Miscellaneous Wisdom Writings
Presented on: Tuesday, June 20, 1989
Presented by: Roger Weir
Dead Sea Scrolls
Presentation 12 of 15
Miscellaneous Wisdom Writings
Presented by Roger Weir
Tuesday, June 20, 1989
Transcript:
After tonight there will just be three more of our lectures. And there'll be two more lectures on The Dead Sea scroll to bring through the sense of the continuity of the whole and establish a historical view. Which curiously enough will be the first time that anyone has actually put the historical pattern together with any kind of at least forcefulness if not accuracy. And it's all very surprising. And you would think that after more than 40 years that this would have been done already or many times. But everyone has been overly ginger and overly tentative. And no one has piece together the pattern. But the pattern is like an arrow and points very clearly to some rather radical happenings.
Then on July 11th well give our cells a run-through again of the Hermetic wisdom liturgy. But just a few of us. Just a, a religious evening. A sacred evening. And I will try to convey as best I can in a visionary mode the feeling tone of the material. We've had several run throughs so that you can get acquainted with the method and the material. But there still has not been established, to my experience, the feeling tone, the mystical feeling tone. So, I will try and do that on July 11th. So that you can have somewhat of a reminder perhaps of what it was like.
Then we'll give the Hermetic wisdom liturgy in late August. August 29th, which is a Tuesday evening. We'll perform it for Mr. Hall in his own home. And he's quite anxious to see it. And so that will be a joyous event, an evening. And I hope that most of you will continue with the Saturday class after that. Because some of that material will be worked in there.
So, we have just three more meetings here. The third one will be a mystical presentation, recreation better, of the Hermetic wisdom liturgy. And then on August 29th we'll perform it in Mr. Halls living room.
In The Dead Sea Scroll material there are two Greek words which occur which you should be familiar with. The first one is spelled using the English name for the letters, o-s-i-o-i. Osioi. And that Greek word means in translation Saints. The Saints. And was used of the Essenes. So that the, the term Essene was not able to be translated into Greek. And the Greek term that was used as a translation for Essene was Saint, osioi.
The second one, o-m-i-l-o-i . Omiloi. And structure than just company. Perhaps the idea of a traveling Shakespeare company would be alright. But more generally society.
The two words go together. The Saints are saintly because of their society. Being a society. In other words, what made the Essenes holy, and the derivation of the word Essene from the Hebraic Semitic languages is not certain at all. but the closest that we have is Philo and Josephus who both agree that the word meant holy. What made them holy was that they were in their societies a unity. now it's difficult for us to understand and put the emphasis on this. The closest experience to this in the modern world outside of some of the Islamic Sufi sects, would be the Quakers. The early classic Quakers of the 18th century. That is to say that the, the community, the society, was holy as a unity. And whatever the individual was, the individual was like a note in the chord of the whole. And only because the whole was harmonious did the, did the individual have a reality. This is a very peculiar quality and it is thoroughly Pythagorean. It is not Buddhist at all. It is not due to South Asia at all. But is in fact a Greek mystical view of an Egyptian idea. Which was taken over by the Essenes.
So that we read in one of Philo's lost books. We have an extract, a fragment, of this lost book which was saved for us in a most peculiar way. Eusebius who was the man that Constantine chose to convene the Ecumenical Council in 325 A.D. Eusebius wrote also besides his History of The Christian Church, A Preparation For The Gospel. And it survived all this time because it was considered to be innocuous and harmless. It was a classic school textbook with long boring excerpts meant to be a catechetical support. And it has survived since the 300s intact. This is part one of two parts. And this first volume goes well over 500 pages. So, it's a thousand-page tome that just was, was never emptied out. Never conveniently lost. Never suppressed. Because no one suspected that dynamite would exist in this form.
But Eusebius has preserved for us. Not only extracts of works that are very important and otherwise would be lost. But he preserves for us a, an outlook which is important for us to remember and to have.
