The Thanksgiving Hymns
Presented on: Tuesday, June 6, 1989
Presented by: Roger Weir
Dead Sea Scrolls
Presentation 10 of 15
Thanksgiving Hymns
Presented by Roger Weir
Tuesday, June 6, 1989
Transcript:
For all of those who are listening exclusively by tape, the translation that I'm going to use is not in The Dead Sea Scrolls in English. The Dead Sea Scrolls in English translation I've found is stilted and not suitable for the kinds of consideration that we're expecting from ourselves. So, I'm using the DuPont Sommer translation, made originally into French and then translated back into English. But his double translation is better than the Vermes for this particular Dead Sea Scroll.
This is the most powerful of all of the Dead Sea Scrolls. This is The Thanksgiving Hymns. And in two different caves at Qumran seven copies of this were found. Showing that this was one of the major books for the entire sect of the Essenes. The author can be none other than the founder of the Quran community, the Teacher of Righteousness. Whose personal name and true name is unknown and not likely to be known. the figure embodies the mysterious person archetype to a fullness not found previously. And so just alluding to him as the Teacher of Righteousness is sufficient really.
There are Pythagorean tones throughout The Hymn Scroll. And especially in the very first hymn which DuPont Sommer designates as Hymn A. And there is a quotation here, To the everlasting spirits and their dominions that thou has entrusted the heavenly lights according to their mysterious laws. The stars according to the paths which they follow. And so on. Everything coordinated by mysterious laws. this is the Pythagorean sense. And in fact, DuPont Sommer picks it out and is able to give us in several footnotes on page 204 of his book, An allusion to poetry and music and their subjection to the laws of measure and harmony. The psalmist finds their origin and God. This passage may be compared with Pythagorean speculation on the subject of numbers and a harmony.
So that we have a mixture of a taste for sacred song and for the content of sacred song to have a kind of numerical correspondence. And for all of this to be attuned to a universal set of laws and correspondences. And this entire sequence of correlation is available for human appreciation only by initiation into a secret inner dimension. And that the initiation into the secret inner dimension is the key to unveiling or unraveling the entire meaning. In other words, there is no meaning that can be established with any certainty short of the whole. And it's like either confusion or complete realization. And this is a very peculiar tone.
Notice also that this is not traditional in Judaism. In Judaism the tradition was always that man schools himself according to the Torah. And by hearing the in public establishes your viability as a human being, as a Jew, and as a aspiring good person. But The Thanksgiving Hymns of The Dead Sea Scrolls establishes almost a diametrically opposite criteria for wisdom. Instead of public, it is secret. instead of in terms of the Torah, it is the small inner voice within. And instead of there being a certainty of the future based on the past, there is a realization that the past has been completely misunderstood. and the future can only be lived by someone who is fully present now. For someone who is not able to be fully present now there is no future.
And so, we find a very peculiar kind of the inversion of traditional Judaism. And in fact, the Teacher of Righteousness in his lifetime was scorned by all but just a few handfuls of individuals. Not just scorned by the powers that be, the authorities, the traditional Orthodox religion against which he rebelled and withdrew. But also, within the Essene community itself after it had been established, after it had been going, there was again at a second period a revulsion against the Teacher of Righteousness and he was imprisoned and jailed. And we will if we can get to it find his own account in very poignant poetry of all of these events.
Now Dupont Sommer points out that we do not have all of the hymns. We have almost complete texts for twenty hymns. we have partial texts for another twenty, making forty hymns. And there are over 66 fragment extant. So that if we had the entire Thanksgiving Hymns it might be somewhere in the 75-85 perhaps 95 hymn range.
Now there are a hundred and fifty-one Psalms. In tradition there were 150 but actually
there are 151. The Dead Sea Scroll Thanksgiving Hymns are a replacement of the Psalms with the new emphasis. Theyre psalms for the New Covenant. So that the Teacher of Righteousness uses the Psalms of David as a pattern to begin with but also as a foil against which to make differentiations and distinction. His favorite books in The Old Testament of the two great prophets Ezekiel and are, Jeremiah and Isaiah. There's not too much Ezekiel in here.
