Supernatural Preface
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Supernatural Sides to Life
Fairly Shocking Propaganda Favoured by Repetition
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| [See larger photo] |
Faltu ra, faltu riltu raltu ra.Certain images and descriptive adjectives abound according to conventions. Thus white is milk white, snow white, and lily white, but not tooth white. Compare the Song of Solomon: "Your teeth are like a flock of sheep just shorn" [4:2; 6:6]. Big teeth - and ugh!
The ballads glorify certain people and virtues like boldness, and work as propaganda that benefits nobility and famous guys but seldom and never cotters and honest working people. There is that profile. The themes include the fates of sweethearts and love affairs. Often they have a tragic and romantic outcome. There are slain lovers and shrewish mothers-in-law, gullible happy couples, murders and other crimes.
In some of the ballads the supernatural is worked into the action by enchantments, spells and the art of dreaming, perhaps. Some heroines get abducted and bewitched by the netherworld people, the hill-folk underground, Supernatural elements are found all through balladry [Ebu "ballad"].
Gurus of Self-Realization Fellowship (SRF) are presented as supernatural beings too, but not only they - you yourself are a supernatural one, is part of Yogananda's teachings. And, by the way, Jesus said to angry ones who would stone him, "You are gods?" [John 10:34-36]. There are also ghosts:
Who are the Ghosts?
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| A ghostly Donald Duck - his wings are hands. |
A Summary of Yogananda's Hollywood Talk on Ghosts
There is another world, and those who live in it, are "ghosts". There are also tramp souls who occasionally succeed in entering and taking possession of an unstable and weakened person's body and mind. But such tramp souls cannot stand the high vibration of Giant Mind deep inside, that is Essence, also called spirituality. Therefore, attune inwards to get it better.When you die, you may wake up inwardly and see that you are encased in a luminous body, one of light and energy (the astral body), and may roam around. You rejoice to find that you can hear, you can see, you can touch, and that your new form has no bones and no flesh that can be hurt. Good behaviour on earth draws one to one of the higher spheres of light, peace, and joy. Evil deeds attract one to a lower, dark sphere. Further, "If you concentrate deeply at the spiritual eye you can view with inner vision that luminous world in which are living all the souls who have gone on to the astral plane," says Yogananda.
Essentially we are mind-and-body encased souls that are clothed with central functionings on the mind level, an emotial gamut, and the physical body. The way inwards is a way out too. Then,
When souls shed the astral body and go into a mental form in the causal [mental] world [level of being] they are not non-entities, but they do become truly invisible. When all causal desires are overcome, one becomes a liberated or free soul.Here comes the clou:
Before you took on this physical form you were a ghost, and when you die you will become a ghost again. We are also ghosts when we sleep, for in sleep we are not aware of ourselves as a physical body at all. Since you are a ghost when you are asleep, and you will be one after death, why be afraid of ghosts? . . . that is what you are going to be.The biography Paramhansa Swami Yogananda [Psy] divulges how Yogananda feared ghosts himself.
Added Yogananda Sayings
At night and when we die we become ghosts. We must learn to know our ghostly nature, our invisible, powerful nature." [Yogananda, Ak 269-82, passim]
Your will is invisible, your central sense of "I" and meanings, all the higher aspects of yourself too; invisible to ordinary vision, but still exist. "Ghost" is not a perfect term for these sides of ourselves, but if it serves to take your fear away or tone it down: good. Yogananda concurs:Your being has two sides - one visible, the other invisible. [Yogananda, Ak 167]The invisible man within is the real one. [Yogananda, Ak 261]
The visible man is of little importance; the invisible self, or soul, is of utmost importance. [Yogananda, Ak 261]
You have invisible organs . . . These parts - tissues of light and energy - constitute the astral body of the invisible man. [Yogananda, Ak 261-62]
The invisible astral body . . . can hear what the physical ears cannot hear, and see what the physical eyes cannot see. It can also smell, taste, and touch objects far beyond the range of the physical senses . . . You can make it large or small at will. [Yogananda, Ak 262]
Supernatural Sheep Coming
As the ark was moved into Solomon's Temple, the ark that soon disappeared, so many sheep were slaughtered in the dedication ceremony that it was unrecordable or unaccountable, or 120.000 sheep along with goats, says the Bible in two books. The amount of slaughter increased "to honour" God and the king's edifice.[cf 1 Kings 8:5,63; 2 Chronicles 5:6; 7:5; 15:11]From this period or earlier sheep are at times used to mean people. "I saw all Israel scattered on the hills like sheep without a shepherd, and the Lord said, "These people have no master. Let each one go home in peace.'" [1 Kings 22:17] One day when David had done something regrettable, he wanted God to execute his family members to atone for it, as if they had anything to do with it. David said, "I am the one who has sinned and done wrong. These are but sheep. What have they done? Lord my God, let your hand fall on me and my family, but do not let this plague remain on your people." [1 Chronicles 21:17]. In the biblical Psalms [44:11,22; 49:14; 74:1; 78:52 ff; 78:71-72] there are memorable words, including, "Help us, God . . . Pay back into the laps of our neighbours seven times the reproach they have hurled at you . . . Then we your people, the sheep of your pasture, will praise you forever [Emphasis added]." Bargaining. Here Jehovah is a shepherd and his people are sheep. The metaphor did not start with Jesus.
