1. The Gospel of Truth is joy for those who have received from the Father of truth the gift of recognizingº him, thru the power of the Meaning¹ who comes forth from the fullness which is in the thought and mind of the Father. This is he who is called the Savior—that being the name of the task which he is to do for the atonement of those who had been unacquainted with the Name of the Father. (Mt 1:21, Jn 17, Ac 4:12; ¹Ο Λόγος)
2. Now, the Gospel is the revelation of the hopeful, it is the finding of themselves by those who seek him. For since the totality were searching for him from whom they came forth—and the totality were within him, the Inconceivable Incomprehensible, he who exists beyond all thought¹—hence unacquaintance with the Father caused anxiety and fear. Then the anxiety condensed like a fog so that no one could see. (¹Ph 125)
3. Wherefore confusion grew strong, contriving its matter in emptiness and unacquaintance with the truth, preparing to substitute a potent and alluring fabrication for truthfulness. But this was no humiliation for him, the Inconceivable Incomprehensible. For the anxiety and the amnesia¹ and the deceitful fabrication were nothing—whereas the established truth is immutable, imperturbable and of unadornable beauty. Therefore despise confusion! It has no roots and was in a fog concerning the Father, preparing labors and amnesia and fear in order thereby to entice those of the transition and take them captive. (Ph 68; ¹Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina: ‘That universal solution which life gives to all questions, even the most complex and insolvable: one must live in the needs of the day—that is, forget.’)
4. The amnesia of confusion was not made as a revelation, it is not the handiwork of the Father. Forgetfulness does not occur under his directive, although it does happen because of him. But rather what exists within him is acquaintanceshipº—this being revealed so that forgetfulness might dissolve and the Father be recognized. Since amnesia occurred because the Father was not recognized, thereafter when the Father is recognized there will be no more forgetting.

Transcendentalism was a religious and philosophical movement that was developed during the late 1820s and 1830s[1] in the Eastern region of the United States as a protest against the general state of culture and society, and in particular, the state of intellectualism at Harvard University and the doctrine of the Unitarian church taught at Harvard Divinity School. Among the transcendentalists' core beliefs was the inherent goodness of both people and nature.
Transcendentalists believed that society and its institutions—particularly organized religion and political parties—ultimately corrupted the purity of the individual. They had faith that people are at their best when truly "self-reliant" and independent. It is only from such real individuals that true community could be formed.

Frankish kingCharles the Bald in the year 840 AD,

We know not what God is. God himself doesn't know what He is because He is not anything. Literally God is not, because He transcends being

The Golden Eagle is the Messenger, carrying with it the Yasa and its high spiritual principles from above.

"If the great, the military leaders and the leaders of the many descendants of the ruler who will be born in the future, should not adhere strictly to the Yasa, then the power of the state will be shattered and come to an end, no matter how they then seek Chingis Khan, they shall not find him."

(Chingis Khan)

Its message

The Great Yasa of Chingis Khan was, among other things, a collection of Chingis Khan's maxims, regulations and instructions. At his acquisition of supreme power in 1206, he already had prepared his Great Yasa, which continued to be developed during his lifetime. The word "Yasa" means "order, decree." This has led to some confusion, since a "yasa" can also be a single rule. It must therefore be made clear that when we talk about the Great Yasa, we mean Chingis Khan's collected laws, rules, and words of wisdom.

The work was written in the Uighur script that Chingis himself had introduced as the written language of the Mongols. It was written on scrolls that were bound in volumes, and kept in secret archives to which only the supreme ruler and his closest associates had access.

"Man is the measure of all things" -Protagoras
Upanishad says, “Self-luminous is that Being, and formless. He dwells within all and without all. He is unborn, pure, greater than the greatest, without breath, without mind.”
Upanishad states, “The Cosmic Self ... created the whole world of living and non-living things. He created them and then entered into them.”
 “All that it has is its Self in him alone. He is the truth, He is the subtle essence of all. He is the self. And that, Svetaketu, THAT ART THOU”
Humans derive their lofty status from the Brahman’s presence in them, a presence that links them with the rest of the universe in which Brahman is also present. The dawning of the awareness of the oneness of everything demolishes the colonial attitude toward nature as well as the arrogance that leads to violence. The Isha Upanishad says, “And he who sees all beings in his own self and his own self in all beings, he does not feel any revulsion by reason of such a view.” It adds, “When to, one who knows, all beings have, verily, become one with his own self, then what delusion and what sorrow can be to him who has seen the oneness?” (Translation by S Radhakrishnan).
\
Hanuman enquires about the different kinds of "liberation" (Mukti, hence the name of the Upanishad), to which Rama answers that "the only real type [of liberation] is Kaivalya (solitude/nirvana)"

The Brahman is the universal spirit and the Atman is the individual Self.

 Brahman probably comes from the root brh, which means "The Biggest ~ The Greatest ~ The ALL." Brahman is "the infinite Spirit Source and fabric and core and destiny of all existence, both manifested and unmanifested and the formless infinite substratum and from whom the universe has grown". Brahman is the ultimate, both transcendent and immanent, the absolute infinite existence, the sum total of all that ever is, was, or shall be. The word Atmanmeans the immortal perfect Spirit of any living creature, being, including trees etc. The idea put forth by the Upanishadic seers that Atman and Brahman are One and the same is one of the greatest contributions made to the thought of the world.