Jeremiah in particular because Jeremiah was in exile in Egypt. That is during the Babylonian captivity he was not captured by the Neo-Babylonians, but he was taken unwillingly by his own congregation. Jeremiah was captured by Jews and taken into exile in Egypt in protective custody for his own good. And Jeremiah in his book said, In consequence of this travesty of the people who should be listening to a prophet of God, instead they have kidnapped him against his will. Therefore, the whole covenantal tradition has been abrogated. and that God will make a new kind of covenant with whatever remnant is left over at the end of an exile period. and that this new covenant instead of being a Torah in words on stone exteriorly, will be words written on the heart and in the mind of select individuals. So that Jeremiah prophesized an internal covenant, that the old external Torah is now abrogated.
And in fact, the Teacher of Righteousness in his hymns uses the plural and says there have been many covenants that God has now set aside. But that God is making a new covenant and that this one has a very special flavor. It has an eternal flavor. That the past covenants had been covenants have been passed on from generation to generation. From good man to good man. all of those covenants are now set aside. They are no longer in force. They are no longer viable. And that there is a new covenant coming. a new, a new covenant which will be eternal, a final one. One that will never be abrogated. before God's Word was given to man through prophets. and from prophets passed on to man in a second hand, sometimes a third hand fashioned. The new covenant will be direct from God to the person. No middle person. And instead of the words being for the outer ear, the new covenants word is for the inner mind. The inner heart.
Now in the Dupont Sommer translation, he sets aside 32 hymns, which he gives letter designations. Hymn A, Hymn B and he goes on. And finally uses A Prime, B Prime and so forth. The title for the whole collection in his translation is called The Hymn Scroll but it's generally referred to as The Thanksgiving Hymns. And in Vermes they are called The Thanksgiving Hymns. Their designation is 1QH. In other words, it's the very first manuscript in importance from Qumran in this genre. The Hebrew word, which is used again and again in the actual manuscript for the collection is jota yo (sp?). And that word has come down in English from Renaissance times as a variant. In English, it's the word is hoodia (sp?), which means this day. It means these are sacred songs for this day. And in our time, in the 20th century, the great English composer Ray Vaughan Williams orchestrated a number of these kinds of hymns and called it hoodia. And I have a record of it here on angel recordings, which you can hear sometime.
What is of though is that the Greek word for this kind of collection of this material, the Greek word is Eucharist. I mean to say to you that the original term Eucharist is not a sacramental meal in a high church ceremony. The original sacrament is a collection of sacred hymns from the inner self. God's speech to the person interiorly. And those songs, those hymns, offered up for the edification in the help of others, others in the community in particular. That is the original Eucharist. for your information the, the kind of Eucharistic theatrics that are common now were developed in the High Middle Ages. In the 12th or 13th century. Before that there was no Eucharist as you would know it now.
So, the Eucharist, the hoodia, The Thanksgiving Hymns. This is a collection. And they are in fact then New Covenant Psalms. Theyre Psalms for a new covenant. They are, they are meant to be psalms in the sense and it appears several times in the in the collection. There are to be lutes. There are to be flutes. There are to be rhythmic instruments. These are to be sung. They are in a minimal sense to be intoned in a kind of a musicality. But the indication is very clear that they should be sung. And so, they are sacred songs of the heart. and they are the foundation, the foundation line for the new reality. That is to say, by participating in making sacred songs in this building this foundation line. And once that foundation line is there you can then build the building of your soul, of your psyche. And as one builds upon this foundation of being able to sing your own sacred songs to the community. As you build your psyche up. The Greek word for soul is psyche. As you build your psyche up there is a penetration, which the Teacher of Righteousness calls the root. And when the psyche has been built to a certain fineness the root has penetrated down to an, a subterranean stream. This subterranean stream is a presence of God Himself. No middle person. The human being who is able to branch out with this kind of growth of soul and to put this tap root down to the buried stream of God, that person then is a tree of life. and such a person has reestablished themselves in Eden. The missing tree is you who have amplified and deepened yourself in this way, how you are now, that personal space is Eden. Is in the kingdom.
So, you can see that this was not just a surface methodology but was the prime method for soul growth and contact of the divine. So that the making of sacred hymns replaced the hearing of a prose Torah. The making of a sacred poem became a displacement for the rote learning of prose rules. So, there is a whole different mentality that comes out of this.
