Common Sense Advices

Someone uploaded a good recitation,
with music of the Armenian teacher, 
arranged by his pupil Thomas De Hartmann.

The following list of 82 advices first appeared in the autobiography La Danza de la Realidad and its English version The Spiritual Journey of Alejandro Jodorowsky, the cinema director and therapeutic artist. 

According to Alejandro these advices were given to him by a woman nicknamed Reyna D'Assia (Queen of Asia), who presents herself as daughter of G.I.Gurdjieff, the Armenian teacher of dances and inner-development. 

Given the novelesque and symbolic flavor of many of the events described, it is difficult to separate factual circumstances from symbolic reality in some passages, as in the movies of Jodorowsky and the work  Meetings with Remarkable Men, Gurdjieff´s own autobiography.

However, the so called "commandments" that she attributes to her father do seem to mirror many of the attitudes of the Armenian teacher.

And it is worth meditating on each one of them, regardless of the veracity of the source and events in which they were supposedly presented. 

They are charged with an almost overwhelming force to live with a truly universal common sense:

Reyna D´Assia speaking:

“We have been badly educated. We live in a world of competition in which honesty is synonymous with naïveté. We must first develop good habits. Some of them may seem simple, but they are very difficult to realize. Believing them to be obvious, we fail to see that they are the key to immortal consciousness. Now I shall offer you a dictation of the commandments that my blessed father taught me:

Ground your attention on yourself. Be conscious at every moment of what you are thinking, sensing, feeling, desiring, and doing. 

Always finish what you have begun. 

Whatever you are doing, do it as well as possible. 

Do not become attached to anything that can destroy you in the course of time. 

Develop your generosity — but secretly. 

Treat everyone as if he or she was a close relative. 

Organize what you have disorganized. 

Learn to receive and give thanks for every gift. 

Stop defining yourself. 

Do not lie or steal, for you lie to yourself and steal from yourself. 

Help your neighbor, but do not make him dependent. 

Do not encourage others to imitate you. 

Make work plans and accomplish them. 

Do not take up too much space. 

Make no useless movements or sounds. 

If you lack faith, pretend to have it. 

Do not allow yourself to be impressed by strong personalities. 

Do not regard anyone or anything as your possession. Share fairly. 

Do not seduce. 

Sleep and eat only as much as necessary. 

Do not speak of your personal problems. 

Do not express judgment or criticism when you are ignorant of most of the factors involved. 

Do not establish useless friendships. 

Do not follow fashions. 

Do not sell yourself.

Respect contracts you have signed. 

Be on time. 

Never envy the luck or success of anyone. 

Say no more than necessary. 

Do not think of the profits your work will engender. 

Never threaten anyone. 

Keep your promises. 

In any discussion, put yourself in the other person’s place.

Admit that someone else may be superior to you. 

Do not eliminate, but transmute. 

Conquer your fears, for each of them represents a camouflaged desire.

Help others to help themselves. 

Conquer your aversions and come closer to those who inspire rejection in you. 

Do not react to what others say about you, whether praise or blame. 

Transform your pride into dignity. 

Transform your anger into creativity. 

Transform your greed into respect for beauty. 

Transform your hate into charity. 

Neither praise nor insult yourself. 

Regard what does not belong to you as if it did belong to you. 

Do not complain. 

Develop your imagination. 

Never give orders to gain the satisfaction of being obeyed. 

Pay for services performed for you. 

Do not proselytize your work or ideas. 

Do not try to make others feel for you emotions such as pity, admiration, sympathy, or complicity. 

Do not try to distinguish yourself by your appearance. 

Never contradict; instead, be silent. 

Do not contract debts; acquire and pay immediately. 

If you offend someone, ask his or her pardon; if you have offended a person publicly, apologize publicly. 

When you realize you have said something that is mistaken, do not persist in error through pride; instead, immediately retract it. 

Never defend your old ideas simply because you are the one who expressed them. 