The mantra Aum Shānti Shānti Shānti, translated as "the soundless sound, peace, peace, peace", is often found in the Upanishads. The path of bhakti or "Devotion to God" is foreshadowed in Upanishadic literature, and was later realized by texts such as the Bhagavad Gita

Haqiqa is a stage in Sufism, a mystical branch of Islam. Sufis strive to perfect themselves and come into the presence of God while still living. They recognize four stages in their pursuit of this: shari’a, tariqa, haqiqa and marifa.

The four stages

Shariat
Shari’a is Islamic law as revealed in the Qur'an and Sunna. The first step in Sufism is following every aspect of the law perfectly. The purpose of this is to prove their love for God, by rigorous self-discipline and constant attention to their conduct. When the Sufi fully lives his or her life according to the Shari’a he or she is ready to progress to the second stage. This conformity to earthly rules is important because it recognizes that the spirit of a man or woman is affected by the actions of the body. In this way, bringing the body under the will of God also purifies the spirit and a pure spirit is essential for the second step.

Sailing on the Sea of Love: The Music of the Bauls of Bengal
By Charles Capwell. 2011. Calcutta: Seagull Books. 244 pages. ISBN: 978-0-85742-004-6 (hard cover).

Reviewed by Thomas Solomon, Grieg Academy - Institute for Music, University of Bergen, 5015 Bergen.

[Review length: 1406 words • Review posted on November 23, 2011]

This re-printing (I hesitate to call it a “new edition”) of Charles Capwell’s The Music of the Bauls of Bengal, originally published in 1986 by Kent State University Press, is both a welcome event and a disappointment. It is welcome in that it makes available again Capwell’s careful study of the music of a significant religious sect of eastern India. More importantly, since this re-issue is by Calcutta-based Seagull Books, it will make the book much more widely available to Indians and especially Bengalis, thus returning the results of Capwell’s research to the community where he studied. At the same time, this re-printing is a disappointment in that the author has chosen to basically re-publish his original monograph from twenty-five years ago without updating the text in reference to new developments in Baul music or in scholarly research on the Bauls that have emerged since the book was first published. The book has been given a new, more evocative title [1]; the author has added a new two-page preface in which he only very briefly acknowledges new developments such as the growing visibility of the Bauls and their music around the globe, including a significant Internet presence; the recordings on the two cassettes accompanying the original edition are now included on two CDs packaged inside the front and back covers; and a bibliographical reference that was missing from the original edition has been added, but otherwise the text has not been revised.

‘BAUL’ AND THE IDEA OF NATION IN RABINDRANATH WITH REFERENCE TO ‘GORA’:A SUBALTERN CASE STUDY Jeanne Openshaw in her seminal ‗Seeking Bauls of Bengal‘ rightly observes that the bauls: ‘While on theone hand they are … romanticized, on the other they are demonized.‘‘ Their antipathy to caste system andoverlapping the boundaries of natural order and involvement into sexual ritual practices makes them typicalaboriginals of Bengal. Early sources dating back to the 1870s project a negative view of the bauls as low casteentertainer and bairagis belonging to different sects.

Essentially, hermeneutics involves cultivating the ability to understand things from somebody else's point of view, and to appreciate the cultural and social forces that may have influenced their outlook. Hermeneutics is the process of applying this understanding to interpreting the meaning of written texts and symbolic artifacts (such as art or sculpture or architecture), which may be either historic or contemporar

Hermeneutics is the art of interpreting. Although it began as a legal and theological methodology governing the application of civil law, canon law, and the interpretation of Scripture, it developed into a general theory of human understanding through the work of Friedrich Schleiermacher, Wilhelm Dilthey, Martin Heidegger, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Paul Ricoeur, and Jacques Derrida. Hermeneutics proved to be much bigger than theology or legal theory. The comprehension of any written text requires hermeneutics; reading a literary text is as much a hermeneutic act as interpreting law or Scripture.

Without collapsing critical thinking into relativism, hermeneutics recognizes the historicity of human understanding. Ideas are nested in historical, linguistic, and cultural horizons of meaning. A philosophical, theological, or literary problem can only be genuinely understood through a grasp of its origin. Hermeneutics is in part the practice of historical retrieval, the re-construction of the historical context of scientific and literary works. Hermeneutics does not re-construct the past for its own sake; it always seeks to understand the particular way a problem engages the present. A philosophical impulse motivates hermeneutic re-construction, a desire to engage a historically transmitted question as a genuine question, worthy of consideration in its own right. By addressing questions within ever-new horizons, hermeneutic understanding strives to break through the limitations of a particular world-view to the matter that calls to thinking.Ý

Hermeneutics opposes the radical relativist notion that meaning cannot be trans-lingual. As the speculative grammarians of the Middle Ages recognized, all languages are rooted in a depth grammar of human meaning. This ontological grammar is not a meta-language in which everything can be said. Rather, it is the single horizon of human understanding, which makes speakers of various languages members of a human community. On the other hand, hermeneutics opposes the rationalist tendency to downplay the uniqueness of languages. Hermeneutics is not satisfied with translating the language of the other; it wants to speak with the other in the language of the other.

