The Buddha From Babylon

by Harvey Kraft

  The construction of massive pyramids and temples initially in Sumer and Egypt were designed to create a two-way link with the immortal plane. By supporting royal preoccupations with immortality, priests had ordered the construction of man-made Cosmic Mountains to serve as cosmic gateways between Earth and the worlds above and below. In the Era of Divine Architecture the heavenly platforms, the ziggurat tower-temples in Sumer and pyramids in Egypt, were aligned with the appropriate celestial coordinates needed to establish an inter-world bridge between Heaven and Earth.

  The quest for an immortal lifetime in Heaven would become the overarching goal of religion for thousands of years to follow. But initially immortality would be reserved only for those who made epic contributions in this world, the sovereigns and great heroes. For the rest of the people, religion would help them in the pursuit of harmony with Universal Order, to keep them nourished, safe, and in the good graces of the immortals while on Earth, but not in the afterlife.

  Always there were seers reminding all that prosperity could come to an end if they did not pay tribute to the gods. Failure to please the gods would bring chaos and invite contaminated spirits into the world. Doom in the afterlife awaited all but the very powerful. Ordinary Egyptians believed that in the afterlife either their souls would be entombed in the underworld or, if so deemed by divine judgment, a monster would devour it. In the Sumerian view, in death all souls descended to an underworld “House of Dust.”

  ORGANIZED RELIGION

  Gods and Nature were inseparable. Priests understood the importance of this connection in matching the right gods with the needs, interests, concerns, and dependencies of locals. To make life possible and sustainable for specific tribal or urban populations, the role of spirits had to be diminished and obeisance had to be paid to gods. In an age of farming, a portion of the harvest had to be shared with the gods responsible for delivering the natural resources and fundamental elements of nature (i.e., air, water, light, soil).

  Priestly institutions dominated these societies. Located in the center of the cities the temples catalyzed social, economic, and ritual activities. The two major Sumerian cities (Uruk and Eridu) were built around ziggurats, step-pyramid towers topped with a temple containing a seat for their god. Neighborhoods surrounding the sacred edifice were organized according to status. The wealthiest and most powerful lived closest to the grand temple in a city’s center, while the poorest residents filled out the outlying ring near the city wall. Religious assemblies at the temple grounds were similarly organized.

  Religion and economics were related, and temple officials served a commercial function. The priests appointed themselves as the go-betweens in deals between Heaven and humans, the service providers, reflecting the religious belief that the gods were the owners of the world and humans their tenants. The Sumerian clergy recorded all business transactions drawing up contracts written and issued on behalf of property owners. The clergy served as the middlemen representing the interests of owners in the drawing of social contracts for the selling, rental, or care of material property.

  The priesthoods amassed wealth by charging trading commissions, facilitating deal introductions, and collecting religious tributes. The roles of the priesthoods were very lucrative, and their costs minimal, resulting in the growth of the temples into economic powerhouses. They became the predominant owners of lands, producers of agricultural products, managers of merchant activities, builders of food distribution routes, as well as administrators of contracts and keepers of records.

  The riches they accumulated were used to enhance the grandeur of the temples and provide leading priests with lavish lifestyles. They hired builders to construct increasingly larger monuments and sculptures and to form statuary of animal images and celestial symbols. Their artisans created splendorous art, artifacts, and architectural crafts displayed at ceremonies, inviting the descent of the gods into their graven idols.

  The prosperity of religious institutions depended on the work of local people and the cooperation of nature. But the credit for it belonged entirely to their ability to communicate with divine interests. Although institutional religion had championed the conversion of tribal life into civilized communities, the foundation for their beliefs remained steeped in the cosmology they inherited from earlier shamans.

  The priesthoods had emerged out of a worldwide affiliation of shamans who kept alive the heritage of the old divine secrets. Prehistoric seers had established powerful alliances across geographic boundaries designed to protect and perpetuate the mystic traditions of the Mondial Cosmology and gather special knowledge useful in their continuous effort to see beyond the veil of the divine realm.

