SEEK MOTHER WITHIN
“In The Beginning We Were All Created Female.”
“This is a fundamental and recurring pattern in nature: Life is a female environment in which the male appears, often periodically, and created by the female, to perform highly specialized tasks related to species reproduction and a more complex evolution, a freshwater crustacean, reproduces several generations of females by parthenogenesis; the egg and its own polar body mate to form a complete set of genes for a female offspring. Once annually, at the end of the year’s cycle, a short-lived male group is produced; the males specialize in manufacturing leathery egg cases able to survive the winter. Among honeybees the drone group is produced and regulated by the sterile daughter workers and the fertile queen. Drones exist to mate with the queen. An average of seven drones per hive accomplish this act each season, and then the entire male group is destroyed by the workers. Among whiptail lizards in the American South-west, four species are parthenogenetic; males are unknown among the desert grassland, plateau, and Chihuahua whiptails, and have been found only rarely among the checkered whiptails.”
THE FIRST SEX: “IN THE BEGINNING, WE WERE ALL CREATED FEMALE”
In the beginning . . . was a very female sea. For two-and-a-half billion years on earth, all life-forms floated in the womb-like environment of the planetary ocean-nourished and protected by its fluid chemicals, rocked by the lunar-tidal rhythms. Charles Darwin believed the menstrual cycle originated here, organically echoing the moon-pulse of the sea . And, because this longest period of life’s time on earth was dominated by marine forms reproducing parthenogenetically, he concluded that the female principle was primordial. In the beginning, life did not gestate within the body of any creature, but within the ocean womb containing all organic life. There were no specialized sex organs; rather, a generalized female existence reproduced itself within the female body of the sea. 1
Before more complex life forms could develop and move onto land, it was necessary to miniaturize the oceanic environment, to reproduce it on a small and mobile scale. Soft, moist eggs deposited on dry ground and exposed to air would die; life could not move beyond the water-hugging amphibian stage. In the course of evolution, the ocean — the protective and nourishing space, the amniotic fluids, even the lunar-tidal rhythm — was transferred into the individual female body. And the penis, a mechanical device for land reproduction, evolved.
The penis first appeared in the Age of Reptiles, about 200 million years ago. Our archetypal association of the snake with the phallus contains, no doubt, this genetic memory.
This is a fundamental and recurring pattern in nature: Life is a female environment in which the male appears, often periodically, and created by the female, to perform highly specialized tasks related to species reproduction and a more complex evolution, a freshwater crustacean, reproduces several generations of females by parthenogenesis; the egg and its own polar body mate to form a complete set of genes for a female offspring. Once annually, at the end of the year’s cycle, a short-lived male group is produced; the males specialize in manufacturing leathery egg cases able to survive the winter. Among honeybees the drone group is produced and regulated by the sterile daughter workers and the fertile queen. Drones exist to mate with the queen. An average of seven drones per hive accomplish this act each season, and then the entire male group is destroyed by the workers. Among whiptail lizards in the American South-west, four species are parthenogenetic; males are unknown among the desert grassland, plateau, and Chihuahua whiptails, and have been found only rarely among the checkered whiptails.
Among mammals, even among humans, parthenogenesis is not technically impossible. Every female egg contains a polar body with a complete set of chromosomes; the polar body and the egg, if united, could form a daughter embryo. In fact, ovarian cysts are unfertilized eggs that have joined with their polar bodies, been implanted in the ovarian wall, and started to develop there.
This is not to say that males are an unnecessary sex. Parthenogenesis is a cloning process. Sexual reproduction, which enhances the variety and health of the gene pool, is necessary for the kind of complex evolution that has produced the human species. The point being made here is simply that, when it comes to the two sexes, one of us has been around a lot longer than the other.
In The Nature and Evolution of Female Sexuality, Mary Jane Sherfey, M.D., described her discovery in 1961 of something called the inductor theory. The inductor theory stated that “All mammalian embryos, male and female, are anatomically female during the early stages of fetal life.” 2 Sherfey wondered why this theory had been buried in the medical literature since 1951, completely ignored by the profession. The men who made this herstory-making discovery simply didn’t want it to be true.
Sherfey pioneered the discussion of the inductor theory ; and now, with modifications based on further data, its findings are accepted as facts of mammalian — including human — development. As Stephen Jay Gould describes it, the embryo in its first eight weeks is an “indifferent” creature, with bisexual potential. In the eighth week, if a Y-chromosome-bearing sperm fuses with the egg, the gonads will develop into testes, which secrete androgen, which in turn induces male genitalia to develop. In the absence of androgen, the embryo develops into a female. There is a difference in the development of the internal and external genitalia, however. For the internal genitalia — the fallopian tubes and ovaries, or the sperm-carrying ducts — “the early embryo contains precursors of both sexes.” In the presence or absence of androgen, as one set develops the other degenerates. With the external genitalia, “the different organs of male and female develop along diverging lines from the same precursor.” This means, in effect, that the clitoris and the penis are the same organ, formed from the same tissue. The labia majora and the scrotum are one, indistinguishable in the early embryonic stages; in the presence of androgen “The two lips simply grow longer, fold over and fuse along the midline, forming the scrotal sac.”
Gould concludes : “The female course of development is, in a sense, biologically intrinsic to all mammals. It is the pattern that unfolds in the absence of any hormonal influence. The male route is a modification induced by secretion of androgens from the developing testes.” 3
The vulnerability of the male newcomer within the female environment is well known. Vaginal secretions are more destructive to the Y-bearing sperm. The mortality rate is higher among neonate and infant males. within the womb the male fetus, for the first two months, is protected by being virtually indistinguishable from a female. After that, it must produce large amounts of the masculinizing hormone in order to define itself as male, to achieve and to maintain its sexual identity. For all we know the Near Eastern myths upon which our Western mythologies are built, those which portray the young god or hero battling against a female dragon, have some analog here, in utero, where the male fetus wages a kind of chemical war against rebecoming female.
For now, it is enough to say that “maleness” among mammals is not a primary state, but differentiates from the original female biochemistry and anatomy. The original libido of warm-blooded animals is female, and the male — or maleness — is a derivation from this primary female pattern. Why, then, did the medical men, the scientists, take longer to figure out this basic biological fact than it took them to split the atom? And why, once this fact was noted, did they turn around and bury it in professional silence for ten years, until a woman dug it up again? Why indeed.
For about two thousand years of Western history, female sexuality was denied; when it could not be denied it was condemned as evil. The female was seen as divinely designed to be a passive vessel, serving reproductive purposes only. In one not-too-ancient dictionary, “clitoris” was defined as a “rudimentary organ,” while “masculinity” equalled “the Cosmic generative force” . . . ! With Freud, female sexuality was not so much “rediscovered” as pathologized. Freud dismissed the clitoris as an undeveloped masculine organ and defined original libido as male. Clitoral eroticism was reduced to a perverse neurosis. Even after Masters’s and Johnson’s laboratory studies were published in Human Sexual Response in 1966, their findings were not integrated into psychoanalytical theory. In Mary Jane Sherfey’s research during that period, she found not one work of comparative anatomy that described — or even mentioned — the deeper-lying clitoral structures; yet every other structure of the human body was described in living detail. Even today, with our relative sophistication of 1987, we are frequently whistled at by magazine headlines that promise breathless articles announcing the discovery of a new “spot” — a G-spot, an X-spot — located within the vagina. within all these new “spots” exists the old wistful desire to deny the existence of the clitoris as a trigger-organ of female orgasm.
Why? There is the generalized , traditional fear of female sexuality. Further, there is discomfort with the similarity, with the common origin, of the female clitoris and the male penis. Women are used to hearing the clitoris described as an “undeveloped penis”; men are not used to thinking of the penis as an overdeveloped clitoris. Finally, and most seriously, there is a profound psychological and institutional reluctance to face the repercussions of the fact that the female clitoris is the only organ in the human body whose purpose is exclusively that of erotic stimulation and release. What does this mean? It means that for the human female, alone among all earth’s life-forms, sexuality and reproduction are not inseparable. It is the male penis, carrier of both semen and sexual response, that is simultaneously procreative and erotic. If we wanted to reduce one of the sexes to a purely reproductive function, on the basis of its anatomy (we don’t), it would be the male sex that qualified for such a reduction, not the female. Not the human female.