Hermeneutics is philosophy in the original sense of the word, the love of wisdom, the search for as comprehensive an understanding of human existence as possible.

A Baul lost in ecstasy

That Mysterious One whispers to me
But He would not let me see Him.

He moves
Close to my being
But hidden from beseeching.

I explore
The sky and the earth
Searching Him,
Circling round my error
Of not knowing me:
Who am I, and who is He?

Katha koere dekha dey na.
Norey chorey buker vitor,
Khujle jibonbhor melena.

Khuji tare aasman jomin
Amarey chininey ami.

Eki bhison bhule bhromi!
Ami konjon, Shey kon jona?

~ Original Bengali by Lalan, English version by Deben Bhattacharya with slight modification

Agrippa and the Greek skeptics

The following tropes for Greek skepticism are given by Sextus Empiricus, in his Outlines of Pyrrhonism. According to Sextus, they are attributed only "to the more recent skeptics" and it is by Diogenes Laertius that we attribute them to Agrippa.[1] The tropes are:
Dissent – The uncertainty of the rules of common life, and of the opinions of philosophers.
Progress ad infinitum – All proof requires some further proof, and so on to infinity.
Relation – All things are changed as their relations become changed, or, as we look upon them from different points of view.
Assumption – The truth asserted is merely a hypothesis.
Circularity – The truth asserted involves a vicious circle (see regress argument, known in scholasticism as diallelus)



The Münchhausen trilemma,

Also called Agrippa's trilemma, purports that it is impossible to prove any certain truth even in fields such as logic and mathematics. According to this argument, the proof of any theory rests either on circular reasoning, infinite regress, or unproven axioms.

Infinite regression
Overlooking for a moment the complications posed by Gettier problems, philosophy has essentially continued to operate on the principle that knowledge is justified true belief. The obvious question that this definition entails is how one can know whether one's justification is sound. One must therefore provide a justification for the justification. That justification itself requires justification, and the questioning continues interminably. The conclusion is that no one can truly have knowledge of anything, since it is, due to this infinite regression, impossible to satisfy the justification element. In practice, this has caused little concern to philosophers, since the line between a reasonably exhaustive investigation and superfluous investigation is usually clear, while others argue for coherentist systems and others still view an infinite regress as unproblematic due to recent work by Peter D. Klein. Nevertheless, the question remains theoretically interesting

Alan Turing was a complicated and eccentric genius – a man ahead of his time. In the 1930s, this British mathematician envisioned a digital world few others could imagine. During World War II, he broke the German naval Enigma code and helped Britain defeat the Nazis. As the father of computer science and a leading theorist of artificial intelligence, today Turing is considered one of the 20th century’s most important people. He never saw the world he helped create: instead, after being persecuted for his homosexuality by the government he helped save, Turing took his own life in 1954.

The Bauls of Bengal
Robert Menger, November 28, 2000

KEYWORDS: Baul, Bengali songs, Rabindranath Tagore, Lalan Fakir, mad saints, sadhana, tantra, guru, sahaj manus, Hinduism

I. ABSTRACT
The Bauls of Bengal believe in a religion largely based on ideas from Hinduism, Islam, and Buddhism.It is the Bauls disregard of social constraints, such as the caste system, which leave them free to achieve liberation through the realization of the Divine.Lalan Fakir, who is the oldest recorded writer of these songs, developed the majority of Baul songs.In the Baul religion, individual inquiry and empshasize on the importance of a person�s physical body are important because it is within the body and the Supreme resides and thus it is the only place people need to search for God.The basis of Baul ideology is to achieve the spiritual objective of liberation.Baul songs were invaluable to the maintenance and preservation of their religion.Songs were used for instruction by the guru to teach his disciple and to prepare him for the ultimate truth.The goals, of the Baul practitioner, are to achieve the realization of the Supreme using both yogic and tantric techniques.

II.Scope and Purpose of the System
��������������� The Bauls of Bengal belong to an unorthodox devotional tradition, which has been influenced by Hinduism, Buddhism, and Islam, yet it is distinctly different from all three.The Bauls tradition is eclectic; its influences come from tantric (Sahajiya) Buddhism, tantric Hinduism (primarily Vaisnava Sahajiya, but also Saiva-Sakta), Bengali (Gaudiya) Vasinavism, and Sufi Islam(Dimock 260-62). Bauls consist of both economically and socially marginal groups. They identify themselves with neither Hindu nor Muslim society. The majority of Hindu Bauls residing in the state of West Bengal in northeastern India, and most Muslim Bauls live in Bangladesh (Lopez 187). Monks, ascetics, homeless, and married men compose the society of the Bauls. Caste, special deities, temples and sacred places play no part within Baul ideology. They do not set up any images of divinities or religious symbols in their own places of worship.� They believe the temple where the supreme resides is in their own body (Tagore 210).
Bauls go from village to village, singing, with their ektaras, which is a simple one-stringed instrument, and drums called dubkis.� The Baul earns most of his living from his songs, which he sings traveling from door to door(Bhatt 26).� It is mainly through these songs that they give outward expression of their beliefs and practices(Lopez 187). They are in essence a tantric yogic sect, and share common practices with other tantric yogic traditions. Poetry, music, song and dance are all essential to the Baul and all are devoted to finding man�s relationship with God, and to discover the purpose of man�s existence (Reymond 242). Kaya Sadhan (Realization through the body) can be realized by a spiritual undertaking (Tagore 218). In order to gain real freedom, one has first to die to the life of the world while still being alive in order to get rid of worldly desires. The Baul must defeat necessity in order to achieve his or her liberation (Tagore 209-210).�

