CAN veD SCIENCES EXPLAIN
THE WORD "RELIGION"????
In
veDik texts such as puraaANo
and itihaas is explained the
SCIENCES OF CREATION AND LIFE. veD
explains for the understanding of the humanity in the current
veDik time era called
kli-yug that the
ONE CREATOR manifests in infinite
naam (name) and
ruup (forms) to create, sustain and recreate all creations
in this universe of ours. This ONE CREATOR
commonly known as GOD also continually
creates and recreates all the infinite number of universes that exists beyond
the sense and knowledge perception of this humanity on this planet earth.
As per sciences of veD, because of
the maayaa-shkti of this
CREATOR GOD all peoples of this
humanity is deluded into thinking "I-self"
as the creator, sustainer and continuing the progeny of creations....This
maayaa-shkti also makes all peoples of
this humanity into thinking that each people is different from other peoples in
a superior or inferior sense...But then all peoples of the humanity have
fundamental belief there is only ONE GOD....Again
this duality and its paradox is created by the twin
aavrAN-shkti and
viKSHaep-shkti of
maayaa-shkti...
Tomorrow, on December 25, 2003, about a billion or so people who call
themselves Christians will be celebrating
the birth of JESUS CHRIST who is the founder
of religion called Christianity....But then
all these billion Christians are still affected by the
maayaa-shkti of a CREATOR GOD
as noted above and the proof of this effect is in all the recorded
inter-Christian and intra-Christian quarrels resulting in 2000 years of wars,
suffering and pain among the entire humanity of this planet earth....(preceding
knowledge shared by SRii chmpklaal Daajibhaai miisTRii
of Edmonton, Alberta, Canada)...
Read an interesting research on the background of
Jesus Christ and Christianity
from
National Glob and Mail Newspaper in
Canada.....you can read this article directly on the newspaper's web site by
clicking on the preceding red hilite or click on the next line to read a
copy of the article on this PVAF web site as part of sharing
KNOWLEDGE OF veD = SCIENCES OF CREATION AND LIFE
at PVAF.....And TO MAKE TOMORROW HAPPIER WITH
UNDERSTANDING THROUGH PURE KNOWLEDGE of this
maayaa-shkti of
ONE CREATOR commonly known as
GOD......
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"Fifth-century Celtic spiritualism had the notion of ''thin places''
where two levels of reality met -- the domain of everyday life and that of the
sacred and the spiritual. Christmas survives into the 21st century as a thin
place where people attempt to step out of the stress and nastiness of everyday
life and show love and charity and know peace. It is a nice time of year, a
nice holiday. As one writer has put it: "Christmas is Christianity's most
conspicuous ambassador to the secular world".
A Merry
Mithras (Sun-God's Birthday)
to all?
In Canada: Mixing a profound religious holiday with a
consumer orgy is wrong.
Let's abolish state religious holidays and admit Jesus was probably born
in May,
says MICHAEL VALPY. Mithras is the one with dibs on Dec. 25
By MICHAEL VALPY
Globe and Mail: Wednesday, December 24, 2003 -
Page A19
Fifth-century Celtic spiritualism had the notion of "thin places" where two
levels of reality met -- the domain of everyday life and that of the sacred and
the spiritual.
Christmas survives into the 21st century as a thin place where people attempt to
step out of the stress and nastiness of everyday life and show love and charity
and know peace. It is a nice time of year, a nice holiday. As one writer has put
it, Christmas is Christianity's most conspicuous ambassador to the secular
world.
It also is showing up annually in pluralistic North America and Europe dragging
evermore unpleasant, fractious baggage like the chains of Marley's Ghost.
This year, to illustrate, a U.S. federal courtroom has been a battleground for
New York City's decision to ban Christian nativity scenes in its 1,200 public
schools. The court has said there's nothing wrong with displaying religious
symbols so long as they don't promote a given religion -- which the nativity
scenes do by presenting the birth of Jesus as the son of God. In other parts of
America there are school boards stirring maelstroms of outrage by prohibiting
calendars with the words "Christmas holiday."
There is the Alliance Defense Fund, an Arizona-based Christian legal group, that
has signed up 700 lawyers nationwide "to combat senseless and reoccurring annual
attempts to censor Christmas" in schools and other public institutions.
Meanwhile, the British Red Cross this year prohibited religious Christmas
decorations in its 300 charity shops, and British civil-rights lawyers are
warning that, under new equity legislation, employers could be charged with
discrimination by their non-Christian employees if they order the traditional
Christmas holiday shut-down of business and compel their workers to take leave.
Here in Canada, with major retailers such as IKEA and the Hudson's Bay Co. for
the first time marketing end-of-Ramadan sales, Muslim Canadians are publicly
asking why the festival of Eid el-Kebir, which ends the Ramadan month of
fasting, shouldn't be declared a public holiday alongside Christmas -- something
recommended a few days ago (along with a holiday for the Jewish Day of
Atonement, Yom Kippur) by a presidential commission in France.