Notice that the focus in the rules is on authority. And the focus in the New Covenant is on knowledge. Knowledge displaces authority. And again, and again the Teacher of Righteousness assures us that he speaks from personal knowledge and from personal experience. That this is in fact the way.
What occurs in Hymn A is the stress here then, that in the past there was a plan and now that plan is transformed into a pattern. What was a designed plan before, the Torah, the law is now a pattern. You can live by a plan, but you must live the pattern. So, the emphasis is on actual, your actual doing it. your actual participation. Your actual experience. It's not what you have heard but is what you are doing. Do not be just hearers of the word but be doers also. And that kind of emphasis.
And here the teacher of righteousness says,
It is thou who has spread out the heavens. For thy glory has created all their hosts according to thy will. Together with the mighty winds according to the laws which governed them. Before they became thine angels of holiness. And to the everlasting spirits in their dominions, has thou entrusted the heavenly lights according to their mysterious laws. The stars according to the paths which they follow. Clouds and the rain according to the office they fulfill. The thunderbolt and lightnings according to the service appointed unto them. And the providential reservoirs according to their functions. Then that snow and hailstones all according to their mysterious laws.
That is to say the Torah is no longer a sociological document with theological implications but is now the very face of nature. The very existential participation of life as the synthesizing thread in nature. Our life lived brings the pattern of nature into a cosmos.
And you can recognize them as the deep Pythagorean residence. And a deep the Hermetic background. Judaism has been enlarged and turned inside out. This experience I might point out to you most of you recognize is a shamanic experience. To be turned inside out means
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that your skeleton now is on the outside. But if you have lived with a skeleton of laws on the outside, the Torah on the outside, if you are turned inside out the Torah now inside. So, it's an obverse shamanism.
So, the law, the Torah, now is an interior presence. And your only access to it is to be able to meditatively contemplatively go and find it within yourself. This, and for this method the Archimedean screw being able to penetrate in is the ability to bring language in sacred poetry out. To the extent that you can bring sacred poetry out, you are able to penetrate to a vision within. The two are definitely correlated together. The more one can sing the praises of God, the more one can actually experience that grace. The term is used by the Teacher of Righteousness many times.
So that we have a quotation from Monsieur Dupont Sommer, But despite the damage inflicted by time there is no doubt that this scroll is the jewel of all the mystical literature from Qumran. It seems to have been one of the classic and most highly venerated books of the sect. in fact we learn from the scroll of The War Rule. That's The War of the Sons of Light Against the Sons of Darkness. That in the grave and solemn hours immediately preceding the final battle, Armageddon against Belial the liar and all his fiends. The high priest was to read the prayer in time of war as well as the words of the hymns from the thanksgiving. So that these were in fact not only the training to develop the soul and to persevere in your contact with God, but that at some historical time this form must be completed. You must have grown into the tree of life. Because there is a time coming. There is a historical threshold coming. The end of days. Judgment Day. And that at that time who is alive shall live forever and who is dead will be gone. And so, there is this kind of a pressure. There's this kind of an honest constantly in the Teacher of Righteousness.
I must say that as far as the dates go the Hymns of the scrolls are probably from the late 160s B.C. and the 150s B.C. I would think that we would be hard-pressed to go much into the 140s but it could possibly have gone to about 140 B.C. So that we're dealing with something that was about 170 to 180 years before Jesus' public mission. That is to say if we're living in the 1980s now, we're speaking of something that might have occurred to us in the first decade of the 1800s. So that the Teacher of Righteousness would have been to Jesus's time what Jefferson is to our time. about that kind of relationship. Not quite ancient but certainly old. Venerable but just barely still able to be held in contact. One would have had to have studied to become familiar with it.
