Society & Culture - 28 June 2006

2006-06-28 14:36:41 · 14 answers · asked by Anonymous in Religion & Spirituality

JUST GAVE A GIRL A CUTE STUFFED MONKEY AND SHE WANTS ME TO NAME HIM. I REALLY LIKE HER AND I THINK SHE LIKES ME. SO I DON'T KNOW WHERE TO TAKE IT FROM THERE. HELP!!!

2006-06-28 14:36:37 · 18 answers · asked by LUi 1 in Other - Society & Culture

i mean...ppl say they are not racist because they have a friend of a different color, but when asked if they would ever date someone of that same race, they say no.

2006-06-28 14:36:28 · 14 answers · asked by Anonymous in Other - Cultures & Groups

(one per life)
Can some of their souls go to Heaven and others to hell?

2006-06-28 14:36:20 · 9 answers · asked by Kenny ♣ 5 in Religion & Spirituality

according to the bible satan only did as he was ordered. it was when he had the guts to stand up to Jehova that he was casted out. people attack satan constantly but their god Jehova is angry, jealous, and vengeful. even the Jesus story implies that Jesus saves people from Jehova and not really Satan per se.

2006-06-28 14:35:50 · 29 answers · asked by Anonymous in Religion & Spirituality

A woman came up to me today in t shirt, shorts and bare feet. She asked me for a quarter. I gave it to her and seemed so grateful.

2006-06-28 14:35:34 · 13 answers · asked by Anonymous in Other - Society & Culture

13) They believed in astrology, cast horoscopes, and made "magical" amulets of plants and gems according to astrological aspects. They also believed that angels had taught Moses the practice of herbalism.

14) They believed that miraculous cures were natural extensions of authentic spiritual life.

15) They would wear only white clothes13 as a sign that they worshipped God Who is Light and were clothed by Him in light. This so provoked the other Israelites that praying in white clothing was prohibited by the Pharisees and Sadducees, and laws were drafted accordingly. (The Mishnah begins with such a prohibition.)

16) They observed the identical rules of purity (shuddhi) as the Brahmins in India at that time, especially in the matter of bathing frequently.

17) They practiced the strictest adherence to truthfulness.14

It should also be noted that most of these Brahminical practices were observed by Buddhists as well, so it is not out of place to consider that the Essenes-and Jesus and His disciples-possessed the qualities of both Hindu and Buddhist religion.

From all this we can see why Edersheim states that "In respect of doctrine, life, and worship, it [the Essene community] really stood outside Judaism." As a result of these differences from ordinary Judaism, the Essenes lived totally apart from their fellow Hebrews, usually in separate communities or in communal houses in the towns and cities. (The supposed "communal experiment" in the book of Acts15 was really a continuation of the Essene way of life. The Last Supper took place in just such an Essene "house.")

The History of Isha Messiah-Jesus the Christ16

Among the Essenes of Israel at the threshold of the Christian Era, none were better known or respected than Joachim and Anna of Nazareth. Joachim was noted for his great piety, wealth, and charity. The richest man in Israel, his practice was to divide his increase into thirds, giving one third to the temples of Carmel and Jerusalem and one third to the poor, keeping only one third for himself. Anna was renowned as a prophetess and teacher among the Essenes. Their daughter Mary [Miryam], Who had been conceived miraculously beneath the Holy of Holies of the Temple, had passed thirteen years of Her life as a Temple Virgin until her espousal to Joseph of Nazareth. Before their marriage was performed, She was discovered to have conceived supernaturally, and in time She gave birth to a Son in a cave of Bethlehem. His given name was Jesus (Yeshua in Aramaic and Yahoshua in Hebrew).

This Son of Miryam was as miraculous as His Mother, and astounding wonders were worked and manifested daily in His life-for the preservation of which His parents took Him into Egypt for some years where they lived with the various Essene communities there. But before that flight, when the Child had been about three years old, sages from India17 had come to pay Him homage and to establish a link of communication with Him, for His destiny was to live most of His life with them in the land of Eternal Dharma before returning to Israel as a messenger of the very illumination that had originally been at the heart of the Essene order. Through the intermediary of merchants and travellers both to and from India, contact was maintained with their destined Disciple.

