A Madman's Task, But Somebody Gotta Tell The Truth

A madman's task, this, like an errand knight, a sorcerer conjuring secrets from the depths of our memories ancient and sublime, stark and dark truths that do invert assumptions and paradigmatic presumptions. Upending religious predispositions and spells spun to lull minds to sleep, disturbing those subtle taboos surreptitiously existing between the lines of discourse which somehow prevent us from seeing the obvious stories of history; challenging assumptions of which end is up and which is down in terms of the common paradigms proffered; breaking social norms to unknowingly play out an ancient myth of God in mourning; telling tales of collusion and subtle twists to the tales of the world's religions where indeed it is the politics of the gods and stories of passion and compassion which often leave the truth sounding more like a puzzle or a riddle or a sci-fi fantasy than “real life.” Only this is my life and the madman's tasks seem to have fallen upon my path.

Indeed, for what I have come across in my studies and searchings has implications would overturn the array of world mythology and world religion(s) as these stand, and would thus have startling implications for culture and society as a whole. The only scarcely hidden story I have uncovered would/will/ought unravel the myth of “the West” and present a quite inverted construction and mythic typologies compared to the status quo. Essentially, the Abrahamic religions represent rather deliberate seeming inversions or at least twisted versions of the religion of Abraham's ancestors, which I would assert to be sanAtana dharma or “Hinduism.” Central to this lila, this rather absurd play, is the very construction of who and what is “God” and who or what is to be taken as the opposite of God.

These are facts no one affiliated with any of the religions involved would reasonably call into question:

-brahman is Sanskrit for the Universal Divine Being, and atman is that Divine Soul as is manifest in each.

-Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva are the Creator, Maintainer and Destroyer expressions of God according to sanAtana dharma.

-Buddhists generally taut abrahman and unatma, that is, they do not believe in God.

-Abraham and Sarah and Hagar and their tribe originated from Ur of the Chaldese, the which has been determined to be in far southeast Iraq, rather near Indus Valley Civilization, which was in fact waning at the time Abraham is tauted by the Torah/Old Testament to have departed his homeland in Ur to venture to the west.

-Brahma and Saraswati are the Creator and His Consort according to Hinduism. The Ghaggar is a tributary river to the Saraswati River. Abraham and Sarah and Hagar sound rather like Brahma and Saraswati and Ghaggar, likely too much for this to be mere coincidence.

-according to Judaism, “the Righteous” go to a place called Abraham's bosom or Sheol after they die to await Judgment Day. Sheol translates to Hades, i.e., “Hell”, in Greek.

-The Hebrews worship Yahweh.

-The Lord of Death and Hell in Hinduism is Yama, who was once a mortal who was the first to attain knowledge of brahman and thus became a Deva (a god) and was given charge for schooling other mortals not devoted to the Divine already, as well as charge over the underground Hell supposing any mortals need such harsh schoolings as are therein proffered.

I first had my questions regarding the heaven and hell of the Christian religion, and specifically the place the Hebrews called Sheol or the Bosom of Abraham, when or perhaps even before I was a Christian minister. I was not alarmed enough about the potential implications of that underground place as the holding place of righteous dead Jews [I thought Hell was the place dead people go that's underground!?!) to give it a great deal of thought at the time, assuming perhaps that some theologians must have already worked that problem out at some point in the long history of the church. I was also given clue to the importance of the connection between Abraham and Brahma, if rather as a warning than as a heads up, when I was attending Oklahoma Baptist University. A religion professor had been giving a lecture about Abraham and company traveling across southern Asia to settle in Palestine and the class was about to let out. Dr. Dawson then said, with rather an odd glint in his eyes,

“Now there may be those who tell ya' that Abraham has something to do with the Hindu God Brahma . . . but we know better than that, now don't we?!”

I resigned my ministry and ceased my affiliation with the Christian church before my last year in college at OBU largely as I had inferred and determined that what they taught is essentially untrue, both in terms of their understanding of language and Divine truth and in terms of history, though I had no idea to what degree they were in err, if not covering up the truth of the story to bolster their spin. Again and most startlingly, it is actually their god that is the Lord of Hell. According to sanAtana dharma, those who are not otherwise devotees of brahman in whatever guise, via Shiva or Krishna or Parvati, etc., then Yama is in charge of their dharma/schooling. As the Abrahamites left the place and religion of their homeland in Ur and it seems from the name of their patriarch rejected brahman, they thus became attached to Yama as their Lord, and they called him Yahweh. The God of the “polytheistic” Hindus is actually the God of Abraham's forefathers, brahman, both and neither male and female, “God” to Abraham's forefathers.