But these are only biological facts. These are only biological realities. As we know, facts and realities can be, and are, systematically ignored in the service of established ideologies.
Throughout the world today virtually all religious, cultural, economic, and political institutions stand, where they were built centuries ago, on the solid foundation of an erroneous concept. A concept that assumes the psychic passivity, the creative inferiority, and the sexual secondariness of women. This enshrined concept states that men exist to create the human world, while women exist to reproduce humans. Period. If we argue that data exists — not solely biological, but archaeological, mythological, anthropological, and historical data — which refutes the universality of this erroneous concept, we are told to shut up; because something called “God” supports the erroneous concept, and that’s all that matters. That’s the final word. Throughout the world, throughout what we know of history, something called “God” has been used to support the denial, the condemnation, and the mutilation of female sexuality. Of the female sex, ourselves. Today, in parts of Africa — predominantly among African Muslims, but also among African Christians and Jews, and some tribal beliefs — young girls are still subjected to clitoridectomy. This surgery, often performed by older women with broken glass or knives, excises the clitoris, severing the nerves of orgasm; the operation is intended to force the girl to concentrate on her vagina as a reproductive vessel. Infibulation, a more thorough operation, removes the labia minora and much of the labia majora; the girl is then closed up with thorns or required to lie with her legs tied together until her entire vaginal orifice is fused shut, with a straw inserted to allow passage of urine and menstrual blood. On the wedding night the young woman is slit open by a midwife or her husband; further cutting and reclosing is performed before and after childbirth. Complications from these surgeries are numerous, including death from infection, hemorrhage, inability to urinate, scar tissue preventing dilation during labor, painful coitus, and infertility due to chronic pelvic infection. In 1976 an estimated 10 million women were involved with this operation. 4 And something called “God” justified it; a “God” who supposedly created young girls as filthy sex maniacs who must then be mutilated to turn them into docile breeders.
The word “infibulation” comes from the Latin fibula, meaning a “clasp.” Those civilized Romans, great highway builders, also invented the technology of fastening metal clasps through the prepuces of young girls to enforce chastity. This practice was copied by Christian crusaders during the early Middle Ages in Europe; they locked up their wives and daughters in metal “chastity belts” and then took the keys with them while they were gone — often for many years — fighting for “God” in the Near East.
And, lest through hypocrisy and racism we dismiss these practices as merely “Barbaric” or “Ancient,” we must recall that clitoridectomies were performed in the last century on young girls and women in both Europe and America. This surgery, very popular with nineteenth-century Victorians, was inflicted on any female considered to be “oversexed,” or as a punishment for masturbation, or as a cure for “madness.” These determinations were all made by male relatives, male physicians, and male clerics, and the women involved had no legal say in the matter.
These are extreme examples of the repression and mutilation of female sexuality, always sanctioned, however remotely and dishonestly, by something called “God.” All the other repressions and mutilations — of the body , of the mind, of the soul, of our experienced female selves — are so well known and documented that they need no numeration at this point; we can all make our own lists. The point is this: Wherever repression of female sexuality, and of the female sex, exists — and, at the present writing, this is everywhere on earth — we find the same underlying assumptions. These are ontological assumptions — assumptions made at the very root of things — about the nature of life itself. They are (1) that the world was created by a male deity figure, or God; (2) that existing world orders, or cultures, were made by and for men, with God’s sanction; (3) that females are an auxiliary sex, who exist to serve and populate these male world orders; (4) that autonomous female sexuality poses a wild and lethal threat to these world orders, and therefore must be controlled and repressed; and finally (5) that God’s existence as a male sanctions this repression. The perfect circularity, or tautology, of these assumptions only helps to bind them more securely around the human psyche. That they are as erroneous as they are universal seems to pose no problem to their upholders. After all , wherever we go on earth, every intact institution — religious, legal, governmental, economic, military, communications, and customs — is built on the solid slab of these assumptions. And that’s a pretty entrenched error.
In the post-World War II United States — as well as in Europe and most of the world generally — we’ve gone through a secularizing period in which some of these assumptions have been loosened up, and even been made to crumble, under questioning. But now the backlash is upon us. Today, spokespeople for various fundamentalist religious beliefs use modern media to broadcast a very old idea: that female sexuality — i.e., feminists, and feminist demands for abortion, contraception, reproductive autonomy, childcare, equal pay, psychological integrity — constitutes a threat to “our civilization”; and this amounts to a “Blasphemy against God.” Whores of Babylon, Darwin’s Theory of Evolution, and the “menace of world communism” all somehow get subliminally mixed up in this feminist threat — for some very good historic and psychological reasons — which we will explore later. For now, it is enough to say that “God” and “civilization” are loaded concepts (loaded with dynamite!) that can always be brought in to end an argument that cannot otherwise be refuted. Or, for those who don’t lean too heavily on “God,” or who major in “civilization,” you can always quote an anthropologist!
For, just as established religions assume the maleness of God, just as Freud and psychoanalysis assumed the maleness of libido, so have the social sciences — and in particular anthropology — assumed the generic maleness of human evolution. Both popular and academic anthropological writers have presented us with scenarios of human evolution that feature, almost exclusively, the adventures and inventions of man the hunter, man the toolmaker, man the territorial marker, and so forth. Woman is not comprehended as an evolutionary or evolutionizing creature. She is treated rather as an auxiliary to a male-dominated evolutionary process; she mothers him, she mates him, she cooks his dinner, she follows around after him picking up his loose rocks. He evolves, she follows ; he evolutionizes, she adjusts. If the book jackets don’t give us pictures of female Homo sapiens being dragged by the hair through 2 or 3 million years of he-man evolution, we are left to assume this was the situation.
This, despite the known fact that among contemporary and historic hunting-and-gathering people, as among our remote hunting-and-gathering ancestors, 75 percent to 80 percent of the group’s subsistence comes from the women’s food-gathering activities. This, despite the known fact that the oldest tools used by contemporary hunters and gatherers, and the oldest, most primal tools ever found in ancient sites, are women’s digging sticks. This, despite worldwide legends that cite women as the first users and domesticators of fire. This, despite the known fact that women were the first potters, the first weavers, the first textile-dyers and hide-tanners, the first to gather and study medicinal plants — i.e., the first doctors — and on and on. Observing the linguistic interplay between mothers and infants, mothers and children, and among work-groups of women, it is easy to speculate on the female contribution to the origin and elaboration of language. That the first time measurements ever made, the first formal calendars, were women’s lunar-markings on painted pebbles and carved sticks is also known. And it is thoroughly known that the only “God-image” ever painted on rock, carved in stone, or sculpted in clay, from the Upper Paleolithic to the Middle Neolithic — and that’s roughly 30,000 years — was the image of a human female.
In 1948 The Gate of Horn was published in Britain; in 1963 it was published in America, retitled Religious Conceptions of the Stone Age. In this pioneering work, archaeologist and scholar G. Rachel Levy showed the unbroken continuity of religious images and ideas descending from the Cro-Magnon peoples of the Upper Paleolithic period in Ice Age Europe, through the Mesolithic and Neolithic developments in the Near East, and down to our own historical time. As Levy noted, these early people are lost to us in the mists of time; but their primal visions, images, and gestalts of human experience on this planet still resonate in our psyches, as well as in our historic religious-ontological symbols. These Early Stone Age people “bequeathed to all humanity a foundation of ideas upon which the mind could raise its structures.” 5 And what were these primal human images and ideas? The cave as the female womb; The Mother as a pregnant earth; the magical fertile female as The Mother of all animals; the Venus of Laussel standing with the horn of the moon upraised in her hand; the cave as the female tomb where life is buried, painted blood red, and awaiting rebirth. Levy shows the continuity of these images and symbols through the Late Neolithic Near Eastern rites and mythologies, and their endurance 30,000 years later in “modern” religions. In Christianity, for example, with its central image of the birth of the sacred child, in a cave-like shelter, surrounded by magic animals; and, especially in Catholicism, the icon of the great mother who stands on the horned moon and awaits the rebirth of the world.