III.� AUTHORITY STRUCTURE:
����������� A. � Sources and Criteria of Valid Knowledge:
����������� Reason is an inadequate tool when one is dealing with the intangible.� The Baul�s life is balanced between knowing and unknowing, of life with death� (Bhatt 36).� The Baul is not an intellectual.� He possesses simple and natural wisdom.� Bauls do not accept the organized system yet he accepts the faith because it results from natural trust.� This trust springs from the Adhar Manush, the unattainable man, who resides in the human form.�
Ritualized religion produces habits and customs, which prevent one from being alert for the �man of the heart�.� Religions sometimes produce formalities, which can become to people more important than God� (Bhatt 37).� Baul philosophy is not developed in any sacred writings and the Baul does not depend on any tradition.� Above all else, intuition guides the disciples (Reymond 242).� Bauls do not accept inference, and without physical existence, they have no ritual practice.� Baul spiritual practice focuses on the body.� Without reference to the body, practice is considered irrelevant and imaginary� (McDaniel 180).� The followers of the sahaj cult believe only in living religious experience.� Truth, according to them, has two aspects, inert and living.� Truth has no value for man until it is part of a living person.� The guru or master is the one who makes the truth for the Bauls living� (Tagore 215).� As is true of mystics in general, the Bauls believe that the truth cannot be found in books.� They reject the authority of Hindu scriptures such as the Vedas and Puranas as blinding one path to the divine� (Lopez 191).� Like the Sahajiyas, the Bauls are strongly opposed to the study of the Vedas and the Puranas, which according to them only make men confused.� Bauls believe, as do the Sufi mystics, that the ultimate truth cannot be grasped through intellectual knowledge or reasoning but can only be realized within oneself using the power of love (Datta 450).�

B. Methods of Inquiry
����������� The pain of being apart from the Divine cannot be eased by textual study, debate, or even prayer for the Bauls(Tagore 216).Baul songs must be approached with a softness of feeling and a meekness of spirit(Dimock 159).Freedom of spirit provides the Bauls with natural inclinations of the mind, which are not restrained by social institutions.� Their ideology proceeds in a direction opposite to that followed by the general public.� Bauls avoid all religion in which the natural goodness of the soul is overshadowed by ritualism and ceremony.It is for this reason that the Bauls call their path ulta (the reverse) path and think of the process of their spiritual advance as the process of proceeding against the current(Dimock 163).�
Like other tantrics, they hold that the body is a microcosm of the universe in which the Supreme resides, and that it is the only instrument for gaining liberation and conquering death� (Lopez 191).� If one desires to achieve the knowledge and realization of the Supreme then one should focus on the inner being.Within the Baul discipline, the physical body must be kept exceedingly pure for it is here the Bauls believe that the temple of the Supreme exists (Reymond 243- 44).Sexuality plays an important part in the Bauls search for the ultimate truth.
Ritual practice is largely disputed among the Bauls.Those for rituals believe they are mandatory to achieve the desired state of perfection.In contrast, other feel ritual practice is only necessary when a person does not have a close relationship with the Divine(Mcdaniel 185).The Bauls use a process called Urdha-srota, (the elevation of the current), in order to convert the currents of jiva (animal life) into the current of Shiva (God life) and bring about a realization of the Supreme within a person(Tagore 218).Gobinda Das, a Baul songwriter, believes it is foolish that some people pray, make pilgrimage, or fast in order to find God.He feels God exists on its own, extremely infinite and having many shapes(Bhatt 60).
Like the tantrics, the Bauls believe that the means to experience divine love is through human love; through the union of the physical forms of man and woman(Lopez 191).Bauls practice sexual intercourse with seminal retention during a woman�s menstrual period.The aim of these rituals is to reunite the dual principles that were separated when the world was created.The Bauls seek to reverse the cosmic process that leads to death and rebirth.The active form of the Supreme, called the sahaj manus becomes manifest in the lowest cakra, the mudladhar, during a woman�s menstrual period.It is at this time that the Bauls perform their sadhana to �catch� him.(Lopez 194)For sadhana to be successful it is necessary to bring under control the six enemies (lust, anger, greed, infatuation, vanity, and envy).The male practitioner envisions himself as a woman in order to change his lust into true love by preventing semen loss (Lopez 195).
If one realizes the truth of the body (bhanda) one will be able to realize the truth of the universe (Brahmanda)(Datta 451).The ideas the Bauls have about the composition of the body do in most cases go against the standards of modern science.One proof of the validity of their system lies in the appearance of madness in certain Bauls.This madness is not an effect of their separation from God, but instead from direct visual manifestation (darsana).The appearance of madness shows that the Baul has seen the Supreme thus confirming the authenticity of his practices(McDaniel 190).