Do not keep useless objects. 

Do not adorn yourself with exotic ideas. 

Do not have your photograph taken with famous people. 

Justify yourself to no one, and keep your own counsel. 

Never define yourself by what you possess. 

Never speak of yourself without considering that you might change.

Accept that nothing belongs to you. 

When someone asks your opinion about something or someone, speak only of his or her qualities. 

When you become ill, regard your illness as your teacher, not as something to be hated. 

Look directly, and do not hide yourself. 

Do not forget your dead, but accord them a limited place and do not allow them to invade your life. 

Wherever you live, always find a space that you devote to the sacred. 

When you perform a service, make your effort inconspicuous. 

If you decide to work to help others, do it with pleasure.

 If you are hesitating between doing and not doing, take the risk of doing. 

Do not try to be everything to your spouse; accept that there are things that you cannot give him or her but which others can. 

When someone is speaking to an interested audience, do not contradict that person and steal his or her audience. 

Live on money you have earned. 

Never brag about amorous adventures. Never glorify your weaknesses. 

Never visit someone only to pass the time. 

Obtain things in order to share them. If you are meditating and a devil appears, make the devil meditate too.”

__________________

[1] 

Sacrifice the interference

Roman mosaic: Orpheus with his tamed Beasts

A Native American elder once described his own inner struggles in this manner: 'Inside of me there are two dogs. One of the dogs is mean. The other dog is good. The mean dog fights the good dog all the time.' When asked which dog wins, he reflected a moment and replied: 'The one I feed the most' –told by George Bernard Shaw

Many are the ways conscious love can be expressed. Yet the most sublime is indeed the sacrifice of that which hinders the communion between the Lover and Beloved Essence that breathes in every fiber of the Kosmos.

The Supreme is always Lover and Beloved, aspiring to merge with the third holy force in an endless embrace.

Any love outside that intimate Holy Trinity, is intrusive, parasitic, an object of Idolatry.

Countless are the distractions that drive the animal mind and bestial heart away from the real Heart. Mechanical and ruthless is the force that obsessively pulls back the psyche to worries and restless emotions. Why? What is this drive? What preys and feeds on emotions and endless thoughts?

Emotions –not higher feelings– can be like a drug rooted on false memory, the distorted perception of the past: irrational fear, self-pity, self-deprecation, boredom, loneliness, lust for pleasure and high experiences, jealousy, envy, greed, hate, are all full of pride, self-centredness, and make the mind chatty and noisy. The heart moves the mind, which in turn agitates the heart, forging a slavery chain that should be stopped so that one can be free.

By contrast, higher feelings –such as compassion, gratefulness, happiness, conscious love, longing, the inherent sorrow of life or even the burning remorse of conscience that shows some inner imperfection and its negative impact outside–, can only exist now, and may lead to the silence and serenity of a higher nature when due attention is paid. 

Only humans can have these higher feelings, provided one escapes the subconscious influence of the emotions, animal energy in motion.

By fortune emotions can be transformed into higher energy, higher feelings. How? By sacrificing them, depriving the emotional animal of its food and letting it die of starvation, freeing the necessary energy for higher nature, which is indigestible to psychic predators.

It is in the search for the Beloved Essence and conscious love that seekers should understand ancient teachings concerning “sacrifice” and “dominion over animals”, as those found in sacred traditions:

Take four birds and draw them towards thee, and cut them in pieces." The birds are explained to be the duck of gluttony, the cock of concupiscence, the peacock of ambition and ostentation, and the crow of bad desires, and this is made the text of several stories. Beginning with gluttony, the poet tells the following story to illustrate the occasion of the Prophet's uttering the saying, Infidels eat with seven bellies, but the faithful with one –Rumi [1]

And Elohym said: Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth –Genesis 1:26

...these have altogether broken the yoke, and burst the bonds. Wherefore a lion out of the forest shall slay them, and a wolf of the evenings shall spoil them, a leopard shall watch over their cities: every one that goeth out thence shall be torn in pieces: because their transgressions are many, and their backslidings are increased–Jeremiah 5:5-6

When dealing with people, remember you are not dealing with creatures of logic, but with creatures bristling with prejudice and motivated by pride and vanity ―Dale Carnegie, in How to win friends and Influence People

It is necessary to understand that to be really human is to be humble, humus, soil for divine gardens. And this demands indeed the sacrifice of the proud animal that still lives in the physical body and the psychic body, both of which have different desires.

