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because of the very practice that characterises its nondualism: seeing
God in everything.
Comparisons with the ancient Egyptian texts, the spiritual context
out of which Judaism emerged, are worth noting:
I am the Eternal Spirit,
I am sunrise over the Primeval Ocean.
My soul is called God, I created the Word.
I abhor evil, and thus I do not see it.
I created the perfect harmony in which I dwell,
I am the deathless Word,
Which lives forever in my name of 'Soul.'
- From
Spell 307, Coffin Texts, Book of the Dead
(Eleventh Dynasty, c. 2000
BC
)
Just as language is divine, itself constituting a parable of creation, so
society reflects the nature of creation in its structure; and the human
body contains a version of the eternal, its parts and proportions the
measure of all things temporal, just as the universe is the body of
the Timeless. In the Vedas the human body is an entire world of its
own, ruled by the soul, with sense organs as lieutenants, and so on.
A
yagna
was any organised attempt to improve the human
condition. It was a selfless act, technically a sacrifice and therefore
considered sacred. Too many evolutionist scholars, however, want
to believe the
yagnas
were merely primitive, superstitious, and
barbaric events involving ritual slaughter of animals, or worse. They
even insist that fire was worshipped rather than employed as a
symbol. Such events, to the evolutionist's eye, after all, were a well-
known feature of many primitive cultures.
Fire was a great mystery to those who could not control or harness
it. Accordingly, the Vedic hymns speak in terms the less developed
people receiving them would have instantly understood. The Vedic
seers seem to have taught the process by which fire could be created
at will, tamed, and used. The
yagnas
appear to be part of this teaching
process, ensuring that the art is passed down to posterity. I watched a
traditional
yagna
at the Dasara festival in Puttaparthi that began with
the symbolic creation of the sacred fire by Brahmin pundits, who, in
the ancient manner, twirled a stick with a bow in wood shavings
until they ignited.
