Jesus goes to Hollywood

News Item: “Hollywood is to fill in the Bible’s “missing years” with a story about Jesus as a wandering mystic who travelled across India, living in Buddhist monasteries and speaking out against the iniquities of the country’s caste system.”

Like Mr. Joseph Smith of upstate New York who received the Book of Mormons in a vision, Mr. Levi Dowling of Ohio claimed to have received (also in the 19^th century)  the “Aquarian Age Gospel” which was alleged to have been imprinted on  tiny plates “smaller than atoms.” If you can believe this, you should be able to believe the rest of this fantasy which, like the Bhavishya Purana, is taken to be the gospel truth by countless credulous souls, both Hindu and Christian,  down to this day.If we think God speaks only Sanskrit, Hebrew, and Arabic, that too would be off the mark. To Smith and Dowling, for example, He spoke in good American English.

I first heard about this gospel in a lecture I attended some fifteen years ago at a Divinity School. I became interested and read through this inspired fable. I looked for internal discrepancies in it. Sure enough, there are several loop-holes in this hoax or delusion, the most staggering of which is that Jesus was a pupil at the temple of Jagannath where he took a course on the Vedas. This is like saying that Shankara of the 7th century  had been a graduate of Harvard. Anyone with even extended historical imagination knows that this temple wasn’t there before the 10^th century CE.

One of  the people Jesus met in Puri  was Professor Lamaas Brama who asked the  would-be prophet for his definition of Truth. Young Jesus’ profound answer began with the statement: “Truth is the only thing that never changes.”  [This would imply that human stupidity is Truth.] But he also said a few things that should make any advaitin happy, such as: “In all the world there are two things; the one is truth; the other is falsehood; and truth is that which is, and falsehood that which seems to be.” Jesus also gave Lamaas the Upanishadic wisdom that “God and man are one.”

And here is the version in which, as per this gospel,  Jesus is reported to have heard a graphically colored version of the Purusha Suktam:

“Now, from the mouth of Parabrahm the first man came; and he was white, was like the Brahm himself; a brahman he was called. And he was high and lifted up; above all want he stood; he had no need of toil. And he was called the priest of Brahm, the holy one to act for Brahm in all affairs of earth.  The second man was red, and from the hand of Parabrahm he came; and he was called shatriya.  And he was made to be the king, the ruler and the warrior, whose highest ordained duty was protection of the priest. And from the inner parts of Parabrahm the third man came; and he was called a visya.  He was a yellow man, and his it was to till the soil, and keep the flocks and herds.  And from the feet of Parabrahm the fourth man came; and he was black; and he was called the sudras, one of low estate.  The sudras is the servant of the race of men; he has no rights that others need respect; he may not hear the Vedas read, and it means death to him to look into the face of priest, or king, and naught but death can free him from his state of servitude.”

This abomination of the PS is not even funny! 

Yes, the book says that Jesus (like many of us, though not all, in the 21st century) said that it was not fair for God to have created men in this way. He was chased out of the Jagannath temple for saying this (as some Non-Hindus are even in our own times). Jesus now went to the Shudras to whom he preached saying, for example, “The sudras shall be free as priest; the farmer shall walk hand in hand with king; for all the world will own the brotherhood of man.”

What a dramatic impact this would have when shown on the big screen in Technicolor!

Jesus and (by now his friend) Lamaas went on to Varanasi where Jesus studied medicine (art of healing) under Professor Udraka. Well, of course, like any spiritual tourist of the day, he went to Varanasi and Tibet, and perhaps foreseeing the emergence of Pakistan, he also made a stop in Lahore before heading back home to give his scheduled lecture on the mount. He seems to have missed Madurai and Kanchipuram, though, which is too bad.

In case you are wondering what brought the would-be Savior to India, well, we are told in dead seriousness that Jesus took the trip  at the invitation of King Ravanna of Orissa who visited the prophet in his home town in Israel with “a band of Brahmic priests.” Competing with Hindu creativity in making up etymologies,  Dowling tells us that Abraham is just an anagram of Brahma, more or less. [I have seen Hindus elated by this observation.]

If some of us feel that it is spiritually absurd, religiously offensive, and historically outrageous to come up with a pseudo-document like this (the only excuse could be an extreme case of hallucinatory raving),  we must realize that most prophets and spiritual visionaries are basically honest people. First order prophets found religions, and second order prophets extend established religions to newer heights or generate new sects. Dowling was (a not too successful) second order prophet, But now, thanks to Hollywood, this now ignored gospel-composer may be in for a fame-boost. It is recorded that he was a child-preacher who had visions before he could think clearly, which he perhaps never did anyway.

The man surely deserves a place in the archives of religious curios, but I think it is irresponsible for Hollywood entertainers to turn this travesty into a film. It is likely to delude millions of naïve movie-goers (both Christian and Hindu) into believing that this canard is in fact part of the already dubious Jesus history.

