Healing the Soul

The Essence of Ayurveda

Session 2 Part 3 Transcription

Babaji: The Vedas are almost unknown in the West. They cover every possible subject you can imagine. The Vedas cover not only all spiritual knowledge, but all material knowledge as well: how to govern a kingdom, how to establish a community, how to manage a farm or a homestead, all these material subjects--how to build buildings, all this... how to make music, how to do temple worship, how to cast spells, magic, and all these things are covered in the Vedas. You can find in the Vedas everything that's in every other scripture. But the thing that's unique to the Vedas is that it also has the complete science of God. And since we don't have this knowledge [in the West], we can't even imagine what it's like. That's the specific quality of the Vedas. 

Now we're gong to talk about the Western and Eastern spiritual knowledge, the Bible and the Vedas, and their relationship with our Esoteric Teaching. After Jesus Christ appeared, there were [written] the original texts of the Bible. Those texts were complete; they gave many different witnesses' viewpoints about the life of Jesus. 

But then about 300 years after Jesus, the Roman Empire decided to accept Christianity as the state religion, because Emperor Constantine became the emperor by killing his three brothers, because their father divided the Empire equally among the four brothers. So the first thing he did was murder his three brothers, then he became the emperor. Then, he had a problem--I mean besides the fact that he was a bloodthirsty murdering wretch. He also had the problem that now he had to put the empire back together into one piece. 

So he said, "I have a great idea: I'll make a state religion. That way, we won't have all these little, you know, religions with 5% or 10% of the population; we'll only have one religion, and everybody will belong to that religion. Great: now, what religion are we going to use?" So he decided on Christianity, mainly because the Christians were the only ones that would take him. [laughs] He was such a rascal. 

Constantine called a meeting called the Council of Nicea. It was held in a place in Turkey called Niceum. So he gathered all the Christian leaders and all the original texts of the Bible, and they had a big conference. And he said "OK, there are 300 different sects of Christianity. Now you guys are the leaders of all these sects. Now we want to have one universal Catholic Church." Catholic means universal. "One standard version of Christianity for the whole empire. So, you're the experts; you have to figure out this one standard version." 

Then he sat back and he listened to them discuss for three days. After three days they were arguing and arguing, and they couldn't agree on anything. So above all things, Constantine was a very practical man. So he said "Alright--shuddup! It's gonna be like this: salvation by faith not works; no mysticism, no vegetarianism; none of this, you know, mystical stuff about the soul. We have to cut out the part of Jesus' story where he went to India," and so on and so on and so on. "And if you don't like it, there's a guy with a big sword right out here, and he will gladly take off your head." [laughter] So out of the almost 600 people who went to the conference, only about 200 came back. All the rest were killed. [in Italian accent] Hey, that's Constantine's style, you know? "You don't agree with me? [Off with your head!]" Very, very practical man. Just exactly the right kind of man to start a religion. Of course I'm being sarcastic. 

Constantine edited the texts of the Bible to match his political standards. He wanted something so simple, so basic that any Roman citizen could accept it. So it couldn't be austere, it couldn't have a complex philosophy, it had to be a real simple deal:"You believe in this, you're going to heaven." End of story. So that's how Christianity, the religion that we have today, got started. He took this guy Paul... First they killed all the real disciples, then they took this guy Paul, who was a politician, and made him the head of the church, and then everything went downhill from there. That's what happens when politics gets mixed up with religion. Now the unique thing about the Vedas is [that] it never got mixed up with politics. So the Vedas remain complete. But we'll get to that in a minute. 

So what happened next? Around the ninth century the church got in big trouble; the Greeks were defeating them in debates. They couldn't come up with a philosophy strong enough to withstand the Greeks. So they said, "Oh, we know what to do: we'll just bring in Greek philosophy!" So after a big discussion, they decided to bring in Aristotle's philosophy. So they took the philosophy and logic of Aristotle, and did an ontological analysis of the fragmentary Bible texts left over after the Council of Nicea, and they came up with the Roman theology. And this is the standard Roman theology that we still have today. It was created in about the tenth century by applying Aristotelian logic to the texts of the Bible. 