Now he tells us that, in Chapter nine, book eight of The Preparation For The Gospel, he is going to quote for us a long extract. he is just given us some material from Josephus telling us about how the political constitution of the Jews was established by Moses. But with regard to the allegorical meaning shadowed out in the laws enacted by him. Though I might say much I think it's sufficient to mention the narratives of Eliezer and Aristobulus, men originally of Hebrew descent. And as to date distinguished in the names and the times of the Ptolemies. Now Eliezer and Aristobulus are mentioned and then he will go on to quote a document that comes from the 2nd century B.C., The Letter of Aristeas.
Now just to refresh your mind or to tell you if you have never heard this before. Eliezer
was the high priest in Jerusalem at the time of the second Ptolemy. Ptolemy Philadelphus, who was the son of the great Ptolemy son of Lagos, who actually built Alexandria. He was Alexander's childhood friend. And one of his great generals. He's the one that stole the body of Alexander and built the city. And his son Ptolemy Philadelphus is one of the greatest figures in world history. He's the one, Philadelphus is the one, who built the library who built the museum there. The museum, the school of the muses. And made Alexandria the first world University. The first cosmopolitan center in the world. Alexander, Alexandria by 270 B.C. was very much like a 20th century modern urban polyglot metropolitan area.
Ptolemy wanted to have a complete library. He wanted a copy of every book in the world. Now you have to understand that Kings in those days very powerful. And somebody who is the inheritor of Alexander's vision thought broadly. Not just to have a lot of books. Or more books than anyone. But to have every book in the world. And assigned his librarian, Demetrius Valerius, to execute this task. And was given as much money as needed. As much manpower as needed. And built up the library. By the time of Philadelphus the library was close to half a million rolls, scrolls. and many of these rolls would have more than one book on it. He is the one who decided to put the Jewish sacred books that is The Old Testament translated into Greek and put that into the Alexandrian library. He sent to the high priest Eliezer in Jerusalem and 72 scholars were sent back to Alexandria. And they were personally received by Ptolemy Philadelphus. They were put up on the in the island of Pharos, where the great lighthouse was constructed. About 40 stories high. And there they worked in groups of six making translations. And then their translations, twelve translations were collated, and made to agree. And out of this came the book known as The Septuagint. Septuagint means the 70, The Book of the Seventy. Instead of 72 just rounded off to the 70. this, and the abbreviation for the Septuagint again is the Roman numeral LXX. 50, 10, 10. 70. The Septuagint is then The Old Testament in Greek from the 3rd century B.C.
Now since the first, into the 1st century A.D., it has been thought that the primary Old Testament scripture was the one decided upon in 90 A.D. at the council of Jamia by all of the rabbinic scholars. This was the Masoretic text. And all of the Christian versions of The Old Testament were all based on the Masoretic text. that is to say, by the time of Jerome and Augustine it was accepted without question that the Masoretic text was the original, was the princips, the primordial Hebrew tradition. This turns out to have been disproved by The Dead Sea Scrolls. It turns out that in The Dead Sea Scrolls that there were at least three different traditions. There was the Sumerian. there was the Masoretic. And there was the Septuagint from Alexandria. And that they were all independent traditions. And they were never copies of one from the other. Although in the late Dead Sea Scrolls there's a synchronistic try to blend passages from the, the first two traditions, the Sumerian and the Septuagint, they're still quite clearly separate.
What The Dead Sea Scrolls have proved for us is that The Septuagint is the oldest legitimate tradition of what The Old Testament was in its basic handing down. So that The Septuagint in Greek is very, very, very powerful as an independent tradition.
In this extract for Preparation for the Gospel Philo is quoted from his lost book The Apologia Pro Judea's, The Apology for the Jews. And Eusebius gives us this long extract. And in it Philo has this to say, Our lawgiver encouraged the multitude of his disciples to live in community. These are called Essenes. And I think they have merited this title because of their holiness. They live in a number of towns in Judea. And also, in many villages and in large groups.