And in fact, we can see from The Thanksgiving Hymns that even in his own lifetime there was already a tendency to misunderstand. Because those individuals who think that their soul is growing. Who imagined that they're experiencing the presence of God. Who do not have the real experience but have a surrogate of it. An imitation of it. are unable to tell the difference. And slowly, inexorably, as we would say today subconsciously, they slide back into a parallel conception that what they are after is a renewal of the Old Covenant. And not the institution of a new covenant. So that slowly askew comes into the Essene community. In time and it's like it almost always happened in institutional forms of personal discovery. You come up with a surrogate form and not the experience. Instead of the existential radicalism one comes up with a kind of a sociology of knowledge. Which sounds dazzling and seems like you're doing something different. And you are. You're doing a different version of what had been before. You're adjusting instead of curing. And then, and thus one slides back into accepting improvement and not truth. And you can see that this is exactly what happened.
And so, by the time of Jesus understanding quite brilliantly what had happened, he simply declares that all of the, all of the old has been fulfilled. That there's no renewing of it left any longer.
Now the hymns themselves show a great diversity in forms and types. They're not all the same. Each hymn seems to be a little bit different. some of them are very long. Some of them are very short. Some of them are quite developed. some of them have odd kinds of snappy qualities to them. The lyricism draws its inspiration not only from the psalms, but also then from Jeremiah and Jeremiah's poetry, The Lamentations and from The Book of Job.
Now a DuPont Sommer puts in Job here as a source. but as you're familiar with I have identified I think thoroughly conclusively that The Book of Job was written by the teacher of righteousness. Just as The Book of Daniel was. And that the themes of Daniel and the themes of Job reoccur all through The Thanksgiving Hymns in The Dead Sea Scroll. I have, I didn't have time to Xerox off for you. But I've made a complete Xerox of the complete fifty pages of the scrolls. And done line by line annotation for you. And I hope by next Tuesday to be able to give you each a copy of this, so that you can see what an incredible complexity there is. And there might be 50 references showing that these lines are sympathetic echoes to lines in The Book of Job. Or these themes are from Daniel and reoccur here. these images occur in Job constantly, their characteristic. These phrases are exactly the phrases that one finds in The Book of Job. These concerns these ideas are the same why are there so many not a question of an author being influenced by a book but of the author sharing a theme with his earlier composition he brings out in the very first him two qualities of human life that had not been appreciated fully before why is that man has a spirit a holy spirit and that this holy spirit is alive in man. And if a human being is able to practice the holy spirit shines brighter. Is a correlation. So that one can become educated. The whole emphasis on gnosis or knowledge is that one can learn.
And what The Thanksgiving Hymns assure us is that the first thing to learn is to learn how to learn. Once you learn how to learn you can then teach yourself. And the veracity and the certainty comes most poignantly because you yourself know that you have done this right. You have done this and here is the result in you. No one else knows. This is the secret knowledge. This is the secret wisdom. Also, who is the officiating Hierophant? Who is the person who's doing the initiating? Your integrity by continuing to learn and by using your knowledge of how to learn. And so, you can see that the individual has a tremendous new quality. A new potential. A radiance. Possibility.
The second radical introduction is the visitation. The idea of God making visitations. Visitations to the individual within. Coming in a presence within. One is not seen an idea. One is not picturing an image. One is experiencing a visitation of God.
Later on, in the scrolls Teacher of Righteousness puts out a fervent hope that there will be in fact an ever-lasting visitation. That God will come in a way that he never again will. Why? because the heaven where he is will be here in such a way that the kingdom will be here. Heaven will be here.
So that there is a, in the very first hymn there's a sense of God's inner coming to the individual. And some 40 pages later in The Dead Sea Scrolls, The Thanksgiving Hymns he is the sense that there is coming a day of eternal visitation when God will come not to leave back. He will come and bring his home. And what will be his house? The trees of life those individuals will be the home. It'll be the sacred grove where his presence abides.
And so, the Teacher of Righteousness tells us, These things I have known because of thine understanding. How do I know this? I know this through your understanding. God's understanding. He speaks openly to God.
He says because of your understanding meaning that he has learned to think with God's mind. How has he learned to think with Gods mind? A technique again of amplification. Of acquainting oneself with ever-increasing capacities of expression. With learning how to make language sing. And by expanding these capacities one opens oneself from the narrowness that one was and keeps opening and opening until one learns that the technique is to open. Not just to open to a larger part but to open completely. And when openness itself is achieved then God's presence is there. So that God's mind is in man's knowing experience. God's mind is in mans gnosis experience.
