The Benefits of Being Mentored by a Living Teacher, Spiritual Master - Light and Sound on The Path

 

The Benefits of Being Mentored by a Living Teacher, Spiritual Master - Light and Sound on The Path

"We have so many scriptures, and since these scriptures describe the experiences of the soul which are beyond the human intellect, it is all the more necessary to seek the guidance of somebody who has undergone those experiments and experiences himself, and who can explain to us the true import of these scriptures. As these scriptures describe the realms and experiences which are beyond our intellect, our saints, seers, and prophets have often explained them in allegories, parables, and symbols. What often happens is that whatever is meant to be allegorical and symbolic we take to be literal; and whatever is to be taken as literal, we take to be symbolic. And it is in this respect that we cannot understand the true import of our scriptures. It is absolutely essential that for understanding our scriptures in their true import, we must go to the lotus feet of one who has traveled into the spiritual realms beyond, who has crossed the astral, the causal, and the supracausal plane, and who has achieved communion of the soul with the Creator. Only such a personality can explain to us the true import of these books. Spirituality is not a matter of mere knowledge; it is a matter of experience." - Darshan

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The John the Baptist Podcast via Youtube - Spiritual Awakening Radio

 

The John the Baptist Podcast via Youtube

IMAGE: The Locust or Carob Tree, also called the Saint John's Tree of the Middle East. Hanging from it are carob pods. Yeah, they do somewhat resemble "locusts" to some extent, thus the name.

John the Baptist has a tarnished caveman reputation of being all about bugs and bees, eating locusts and honey in the wilderness. But this is really a story about one religion misunderstanding another, and a copiest mistranslating a Greek word and then his mistake is declared to be enshrined as scripture.  Spiritual Awakening Radio Podcast @ Youtube: https://youtu.be/rBM34Cm4laE

I just received my copy of, New Testament Apocrypha, Vol. III, edited by Tony Burke. As with the earlier volumes there are some John the Baptist books included. In one of the earlier volumes there was a vegetarian passage. In this new volume are, The Birth of Holy John the Forerunner, and, The Decapitation of John the Forerunner, both containing plant-based passages about John's diet consisting of "locusts from the tree" and "wild honey", also "an abundance of bread and wild honey dripping from a rock". Clearly there was an understanding by some in early Christianity that "locust" was referring to the carob pod and maybe a kind of carob flour flat bread, and the "wild honey" was not from bees but sticky fruit of some kind, not a diet from bugs and bees.

Indeed, there is a ‘vegetarian’ depiction of John’s diet in the Gospel of the Ebionites: "His [John the Baptist's] food was wild honey that tasted like manna, like a cake cooked in olive oil." (Verse from the Gospel of the Ebionites found translated in, The Other Gospels, Accounts of Jesus from Outside the New Testament, by Bart Ehrman)

“Probably the most interesting of the changes from the familiar New Testament accounts of Jesus comes in the Gospel of the Ebionites description of John the Baptist, who, evidently, like his successor Jesus, maintained a strictly vegetarian cuisine.” (Professor Bart D. Ehrman, Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew, pp. 102, 103)