Such a work is what purifies and unites the psychic body of personality with the watching consciousness received from the Source. This is the union of soul (psyche) and spirit (pneuma) that Saint Paul spoke of in several passages of his letters (ie.1 Thessa 5:23). Wisdom also mirrored on the Egyptian doctrine that emphasizes the merging of Ka or psychic double and Ba, spiritual nature, to give birth to the immortal Soul.

Without this sacrifice and union, there can only be physical death first and then the separation of psyche and spirit (Hebrews 4:12), known as “second death” in the Book of Revelation 2:11 and other passages.

One avoids being devoured by psychic vultures and turn the psyche into a true loving Soul (1 Cor 15:42-44), by charming beasts with the lyre of consciousness, as Orpheus, and bringing down the selfish Giant with slyness and the sling of attention, like David.

Once the individual soul embryo matures and grows through the merging of psyche and consciousness:

The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them –Isaiah 11:6

Now, this is not simple, because the seeker warrior not only has to deal with the animal nature.

It has been taught that humans are in no way the top of the food chain. The Bible, the Zohar and other sacred texts reveal that invisible inorganic forces prey and feed on all types of emotions. Most of those energies are engendered from the waste of psyche in its degenerate behaviors, specially the spill of the seed of life, main source of food for predators. 

And these forces press hard to tempt those who are weak enough to follow their game (i.e Isaiah 34:9-12, Ephesians 6:10-12), depriving humans from the fruits of the Tree of Life, as the dry Fig Tree in Matthew 21:18. Although even scavengers and mosquitoes have a place in the Kosmos.

This is why in myths and tales the spiritual warriors fight beasts, monsters, infidels and hungry demons, all of which attack from the land of the psyche, invisible to the senses and to the blind mind, devouring holy energy.

Like what “it” does not like –maxim of G.I.Gurdjieff, Views from the Real World.

Only hominid minds and bestial hearts believe in gods who demand blood for the expiation of sins or in killing an “external infidel” that does not share a set of blind beliefs. Perverted religion can only lead to psychopathy and death.

True masters knew this. And since very few could understand them, there came savage rituals and religion wars, while ravaging lions, crows and vultures devoured the little humanity some had left. 

It´s surprising to watch –in the XXIst century– how many still teach about converting infidels to their own faith, as if they were messengers of the only Truth.

Yet all that can only be a byproduct of “untamed hearts”, mostly new generations of spirits that might become pure souls one day. Only for the sake of learning humans are allowed to be as retarded as Epimetheus (delayed mind).

It has also been transmitted that inner sacrifice releases energies which harmonize Nature. In the past many semi-humans did not understand this, and they preferred to chop animals or even other people, in order to pacify Nature; but to no avail, for catastrophes caused their destruction, as it will happen to present day civilization if the level of savagery does not decrease in a critical mass of hearts.

Now, all this is not to scare or disappoint anyone. It is simply a set of observations to ponder on sincerely, in case one wants to be truly human knowing the tragic situation better.

Then, a decision has to be taken:

No man can serve two masters...Ye cannot serve God and Mammon –Matthew 6:24

The true Heart of the soul needs also food, but being part of an Angel responsible for carrying love to the Source, its only food is Love for the One, from which everything is given.

The Beloved One is indeed the best example of self-sacrifice, for One becomes Nothing so that everything can Be in unicity with everything else.

