Jesus a myth?

Imaginary Apostles and their Imaginary Master JESUS – Shocking NO HISTORICAL JESUS!!

Religion is the equivalent of modern day’s political parties to corner power and wealth for its leaders. [Religion is that which teaches you that the external glittering world is not that which would give you peace – it teaches that there is a world within which we must discover if we are to live a life of lasting joy. The masters’ and the disciples’ tradition of teaching and preserving the teaching has led to organisations. Later on such organisations became a culture onto themselves, losing the spirit but maintaining the letter. Inevitably such organisations spewed selfish men they are the ones who have given religion a bad name.] Also the religions provided the cheapest form of labour for its leaders as priests and nuns. [This might be the case of corrupted organisations, but originally and truly, all the intentions were truly divine.] Shocking information I found about the Christianity is that Jesus could be just a mythical figure and never existed in reality. [Even if Jesus did not exist, isn’t the myth an indication of a possibility that man could be divine?] A scientific enquiry known as ‘Historical Jesus’ is going on by Western scholars and they say that the Twelve Apostles and the Twelve Disciples are just as imaginary as their master Jesus. [If in the present day world we have Gurus and shishyas, why couldn’t a great Guru called Jesus have existed?] BBC had reconstructed a 1st Century Jewish man which could be the real Jesus [If Jesus never existed, why bother about any Jesus at all? That’s because it was not simply the case of a man called Jesus who exist or did not – if was the consequence of his existence, no matter real or imagined. If nothing, we have to explain the influence of the Bible, do we not?] if he ever lived on earth and the picture is entirely different from the Jesus picture presented by the Church [That’s fine. Jesus presented by the Church has made Jesus an improbable entity.]. For Christians, the most important documents relating to Jesus are the four Gospels in the Bible. These purport to be eyewitness accounts of the life of Jesus in the first century CE (Common Era). Gospels are given in the names of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John; but we do not actually know that they were by these people. Gospels are not good historical evidence of Jesus existence, or of what he said and did as these were not written by eyewitnesses and are written at the least 37 years after the death of Jesus if he ever lived. [This proves that Jesus was an influential man, to be written of years after his death.] By comparative textual studies, Alvar Ellegard in his book 'Jesus: One Hundred Years Before Christ ' says that the gospel accounts of Jesus' life and sayings were written approximately 100 years after Jesus is supposed to have lived, and so 100 years later than alleged contemporaries such as St Paul, St Clement and the Jewish historian Josephus. Biblical scholars readily admit that the Gospels were written by unknown authors not personally acquainted with Jesus as late as 80 years after his alleged death. The letters known to be genuine Pauline epistles and those believed to be probable are completely silence on Jesus' parentage, when he might have lived, his trial, his death, or even his ethical teachings. Paul in many of his theological disputes do cite Jesus, but he does not appear to have been aware of what Jesus allegedly taught in the Gospels. If there was no Jesus who lived in the early part of the first century and if the early Christians did not believe such a thing, then what could be the basis for what they did believe? It is accepted that the earliest Gospel to be written was Mark, no earlier than 70 C.E., but it is not likely that the author lived in Palestine considering his ignorance of basic Palestinian geography. If the Gospel was not written by an eyewitness to the events described, then it is not accurate reports. According to the Gospels, Jesus was supposed to be a public figure and well known. Given that fact, one should be able to presume that he would have been known to some historians and that they would make mention of him. Jesus of Nazareth may not have existed in actual history. Gospels are mythic tale, like walking on water, splitting of 5 loaves of bread and 2 fishes to feed 5,000, the healing of the sick and disabled, the calming of the storm at sea, the resurrection, and the claim to be the greatest of Yahweh's prophets. New Testament has Tales of virgin births, divine heroes, and miracle workers which were relatively common 2,000 years ago and simply did not mean what they do to us today. One such mythical hero was Mithras, a Persian deity, who was said to have been sent by a father-god to vanquish darkness and evil in the world. Born of a virgin (a birth witnessed only by shepherds), Mithras was described variously as the Way, the Truth, the Light, the Word, the Son of God, and the Good Shepherd and was often depicted carrying a lamb upon his shoulders. Followers of Mithras celebrated December 25 by ringing bells, singing hymns, Black Friday, commemorating Mithras' sacrificial bull slaying. Mithras could be the Jesus of today. The Christian church destroyed records of Jesus and at one time, anyone attempting to preserve writings which were hostile to Jesus was subject to the death penalty. The Church also falsified other records so that it unlikely we will ever be able to say with certainty that Jesus ever existed.

# posted by Anandkumar_V @ 3:34 AM 0 comments links to this post

Rahul Mahajan's predicament

05.06.06.

Rahul – what a fall.

Rahul Mahajan has fallen. We have all fallen one time or the other in our lives and often many times, but we were able to pick ourselves up and continue with life, largely because the public at large had not noticed us fall. We are largely anonymous folks. Unfortunately for Rahul Mahajan, whatever else he was destined to, he was not destined to be anonymous.

If he is a person who has had spiritual training, then right now (and he is on his way to the jail right now) he would in all probability be enjoying life to the brim, nothing really touching him – for spiritual training gives you the capacity to get up and continue walking after a fall, as if nothing had happened. The past is past, dead and gone. If I have broken your laws, then the ball is in your court. Right now I am not breaking any laws, am I? The only way a spiritual person might lose would be the shattered image the public may have of him. But then a spiritual person would not seek to form any image in the first place. So what shatters is an image formed by others, for which the spiritual person is not responsible.

