I had this book in my library for thirty years and never read it until this last year. It describes exactly what you mentioned here:
"These nerves relay body/brain information, including senses of vision, taste, smell and hearing; overcoming these sensory nerves is part of the reason the mythical Christ was said to be crucified — the five senses bind man to the human condition — and overcoming the human condition truly qualifies a Herculean labor."
It then goes on to describe exactly how to 'overcome the human condition' and exactly what the fruit of that would be.
Here is the table of contents:
CONTENTS
TRANSLATOR’S FOREWORD
PREFACE
INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER ONE
The Attributes of the Mind and the Body
CHAPTER TWO
Concerning the Mind
CHAPTER THREE
Guarding the Sense of Vision
CHAPTER FOUR
Guarding the Sense of Hearing
CHAPTER FIVE
Guarding the Sense of Smell
CHAPTER SIX
Guarding the Sense of Taste and the Tongue
CHAPTER SEVEN
Guarding the Sense of Touch
CHAPTER EIGHT
Guarding All the Senses in General
CHAPTER NINE
Guarding the Imagination
CHAPTER TEN
Guarding the Mind and the Heart
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The Spiritual and Proper Delights of the Mind
CHAPTER TWELVE
An Epilogue on the Spiritual Delights
After finally reading it, I couldn't believe that I had waited thirty years!
"What's in a name? That which we call a rose, By any other name would smell as sweet."
Ah, dear Juliette, but you are too dismissive, too hasty. There is mystique in names, and mystique is power!
Teeming with facts and historicity, I have enjoyed reading this more than I have for a long time, and I'll have (more) interesting and deep things to ponder for some time yet.
One small point of discord with my understanding: the ancient calendar consisted of 13 lunar phases - aligning with women's menstrual cycles, a rhythm that carried profound significance in cultures worldwide since time immemorial - was first replaced by the Romans with a 10-month system, equivalent to our March to December, the winter season was not assigned to any month, so the calendar year only lasted 304 days with 61 days unaccounted for in the winter. Later, a 12-month system set around Roman culture and mythology was adopted. If one considers the 13-month lunar phase calendar, I wonder how this wrinkle might propagate through to an enhanced/diminished understanding?
An Ouranos based bias perhaps. We can agree the five senses bind the fallen man. The Man of the Great Triad integrates the Gaian and Ouranic and so is equally empowered as "bound" by the Earthly. The Heavenly bolt of lightning is thus respected but not uniquely craved.
"Varuna, in spite of his reputed passivity, was a stern judge whose most punishing weapons were torture, sense of guilt, disease and sudden death."
The sense of guilt is the merciful symptom of inner conflict/contradiction, which by Hamer is the source of many a disease. Integration via return and a turn of the heart makes one immune to all of these then, which the "Inner Canon of the Yellow Thearch" (first chapter) suggests as well.
This is the main message of Axial Revolution teachings. When well balanced, these streams still respect the gods/jinn/devas/spirits as cool, but treat them as fellow (however powerful) creatures of the Unconditioned. Dhamma trumps power, even as it can enhance power (that of the gods too) when submitted to.
The heavenly deus may get resentful. Axial teachings co-opted into centralised institutional forms/narratives/sublimations could represent this.
"12 Dec 2030 – Uranus at opposition
17 Dec 2031 – Uranus at opposition
21 Dec 2032 – Uranus at opposition
25 Dec 2033 – Uranus at opposition"
Mixing the sun and the moon, 2030 is also when Ramadan happens twice, with the second time on 25 December. Admittedly this is a pretty common occurrence though.
The sun, moon, Ouranos and Gaia all in a line... now THAT would be crazy. But again, is it not "Ouranos as golden shower boss" limitation to bias such arrangements as "opposition"s?
The rains are from the Heavens, and what is of the Heavens and Earth all submit to the Will and Plan of their common Source. Heavenly obsession as a response to Earthly suffering then, but lacking yet the Principle and Power to fully participate in it.
"For those doubting the practicality and veracity of such an ancient physics, it was mentioned in Time magazine..."
Veracity, no, but practicality, yes.
So the elite (financial, degenerate priest, medical) today use it, but they do not appear to be wholesome participants in their own lives to me. They participate instead in superstition - practices of real power where they overestimate their knowledge of what they are doing as they screw with it, just because they can quantify a material outcome and can stay wilfully blind to the Signs arising in their lives of things going astray. This includes their own misery.
Why wrangle with the baby that needs to keep his bottle? Isn't contentment and faithfulness better than their gnawing accumulation and perfidy?
"Uranus' last stint in Taurus (1934-1942) aligned with the Great Depression, WW2, financial reforms and commercial banking collapses."
...and amidst these First World Problems/Colonial Blowbacks, many (by Her Will, whatever the cosmic environment) quietly thrived and lived wholesome lives anyway. We are all only inheritors of our own kamma, and "what [we] sent ahead and [we] left behind" (Qur'an 36:12), and "no bearer of burdens bears the burden of another" and "man has not save that for which he strove"
A Handbook of Spiritual Counsel
By St Nicodemus of the Holy Mountain
I had this book in my library for thirty years and never read it until this last year. It describes exactly what you mentioned here:
"These nerves relay body/brain information, including senses of vision, taste, smell and hearing; overcoming these sensory nerves is part of the reason the mythical Christ was said to be crucified — the five senses bind man to the human condition — and overcoming the human condition truly qualifies a Herculean labor."