Thus, we can´t do this work alone. We need each other to see ourselves mirrored on the other, letting others point our flaws as part of the game. Then will we be able to recognize the Beloved breathing in everyone else, even in those who are asleep. 

May one hand wash the other and both the face.

After these reflections, come to mind questions to be always remembered:

Whom or what are we feeding to? What do we want to sacrifice, the possibility of a loving Soul or the beasts of pride and vanity?

© Copyright 2015

___________________________________________________

[1]  The Spiritual Couplets, Book V [1]

http://www.sacred-texts.com/isl/masnavi/msn05.htm

True Light Service

Early Coptic painting of Yeshua and his disciples. 

El Cairo Museum

Who´s left nowadays to fathom the gist of one of the last great messages for humanity? It seems we have to investigate ourselves, for the streets and teaching rooms are full of preachers and fanatic “Bible experts” that keep focusing on the old controlling strategy of fear and condemning judgement. 

In these circumstances, best we can do is listening to Yahshua the Nazarene himself, aided by the views of his close followers –some of which were former Essenes that moved to Northern Israel, at the foot of Mount Carmel, and which came to be known as Nazarenes [1]:

I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life (John 8:12)

For the Nazarenes this was not a metaphor and it referred to the all pervading, neutralizing, ineffable, silent, invisible, peaceful Light of the Abba (Father-Mother); source of life, consciousness and infinite Love. Thus it can never refer to the lower light of the planets and intellective brain –as some believe–, since that is the electromagnetic light of Death and Delusion, based on dual polarities: + –, good and bad, black and white, pleasant and unpleasant.

I´m the vine, you are the branches (John 15:5)

You are the light of the world (Matthew 5:14)

These were not seen as metaphors either. The soul seed is a pure spark of ineffable Light that needs to be born and grow inside to clothe and liberate the own essence from its captivity in this wilderness of life made of simulations of light, bringing thus serenity and insight. 

If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me (Matthew 16:24)

All egoic impulses –false light– steal soul substance and hinder the emergence of true Light. To deny oneself is to let silent watchful awareness reveal flawed perception, dissolving thus all manifestations of false light, such as pride and selfishness, all mental noise. Then can true Light shine in the heart and illumine all one feels in life. Every bit of experience is valuable, even depression and pain, when one is there to feel them consciously. Depression is actually a sacred call that tells we´re living in darkness, whereas our attentive awareness comes from that true conscious love, a love which does not ask for anything in return and gives all care, all attention. The rest is all lies, false love, false light.

I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me (John 14:5)

The Christ story is a manual of transformation, to be followed, not to be just believed blindly with the mind. True faith involves the action of conscious love. 

Watch therefore, for ye know neither the day nor the hour wherein the Son of Man cometh (Matthew 25:13)

No metaphor either. Silent watchful awareness stops and burns all negative impulses, preparing the ground for a higher birth (from water and spirit). The concept of the Son of Man, Bar Enash in Aramaic, derives from the prophetic tradition (i.e Daniel 7:13, Ezekiel 7:2,  Book of Enoch, etc ). That is how a realized man was called, for it refers to the actual birth in a human being of what the Hebraic mysticism calls Man from Above or Little Face, to which our soul has to be "married" aided by the Ruach ha Kodesh or Holy Inspiration (see parable of the Samaritan woman in John 4:16).

I am the Light...You´re the light...Watch...I am the Way...Can there be more clear hints? Still how many Bible preachers, theologians and ardent believers get such a plain message? What´s the point of justifying false expectations with judgements and eternal condemnation, telling others what to believe to be saved? In extreme cases some even use flails and get nailed to crosses thinking such barbaric acts are useful, as if daily life was not hard enough, as if there was not enough “energy light” stolen in us. 

In the end all proud religious claims seem about “me” and “us”, about “people of God who will inherit the kingdom while a bastard called Satan is destroyed”, all about “Jesus, save me”, “Jesus, help me”, “Jesus don´t forget me when I´m done”...