Now the footnote here, our lawgiver, the footnote is that this is Moses. This is, I'm reading the translation from that's included in Dupont Sommers The Essene Writings from Qumran. The law giver in this case is not Moses but the Teacher of Righteousness. This is a scholarly error.
If we go back to Eusebius, the book itself not just the Dupont Sommer presentation of a quotation from Eusebius. And go back to this wonderful translation made by a man named E.H. Gifford a long time ago. This is a reprint from the 1903 edition. And we read. Here's how it reads in the, in a better translation. But our lawgiver trained to community of living many thousands of his disciples, who are called Essences. Now the disciples of Moses were never called Essenes. Moses is an anachronism. And what Philo is really talking about is the Teacher of Righteousness. But notice that he uses, but our law Giver. Philo himself was an Essene but he was a special kind of Essene. He was an Alexandrian Essene.
Do you recall that Philo's family was very wealthy? Philo's brother bankrolled Herod Antipas, who was the sensible King, the Roman designated king of Judea and Samaria at the time after Jesus. So, Philo's family was very, very powerful. Very, very wealthy. But Philo himself is the therapeutae. And his testimony is extremely trustworthy and critical.
Our lawgiver, that is the Teacher of righteousness, Trained to community of living many thousands of his disciples, who are called the Essenes. Because as I suppose of their holiness. They dwell in many cities of Judea. And many villages and in large. and populous societies. and there the Greek term is omioli. O-m-i-o-l-i. Omioli.
Now the word for Essenes in Greek is not Essenes but is that word o-s-i-o-i. Osioi. Saints. So that what the Teacher of Righteousness did, Philo is saying, probably around 20 A.D.- 25 A.D. he was he would be writing this. that the Teacher of Righteousness trained these individuals to practice methodically a form of inner repose, which would allow them to resonate with each other in form societies which were whole. It is the societies that were whole. And the individuals who were open to the wholeness. So that you have a totally different kind of personality. You do not have a self-centered personality. You have a personality that has an openness at the center and not an ego.
Now if you have an openness at the center instead of an ego, all meditative traditions have shown this the world round for all time. Instead of being an object of reference from the world, you are a resonance of sympathia from within. So, the primary quality of your personality is sympathy to harmony rather than imitation of example. So, it's a totally different kind of a personality.
Philo goes on to quote. It goes on in the quote from Eusebius. Their sect is formed not by family dissent for dissent is not reckoned among matters of choice. But on account of zeal for virtue and a longing for brotherly love. Now this phrase that we hear so lightly brotherly love is this sympathia. This Sympatico. Which is the hallmark of saintliness, of holiness. That one's reality is there where we occur together. And not in the individual isolated sense at all. So that what becomes expressively real of the person is the community. And the religious realization of this is that the face of God is seen by no man but can be manifested by the community as a whole.
And Philo goes on to say,
Accordingly, there is among the Essenes no mere child. Nor even a scarce bearded lad or young man. Sense of such as these the moral dispositions are unstable and apt to change in accordance with their imperfect age. But they are all men, full-grown, and already verging upon old age. As being no longer swept by the flood of bodily impulses. Nor led by their passions. But in the enjoyment of the genuine and only real Liberty.
What is that real Liberty? The sympathia with the integrity of the Omioli, of the society.
Now all of this is in fact a Pythagorean note. Philo goes on.
And their mode of life is an evidence of this liberty. None vention
ventures to acquire any private property at all. No house. No slave. No farm. No cattle. Nor any of the other things which procure or minister to wealth. But they deposit them all in public together and enjoy the benefit of all in common. And they dwell together in one place forming clubs.
And the translation here is messes. That is to say they eat together in, in these societies. The Omioli. and they passed their whole time in managing every kind of business for the common good. And all of this has a familiar ring to those who have been following the Pythagorean series.
Now in The Letter to Aristaeus which came just before the quotation from Philo. There is this kind of say.
