On Sacred Texts

Our ancient spirits, which have passed through many forms before entering the human form we are presently in, must strive for overcoming this merely human nature and awakening to our true identity as a child of God. This is why we have entered into human form. The purpose of this human life is to return to God-Consciousness. This may sound extraordinary, but it is actually the natural state of our consciousness to be in serenely ecstatic communion with God. So though in our present state of illusion God-Consciousness is transcendentally beyond anything we can perceive or imagine, it nonetheless just means a return home. We have been in this state of illusion for so long that we think that what is natural is extraordinary and what is bizarre is natural. In our current state of illusion we tend to mistakenly think that this life is the only one we have ever had, that this world is all there is, and that this body is all we are due to the hypnotically bewildering power of matter upon our consciousness coupled with our ignorant decision to rebel against God which we made long ago. But before we entered into this world of Matter we were conscious of God. In this world of illusion, We look up at the stars in wonder, but we ought to look within, because we are older and more luminous than even the stars.

We freely chose to enter into this world, and we eventually forgot God, the spiritual world that is our home, as well as our own true nature. Thus the stubbornly and perniciously persistent illusion of materialism and egoism has arisen in us, but we can dissolve it, and to dissolve it utterly within our own lives and experience the Truth directly without any mediation at all is the purpose and goal of all true philosophy, religion, art, and spirituality. If you are reading this now, you are being called to make progress towards fulfilling the purpose of this life together with me.

We awaken to God-Consciousness gradually by following The Dharma, the intrinsic metaphysical and ethical order inherent in the universe. In better ages than ours, spirits awakened to holy God-Consciousness purely through following their own conscience and intuition to discern The Dharma. But as the ages roll by, the state of the spirits conditioned by this world of illusion worsens, hence the need for religions and sources of truth outside of ourselves to check ourselves against, measure ourselves with, and to have faith in. 

A human in a state of illusion as terrible as ours could never come up with the ideas that could lead them to the truth, because one caught in the state of illusion has no clue what the truth even is. So for people like us to even have the dimmest chance of waking up, God inspired the awakened men of the past who had the truth revealed to them to write texts that the peoples have called scriptures according to their traditions. Such books as The Bible and The Bhagavad Gita remind us what God is like, what He wants us to do, and what the purpose of life is. Given that this world, especially in this time, is a maddeningly confusing place, it is natural for a man to seek guidance from a book, as books preserve important information, and the information that instructs us in how to attain God-Consciousness by following The Dharma is necessarily the most important information of all, the best guidance for a man. So out of His love for us, God ensures that the essential knowledge necessary for Man is preserved in books that He Himself inspires men to write. Some of what we are meant to know is explicitly stated in the scriptures, but much more of what we must know is hidden in them by being stated esoterically. Only the wise who have pondered the scriptures for much time and purified themselves can understand the mysteries of the scriptures. 

God wants us to discern what He has commanded implicitly in the world’s heritage of scriptures and follow those commandments as readily as we follow the explicitly stated ones. Part of the reason He has hidden messages at all is because by tantalizing us with mysteries, He encourages us to think about Him more, and even just thinking about Him at all purifies our souls. Thinking on mysteries grows our intelligence, which God wants us to do. But in a real relationship with a person, and we are called to commune with God, a person spends much time thinking about how to please their beloved. When we love someone gratuitously we want to think about how to please them beyond what they explicitly tell us. So for us to have a real relationship with God, He must keep some things a secret. He is obliged to be mysterious. 

Part of what the wise come to understand is that the scriptures are imperfect, though nonetheless utterly necessary for understanding The Perfect Spirit, God. All true scriptures can only ever be attempts at putting into mere words a divine revelation, and this will of course involve a dilution of what was revealed to an awakened man, since it’s impossible for The Transcendent to even be accurately put into words at all. Thus, while scripture study is for the overwhelming majority of us utterly critical for walking the path, it must never be seen as an end-in-itself but only as a means towards the end of attaining the same state of God-Consciousness that the scriptures were written about. 