So the theology of the Roman church is 95% the same as the theology of all the other churches that were derived from it. The differences are only minor. Even the so-called Reformation never seriously questioned this whole process [of editing the original texts and interpreting them according to Aristotelian logic]. Basically it was a political thing, saying that "We don't believe in the infallibility of the Pope." But what wound up happening was that they just took the same philosophy and created a new organization. It's like playing the same game for a different team. They were saying "We need more teams; then we can have a league, and have competition." Great. [laughs] So that just created more confusion, but it didn't really help people get closer to the truth. 

Now let's talk about the Vedas. We still have the original complete texts [of the Vedas]. As we discussed, there's a whole system so you cannot change or edit the texts of the Vedas without being detected. And in India there are four places where the complete texts are kept safe. So these texts would survive even a nuclear war. There's no way that anybody can destroy the original Vedas. Plus we have the commentaries of the spiritual masters. Over 5,000 years, the spiritual masters have given us commentaries to bring the knowledge of the Vedas into the present time, according to the situation in the world. My spiritual master also wrote many commentaries on the Vedas. So together, these [original texts and commentaries] are very, very complete. 

The difference is, in the West, the original texts were edited, and all we have now is fragments. For example, what happened to the 17 years between Jesus' Bar Mitzvah and when he was received by John the Baptist? What was he doing? Building furniture with his father? [laughs] No, I don't think so. 

Response: Vacation. [laughter]

Babaji: Actually he was traveling; he went to India. How do we know? Because when he went to India, he stayed with our school. We still have the historical records; I've seen them with my own eyes, in the library of the King of Puri. In India there are still the original manuscripts, the records of Jesus' visit. So these things have been made a secret in the West; because, as you observed, to keep people under control. When people become spiritually strong, they can't be controlled, because they know what the truth is. Remember, the reason people accept something that's not true is because they're lazy; they're too lazy to investigate, and find out the actual truth. But we encourage everybody to investigate our knowledge. Please! Investigate as deeply as you like; you cannot find any flaws in it. I haven't been able to find anything wrong in over 40 years of looking into this Vedic knowledge. 

So if we take this [Vedic] knowledge, and we do the same kind of ontological analysis, we come up with something called Transontology. Transontology means 'transcendental ontology'; it means a set of categories of existence that includes spiritual things as well as material things. So when we live in a world of Transontology, we see the spiritual meaning of everything. We don't just see it as a material thing, because we see it in the context of spiritual existence. 

And from that [Transontology] we get the Esoteric Teaching of the Vedas, which is passed down by our lineage. This ontological analysis was done 500 years ago by one of our predecessor spiritual masters. And he went through all of the Vedic texts and analyzed it into an ontology. All our work is based on this [Transontology] analysis. 

So once we saw that it was possible to do this [Transontology analysis], then we also saw that was possible to do this [fill in the missing parts of the Bible through a  Transontology analysis]. It's possible to take Transontology, analyze the remaining texts of the Bible, and fill in the missing information from the original texts of the Vedas. And in that way we come up with the Secret Teachings of Jesus. We have so many videos on the Sermon on the Mount, where we talk about these teachings. We spent a whole weekend, huh? talking about Jesus' Sermon on the Mount. 

And our conclusion is [that] Jesus is not a Western man, because his opinions, his way of expressing himself, everything is so Eastern. If you go to the East, you'll understand what I mean. For example, he says "Don't let your left hand know what your right hand is doing." That's a completely Eastern statement; because in the East, you only give and take with your right hand. He's talking about charity; He says, "Don't give charity in public so that other people will see; give in secret, so that only God will see, and then God will reward you in secret." "Don't let your left hand know what your right hand is doing." 