And the Teacher of Righteousness tells us that the world, the world as it is, is graven. We tend to hear this as a derisive term, the graven image or something like this. What it means is that there is an embossed reality, an engraved image, which is the world.
The world is graven. Before they with the graving tool of the reminder. For all the unending seasons together with the cycles of the numbers of everlasting years. with all their times. They have not been hidden or concealed from before thee. but how can a man count up his sins. And what can he answer concerning his iniquities. And how can he perverse reply to the judgment of righteousness. Thine, thine oh God of knowledge are all the works of righteousness the foundation of truth. But to the sons of men belong to the service of iniquity in the words of deceit.
In other words, the world in an unreformed way is a graven image. It's not real. It's like an engraved imitation. And as long as a person comports to that you also are that. You're just, as a friend of mine once said jokingly was a famous cartoonist. He used to ask people who drew you when they were acting stupid. Well who drew you? Your life is a joke. You're just living in a cartoon. You're not really alive. You don't really here. Who drew you?
How does one get off the cartoon page? You have to withdraw what you have committed to that, your belief in it. And when you draw withdraw your belief where does the belief go? It remains with you. And the more your belief collects within the more that is real. And the less the engraved world, the cartoon world, the less than is real.
And finally, the Teacher of Righteousness tells us that there is a time of Darkness where the eye no longer sees the world. But out of that darkness shines the light. And so, there is a sense here that there is a theophany which is a central essential nature of the divine. God's essential nature is thiophanate. That is to say what distinguishes God is that God occurs. And that as long as one is not an individual fully grown into a tree of life, you're oriented more to the mob than to God.
And finally, this, this several hundred years three, four hundred years later, will occur in Alexandria in Gnostic terminology, that not only is the world just an engraved image, but most conceptions of heaven were just engraved images. And that these heavenly engraved images were like false ideas of the cosmos that trapped people. And you have to free yourself not only from this world in its cartoon quality but also from the false cosmological ideas that are even more difficult. It's easy in a way comparatively to break free of this world because it is very disgusting. But it's very difficult to break free of the beautiful ideas that one has of the cosmic orders. And to penetrate through those illusions, that takes a tremendous courage.
Here is a quality of language, which the Teacher of Righteousness tells us, that is necessary for the making of songs that are sacred. For the making of hymns that are truly praises to the divine. for the structuring of the soul. This is towards the end of Hymn A.
It is thou who has created to breath on the tongue. And known the words of the tongue. And determined the fruit of the lips before ever they were. Thou has set out words on a measuring chord. And measured the breath, the breathing of breath from lips. And has sent out sounds according to the mysterious laws. And breathings of breath according to their harmony. And thy glory might be made known. And wonders told. And all thy works of truth and judgments of righteousness. And that thy name might be praised by all the mouths of men that they might know they according to the measure of their understanding.
So, you can see here that there is a quality that as the language becomes more conscious and measured and the amplification, so the soul grows in just that way. And so, the inner penetration grows.
So that finally one begins to get a sense that what amplification you have reached is the measurement by wholes. When you have become whole, you no longer measure in units of ones or tens or hundreds or whatever it is. You measure only in terms of wholes. And when you measure in terms of wholes, one can see the all, which is a, the wholeness of the whole.
In this way the Teacher of Righteousness tells us that, Thou has made of me a banner for the elect of righteousness and an interpreter of knowledge concerning the marvelous mysteries. to test the men of truth. And to try them that love instruction. In other words, in the growth patterning, there are always phases up until the final openness. there are always phases. There are thresholds. these phases, these thresholds, come in harmonic project progressions. Definite. and as the soul grows and the penetration grows more one more and more one becomes familiar with the ratio. The ratio of the soul's growth over the interior penetration to the divine. And finally, when there's a oneness of the soul and a oneness of the inner penetration the ratio reads one over one. Which is one. which is whole. And in just this way the rationality of man, the rationess of man achieves the fullness, one over one. Tolstoy in his old visionary age came up with, he said the only ratio I can conceive of expressing God as X over zero. It's a very, very, very interesting way to put it.