  One such spiritual alliance had preserved the ancient shamanic origins of Africa and brought it into Europe. Its chief symbol was the lion (Skt. Arya; Heb. Arye). Its Arya seers advocated the power to open the heavens with their cosmic roar, and worshipped the sun as the symbol of light and life. Their Lion-Sun Fellowship espoused the ability of seers to illuminate the divine domain and their mythic stories were used to describe the worlds beyond. For the Arya seers, the lion was regarded as the majestic guardian of the Heaven-Earth passage, and the sun was the source and keeper of transcendent wisdom.

  They developed metaphoric languages to convey their visionary landscapes, designed pantheons of gods and rituals for engaging them, and conducted and recorded astronomical observations to foretell destiny. In Egypt they inspired the divine pharaoh-faced lion, Sphinx, the double lions guarding temple and palace entryways, and the sun-carrying transformational Lion of Aker. In the Levant and Mesopotamia they heralded the Lion God-of-the-Sun, Shamash. In Greece, they built the Lion Gate of Mycenae, and in Hebrew and Christian teachings they are echoed in the Lion of Judah. In Buddhism, their influence appeared in the form of the Lion-Throne, the symbol for the seat of enlightenment.

  The Bovine-Moon Fellowship, a competing religious alliance, centered on the sacred relationship of cattle and moon dating back to the shaman leaders of herding tribes. They worshipped the bull, cow, calf, oxen, and buffalo as icons for the generative power of the divine. The lunar-powered deities of this priesthood championed fertility, nourishment, creativity, and the cultivation of growth. In Egypt the this clergy was marked by the Apis and Mnveis bulls representing the divine power that created the vital lifeforce (ka) and raised the terrestrial world out of the waters, as well as the sacred cow, Hesat, and the Mother Earth Goddess, Hathor, protector of nature. In Sumer, the tutelary horned-cow Goddess, Ninhursag, depicted the mountain mother-creator of the fertile Earth. The milk-giving mother goddess symbolized the divine female function of nature to nurture humanity with the right nourishment at the right time, just as a human mother’s milk changed to respond to each stage of her infant child’s development.

  The Bovine-Moon worship expressed in Babylon as the bull-calf god of gods, Marduk, and in Nineveh, as Assur (alternative spelling is spelling “Ashur”), the Assyrian bearded king-god with a winged-bull body, reflected a dominant male sovereign. The seductive influence of the Moon God, Sin, appeared in the Hebrew Bible with the worship of the golden calf under the specter of Sinai Mountain. In Greek cultures, the

  carnal appetites of the bull manifested as Zeus, Bacchus, and the Minoan Minotaur. In the Vedic civilization, Indra, the bull-god and Lord of Light (i.e., the moon) fought the forces of darkness empowered by drinking the Elixir of Immortality (Skt. Soma)—a psychoactive “milky” potion also consumed by Vedic shamans (Skt. Rishi) as an agent for inducing trance-state.

  SUPREME POWER

  The first great pantheon-based cosmology was assembled in Mesopotamia. Its gods ruled the divine realm above the sky, the mortal Earth, and the underworlds below it. At the helm of Sumerian theology was a trinity of supreme gods who divided up the world: Anum was God of the Realm of Heaven; his son, Enlil, was God of Air and Sky, and sovereign Overseer of the Earth; and his other son, Enki, was God of Sweet Waters and Wisdom. An Assembly of Gods (Sum. Annunaki) re
presenting hundreds of local communities made the decisions affecting the whole world. All Mesopotamian cities and kingdoms were given a seat at the council table. The Assembly of Gods legislated and advised the supreme gods who, in turn, were tasked with discipline and enforcement.

  Enlil presented the stern authority of a supreme enforcer charged with instituting the destinies pre-determined by the Assembly of Gods. The lot of people, merely tenants in the domain made by the gods, was mandated from above. The governance of Sumerian city-states was designed to reflect this model. Each locality relied on an assembly of religious and secular leaders to draw up laws to be enforced by kings who ruled with a strict hand. Even after the Akkadians of northern Mesopotamia invaded and occupied Sumer in southern Mesopotamia, the gods remained the same, although they acquired additional names.