At the age of twelve, during the passover observances on Mount Carmel (not in Jerusalem), Jesus petitioned the elders of the Essenes for initiation-something bestowed only on adults after careful instruction and scrutiny. Because of His well-known supernatural character, the elders examined Him before all those present. Not only could He answer all their questions perfectly, when the examination was ended He began to examine them, putting to them questions and statements that were utterly beyond their comprehension. In this way He demonstrated that the Essene order had nothing whatever to teach Him, and that there was no need for Him to undergo any initiation or instruction from them.

Upon His return to Nazareth preparations were begun for His journeying into India to formally become a disciple of those Masters who had come to Him nine years before. The necessary preliminaries took something more than a year, but sometime between the age of thirteen or fourteen,18 Jesus of Nazareth set forth on a spiritual pilgrimage that would transform Jesus the Nazarene into Isha the Lord, the Teacher of Dharma and Messiah of Israel.

The spiritual training of Jesus

In the Himalayan fastnesses Jesus was instructed in yoga and the highest spiritual life, receiving the spiritual name "Isha," which means Lord, Master, or Ruler, a descriptive title often applied to God, as in the Isha Upanishad. Isha is also a particular title of Shiva.19

The worship of Shiva centered in the form of the natural elliptical stone known as the Shiva Linga (Symbol of Shiva) was a part of the spiritual heritage of Jesus, for His ancestor Abraham, the father of the Hebrew nation, was a worshipper of that form. The Linga which he worshipped is today enshrined in Mecca within the Kaaba. The stone, which is black in color, is said to have been given to Abraham by the Archangel Gabriel, who instructed him in its worship.

Such worship did not end with Abraham, but was practiced by his grandson Jacob, as is shown in the twenty-eighth chapter of Genesis. Unwittingly, because of the dark, Jacob used a Shiva Linga for a pillow and consequently had a vision of Shiva standing above the Linga which was symbolically seen as a ladder to heaven by means of which devas (shining ones) were coming and going. Recalling the devotion of Abraham and Isaac, Shiva spoke to Jacob and blessed him to be an ancestor of the Messiah. Upon awakening, Jacob declared that God was in that place though he had not realized it. The light of dawn revealed to him that his pillow had been a Shiva Linga, so he set it upright and worshipped it with an oil bath, as is traditional in the worship of Shiva, naming it (not the place) Bethel: the Dwelling of God. (In another account in the thirty-fifth chapter, it is said that Jacob "poured a drink offering thereon, and he poured oil thereon." This, too, is traditional, both milk and honey-which Shiva promised Moses would flow abundantly in Israel-being poured over the Linga as offerings.) From thenceforth that place became a place of pilgrimage and worship of Shiva in the form of the Linga stone. Later Jacob had another vision of Shiva, Who told him: "I am the God of Bethel, where thou anointedst the pillar, and where thou vowedst a vow unto me."20 A perusal of the Old Testament will reveal that Bethel was the spiritual center for the descendants of Jacob, even above Jerusalem.

2006-06-28 14:35:26 · 4 answers · asked by sun rays 1 in Religion & Spirituality

Do you think you should be an iniciative person in order to get and be where you want to be? Sometimes many things go through our minds. Do you think that everyone's career depends on the person or the heavens? Our world was well created by God, there's many secrets we don't know yet! However, how do you personally describe this statement? Could it be true that careers fall from the sky or is there something else that we don't know! mysteries, mysteries and more mysteries to discover!

2006-06-28 14:34:55 · 4 answers · asked by Peter 2 in Religion & Spirituality

Their contact and interchange with Indian religion-Brahminical practices in particular-were manifested in several ways among the Essenes:

1) They practiced strict non-violence.

2) They were absolute vegetarians and would not touch alcohol in any form. Nor would they eat any food cooked by a non-Essene. (Edersheim says: "Its adherents would have perished of hunger rather than join in the meals of the outside world.")

3) They refused to wear anything of animal origin, such as leather or wool, usually making their clothes of linen.

