Quest Magazine

Originally printed in the March - April 2003 issue of Quest magazine.
Citation: Coady, Mary Frances. "The Little Flower St. Thérèse of Lisieux." Quest  91.2 (MARCH - APRIL 2003):52-55.

By Mary Frances Coady

The basilica, perched like a gaudy oversized crown on the top of a hill, is the first thing you see as the train approaches Lisieux, 180 kilometers west of Paris. A 1920s attempt at baroque splendor, the edifice seems out of place in this modest town, which is otherwise indistinguishable from all the other towns in Normandy that were decimated during World War II and then rebuilt. Whatever one may think of its architectural qualities, however, the basilica does signal something extraordinary about Lisieux.

Lisieux is a remarkable town because a young woman grew up there, entered a Carmelite monastery near the center of town, and died there in 1897 at the age of twenty-four. Her name was Thérèse Martin, known as Sister Thérèse of the Child Jesus after she became a nun. Twenty-eight years later, Thérèse was canonized and became the most popular saint in the history of Catholicism. Her statue, depicting a young nun in brown-and-cream-colored robes with an armful of roses (she called herself the "Little Flower" and declared that she would shower roses upon the earth after her death) graced one Catholic church after another.

The unlikely popularity of this obscure nun was the result of several factors: the Catholic appetite at the time for piety (especially when it came packaged in a person of youthful attractiveness), some shrewd work on the part of the nuns after her death (three of whom were Thérèse's own sisters), and, most enduringly, her own writing.

A few years before her death, Thérèse—the product of staunchly devout, royalist stock (not popular in the anticlerical republican France of the time)—was asked by one of her sisters (who was also her religious superior at the time) to write a short account of her childhood. This she did in a school exercise notebook, which she gave to her sister. It was put aside and forgotten until a few months before her death, when she was asked to continue writing.

The result was an astonishing account of her own spiritual development in what she called the "Little Way," a spiritual path that emphasized simplicity and childlikeness, acceptance of her own failings, and an almost light-hearted trust in God. It was not an easy path to forge: her monastery, built on a small patch of ground, with a tall green fence enclosing the garden, was cloistered (that is, the nuns made virtual prisoners of themselves, never leaving the monastery grounds and receiving visitors in parlors where heavily veiled grilles prevented them from being seen). The nuns she lived with, far from being saints, were living exemplars of every kind of neurosis. She suffered bouts of anguish over reports of her father's deteriorating mental condition (he was eventually confined to an institution in the nearby city of Caen). And, as Thérèse herself revealed, she spent most of her nine years in the monastery in a numbing state of spiritual murkiness known as "the dark night of the soul," a state that was often accompanied by nagging doubts about the existence of God.

Not much about the town of Lisieux reflects the spirit of this tough-minded young woman who clung to her faith with little support while living a way of life that many would now label meaningless. Her own nuns, capitalizing on the sensation caused by her autobiographical writing (which was published under the title Story of a Soul), had cards printed depicting a sweet-faced, kewpie-doll nun. Actual photographs, many of them taken by her sister Caline, who brought a camera with her when she entered the monastery, were touched up in order to give her an acceptable prettiness. The shops around town reflect this flowery treatment of Thérèse, with souvenir plastic statues, cheap rosaries, and kitschy bric-a-brac.

The Carmelite monastery, however, still exists in much the same way as it did when Thérèse lived there. There is still a cloistered community of nuns, although occasionally one or two can be seen outside the monastic enclosure, dressed now in a habit consisting of a simplified dress and veil, a disappointment to some visitors who would like them to remain unchanged from the way they dressed in Thérèse's day. Inside the monastery, seen only with permission, is the great iron door notable for the absence of a handle. It was this door upon which, according to a customary ritual, the fifteen-year-old Thérèse knocked when she sought admission to the cloister. The door was opened from the inside and swung shut behind her.

Inside the monastery chapel, a marble tomb flanked by lighted candles and huge vases of roses contains Thérèse's mortal remains. Above the tomb her effigy lies in gilded state, the model of a pretty young nun with rosy cheeks, a garland of flowers around her head. In a small museum beside the monastery, Thérèse's long blonde ringlets, cut off when she received the Carmelite habit, are on display. (The hair of the young women entering the monastery, cut as a sign of their renunciation of worldly vanity, was often made into wigs that were worn for plays during recreation; Thérèse herself was photographed in a wig for a play she wrote about St. Joan of Arc.) Also in the museum is a priest's vestment made from the rich brocade of the bridal gown she wore for the ceremony at which she was given the habit (marking the first stage in becoming a "bride of Christ"), as well as a rough serge robe and a pair of wooden clogs typical of the nuns' garb of the time.

The abbey school she attended was destroyed by Allied bombs. Her childhood home, called Les Buisonnets, still stands, however. Many of the family's possessions still remain, including Thérèse's dolls.

In the climate of theological awakening that followed the second Vatican Council in the 1960s, many Catholics cast aside the sugary cult of Thérèse, and her statue was often among the first relegated to the church basement. In recent decades, however, critical editions of her story, restored to its original state, have appeared, as well as her extant letters and the original photographs showing a young nun in a slightly askew habit looking sometimes impish, sometimes pensive. Serious analyses of her work and thought are published with remarkable regularity.