For when closely observed they are manifestly glorious. First the construction of the body and the distribution of the food. And the distinction of each separate limb. And far more the orderly disposition of the senses. The action of the mind and it's invisible movement. Its quickness and acting according to each occurrence. And its invention of arts have a delightful character. Wherefore he exhorts us to remember how the aforesaid parts are held together and preserve by a divine power. For his marked out every place and time with a view to our continually remembering the God who rules them. While we observed the beginning, the middle and the end of each. for in the case of meats and drinks he bids us first concentrate apart. And then straightway used the rest moreover from the borders of our garments he has given us a symbol of remembrance. And in like manner he has commanded us also to set the inspired words upon the are gates and doors to be a remembrance of God. Also, upon our hands express expressly commands the symbol to be fastened. Clearly showing that we ought to perform every action in righteousness. Keeping a remembrance of our own creation. But in all things remembering the fear of God. He bids men also when lying down to sleep and when rising up in the morning. And in walking in the way to meditate upon the works of God. Not only inward but also by observing distinctly their own movement and their self-consciousness. When they are going to sleep and then they're waking. How the alteration of these states is divine in incomprehensible. There has been shown to you also the excellence of the analogy in regard to distinction and memory. According to our explanation of the division of the hoof and the chewing and the cud.
Just some images that they use.
For the laws have not been enacted without consideration. And just according to what came into the mind but with a view to truth and to the indication of right reason. For after the several directions about meats and drinks and cases of touching, he bids us neither to do nor to listen to anything spotlessly. Nor to resort to injustice by employing the mastery of language.
So that The Letter of Aristeas also is Pythagorean in its tone. Upon going to sleep at night the retrospective remembrance. And in waking up the building back of the continuity. The holding together in community. And the looking upon the shape being held by divinity in symbols. And the putting of symbols in all of the moving junctures of everyday life. on the hands. On the doors on the gates. And so forth. All of this is mystical Pythagorean community work.
The curious thing is that The letter of Aristeas was written about 170 B.C. in Alexandria. There's a very curious thing. That is to say contemporaneous with the Teacher of Righteousness, who is just at that time beginning to be discovered by the Qumran community who have been looking for 20 years for a leader in Alexandria. A person known as Aristeas. And the word the name Aristeas is a Cypriot Greek name. It's for the Aegean islands. It's not characteristic of the Middle East. And it's not characteristic of Egypt. It's an Aegean Island or Mediterranean island kind of a name. but the tone in The Letter of Aristeas is exactly the same tone in The Fragment of Philo some 200 years later.
Now Eusebius very wise. Many people criticize Eusebius because of his blandness so-called. But actually, Eusebius is very, very powerful. And we always have to keep in mind that he, he was the one that Constantine chose to bring Christianity into the unity so that it could be used by the Roman empire as its new theological basis. The old pagan Gods had proved ineffectual. And the only way to keep the Roman Empire going is to have a new theological basis. So, Eusebius a very powerful man.
Eusebius puts these two quotations together. He puts the Aristeas and the Philo together. He puts two Pythagorean quotations that occurred 200 years apart. One of them at the very beginning of the manifestation. The Neo Pythagorean movement didn't really begin until about the 180s-170s B.C. in Alexandria. And the Philo quotation is right at the end when the new Pythagorean movement was coming back into a focus. Which would become what we know today as Hermeticism. The new Pythagorean movement was, was blended back into Hermeticism. That is to say the origin of Pythagoras was in Egypt. And the Neo Pythagoreans by the 1st century A.D. were understanding that it isn't just a Pythagorean or neo Pythagorean tradition. But that this was thousands of years old and was Egyptian Hermeticism. And so, they brought it back in. and by the 2nd century A.D. there was only this Hermetic tradition.