The evidence leaves no doubt that these images were at the origins of what we call human psychological and spiritual expression. Levy’s book is a masterpiece; it received great praise upon both its British and American publications; and has since been virtually bypassed and ignored by the anthropological-archaeological-academic establishments. Why? Because her evidence is irrefutable. It shows with clarity — and in the solidity of stone and bone — that the first 30,000 years of Homo sapiens’ existence was dominated by a celebration of the female processes: of the mysteries of menstruation, pregnancy, and childbirth; of the analogous abundance of the earth; of the seasonal movement of animals and the cycles of time in the Great Round of The Mother. The Gate of Horn is as close as we can come to reading the “sacred book” of our early human ancestors. And it confirms what too many people do not want to know: that the first “God” was female.
Since Levy wrote, the tendency has been to relegate these Old Stone Age and Neolithic images to the psychological real m— they’ve become “Archetypes of the unconscious” and so forth, while anthropological writers proper, both academic and popular, continue to explain physical, real human development solely in terms of the experiences of the male body in hunting, aggression, and toolmaking. Thus the female images — which are there, and cannot be denied are sideswiped, reduced to “The subjective,” “The mythic realms”; and thus the first 30,000 years of our human history is denied to us, relegated to a “mind trip” or “psychological software.” Even among feminists, in recent years, there has arisen doubt that these images and symbols might be anything but “mythology”— i.e., unrealities.
To approach our human past — and the female God — we need a wagon with at least two wheels: one is the mythical-historical-archaeological; the other is the biological-anthropological. A strong track has already been laid down for the mythical-historical-archaeological wheel ; milestones along that track, along with G. Rachel Levy’s great work, are J. J. Bachofen’s Myth, Religion and Mother-Right, Robert Briffault’s The Mothers, Helen Diner’s Mothers and Amazons, Jessie Weston’s From Ritual to Romance, Robert Graves’s The White Goddess, O. G. S. Crawford’s The Eye Goddess, Sibylle von Cles-Reden’s In the Realm of the Great Goddess, Michael Dames’s Silbury Treasure and Avebury Cycle, Marija Gimbutas’s The Goddesses and Gods of Old Europe; and most recently Elizabeth G. Davis’s The First Sex; Merlin Stone’s When God Was a Woman and Ancient Mirrors of Womanhood; Phyllis Chesler’s Women and Madness and About Men; Adrienne Rich’s Of Woman Born; Mary Daly’s Beyond God the Father, Gyn-Ecology, and Pure Lust; Susan Griffin’s Woman and Nature; Anne Cameron’s Daughters of Copper Woman-and many many more, including the richly useful Women’s Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets by Barbara G. Walker.
The other side of our wagon — the biological-anthropological side — has almost no wheel and no track; not because there is no important place to go in that direction, but because the physical-cultural anthropologists are off somewhere else, busily mapping the evolution of Tarzan. There is no body of anthropological work based on the evolution of female biology. With rare exceptions, there have been no attempts whatsoever to study the evolution of human physiology and cultural organization — from pre-hominid to “modern man” — from the perspective of the definitive changes undergone by the female in the process of that evolution. Popular books on this subject, by Lionel Tiger, Desmond Morris, et al., are invariably male-oriented, treating the evolution of the female as sex object only, from monkey-in-heat to hot bunny. One delightful exception is Elaine Morgan’s The Descent of Woman; during 12 million years of dry Pliocene, Morgan speculates, the female prehominid took to the oceans, surviving in the warm and food-filled coastal waters and during this experience underwent a sea-change from knuckle-walking, rear-sex primate to upright human sexual body, to which the male primate responded by becoming man. Morgan argues convincingly that the human species survived the long Pliocene drought through the cooperation and social invention of the evolving hominid females in their adaptation to the sea; academic “experts” ignore this theory , but they have no other explanation for our Pliocene survival, for our successful evolution from ape to human during this difficult period, or for the many ways in which our human bodies resemble the bodies of sea mammals, rather than primates.
In The Time Falling Bodies Take to Light, historian William Irwin Thompson points out that early human evolution occurred in three critical stages: (1) hominization, in which our primate bodies became human, not only in walking upright and freeing the hands, but specifically in our sexual characteristics and functions; (2) symbolization, in which we began using speech, marking time, painting and sculpting images; and (3) agriculturalization, in which we domesticated seeds and began control of food production. And , as Thompson writes, all three stages were initiated and developed by the human female. 6 The symbol-making and agricultural stages have been studied, and the originating role of women in these stages is known; it is sexual hominization which, as yet, has barely been explored.
Why? Why indeed . Because sexual hominization is almost exclusively the story of the human female. The mechanics and anatomy of male sexuality, after all, haven’t changed greatly since the primates made love. The revolution in human sexuality — the revolution that made us human — resulted from evolutionary changes that occurred in the female body. These changes were not primarily related to mammalian reproduction, but to human sexual relationship. No one knows the order in which they occurred, but taken together, as an evolved cluster of sexual characteristics, they constitute a truly radical sexual metamorphosis undergone by the human female:
Elimination of the estrus cycle, and development of the menstrual cycle, meant that women were not periodically in heat, but capable of sexual activity at any time. Pregnancy could occur during a part of the cycle; but for most of the cycle sex could happen without necessarily resulting in pregnancy. Among all other animals, the estrus cycle determines that copulation always results in pregnancy, and has no other than a reproductive purpose.
Development of the clitoris and evolution of the vagina meant a greatly enhanced sexuality and orgasmic potential in human females compared to all other animals.
The change from rear to frontal sex, we can imagine, created an enormous change in relations between the sexes; frontal sex means a prolonged and enhanced lovemaking period, and what might be called the personalization of sex. The emotion-evoking role of face-to-face intercourse in the development of human self-consciousness has yet to be evaluated (she turned around and looked him in the eye: and there was light!)
Development of breasts added to woman’s potential for sexual arousal; further, combined with frontal sex, no doubt the female’s maternal and social feelings were also now aroused by the personal lover, whose body was now analogous to the infant’s body at her breast.
As Thompson points out, such radical changes in the female body alone were enough to trigger the hominization of the species. Human beings, with these changes, became the only creatures on earth for whom copulation occurs — can occur, anytime — for nonreproductive purposes. Human sex thus became a multipurpose activity. It can happen for emotional bonding, for social bonding, for pleasure, for communication, for shelter and comfort, for personal release, for escape — as well as for reproduction of the species. And this is one of the original and major, determining differences between humans and all other animals, birds, reptiles, insects, fishes, worms . . . for whom copulation exists only and solely for species reproduction.
The human race has been definitively shaped by the evolution/ revolution of the female body into a capacity for nonreproductive sex.
This is not just a physical fact. It is a cultural, religious, and political fact of primary significance.
Many feminists today are unsure whether studies of evolutionary biology, or of religious mythology, can have political relevance for contemporary women. We believe that nothing could be more politically relevant than knowing why we got where we are now, by seeing how we got here, and where we began.
In the beginning, the first environment for all new life was female: the physical/ emotional/ spiritual body of The Mother, and the communal body of women — young girls, grown women, older women working together. When hunting-and-gathering people move, the infant is carried bound close to The Mother’s body; when they settle, the women form an “Inner circle” campsite of women and children. The socialization process begins here.
Human culture is marked by a strengthening and prolongation of the relation between mothers and offspring. For its first year the human child is virtually an “embryo” outside the womb, extremely vulnerable and totally dependent. Female group behavior — the cooperative care-sharing among mothers and children, older and younger women, in the tasks of daily life — emerges from the fact of this prolonged dependence of the human child on the human female for its survival. Males help but they also leave; the male body comes and goes, but the female presence is constant. Females train, discipline, and protect the young; beyond infant care, the maintenance and leadership of the entire kin-group is the task of women . The female animal is always on the alert, for on her rests the responsibility not only of feeding the young, but of keeping the young from being food for others. She is the giver and also the sustainer of beginning life. Among humans, males help with protection and food acquisition; but it is the communal group of females that surrounds the child, in its first four to six years of life, with a strong physical, emotional, traditional, and linguistic presence. And this is the foundation of social life and human culture.
