To MAV Energy and Matter

[Guest guest]

Hi Mary Ann:

 

You write: "I feel you have not understood my posts, but thanks for

trying."

 

In fact, I think that I *have* understood your meaning; my only

intent was to perhaps help you to refine it, and recognize

unintended implications of some of the ideas you are working with.

 

You add: "I have not rejected anything positive that Hinduism or any

other religion has to offer."

 

I am only going by your own words: "Until those cultures begin to

reflect their wondrous spiritual claims in the way they conduct

basic human relations, I think it's time to question the claims."

 

It sounds like you're saying that when the lowest gross

manifestations of a vastly diverse culture are unsatisfactory to us

at a given point in time, that gives us license to disregard and

dimiss the highest philosophical speculations and discoveries of the

precursors of that culture. In other words, you are denying the

possibility of positives on account of the negatives. That may not

be what you believe; I do not know. But it is what you are saying.

 

You note: "Also, I am not typing consciousness as male - you said

that was the Hindu teaching."

 

That is only part of what I said. You may have skimmed over the rest

of my explanation, so I repeat it whole here: Very little in these

systems applies universally. One of the texts I use most is Tripura

Rahasya, which very clearly posits Devi as both Consciousness [i.e.

Consciousness as Female] and the manifestation of that Consciousness

[i.e. energy/matter as Female]. I quoted another, similar line from

the Yoginihridaya Tantra just yesterday. That is pure Shaktism;

welcome aboard.

 

*** I simply encourage people to become aware of the symbols or

rituals they choose or gravitate toward ***

 

No harm in that, unless the intellectual analysis of human-made

symbols becomes an end in itself, obscuring the larger Truths behind

them. Symbols are merely culturally specfic signposts; they do not

represent the thing itself as much as point toward it. They use the

specific everyday world that the individual comprehends to point

her/him beyond, toward what they do not yet comprehend.

 

You may not like the symbol, because it does not reflect your

reality or your cultural context. If you come across a Cyrillic road

sign in Russia saying Moscow turn right and Petersburg turn left,

you -- not reasding Russian -- may say "What is this gibberish?" But

to the person of that culture, the signs bears important

instructions. Likewise, what you see in an image of a Hindu deity

may be radically different from what a person born and raised in

that culture will see. Just as the Russian road sign wasn't

effective symbolism for you, so the Hindu deity may not work for

you. But that doesn't mean that it is gibberish; nor does it mean

that the symbol necessarily carries (for a member of the culture to

which the symbol was intended to speak) all of the freight and

baggage that your cultural context may attach to it.

 

In fact, I would go even further and state that the problem in

the "lowest common denominator" sectors of all religions occurs when

people grow too attached to the outward trappings and symbolic

imagery of "their" system as opposed to that of other religions,

rather than the underlying, unchanging, universal Truths that

underlie them all. And that is where hate and intolerance begins,

and where spiritual progress ends.

 

PLEASE let me hasten to add that none of this is intended to suggest

that you are intolerant or that your spiritual progress has stopped!

*lol* Having had the pleasure of frequently speaking and

corresponding with you on and offline for severasl years now, I know

that nothing could be further from the truth. My points are made

only in the spirit of honest debate.

 

Warmest regards

 

DB