But in all likelihood, Rahul Mahajan may be quite far from any spiritual attainment. He would not have got into this mess if he was onto spiritualism.

Let us say he was an addict. And Vivek Moitra was his Guru. The Guru has paid for it. Rahul may be sentenced to some months in jail on charges of consumption of drugs. But would other things come out? About homosexuality? Worse, about Pramod Mahajan’s supposed hidden millions? And each time Rahul is punched by the media, the BJP’s image takes a beating. BJP simply cannot escape Rahul’s predicaments.

Ban of cow slaughter

06.08.03

Ban on cow slaughter.

Is the ban on cow slaughter a great thing? Undoubtedly. The ban should eventually extend to all slaughter. That would lead to vegetarianism and non-violence as a way of life. But such thoughts are idealistic. Idealists are invariably jolted before long by reality. For reality says it takes all sorts to make the world and the spectrum of characters range from the crudest to the most subtle. Nevertheless, the fundamental job of a Government is to protect the lives of its citizens , which, it goes without saying, includes its denizens.

Scheme of living

29.09.03

How important is marriage in the scheme of living? The importance of not just marriage but of all activities in the scheme of living can be put in proper perspective only if we are aware of the purushartha or purpose of living. It might be said that the purpose of living could be any purpose we set for ourselves. But that reasoning would incorporate the follies of our ignorance and surely something as sacred as life would not have it’s living based on ignorance. Therefore, we come to the question of how to live a life that would do justice to the sacredness of life.

We might want to define life as an isolated phenomenon but since there is no life separate from our consciousness of it and a sterile definition of life would take us to the realm of academics and since consciousness is a subjective experience, our seeking to understand consciousness, identified as our forays into meditation, is the only process of defining life. Thus, it is apt to take recourse to the gleamings of the greatest of the meditators, the Rishis of yore, as a sounding board for our understanding of consciousness.

The sense of lack

20.10.03.

The sense of lack.

Whenever we want to do something, whatever, we can be sure that we are in lack of something. We would assume, thereby, that all action is in fulfilment of one lack or the other. Within the immediate range, this seems obvious. But speaking long term, the fulfilment we seek through action is a settling of our restless mind. Ironically, the restless mind is hardly settled by any action whatsoever. If action does not settle the mind, what would? To get the answer, we have to know what makes the mind restless. Is restlessness the true nature of the mind? No. Then what causes it? What causes a restless mind is our sense of incompleteness. We ever feel something is lacking so naturally the question is what is lacking? It appears this is the question we are born to answer in more ways than one. We imagine by doing this or getting that we would end our lack because we see only into the immediate vincity and imagine that our lack is material. Truly, our lack is caused by ignorance, which supposes we have a lack remedial this way or that. But the truth is we have no lack. We are complete. We feel negatively only because we are not in communion with our soul, wherein we shall experience the fullness of our being.

Soul

17.11.03.

Soul

The soul of a thing, of anything – would it be the same as the soul of every other thing? If we say ‘same’, then we also mean that there is only one soul, for what is same (in totality) cannot be dual. When we reduce anything to its soul, we are essentially identifying the substratum of creation. The substratum being the ocean, creation is the waves. Vedanta says the substratum is consciousness. Like the ocean and waves being one, there is nothing other than consciousness in this world. But if the oceans and waves are one, whence come its sense of difference? In other words, why does consciousness have its sense of difference? Because that is the very nature of consciousness. For it is the sense of difference that makes for consciousness. Otherwise consciousness becomes unconsciousness.

Why does the conscious become unconscious? For consciousness to be there must be unconsciousness. The unconscious is the seed, the conscious the plant. Thus, we see that it is best to say that the substratum of consciousness is the unconscious. Unconscious is Brahman. Consciousness is Ishwar. And consciousness, Ishwar, having being brought forth by the sense of difference, differentiates and thus creates. Consciousness is the capacity to differentiate. It is this capacity that leads to creativeness.

The unconscious is not devoid of consciousness. It is only a state when its capacity to differentiate and thus be conscious of itself is not used. You could say that consciousness is at rest. Why? So that it can create again.

When does the steam of creativity or differentiation run out? When does creation reach a state of Pralaya? Does it mean there is a limit to creation or differentiation or consciousness? The whole process is cyclic, where the end is only coming back to the beginning. The cycle is infinite.

Restless-restful syndrome

17.11.03

Restless-restful syndrome.

The culture of the restless and the culture of the restful – this is the basic antithesis in the experience of man.

Iraqi turbulence

10.05.04.

Iraqi turbulence

Iraq. National upsurges are quite in order and its consequences are normally limited to the nation in question. But what we have in Iraq is the Islamic element and therefore the Iraqi conflict resolution would have an effect on India with its huge Islamic community. Islamic activism led to the partition of India. Islamic activism can lead to turbulence the world over. Such turbulence can be quelled only if the source of the turbulence is correctly identified. The source is the Quran with its vision of the setting up of a world state based exclusively on its teachings.

The spiritual being

25.11.03.

“All man’s miseries derive from his not being able to sit quiet in a room alone.” [Blaise Pascal]

“Our greatest experiences are our quietest moments.” [Nietzsche]

“SILENCE AND SOLITUDE” SENTIMENTS OF fray Luis De Leon. “And so while others miserably pledge themselves to the pursuit of ambition and brief power – I will be stretched out in the shade, singing.”