Sounds like selfishness and greed, doesn´t it? So greedy and selfish is the ordinary mind-heart that humans conform with what sounds nice and easy and leave the important action for others.

Hence the typical childish cliché “Christ died for our sins and he will save us if we believe.”

Elegant way of getting rid of all responsibility.

Indeed, the Nazareans saw Yahshua´s death at the cross as the way the Light called Christ descended in the world of matter to rescue the enslaved humanity. Yet, even assuming that, why are believers still waiting without living anything of what Yahshua taught and did?

According to the Scripture, he came to exemplify the birth of the Son of Man or Christic humanity, becoming Head of a glorious body to which those who decide can belong to (1 Cor 12:12-27). But how many are willing to pay such a high price? For mere believers it´s too expensive, since true faith is not belief and implies burning all selfishness, emptying oneself (kenosis) from oneself to receive. 

And why call ye me, Lord, Lord, and do not the things which I say? –Luke 6:46

What do we really do to wash the mirror for the Divine, the Earth and others?

The harvest truly is plenteous, but the labourers are few –Matthew 9:38

Aren´t true aspirants meant to follow, to join the Way, the Truth and the Life of Light, which illumines and dissolves darkness inside, illumining everything, conquering death, breaking the chains of the Moon, Saturn and the rest of astral forces that form the Matrix, Illusion, Maya.  

If one´s true light does not light up the world, who´s going to do it? Not the internal opposing force called Satan, of course, for the role of such force is to steal all the goods from the store house in its own benefit. And a sacred duty is to break down its trickery, its hypnotic power, as Light conquering the Cross.

Hence the gospels present the image of the two thieves crucified with Christ. One dies miserably. The other, in the right, is saved. How´s that? Why in the right and not the left?

To be a Christic worker means to claim and gain back the stolen light, merging with the Eternal Light to which our true heart belongs to, and that requires more trickery than the ego-light simulations of the pseudo-religion and pseudo-spirituality that dominate the market.

Most believers will still say that belief alone is enough, yet nowhere in the gospels such a thing has ever been stated. It was Paul –who was accepted into the Nazarene community (Acts 24:5)– who divulged the idea of “a belief, pistis, that saves”, luring the gentiles. It is true he corrected it slightly adding: 

For in Jesus Christ neither circumcision availeth any thing, nor uncircumcision; but faith which worketh by love (Galatians 5:6)

Nevertheless, the ambiguous Greek word pistis was very unfortunate, for it usually means ordinary belief, whereas Yahshua and the disciples did not teach in Greek, and they used the Hebrew word emunah, which means faith, steadiness, trust and faithfulness in the Light. As James stated very clearly, emunah is nothing without works –inner work (James 2:14-26).

This idea of "belief alone" turned out to be very harmful; although Paul surely did not mean to generate any mess and had in mind the Age of Piscis, Pistis, the Times of Belief. After all, he was trying to develop a task he received from those who did knew the Teacher and the teaching (Gal 1:9-10). 

Quite shocking is to see how far away is modern Christianity from the teachings contained in the four gospels. Yet it´s not surprising, since the inner circle of Nazarean community were the only ones who knew what was all about and they were persecuted to death by the Romans, disappearing from the scene around 135 A.D, during Bar Kokhba´s revolt.

Meanwhile the new gentile Christianity that Paul had created following orders from Yahshua´s disciples, opened up the door to multiple antagonistic interpretations: on one hand all the Gnostic views that followed, and on the other, all the forms of blind faith so popular nowadays.

It was the people of Paul´s Hellenist community who started to be called Christians in Antioch (Acts 11:26). 

Yet the Nazarenes and first Christians were not mere believers. They ate no sacrificed meat, drank no alcohol, and lived life fully without preconceptions nor agendas, walking in the presence of Light, giving Light, willing to pay even with their life. 