It then goes on to describe exactly how to 'overcome the human condition' and exactly what the fruit of that would be.
Here is the table of contents:
CONTENTS
TRANSLATOR’S FOREWORD
PREFACE
INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER ONE
The Attributes of the Mind and the Body
CHAPTER TWO
Concerning the Mind
CHAPTER THREE
Guarding the Sense of Vision
CHAPTER FOUR
Guarding the Sense of Hearing
CHAPTER FIVE
Guarding the Sense of Smell
CHAPTER SIX
Guarding the Sense of Taste and the Tongue
CHAPTER SEVEN
Guarding the Sense of Touch
CHAPTER EIGHT
Guarding All the Senses in General
CHAPTER NINE
Guarding the Imagination
CHAPTER TEN
Guarding the Mind and the Heart
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The Spiritual and Proper Delights of the Mind
CHAPTER TWELVE
An Epilogue on the Spiritual Delights
After finally reading it, I couldn't believe that I had waited thirty years!
Oh well, better late than never, I guess!
"What's in a name? That which we call a rose, By any other name would smell as sweet."
Ah, dear Juliette, but you are too dismissive, too hasty. There is mystique in names, and mystique is power!
Teeming with facts and historicity, I have enjoyed reading this more than I have for a long time, and I'll have (more) interesting and deep things to ponder for some time yet.
One small point of discord with my understanding: the ancient calendar consisted of 13 lunar phases - aligning with women's menstrual cycles, a rhythm that carried profound significance in cultures worldwide since time immemorial - was first replaced by the Romans with a 10-month system, equivalent to our March to December, the winter season was not assigned to any month, so the calendar year only lasted 304 days with 61 days unaccounted for in the winter. Later, a 12-month system set around Roman culture and mythology was adopted. If one considers the 13-month lunar phase calendar, I wonder how this wrinkle might propagate through to an enhanced/diminished understanding?
"the five senses bind man to the human condition"
An Ouranos based bias perhaps. We can agree the five senses bind the fallen man. The Man of the Great Triad integrates the Gaian and Ouranic and so is equally empowered as "bound" by the Earthly. The Heavenly bolt of lightning is thus respected but not uniquely craved.
"Varuna, in spite of his reputed passivity, was a stern judge whose most punishing weapons were torture, sense of guilt, disease and sudden death."
The sense of guilt is the merciful symptom of inner conflict/contradiction, which by Hamer is the source of many a disease. Integration via return and a turn of the heart makes one immune to all of these then, which the "Inner Canon of the Yellow Thearch" (first chapter) suggests as well.
This is the main message of Axial Revolution teachings. When well balanced, these streams still respect the gods/jinn/devas/spirits as cool, but treat them as fellow (however powerful) creatures of the Unconditioned. Dhamma trumps power, even as it can enhance power (that of the gods too) when submitted to.
The heavenly deus may get resentful. Axial teachings co-opted into centralised institutional forms/narratives/sublimations could represent this.
"12 Dec 2030 – Uranus at opposition
17 Dec 2031 – Uranus at opposition
21 Dec 2032 – Uranus at opposition
25 Dec 2033 – Uranus at opposition"
Mixing the sun and the moon, 2030 is also when Ramadan happens twice, with the second time on 25 December. Admittedly this is a pretty common occurrence though.
The sun, moon, Ouranos and Gaia all in a line... now THAT would be crazy. But again, is it not "Ouranos as golden shower boss" limitation to bias such arrangements as "opposition"s?
The rains are from the Heavens, and what is of the Heavens and Earth all submit to the Will and Plan of their common Source. Heavenly obsession as a response to Earthly suffering then, but lacking yet the Principle and Power to fully participate in it.
"thus we dismiss astrology as pseudo-science"
Who's this "we"? A heavenly covering.
"For those doubting the practicality and veracity of such an ancient physics, it was mentioned in Time magazine..."
Veracity, no, but practicality, yes.
So the elite (financial, degenerate priest, medical) today use it, but they do not appear to be wholesome participants in their own lives to me. They participate instead in superstition - practices of real power where they overestimate their knowledge of what they are doing as they screw with it, just because they can quantify a material outcome and can stay wilfully blind to the Signs arising in their lives of things going astray. This includes their own misery.
Why wrangle with the baby that needs to keep his bottle? Isn't contentment and faithfulness better than their gnawing accumulation and perfidy?
"Uranus' last stint in Taurus (1934-1942) aligned with the Great Depression, WW2, financial reforms and commercial banking collapses."
...and amidst these First World Problems/Colonial Blowbacks, many (by Her Will, whatever the cosmic environment) quietly thrived and lived wholesome lives anyway. We are all only inheritors of our own kamma, and "what [we] sent ahead and [we] left behind" (Qur'an 36:12), and "no bearer of burdens bears the burden of another" and "man has not save that for which he strove"
(53:38-9).