So that the quotation from Aristeas and the quotation from Philo are the bookends again of the development of a whole idea. the idea that man has a radically different nature when he belongs to God. From when he thinks he belongs in this world. If he is in this world, he has got to be capable of being clever and powerful. And fight for what is his. And for getting more. And making alliances with others on the basis of following that strategy. So that you come together politically on a power basis for authority and for control. Whereas diametrically opposed to that, diametrically opposed to the way of the world, which is symbolized by money, by the coin that has the Kings portrait on it, is the individual who doesn't carry any symbol of external power. But carries within him a symbol of God's power God's face by keeping himself open and not putting any one's face, not even his own in the center of his personality. But leaving it open so that God in his own time and his own way will show his face in you.
So that opposed to the world is the way of God. In that one is holy. One is a saint. One is the therapeutae. One is an Essene. To the extent that one has performed this metanoia. This turning around. Now you can physically try to turn around, but you can see that any way that you turn physically you're still facing the world. So that the only fulcrum that really can turn around from the world is in the mind. But the mind in a kind of a natural mythic way is filled with images that come from the world. So, the only way to turn in the mind from the world is to turn from the image base with which mythologically is engendered from the world. Which means that you cannot turn to any particular image. It's just like physically trying to turn from the world, every time you turn, you're still facing the world in some way. You cannot in the mind turn away from the mythic image base. except by one radical ploy. And that is to turn to the integrated center of the meaning of all of the images together. The center is the way out. And the center is occupied by, always, by a symbol. The integration of any image base is always controlled by a synthesizing symbol.
We're okay. We're fine. We're okay. Okay, just my neck, my vertebra. The sixteenth vertebra.
You cannot charge from the world physically you cannot turn from the images mentally. But you can perform this metanoia, this turning in terms of the synthesizing symbol.
And when you turn from the synthesizing symbol in the mind what you find is the direct opposite of the symbol. And that is the nothingness which is the context for it. A symbol is always a powerful limit. But what allows for it to be expressively limited is the unlimited. The Pythagorean apeira. The unlimited. The openness. Known in the Mahayana is a Sunyata. That openness. That quality of openness. That quality of readiness. That is divine. That is what is holy. That is what makes the same. So that when you have a population where every single person in that is open together, their openness becomes like a secret thread uniting them together and they become a society. Not in a political sense. Political economy is not the energy of the structure. But they become a society in the sense of their openness to the background of the synthesizing symbol. And that turns out to be an experience of the divine.
So that Moses as a lawgiver is a lawgiver in terms of dealing with the world. Effectively dealing with the world. You sacrifice a lamb and such in such a way on such in such a date for such and such an occasion. But the Teacher of Righteousness turns in a Metanoia. Turns the entire compartment of the law around so he is a lawgiver from the inside. A lawgiver of the deep heart. The center of the mind is always called the heart. It's a symbol. The symbol actually in history comes out to be a heart with a flame on it. Flaming, the flaming heart.
Can you see, can you see and understand that this occurrence, this movement, manifesting over two centuries happened with such slow motion. In retrospect we make a radical idea out of it. But it happened with such slow motion that the difficulty was keeping the participation alive. Keeping you alert for the 70 years or 80 years of your life. Or 60 years of your life. Keeping it going for in 200 years there are at least 10 generations. How do you do that? The knack, the technique, was to make what you did in the world expressive of your inner society. So, the Essenes were always doing crafts. They were raising bees. They were husbandry people. They were agriculturalists. They were carpenters like Joseph, Jesus's father. They worked with crafts. And the important thing is that they gave the shape from the inside out. It was what distinguished the Essenes. They did not participate in crafts as, to use a colloquial from our age, blue-collar worker. They did it as Saints. What their everyday life was what was holy. And that's what made them the, the outstanding population in the ancient world. Everyone could see they're quite different. In fact, they are diametrically opposed to most people. They work from the inside out. What they do is expressive of themselves. It's like someone once said of a famous Hassid that somebody went to see how he tied his shoelaces. Because a wise man anything that he does has the ring of truth to it. So, they were characteristic like that.
