From my blog post of Dec 2, 2014
Altruism vs. Selfishness?
This gets me all excited. This essay is a teaser of what's to come. I'm working on an essay, "Money: the House Divided", showing how the money mentality skews our vision of the universe into divisions and duality, a lack of realization of the oneness of all things. One example is in the concepts of altruism and selfishness. In our minds, it's either one or the other, altruism or selfishness. We think of altruism and selfishness as separate things.
We think of altruism as selfless sacrifice for others. We think of selfishness as serving the self at the expense of others. But look at the reality of a living body.
If your left hand scratches an itch your right cheek, is your left hand being selfish or is it being altruistic? Does your left hand expect any kind of payment, any kind of reward, by scratching your right cheek? Herein lies the philosophy of living without money or conscious barter. Freely give, freely receive, expecting nothing in return, because you realize the whole universe is one body. Anything else is delusion.
Does a cell in your body bring hurt or harm to the whole body if it hurts itself? Does a cell in your body help or harm itself by bringing assistance and health to a neighboring cell? To help others is to help the self. To help the self is to help others. This is basic life, 101.
You cannot love the Whole without loving your neighbor, and you cannot love your neighbor without loving your self. And you cannot love your self without loving the Whole and loving your neighbor. Notice how this is the very basic fundamental of both Judaism and Christianity, as well as Hinduism.
The Greatest "Commandment"
This concept of the Greatest Commandment being the fundamental of both Judaism and Christianity is so fundamental, few really think about it, and, ironically, it has become lost to "fundamentalists,"
for it is also fundamentally Hindu at its core.
Long before the man Jesus (Yeshua) is said to be born, some clever Jewish rabbi, whoever she or he was, found something interesting in the Torah (books of Moses) about the Greatest Commandment.
The Torah states,
Hear, O Israel: The Yahweh our Elohim, Yahweh is One! You shall love Yahweh your Elohim with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength.
(Deuteronomy 6:4-5)
The first phrase starting with the Shema, "Hear, O Israel..." is pointing out something profound at the heart of Monotheism. Elohim is translated as the singular "God" in English Bibles, but it literally means the plural "Gods." And Yahweh means eternal being.
Hear, O Israel, Eternal Being, our Gods, Eternal Being is One!
(Hebrew reads right to left)
The point is not to say there is one God above all others, but that all gods are One!
To say there is one God above all others is to say there is a reality of separate gods,
which appeals to the fanatical, divisive, war-mongering fanatic.
To say, as this Shema states, that all gods are One, is to appeal to the spirit of love and inclusion.
Now some rabbi looked further at this and wondered, how can you love this One with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength and have room to love anybody else, unless there is nobody else? This commandment absolutely makes no room to love anybody else!
Then this rabbi wanted to bring this concept to everyone's attention, so found another similar commandment in the Torah, in Leviticus:
You shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Yahweh.
(Leviticus 19:18)
And he squished this "love your neighbor as yourself" commandment in Leviticus up against the "love Yahweh" commandment in Deuteronomy to point out this blatant anomaly:
Hear, O Israel, Eternal Being, our Gods, Eternal Being is One! You shall love Eternal Being your Gods with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength.
You shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am Eternal Being.
(Deuteronomy 6:4-5 together with Leviticus 19:18)
Hear, O Israel, because I'm pointing out something you have been deaf to!
What you see as many is One!
And you shall love this One
with all your heart
with all your soul,
with all your strength.
Your love must be for One and no other, never divided, not adulterous.
How can you love your neighbor and love yourself if they are separate beings from the One?
If they are separate beings, love is impossible!
This is the Holy Trinity, and the Trinity is One:
The Whole, Your Neighbor, Yourself.
The Whole is the Source, the Parent, of all.
All credit goes to the Whole (Hallelujah means "all credit to Jah").
No particular can do anything of itself, but all comes from the Whole. ("I can do nothing of myself.")