In her writing, if one sifts through the flowery French style of the nineteenth century, one discovers the essence of her spiritual path. She herself pointed to the voice of Wisdom in the Book of Proverbs as her inspiration: "You that are simple, turn in here!" One finds this path of simplicity in many spiritual traditions. It is echoed in today's twelve-step programs: give everything over to the Higher Power. A similar message appears in the form of contemporary slogans: Don't sweat the small stuff. Let go and let God. Hand it over.

The yearning for such a path can be heard in many people's desire for the simple life, for solitude and quiet, for relief from the violent jangling of city noise and the drivel of the world of advertising, from the compulsion to grasp and consume. In the midst of everyday struggles and personal ambition, there is a quest for meaning, a longing to see beyond oneself, to view the world with compassion through the eyes of the heart. Beneath our daily striving, despite the belief that we can have it all and that we are self-made human beings, is the recognition that in the end we are weak and powerless. Wise spiritual guides, Thérèse among them, tell us to embrace that powerlessness and surrender it to what the Buddhists call the Ground of our being—or in Thérèse's Christian language, the loving hands of God. This is the path: simple but not easy. Wise guides also acknowledge that the journey down this path is a lifelong effort.

In the town of Lisieux, despite the souvenir shops, life carries on normally: coffee shops and pubs flourish, children go to school, townspeople hurry home with armfuls of bread and market produce. And inside the monastery chapel, the nuns' voices can be heard singing every day at prayer time. Their hidden lives remain dedicated to her timeless message of joyful trust.

From my earliest days I have believed that the Little Flower would be plucked in the springtime of her life. But today my only guide is self-abandonment. I have no other compass. I no longer know how to ask passionately for anything except that the will of God shall be perfectly accomplished in my soul. I can repeat these words of our Father, St. John of the Cross: "I drank deep within the hidden cellar of my Beloved and, when I came forth again, I remembered nothing of the flock I used to look after. My soul is content to serve Him with all its strength. I've finished all other work except that of love. In that is all my delight."

Or rather: "Love has so worked within me that it has transformed my soul into itself."

. . . I know that the Kingdom of God is within us. Jesus has no need of books or doctors of the Church to guide souls. He, the Doctor of doctors, can teach without words. I have never heard Him speak, but I know that He is within me. He guides and inspires me every moment of the day. Just when I need it, a new light shines on my problems. This happens not so much during my hours of prayer as when I'm busy with my daily work.

VOLUME 91, NUMBER 2

Contents

Excessive Happiness
By Betty Bland

Delight as a Form of Yoga
By Radha Burnier

Awakening the Inner Self
By Edward Abdill

Mysticism, Self-Discovery, and Social Transformation
By Beatrice Bruteau

Jesus, the Lord of Pisces: Hipparchus and the Gospels
By Jay G. Williams

The Little Flower St. Thérèse of Lisieux
By Mary Frances Coady

Originally printed in the March - April 2003 issue of Quest magazine.
Citation: Williams, Jay G. "Jesus, the Lord of Pisces: Hipparchus and the Gospels." Quest  91.2 (MARCH - APRIL 2003):44-50.

By Jay G. Williams

WE SEE THE HEAVENS through the eyes of Copernicus and Galileo, not through our own eyes. As a result,the heavens appear very different to us than they did to premodern people. With our own eyes, we see the sun rising and setting, but Copernicus has taught us that, in fact, the earth is revolving on its axis.We see the moon waxing and waning, the stars moving slowly through the sky, and perhaps the planets doing their little epicyclic dances, but Copernicus intervenes to transform our seeing. 

For us who live in the Copernican world, the universe above with its novas, black holes, and immense galaxies is a very impersonal place, which may contain threatening forces and amazing possibilities—perhaps even living beings—but which seems to have little to do with our everyday lives. God doesn't live there any more. Therefore, when people speak of heaven in religious terms, it is a spiritualized and mythologized place that has little to do with the heavens above.

Premodern people saw very differently. Heaven was a transcendent and mysterious realm that constantly impinged on their own lives. After all, it is heaven that gives us time. Without the heavenly realm, there would be no days, months, or years. The seven "planets" (Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn) evoked particular interest because of their unique movements. While the crystalline sphere of stars moves inexorably forward through the night sky, each of the seven planets has a special path of its own.

Working with the basic principle "as above so below," ancient people concluded that what happens in the heavens is a major key to understanding what happens on earth. Just as the Sun's cycle is directly related to our waking and sleeping, to crop growth and many other phenomena, and just as the moon relates to tides, menstruation, and some say childbirth, so it seemed reasonable that all the other planets must have their subtle effects too. At first, these planetary powers were understood as affecting primarily the social and political spheres, but by the Hellenistic period planetary effects upon individuals were also being charted out. The individual horoscope had become a reality. Looking at the heavens was comparable to peering into the inside of the skull; planetary and psychic forces were seen as synchronous.