But then, we have entered an age in which history and pseudo-history have merged with politics and religion and become one unrecognizable mess of a hot-mix in which one cannot separate  peanuts from  splitp-peas and  rice crispy from salt and pepper. 

We can only exclaim helplessly, amen! or aameen! or tataastu! or so be it! depending on our linguistic preference. 

Approaches to Traditional Spiritual Truths

There are three different approaches to ancient awakenings: whether it is Gnosticism, Sufism, Advaita, Zen, Vaishnavism, Cabala, or whatever classical school of spirituality.

One may take them literally as the original teachers and preachers had taught them, and derive therefrom whatever spiritual fulfillment one can. It is a fact that the mutually competing schools are divergent in their formulation of Ultimate Truths, but this should not bother the committed devotee who has made a decision as to which path is the best, perhaps even the only one.

The second approach is to carefully look into the traditional systems and re-formulate them in a framework that is meaningful and helpful in the modern context. Many have done this and many have benefited from such re-interpretations.

Those who are wedded to traditionalism (a variant of which is religious fundamentalism) will have nothing of this. They will always protest that the purity of the revealed truths is sullied and its content distorted by modern thinkers who simply don’t have the spiritual wherewithal or the Divine grace to even understand, let alone handle subtle spiritual truths. Spokespeople for Eastern religions would say that the West is too materialistic and therefore quite incapable of grasping the higher truths; and their counterparts in the West would say that the people in the East are drenched in mystical mumble-jumble, and are missing out on the opportunity to save their souls by embracing this prophet or that.

And modern interpreters simply can’t escape the criticism, condemnation, even wrath of the faithful followers of the charismatic gurus and the upholders of the sacred Scriptures of recorded history.

The third approach would be to simply ignore all these ancient modes as irrelevant, quarrelsome, and utterly useless in coping with the problems and challenges of the modern world which range from racism and inter-religious bickering to AIDS and global warming. The ancient systems may be interesting and even helpful to many people, and they may have it as long as they don’t beat dissenters on the head. But there are newer worldviews relying on newer knowledge and understanding of the world which can bring one as much peace of mind and harmony as the time-honored mystical modes.

People choose one or another of these approaches, depending on their background, upbringing, knowledge base, philosophical inclination, cultural affiliation, and a variety of other personal factors. What is most important, however, is the freedom to choose from among these approaches: a freedom that is sadly not yet the precious possession of all human beings on the planet. There are forces that are striving to snatch away that freedom from whose who have.

If and wherever the members of the first group gain political power, that freedom of choice and mind will be lost. This is one of the major challenges of our time, irrespective of what Advaita, Gnosticism, Sufism,  Kabala, or Ch’I may really mean.

On Religious Conversions

Every religion, no matter what its historical roots, has forged a world view of the Beyond in the context of the Ultimate Mystery. Over the ages the different visions have elaborated meaningful rites and rituals and sacraments which answer to the spiritual needs of its practitioners.
The doctrinal basis of every religion is that its own particular vision of the transcendental is the appropriate one. But, in some instances, it goes on to proclaim that those of other traditions are mistaken, primitive, or worse, and that it is incumbent upon them to bring light to the misguided. This is the instigation of evangelism which, I concede, is paved with good intentions. Unfortunately, from the point of view of the outsiders, such a view is the theological equivalent of racism.
As a result, when the Holy Father goes to India and proclaims on the day of Divali (the festive equivalent of Christmas) that missionaries, while respecting the local faith, should not stop in their efforts to bring true religious light to more than half a billion Hindus, or when another group resolves to convert all those unfortunate Hindus into Baptists rather than Catholics, the worst passions of Hindu fundamentalism are unleashed. The burning of the Pope’s effigy by so-called Hindu patriots is regrettable, but understandable.
As to demanding an apology from the Pope for past misdeeds of the Christian Church in India (which some people did), Hindu leaders should also acknowledge gratefully all the good done by the scores of schools and colleges from which generations of India’s scientists, intellectuals, and leaders have come, and hospitals and asylums for victims of tuberculosis and leprosy which were established by Christian missionaries.
We live in an age wrought with conflicts and confrontations. We have enough problems staring us in the face: problems ranging from political turmoil, economic competitions, resource limitations, racial injustices, gender oppression, and such. There is no urgency to add to this long list with proclamations of religious superiority and demands for apologies.
It is the responsibility of enlightened religious leaders to preach understanding and tolerance among faiths, rather than assert one’s monopoly as to the nature of the Divine or create unpleasantness by taunting the leaders of other religions. We need to form Interfaith Forums to inform and be informed about whatever is best in the various religious traditions of the human family.
There is a verse to which I was initiated many long years ago, and which I am freely rendering from Sanskrit into English as follows:
As waters falling from the clouds,
All return to the self-same sea;
So do prayers to different gods
Go back to the same Divinity.
I cannot think of a more appropriate verse to inspire religious harmony in this world of rich diversity, for it reminds us that every religion is but a partial glimpse of the infinite splendor. The value of a religious vision lies in the inner light that the pious experience, not in the number of converts that it has won among others.
Whether Christians or Jews, Muslims, Hindus or Buddhists, or whatever, let us invite ardent practitioners of other faiths to tell us about their meaningful traditions and religious ecstasies in a spirit of sharing, rather than with the presumptuousness of one who declares that his or hers is the only right mode of gaining a vision of the Unfathomable or the sole path to lead us to the glorious Beyond.