The popular image of early human society as being dominated — indeed created — by sexist male hunters and ferocious territorial head-bangers just doesn’t hold water. If the first humans had depended solely on despotic and aggressive male leaders, or on several males in chronic, ritualistic contention for power-human society would never have developed. Human culture could never have been invented. The human presence on earth would never have evolved.
The fact is that it was from this first inner circle of women — the campsite, the fire-site, the cave, the first hearth, the first circle of birth — that human society evolved. As hominids evolved into Paleolithic Homo sapiens, and then into settled and complex Neolithic village people on the time-edge of “civilization,” these tens of thousands of years of human culture were shaped and sustained by communities of creative, sexually and psychically active women — women who were inventors, producers, scientists, physicians, lawgivers, visionary shamans, artists. Women who were also The Mothers — receivers and transmitters of terrestrial and cosmic energy.
We have to understand how and why these ancient millennia of womancultures have been buried — ignored, denied, passed off as “mythology” or “primitive prehistoric origins” — by Western male historians who insist (and often really believe) that “real history” began only about five thousand years ago with the relatively recent institutions of patriarchy.
Sjoo, Monica; Mor, Barbara (2013-12-10). The Great Cosmic Mother: Rediscovering the Religion of the Earth (pp. 4-12). HarperCollins.
Note:
1. Helen Diner, Mothers and Amazons (New York: Doubleday /Anchor, 1973), 74. Diner is referring to Charles Darwin , Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex, volume 1 (New York: J. A. Hill and Co., 1904), 164— 68; Darwin believed both sexes, originally , were maternal, and thought the prostate gland might be a rudimentary uterus.
2. Mary Jane Sherfey, M.D., The Nature and Evolution of Female Sexuality (New York: Vintage Books, 1973), 43.
3. Stephen Jay Gould , Hen’s Teeth and Horse’s Toes: Further Reflections in Natural History (New York: W. W. Norton, 1983), 153— 54.
4. Fran P. Hosken, Women’s International Network News 2, no. 1 (January 1976): 30— 44.
5. G. Rachel Levy, Religious Conceptions of the Stone Age, and Their Influence Upon European Thought (New York: Harper & Row, 1963), 70.
6. William Irwin Thompson, The Time Falling Bodies Take to Light: Mythology, Sexuality and the Origins of Culture (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1981), 43— 156.
So intent was Paul on declaring maleness to be first that he was willing to blind himself to the biological truth of birth
The Daughters of Eve
Even today Hebrew males are taught to offer the daily prayer, ‘Blessed Art Thou O Lord our God, King of the Universe, who has not made me a woman.’
Mohammed stated, ‘When Eve was created, Satan rejoiced.’
As the Hebrew myth of the creation was later adopted into the sacred literature of Christianity, along with all the other writings of the Old Testament, the writers and religious leaders who followed Christ assumed the same pose of contempt for the female, continuing to use religion to lock women further into the role of passive and inferior beings , and thus the more easily controlled property of men. As the years went on and the position and status of women continued to lose ground, the Church held fast to its goals of creating and maintaining a male-dominated society. For hadn’t it been one of the first decrees of the god who made the world and all life? Women were to be regarded as mindless, carnal creatures, both attitudes justified and ‘proved’ by the Paradise myth.
In Paul’s letter to the Ephesians we read, ‘Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands as unto the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the Church and he is the savior of the body. Therefore as the Church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything’ (Eph. 5: 22- 24).
This brings to mind the quote from Hosea in which the husband so totally identified himself with the male deity that his words became the words of Yahweh. In the new religion not only the priests, but all men, were to be considered as direct messengers of the Lord, not merely in Church but in the privacy of a woman’s kitchen or even in her bed.
Using the now-familiar Eden myth, Paul asserted that this was the reason that women must be obedient, denying themselves even the faculty of their vocal chords, not to mention their minds. We read in I Tim. 2: 11-14, “Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection. But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence. For Adam was first formed and then Eve and Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression.’
And in Corinthians the word of the creation legend was brought home once again. ‘The head of every man is Christ; and the head of the woman is the man; and the head of Christ is God. For a man indeed ought not to cover his head for as much as he is the image and glory of God, but the woman is the glory of the man. For the man is not of the woman but the woman of the man. Neither was man created for the woman but the woman for the man’ (I Cor: 11:3, 7., 9).
Statements carefully designed to suppress the earlier social structure continually presented the myth of Adam and Eve as divine proof that man must hold the ultimate authority. The status of the male deity was the status of the male mortal, and it was surely no accident that the Levite priests of Yahweh had fought so bitterly for his position. So intent was Paul on declaring maleness to be first that he was willing to blind himself to the biological truth of birth —”For the man is not of the woman but the woman of the man.” Woman bears the pain but man takes the credit.”
Stone, Merlin (2012-05-09). When God Was A Woman (Kindle Locations 3807-3831). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
Mother Tao, Source of All Things
“The expansion and contraction of the universe could be conceived as the in-breath and out-breath of Mother Tao. Tao is the emptiness out of which all things arose and into which they will again return and arise again … and return … and arise again … and so on. Mother Tao is sometimes referred to as ‘the Primal Unity’ or ‘the One’ and suggests the image of a circle- the going out and the coming in of life. This circle of unity applies not only to the grand cosmological cycle of the universe but more immediately to the life cycle of the individual- all that transpires between the in-breath at birth and the out-breath on dying. In this too, we find parallels between The Mother Tao and the Hindu Brahman.”
Mother Tao, Source of All Things
Long before Heaven or Earth is made,
It is silent and shapeless,
It is always present, endlessly in motion From it like a mother every living thing has come.
I do not know what to call it.
So I call it Tao. -Lao Tzu
The Tao is also referred to as “The Mother of all things’ or as ‘the what-is-not that is the source of the what-is.’ In some respects, ‘Mother Tao’ harkens back to the goddess religions that dominated in matriarchal Neolithic cultures throughout the world. Yet Mother Tao is not to be imaged or conceived of as a divine personage, but as a kind of “silent and shapeless” protolife from which “every living thing has come.” As Chuang Tzu put it, “Tao makes things what they are, but is not itself a thing”— even a divine thing. within the “silent and shapeless” womb of Mother Tao, every existing, or potentially existing, thing or event resides.
All cultures are made in the image of their cosmology , that is, in their understanding of the origin and structure of the universe. Cosmology deeply affects not only our relationship to the universe but our notions of time and the creative process. In Western Biblical cosmology, we have a divine person who wills the universe into existence. As a personality (albeit a divine one), He is subject to loneliness , anger, jealousy, and revenge, as well as goodness, mercy, kindness, and joy. In six days, He made the universe and all the things that fill it. Like so many mudpies, He fashioned the heavens, the earth, the fish in the sea, the birds of the air, the creatures of the earth, and eventually, human beings. All of these were made by deliberate, discreet operations within linear time. First He made this, and then He made that. The Divine Person stands apart from His creation. He is wholly spiritual ; His creation, wholly material. He is good; His creation, fallen and corrupt . Man, as a part of this fallen creation, can only be redeemed by His divine intervention.
The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious…. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead; his eyes are closed. ALBERT EINSTEIN
From the Taoist perspective, there is no Maker or Creator God. Nature (the universe) is not made, but is tzu-jan ‘of itself so.’ The process of the universe is not one of deliberate manufacture but of organic growth. From the Taoist perspective, everything that now exists (or ever will) came into being when Mother Tao was ‘mysteriously brought into existence.’ Everything has grown out of this One source and is latent in it. In the Chuang Tzu we read, ‘Heaven and Earth were born at the same time I was, and the ten thousand things are one with me.’ 10 The universe , being without a maker, is also without a cause or a boss. No-thing has caused other things to be; all things have mutually arisen (hsiang-shan) and therefore mutually create and sustain one another.
With respect to the origin of the universe, there are striking parallels between Taoist cosmology and the theories of modern physicists. The theory of the big bang suggests that the entire universe began with a single giant explosion. From some ‘silent and shapeless’ stuff (gases), the entire material universe was born. All subsequent effects, including the evolution of animate life and eventually of humankind, can be seen as having been latent in the primordial gasses that produced the big bang. For many years now, it has been the consensus view among physicists that the universe has been continually expanding since the big bang. More recently, a number of physicists have theorized that it may eventually begin to shrink and collapse upon itself. Research is currently being conducted to test this hypothesis. Should it ultimately prove out, this too would fit the Taoist cosmology. If it turns out that the Universe will eventually collapse back into itself, it may well be that this pattern of expansion and contraction is an endlessly repeating cycle that has been going on for incalculable eons.