4) They rejected animal sacrifice, insisting that the Torah had not originally ordered animal sacrifice, but that its text had been corrupted-in regard to that and many other practices as well. Their assertion was certainly corroborated by passages in the scriptures such as: "Will I eat the flesh of bulls, or drink the blood of goats?"5 "To what purpose [is] the multitude of your sacrifices unto me? saith the Lord:...I delight not in the blood of bullocks, or of lambs, or of he goats."6 "For I spake not unto your fathers, nor commanded them in the day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt, concerning burnt offerings or sacrifices."7 The quotations from Isaiah are particularly relevant since he was himself the Master of the Essenes.

It was the Essenes' contention that the "animals" originally offered in sacrifice were symbolic effigies of animals that represented the particular failing or fault from which the offerer wished to be freed. (Appollonius of Tyana taught this same thing in relation to the ancient Greek sacrifices, and urged a return to that form. Long before that, in India dough effigies were offered in "sacrifice."8) In the Essene practice, each person molded the effigies with his own hands, while praying and concentrating deeply on the traits he wished to have corrected, feeling that it was being transferred into the image. The effigies were made of five substances: powdered frankincense, flour, water, olive oil, and salt. When these had dried, they were taken to the tabernacle whose altar was a metal structure with a grating over the top and hot coals within. The effigies were laid upon this grating and burnt by the intense heat. As they burned, through the force of the heat the olive oil and frankincense liquefied and boiled or seeped upward. This fragrant liquid was called "the blood" of the sacrifice. It was this with which Moses consecrated the tabernacle, its equipment, and the priests,9 not animal blood. And it was just such a "lamb" whose "blood" was sprinkled on the doorposts in Egypt.10

For the Passover observance, the Essenes would bake a lamb effigy using the same ingredients-except for the frankincense they would substitute honey and cinnamon. (Or, lacking honey, they would use a kind of raisin syrup.) This was the only paschal lamb acceptable to them-and therefore to Jesus and His Apostles.

Consequently, the Essenes refused to worship in Jerusalem, but maintained their own tabernacle on Mount Carmel. They did not have an actual building on Mount Carmel, but a tent-tabernacle made according to the original directions given to Moses on Mount Sinai. They considered the Jerusalem temple unacceptable because it was a stone structure built according to Greco-Roman style rather than the simple and humble tabernacle form given to Moses-a form that symbolized both the physical and psychic makeup of the human being. Further, the Jerusalem temple was built by Herod who, completely subservient to Rome, disdained Judaism and practiced a kind of Roman agnostic piety. Because of this the temple was ritually unclean in their estimation. They placated the Jerusalem Temple priests by sending them large donations of money. On occasion they gave useful animals to the Temple in Jerusalem, but only with the condition that they would be allowed to live out their natural span of life.

5) They interpreted the Torah and other Hebrew scriptures in an almost exclusively spiritual, symbolic, and metaphysical manner (as did the Alexandrian Jewish philosopher Philo). They also had esoteric writings of their own which they would not allow non-Essenes to see. But even more objectionable to the other Hebrews was their study and acceptance of "alien" scriptures-the holy books of other religions-so much so that an official condemnation was made of this practice. In contrast to all those around them, the Essenes held a universal, eclectic view of religion.

6) Celibacy was prized by them, being often observed even in marriage, and many of them led monastic lives of total renunciation.

7) They considered their male and female members-all of whom were literate-to be spiritual equals, and both sexes were prophets and teachers among them. This, too, was the practice in Hinduism at that time, women also wearing the sacred thread.

8) They denied the doctrine of the physical resurrection of the dead at the end of time, which was held by some Pharisees-who usually believed in reincarnation-and later became a tenet of Mediterranean Christianity.