Now in The Dead Sea scroll material that we have for tonight, these miscellaneous hymns and wisdom things. One of the most powerful of all the things here is The Exhortation To Seek Wisdom. And this is a lost fragment of a wisdom poem in which the teacher encourages his people. His sons. The simple. The simple as opposed to the complex. Not simple-minded the simple and that there's only one moving part in the community. God. He's the only moving part. And when he moves, we all sense it together.
So that The Search For Wisdom. And this has been preserved in cave for at Qumran. And it's dated to the first half of the 1st century B.C. So, it's probably from around 70 B.C. or so. 75 B.C. Now there are missing parts that have ellipsis. And I'll try and read it for you so you can hear I'll pause were there ellipsis. Let the words come out. The words are coming from the inside out.
And you sons of men. woe to you. For he, man sprouts from his ground like grass. And His grace blossoms like a flower. His glory blows away. And his dries up. And the wind carries away its flower so that it has found no more. They shall seek him but shall not find him. And there is no hope. And his days are like a shadow over the earth. Now pray hearken to me, my people. Heed me oh you simple. Become wise through the might of God. Remember his miracles that he did in Egypt. And his marvels in the land of Ham. Let your heart shake because of his fear. And do his will. Your souls according to his good graces. And search for yourself away towards life. a highway towards a remnant for your son's after you. And why have you given up your soul to vanity. No judgment. Hearken to me all my sons and do not rebel against the words. Do not walk but in the way, he established for Jacob. And in the path which he decreed for Israel. Is one day not better? His fear and not to be afflicted by dread. To be set apart from his angels. For there is no darkness nor gloom. And you, what do you understand? Before him evil shall go towards every people. Happy is the man to whom wisdom has been given thus. Let not the wicked boast saying it has not been given me nor. And with a good measure he measures it. And he will redeem his people. And he will put to death those that hate his wisdom. Seek it and find it. Grasp it and possess it. With it his length of days and fatness of bone. The joy of the heart. And happy as the man who works it.
So that you can, you can get the flavor from this fragment.
This Exhortation To Seek Wisdom is similar to the poem which is at the end of Ben Sira. Do you remember The Appendix to Ben Sira that I read last week, some excerpts? Now Ben Sira is translated in Alexandria in 130 B.C. But was written in Palestine around 180 B.C. So that the book in The Old Testament of Ben Sira and The Letter of Aristeas are contemporaneous. Ben Sira is the last indication before the Essene movement really gets founded by the Teacher of Righteousness. It's the last general tone that there is. And The Letter of Aristeas is from Alexandria is the resonant part with it. So, if you put Ben Sira and The Letter of Aristeas together you get a cross section between Palestine and Alexandria about 10 years before the Teacher of Righteousness comes on the scene and consulates all these epical changes. It's the last time before the kind of neo Pythagorean revival begins to leaven the whole movement.
So that we have an opportunity, if we look at the material right, we have an opportunity to see
END OF SIDE ONE
This is a fragment, which the second fragment is entitled The Triumph Of Righteousness. It is very short. And it was originally entitled when they first translated this from the Dead Sea Scrolls about thirty years ago, called The Book Of Mysteries. now they entitle it as The Triumph Of Righteousness. And this is the theme of the struggle between good and evil. But you can see now it's not the idea of good and the idea of evil. It's not a theological struggle. The evil is being magnetized to the world. So that anything that you do in any way whatsoever is in terms of the world. your life, your mind, your person are made, are formed in terms of that context. Your responses are all dictated by the way that thats set up. What is good is that metanoia of turning around and pivoting on the only place that you can pivot. Pivoting on the synthesizing symbol of the deep self.
What is the synthesizing symbol of the deep self? It for 2,000 years was the divine king. And just at this time that synthesizing symbol was being displaced by the mysterious person. So that the only way that one could have that metanoia was to pivot on this new deep self-symbol of the mysterious person. Which was specifically tailor-made almost like by divine plan to facilitate that turning around within. The mysterious person being the synthesizing symbol for your deep self it was easier to make the Metanoia. The pivot within. Easier to make the openness within yourself.