Everything correlated. The seven planets were seven gods, the same gods who shape and move society and nature and the same gods who dominate the human psyche. In the heavens they move against a backdrop of "fixed" stars, within a zodiac that constituted a chart of the human body, with Aries as the head and Pisces as the feet. Each of the twelve signs corresponded to a part of the human anatomy. Much can be learned, they thought, by charting out the positions of the gods within this zodiacal, bodily framework.

Jews, of course, could not agree, for they were strict monotheists and, therefore, did not accept the notion of the seven gods. This does not mean, however, that for them the heavens were unimportant. The heavens (hashamayim) were seen as the abode of only one God, though the sun and moon were still understood to be the "governors" of the day and night (Gen. 1.16). Above the firmament of fixed stars, the King of the universe sat upon his throne surrounded by the cherubim and seraphim and his host of angels. With eyes much sharper than an eagle's, God, from his heavenly vantage point, could look down on earth and see everything.

God's heavenly realm correlated, moreover, with his earthly, political, and social presence, for he was also enthroned in the Temple and, through his Spirit, in the hearts of true believers. Nevertheless, his presence in heaven was regarded not so much mythologically as factually. One could point overhead to the foundation of God's dwelling place. Sometimes he would actually speak to people from his throne in heaven. At other times, he would send angelic messengers with his instructions. Although Hellenistic astrology was officially denied, Jews could be sure that all the heavenly movements had a pine reason and were also messages from God. Like the Greeks and Romans, they too believed in multiple heavens, whether three, seven, or ten.

In the early books of the Bible, clear lines of demarcation were drawn between humanity, earth, and heaven (Williams). Not only was it considered wrong for humans to try to build a tower reaching to heaven (Gen. 11.1-9); it was equally dangerous and wrong for the Sons of God to break through the barrier, to come down and cohabit with human women (Gen. 6.1-4). Humans should know that the earth is their abode and learn to accept that lot. Going up to heaven was not an allowable possibility. At death the nephesh, or life, descended to Sheol, the Pit.

Elijah, the prophet, seems to have been the first to break the heavenly barrier legitimately, for he was taken up to heaven in a chariot of fire. Later, works were written in which many others (Enoch, Moses, and Baruch among them) not only went to heaven but came back with new knowledge. In his second letter to the Corinthians (12.2-4), the apostle Paul says that he knew a man (presumably himself) who was taken up to the third heaven and who literally visited Paradise, learning things that it is not allowable to discuss. He also entertains the notion that this could have been done "in the body," a not impossible notion because heaven at that time was a definite place, right "up there." For him, visiting heaven was as comprehensible as someone today landing on the moon. If one learned how, or was enabled by God, to do it, the trip was quite possible. Jewish Merkabah mystics also explored, in some detail, ways to ascend to heaven to see God's throne. Presumably Jesus' ascension in his resurrected body was seen as a literal change in location from here to there.

The Greco-Roman world into which Christianity was born was a civilization that placed considerable and growing emphasis upon the importance of the heavens. What we call astrology was not considered occult but rather was the cutting edge of science. The Stoics, who represented in many ways the very best of Hellenistic philosophy, were captivated by the power of the stars in the determination of human fate. It is not surprising that we find synagogues decorated by zodiacs and many works, such as the Book of Enoch, exploring astronomical mysteries. It was also commonplace for Jews to refer to God as "Heaven" and to emphasize thereby his cosmological and astronomical dimensions.

Because of this intense interest in Heaven as the ruler of earth and as purveyor of social and personal secrets, any new astronomical discovery would have been seen by virtually everyone as of the utmost significance. Therefore, the discoveries of the Greek astronomer Hipparchus in the second century B.C.E. (circa 128) must have seemed astounding. By comparing his observations with those of Timocharis, an astronomer who lived about 150 years earlier, Hipparchus discovered an amazing fact: the sign of the Zodiac which rose at the time of the vernal equinox was slowly changing—over a period of more than 2100 years. Because he did not accept the heliocentric theory, he could never have guessed that the phenomenon is caused by the slow polar wobble of the earth. Nevertheless, he discovered what has come to be called the precession of the equinoxes.

The zodiac is a belt of stars divided into twelve thirty-degree segments. Each segment is named according to a cluster of stars within it. Everyone assumed that this belt of stars operated like clockwork and never changed. Hipparchus proved it is not so, but rather that in a little more than seventy years the zodiac moves backward one degree. Therefore, at the beginning of the third millennium, the sign of Taurus had been the sign of the vernal equinox, but before that millennium closed, Aries had taken over as the first sign of the year. Moreover, and this is the point which will interest us, in a few more decades after Hipparchus, Aries would give way to Pisces, the Fish, as the equinoctial sign.

For those who believed in the significance of heavenly movement—and that included most educated people of the Hellenistic world—this must have been an astoundingly important discovery. It meant that the whole theory of correspondences would have to be revised. Either that or astrologers would have to live in denial—a situation which has actually existed from that day until this. Astrology today is based upon a zodiac that begins with Aries as the sign of the vernal equinox, a situation that hasn't existed since about 50 B.C.E. Perhaps the reason for the denial is that the zodiacal change threw everything out of place. The cycle now began with the feet (Pisces), instead of the head (Aries) and ended with the calves (Aquarius), not a very rational way to organize things. In any event, in the face of long-standing scientific and religious belief, Hipparchus predicted on the basis of hard data that a new age was about to dawn.