9) They believed in reincarnation and the law of karma and the ultimate reunion of the soul with God. This is clearly indicated by the Apostles asking Jesus about a blind man: "Master, who did sin, this man, or his parents, that he was born blind?"11

10) They believed that the sun was a divine manifestation, imparting spiritual powers to both body and mind. They faced the rising and setting sun and recited prayers of worship, refusing, upon rising in the morning, to speak a single word until the conclusion of those prayers. They did not consider the sun was a god, but a symbol of the One God of Light and Life. It was, though, felt that appropriate prayers directed toward the sun would evoke a divine response. (See Jesus' words to the king of Kashmir as recorded in the Bhavishya Maha Purana that are given later on.)

11) They believed in both divination and the powers of prophecy.

12) They believed in the power of occult formulas, or mantras,12 as well as esoteric rituals, and practiced theurgy (spiritual "magic") with them.

2006-06-28 14:34:00 · 1 answers · asked by sun rays 1 in Religion & Spirituality

This is a question that will live in infamy.

2006-06-28 14:33:29 · 26 answers · asked by Anonymous in Other - Society & Culture

2006-06-28 14:33:04 · 5 answers · asked by italiana mocha 2 in Religion & Spirituality

2006-06-28 14:32:26 · 14 answers · asked by valcus43 6 in Religion & Spirituality

Yes Jesus lived in India. You have got the right information.

At the time of Jesus there were two major currents or sects within Judaism: the Pharisees and the Sadducees. The Pharisees were extremely concerned with strict external observance of their interpretation of the Mosaic Law, ritual worship, and theology. The Sadducees, on the other hand, were very little concerned with any of these and tended toward a kind of genteel agnosticism. Today these two groups might be compared with the Orthodox and the Reformed branches of Judaism respectively.

There was also a third sect which both was and was not part of Judaism. They were the Essenes, whose very name means "the Outsiders."1 Whether they chose this name for themselves or whether it was applied to them by the disdainful Pharisees and Sadducees is not known. But that they were incongruent (even incompatible) to the normal life of Israel at that time is certainly known.

Their claims about their very existence was a controversial matter. For the Essenes averred that Moses had created them as a secret fraternity within Judaism, with Aaron and his descendents at their head. The prophet Jeremiah was a Master of the Essenes, and it was in his lifetime that they ceased to be a secret society and became a public entity. From that time many of the Essenes began living in communities. Isaiah and Saint John the Baptist were also Masters of the Essenes. Their purpose was to follow a totally esoteric religious philosophy and practice that was derived from the Egyptian Mysteries. As the grandson of the Pharaoh, Moses had been an initiate of those Mysteries and destined to ultimately become the head of the Egyptian religion.2 These Mysteries were themselves derived from the religion of India: Sanatana-or Arya-Dharma.3 Because of this the Essenes had always maintained some form of contact and interchange with India-a fact that galled their fellow Israelites. Regarding this, Alfred Edersheim, in his nineteenth century classic The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah, wrote: "Their fundamental tendency was quite other than that of Pharisaism, and strongly tinged with Eastern elements."

The reality of this contact with India is shown in the Zohar (2:188a-b), a compilation of ancient Jewish mystical traditions and the major text of the Jewish Kabbalah. It contains the following incident regarding the knowledge of an illumined Rabbi concerning the religion of India and the Vedic4 religious rite known as the Sandhya, which is an offering of prayers at dawn and sunset for enlightenment.

"Rabbi Yose and Rabbi Hiyya were walking on the road. While they were walking, night fell; they sat down. While they were sitting, morning began to shine; they rose and walked on. Rabbi Hiyya said, 'See, the face of the East, how it shines! Now all the children of the East [in India], who dwell in the mountains of light [the Himalayas], are bowing down to this light, which shines on behalf of the sun before it comes forth, and they are worshipping it....Now you might say: 'This worship is in vain!' but since ancient, primordial days they have discovered wisdom through it."

2006-06-28 14:31:21 · 9 answers · asked by sun rays 1 in Religion & Spirituality

2006-06-28 14:31:06 · 6 answers · asked by Anonymous in Other - Society & Culture

well, i hate familes and crowds and i don't want or need to go visit. but they've got a pool and its hot outside

2006-06-28 14:31:00 · 9 answers · asked by Anonymous in Other - Society & Culture

2006-06-28 14:30:04 · 31 answers · asked by zcilinks 1 in Religion & Spirituality

2006-06-28 14:29:57 · 12 answers · asked by Nikita 1 in Languages

Why do certain sins feel so natural?