C.Institutions and Professional Structure
����������� Religions that reject scriptural authority place great importance on guides who lead those seeking to learn the practices of a tradition.The practice, preservation, and teaching of the Baul religion rest heavily on the guru or teacher.In the case of the Bauls, the guru or murshid is not just a regular person but also an intermediary through whom God relays his teaching and guidance.Bauls consider the guru to be the divine in the shape of a human being or in some cases the Supreme himself.The Guru is the only person that can bring about knowledge in the disciple and guide him toward the realization of God, thus the guru demands as much devotion as the Supreme would(Datta 448).This dedication toward the guru results in the disciple coming closer to the gurus perfected state and the grace of God(McDaniel 161).Even though the Guru is highly praised and esteemed, the disciple has no responsibility toward the master and is also free of any commitments.
Baul songs, along with music, play a major role in the oral communication of Baul ideas and beliefs.These songs were not used for propaganda or to convert people to the Baul tradition but used instead to relay teaching and instruction from the guru on down to disciple(Bhat 11-13).Baul songs are never recorded into book form.(Tagore 211)The importance of the teacher (guru) - pupil (shishya) relationship is seen by both Hindu and Muslim Bauls alike.They both believe that this divine relationship was developed by God himself(Reymond 243).The all-knowing guru does not make the disciple renunciate the pleasure of the world, but instead stresses the development of a new higher self, which cannot be found in any text(Tagore 219).Baul songs were composed by the part of the sect that had reached maturity through spiritual union.They, in turn, tell about the power of their realization to their disciples(Lopez 192).The guru-sishya system is of extreme importance in the tantras especially the Bauls who deal with the practical side of Sadhana that involve yogic exercises.In the Baul tradition, no disciple can attempt to find the ultimate truth without the instruction of the all-important guru(Datta 448).

IV.History
The Bauls, who do not belong to the orthodox traditions of India, embody spiritual life, which remains alive even today.Baul ideology is believed to have existed before that of the Vedic religions(Reymond 246).The name Baul, however, first appears in the literature of Bengal only in the fifteenth century.It seems to derive from the word �batula� meaning �he who is beaten by the winds� he, that is, who abandons himself to all his impulses.But this ecstatic madness has to do with their love for God(Reymond 246).Scholars have placed the origin of the Baul sect anywhere from the fifteenth to the seventeenth century.
Baul songs provide no clues as to how far back the tradition goes.They are primarily transmitted orally from guru to disciple and from singer to singer.The language tends to be modernized thus giving no indication of the date of composition.Brajendranath Sil feels that �the birth of the Bauls� took place near the end of the fourteenth century or the beginning of the fifteenth.But it was after this in the sixteenth century that the Baul religion began to spread rapidly.Between the fourteenth and seventeenth centuries the Bauls got their iconoclastic nature when it swept across northern India.It was this same presence that brought about santa cults, which in turn affected the Sufi Islam.There are a few points of similarity between the Bauls and other sects around them(Dimock 254-256).
The Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore, who is considered by some to be a Baul is credited with bringing Baul songs to the attention of middle-class Bengali society(Dimock 258).It was mostly Tagore and his associate Ksitimohan Sen, who elevated the Bauls to the status of a cultural symbol.In 1968, Upendranath Bhattacarya wrote about the Bauls and proved that Bauls whether Hindu or Muslim practice almost the same sexual rites and that these rites are important to Baul religion and to a comprehension of their songs.
Although there are many outstanding Baul poets, Lalan Fakir also known as Lalan Shah is considered to be the greatest of them all.Lalan was very popular in West Bengal and Bangledesh and he has had a great impact on Bengali literature as well as on Baul tradition.Lalan declared that there was only one true religion and that it was the �religion of man�.The songs that he composed which are numerous are the believed to be the oldest dated songs.In addition, these songs form the basis of Baul ideology and the basis for scholarly discussion(Lopez 188).The word Baul cannot be traced in medieval Bengali literature.The word derived either from Sanskrit vyakula �confused� or vatula �mad� is found in Bengali texts dating back to the fifteenth century where it generally has its literal meaning �mad�.The Baul tradition reached its fullest potential in the last century and the early part of the present one.During this time period the basis of the Baul religion was developed through the creation of songs(Lopez 189).Most recently a group of Baul singers can be heard on Pink Floyd�s new album, demonstrating their longetivity(Lopez 189).