With the divine king the only person who could make himself open to God was the divine king. The ruler was the only contact with divinity that the people had. That any people had. It was his function. What makes a king is that he has the contact. He brings the laws into effect. He doesn't act as a man, he is, he is the divine king. He is the emissary, the only emissary.
But with the mysterious person archetype being the synthesizing symbol the inner pivot, the Metanoia, was possible for everyone. No matter who you were. You had not only the privilege and the right, but there was a method by which you could do it. A teachable methodology by which you could learn to do this. The knowledge was available for you to do this. You can see how powerful this was. You can see how the confluence of all of these activities together. When you put them together is really like a, it's like a nuclear fusion sense of psychological power. Instead of operating on a battery which is charged by the world. and if the world doesn't charge you, you get run down, so you need more in the world. You have an inner source of power that was eternal. That was transpersonal. That was divine. The world was irrelevant. It's like Philo says about the Essenes, they paid no attention to weather. Didn't matter how hot or how cold it was. it was raining or, or whatever. The weather was irrelevant. They went about their work the same regardless of the external circumstance. It's the same as like in the Philo's account of them, of the Alexandrian Jewish Christians going to Rome and having that terrible time with the madness of Caligula. And they were almost at the end of their tether until Philo says that they got hold of their deep inner self. And as soon as they made that pivot within, Caligula had no more hold on them. The fear left them. They were whole.
So, here's The Triumph Of Righteousness listen to the language.
They do not know the mystery to come. Nor do they understand the things of the past. They know not that which shall befall them. Nor do they save their soul from the mystery to come. And this shall be the sign for you that these things shall come to pass. when the breed of iniquity is shut up, wickedness shall then be banished by righteousness. As darkness is banished by the light. As smoke clears and is no more. So shall wickedness perish forever. And righteousness be revealed like a sun governing the world.
Notice it has nothing to do with the idea of good or evil. It's this inner outer comportment and the turning to the inner Sun. but it's an inner Sun which is there by virtue of your openness to it, is God's Sun and not, not yours. Not an image that you have on the sun. Notice that by making an image of the sun and worshiping it you have a mythic image in your mind. And it tacks you down to the world. Then you're a servant of the world. But with no idols, no image. Easier for the synthesizing symbol if it's the mysterious person to turn around and be open. Then Gods sun can be there. S-u-n.
Be revealed like a sun governing the world. All who cleave to the mysteries of sin shall be no more. Knowledge shall fill the world. And folly shall exist no longer. This word shall surely come to pass. This prophecy is true. And by this it may be known to you that it shall not be taken back. Do not all the peoples loathe iniquity, and yet it is spread by them all. Does not the bane of truth issue from the mouths of all the nations, yet there is a lip or tongue which holds to it. Which nation likes to be oppressed by another stronger than itself or likes its wealth to be wickedly seized. And yet which nation has not opposed another. And whereas there are people and has not seized another's wealth?
Where is there? Never in the world had there ever been such a people. Now there is. a new people. A new race of man as it were. A race of man that has an inner openness to whatever God will be. It's a whole different outlook.
I want to give you one more and then we'll, we'll call it an evening. I think I'll give you this one. Im looking for The Prayer of Nabonidus. Here it is.
Among the fragments of Quran were found many fragments of additions to The Book Of Daniel. Why were there additions to The Book Of Daniel? Because a Teacher of Righteousness having written The Book Of Daniel and founded the community, it was an integral part of the tradition. In fact, it was the beginning part of the whole tradition. The Book Of Daniel and The Book Of Job are the beginnings of the Essene material.