The Muslim Canadians are on the right track. Although, in a country like Canada,
adding everyone's religious rites to the holiday list would turn into a
nightmare; the idea is to wipe the slate clean. It is a safe bet that, within a
few years, Canada won't have religious public holidays in Canada, and that
Section 93 of the Constitution Act of 1867 (permitting Roman Catholic public
schools) will be gone.
And yet there are certain shared rituals which sociologists speak of as being
necessary for a society's "ontological security," and Christmas remains among
the greatest of them -- along with the inspiration of some of Western culture's
most magnificent music and moral and sacred narratives.
But circumstances change. Public Christian Christmas in Canada has outgrown
itself. It not only doesn't fit with contemporary secularism and multicultural
pluralism, its story also belongs to a fading Christian paradigm. What Christmas
celebrates, as The New York Times said recently, is the North American consumer
economy. Non-Christians find its official holiday status meaningless (a Jewish
colleague takes his family bowling) if not offensive. And likely most Canadians
who label themselves Christians don't believe what it commemorates: the biblical
New Testament's account of the birth of a baby in a stable by a virgin mother
impregnated by God and announced by angels.
The University of Oregon's Marcus Borg, possibly today's most outstanding
Western Christian thinker, writes in his new book, The Heart of Christianity ,
that, in the emerging paradigm of mainstream Christian theology, the Bible is no
longer seen as a divine product with divine authority, but as a human response
to God. In this emerging paradigm, the Bible is no longer literal-factual but
historical, written for two ancient cultures: historical Judaism and
2,000-year-old Christianity. And it should be interpreted in that context. Prof.
Borg writes that the Bible's function in the emerging Christian paradigm is
metaphorical and sacramental -- an experience of closeness to God -- rather than
a revelation of doctrine and morals. Thus the emphasis in Christian life is
changing from the notion of rewards in the afterlife -- as a result of faith in
the New Testament's literal narrative -- to transformation in this life through
an inner spiritual relationship with God.
Which makes Christmas, as a metaphorical and sacramental thin place for
Christians, increasingly a meditation on the present. Christians turn up in
great numbers at Christmas church services not simply out of sentiment or
nostalgia but because the metaphor, the powerful symbolism, of the Christmas
story -- the light in the darkness -- touches them at a very deep level.
Mixing it up with a lionization of the consumer economy is a big pain. Wringing
all the spiritual content out of it as the only acceptable means of allowing it
to be put on public display is a major annoyance. Christmas is not Frosty the
Snowman wishing everyone a desiccated "Happy Holiday" while they shop 'til they
drop. We are bruising a significant event, Christmas, because it is a public
holiday. It doesn't have to be.
Christmas does not have to be an irritant to non-Christians. Nor does it have to
be Christianity's conspicuous ambassador to the secular world, which does not at
all help make it a contemplative thin place.
Suppose we were to change its public-holiday status? The ingredients of
depriving it its status might work like this: Allow four or five years of
increasingly heated, ill-humoured dispute about Christmas and Easter alone
having public-holiday status as religious festivals. Allow Christians to get
more irritated about Christmas having all religious significance whacked out of
it. Get a few MPs to introduce private member's bills to abolish statutory
religious holidays; they'll be unsuccessful but will get media attention, and
with luck a supportive editorial or two.
Then get someone to go to court, claiming that the federal government's
declaration of Christmas and Easter as statutory holidays violates Section 15 of
the Charter of Rights and Freedoms: "Every individual is equal before and under
the law and has the right to the equal protection and equal benefit of the law
without discrimination, and, in particular, without discrimination based on
race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion . . ." When the Supreme Court
of Canada eventually rules that Christian-only religious public holidays are a
Section 15 violation, most of those who find the decision upsetting will be
dead.
Parliament then will amend the three federal statutes that designate Christmas
and Easter as statutory holidays.
If MPs are imaginative, we'll get something solstice-ish as a replacement. This,
of course, is what there was before, when Dec. 25 marked the birth of the sun
god Mithras, natalis solis invicti , before the Christian church took it over
around the year 336 for Jesus's birthday. (For Christianity's first three
centuries, there was a huge debate in the church about celebrating birthdays;
some called the custom pagan.)
If MPs are unimaginative, we'll get something called "Late December Holiday."
We'll also figure out some way of giving every Canadian worker one annual
religious holiday of her or his choice (May 20 could be a contender, which St.
Clement of Alexandria believed was the real date of Christmas).
Then we will all relax. And Christians will no longer feel embarrassed about
wishing people Merry Christmas -- because Christmas will belong to them again.
Michael Valpy reports on religion and ethics for The Globe and Mail
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