  At about the same period of time the cosmic pantheon of Egypt similarly reflected the marshalling of elemental gods to rule from above, but the Egyptians were much more concerned about the afterlife. Their pyramids served the same mondial channeling function as the ziggurattemples of Mesopotamia, but were also designed to assist in sending a royal soul back to the stars.

  Next to the lotus blossoms along the Nile, Egyptians built pyramids that in death would enable a pharaoh (i.e., god on Earth) to join his ancestral deities in a resplendent royal heaven. The Pharaoh Khufu built the Great Pyramid at Giza to enable his afterlife journey with the aid of the sun, the god Rae. It took nearly twenty-five years using tens of thousands of laborers to build it using more than two million stone blocks, some as large as sixteen tons. The polished limestone casings covering the exterior faces of the structure reflected sunlight like a giant mirror producing a powerful brightness visible from the heavens. The alignment of the Great Pyramid, with its four-cornered base pointing at the cardinal points and its vertical axis pointed at the divine cosmic gateway above, had been designed to emulate the Cosmic Mountain of the Mondial Cosmology.

  Like the religious institutions in Sumerian/Akkadian city-states, the early Egyptian priesthood also became wealthy. The successful management of the Nile and the mining of gold and other metals made it possible for pharaohs to finance the building of large temple complexes to support the delivery of the royal family to Heaven. Because this funerary-fixation was economically unsustainable, in later centuries new Egyptian religions arose offering adaptations to earlier pantheons. Their large compounds and workforces were refocused on the perpetuation of a stable society by delivering social services that would keep everyone working together in alignment with the original harmonies set by the gods.

  At the Karnak complex the priesthood operated an economic enterprise with some 80,000 employees consisting of farmers, fishermen, hunters, food handlers, stone builders and artisans, cooks, bakers, brewers, and administrators. Positions in the priesthood gained through royal appointment or family inheritance were organized according to specialized functions—ranging from religious duties (such as royal advisors, caretakers of gods, and ceremonial facilitators) to administrative roles (such as scribes, readers, time-keepers, and managers), or civil servants (such as magician-healers, musicians, and dancers).

  THE EPIC DROUGHT

  The collapse of a farming-friendly climate ended the era of exuberant prosperity. A three hundred-year Epic Drought that began around 2100 BCE brought down the institutions of power and caused a cataclysmic shift in populations. Swiftly, the lingering period of drought, along with intermittent monsoon rains and dust storms, and the occasional impact of an astral object destroyed crops and decimated city-states across a vast territory from Egypt to the Indus.

  A dramatic change in the normally humid Mediterranean trade wind path reduced rainfall by 30–50 percent from the Black Sea in the north to Egypt in the south, and from the Levant in the western end of Asia to the Indus in the east. Without rain in Ethiopia, most of the Nile dried up. The disastrous economic consequences forced the Old Kingdom in Egypt to stop the construction of pyramids.

  Temperatures plunged across northern latitudes across the globe causing migrations to head south only to find conditions that were worse. Extreme dryness and sand storms ravaged the Middle East. From Canaan to Mesopotamia sweet farmlands turned into salt licks. In the Tigris-Euphrates region the Akkadian Empire, having conquered the ziggurat city-states of Sumer, suffered an economic collapse. Nomad populations from Eurasia, the Near East, and the northern shelf of Central Asia rolled out their migrations in search of new grassland far from their territories.

  Massive loss of farming land severely weakened the prevailing religious, economic, and sovereign structures resulting in power vacuums and inviting conquest or overthrow of bloodlines. In Egypt during the three hundred years of suffering an intermediate kingdom with regional governors replaced the centralized monarchy. It would be centuries later, after the crisis had passed, before Egypt was able to reunify its lands under dynastic kings (Middle Kingdom).

  In Asia, anarchy and barbarian invasions added to the economic havoc as the Mesopotamian dynasties disintegrated. It took several hundred years before the power structures could regenerate and by that time the old guard was gone. Who would take their place?

  The Epic Drought invited a hard look in the mirror for authentic practitioners of the spiritual arts. A deeper lesson had to be learned. Challengers to the failed priesthoods called for a purge of the corrupting influences wealth, pleasure, and power had on authentic religiosity. The good spirits had departed, the new seers declared. The gods demanded, they said, that religions clean up the chaos and realign with the purity and innocence of their original spiritual commitment.