V.Representative Examples of Argumentation
The traditional image of the holy man is a controlled yogi, peaceful and strong, To the non-Baul, the madman (ksepa) of which belong many Bauls are viewed as illogical and possessed.The Bauls defend this allegation by explaining that it is the Bauls disinterest with the world and also his extreme emotional states, which make seem mad.For the Baul, madness shows devotion to a spur-of-the-moment love that goes against established social rules.The madman does not hallucinate, but rather sees the truth(Mcdaniel 158-59).The experience of the Supreme can often make Bauls appear bewildered and cause him to ramble but this is because to view the Divine the Baul must do the opposite of what normal society says(McDaniel 185).
The Bauls hold the body as the means to achieving salvation.Thus they defend themselves against other religions that see the body as creating obstacles toward a person achieving salvation. Some religions worship in temples, but the Bauls believe the only temple is the human body(Tagore 210).The Bauls defend their rejection of the caste system by saying,�Are the lower planks of a boat of any lesser importance than the upper?�(Tagore 213)In addition, people ask the Bauls why they do not pay attention to the scriptures they reply, �Are we dogs that we should lick up the leavings of others?Brave men rejoice in the output of their own energy, they create their own festivals.These cowards who have not the power to rejoice in themselves have to rely on what other have left.They are content with glorifying their forefathers because they know not how to create for themselves�(Tagore 214).Bauls also explain that their cult has no age because their real religion is not constrained by time, unlike the Vedas and Puranas, which they feel are artificial(Tagore 215).The Bauls depart from the majority of tantric traditions and most closely resemble the Sufis and the Vasisnavas, both orthodox and Sahajiya, is in the importance they attach to love in the realization of the divine.
Like Sufis and orthodox Vaisnavas, the Bauls see love as the longing of the individual for the Supreme(Lopez 190).Although the tantric conception of the deity is at core of their belief, the Bauls� intense feeling of pain at being separated from the divine is expressed in song after song, reflects the influence of Vasinava and Sufi traditions(Lopez 192).The Bauls like other tantric yogic practitioners, conceive of the body as having two forms.There is a material or gross body made up of skeleton, muscles, organs, and having nine or ten openings or �doors�.The other form is the subtle body.Their conception of the subtle body for the most part resembles that of the Hindu tantras and of other yogic texts, but also reflects the influence of Bengali Sufism(Lopez 192-93).
VI.Suggested Position in Comparative Scales

a.     Relative emphasis on traditional authority (1) ----- or the testimony of experience. (10)
Rating:9
����������� The Baul religion is completely based on one�s experience in the realization of the divine.It is the disciples feeling of longing for the Supreme and the resulting madness that demonstrates that he feels reunited with the Divine.

Reative centralization of authority (1) --- or decentralization (individual inquiry, lay authority). (10)
Rating: 10
����������� Individual inquiry is the basis of the Bauls religion.There is no centralized body, which makes rules to follow.It is the individual who must come to find the ultimate truth on his own under the guidance of a guru.

Relative emphasis on invisible (spiritual or heavenly) realities (1) ----- or material, earthly ones. (10)
Rating 2
����� The religion of the Bauls is based on spiritual awakening and is a search for the heavenly.Much of the their practices involve invisible acts that are accepted as reality by the followers of the religion.

Mainly spiritual or moral objectives (1) ----- or pragmatic aims (prediction, healing, etc.) (10)
Rating 2
����� The objectives and the motivation behind the Baul religion is the quest for spiritual realization of the man of the heart.Their spiritual objectives are to catch the Supreme within their own body.

Most power or agency reserved for a divine being (1) ----- or realizable in individuals. (10)
Rating 10
����� The religion of the Bauls belief is that the Supreme lives in the heart of human beings.If one performs Sadhana and the proper yogic practices it is possible for the individual to achieve liberation and to be reunited with the Divine.


����������������������������������� Works Cited

I.Primary Sources

Reymond, Lizelle. To Live Within. New York: Doubleday, 1971.

����������� This source was a unique one because part three of the book was written by the Baul named Shri Anirvan.This gave me an insider�s look into the Baul tradition.In addition, the book gave a book background to the Baul culture.

Solomon, Carol,"Baul Songs," Ch. 9 in Donald Lopez, ed., Religions of India in Practice.New Jersey: Princeton UP, 1995.

The book written by Lopez was the main source for my paper.It provided essential information about every section in this paper.

Tagore, Rabindranath. The Religion of Man. London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd,
1958.

����������� This source provided some excellent examples of argumentation and how the Bauls defend some of their traditions.I used this source a lot throughout my paper and it was very helpful in every area.

II.Secondary Sources

Bhattacharya, Deben. Songs of the Bards of Bengal. New York: Grove Press, 1969.

The book by Bhattacharya was useful in dealing with the sources and criteria of valid knowledge.It provided good overall detail about the Baul culture.
Capwell, Charles. �The Esoteric Belief of the Bauls of Bengal.� Journal of Asian
Studies 33(1974): 255-63.

I did not use this source explicitly in my paper, However I received useful background information about the beliefs of the Bauls.

Dasgupta, Shashibhusan. Obscure Religious Cults. India: Mukhopadhyay, 1962.

I did not really use this source.However it was an interesting book to read and it was useful in getting an overall idea of the Bauls.

Datta, Rajeshwari. �The Religious Aspect of the Baul Songs of Bengal.� Journal of
Asian Studies 37 (1978): 445-55.

This source gave detailed information about the guru-diciple realtionship and the importance it had.It was a very useful source and was extremely important to have when I was writing this paper.

Dimock, Edward Jr. The Place of the Hidden Moon: Erotic Mysticism in the Vasisnava-
sadhajiya Cult of Bengal. Chicago & London: Chicago UP, 1989.

This book play a key role in my developing the methods of inquiry section.In addition it provided some of the material for the history section of the paper.

Dowson. A Classical Dictionary of Hindu Mythology and Religion. New Delhi: D.K.
Printworld�s edition, 1998.

This source was important for getting a general idea of the definition of the Bauls.It was useful in looking up Hindu words and for getting their English definition.

McDaniel, June. The Madness of the Saints: Ecstatic Religion in Bengal. Chicago &
London: Chicago UP, 1989.