Again, and again a symbol that occurs in The Thanksgiving Hymns is a fountain of knowledge. A fountain of knowledge. What is the fountain of knowledge? It's the language. the beautiful language. The heartfelt mental radiant language of praise which comes out. And as it is released more and more one finds oneself become a fountain. a fountain of knowledge. And I was a man of dispute for the interpreters of sayings. At one time this is I love to argue about what it means. But a man of peace for all who see true things. When I became a spirit of jealousy to all who seek smooth sayings. Easy way out.
And all the men of deceit roared against me like the clamor of the roaring of great waters. And the ruses of Belial the liar were all their thoughts. And they cast down towards the pit. The life of the man by whose mouth thou has established the teaching. And within whos our heart thou has set understanding. That he might open the fountain of knowledge to all of understanding.
So that there is a sense here of a triumphal occurrence when all the inner wells have been dug down to the stream of God's consciousness. And their language has grown and matured and exfoliated so that they can sing in a heavenly choir together. Then God occurs in that community from the roots up to the tops. Comes as a living water from the stream within the soul and comes out through the expressive language of the community. And this is the, this is the theme which occurs again and again. So that the New Covenant, the key, the symbol for, for understanding. Or for unlocking the fulcrum for participating in the New Covenant is the sacred word.
Notice here that always the emphasis is upon the individual. On the person. So that more and more by echoing resonance the word becomes a person. The word becomes that person. And this of course we recognize as a therapeutae technique.
A beautiful phrase from Hymn C, Thou has placed my soul in the sack of life. It's in a gorgeous language and phrases. My being proceeds from thee. my steps proceed from thee. And he goes on to say that, My soul seized hold of thy covenant. So that deeper than the heart, deeper than the mind, is the soul. the psy-ka as the Greeks would pronounce it. The psyche.
END OF SIDE ONE
I'm using a formal diction. So that those who listen to the tape will be able to recreate the quality of presence in their inner ear. You have it by virtue of being here. And something this psychic flavor of what is here. But those who hear it by the cassette only have the sound and measure of my voice. And so, I'm using it in a way to recreate for them the tone which you can experience just by yourself. Just by being here.
One of the first radical changes of the old Torah occurs at the end of Hymn B. the phrase is the uncircumcision of the lips. And later on, the phrase on the other side will be used that one's lips are circumcised and therefore one can speak the truth. By making circumcision metaphorical. By taking it away from the penis to the lips, one then makes it metaphorical of a different process. The bringing to life is no longer a function of that masculine gland. but now the bringing to life is the function of the lips. That is to say that, the voice, the forming of words the forming of, of the language, this is the vehicle of life. One now is coming to the quality of being able to by using language correctly, to call into life realities. one fertilizers now by the truth rather than by the semen. So, there is a whole different understanding.
Notice that it's not just an improvement on the old law. It is a complete transformation. It's the butterfly versus the caterpillar. And if one doesn't see a transformation like this. If one doesn't participate in a transformation like this. It's hard to believe that it could be.
So that the inner heart and the mind are the emphasis not the Torah as usual, but that the inner heart and the mind are meant to grow. The mind is a quality which helps shape the language, helps create the soul. The inner heart is what plums down to the stream, the secret inner stream. So, the deepening of the heart by contemplation and the exfoliating of the mind by language forms, brings one into this fullness where the soul occurs as the whole of the two processes in their fullest development. One soul in that case is God's eye on your life. What one experiences is that this life is now seen by God as an eye, which is **inaudible word** singular. Singular. What does an inner eye singular see? It sees fullness. It sees in terms of wholenesses not partialities at all.
And if you have trouble with this there's a beautiful exploitation of this in Art and Yoga in India by Heinrich Zimmer at Princeton University Press published in a translation just a few years ago. In was **inaudible word** 1926 but it's a beautiful explication of this process. the eye looking out, the eyes plural, looking out must focus. And in their act of focusing they focus on singularities.
So that the whole process is one of perceptual differentiation to the particular. That when the eye looks within. And if you've ever seen any kind of a high samadhi trance it's almost like a crossed eye. Its not looking at anything inside but it's looking holistically. So that there's, there's only the all which is there to be perceived. Not anything in particular.