So generally in the East it's understood that auspicious things are done with the right hand, and inauspicious things are done with the left hand. This is an Eastern thing. Can you imagine a continent three times the size of South America, with no toilet paper? Now are you starting to understand? Right hand and left hand; they talk about the left-hand path. So, we take the right-hand path, and we worship God according to our best understanding, and we don't say [that] you have to change your religion. 

We're not trying to recruit people from Christian religion and change them to Vedic religion. What we're saying is, if you take knowledge from the Vedas, that you'll be able to understand your same religion much, much better. You don't have to change religion; in fact, we don't advise it. Because whatever you have faith in, you should stick with that. We encourage you to develop your existing faith, not to change your faith; that [would be] cheating. So whatever faith you've got in Jesus, that should increase more and more, because we regard him as the original guru; we take him like that. 

Because remember the creed: "I believe in God the Father, maker of heaven and earth, [and of all things visible and invisible.] and in His son, Jesus Christ, who was born before all worlds; God of God, light of light, very God of very God;" you know it by heart, right? "Being of one substance with the Father, by whom all things were made." What does that mean: "born before all worlds"? He's eternal, but he also has a specific function in the creation, as the Logos or the word of God. God says, "Let there be light," well who carries out that command? Who else is there? Nobody else exists! Only the celestial Christ. 

So he takes the material elements created by God, and using the Word of God, the Name of God, that sound vibration, that spiritual sound, he creates the material universe from the original material given by God. That's our same Jesus Christ. And he is also, in his celestial form, the first guru of our Vedic literature. In the Vedas, he's called Brahma or Isha; in fact throughout Asia, Jesus is called Isha, or Esa. In fact, the name of the whole continent of Asia comes from the name of Isha. Because in Sanskrit, the possessive form of that declension is formed by extending the first vowel. A declension is a group of nouns whose different forms [cases] are made in a similar way. 

In Sanskrit, the possessive case of certain declensions is formed by extending the first vowel. The example is Vasudeva and Vaasudeva. 

Uddhava: I don't get it.

Babaji: Vasudeva and Vaasudeva.

Uddhava: The translator is failing tonight.

Babaji: We're going to fire you in a minute. [laughter] [writes on board] Vasudeva and Vaasudeva. Vaasudeva means the son of Vasudeva. So Isha, in the possessive becomes Esa. So the name of the continent Asia means that it belongs to Isha. Yes, whenever he appears on this planet, he comes to this place: Asia. You understand? So many ancient names come from Sanskrit, and they explain the ancient relationships between God and the human race. So many mysteries are [explained] there in language, if you know how to read them. This science is called Philology.

Question: Those are names of God, then?

Babaji: Yes. Because God is the first [Isha]. And Vaasudeva means [Krsna] the son of King Vasudeva. 

Comment: Isha Mashia means 'the first Messiah' [in Mayan].

Babaji: Hmmm. Very interesting. I think you'll find, if we had the original information from the Mayas and Incas, that there was a connection with the ancient Vedas. But because their language and everything has been destroyed, we don't know the meanings of the carvings, and we're just guessing. Too bad the Conquistadores didn't keep all that [information]; but they thought, "Well it's just primitive mythology." That's always their excuse. 

When the British invaded India, they tried to destroy the Vedas. And how did they do it? Well, they were too civilized to just go and burn all the temples; what they did was, they created an artificial religion called 'Hinduism.' Hinduism is only 250 years old; it never existed before that. The word 'hindu' does not appear in the Vedas anywhere, because it's not an Indian word, it's a Persian word. It started when the Persians invaded India. And India, you know, has on the border... Here's the India, right? It's shaped something like that, and on the border is the Indus River. So the Persians were lined up along the Indus River, and the Vedic people were lined up on the other side, stopping them. So the Persians started calling the Vedic people the 'Indus.' 

Comment: The name of India is Bharata.

Babaji: Bhaarata is the original name of India. Bhaarata means the country of King Bharata. 