Compare Psalm 100:3; 119:75; Isaiah 53:6-7 too. Further down in Isaiah 53 it says it "was the Lord's will to crush him" and make "his life a guilt offering". Yet this one would see his offspring and prolong his days [v. 10]. Who was he? Jesus did not have offspring we know of. But Mr. X had offspring and prolonged days. [Isaiah 53:1-12, passim]
He was later identified by Christians as Jesus, who played a double role of being a shepherd and a sheep combined. He was to be butchered (sacrificed). Later still, he was a supernatural sheep that was like a lion - [cf John 1:29, 36; Revelation 5 etc.]
Hearing every shark, pollock, lobster, crab, shellfish, and shrimp singing underwater praise of the Lamb requires heightened hearing one may add to the nonsense."See, the Lion has triumphed. He is able to open the scroll and its seven seals."
Then I saw a Lamb. [Revel 5:12]
Then I heard every creature . . . singing: "To the Lamb be praise and honour and glory and power, for ever and ever!" [Revel 5:5-14, passim - retold]
Then "I" of the story watched as the Lamb opened the first of the seven seals. It could perhaps scratch the seals off with its claws or lick them off with its tongue. Yogananda has tried to interpret the Revelation in a yoga light. One should perhaps note here that Genesis says man is the crown of creation, made on the seventh day and after the animals were made:
In spite of this a sacrificed lamb with seven horns and seven eyes (mutant look), took over. Every creature sang loud and clear in honour of it, such as: "To the Lamb be praise and honour and glory and power, for ever and ever!" [Revelation 5:13]. If sheep could but read, these tidings would boost their self-esteem, is the bet: Better than man, the New Testament insists, and finally.
Sheep Summary
What about other animals to be slaughtered - pigs, for example? A boar is God (Vishnu) in Vishnuism, and one of the first incarnations of God.Apropos
Buddha's existential "Avoid killing" has a biblical counterpart in "I desire mercy, not sacrifice." [Hosea 6:6], repeated by Jesus with the addition that if the meaning was understood, people would not have condemned the innocent [Matthew 12:7].Instead the Bible is filled with victimising and fiendishness. By contrast, Buddha teaches a Middle Path, "free from pain and torture, from groaning and suffering". In it, right understanding and mindedness together are wisdom; right speech, action and living are morality; and right effort, attentiveness and meditation are "concentration".
Right action is abstaining from killing; abstaining from stealing (etc.), and should go along with right understanding and attentiveness.
It helps to accommodate to Gautama Buddha's founding teachings; it minimises sufferings and assists good living basically. You may be able to use surplus for higher endeavours, for example later in life. Joy of life is to be kept and helped by right living - as mapped out in some of the first extant scriptures in the Pali Canon. There is no great need for any sacrifice if such basics are adhered to. One should be qualified for one's attainments, not just sacrifice others for them. That is a stand to bear in mind.
It also matters to see the difference between seeking atonement by abusing victims, and between partial or complete yogic self-sacrifice. The Bhagavad Gita says that
Some again offer wealth, austerity and Yoga as sacrifice, while the ascetics of self-restraint and rigid vows offer study of scriptures and knowledge as sacrifice. Others offer as sacrifice the outgoing breath in the incoming, and the incoming in the outgoing, restraining the courses of the outgoing and the incoming breaths, solely absorbed in the restraint of the breath . . . This world is not for the man who does not perform sacrifice . . . Superior is wisdom-sacrifice to sacrifice with objects . . . All actions in their entirety . . . culminate in knowledge! . . . among sacrifices I am the sacrifice of silent repetition. [Bhagavad Gita 4:28-29, 31, 33; 10:25 etc.]We observe that silent repetition [of mantras, words of power] and wisdom are "kings" of sacrifices. Sacrifice is central in Hinduism as in old Judaism, but Hinduism has a broader outlook that encompasses transcendental explanations.
Supernatural Beings Abound
In Western Traditions many supernatural beings have wings.From ancient Greece and onward, in the West the supernatural beings are depicted with wings. The God Mercury of ancient Greece has winged feet, for example. He is a messenger. To be a messenger is the task of an angel too. And angels have wings, some are like goose feathers, others like duck feathers. There are many sorts. In art, some have only heads with wings, for example.
Interestingly, angels are depicted with clothes too, even though "You cannot take it with you", is often fored against hoarding things here on the material plane. Egyptian pharaos and many leaders, for example in China, disregarded that.
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| Angel boys with wings by Raphael (Raffaello Sanzio, 1483-1520). |
Hence, the goose wings that many angels are painted to have, and the gowns of angels are "angel fashions according to earthly painters."