Essentially, one might see the dispersion of people and specifically religions from India and from sanAtana dharma as a dialogue that is essentially the question “to Be or not to Be.” Buddhism tauts Nirvana, non-Being as they see it, as bliss, and Abrahman, no-God, as a philosophical hypothesis or supposition around which entire civilizations were built.

Though not so bold or forthright with their statement of the question or challenge to the established notion of brahman (nor perhaps generally much aware of this aspect of said root to their religions), the Abrahamic traditions nonetheless have been bound on that task to find means of interpreting the world without those more ancient and it certainly seems more abiding understandings of what this all is as expressed in brahman. It is as if Abraham and crew said, as they departed from Ur and the world according to sanAtana dharma, “If indeed, Abrahman (no “God” as we were taught) then what?” As would be predicted by sanAtana dharma, Yama becomes their Lord and the Deva (god) responsible for their dharma (schooling), again as alluded to by the place the Hebrews believe they go after death, the underground place they call Sheol or the Bosom of Abraham. If viewed from the broadest perspective, it is as if humanity is playing out the “question of God” or perhaps “To be or not to be . . .” in the play of peoples and nations, tribes and myths, experimenting with how whatever really is the truth will respond to the presentations proffered. At least as played out in the Abrahamic religions, the answer proffered to that rejection of brahman is fitted to within the context of the religion they left behind, and thus the “Hindu” Lord of Hell, Yama, becomes their God.

I suppose I ought to note that Muslims obviously do not worship Yahweh (Yama), but in fact seem to have unconsciously endeavored to return their devotions to the Gods of their ancient forefathers by worshiping “Allah,” a name rather starkly near the name Alla, an appellation attributed to Durga, Consort of Shiva. The all important confession from the perspective of Islam, is called one of the kalimas, again rather linguistically nigh another name of Shiva's Wife, Kali Ma (“Black Mama”). Ummah is the central tenet of Islam translates as “community.” Uma Himavati is yet another of the names of Shiva's Consort. Before Mohamed, Arabia was essentially Hindu. By these evidences and many more, it appears that the cycles of the three Abrahamic religions rather succinctly follow, else are response to and bound to within the context of, sanAtana dharma. The above information is among the many reasons I am a practitioner of yoga (translates as “yolk” and is root to said English word), a practitioner of sanAtana dharma, “keeping it together forever.”

In essence what I am proposing is a unified perspective of mythology and religion and culture and history that recognizes that many of the figures of various mythologies may well be actual conscious entities, else at least deserve consideration as more than merely imaginary characters. In order to adequately analyze a mythology's purport, one cannot approach without some faith in the reality of what you study, it's verity and that at some level and guise, its gods are real. With that in mind, what I would propose to do is to in some guise trace the play of the gods across recorded history. Exemplary of this would be examining relationship between the Hindu maya/Mahamaya and the Greek goddess Maya, daughter of Atlas according to said mythology. The relationship between Lalitha (Hindu tradition) and Lilith (Judeo-Christian lore) is another example of the tantalizing possible secrets of the Gods are there to be discovered, as are traces of Pasupati/Shiva on a cauldron found in Scandinavia, far away from Indus Valley Civilization as we know of it, thus identifying the Horned God of Europe with Shiva.

Whether transmitted by social and cultural means available to the description of the social scientist or else manifest by esoteric and occulted and “supernatural” phenomena, these seeming lineages of mythology do indeed exist beyond mere coincidence. That these nigh cognates and such so soundly connect seeming disparate mythologies as traces in the narratives and plays of peoples and cultures, myths and religions and the play of the Gods/gods, is well enough evinced. Indeed evidence indicates the possibility of a continuous and contiguous plot that supersedes individual cultures and religions and civilizations and the rather narrow purview of most histories writ, and might discern the subtle discourse that tells of the mind(s) of God/the gods, whether they be merely us or no.