Wednesday 16 May 2012

Enjoining all Religions: E=I AM mc²

Essential teachings abound in religious books but, if there were some on which all believers, agnostics & atheists could agree, society could be reformed harmoniously. Ramana Maharshi mentions that of all the definitions of God, "none is indeed so well put as the biblical statement 'I am that I am'." He maintained that although Hindu scripture contains similar statements, the Mahavakyas, these are not as direct as given in Exodus. Further the "I am" is explained by Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj as an abstraction in the mind of the Stateless State, of the Absolute, or the Supreme Reality, called Parabrahman: it is pure awareness, prior to thoughts, free from perceptions, associations, memories. As a psalm puts it, "Be still and know that I AM God." As Exodus puts it, "Ehyeh asher ehyeh" ("I Will Be What I Will Be". It is the refusal of a name, and hence it better expresses God--infinitely above everything that we can understand or say, the "hidden God." Or as Laozi puts it, "The Way that can be explained is not the eternal Way." It cannot be seen, heard, or touched, but it is what gives us the ability to see, hear & feel. Quantum physics' Reality is neither particle, nor energy, nor both, nor neither. Or, as a Tibetan saying goes, Samsara and Nirvana are inseparable. * * * Introducing the Church of E=I AM McSquared. Its logo will be da Vinci's Vitruvian Man, because the human body is a scaled-down version of the world & the cosmos as a whole...the intersection of the human & the divine, where art, science & philosophy merge and become non-dual. "I AM McSquared" suggests that all lives are in me and I am in all, that God is both the square of myself and the square root because, of course, God is One. Assign the speed of light, or Godspeed, with a numerical value of 1, and assign yourself a body-mass of 1 (because, of course, you have one body), and the equation becomes quite simple: E=1. The Church's non-sectarian prophets include Albert Einstein, Richard Feynman, Ramana Maharshi & Nisargadatta Maharaj. One incarnate prophet is Candice O'Denver of Balanced View. Its first Precept: "The thinking mind is not made to be 'on' all the time we're awake. By not learning to control it, we become slaves of our thoughts, emotions & experiences, our memories, hopes, fears, imaginations, each state overlapping all the others to create our personal, illusory realities. Switch off the mind, and enter the wider Reality. The mind should normally be in abeyance--incessant activity is a morbid state." (Nisargadatta) Recommended daily sacraments include morning or evening Kundalini Yoga (less than 1hr/day for the first year) and advaita-vedanta meditation at any & all times throughout the day.