The expansion and contraction of the universe could be conceived as the in-breath and out-breath of Mother Tao. Tao is the emptiness out of which all things arose and into which they will again return and arise again … and return … and arise again … and so on. Mother Tao is sometimes referred to as ‘the Primal Unity’ or ‘the One’ and suggests the image of a circle — the going out and the coming in of life. This circle of unity applies not only to the grand cosmological cycle of the universe but more immediately to the life cycle of the individual — all that transpires between the in-breath at birth and the out-breath on dying. In this too, we find parallels between The Mother Tao and the Hindu Brahman.
Tranquil, let one worship It
As that from which he came forth
As that into which he will be dissolved
As that in which he breathes. -UPANISHADS
This is Mother Tao — the womb, tomb, and breath of life —the silent shapeless stuff from which one has arisen, into which he shall return, and in which he lives and breathes. Mother Tao is his past, his present, and his future; and past, present, and future are one in birth, death , and breath.”
Boldt, Laurence G.. The Tao of Abundance: Eight Ancient Principles for Living Abundantly in the 21st Century (Compass) (Kindle Locations 245-289). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
The Paraclete Shri Mataji
“God created only one world. We have made different countries. Not only that, but we think that we are all different people. Of course He has not created even one leaf like the other. In the same way we are created differently. This is variety to create beauty. But this has led us to lots of confusions. So this Kundalini is your Mother. She is your individual Mother. And She knows everything about you. And She is anxious to give your second birth. She is anxious that you should get this benevolence. But it is your pure desire only that can manifest this happening.
All other desires are impure. Because it is said in economics that in general desires are not satiable, wants are not satiable. So, these desires are not pure. We move from one desire to another desire. So the pure desire within us, which is the power of Kundalini, is to be one with the Divine, to be in yoga with the Divine.
This is achieved through the awakening of Kundalini.
But what is Kundalini, is the reflection of the Holy Ghost. We have God the father, God the son, but what about The Mother? How can you think of a father, and a son and not of The Mother? Holy Ghost is the Primordial Mother. And She is reflected within us as the Kundalini. And in the heart is reflected the God Almighty. God Almighty is the witness. Witness of the play of the Holy Ghost that is His power. They are inseparable like moon and moonlight or sun and sunlight. That is why when the Yoga takes place, the Kundalini rises up to the head here up to the fontanel bone area, breaks through this fontanel area and you feel the Cool Breeze of the Holy Ghost coming out of your head. This is the seat of the spirit though in human beings it resides in the heart.”
The Paraclete Shri Mataji
The Paraclete Shri Mataji
“The mother is completely cancelled by the Paul in Christianity, I would say. But when you say the father, the god, the son, the god, what about the mother part, that’s a dove. I mean just imagine (audience laughs), how can you accept logically? Just to cancel women like that. But this, whatever religions are not organized like this, they say that women is the power, She is the Shakti. And the whole thing was created by the primordial mother like see Greeks call it Athena. ‘Ath’ means the primordial, Athena – primordial Mother, and a mother can only do such a job, I tell you. Men have no patience. (Shri Mataji and audience laughs) So this kind of a thing they have put into our heads that there’s nothing like a woman in spirituality.
I mean I am a woman alright and I’m proud of it. Like the Mother Earth has to bear everything. She’s the only one who can bear it. The Sun can give light, alright, but it can’t bear anything. It cannot nourish the way the mother does it. Is a very important role. To cancel women is something I can’t understand because they are the ones who are for the upbringing of the children. You’ll hear a lot of about it, when you listen to my tapes because there are many tapes on this subject. Is absurd, I can’t understand this kind of thing.
At the time when Christ was crucified what did he say? “Behold The Mother” Despite all kinds of cancellations there are some truths still left in, in the Holy Bible. And one of them is ‘Behold the Mother’. He didn’t say ‘Behold The Father’. Why didn’t he say that?
And my father, who was a great realized soul and a great scholar he told me that even Martin Luther felt that it would not be opportune to talk about the Mother because the primordial mother, because the Muslims may not accept that kind of a thing but he said, he must have felt that it will be one day exposed so it’s better not to talk about it just for the time being to get the Muslims more towards the Christianity.
I know you have a big problem of ordination and all that going on here.(Shri Mataji laughs) That’s why then you have these liberation of women as a reaction, this that. Is all a unnatural, very unnatural. They’re all complimentary to each other.”
The Paraclete Shri Mataji
Public Program Day 1, Melbourne, Australia—March 6, 1990
September 12, 2017
Note: Every single word and sentence in the two paragraphs below are true and beyond question. Of utmost importance is the comprehension of this sacred secret: She is subject to no male consort. In this single sentence lies one of the highest vidya (Knowledge) attainable that has for us its roots in all that is the past (countless creations), the present (being born of the Spirit and Resurrection), and the future (life eternal in the Kingdom of God).
We are experiencing the World-Mother in the form of the Spirit-Paraclete who has intervened, as requested, to fulfill the promised Resurrection. The Spirit-Paraclete form of the World-Mother did arrive at the most critical time in history. Few know of this divine eschatological intervention. Even less believe! – jagbir
Introduction
The Goddess and Her Song
“The Devi Gita, or Song of the Goddess, presents a grand vision of the universe created, pervaded, and protected by a supremely powerful, all-knowing, and wholly compassionate divine female. She is Mahadevi or the Great Goddess, known to her most devoted followers as the auspicious Mother-of-the-World (jagad-ambika, jagan-matr). Unlike the ferocious and horrific Hindu goddesses such as Kali and Durga, the World-Mother of the Devi Gita is benign and beautiful, though some of her lesser manifestations may take on terrifying forms. And unlike other beneficent divinities such as Parvati and Laksmi, she is subject to no male consort.
This World-Mother is formally addressed as Bhuvanesvari, the “Ruler of the Universe.” She resides in her celestial paradise known as Manidvipa, the Jeweled Island, situated at the topmost point of the universe. From there, ever wakeful and alert, she observes the troubles of the world, eager to intervene on behalf of her devotees.”
Mackenzie Bown, The Devi Gita: The Song of the Goddess
State University of New York Press, 1998, p. 1
“The Message of the Comforter does not detract in any way from the teachings of Jesus the Christ. It does not encroach on the long-established system of organised, orthodox belief. On the contrary, the World Mother is coming into physical manifestation at this critical time to expound the teachings of the Christ, to present them in a form that will be acceptable to all God’s children, to draw the peoples of the earth together, to unite, to bind, to gather the scattered flocks of the human family; to function as the Comforter of the world during the period described in the Scriptures as “The last tribulations.”..
The only difference between the teachings of this little book and those of the Scriptures lies in the fact that the writer sees the Holy Spirit in the garb of a Woman, a Mother. Time alone will show us whether this is correct or not. No one who is under a delusion is mentally equipped to create the form of a mighty Being who is able to manifest among men as a leader, able to give expression to the powers of the Spirit in prophecy, in healing, in telepathy, in working the signs and wonders and miracles which we are wont to associate with the life of Jesus, and Jesus alone, in spite of the fact that He said “The works that I do shall ye do also; and greater works than these shall ye do.” A modern Messiah who is able to save the situation at the eleventh hour would naturally manifest in such irresistible power that all our reasoning will be swept away. And that is what I expect; a demonstration of the power and majesty of God in the fragrant beauty of an earthly, feminine form, a comforting, womanly Presence whose mission will be far more effectively carried out because it presents the most unexpected deliverance.”
Johanna Brandt, The Paraclete OR Coming World Mother (1936), pp. 4-5
Yahoo forum post # 18698
September 13, 2017
Dear Jagbir:
She is subject to no male consort.
Can you please expand your take on this statement.
or direct me to were I can find the information to be able to absorb and fathom the importance of this secret.