David Ulansey has argued persuasively that this discovery lies behind and, to a large extent explains, the origins of the Mithraic Mysteries, a secret religion that was one of the chief competitors with Christianity during the Roman Empire period. He explains how Hipparchus's discovery provides interpretive clues for the once enigmatic iconography of the Mithraic temples that were built across Europe in the first centuries of our era. According to Ulansey, what the Mithraists worshipped was that tremendous power, the cosmocrator, which moves the heavens to create the precession. The picture of Mithra slaying the bull actually depicts the death of the sign Taurus so that the sign of Aries could rule. Other apparently obscure symbols, he says, also directly relate to this phenomenon. Although Mithraism may have changed as it developed, when it began in the city of Tarsus, this was its essential theme. What was whispered in secret meetings and initiation rites had to do with the great heavenly cycle.

Whether Ulansey is entirely correct I will leave to experts in the Roman Mysteries to decide. The question, however, that his work raises is this: to what extent did Hipparchus also influence the gospels and the early Christian movement? Was the proclamation of the imminence of the kingdom of heaven based in any way upon the recognition that the Age of Aries was past and that the age of Pisces was beginning? Does the movement of the heavenly spheres help to explain what Jesus was talking about in his proclamation of the kingdom and why people were attracted to his and other so-called apocalyptic movements? Is this the reason why Justin Martyr accused the followers of Mithra of copying Christianity?

These may seem odd questions, for Jesus is frequently interpreted primarily within the context of Jewish culture and that culture is seen as an island largely separated from the world of Hellenism that surrounded it. The truth of the matter, however, is that Jesus, if we can believe the Bible, was brought up in Galilee, an area strongly influenced by Hellenistic thought and culture. Jews who lived there could be expected to be fully acquainted with Hellenistic ideas and perhaps even rather disengaged from their own Semitic traditions. Sepphoris, a major city just a few miles from Nazareth, was a center for Hellenism and all that it stood for. Jesus could have attended Greek tragedies, visited temples dedicated to the Greek gods, viewed chariot races, and frequented the popular public baths. If Hipparchus's discovery was at all common knowledge, Jesus certainly could have heard about it.

I do not wish, however, to try to reconstruct Jesus' thought or life history. Whether there actually was in ancient times a town called Nazareth or even whether there was a person called Jesus are historical questions about which there is and should be much debate. It seems quite possible that, as Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy, the authors of The Jesus Mysteries, assert, Jesus is a mythical character invented for the celebration of a Semitic form of the holy Mysteries. What I do wish to address is the question: do the Gospels show evidence of the influence of Hipparchus's discovery? How, if at all, is the proclamation of the kingdom related to the monumental change caused by the precession of the equinoxes?

Perhaps the first thing to say is that any answer we come to will be hypothetical at best. It is doubtful that there will ever be any absolute proof, for if the proof were obvious, scholars would have discovered it long ago. Whatever evidence we have will be somewhat circumstantial. This is particularly true because the Gospel according to Mark, generally thought to be the earliest canonical gospel, emphasizes that Jesus concealed as much as he revealed in his teaching. "To you," he says to his disciples, "has been given the secret of the kingdom of God, but to those outside everything is in parable" (Mark 4.11). We can only guess what the disciples were told in secret. Moreover, this secrecy was maintained during the first years of the church. If Christianity was not a mystery religion, it certainly looked like one from the outside. Ulansey says that the mysteries of Mithra had to do with the precession. Could the mystery of the kingdom also be related to Hipparchus's discovery?

Mark condenses Jesus' early message in a few words: "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel" (Mark 1.15). Although this translation is not inaccurate, the same Greek words could also be rendered: "The season is finished, the reign of God is here; turn around and trust in the good news." One must ask: What season? Why does the conclusion of this season imply doing a complete about-face in life? And what makes this news good? These are relevant questions because later in the gospel Jesus makes clear that the changes that are occurring will involve political and natural upheavals that entail much individual suffering (Mark 13).

Luke offers no parallel passage to Mark 1.15. Instead he describes as the beginning of Jesus' ministry his visit to his hometown synagogue (Luke 4.16ff), where he reads from Isaiah 61.1 -2, concluding with another interesting temporal phrase: "To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord." Since Jesus read the passage in Hebrew, the words might be rendered "To announce the year of the Lord's goodwill." Again, the emphasis is upon a time that, as Jesus says, is now fulfilled or completed.

Matthew's account parallels Mark's but is briefer: "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand" (Matt. 4.17). Most scholars would argue that "heaven" is used here as a substitute for "God," and that is certainly true, but it is also a particular sort of circumlocution which differs in connotation from "Lord" or "the Almighty" or "Father." "Heaven" directs the reader's attention to God as a transcendent, cosmic being who dwells above and regulates the heavenly spheres and, in so doing, regulates the earth. Mark's emphasis upon "the time or season" is missing but is implied in the word "heaven." The phrase "the kingdom (or reign) of heaven" encompasses all those great cycles that heaven controls. This certainly would include the precession of the equinoxes.