Nothing is impossible with God, said an angel to Mary.Did she lower herself to get pregnant by an angel? That would be bad. Man was made a little bit better than the angels, says the Old and New Testament [Hebr 2:6-8; Psalm 8:4-6]. But Joseph was kind enough to marry her to save her from the disgrace of being pregnant outside wedlock. May it also be pointed out that Jesus did not "reign over the house of Jacob forever". That "house" had him executed; such was his reigning. Even the people in his home town took offense at him [Matthew 13:57; Mark 6:3], so that one day "All the people in the synagogue were furious [and] got up, drove him out of the town, and took him to the brow of the hill on which the town was built, in order to throw him down the cliff." [Luke 4:29] His own relatives were "on their side" too. The relations were strained.
"I am the Lord's servant," Mary answered. [Luke 1:26-38, passim]
Nine levels or groups of angels in In Christian angelology rest on tales of ancient Hebrews, and are from the top: seraphim, cherubim, thrones, lordships, powers, authorities, mights, archangels, and ordinary angels. Angels are considered "functional extensions of the divine will" and sometimes intervene in human affairs. The angel who wrestled with the patriarch Jacob had the form of a man (so it was a man?). Between the 200s BC and 200s AD the spiritual nature of the angels was emphasised. Angels of the two highest orders, the seraphim and cherubim, were described as winged ones. Seraphim have two or three pairs of wings - how impossible their bodies may be, accordingly. Wings need special bones, muscles, and very light weight to work. Wings attached to various beings symbolises their invisible and spiritual nature. This practice can be traced back to ancient Egyptians. They represent the sun-god Horus of Edfu as a winged disk. But Christianity traditionally uses winged human figures with gowns on. And the Church Father Augustine (354-430) states that the etheral-bodied angels can assume material bodies, wherever he got that from.
Extra hands
In Indian art there are supernaturals with extra hands, typically.In yoga, both Buddhist Yoga and Hindu Yoga, we are presented with supernatural beings too. Angels are seldom spoken of. In the Trantric arts and Tantra-inspired arts the ordinarily invisible beings, "shining ones", devas, are represented in art otherwise. They are depicted with impossibly added hands to represent varios functions they have or are accomplished in. Another sort of symbology is involved, then. The added hands are like humanly impossible angel wings: bones, sinews, and muscles are absent or very dysfunctional, so whatever extras you find depicted, are fairly unfit for use.
Depiction of supernatural elements can be part of art, or a lila (Game). They serve accommodations among commoners more often than not, or were so intended.
Paramahansa Explained
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| Hansa means duck! |
"Hansa . . . means any kind of goose or duck [Ma 30n]." [LINK]A poem by Matthew Arnold enlarges the subject for us:
Let the long contention cease!Thus, the Sanskrit word hansa, also spelled hamsa, can mean duck, goose, and swan, because people did not discern a lot among these birds in the old times.
Geese are swans, and swans are geese.
- Matthew Arnold, "The Last Word"
Now, how is the param(a)hansa? The added Sanskrit word param(a) means supreme. Hence: supreme duck, or supreme goose, and supreme swan. Is that all there is to it? Far from it. The Indian mind is good at abstracting: the words have got religious meanings too. A hansa - in addition to being a duck, goose or swan, has got religious-mythological meaning, and is also a religious fellow, a monk. The idea is he can fly high, that is, fly inwards in contemplation. This makes him valuable.
In Hindu mythology the supreme swan (paramahansa) is marked by the ability to drink only the milk out of a mixture of milk and water, and thus is a symbol of supreme discernment, if not impossible discernment - And a "perfected monk" is a param(a)hansa. The perfected monk, how is he? There are many definitions of it in yoga literature. Not everyone sees eye to eye on this either.
The paramhansa has been explained by paramahansas too. "The Paramahamsa is like a five year old child. He sees everything filled with consciousness," says Paramahansa Ramakrishna in Tales and Parables of Sri Ramakrishna. [Tas 207]
Dr. Paul Deussen has translated many upanishads, and one of them is the "Hamsa Upanishad". It contains food for thought too. [So].
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Literature
Ak: Yogananda, Paramahansa. Man's Eternal Quest. 2nd ed. Los Angeles: Self-Realization Fellowship, 1982.
Ebu: Encyclopaedia Britannica. Encyclopaedia Britannica 2009 Ultimate Reference Suite DVD. London: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2009.
Ma: Pargiter, Frederick Eden, trans. Markandeya Purana. Calcutta: The Asiatic Society, 1904.
Psy: Dasgupta, Sailendra. Paramhansa Swami Yogananda: Life-portrait and Reminiscences. Portland: Yoga Niketan. 2006. Online pdf. www.yoganiketan.net
So: Deussen, Paul, trans. Sixty Upanishads of the Veda, Vols 1-2. Varanasi: Banarsidass, 1980.
Tas: Ramakrishna. Tales and Parables of Sri Ramakrishna. 5th ed. Madras: Ramakrishna Math, 1974.
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