I have 30 more hymns to go and we're not going to make it this evening. So, I'll give you just some of the, some of the creamer (?). This is from Hymn F, I give thee thanks oh Adoni. Many of the hymns begin this way. I give thee thanks oh Adoni. thou has redeemed my soul. And a few lines later he says, thou hast made me to rise to everlasting heights. And I have walked on an infinite plain. And you see what gorgeous language is there. Raised until one is an everlasting height. Walking on an infinite plain. this is the redeeming of the soul. This is the wholeness you see.
So, the whole purpose is not to delineate the structure but to experience the wholeness. The technique for soul growth is not to pay attention to structure but to transform a particular **inaudible word** the wholeness that they are.
Thou has shaped from the dust man for the everlasting assembly. So that there is this, there is the scale. On one end is dust and on the other is the everlasting assembly of all the trees of life of Eden. From dust to Eden. notice that this is the scale by which man really can be measured. He is from dust to paradise. The Pythagorean insight to this is that man is not the notes on this scale but is the scale itself. That to look at the notes on the scale is to look exteriorly. To be in materialized. To be trapped at looking at what is irrelevant. Only by looking at the wholeness of it all as it occurs as you, that is the interior eye, the singular eye. Quite different.
Then one will feel kinesthetically as if you are scuffing clouds by walking down the street, that you are indeed walking in an infinite plain. thou has shaped from the dust and for the everlasting assembly. Have cleansed the perverse spirit could great sin. And might watch with the army of the saints and enter into communion with the congregation of the sons of heaven. Thou has cast an everlasting destiny for man in the company of the spirits of knowledge. That he might praise thy name in joyful Concord. and recount thy marvels before all thy works.
The word concord here of course is Pythagorean. It means, the Greek term for this for harmony is symphonia. And the concord is when you hum in tune with the symphony. That's what the concord is.
What stops this? What stops this is the worldliness of ignorance. The constant grinding out of irrelevant differentiations. Which the Teacher of Righteousness says are snares and nets. Now this is a, this is a very universal theme when it gets to this level. For instance, the buddha, historical buddha, taught this way. And the very first of the of the Giga Nakeya (sp?), the long sermons of the Buddha, is about the net that catches all errors. By the time one has mastered the net that catches all errors one no longer has that use for any net whatsoever.
So, it's, it's like that kind of thing our Laozis favorite metaphor in the Tao Te Ching, heaven's net casts wide but nothing escapes. In other words, Taolistically when you are nothing new can escape from **inaudible word or two**.
You can see then what he says,
While all the traps of the pit were opened. And all the snares of wickedness spread out. And the nets of the wretched upon the face of the waters. While all the arrows of a pit flew out straight to the target. And shot out leaving no hope. While the chord of destruction beat on the dammed. And the destiny of wrath upon the abandoned. And the pouring out of fury upon the hypocrites. while it was the time of Wrath for all the real. And the bonds of death tightened leaving no escape. And the torrents of Belial overflowed all the high banks like a fire consuming all the shores. Destroying from their channels every tree green and dry and whipping with whirl winds of flame. Until the vanishing of all that drinks there. It devours all the foundations of pitch. And the very basis of the continent. The foundations of the mountain is prayed to fire. And the roots of flint become torrents of tar. And the devour of his far as the great abyss.
You can see the building power, the penetration in his language the Teacher of Righteousness. Completely beautiful.
And we're running out of time. So, I'm going to skip over to this. in Hymn I, letter I, is a definite of illusion to alchemy. Now this is very peculiar. Because indeed there are very few mentions metaphorically about alchemy anywhere in literature this early. Alexandra was the only place in the world at this time where there was any kind of a metaphorically for alchemy. Which indicates so to me that the Teacher of Righteousness was familiar with Alexandra.
So, in Hymn I it reads this way, Thou has made him enter into the crucible like gold that he works at fire. And like silver refined in the crucible of the blowers to be purified seven times. And of course, there is no metallurgical operation that occurs seven times. It is a Pythagorean term which has brought in consonants to the Jewish menorah, the perfection. That if one does this assay seven times you will have the purity to the seventh level, you see. one goes beyond then. So that there is a definite sense here of an Alexandrian contact. even with the Teacher of Righteousness.