Matthew could rightly be called the "heavenly gospel," for the author employs the word ouranos (heaven) in its several forms more than eighty times. Moreover, he begins his gospel with a genealogy of Jesus divided into three segments of fourteen generations each which covers the last eon (the Age of Aries?). This is particularly interesting because astrology pides eons into three ages: the cardinal, the fixed, and the mutable. Having provided knowledge of roots in the past age, he tells the story of the "genesis" of Jesus and in so doing introduces the so-called wise men and the star.

Magi, presumably Chaldean astrologer-priests, are said to have seen "his star" in the East and subsequently come to worship the toddler Jesus. Scholars and astronomers have often speculated about what the star was. I have seen star shows at Christmas featuring the conjunction of planets and various novas as possibilities. One cannot help but ask, however, whether a better candidate might not be the first star of Pisces rising at the vernal equinox, a clear sign that the old age had passed away and the new age was arising. Of course, it is probable that this story is a fictional narrative, not a recording of an actual event. In that case it is a clear hint that Matthew's whole narrative has to do with something in the heavens that is new and observable, something in which astrologers would have had interest.

Matthew, throughout his gospel, distinguishes between the last age and the new one that is dawning. "It was said of old . . . but I say unto you" is the format that dominates the second section of the Sermon on the Mount. Matthew never says that Moses was wrong, but rather that he spoke in a different age. In fact, his Torah will remain in effect until the kingdom of heaven is in place. Nevertheless, the reign of heaven is at hand and the rules have changed. In this new age, the old laws of the Torah will no longer apply. Jesus seeks to prepare his listeners for the age to come, for an age that initially will involve radical disruption and suffering. After that, however, there will be a strikingly new order in which everything known at present will be turned upside down. The meek will inherit the earth, and the poor in spirit will receive the kingdom while the rich will be, in the words of Luke, "sent empty away" (Luke 1.53).

To help him in his mission to proclaim the kingdom, he calls disciples who are, significantly enough, fishermen. In the Hebrew Scriptures, little is said about fish and fishermen. This is not surprising, for the coast of Israel has no natural harbors and Israelites were not particularly tempted to develop a fishing industry in the Mediterranean Sea. People probably had fished the Sea of Galilee for centuries, but this so-called sea is no bigger than a small lake and could never have supported a very large number of fishermen. In the Gospels, however, fish and fishing become very important symbolically, and the early church seems to have adopted the sign of the Fish as one of its primary symbols. It is also interesting to note that in one of the few events which all four gospels record, Jesus feeds the 5000 with five loaves and two fish. The loaves seem reminiscent of manna from heaven, but the two fish? One can only ask: are they not a symbol of the new age, now ushered in by the reign of heaven, the Age of Pisces?

All the synoptic gospels emphasize Jesus' direct relation to heaven. At crucial times, such as his baptism and his epiphany on the mountaintop, the heavens actually open and a voice identifies Jesus as the beloved Son. This close connection between Jesus and heaven is also underlined in the prayer he teaches his disciples. In the space of a few words, Jesus refers to heaven twice. A fairly literal translation of his words might read: "Our Father in the heavens, may your name be hallowed, may your kingdom come, may your will be done, as in heaven so on earth."

In this most important of Christian prayers, Jesus directs his hearers to the Father in the heavens and to the coming of the kingdom that he has emphasized so often. He teaches his disciples to pray that the kingdom may be realized on earth as it is in heaven. In other words, the disciples are to put their hearts and minds in agreement with what is happening in heaven. That the kingdom will come on earth, however, is a foregone conclusion. Jesus promises it within a generation.

At the end of his gospel, Matthew describes the risen Christ commissioning his disciples on a mountaintop in Galilee. His very last words to them and to us are "And lo, I am with you always, to the close of the age (aion)" (Matt. 28.20). Although perhaps one can read too much into this passage, it seems to imply that Jesus is ushering in and presiding over a new age, an age which itself will eventually end. Is he the herald and ruler of the age of Pisces? And when that age ends, will Jesus be replaced by a new herald, the herald and ruler of the Age of Aquarius? Perhaps, but if the old age can serve as an example, the Power which is in Jesus will die only to be resurrected in new form. The Lamb was slain, but only to become the great Fisherman.

When we turn from the synoptic Gospels to John, we find an author who deemphasizes some of the major themes of the synoptics. For instance, in John there is very little mention of the kingdom of God at all. Apocalyptic imagery is also somewhat subdued. Nevertheless, the strong connection between Jesus and heaven remains. Jesus is seen as the earthly manifestation of what is happening in the heavenly realm. In John 3.12-13 Jesus says to Nicodemus: "If I have told you earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you heavenly things? No one has ascended into heaven but he who descended from heaven, the Son of Man." This is a theme that John repeats frequently, particularly in chapter 6. Jesus is seen as the one who has come down from heaven and who will ascend to heaven. He is, in fact, everything, including the manna, that Heaven has ever sent. What goes up is the Son; what comes down is the Son. So to go to heaven one must become one with him.