All of the best of the scriptures of this world are but distorted earthly reflections of heavenly tomes that are so faultless that they can be said to be the universe itself rendered into literary form. But only such gods as we are destined to become can read those heavenly scriptures without melting their minds, so for now we must content ourselves with The Bhagavad Gita, The Holy Bible, The Norse Eddas, and other traditionally revered sacred texts. 

Yes, in this world religious movements emerge centered around divinely inspired books. They are recited, contemplated, and there are different interpretations of these texts and thus different factions within the various sectarian religious movements. We are familiar with this. 

I’ve often wondered what a world would be like where the primary source of spiritual revelation and religious authority was a divinely inspired image such as a painting, sculpture, or carving. Or perhaps even a divinely inspired piece of music, which had to be replicated “just so” - exactly like how it was revealed, and there would be different schools of thought based on the meaning of the image or song, or on what the original divinely revealed art may have looked or sounded like. I imagine if it was a piece of sacred art that was the central pillar of divine revelation, then great care would be taken with how we encounter it. Perhaps one would have to pass through many trials and purify oneself to enter into a state of receptivity before beholding it or listening to it for the first time, and one would be forbidden to speak of what it was like to others.

In some ways this would be a much better world. Art and music appear to cut through to the heart of most people in a much deeper way than texts. I say this as a logophile in the extreme, having long been an enthusiastic student of the holy texts.  Such divinely inspired images and songs do indeed exist, and they do purify the consciousness of those who contemplate them and induce God-Consciousness. In epochs long past and forgotten, such sacred artistic masterpieces crafted according to divinely revealed specifications were the primary way of communication between God and Man. While plenty of sacred art and sacred music is made now, and these ought to be sources of inspiration for the quester after God-Consciousness, these can’t induce the fullness of spiritual enlightenment like the sacred art made in ages long forgotten of which no substantial traces remain. But songs like Tchaikovsky’s Hymn of the Cherubim can still remind us of the Divine Nature and instill in us a longing to know it better, and an exalted few can attain high levels of spiritual enlightenment by long contemplation of sacred mandalas. But the ages of one being able to attain the salvific realizations through art and music alone are long gone. We will still be able to experience these revelatory artifacts of art from epochs past after we attain God-Consciousness. But in this age, we must turn to the scriptures.  Even those aforementioned modern instances of sacred art and music are derived, ultimately, from scriptures and are thus subservient to them. 

Indeed, the Word of God in textual form is a great grace for mankind especially in this dark age, this Kali Yuga. The scriptures are an even greater necessity for study due to two grave distinguishing features of the Kali-Yuga. One of the distinguishing features of this stage of the Kali Yuga is that the ancient lineages of enlightened spiritual teachers have been broken. In ancient times, the essential teachings necessary for socio-political human flourishing and personal spiritual enlightenment were handed from Teacher to student in an unbroken chain of succession that ultimately finds its origin in God. While many such lineages still exist in our world today, they have almost all universally fallen short of their high calling and thus been rendered ineffectual. One may be able to still receive graces from them, but they can’t lead you to your final destination of God-Consciousness. Most claiming to be an enlightened “Guru” today, even the ones with valid disciplic lineages of succession, are ignorant charlatans or even complete monster who do a disservice not only to whichever tradition they claim to represent but to all forms of higher culture everywhere. They have failed to live up to the high-calling of their office due to being morally and/or intellectually compromised, and do not have God-Consciousness as their ancient predecessors did. Even if the priest, guru, or whomever is a morally upright person (a rare thing in the clergy and teachers of today) they are likely completely brainwashed by the lies of Modernism, and thus not a helpful guide for understanding the truth. Such people are always ultimately useful idiots who wind up helping, often without even knowing, the forces of evil they claim to combat. Thus, living spiritual teachers have failed to preserve what was passed down to them and to keep the fire of sacred knowledge burning. Most living spiritual teachers are more responsible than most others in the modern world for the total extinguishing of spiritual knowledge from this earth due to their abject failure either to bravely call out error for what it is or to realize the truths of their tradition within the innermost depth of their being. 