Thank you
Pamela
Yahoo forum post # 18701
Dear Pamela (and all),
i will start by extracting this:
“Why is blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, but not the Father or Son, not forgiven? [closed]
Matthew 12:31–32 (RSV)
31 Therefore I tell you, every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven men, but the blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven. 32 And whoever says a word against the Son of man will be forgiven; but whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the age to come.
If the Trinity is real then how come whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven but whoever speaks against the Son of Man will be forgiven? Aren’t the Son, Father and Spirit equal to God? So is speaking against one speaking against all three?”
http://christianity.stackexchange.com/questions/50288/why-is-blasphemy-against-the-holy-spirit-but-not-the-father-or-son-not-forgive
The Savior, the very epitome of love and forgiveness, has singled out only one unforgivable sin – blasphemy against the Holy Spirit! Jesus, who spoke Aramaic, addressed the Holy Spirit in feminine terms two millennia ago. In the Age that has come that Holy Spirit arrived in the form of the Paraclete Shri Mataji.
For Jesus, even blasphemy against the Father (male) or himself (male) will be forgiven. But there is no forgiveness for blasphemy against the Holy Spirit-Paraclete (female). Meditate deeply on this ‘anger’ of Jesus. Why does He have such high esteem for the Holy Spirit, even above that of the Father?
i will extract other sources to bring more clarity but the above should suffice for the moment. We must have the time to absorb truth that goes against and begins to destroy ingrained doctrine and dogma (avidya). You must be clear about the Gender of the Holy Spirit ……………………… yet another of the infinite forms of the MOTHER!
regards,
jagbir
Gender of the Holy Spirit
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The gender of the Holy Spirit has been the object of some discussion in recent years, questioning whether the Holy Spirit should be referred to as “he”, “she” or “it”. To some extent this derives from the gender of the noun used in different languages. In the original Hebrew of the Old Testament, the word for spirit is “rūaḥ” is a feminine noun. The word for spirit in New Testament Greek is pneuma, a neuter noun. In Latin, the common language of the Roman Catholic Church, the word for spirit is masculine.
Grammatical considerations
While scholars generally agree that grammatical gender is not necessarily correlative to personal gender, if by “gender” is meant grammatical gender, then the gender of the Holy Spirit varies according to the language used. Thus the grammatical gender of the word “spirit” is generally feminine in the Semitic languages such as Hebrew (rūaḥ), in which the Old Testament was originally written, and neuter (pneûma, pneuma) in Greek, in which the rest of the New Testament was written in. However, the word for “spirit” is masculine in other languages unrelated to the original writing of the Bible, such as Latin (spiritus) and in Latin-derived languages, as also, for instance, in German (Geist).
Even in the same language, a difference may arise relating to what word is chosen to describe the Holy Spirit. In Greek the word pneuma is grammatically neuter[1] and so, in that language, the pronoun referring to the Holy Spirit under that name is also grammatically neuter. However, when the Holy Spirit is referred to by the grammatically masculine word Parakletos (Counsellor, Comforter), the pronoun is masculine, as in John 16:7-8.[2]
William Mounce argues that in John’s gospel, when Jesus referred to the Holy Spirit as Comforter (masculine in Greek), the grammatically necessary masculine form of the Greek pronoun autos is used,[3] but when Jesus speaks of the Holy Spirit as Spirit, grammatically neuter in Greek,[4] the masculine form of the demonstrative pronoun ekeinos (“that masculine one”) is used.[3] This breaking of the grammatical agreement expected by native language readers is an indication of the author’s intention to convey the personhood of the Holy Spirit, and also the Spirit’s masculinity.[5] Daniel Wallace, however, disputes the claim that ekeinos is connected with pneuma in John 14:26 and 16:13-14, asserting instead that it belongs to parakletos. Wallace concludes that “it is difficult to find any text in which [] is grammatically referred to with the masculine gender”.[6]
Semitic languages
In Hebrew the word for Spirit (ruach) is feminine, (which is used in the Hebrew Bible, as is the feminine word “shekhinah” used in rabbinical writings, to indicate the presence of God, Sakinah in Arabic language, a word mentioned six times in the Quran).
In the Syriac language too, the grammatically feminine word rucha means “spirit”, and writers in that language, both orthodox and Gnostic, used maternal images when speaking of the Holy Spirit.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_of_the_Holy_Spirit
Wikipedia (extracted 2017-09-13)
References
1. “Catholic Exchange”. Retrieved 2009-05-13.
2. John 16:7-8
3. William D. Mounce, The Morphology of Biblical Greek (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1994), pp. 241-242
4. John 14:26; 15:26; 16:13-14.
5. Grudem, Wayne (1995). Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Biblical Doctrine. Grand Rapids: Zondervan. p. 232. ISBN 0-310-28670-0.
6. Daniel B. Wallace, Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics: An Exegetical Syntax of New Testament Greek (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1996), 332.
Yahoo forum post # 18705
The fulfillment of eschatological instruction promised by Jesus
“The original meaning of the word ‘apocalypse’, derived from the Greek apokalypsis, is in fact not the cataclysmic end of the world, but an ‘unveiling’, or ‘revelation’, a means whereby one gains insight into the present.” (Kovacs, 2013, 2)
An apocalypse (Greek: apokalypsis meaning “an uncovering”) is in religious contexts knowledge or revelation, a disclosure of something hidden, “a vision of heavenly secrets that can make sense of earthly realities.” (Ehrman 2014, 59)
“An apocalypse (Ancient Greek: apokalypsis … literally meaning “an uncovering”) is a disclosure or revelation of great knowledge. In religious and occult concepts, an apocalypse usually discloses something very important that was hidden or provides what Bart Ehrman has termed, “A vision of heavenly secrets that can make sense of earthly realities”. Historically, the term has a heavy religious connotation as commonly seen in the prophetic revelations of eschatology obtained through dreams or spiritual visions.” Wikipedia 2021-01-09
Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi (1923-2011) was Christian by birth, Hindu by marriage, and Paraclete by duty.
Total number of recorded talks 3058: Public Programs 1178, Pujas 651, and other (private conversations) 1249
“The Paraclete will come (15:26; 16:7, 8, 13) as Jesus has come into the world (5:43; 16:28; 18:37)… The Paraclete will take the things of Christ (the things that are mine, ek tou emou) and declare them (16:14-15). Bishop Fison describes the humility of the Spirit, ‘The true Holy Spirit of God does not advertise Herself: She effaces Herself and advertises Jesus.’ …
It is by the outgoing activity of the Spirit that the divine life communicates itself in and to the creation. The Spirit is God-in-relations. The Paraclete is the divine self-expression which will be and abide with you, and be in you (14:16-17). The Spirit’s work is described in terms of utterance: teach you, didasko (14:26), remind you, hypomimnesko (14:26), testify, martyro (15:26), prove wrong, elencho (16:8), guide into truth, hodego (16:13), speak, laleo (16:13, twice), declare, anangello (16:13, 14, 15). The johannine terms describe verbal actions which intend a response in others who will receive (lambano), see (theoreo), or know (ginosko) the Spirit. Such speech-terms link the Spirit with the divine Word. The Spirit’s initiatives imply God’s personal engagement with humanity. The Spirit comes to be with others; the teaching Spirit implies a community of learners; forgetful persons need a prompter to remind them; one testifies expecting heed to be paid; one speaks and declares in order to be heard. The articulate Spirit is the correlative of the listening, Spirit-informed community.
The final Paraclete passage closes with a threefold repetition of the verb she will declare (anangello), 16:13-15. The Spirit will declare the things that are to come (v.13), and she will declare what is Christ’s (vv. 14, 15). The things of Christ are a message that must be heralded…
The intention of the Spirit of truth is the restoration of an alienated, deceived humanity… The teaching role of the Paraclete tends to be remembered as a major emphasis of the Farewell Discourses, yet only 14:26 says She will teach you all things. (Teaching is, however, implied when 16:13-15 says that the Spirit will guide you into all truth, and will speak and declare.) Franz Mussner remarks that the word used in 14:26, didaskein, “means literally ‘teach, instruct,’ but in John it nearly always means to reveal.” (Stevick 2011, 292-7)
The Holy Spirit as feminine: Early Christian testimonies and their interpretation,
Johannes van Oort, Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands
Department of Church History and Church Polity, Faculty of Theology, University of Pretoria, South Africa
Paraclete, as the continuation of Jesus’ teaching, must also be understood as the fulfillment of the promise of eschatological divine instruction.”