2006-06-28 14:28:32 · 17 answers · asked by Subterfuge 3 in Other - Society & Culture

2006-06-28 14:28:08 · 10 answers · asked by Anonymous in Other - Society & Culture

Does anyone else agree that many Catholics (possibly even more than half) have less understanding of their faith than the average sports fan does of the history of football? I have this crazy idea that if one truly believes in this omnipotent, omniscient, and all-caring god then he/she should devote more than just half an hour on sunday? I think even fervent Catholics, whom I am not attacking, would agree. Catholic myself, i am appalled by those who fornicate and sin all week and then go to church on sunday. I am criticized enough for my faith as it is without the absolute lack devotion demonstrated by most Catholics. Isn't wrong for one to attend catholic church without so much as understanding the conditions for mortal sin? Shouldn't luke warm people stick to less important movements? If all humans behaved like Christ, wouldn't we actually be capable of making a change rather than "praying in church on sundays?" I belive jesus was social reformist who dreamed of change.

2006-06-28 14:27:41 · 19 answers · asked by kmm4864990 1 in Religion & Spirituality

is this a term to describe the period of time that you are alive?

2006-06-28 14:26:19 · 2 answers · asked by rescue me 1 in Religion & Spirituality

Have a GED with no college degree. Been divorce for 4 years,after been married for 20. Came out of a very abusive relationship,but trying to get a job that I could live on.

2006-06-28 14:26:07 · 20 answers · asked by Anonymous in Other - Society & Culture

I am here as one of the guardians of democracy, defending our beloved Constitution against the religious bigots who would erode our Constitutionally guaranteed freedoms who would erode them at every opportunity in some false guise with the real agenda of transfoming the United States into a theocratic totalitarian state that will kill folks like Galileo for saying the world is not the center of the universe or that the universe evolved. I am but one of the guardians of freedom. WHAT DO OTHER NON THEISTS SAY? WHY ARE YOU HERE?

2006-06-28 14:25:18 · 16 answers · asked by valcus43 6 in Religion & Spirituality

I am Christian but I do not preach to people because it is annoying. I hate being preached by mormons. I am outside in peace and then these two business-looking guys come to me on bikes and they have helmets on and they start preaching about mormonism. Atheists need to stop telling negative things about our religion but that won't happen because there are also Christians who preach to Atheists. Everyone stop PREACHING! If someone wants to follow a religion then THEY will come to YOU. Preaching about your beliefs makes everyone who shares your beliefs look bad. I want you to tell me what group of people have been preaching to you the most? Also, have YOU ever preached to anyone, if yes explain your reasons for doing it? If you preach, what makes you think you will be successful in converting people into believing what you believe?

2006-06-28 14:24:55 · 23 answers · asked by Anonymous in Religion & Spirituality

2006-06-28 14:22:51 · 37 answers · asked by Gobstopper5 2 in Etiquette

2006-06-28 14:21:40 · 9 answers · asked by Not-Uh-Fighter 2 in Other - Cultures & Groups

That is, if you do say howdy to strangers. I often experience an awkward distance / timing thing even if it turns out to be a friendly person. I was wondering if others did.

2006-06-28 14:21:01 · 13 answers · asked by megalomaniac 7 in Etiquette

Did they really just need to get plastered or what?

2006-06-28 14:20:25 · 23 answers · asked by BuckFush 5 in Religion & Spirituality

I'm sick to death of certain individuals who are full of themselves, trying to blow out other people's candles to make theirs look brighter. I need a good way to humble them and show them, once and for all, that they are NOT all that and a bag of chips.\

10 points for the most useful idea.

2006-06-28 14:20:22 · 14 answers · asked by I Know Nuttin 5 in Other - Society & Culture

Ever heard this saying ?
"The world going to hell in a hand basket."
What does this mean, and who is carrying the basket ?

2006-06-28 14:20:14 · 14 answers · asked by Scott c 5 in Mythology & Folklore