Your Neighbor is Christ himself.
If you don't see this, you do not accept Christ. ("I was hungry and you did not feed me.")
Loving your neighbor, as yourself, is the way, the truth, and the life. There is no other way to loving the Whole. I Am who I Am, the Way, the Truth, and the Life.
Your true self is the Holy Spirit, God within, "the hope of glory."
This is fundamental Christianity, and it is fundamental Bible.
The Yoga of Life
Here is another scripture I love bringing up, because "fundamentalists" won't touch it with a 10-foot pole:
I [the Son of David] said in my heart,
"Concerning the condition of the sons of men,
God tests them,
that they may see that they themselves are animals."
For what happens to the sons of men also happens to animals;
One Thing befalls them:
as one dies, so dies the other.
Surely, they all have One Spirit [רוּחַ ruach];
man has no advantage over animals,
for all is emptiness.
All go to one place:
all are from the dust,
and all return to dust.
(Ecclesiastes 3:18-20)
All have One Spirit. The Hebrew word here is רוּחַ (ruach), which means Spirit or Breath, the same word translated as Holy Spirit in the Hebrew Bible. The Sanskrit word for Spirit or Breath is Atman, the same word used in the Baghavad Gita to refer to the Life Spirit, in every living creature. Atman is often translated as the Self in the Baghavad Gita and the other Hindu scriptures:
With the heart concentrated by Yoga,*
with the eye of evenness for all things,
he beholds the Self [Atman] in all beings
and all beings in the Self [Atman].
He who sees Me in all things,
he never becomes separated from Me, and sees all things in Me,
nor do I become separated from him.
He who being established in unity,
worships Me, who am dwelling in all beings,
whatever his mode of life, that Yogi abides in Me.
He who judges of pleasure or pain everywhere,
by the same standard as he applies to himself,
that Yogi, O Arjuna, is regarded as the highest.
(Baghavad Gita 6:29-32)
*(Yoga, by the way, means all spiritual practice, a way of life, which may or may not include special physical excercises. Westerners and pop gurus have made it into an excercise you do on weekends and after work.)
And Gautama Buddha stated:
most people never see this reality because they attach to the material aspect of the world.
Illusions of self and other fill their vision.
--Gautama Buddha
Notice how Jesus himself is recorded as saying to his own people, when they condemned him for calling himself Son of God:
“Is it not written in your law, ‘I said, “You are gods”? (John 10:34)
He was quoting from the Psalms:
Now Jesus is calling his own people Elohim! Now it's all becoming clear, huh?
Yes, Jesus taught nothing new, but reminded those of his own Jewish faith of their own fundamental religion, pointing out these two Great Commandments as One:
Notice how, in the Mark passage, he and a Jewish scribe are conversing in full agreement about the Greatest Commandment, and the Jewish scribe confirms what Jesus says, then takes it farther to this deepest fundamental of Judaism and Hinduism that I have just pointed out above:
So the scribe said to Him,
"Well said, Teacher. You have spoken the truth,
for there is one God,
and there is no other but He.
And to love Him with all the heart,
with all the understanding,
with all the soul,
and with all the strength,
and to love one's neighbor as oneself,
is more than all the whole burnt offerings and sacrifices."
(Mark 12:32-33)
Notice how he is pointing out what is stated in the Torah and the Prophets, which literally says there is nobody and nothing else but God. All is One!
What would make "fundamentalists" purposefully skirt around and deny these most basic fundamentals of their own religion?
Now that's the mystery.
God is playing hide and seek with Herself,
Her Atman.
Holy Spirit,
the Hidden Feminine.
Now, that's a teaser for essays I'm working on, essays to come, Insh'Allah.
I said, “You are Gods [Elohim],
And all of you are children of the Most High.
(Psalm 82:6)
Hear, O Israel: The Yahweh our Elohim, Yahweh is One! You shall love Yahweh your Elohim with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength.
(Deuteronomy 6:4-5)