A Thought on Religions

Religions – leaving aside their ontological claims – are magnificent expressions of the human spirit, deep visions on the human condition, and sublime poetic expressions provoked by the mystery of existence and of cosmogenesis. Like literature and music they have a hundred manifestations, each presenting another facet of the elusive Ultimate Truth. To say that there are many religions, but only one science, need not imply that it is somehow less than science. Rather, it is to say that religions are  glimpses of the rich and complex presence of human experience in the vast stretch of space and time, in all its historical, geographical, and cultural  splendor. These can’t be reduced to a set of logically incontrovertible Euclidean propositions. The goal of religions is not to solve the riddles of the physical universe or to fill in the blanks in the Cosmic Crossword puzzle using the clues of observed data (as science does), but to make us establish and appreciate the magical link between the spark of individual consciousness and the Cosmic Whole.

On the Damnation of Non-Believers

A doctrinal belief of Christianity is that (technically) non-Christians are doomed to eternal damnation. I like to think that this is not the central core of their religion which relates to the divinity of Christ and the sanctity of his mission to save humanity from its moral transgressions. I am quite sure that most normal Christians (today), while they pray and act and share, are not obsessed with the idea of eternal damnation for non-Christians. They may refer to it in discussions, or some evangelists even threaten some simple souls in their (genuinely well-motivated) effort to convert, but this is not the every-day concern of the majority of Christians. Some of them may even be genuinely troubled by it and are working hard within themselves to reconcile that doctrine with the nobler and more charitable tenets of Christianity.
This is not an issue that must bother non-Christians, unless there is coercion and persecution on this basis. I have always felt that it is important not to judge the (harmless) religious beliefs of other faiths. There is so much goodness in every religion, why should an outsider keep slinging mud at it when we can learn from its positive aspects? It is surely not difficult to win an argument against specific doctrines of any religion, and to show by reasoning that the another person is wrong or stupid or misguided. But what is gained by that? I am convinced, for example, that no matter what his church proclaims, the average Christian in our own times doesn’t think of me only as a potential permanent resident of Hell. At the very least, I would expect him to leave the decision on this matter to God.
But there is a sense in which I too subscribe to this doctrine. Accepting Christ is (for me) the equivalent of living by a moral code that respects life, that has reverence for humanity, and that recognizes the bond between our individual selves (souls) and the Cosmic Mystery (God). Those who reject such a code are likely to be intrinsically unhappy (the Hell-state) for as long as they live, just as those who embrace it will find an inner peace (Heaven-state) that eludes the others. I can see considerable psychological insight in such a thesis.The post-mortem continuation of such states is what constitutes eternal redemption and eternal damnation, and about this I have no idea.
It is to be noted that similar beliefs are formulated in the traditional religious dogmas of others religions as well: e.g. Islam and Vishnavism. In the first instance, it is very much a living conviction among the activists; in the second case, it is only part of a medieval doctrine which no sensible Vaishnava takes seriously in our own times.

Varieties of Theism

With respect to belief in God:

1. Theist (+): One who takes the notion of God seriously enough to reflect on life, existence, and the world, adopt values, and conduct one’s life with the deep conviction that there is a greater universal principle (with some anthropic characteristics) undergirding the physical, phenomenal, and human world of experience.

Atheist (-): One who rejects the existence of any such principle or being in which the theist believes, and is overtly or implicitly unhappy, uncomfortable, sometimes even angry that there are theists in the world.

Pro-theist: One who not only believes in a God of a particular kind and with a particular name and geographical origin, but is eager to propagate this belief among those who don’t recognize the God of his tradition.

Anti-theist: One who not only rejects the existence of the divine, but also actively denounces such beliefs or such a God with statements like “God is not Great,” “God is a delusion,” “God is a spell that must be broken,” etc.

Non-Theist (0): One who is indifferent to the notion of God in his/her own views, values, and reflections on life, existence, and the world, with the conviction that belief in God is neither necessary nor necessarily bad.