Moreover, it is John who introduces the theme that parallels quite exactly that of the Mithraic mysteries. Just as that cult emphasized the death of the bull as the symbol for the death of one age in preparation for the birth of the next, so John portrays Jesus as the Lamb of God who is slain and through his death ushers in a new era. Although this imagery of the Agnus Dei has become familiar in Christianity, it is, apart from the precession theme, quite difficult to interpret. When John the Baptist says, "Behold the Lamb of God" (John 1.36), he introduces an image that is by no means self-explanatory.

It also seems significant that, aside from his mention of the two fish in the feeding of the five thousand, John saves the fish imagery until the very end of his gospel. In fact, from John's gospel one would not even know that Peter and his brother were fishermen. After the resurrection, however, in what appears to be an appendix to the book, the disciples decide to go fishing, which at the very least, seems an odd thing to do. There in Galilee, beside the sea, Jesus meets them and teaches them how to fish in this new age, and they are amazingly successful. Jesus also eats a fish, symbolizing perhaps the transition from one age to another. He becomes the Lord of Pisces.

Does all this prove that the gospel writers knew about the precession of the equinoxes and saw it as the root of the proclamation of the gospel? No, not really. At most the idea has only become more plausible. The proposal will remain quite hypothetical until much more work has been done. Perhaps, because of the secret nature of early Christianity, we will never be sure. By the time the Church gave up its secrecy, the new age had proved to be far less idyllic than predicted and, although the symbolism remained, the epochal nature of Christianity was deemphasized.

Still, I believe this hypothesis is important to explore more fully, for it explains not only some of the symbolism of the gospel but why so many were ready to flock to the movement. Great symbols always contain multiple meanings and can be read several ways. If that were not so, they would wither away after a generation or two. Certainly the New Testament can bear a number of different readings. What I have presented here is one reading that I believe is a significant angle on the gospels, one that needs much further exploration.

References

By Ravi Ravindra

[Based on a convention talk delivered at Adyar, December 1997, and printed in another form in the Theosophist, May 1998.]

My view of spiritual practice in daily life has been well tested during the last three days. Three days ago I arrived in Delhi, but my baggage has still not arrived. So this is a good occasion to practice what I am about to say, and let me tell you that it is very important to think about spiritual things when one is in this kind of everyday situation.

It is always the profound truths that are really the lifeline to sanity; otherwise the triviality of ordinary daily life can submerge one completely. In fact, our soul is almost starved if we do not come back to those truths. If I have not thought about or read about a great idea for about twenty-four hours, I begin to feel as if I have been bereft of something, literally as if I am hungry. No doubt, each one of us has a certain frequency with which we need to feed the spirit.

During the past three days I have had a lot of occasions to ask Krishna what would he actually do in the situation I am now in. It is easy for him to say big things, and it is necessary for us to hear big things, but what would he actually do? Let me begin with a remark of his from the third chapter of the Bhagavad Gita (3.30):

Renouncing all actions to me, and being mindful of your deepest self, without expectation, without egotism, struggle without agitation.

Now, how do you struggle with the bureaucracy of Air Canada 1200 miles away without agitation, I would like to ask Krishna. Keep this problem in mind because Krishna's ideas are profound, but it is necessary to put them into practice. And if we do not appreciate that they are not easy to put into practice, then we will not be practical about them. We can quote the ideas, but how do we live them?

First of all, we each have our own Krishna. It would be a shame if we thought of Krishna as some kind of sectarian God, whom we need to obey. Sometimes devotees have this tendency, and they make him one God among other Gods. But anybody who has read the Bhagavad Gita with care and, not excessive reverence, but a joyous wrestling with Krishna, knows that Krishna is not some being out there. He himself states, "I am seated in the heart of everyone."

Krishna is really our deepest attraction. Krishna is that which draws or attracts one. Each of us has a feeling that there is a reason for our existence. This is not all just accident. If we do not, at least occasionally, think about this reason, trying to see how we relate to it, then we are not living with our Krishna. We may have some Krishna out there in some temple, but it is only a figure, an idol.

So what is my Krishna? Who should I be renouncing all my daily actions to? Each of us has a daily life; and for some of us losing our baggage is practically daily life because we are condemned to travel so much that it happens often enough. But in the midst of all this we must occasionally consider who is the Krishna to whom all of our actions are to be dedicated or renounced. In answering that question, there is much help in the next phrase: "being mindful of your deepest self." Being mindful of our deepest self is a way to attend to the purpose of our Krishna.

What is one's deepest self? This question is also not so easy. It is easy to see what is one's worldly, superficial self. Almost constantly one is fantasizing about what took place in the past, or what should have taken place, or what will take place in the future. Such fantasy is really much of one's ordinary life. And this is so even in the monasteries. Those of you who may have a hankering to become an ascetic and escape from the world should spend a week or two in a monastery, any monastery--Buddhist, Christian, or Hindu. Hindu ones are the easiest, but you can take any monastery, even pre-Counter-Reformation monasteries in Europe.