Stephen E. Witmer, Divine instruction in Early Christianity
“Jesus therefore predicts that God will later send a human being to Earth to take up the role defined by John .i.e. to be a prophet who hears God’s words and repeats his message to man.”
M. Bucaille, The Bible, the Qur’n, and Science
“And when Jesus foreannounced another Comforter, He must have intended a Person as distinct and helpful as He had been.”
F. B. Meyer, Love to the Utmost
“The Paraclete has a twofold function: to communicate Christ to believers and, to put the world on trial.”
Robert Kysar, John The Meverick Gospel
“But She—the Spirit, the Paraclete…—will teach you everything.”
Danny Mahar, Aramaic Made EZ)
“Grammatical nonsense but evidence of the theological desire to defeminize the Divine.”
Lucy Reid, She Changes Everything
“The functions of the Paraclete spelled out in verses 13-15… are all acts of open and bold speaking in the highest degree.”
David Fleer, Preaching John’s Gospel
“The reaction of the world to the Paraclete will be much the same as the world’s reaction was to Jesus.”
Berard L. Marthaler, The Creed: The Apostolic Faith in Contemporary Theology
Bultmann calls the “coming of the Redeemer an ‘eschatological event,’ ‘the turning-point of the ages.”
G. Ladd, A Theology of the New Testament
“The Paraclete equated with the Holy Spirit, is the only mediator of the word of the exalted Christ.”
Benny Thettayil, In Spirit and Truth
“The divine Paraclete, and no lessor agency, must show the world how wrong it was about him who was in the right.”
Daniel B. Stevick , Jesus and His Own: A Commentary on John 13-17
Stephen Smalley asserts that “The Spirit-Paraclete … in John’s Gospel is understood as personal, indeed, as a person.”
Marianne Thompson, The God of the Gospel of John
“The Messiah will come and the great age of salvation will dawn (for the pious).”
Eric Eve, The Jewish context of Jesus’ Miracles
“The remembrance is to relive and re-enact the Christ event, to bring about new eschatological decision in time and space.”
Daniel Rathnakara Sadananda, The Johannine Exegesis of God
“The Spirit acts in such an international situation as the revealer of ‘judgment’ on the powers that rule the world.”
Michael Welker, God the Spirit
The Paraclete’s “Appearance means that sin, righteousness, and judgment will be revealed.”
Georg Strecker, Theology of the New Testament
“While the Spirit-Paraclete is the true broker, the brokers they rely on are impostors.”
T. G. Brown, Spirit in the writings of John
“The pneumatological activity … of the Paraclete … may most helpfully be considered in terms of the salvific working of the hidden Spirit.”
Michael Welker, The work of the Spirit
“The pneuma is the peculiar power by which the word becomes the words of eternal life.”
Robert Kysar, Voyages with John
“The gift of peace, therefore, is intimately associated with the gift of the Spirit-Paraclete.”
Francis J. Moloney, The Gospel of John
“This utopian hope, even when modestly expressed, links Jesus and the prophets to a much wider history of human longing.”
Harvey Cox, The Future of Faith
“Because of the presence of the Paraclete in the life of the believer, the blessings of the end-times—the eschaton—are already present.”
Robert Kysar, John
“They are going, by the Holy Spirit’s power, to be part of the greatest miracle of all, bringing men to salvation.”
R. Picirilli, The Randall House Bible Commentary
“The Kingdom of God stands as a comprehensive term for all that the messianic salvation included… is something to be sought here and now (Mt. 6:33) and to be received as children receive a gift (Mk. 10:15 = Lk. 18:16-17).”
G. Ladd, A Theology of the New Testament
Lessons for Living Found in Views of the Last Judgment
Beliefs
By PETER STEINFELS JAN. 20, 2007
“The image of the God who judges in wrath has caused a great deal of spiritual damage,” Professor Moltmann will be telling his listeners.
But he is not satisfied with the alternative that makes eternal destiny simply a matter of the individual’s own choice of whether to reject God. In that case, Professor Moltmann says, the Last Judgment becomes no more than “the ultimate endorsement of our free will.” God really has nothing much to do with it beyond implementing the human outcome; in short, “we are the lords, and God is our servant,” he says.
The alternative, in Professor Moltmann’s view, is to put Jesus Christ at the center of this final drama. “It is high time to Christianize our traditional images and perceptions of God’s Final Judgment,” he says.
Any Last Judgment with Christ at the center must answer the cries of human victims for justice, without simply meting out vengeance on the perpetrators of injustice, Professor Moltmann suggests. A Christian eschatological vision would involve not the retributive justice of human courts but “God’s creative justice,” which can heal and restore the victims and transform the perpetrators.
The goal of a final judgment, in this interpretation, is not reward and punishment but victory over all that is godless, which he calls “a great Day of Reconciliation.” Professor Moltmann argues for the universal preservation and salvation not only of humans, as individuals and as members of groups, but also of all living creatures. It has been “a fatal mistake of Christian tradition in doctrine and spirituality,” he argues, to emphasize the “end of the old age” rather than “the new world of God,” the beginning of the “life of the world to come.”
This resurrected life will be bodily and worldly, and its expectation, he says, should teach people to “give ourselves wholeheartedly to this life here and surrender in love” to its “beauties and pains.”
New York Times, Lessons for Living Found in Views of the Last Judgment
January 20, 2007
“But today is the day I declare that I am the one who has to save the humanity. I declare I am the one who is Adishakti, who is the Mother of all the Mothers, who is the Primordial Mother, the Shakti, the desire of God, who has incarnated on this Earth to give its meaning to itself; to this creation, to human beings and I am sure through My Love and patience and My powers I am going to achieve it.
I was the one who was born again and again. But now in my complete form and complete powers I have come on this Earth not only for salvation of human beings, not only for their emancipation, but for granting them the Kingdom of Heaven, the joy, the bliss that your Father wants to bestow upon you.”
THE MOTHER: Messiah-Paraclete-Ruh
London, UK—December 2, 1979
“I am the one about which Christ has talked… I am the Holy Spirit who has incarnated on this Earth for your realization.”
THE MOTHER: Messiah-Paraclete-Ruh
New York, USA—September 30, 1981
“But to communicate with the people, to communicate with the Spirit—to understand the Kundalini, the vibrations, and their different decodings and all that—the Holy Spirit had to come; with Her mouth, and with Her voice, and with Her intelligence that is intelligible to you; with the knowledge, and everything.
Otherwise it is not possible to communicate and that’s why if somebody has to come you have to just recognize. Recognition is the best way of understanding the powers that are given to you…
So somebody has to be there to give you the complete picture. You get Realization, you get vibrations (Ruach, Pneuma, Prana), but then what? What about the complete? And for that the Holy Ghost has to take a form. All right?”
The Paraclete Shri Mataji
Sydney, Australia—April 7, 1981
Guest: “Hello Mother.”
Shri Mataji: “Yes.”
Guest: “I wanted to know, is the Cool Breeze (Pneuma) that you have spoken about, you feel on the hands the Cool Wind of the Holy Spirit, as spoken about in the Bible?”
Shri Mataji: “Yes. Yes, yes, same thing, same thing. You have done the good job now, I must say.”
Interviewer: “Is it the Holy Spirit?”
Shri Mataji: “Yes, of course, is the Holy Spirit.”
Guest: “Aha… I am feeling it now on my hand through the [not clear]”
Shri Mataji: “It’s good.”
Interviewer: “Did you want to say anything more than that?”
Guest: “No, I just… That’s all I wanted to know because I…”
Shri Mataji: “Because you are thoughtless now. Enjoy yourself.”
Guest: “Thank you.”
The Paraclete Shri Mataji
Talkback Radio 2UE, Sydney, Australia—March 31, 1981
Second Guest: “I just want to ask Mother about a quotation from the Bible.”
Interviewer: “Yes, what’s that?”
Guest: “It says, ‘But the comfort of the Holy Spirit that the Father will send in My name would teach you all things.’ I would like to ask Her about that.”
Interviewer: “Could you just repeat the quotation again?”