Due to extreme persecution they had to gather in caves, houses and catacombs, where they studied, prayed in silence and practiced meditation techniques such as incubation [2], an ancient healing art that they might have inherited from the shamanic tradition of Mount Carmel, legendary central site of the Hebrew prophets, where Pythagoras also studied, according to Iamblichus (see Life of Pythagoras).

As we have seen in other articles [3], incubation was used in Greek healing temples and consisted in lying down in silence to delve into sensation and naked consciousness, letting the selfish impulses of body and mind “die”, so that light can shine out of darkness.

It was actually a very practical way of dying consciously and descending into the darkness of the underworld, as Christ at the cross. For if one´s false light does not die, one can´t be born from above and be resurrected. Die before you die, says the proverb.

Both Southern Israel Essenes at Qumran and the Nazarenes at Mount Carmel, in the North, called themselves Children of Light.

The latter, though, knew the coming of the Son of Man is an intimate event that takes place in those who live from silence and inner peace.

Toc, toc, toc. Who´s at home already?

Children of Light or Children of Darkness?

© Copyright 2015

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[1] The most likely hypothesis is that Yeshua studied first with the Nazorean Essenes, given the huge amount of parallelisms between their expressions and his, as well as the celebration of the last supper following the Essene solar calendar, instead of the lunar, typical of official Judaism, as we already pointed in other article (Jesus and the Essene Calendar).

And he came and dwelt in a city called Nazareth: that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophets, He shall be called a Nazarene– Matthew 2.23

Since there are no ancient historical references to the city of Nazareth mentioned in Matthew 2:23, not even in Flavius Josephus´ detailed description  of the area, it´s logical to assume that the early gospel in Hebrew and Aramaic  must have been referring to the new Essene community, whose tradition eventually inspired the name of the modern place called Nazareth, at Mt.Carmel. 

Therefore, it would not be strange that the term "city", polis –polin in the text–, is either a mistranlation or an interpolation of "christians" that didn´t like very much early forms of christianity. Unfortunately, the gospels are full of those alterations, hence the constant contradictions. 

The "christian" heresiologist Epiphanius said the following:

The Nazarene sect was before Christ –Panarion 29, 6

1.2 For this group did not name themselves Christians or with 
Jesus' own name, but Nazoraeans. 3 However, at that time all
 Christians were called Nazoreans in the same way. They also came to
be called "Jessaeans'' for a short while, before the disciples began to be
called "Christians" at Antioch. 4 –Panarion 29, 1.2-4

For an interesting lecture about the Essenes:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yK3llET2rfk

[2] See article: 

Looking for Dreams and Talking with Martyrs. Internal Roots of Christian Incubation.

http://www.academia.edu/4077822/Looking_for_Dreams_and_Talking_with_Martyrs._Internal_Roots_of_Christian_Incubation

[3] Incubation, a Western Form of Meditation:

http://themusicofwisdom.blogspot.com.es/2009/04/incubation-western-form-of-meditation.html

Eternal Life Is Now

For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it –Matthew 16:25

To reflect upon these teachings in a temporal or escatological way taints their deep sense, for they point to something beyond time, which is lived now.

The crucifixion symbolizes the intersection of flesh and spirit in the cross of matter. To crucify the five senses (five wounds of Jesus) means to harmonize them and neutralize their blinding, as well as the effect of the selfish impulses of the tyrant that lives inside, which must die so that we can be resurrected. Without psychological death there can´t be resurrection.

Raimon Panikkar used to speak of "living Eternity in the temporal", as he showed in one of his illumining talks:

In order to live and die we don´t need to know how to live and die. By knowing we lose our inocence. We can only accept a life we have been given for a definite time. Blessed are those who have reached supreme ignorance –agnosia–, said Evagrius Ponticus.