Uddhava: No, not again. Come on... [laughter]

Babaji: You see? The possessive is formed by extending the first vowel of that particular declension. So the original king of what we call India, his name is Bharata. So the country is called Bhaarata. It's hard for us to hear, but the people in that place, they can hear [the difference] very easily. In Sanskrit there are five sounds of 'n': so there are all these different sounds, [but] we can't hear the difference. But when you're in India, if you put your tongue in the right place, then people smile at you because you have the right accent. I lived in India for 13 years. 

So anyway, the Persians were calling the people on the other side the Indus, but they couldn't pronounce Indus, so they called them 'Hindus.' It's a Persian word, and it's a racial slur, a disrespectful racial term. So the British took this [racial epithet], and then they took their understanding of the Vedas, which is that [they teach] polytheism, and that God is ultimately impersonal, and that everything is controlled by karma, so there's no free will, no escape from samsara, like that. And they put all this together in one mishmash thing, and to add insult to injury, they called it 'hinduism.' And then they found the most atheistic sect that they could find, and put them in charge of the whole thing. 

And then, the most brilliant part of their plan: they made it a required course in all their schools. Magnificent evil. So by this plan, now they convinced all the educated people in India that they're Hindus. That's [about] like convincing all the Blacks in America that they're 'niggers.' I mean, really, really evil plan. So now, [if] you look in any schoolbook, any university text on religion, what is the religion of 'India'? 'Hinduism.' But ultimately if you research this hinduism, the whole thing falls apart. If you go on the Internet, and you Google "British created Hinduism"--try it sometime. I don't know about Spanish, but in English there are about 150,000 links. The Indians are well aware of this if they've done any inquiry into their history. 

Comment: They were not cheated.

Babaji: Some were not. The Westernized Indians, though; they're lost. So if you look at the flag of India, they still call it Bhaarata. You look on the Indian flag, and the country is written like that: not India, Bhaarata. Yeah, it's a long syllable. In Sanskrit, the long syllable is twice as long as the short one. So, Bharata, Bhaarata; we're not used to talking like that. 

So, what the heck were we talking about--oh yeah, the Vedas. So the original Vedic literature is still there in India, in the north, east, south and the west, in caves. Kept very carefully, so that no matter what happens in the future, the Vedas will remain intact. So the Vedic knowledge never changes, even over thousands of years, because it has all kinds of safeguards built in to it to prevent change. 

In our next session, we'll talk more about specific knowledge of the Vedas, especially the three modes of material nature and the Holy Name of God. Because these are the most powerful, most important parts of the Vedic knowledge. If you don't remember anything else from this course, you should remember these principles. We're goin to go into that in great detail next week. 

So now I want to open up the meeting to questions; we only have a few minutes left, and I want to make sure that you understand everything clearly. 

Question: Did Sankara reorganize the [Vedic] knowledge recently?

Babaji: Oh, he sure did; he turned it completely upside down and backwards! [laughs] Most of the ideas of 'hinduism' come from Sankara. He completely misinterpreted the Vedas to create a false religion that would lead the demons to hell. There's a passage in the Padma Purana where Siva says to Parvati, "In the Kali-yuga I incarnate as a brahmana and I preach a false religion, which is atheism disguised as Vedic knowledge, in order to deceive the demons and send them to hell. Anyone who studies this knowledge is doomed." That comes from Sankara himself. 

Remember I said that the Vedas' meaning is interpreted according to context; what Sankara did was take particular statements out of context, and then reinterpret them to show that God is impersonal. So his ultimate conclusion is that God is just some kind of energy; actually his ulimate conclusion is very unclear. And--let me finish--more than this, Sankara's personal life and his mission was a complete failure. The history of Sankaracarya is that he lost every single debate in his whole life, that we know about. In fact, Sankara's death happened because he lost a debate with a Buddhist, and the bet was, "Whoever loses the debate has to jump into a pot of boiling oil." So Sankara lost the debate! [laughter] Bye... Hasta la vista... [laughter]

Sankara's last words before he entered the boiling oil, he turned to his followers and said, "You're all idiots. Worship Govinda! Worship Govinda! Worship Govinda!" Three times. He didn't say, "Meditate on Govinda," he said, worship--bhaja govinda, bhaja govinda, bhaja govinda, mudha mate. "You fools and asses--mudha means burro. Yeah, because Krsna says in Bhagavad-gita that anybody who takes up the impersonal path to the Supreme, all they--the only benefit they get is their own had labor. 