The daily life in monasteries is much the same as that outside them. And so it was even in the presence of Jesus Christ himself. We are told in the gospels that the disciples worried whether they were going to sit on his right-hand side or his left-hand side when they got to heaven. This is the kind of concern that occupies our daily life: competitiveness and concern about what I have gained or what I have lost. Am I looking good today? Am I being approved of? That is the concern of our daily life, and this daily life goes with us wherever we are. My daughter told me of proverb from the west African Republic of Mali: "Wherever I go, there I am." One always takes oneself everywhere.

So, in the midst of these daily activities, periodically one needs to think of Krishna, renouncing these activities to him. Otherwise, essentially what one is doing is trying to arrange one's life so that one always comes out on top. For example, speaking in the first person, I presume that the galaxies will so turn that sooner or later Ravindra is on top, a winner, a handsome fellow who everybody admires. Therefore, to renounce all this, at least occasionally, to Krishna, requires first of all being aware of one's inner landscape.

What is the way my life is actually lived? It almost does not matter what religious beliefs one has or what dogma one subscribes to. If you look at a person's checkbook and datebook, you know what their religion really is. Everything else is just theory. In the Bhagavad Gita Krishna is asked: "How does a person of steady wisdom sit, how does he stand?" Our ordinary actions in daily life are really the heart of the matter. And it would be a mistake to imagine that daily life is a means to something extraordinary. Daily life is a practice. Daily life is also the goal of all spiritual life, rather than living in some cave in the Himalayas. If a person cannot actually practice this steady wisdom in the market place; when one's baggage is lost and no one knows where it is, one cannot practice it at all. It is not easy to do so, but there is no other practice.

Krishna's injunction is that we should "struggle without agitation." Elsewhere in the Mahabharata, Krishna says there is no real choice between struggle and the absence of struggle. He says the choice is really only between one and another kind of struggle or struggle at other levels. This is much like St. Paul's remark in one of his letters, that we have our struggles not only with human beings, but with principalities, with powers, with potentates, and so forth.

There are different degrees and kinds of struggle, whether it is the struggle to retrieve one's baggage from Air Canada or the struggle that takes place in one's mind, especially when there are mosquitoes or when one is hungry or thirsty. Each one of us is so occupied with little flea bites that we forget the very raison d'être for which we are here. Even the great Buddha, after so many incarnations that he was just about to become the Buddha, had enormous struggles. To be sure, the Buddha had to struggle with big devils, whereas in our lives there are only mosquitoes, because we have only little devils who worry about us. Similarly Jesus Christ had his struggles with the big Devil: temptations in the wilderness. The opposing forces are just about equally matched to the quality and strength of our effort. However, there are also forces that help us.

Much of our life is essentially a play of forces within our psyche, and these forces are both upward and downward. Of course, we do not always think of daily life negatively, because when one is in love, there seems to be nothing wrong with daily life, which is perfectly fine. Negativity is therefore an indication of what is wrong with our usual daily life. It is a lack of passion, lack of intensity, lack of engagement, and therefore a consequent dullness that we associate with a humdrum life. If one eats, sleeps, and procreates, then there is a certain kind of dullness to life. And this is what one wishes to escape from.

There is also a life of freedom, which is not occupied with reward or punishment and in which I do not do something just because it advances me in some way. Instead one does something for the sheer joy of it. All the great scientists, philosophers, writers, poets, and artists, in their best moments, do their work because they find it ecstatically beautiful. It is almost as if their life is not complete without doing these things.

It is only then that one can be said to be living a spiritual life. A spiritual life is anything that assists us in understanding our own Krishna. A spiritual life is one in which we intuit, even dimly, that there is a reason for our existence and that it is not merely accidental and in which this intuition is given more and more concrete form in our lives.

However, spiritual life also has a certain verticality to it. It is not merely changing impressions or changing countries, it is not even simply a change of scale, although that also helps very much. For example, just to remind ourselves of ordinary facts, every year more than 120 million human beings die. I am not thinking of any great wars or pestilences or famines, nothing dramatic. In this quite humdrum daily life, people just like you and me, with their children and grandchildren, their hopes and fears and ambitions, 120 million of us die. Even during these fifty minutes or so that I will be spending here, several thousand people will die. To be sure, more than the same number will also be born, because the population is increasing. This is a matter of a scale, not a change of level.

The vastness of the universe gives us no reason to be carried away with our own self-importance. But on the other hand, we see that everyone is dedicated to the idea that "I am the center of the universe, everything turns around me!" Part of the meaning of a sacred or spiritual life is a displacement of this idea. This is not so easy, because when I realize I am not the center of the universe, I am immediately anxious: "What meaning does my life have?" Or if I think I am the center of the universe, then I am also very anxious. Anxiety is really a law of each human being's existence, at least at our level. If Descartes was looking for a truth that is more universal than "I think therefore I am," he should have said, "I worry therefore I am." It is more or less everybody's psychological situation all the time.

Nevertheless, I have a place, I have a purpose for my existence, and I must fulfill my responsibility. To know yourself is primarily to understand how one's energies, including one's time and resources, are being spent. Meanwhile, so Krishna claims, he is seated in the heart of everyone. Even in the hearts of the employees of Air Canada, who cannot keep the baggage straight; even they, deep down, are representing Krishna. In the midst of all the superficiality of life and its little flea bites, deep down there is a reason for my existence. And Krishna sits there, somewhere, reminding me of this.

