all of us.

Why do we not see that Light?

• Because in the process of creation, the soul, in its descent, became embedded and entangled with the mind to such an extent that the mind prevents the Light of the soul from shining through.

• The veil of darkness is composed of the sins we have committed in our past births.

• ‘That is why Christ says, “Repent ye: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” and “the kingdom of God is within you.”

• The Father is not to be seen outside. He is within every one of us, but before we can see Him within we have to repent, in order to remove that veil of darkness.

Repent for what?

• Just after taking birth, a child has not done anything in this world to repent for, so why can he not see the Father within himself?

• Because he has done something in his past lives, so he has to repent for all the karmas he has been carrying from birth to birth.

• As is mentioned in the Bible, “but if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is the darkness”.

Word and Light – Examples from other Scriptures:

• Holy Qur’ān: ‘Surah XXIV: An-Nur, “Light” • Allah is the Light of the heavens and the earth. The

similitude of His Light is as a niche wherein is a lamp. The lamp is in a glass. The glass is as it were a shining star. (This lamp is) kindled from a blessed tree, an olive neither of the East nor of the West, whose oil would almost glow forth (of itself) though no fire touched it?

• Light upon Light, Allah guideth unto His Light whom He will.

• And Allah speaketh to mankind in allegories, for Allah is Knower of all things.

• Kun is the divine Command Be! Exist! By which creation comes into being or existence. It is used in the Qur’ān to denote Allāh’s creative force and order.

In Zoroastrianism:

• Sarosh is the Zoroastrian equivalent for Word. • Zoroaster had seen with his spiritual eyes the

working of the law of Karma, rebirth and transmigration.

• Zoroastrian literature stresses that it is possible for us to reach Godhood, and that in a single life; and that a Perfect Master and meditation according to his instructions are necessary for it:

• Thy sage shall show the path of Righteousness. – Yasna 34.

• Righteousness implies the discovery of Truth, the Word, and the eternal unchanging, incorruptible first revelation of God, the Creator and Sustainer of the entire universe within one-self.

In Taoism:

• Taoism refers to the Word as Tao, the Inner Light which supports the creation and which can be obtained by complete stillness of body and mind, and by shedding all attachments to the world while still living in it.

• “He who having used the Outer Light, can return to the Inner Light, is thereby preserved from all harm” – Tao Te Ching.

• “Find the Tao in yourself and you will know everything else.” – Kwan-yin-Lse.

• According to Taoism, the search for God must be made in one’s own body under the guidance of a Perfect Master. And the Master and the disciples do not reveal their inner experiences. – Tao Te Ching.

Taoism Continued:

• “Learning consists in adding to one’s stock day by day;

• The practice of Tao consists in subtracting day by day,

• Subtracting and yet again subtracting,• Till one has reached inactivity,• But by this very inactivity,• Everything can be activated.”

In Hindu and Sikh Literature:

• Nad Bindu Upanishad: In the beginning of this (mystic) practice, many loud sounds he (the disciple) hears. Gradually, they increase in pitch and are heard more and more subtly. The sounds are at first like those of ocean, clouds, kettle-drum and cataracts, in the middle (stage) those of Mardala (a musical instrument), bell and horn.

• Granth Sahib: Seeing without eyes, hearing without ears, walking without feet, working without hands, talking without tongue, thus dying while living, by knowing (His) Command, O Nanak, doth one find the Lord.

• When the mind was attuned to the Word; it became detached and dispassionate. There appeared Light within and from It emanated The Heavenly Sound. This made me a devotee of the True Lord.

• – M I Sorath 634-12

In Judaism:• Historical researches conducted in ancient Egypt have

revealed that “what was known as the worship of the Word” was quite extensively prevalent during the times of the Pharaohs some 3,000 years ago.

• Mystical sect of Rabbi Israeli ben Elizer believed:• That God pervades the entire creation, including what

is imagined to be non-living creation.• That the soul of man is a spark of Divinity.• That the principal duty of man is to take the soul

back to its source. That this can be done by the power of Shekhina, the equivalent of the Name or Word.

• The Throne of a Perfect Master is never vacant.• The Masters preached the banishing of all worldly

desires and merging them in a single desire to meet God.

Experience of Mystics:

• Take the cotton of doubt out of your ears, so that you may hear the Celestial Sound. This is a Divine Message, What is the Divine Message except hearing The Heavenly Sound within? – Maulana Rum

• The Prophet said about the Voice of God, it comes to my ears as do the ordinary sounds. But God has placed a seal on your ears, you hear not the Voice of God.

• The fort of the body has nine doors, the tenth is kept secret. The secret door will not open, only the Word of the Master can open it. – M 3 Ram Kali Var 954-13

• The universe was manifested out of the Divine Sound; From It came into being the Light.

• – Shams-i-Tabriz

Light – Opinion of Science:

• “Among the trillion mysteries of the cosmos, the most phenomenal is light.” Albert Einstein commented in 1951: “All the fifty years of conscious brooding have brought me no closer to the answer to the question, what are light quanta? For all the power, precision, and beauty of quantum optics, we still do not know what light is.”

• ‘At the forefront of the quantum theory, however, some scientists are beginning to describe light (electromagnetic waves moving through space governed by the laws of quantum physics) as the phenomenon that mediates consciousness (information) into matter (form).

Does light give structure to matter?

• Dr. David Bohm, professor of physics at the University of London, spoke of matter as ‘frozen light.’

• Mass is a phenomenon of connecting light rays that go back and forth, freezing themselves into a pattern?

• So matter is condensed light, moving at average speeds slower than the speed of light.

• Dr. Bohm said: • ‘In its generalized sense, light is the means by

which the entire universe unfolds into itself. It is energy, information, content, form and structure. It is the potential of everything.’

Intellect, Reasoning, Intuition

• One may doubt how sound can create and maintain the universe.

• This is not the subject of intellect or reasoning. • Reasoning takes us only to a certain extent. • Beyond that we have to take the help of intuition,

and till we have developed that mental insight, the power of comprehension without reasoning, we have to depend upon the intuition and inner experience of those who have gone within and have seen with their own eyes.

• In the meantime faith must replace reason.

Seek the Sound that never ceases, seek the Sun that never sets – Maulana Rum

• So, my friends: Think, think, and think! The way to liberation is through mind by thought!

• Learn to reflect inwardly over what you hear and read!

• As Mirdad says, ‘You need not move an eyelash to find your royal road. Sit in this nest and send Imagination forth. He is your guide divine unto the wondrous treasures of the trackless being, which is your kingdom.

• Follow your guide with stout and fearless hearts. His footprints, be they in the farthest star, shall be to you as signs and sureties that you have already been planted there.

• For you cannot imagine aught save it be in you or a part of you.’