The Teacher of Righteousness is confident that his beginning is a shoot which will flower at sometime in the future. he is the beginning rhizome which when it matures will bear a flower. A flower which will be the Messiah. And he says that, and I, I is the butt of the insults of my enemies. An object of quarreling and dispute to my companions. An object of jealousy and draught to those who had entered my covenant. An object of murmuring and contention to those I had gathered together. All those who ate my bread, lifted the heel against me. And all who joined my assembly, spoke evil of me with the perverse tongue. And the men of my council rebelled and murmured round about. That went among the sons of misfortune slandering the mystery which thou has sealed within me. But it is in order that my way might be exalted. And it is because of their sin that thou hast hidden the fount of understanding and the secret of truth.
So, there is a sense here that the Teacher of Righteousness, who had developed into a tree of life, by the circumstance of his time including his own covenantal community. Which had turned against him, a great portion of it. How turned against him? Had misunderstood. Had come into an approximation delusion, which they thought was the case. Had not really practiced and so did not know the difference between an idea of something at that itself. Between beautiful clever diagrams of design and the actual wholeness that is. They could not tell the difference. And so being reminded by his very presence that they were not right they took umbrage against him. Seeing him as an object of derision. Not seeing that he could live no other way other than to be whole. And of course, the same thing would happen with Jesus. The very same kinds of jealousies and misunderstandings.
So, he says, finally. This is in Hymn Number J,
I was bound with unbreakable cords. And with chains impossible to sunder. And a stout wall held me shut up in bars of iron and doors of bronze. And my prison was like the abyss without the bonds of Belial bound my soul without any escape. But I was comforted for the roaring of the crowd and for the tumult of kingdoms when they assembled. For I know thou will soon raise up survivors among thy people and a remnant in the midst of thine inheritance.
Now the Essenes themselves have been a remnant. So, what he's talking about is that there's going to be a remnant of the remnant. It's not just a few but there's just a few of the few. It is the very esoteric way of speaking. It means that in Pythagorean terms you're dealing with squares. Youre dealing with powers. A remnant of a remnant in modern mathematical investigation would be, you could designate as the square root of the remnant. Which is to say that there is a selective quality operating to the point of vanishing from worldly view. If you have just a few that's very difficult to see. If there are just a few of the few that's at the very limit of the resolving ability of human worldly differential capacity. The world of consciousness can barely understand the few. And the few of the few puts it right at the edge of visibility in terms of worldly mentality. And he says it's only beyond that threshold that the individual's own experience lies. Your reality is beyond the threshold of world of differentiation to perceive or to conceive. The only way to achieve it is with that girding up of the loin, that courage of the heart and actually doing it. There's no way that you can see the advance what to do, what it's going to be. It's beyond your capacity to resolve. Only the courage of spiritual life by actually living it is able to do it. If you look with worldly eyes you will never see it and thus you will never believe it. And if you just do in accordance with what you can conceive you limited yourself. You have become the resistance for achieving this.
And so, he tells us here, Thou has created me for thy sake to fulfill the law. And to teach by my mouth the men of thy counsel. And in the midst of the sons of men. Not only men but the sons of men. The remnants of the remnants. So later on, he'll use the phrases sons a lot. And what it means is that this is a, this is a selection within a selection already.
For thou has caused them to enter thy glorious covenant with all the men of thy counsel. And those into a common lot with the angels of the face. Very esoteric here. The idea here is that give me angelic hosts surrounding God, there are angels in the court. And then there are angels around the throne. But most esoterically that one would never have suspected until one got that close to see that there are angels in the face. That close you see. By being able to put the pattern of the angels of the court together, one conceit of throne. By putting the angels of the throne together and the fullness of the pattern, one can save the face. And by putting the Angels on the face of God together one save one's own **inaudible word or two**. This is a mystery, he says.
And this of course goes beyond Judaism. From the revealing of the Teacher of Righteousness was that he penetrated through to the breaking point beyond Judaism. In 200 years, Jesus would come do what he had done but did it on a worldwide scale. Just a community of several hundred people but on the worldwide scale.
Let me just end with this. The beginnings of Hymn L and this is the symbol for the new dispensation. And Ill end with this. And I give thanks to thee oh Adoni. That thou has to upheld me by thy might it has poured out by Holy Spirit within me. That I should not stagger.
Thank you, friends.
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