The, the full mystical tradition is that only one quarter of all the materials were public and three quarters were secret. The rabbinic saying is that there are 24 books in the public Old Testament and there was 70 books in the secret tradition. And at Qumran by doing statistical collation of all of the fragments and so forth that same ratio about three to one held. About three to one the books at Qumran were of a secret tradition not a public instruction.
Here is The Prayer Of Nabonidus. This is the introduction. While The Book Of Daniel writes at the miraculous recovery of Nebuchadnezzar after an illness, which lasted seven years, this interesting Aramaic composition tells a similar story about the last king of Babylon, Nabonidus. Nebuchadnezzar is the one at the beginning of the Exile. Nabonidus is towards the end. Cyrus is the one that comes later. And he's the one that ends the exile.
The principle difference between the two is that Nebuchadnezzar was cured by God himself when he recognized God's sovereignty. Notice the Teacher of Righteousness tone. The king is sick. How can the king be well? Only if God heals him. And then later on the thing is transposed, if anyone is sick how can they be cured? Only if God cures them. The, the operative shift is to the mysterious person archetype rather than the divine king.
So, whereas Nebuchadnezzar was cured by God himself when he recognized God's sovereignty. Whereas a Jewish exorcists healed Nabonidus by teaching him the truth and forgiving his sins. The words of the prayer ubber, uttered by Nabonidus king of Babylon. the great king. When he was afflicted with an evil ulcer in the city of Taemin by decree of the Most-High God. I was affected, afflicted with an evil ulcer for seven years. and an exorcist pardon my sins. He was a Jew from among the children of the Exile of Judah. And he said, recount this in writing to glorify and exalt the name of the Most-High God. And I wrote this, I was afflicted with an evil ulcer in the city of Taemin by decree of the Most-High God. For seven years I prayed to the Gods of silver and gold, bronze and iron, wood and stone and clay. Because I believed they were Gods. But I was finally cured by an exorcist who pardoned my sins.
Now the exorcism here is not an exorcism of somebody from the outside taking something out. But showing the method of going in and having it come out from that technique. The Prayer Of Nabonidus is not at all from the ancient Babylonian times but is from the 1st century B.C. It's written about 50 BC. It's written about the same time that The Book Of The Wisdom Of Solomon was written. It's written about 40 years before Jesus is born. It's written 500 years after the historical figure Nabonidus.
It shows that there was more and more consciousness as the time went towards 0 B.C. there was more and more consciousness that the technique could be expressed in such a way so as to re-vision the past. Not only does it work for us, but we can project back and show that this has always been the way that it worked. And thus, project in the future that this is all the way, always the way, that it will work in fact. And as the as the time scheme comes more and more the fulcrum of it is about 30 A.D. As one comes more and more towards that fulcrum there is more and more the clear experience that the moment of eternity is here. And thus, because this moment now is eternal it's projection into the past end of the future is also eternal.
It seems as if the descent of the Dove and Jesus's baptism in the Jordan River is like dead center. That would have occurred about 33 A.D. is like dead center in that whole development. That is to say if you take the literary psychological, sociological pattern. And the way in which these ideas and images and symbols and myths are handled, it seems to come together at about that time. After that time there's more of a sense of retrospection. And before that time there's more of a sense of looking forward. And there is that precise moment about 33 A.D. where there is this balance between no longer approaching towards it and not yet beginning to look back.
Now that moment is so powerful it's always been considered the, the death of Jesus. But the death of Jesus is a mythological myth misinterpretation. It's carrying the old bad habits back. It's not so much the death of Jesus but it's the beginning of that kind of public movement. That started with the baptism in the River Jordan by John the Baptist.
So more next week. Thank you very much.
I'll try and have for you by July 11th the corrected Hermetic wisdom liturgy. I'm going to go over it and hopefully John will able to help me get into shape. And then I'll have for you the corrected version. So, three weeks from tonight I hope to.
Do you have the **inaudible word or two** available **inaudible word or two**.
Yes, I do. Ill give you; Ill give you a copy that you can put in there.
END OF RECORDING