Guest: “But the Comforter, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, will teach you all things.”
Interviewer: “And that’s from where?”
Guest: “John chapter 14, verse 26.”
Shri Mataji: “I think you should take your realization and then you will know the answer to it. Because, logically if it points out to one person, then you have to reach the conclusion, isn’t it? That’s a logical way of looking at things. But I am not going to say anything or claim anything. It is better you people find out yourself.”
Interviewer: “Does that answer your question?”
Guest: “Is the, is the Comforter on the Earth at the present time? Has the Comforter incarnated? Mataji should be able to tell us this because She said that through these vibrations on Her hands, She …”
Shri Mataji: “Yes, She is very much here and She’s talking to you now. Can you believe that?”
Guest: “Well, I feel something cool [Pneuma/Prana/Chi] on my hand. Is that some indication of the …?”
Shri Mataji: “Yes, very much so. So that’s the proof of the thing. You’ve already started feeling it in your hands.”
Guest: “Can I?”
Shri Mataji: “Ask the question, ‘Mother, are you the Comforter?’”
Guest: “Mother, are you the Comforter?”
Shri Mataji: “Ask it thrice.”
Guest: “Mother, are you the Comforter?”
Shri Mataji: “Again.”
Guest: “Mother, are you the Comforter?”
Shri Mataji: “Now, what do you get?”
Guest: “Oh, I feel this kind of cool tingling [Pneuma/Prana/Chi] passing all through my body.”
Shri Mataji: “That’s the answer now.”
The Paraclete Shri Mataji
Talkback Radio 2UE, Sydney, Australia—March 31, 1981
Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi (1923-2011): Christian by birth, Hindu by marriage and Paraclete by duty.
“The Paraclete and the disciples (vv. 25-26): The theme of departure (cf. vv. 1-6; vv. 18-24) returns. There are two “times” in the experience of the disciples: the now as Jesus speaks to them (v. 25) and the future time when the Paraclete, the Holy Spirit, sent by the Father in the name of Jesus, will be with them (v. 26). The Paraclete will replace Jesus’ physical presence, teaching them all things and recalling for them everything he has said (v. 26). As Jesus is the Sent One of the Father (cf. 4:34; 5:23; 24, 30, 37; 6:38-40; 7:16; 8:16, 18, 26; 12:44-49), so is the Paraclete sent by the Father. The mission and purpose of the former Paraclete, Jesus (cf. 14:13-14), who speaks and teaches “his own” will continue into the mission and purpose of the “other Paraclete” (cf. v. 16) who teaches and brings back the memory of all that Jesus has said. The time of Jesus is intimately linked with the time after Jesus, and the accepted meaning of a departure has been undermined. The inability of the disciples to understand the words and deeds of Jesus will be overcome as they “remember” what he had said (cf. 2:22) and what had been written of him and done to him (cf. 12:16). The “remembering” will be the fruit of the presence of the Paraclete with the disciples in the in-between-time. In v. 16 Jesus focused on the inability of the world to know the Paraclete, but in v. 26 the gift of the Paraclete to “his own” is developed. As Jesus was with the disciples (v. 25), so will the Paraclete be with the disciples in the midst of hostility and rejection (v. 16). As the story has insisted that Jesus’ teaching has revealed God to his disciples, so will the Paraclete recall and continue Jesus’ revelation of God to the disciples (v. 26).” (Harrington 1998, 412)
The Paraclete Shri Mataji
Radio Interview Oct 01 1983—Santa Cruz, USA
The Paraclete Shri Mataji (1923-2011)
Total number of Recorded Talks 3058, Public Programs 1178, Pujas 651, and other (private conversations) 1249
“What are they awaiting but for the Hour to come upon them suddenly? Its Signs have already come. What good will their Reminder be to them when it does arrive?” (Qur’n, 47:18) “As the above verse indicates, God has revealed some of Doomsday’s signs in the Qur’n. In Surat az-Zukhruf 43:61, God informs us that ‘He [Jesus] is a Sign of the Hour. Have no doubt about it…’ Thus we can say, based particularly on Islamic sources but also on the Old Testament and the New Testament, that we are living in the End Times.” Harun Yahya
Good News (An Naba) of Resurrection (Al-Qiyamah): Videos 3474, Audios 1945, Transcripts 3262 and Events 2413
“Concerning what are they disputing?
Concerning the Great News. [5889]
About which they cannot agree.
Verily, they shall soon (come to) know!
Verily, verily they shall soon (come to) know!”
surah 78:1-5 An Naba (The Great News)
5889. Great News: usually understood to mean the News or Message of the Resurrection.
Abdullah Yusuf Ali, The Holy Qur’n
Amana Corporation, 1989
[Moderator]: “Any other questions?”
[Audience]: “Pardon me for asking this question, but, earlier you talked about the Resurrection and you mentioned about the scriptures, where like in the Hindus scriptures they talk about the Kalki Avatar who will come for the Resurrection, and for the Christians, I know they talk about the return of Christ and all the religions talk about this Resurrection and the belief in the coming of the Messiah. So I just want to know since you say you are going to give the resurrection to us, what is your station?”
Shri Mataji: “In Russia?”
[Audience]: “And are you the promised Messiah? Shri Mataji, are you?”
Shri Mataji: “I see now I am not going to tell you anything about myself, to be very frank. Because see Christ said He was the Son of God, and they crucified Him. I don’t want to get crucified. You have to find out. When you become the Spirit you will know what I am. I don’t want to say anything about myself.”
THE MOTHER: Messiah-Paraclete-Ruh
Toronto, Canada—October 5, 1993
“It is the Mother who can awaken the Kundalini, and that the Kundalini is your own Mother. She is the Holy Ghost within you, the Adi Shakti, and She Herself achieves your transformation. By any talk, by any rationality, by anything, it cannot be done.”
The Paraclete Shri Mataji
“She is your pure Mother. She is the Mother who is individually with you. Forget your concepts, and forget your identifications. Please try to understand She is your Mother, waiting for ages to give you your real birth. She is the Holy Ghost within you. She has to give you your realization, and She’s just waiting and waiting to do it.”
THE MOTHER: Messiah-Paraclete-Ruh
Sydney, Australia—Mar 22 1981
“The Kundalini is your own mother; your individual mother. And She has tape-recorded all your past and your aspirations. Everything! And She rises because She wants to give you your second birth. But She is your individual mother. You don’t share Her with anybody else. Yours is a different, somebody else’s is different because the tape-recording is different. We say She is the reflection of the Adi Shakti who is called as Holy Ghost in the Bible.”
The Paraclete Shri Mataji
Press Conference July 08 1999—London, UK
Mar 21, 1923—Feb 23, 2011
Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi was
Christian by birth, Hindu by
marriage, and Paraclete by duty.
“The Paraclete represents direct,
intimate divine intervention,
supporting and teaching
believers and challenging the
world, as Jesus did. ” (D. Stevick
Jesus and His Own, 2011, 290)
“Now what is the Holy Ghost? The Holy Ghost is the Primordial Mother. But people never talked about Mother. They talked of the Father and the Son. Imagine, a father and a son and no mother. It is absurd. Have you seen any father and a son without a mother? Such an absurd situation comes in that people accepted because it’s all mental. Somebody tells you, “No, it’s a mystery, there’s no Mother,” and people accepted it.
But there has to be a Mother and this is the time of Aquarius what we call in Sanskrit as Kumbha, meaning the Aquarius which is the Kundalini, where She nourishes, where She cures you, She redeems you, She guides you, counsels you, and this is the time of the Mother. We had the time of the Father, then of the Son, and now this is the time of the Mother where She has to nourish you, where She has to take you to your ultimate goal that is the Spirit.
The consciousness itself, the way we have been moving in other directions, have been like people think that if a woman starts fighting for her life and then she is asserting the femininity. She is not.
What I’m saying is not meant for women or men. It is meant for every one of us, that we have to become like a mother. Like a Divine Mother, like a person who can nourish people, who can give them love, affection, attention, perseverance, fore-bearing.
This is only possible for a Mother to do it and that motherhood should be awakened in every human being.”
THE MOTHER: Messiah-Paraclete-Ruh
Public Program Day 1, Boston, United States—Oct. 11, 1983