Book Presentation

Symbolism of the Scriptures. Overseas Messages IX

by Dr. Ekkirala Krishnamacharya

The scriptures have their own language and their own symbols which are different from the technical man-made symbols. Wisdom is concealed in each symbol in the scriptures. Dr Ekkirala Krishnamacharya (Master E.K.) was a master of the six keys to the Veda without which the knowledge of the scriptures cannot be unlocked. His lectures in this volume "Symbolism of the Scriptures" playfully present the scriptural symbols and explain their significance.

Content: Symbolism of the Scriptures; True Purpose of Astrology; Concept of Astrology

Kulapathi Book Trust, Visakhapatnam, India 2019

Sample:

Symbolism of the Scriptures

We tried to understand how the scriptures have their own language, their own symbols which are different from the technical man-made symbols. For example, the sunrise and the sunset form their symbols. The cycles of the years form their symbols. The shape of the human body forms its symbols to understand the mysteries of God. The one miracle which we call life which no doctor can give you and no human father can give you unless God gives. No biologist can explain you what life is, which life forms a part of the symbols of the scriptures.

Through these symbols, we are expected to read the 'One Book'. Half of the book is placed at some place and half of the book is placed at some other place. That means, you the reader will be half of the book and the whole Creation without yourself forms the other part of the book. What you call subjectivity becomes half of the volume; what you call objectivity forms the other half. This one aspect is common in the symbolism of the scriptures. Begin to know 'thyself'. Read yourself. You will know what is there in others. That is the way how we are expected to start the reading of the scriptures.

Then the medical student may tell us, 'I have read everything in my body. There are the bones, the muscles and the nerves. There is the blood, the heart and the lungs. I have studied everything'. But that is not how we have to study according to the scriptures. What you have studied is not yourself, though it belongs to you. It is called what is called 'yours' and not ‘yourself'. Your head is not yourself because it belongs to you. Your muscles belong to you; therefore you are not your muscles. Your mind belongs to you; therefore you are not your mind. Your intelligence belongs to you; therefore you are not your intelligence. Whatever you know objectively which is different from yourself, it cannot be yourself because you are able to observe it different from yourself.

All these put together are called something yours. You can say, 'this is my head'. You can't believe I am my head. You can say, 'this is my body. This body is mine'. You can't say this body is 'I am'; same thing with the mind also. You can say 'this mind is mine'. He is a fool who says 'I am the mind'. You can say, 'this intelligence is mine'. But he is a fool who says that 'I am my intelligence'. Nothing ‘mine' can be myself. But everything that is mine is part of myself coming from the real 'I AM' in you. But nothing belongs to the real 'I AM' in you. The real 'I AM' is the pure 'I AM' which is no one of these things. Therefore, if a medical man tells you that he has seen himself or he has seen you, it is not in the true scientific sense. Only in the medical sense, he has seen you but not in the sense of the scripture. When he sees from the point of view of the scripture, he should see who he is at first.

He should know the 'I AM' at first, existing as little different from mine in the body. The 'I AM' is the purest light in everyone. No one can possess it because he is itself. When you are something, you cannot possess it. All other things are different from you. Therefore, you can possess them, you can own them, you can purchase them or you can explain them, you can think about them, you can define them, but you cannot define yourself. That is what you call 'I AM' in you. The scriptures make us understand correctly. That is the same 'I AM' is existing in all these bodies instead of each one existing as a little ‘I AM' in everybody. Before making an approach to one of the scriptures, people may believe that everyone is separately a little 'I AM' in his own body, just as the mineral water in every bottle is understood as a different water.

Suppose, all these bottles are thrown in the river and the water is flowing into the bottles, the bottles are in the river and the river is in all the bottles. Then only one can understand that one river is flowing through all these bottles. Previously when you see the bottle in the shop or magazine, you can think that each bottle has different water in it. But when you once go to the river and see how all the bottles contain the same water when immersed in the river and then you will understand that all our bodies are like the bottles and the one 'I AM' is filling and flowing through all these bottles. About that one 'I AM', these scriptures teach us; how God taught the name 'I AM' to Moses; how God said the name of the one God is "I AM that I AM"; how Jesus Christ has said, 'I AM' the way, 'I AM' the Life, 'I AM' the resurrection; how he said, 'Come to ME. I am here to redeem you all'. This mystic language will be understood and the 'I AM' who lives in everyone will not only be understood but experienced by everyone.

That is what we call the living Christ or the living experience. Instead of talking something about Christ, living differently from Christ, we begin to live what Christ is. That is what happens when we read the Old Testament or the Gospel. If you take any Upanishad which is part of the scripture, says, 'I AM that I AM' and asks you to meditate upon that Mantram, not with closed eyes but with eyes opened towards our fellow beings and while doing something useful to others, meditate upon the one 'I AM' that pervades in all. The Upanishads explain the 'I AM' in many ways. One Upanishad says, "I am seeing through the eye, the eye cannot see me; I am listening through the ear, the ear cannot listen to me; I am speaking through the mouth, the mouth cannot speak to me; I am thinking through the mind, the mind cannot think of me." Then the Upanishad asks us to meditate upon these Mantrams.

When you go to any one of the Vedic texts, it says, "I am the light brilliant, the self-luminous brilliance. The fire that shines always; the fire that requires no fuel; the fire that shines eternally; the fire that forms the centre and circumference; that centre is what you call the 'I AM' in your body and the circumference is what you call your environment around you, the environment which includes other people around you." Like this, all the scriptures in the world, they speak of only One Light. The Veda calls this light Agni, which means the fire. It explains how the One Fire becomes three fires and it explains differently about the different aspects of the three fires.

Then, we have to know something about the symbolism of the scriptures present us and we are to know the alphabet of how to read these scriptures. Otherwise we believe that there are some peculiar stories in the scriptures. But always the secrets of the scriptures are given in stories and parables.