Each life has an immensurable value. Life is lived and the only aspect we need to live it is to free ourselves from the fear of death, which is a disguise of the fear of life. Each moment is unique. On each moment lies our destiny. He who does not see a sunset or toothache are a unique revelation, does live neither the sunset nor the toothache. The problem of death cannot be separate from the adventure of life. If we do not know the hour of death we do not know the moment of life either. If we get worried about when we will die, we remain heedless before the instant we live. What happens to the drop of water when it falls into the ocean? The drop disappears. But what am I, the drop of water or the water in the drop? Nothing happens to the water. Death won´t be different from life. But we are afraid of suffering, since we have been told many times that death is suffering, and we want to prolongue it artificially, even with the moribund.

Wisdom is precisely to recognise the unicity of the instant. If we don´t fall in love with each moment in what we are doing, we are slaves, whether it is for going to heaven, to hell or wherever. Life has been given to us and we only deserve it by giving it. Then one is really happy. Going back to Evagrius Ponticus [1]: he who does not live eternal life now, can already forget about living it later.

Without doubt, this is linked to what ancient traditions call "body of light","resurrection body" in Christian terms, fruit of spiritualising the physical body. For the aim is not to run away from the world, as Platonist gnostics did, but to find ourselves in it, and then reach beyond. 

_____________________________

[1] Evagrius Ponticus was a Father of the Desert in the IV, putting into practice the living dimension of Christianity, based on emptying (kénosis) oneself from any selfish willingness, without external idols, merging the mind with the heart with the prayer of the Lord, the silent repetition of the Name, whose deep phase consists on subtle attention to the breath penetrating the belly and the heartbeat.


The Fathers of the Desert followed the maxim: God made itself man so that man could be in God, that is, be part of the body of Christ (1 Cor 10:17; 12:12-27)


Their teachings inspired the great mystics of Christianity and were gathered by the Orthodox Church in the compilation Philokalia. For those who read Spanish, there is a wonderful compilation of texts and comments in the book: Eremitas, by Isidro Juan Palacios. 

Divine Trinity is Relation

Raimon Panikkar (1918-2010)

If there was someone that reconciled mysticism, comparative religion and theology, bringing down all barriers, being himself the example, that was Raimon Panikkar, whose message is a legacy that moves us to break all schemes with foundation. Here we have some of his phrases:

Religion without mysticism is ideology.

The great epidemy of the present world is superficiality.

A religion which does not religate, which does not unite, is not a religion but superstition.

The three great religions, judaism, christianity and islam are not religions of the book, but of word. 

True Christianity is not against any religion. We don´t look for the unity among religions but harmony among religions.

I went to India as a Christian, I discovered myself as a Hindu and went back to Spain as a Buddhist, without ceassing to be Christian.

God is a symbol, not a concept. If we think of God as a supreme entity we turn it into an idol. God is Trinity, and Trinity is relation. But there are no three separate substances. Trinity is the relation of everything with everything.

The Divine Trinity can´t be grasped. It is immanence in transcendence and transcendence in immanence.

The idea of an omnipotent God is a wrong translation of Pantocrator, which is the divine force that acts from within everything.

Knowledge without love is mere calculus. Love without knowledge is sentimentalism. And physical love is mere animality. Wisdom is then to reconcile love with knowledge, for they are divorced. 

Little can be added to these wise words. Suffice to remember that in these times of great contradictions and confusion, if one wants to be really awake, one should avoid succumbing to the play of opposites, the battle of good against evil, delusion and reality. There is not a supreme state of enlightenment, nor a separate Supreme Entity that governs from "the heights", nor gods who rule wickedly over mankind... 

In the same way, to pretend to be like a god or receive a Supreme Good without deserving it, derives from the selfish pride that caused the fall of humanity, which still believes the devil is outside, when it always lied indide.

It is essential to overcome the weak beliefs of the mind, sources of unnecessary suffering. 

_____________________________

Some good interviews in English:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cbjd_Tdnqxg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SOMcDuHh31g

A good interview in Spanish:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6guzJ55Rxbk