This source provided a good description of the madness of the Bauls.It took a look at the reasons they act the way they act.It was an interesting source.

�Sullivan.� Historical Dictionary of Hinduism. London: The Scarecrow Press, 1997.

����������� I did not use this source too much, but it did give definitions of Hindu words.

	Sun Myung Moon and the Unification Church in their own words

Section 1• part 4


The earnest searching question asked by a 1960's pop hit, "What's it all about, Alfie?" reflects for the present time a question that has beset men and women of all time. What is life all about? What are we here to you? Is life, as Shakespeare's Macbeth would have us believe, merely a walking shadow...a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

Or does it have as other poets and mystics suggest, some ultimate and sublime purpose?

For Divine Principle, as we shall see, the purpose of creation is three-fold yet one. In contrast to Macbeth, the Principle affirms there is a profound meaning in life and this meaning is connected to joy. Indeed, for the Divine Principle the very purpose of God creating the world was to produce and experience joy. God, humankind and the natural world all exist both for their own joy and to bring joy to others.

Let us think of how joy is experienced No one feels joy by himself, but only by having an object which complements or reflects his own character. If an artist merely conceives an ideal without expressing it, his joy is not fulfilled. But when his creative idea is perfectly expressed on his canvas, then he is likely to feel a joyful satisfaction . The painting serves as an object to stimulate such feelings.

On a deeper level, joy comes from love. When one has a full relationship of love, the highest joy is his. Romeo's rather exaggerated exclamation upon seeing the light in Juliet's window, "It is the east, and Juliet is the sun!" suggests the ecstatic heights truly-felt love can bring.

Divine Principle teaches that God's desire for love is not so different from that of his children. So long as God was alone and his essential self was unexpressed, the feeling of satisfaction or joy was not his. He needed an object and out of this need he created humankind. Projecting his whole nature into his work, God produced man to manifest his invisible nature in the form of a visible and tangible image. He thus created man as an expression of himself, as a being with whom he can have a relationship of love.

A specific analogy to the divine reality can be found in the human family. Because a child is the most perfect expression of his parents' nature, parents can have an abundant exchange of love with their children. In the same way, of all beings in the created world, many inwardly and outwardly expressed God most fully. Thus he is a being with whom God can have the fullest exchange of love. In the view of Divine Principle such was the hope of God when he undertook his creative endeavor. He intended to live with man forever in the highest joy through the perpetual exchange of love.

Three Great Blessings

Within the framework of this understanding, Divine Principle finds a clear expression of God's purposes in the following well-known passage from scripture:

Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it: and have dominion... Gen 1:28)

God is bestowing three blessings upon Adam and Eve: be fruitful, or unite with him; multiply, or unite with each other; have dominion, or unite with creation.

What precisely would it mean to "be fruitful", which is the first Blessing? A tree becomes fruitful when it becomes mature or when it blossoms and bears fruit. Similarly God's first Blessing to mankind is the blessing of individual perfection or maturity-a state in which the individual become one with God in heart.

In the history of religious thought, man's relationship with his Creator has been characterized in several ways. The encounter between man and God is compared to a ruler and his subject, a master and his slave, a craftsman and his craft. In line with historic Christianity, however, Divine Principle affirms the validity of the most personal analogies; father and child, lover and beloved, bridegroom and bride. The intimacy possible with God not only allows man to reason with God, but also to live in joyous love with him.

Ultimately, each of us is meant to establish a vital rapport between himself and God, resulting in perpetual, ever-expanding joy. "When thou comest unto my heart, all that is within me dost joy!" writes Thomas A Kempis of his relationship with God. Such was God's hope: we were to be fruitful and joyful by uniting with him.

The promise of maturity may be described from another point of view also. That is, Divine Principle would assert that the goal of individual life is achieved by getting mind and body in tune with each other, centered on God. Unfortunately, rather than possessing such a personal integration, most of us know only too well the conflict the Apostle Paul describes:

"I can will what is right, but cannot do it...I do not the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do." Rom.7:19

The task of spiritual growth, then, is to bring an end to this inner division, finding an inward God-centered harmony and unity. In such a state we may say one's feelings parallel God's feelings, his thoughts reflect God's thoughts and both are expressed clearly in his physical deeds. Diagrammatically, we may say this state produces a four position foundation on the individual level.

Despite the promise of this ideal, it is clear that it has not yet been realized. Individuals by and large have not achieved a God-centered integration of personality. Falling short of the goal given us by Jesus, humanity has not become perfect ("You must be perfect as your Heavenly Father is Perfect." Mt. 5:48) nor have we become God's temple ("Do you not know that you are God's temple and God's spirit dwells in you?" 1 Cor 6:19). Therefore, since mankind has not yet become fruitful, neither God's joy nor man's joy has been consummated.

The Loving Family

It has been said that there is no success in the world that can make up for failure in the home, Divine Principle would affirm this as true, based on misunderstanding of God's purpose for men and women, as expressed in the second Blessing. This Blessing is the experience of an ideal family, a family in which God's love dwells. In the view of Divine Principle a man and a woman were first to attain individual perfection and then become husband and wife, giving birth to children and forming a family. As the center of love, this family would be the fullest basis for the experience of love for man and God. Had there been no fall, we may imagine that Adam, Eve and their children would have formed the first God-centered four position foundation on the family level.