Just like the burro; the burro works so hard every day, [but] at the end of the day all he gets is a little grass, and he gets beaten also, because he's by nature very stubborn. [laughs] So Krsna compares the people who--the same Govinda that Sankara is talking about, compares the followers of the impersonal way with burros, because their nature is similar. They're very stubborn, and when we meet these people, we find that they do not accept any good argument. They can't be convinced of anything, because they think that everything is impersonal. So it's impossible to even discuss with them because they're not responding, they're not tuned in. 

So our school completely rejects the impersonal approach, we reject this false hinduism, we reject Sankaracarya. This is a very recent invention. It's just a human, a fallible human invention. It's something that pleases people: "Oh, I am God. I am one with the universal energy. Ah!" 

Response: This is a very tough issue in India.

Babaji: No; no. It's because of the hinduism campaign of the British; otherwise, nobody would consider this teaching very important. Look; my mother and father are people, what about yours? Yeah, and their parents are also persons. And their parents and their parents and their parents are persons, all the way back to the original person, who is God. How can persons come from something that is impersonal? You never see an animal take birth from dirt; no, we only see like things come from like things. So horses give birth to horses, people give birth to people, and every scripture says that the soul is made in the image of God. 

The human being is the representative of God because we're made in God's image. You should go of and think about this for awhile; don't argue with me now, because then you're just confirming that you're a donkey. [laughter] No matter how many goo arguments I come up with, you won't accept. It's always like that; I've been doing this for thirty years, I've met many people with these ideas, and it's always the same. So let's not waste our time. 

Any other questions?

Question: Could you please talk about the belonging of Jesus to the Essenes, and the relationship with Vedic Empire?

Babaji: Oh, boy. In Palestine among the Jews there were three main sects: the Pharisees, the Sadducees, and the Essenes; and the Essenes were the mystics. They were the ones who believed that you could have a direct personal relationship with God, and all their practices were oriented around that [principle]. The Pharisees and Sadducees were impersonalists; specifically, they believed that, if we perform certain rituals in the temple, then God is bound to give the results. In other words, human beings can control God through religion. But the Essenes never accepted that, because their aim was love of God. God is supreme, not humans. 

So there was some politics, and the Pharisees and Sadducees kicked out the Essenes, and forced them to go live in the desert. They were exiled, and they weren't allowed to perform rites in the Temple, even though they were rabbis, descendants of Moses and David, they were pushed out from the Temple. 

So Jesus was born among the Essenes; which, by the way, proves that he was a vegetarian, because the Essenes were always vegetarian. They didn't believe in killing. So [the birth of] Jesus was foretold for many centuries; and when he appeared, the whole Essenes had a Renaissance. And actually there were many people who agreed with the Essenes, or with their philosophy, and wanted to see them reinstated in the Temple. But the Pharisees were very much afraid of this, because then they would lose their big positions. 

So when Jesus began to preach, the Pharisees began to make so many false accusations against him, eventually going to the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate, and making the false accusation that Jesus was trying to start a revolution. But he always said, "My kingdom is not of this world." He said, "The kingdom of God is within you." Even when he came in [to Jerusalem], and they were putting the palms [on the street] on Palm Sunday, and they were saying "Oh, king of kings," he was saying "No, my kingdom is not of this world." 