  These dissenters reasserted the need for spiritual purification as the prerequisite for a visionary reconnection with the divine. They challenged the notion that earthly status and power equated with immortal access. Instead, they reaffirmed the idea that making contact with the divine required a pure soul. They practiced what they preached, rejecting sin and adopting the simple life of a nomadic sage-seer.

  Competing with the authenticity movement, religious reformers had a different plan. They were priests who blamed the old gods and their clergy for corrupt acts that brought on the natural disasters, but their goal was to re-establish the institutional role of the temple. Their plan was to transfer divine powers from the failed gods to new gods simply by changing many of the names of old gods to ones associated with the current occupiers.

  The reformers prevailed when the city-states made their comeback. They reclaimed the institutions of power by making cosmetic changes. Meanwhile, the dissenters made headway among migratory cultures. They strived to guide humanity back into the good graces of the immortals by accepting the absolute power and laws of the divine.

  The challengers focused on restoring the shamanic relationship with the divine by introducing the new role of an authentic “Sage-Savior.” Metaphorically, the savior, unlike a high priest, would guide his people across the desert of hardships to the land of divine salvation. This new kind of shaman would lead the clan to a divinely granted home, an oasis of salvation in the midst of chaos where the flock could lead a simple, safe, and joyful life. In paradise they would find the remedy for mortal suffering and receive the divine blessings that would restore balance between Heaven and Earth.

  MONOTHEISM

  The Sumerian root word for “god” was Il, as used in Enlil, the stern deity, Supreme God of Air, Sky and Wind, overseer of mortal destinies, and arbiter of Reward and Punishment. The derivative word El meant power, strength, or might and defined an Almighty God. The word Bel meant the Lord, or Almighty Lord God.

  Living the city life in drought-ridden Mesopotamia, one elderly sageprophet, Abraham, rejected the pantheons he encountered in Babylonian religions. Due to the drought Abraham and his family may have immigrated to Mesopotamia from Central Asia. Originally he may have been a skilled shaman of the Yadu tribe alluded to in the Aryan scripture, the Rig Veda. A stranger in a strange land, he witnessed the vestiges of animist
ic idolatry. While other religious dissenters blamed the epic drought and the ensuing civil chaos and economic collapse on the failed gods of Sumer/Akkad, Abraham redefined the problem as the worship of false gods and included in that category the entire Mesopotamian pantheon.

  Adopting the Mesopotamian name for the supreme deity, El, Abraham assumed the role of the Sage-Savior for his clan. Like the old Spirit-Listeners and Spirit-Callers, Abraham could hear the voice of the Almighty God, call unto Him, and converse with Him. Like the stern Sumerian Sky God, Enlil, the new Elohim also demanded unfailing allegiance to His absolute authority. But unlike the pantheon of gods serving Enlil, Abraham’s God was the sole God and an omnipotent God.

  Abraham’s El (Heb. Elohim) had the power and goodwill to restore the wayward people on Earth to their original innocence providing they believed in Him and acted in accordance with His Laws. When Abraham accepted his terms, Elohim charged him with restarting a purified civilization. He instructed his messenger-guide to head west, in the direction of the setting sun, where some day his progeny would be able to worship Him in peace and splendor.

  In Abraham’s monotheistic version of the Dual Cosmology, Elohim was the one and only eternal being residing in Heaven and the Creator of the mortal world. His divine mind encompassed the Earth but was separate from it, as this place was mortal, while the Almighty God’s space was immortal. Echoing the Sumerian view that humans were not meant to cross the line between Earth and Heaven, Abraham considered any such attempt to be an insult to God. Humans, in his view, may neither look into Heaven (i.e., gaze upon God’s face), nor enter it in the afterlife. Going to Heaven was not a goal for him. Humbled by the awesome grandeur of God, he refused to see himself as special being chosen by God. Reluctantly, he accepted his mission as a necessary responsibility, a burden placed upon him at an advanced age when another migration hardly seemed like a wise decision.