For Divine Principle, love is the beginning and the end, the nearest and the farthest, the deepest and the highest. "Many waters cannot quench love, either can floods drown it" writes the author of the Song of Solomon (8:7) and the Divine Principle would agree. It would also argue, for reasons we have already mentioned, that such love can be best cultivated in the God-centered family. While it is widely accepted today that one's early experiences with his family are profoundly influential in determining his future psychological health and wholeness, Divine principle points out that the diverse relations of the family also provide the natural ground for ongoing growth in the dynamics of love. Specifically, we may identify three basic expressions of love that develop progressively in the family: L passive, mutual and unconditional.

When, for example, a person is a child he experiences love passively as he receives love and care from his parents. In marriage he is called to know love in a different way, through the mutual exchange occurring between husband and wife. Finally, in becoming a parent, one is to experience unconditional love, expressed in his relations with his par children. For Divine Principle, the family was thus to be a multifaceted sphere through which each person would come to full maturity in his capacity for love. Also, since God's love is expressed primarily through human beings, the family was to be the basis for the fullest knowledge of God. In this way are family and marriage to be sacred.

Although traditional Christianity has considered marriage a sacrament through which one receives divine grace, marriage is generally not given the central position it is in Divine Principle. Mystical religion, Eastern and Western, commonly emphasizes the individual's experience and unity with God. Divine Principle proceeds to an even higher goal, transcending the individualism of the traditional mystic and embracing the potential of the family. The Principle points to the ideal of moving from I and my Father being one to I and my spouse being one, centered on God. The greater and higher goal is the loving unity of God and the family.

In the struggle between the two strands of Islam, the Sunnis are on the rise
May 12th 2012 |From the print edition


IT SEEMED historic. Muslim scholars, 170 in number and representing nine schools of legal thought (including four main Sunni ones and two Shia), gathered in Amman and declared that, whatever their differences, they accepted the others' authority over their respective flocks. Implicitly, at least, they were renouncing the idea that their counterparts were heretics. Some called that meeting in Jordan in 2005 the biggest convergence since 969, when a Shia dynasty took over Egypt.

Many of the globe-trotting greybeards who met there, and at a similar gathering in Qatar in 2007, remain actively and optimistically engaged. But seen from the outside, feuds between Sunnis, who make up roughly 80% of the world's Muslims, and the Shia minority (most of the rest), remain savage and are, in some ways, worsening.

This lecture is the intellectual property of Professor S.W.Hawking. You may not reproduce, edit, translate, distribute, publish or host this document in any way with out the permission of Professor Hawking.

Note that there may be incorrect spellings, punctuation and/or grammar in this document. This is to allow correct pronunciation and timing by a speech synthesiser.

In this talk, I want to ask how far can we go in our search for understanding and knowledge. Will we ever find a complete form of the laws of nature? By a complete form, I mean a set of rules that in principle at least enable us to predict the future to an arbitrary accuracy, knowing the state of the universe at one time. A qualitative understanding of the laws has been the aim of philosophers and scientists, from Aristotle onwards. But it was Newton's Principia Mathematica in 1687, containing his theory of universal gravitation that made the laws quantitative and precise. This led to the idea of scientific determinism, which seems first to have been expressed by Laplace. If at one time, one knew the positions and velocities of all the particles in the universe, the laws of science should enable us to calculate their positions and velocities at any other time, past or future. The laws may or may not have been ordained by God, but scientific determinism asserts that he does not intervene to break them.

The "Dynamic Theory of Gravity" was one of two Teslas's discoveries, which he worked out in all details in the years 1893 and 1894.
More complete statements concerning these discoveries can only be gleaned from scattered and sparse sources, because the papers of Tesla are concealed in government vaults for national security reasons. These papers are located at the "National Security Research Center" now the "Robert J. Oppenheimer Research Center". These discoveries are denied access because they were classified, even though plans for the hydrogen bomb are on an open shelf and could be seen and copied.

The joy of life consists in the exercise of one's energies, continual growth, constant change, the enjoyment of every new experience. To stop means simply to die. The eternal mistake of mankind is to set up an attainable ideal.
Aleister Crowley

In the absence of willpower the most complete collection of virtues and talents is wholly worthless.
Aleister Crowley

If one were to take the bible seriously one would go mad. But to take the bible seriously, one must be already mad.
Aleister Crowley

“Every one interprets everything in terms of his own experience. If you say anything which does not touch a precisely similar spot in another man's brain, he either misunderstands you, or doesn't understand you at all.”
― Aleister Crowley, Diary of a Drug Fiend

Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.
Aleister Crowley

“Having to talk destroys the symphony of silence.”
― Aleister Crowley, Diary of a Drug Fiend

I did it at my age of 33.
I did it in the year of 2013. Although I was looking for it as long as I can remember, it came out of my 2 year of attachment free thinking.
I did it without any apparent help. Not with conventional meditation, memory enhancing drugs, psychedelics or guardian angles. That's why I am convinced in my mind.
It ended my 33 years of depression and my heart is now full of Joy! That joy is not coming from outside. That Joy is not a reaction to anything. It's pure, apolar JOY.

Babu
13-09-2013