So, that didn't matter because it was all about politics. So if you understand this context, then it makes thins in the Bible a lot clearer; for example, when Jesus goes up to Paul, the tax collector, and says "Come with me." Paul says "OK, let's go." It's not that that was the first time that he ever met Jesus; it's not that he never heard of Jesus before. He knew exactly who Jesus was; that's why Jesus could make such a request, and he was ready to go just like that. It's like "Yeah! Let's do it!" He was ready. 

So that puts things in perspective, and makes the story of the Bible much more understandable, if we know the political situation leading up to the activities of Christ. It means that Christ didn't just drop out of the sky; people were expecting him, they were looking for someone with his symptoms. And when he did appear, they were more than ready to follow him. But then, he didn't want anything more than that people would understand the truth about God. 

Question: What's the role that religions are playing today?

Babaji: Well, look around you; religion is in retreat. Because first of all, the only religion that we have in the West is disempowered and incomplete; and this was deliberate, to create a weak, ignorant population that could be manipulated and controlled very easily. That's the role of religion; actually religion is intrinsically weak, because it tries to come between the individual soul and God, and that's an unnatural position, because everyone naturally has a direct, personal relationship with God. As soon as we recognize that relationship, we become beyond religion. And we simply have to wait, then, for the opportunity to learn the real spiritual knowledge. 

The Absolute Truth is that God is everywhere, and in everything, and in the heart of every individual soul. So to have a direct personal relationship with God is the natural condition of the soul. If we're having any other experience, we know something is wrong; it means there's a spiritual disease, which begins from lack of knowledge. But the so-called religions actually enforce that lack of knowledge by editing the scriptures, and by giving the idea of religion as simply rituals, and by discouraging people from inquiring deeper into it. Because if you inquire deeply into it, then you must come to the conclusion that the real source of everything good is love of God. 

We can't love something impersonal; we can only love another person because of His good qualities, because of His wonderful actions, fairness, His unconditional love and so many other things. That's why we love God. Nobody can love just some light, or some energy, or some vague idea of oneness, it's not possible to love [something like that]. So all these [bogus] teachings actually sabotage the natural condition of the soul; they more or less force people into a spiritually diseased condition. That's why they're so dangerous; that's why we preach against them so strongly.

Question: That's why they're fighting in Israel? 

Babaji: Oh, that's something else. There was an argument between the two branches of the family of Abraham. You know who is Abraham?

Response: So it's politics again?

Babaji: Oh yeah. Politics again. Politics is always the bad guy; politics is always the source of evil. Because of greed, people cover up the truth, and they propagate some lie. And because of this, people suffer, and a few people benefit. 

Question: The New Testament is the edited Bible?

Babaji: Yes; why don't they give the whole story of Jesus' life? Why don't they give the background of the Pharisees and the Sadducees and the Essenes? Why don't they tell about the Essenes, which was the sect that Jesus was born into? We had to wait until the discovery of the Nag Hammadi scrolls to find that out. No, the Apocrypha are different. The Apocrypha were the books that were rejected by Constantine, that survived; many others were destroyed. But then there were other books belonging to the Essenes only, and these were discovered at a site called Nag Hammadi in 1952. Or sometimes [they're] called the Dead Sea Scrolls. So these scrolls gave the inside view of the Essenes, which up until then, we had no idea, only speculation. That's how we know that the Essenes were vegetarian; they were nonviolent, they weren't into war and fighting. Their idea was that truth would prevail. 

All of these things are almost unknown by the mass of people. Again because they're content to just accept whatever they're told and believe in it. But we say that's not enough; because if you only believe and you don't test, how do you really know? So we advise people to hear what we say, but also inquire into it and test it; try it for yourself, then you'll know whether we're right or wrong. There are so many beliefs written in so many different books, so many opinions given by so many different authorities; the only way you're really going to know is if you try it, and experience it for yourself. Is God personal or impersonal? Chant His Name and you'll find out. That's the conclusion. If you follow the process given in the scriptures sincerely, you will get the same result. That's our promise. We know that because that's our experience. 

[end of tape]