Another unfortunate distinguishing feature of this age is the total vanishing from the Earth of traditions which are replaced by radical political ideologies. Human life used to be framed by traditions established by men who had awakened to God-Consciousness and which were ultimately renewed by the passing on of knowledge from one generation to another, which finds its ultimate expression in the Teacher-Disciple relationship. The teacher-disciple relationship was meant to guide the disciple into a state of God-Consciousness that the Tradition originally emerged out of, thus ensuring it was perfectly renewed. But the chain of disciplic succession is broken: Unutterably precious knowledge that was meant to be passed down has been scattered into oblivion like ashes in the wind. You will search in vain for a perfectly preserved tradition in our modern world. Everything purporting to be traditional has been distorted at least to some extent. If you were born into a tradition, it is distorted. If you search to join a tradition you were not born in, it too will be distorted even if they allow you to participate in at all. 

The truth is, in our modern world people need the comforts of knowing that God is real and that we are eternal spirits in our innermost essences now more than ever. However, the religions of today are uniquely unequipped to deal with the modern crisis because they have all been corrupted by Modernism. The modern crisis has a racial element to it, but the religions of today do not teach that the race most targeted for destruction - Whites - is the one that ought to rule the Earth, they do not teach that racial egalitarianism is false. They do not teach the tight relationship between race and spirit. The religions of today almost always proclaim feminism, and do not acknowledge that the modern State has fatally compromised the authority of the male in a marriage by essentially making a man’s ownership of his wife legally impossible, thus rendering void one of the main reasons why the societally-foundational principle of marriages even exists to begin within. They do not speak out against these two evils of how modern people are misunderstanding race and sex because they either do not know or they are cowards, and in either case the religions are just as much responsible for the destructions caused by Modernism as any “Cultural Marxist” or diabolical oligarch. 

This reality of our traditions being lost or corrupted is worth mourning, and it has made our situation as spirits in human form very grave. But the traditions and the gurus who lead and inspired them left behind scriptures, and this is where the spiritual seeker must turn. The Sacred Scriptures are the fruits that the traditions and gurus left behind. In them the quintessence of the traditions can be felt, and the teachings of the gurus are preserved. The Scriptures have outlasted the traditions they emerged from. They’re not a perfect guide as they must be interpreted correctly and even the scriptures have been corrupted, but they are our surest way of escaping modernity, and returning to Tradition. To be lost in contemplating the scriptures in our days is to have a ray of light piercing into our cave of darkness, and we can follow it all the way back to its divine source if we follow it sincerely. 

Yes, since the traditions and the self-professed gurus can’t be trusted, the scriptures take on an even greater importance than they have ever had in the past. They are each like limitlessly valuable gemstones that do not wane in beauty even as other artifacts of tradition are reduced to rubble. Having come from a time before the breaking of Guru-Disciple lineages, the loss of tradition, the corruption of our religious institutions, they are our last remaining portal to the world of Tradition. 

The scriptures instruct us in the path to enlightenment, inspire us to walk it, encourage us when the way is difficult and remind us of our goal when the path is long. But no one can truly experience enlightenment by reading a book just like no one can arrive at their destination if they don’t take their eyes off the map. 

But Scripture-centrism brings with it logocentricity, an obsession with words, which can bring with it an unfortunate penchant for argumentativeness and legalism, especially if one does not know how to read with their heart and does not have a real relish for the beauty of words. To read with our heart is to read slowly, contemplatively… the heart is the depths of our mind, and if we read in a rush or academically then the words hover on the surface of our minds. But if we read at a peaceful, steady pace, with an attitude of reverence and humble readiness to be instructed, with a desire to know God and a faith that He can be so encountered through reading, then the words will sink deeper than the surface of our minds and sink into the depths of our heart. Without this type of reading, it is unlikely that God will be able to communicate with someone through a scripture. 