We all have a very deep-seated contradiction in the very center of our hearts. On the one hand, we are reaching for the Light, we wish to be bathed in Truth. But on the other hand, we say, "Well, truth . . . shoot, tomorrow. Today maybe I'll go watch a football game or something." There is nothing wrong with football, but much of our life is dedicated in quite a mechanical way to the status quo.

We talk about the search for truth, and it is practically a cliche to say that we need to undergo a deep-rooted transformation--especially in California, where 50 percent of the lectures and workshops seem to have the word "transformation" in the title. Everybody wants it, but we want to be transformed without the bother of being changed because we have a very deep-seated commitment to the status quo. This is the contradiction in us.

The search for the sacred, or making one's ordinary daily life into a spiritual practice, does not require anything very fancy. It does not require any particular posture, or standing on one's head, or eating cream cheese, or whatever else. It really requires an impartial self-observation from moment to moment. And if you can practice that for even a few minutes a day, that is a very good thing, a modest but right start.

Impartial self-observation can begin with anything, such as one's gestures--remember, Krishna was asked, "How does such a wise person sit, how does he stand?" It can begin with one's posture, with one's tone of voice, how one is with one's children, how one is with the cat or a plant, anything. Because we are each like a hologram. Every part of us contains our whole history, so you can begin anywhere. What is required is a certain impartiality because otherwise, in one's own eyes, one is always right, one always justifies everything. Impartial self-observation is thus the sine qua non of leading a spiritual life.

Of course the goal is very high and very large. Krishna warns us (Bhagavad Gita 7.19) that it comes only "at the end of many births," so we do not need to be concerned about reaching it today or tomorrow. Nevertheless, one needs to begin. Then Krishna says, "The wise person submits to me." When we do that, we recognize that all there is, is Krishna. But such a person is rare to find. The ideal is so to live one's life, so to interact with others--other people, beings, creatures, plants, animals, even Air Canada's employees--recognizing that they are all Krishna.

Such a high ideal can actually be dangerous if one does not keep a little bit of the ordinary practice in mind. That is why one needs to understand that a certain kind of knowledge is esoteric, not in the sense that somebody is hiding it from me, but rather that it requires an enormous amount of preparation. All philosophy is dangerous without some practice to go with it. It is good to have ideals, but keep in mind that action is only small, local, day-to-day, here-and-now.

There is no question that we are manipulated by leaders, governments, and people with their own agendas. Sometimes those agendas may be evil, perhaps but not knowingly so, just mindlessly and needlessly. In fact, much of the evil in the world is mindless and needless; it is not that anybody is specially against me, but they are not specially for me either. They are just carrying on, as most of us do most of the time.

Spiritual practice is mindfulness, the opposite of mindlessness. Mindfulness is not to be understood in a limited way so that, for example, if I move my hand, I am mindful of moving it. It is instead to live in society being mindful of the forces in the society. If there is manipulation, to take one's action correspondingly. This sort of social action is a perfectly legitimate thing for us to be engaged in. Otherwise, there would hardly be an occasion for the Bhagavad Gita. This is exactly what Arjuna has been asked to do for the purpose, as Krishna says, of proper order among the people. So he needs to engage in his battle, whether one understand it literally, as taking a weapon in hand, or as a struggle for social welfare and justice.

Existentialists and scientists are not inclined to think that there is a predetermined purpose for our lives that we should fulfill. They are more inclined to think that we create our own purposes. Traditional religious belief is that we have a soul which needs discovering or saving. The existentialist mode of thinking is that we do not necessarily already have a soul, but that we can make one. The English word "realize" is very happy from that point of view, because it contains both of those meanings. To realize ourselves as a spirit, whether we are creating it or discovering it, is the very activity that gives meaning to our existence and sense to our existence.

When we see a great deal of violence, we can easily lose heart. However, Christian Church fathers, whenever they talked about the seven deadly sins, included acedia, usually translated as "sloth," but meaning "losing heart." To lose heart is to say that there is no order in the universe, no intelligent force. If you are religiously inclined, it is a way of saying that God does not exist. If one is not religiously inclined, it is a way of saying there is no order in the universe. To search for the meaning of our existence is part of our purpose for being and to lose that "hope," to use the Christian expression is really a sin against the Holy Spirit because it is denying something very deep, not only in human beings, but in the whole of the cosmos.

The heart of the Bhagavad Gita's teaching is nishkama karma, which means literally "desireless action," that is, acting without egotism, without selfish desire (or kama). Our ordinary life—I hope that Krishna will forgive me for saying this—is really nishkarma kama "actionless desiring." So, what I am saying about daily life as spiritual practice is that it is to move from nishkarma kama to nishkama karma—from desiring without acting to acting without desiring.

Ravi Ravindra is Professor of Physics and Chair of the Department of Religion at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Canada. His most recent books are Yoga and the Teaching of Krishna (Theosophical Publishing House, Adyar, 1998) and Christ the Yogi: A Hindu Reflection on the Gospel of John (Inner Traditions, 1998).