Logomania, a pathologically excessive amount of verbiage in speech and writing, is fundamental to modern life. It's a byproduct of the great mistake of mass literacy. It’s also a tactic of The Demons to make us numb to words so that The Word of God does not move us like it should when we read it, and so that we are deaf to the even-more important Word of God spoken directly to us in the sacred space of silence in between thoughts from whence all scriptures come. 

The greatest way we can honour the gift of God in preserving the scriptures for us is by surpassing them. Indeed, the Word of God as recorded in a book is only meant to prepare you for hearing the Word of God directly in the depths of your heart. As we ponder the mysteries of the scriptures, grow in ethical disciplines, grow in the practice of silent meditation and prayer, we are preparing ourselves for God to speak to us as surely as He spoke to Moses or Arjuna. A student of the scriptures necessarily must understand this to be properly a student of them at all. A student understands that the scriptures have wisdom in them that is not readily apparent, and must be thought about great length. He understand that the knowledge they impart and the stories they tell must become the very atmosphere of our minds in order for us to be able to have a mind fit for the direct transcendental vision of God’s uncreated light. This makes us as close to having divinely-inspired traditions and gurus as modern man can hope to have: Initiated into a world of tradition by reading, making the scripture itself our Guru. A student of the scriptures understands that they inspire in us sincere aspirations for virtue and purity when understood correctly, and that increasing in virtue will necessarily lead to further insights into the scriptures which will then fill us with even greater enthusiasm for virtuous living in a never-ending spiral of increased understanding and ethical growth that will lead us to the heights of righteousness. A mind afflicted with vices can not understand the scriptures and always tries to warp them to mean whatever our ego would like them to mean to rationalize our vices. A true student of the scriptures is one who speaks regularly with Their Author, who wrote them by the hands of men, in prayer. He is one who understands that the scriptures exhort a lifestyle of contemplative silent meditation, that God-Consciousness can be attained by silent meditation and the energies generated by living a virtuous life. 

We must learn to return to the God-Consciousness that is native to our spirits, by following the clues that lead us there left behind in the scriptures, so that we can then respond to the modern crisis. In ages like ours the importance of the essential telos of life, the importance of Dharma, does not recede but rather increases drastically in importance even as ever-fewer people recognize what these things even are. Whoever attains God-Consciousness in our time will potentially be able to write new scriptures from a place of God-Consciousness. The possibility of even being able to do this at all is more than enough of a motivation to strive for God-Consciousness with all of our zeal. This will be the greatest possible remedy for the Modern Crisis. Studying ancient scriptures will lead us to being able to write new ones. The age calls for new prophetic law-makers, a new Moses, a new Solon. This is the cry of our times. We need a new awakened man to reach the heights of God-Consciousness and, in that state of blissful omniscience, establish new traditions for the existence of man to be essentially grounded in. Those of you who read my newsletter are on the path to becoming this, and hopefully in this very life too. 

I intend to write many essays and commentaries on the ancient scriptures that I have studied such as the Vedic and Buddhist canons, the Holy Bible, “pagan” texts like The Iliad and The Eddas. I think that by doing so, keeping in mind that we do this not to show off mere intellectual erudition but to embody the perennial truths they sought to convey and have the same experience of transformational insight as their authors, that we will be laying the groundwork for new authentic prophets to come. What we see in history is that the new prophets are always very much in touch with the old, dying religions before replacing them with new ones. Moses was an adept of the Egyptian Mysteries before he wrote The Torah¹, and Jesus was a student of the Hebrew Tradition before founding the religious movement that bears His name. In the east, Buddha was well-versed in The Vedas before founding Buddhism. The sense of a continuity with the past is part of what gives a brand new religious revelation their authority. Having realized  eternal truths in the depths of their being, the prophets are inspired by God to put the same eternal truths in a new outward garb to replace the garb that is rotting away, and so mankind is renewed, traditions are created, new disciplic guru lineages are made, and the Dharma is made manifest. This is the high calling of our time.

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May God and the gods bless you. See you next week. Aum / Amen….

1. This is the first five books of the bible (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy)