Tetragrammaton

If you have seen Life of Brian you might remember my favorite scene, where the women have all dressed up as men so they can attend the stoning of a man convicted to death for saying Jehovah. The man is trying to explain himself "All I did was say that fish was fit for Jehovah himself!" To which the guard says "Stop saying Jehovah, it will only get you into more trouble!" "How much more trouble can I be in? Jehovah Jehovah Jehovah!" In the end of course the guard gets stoned for saying Jehovah.

Why was there a prohibition on using the word Jehovah? It's somewhat complex, but very simple really. We have to look at the Tetragrammaton, which is God's real name and which we've been told over and over not to use. Many say that his real name is Yahweh. To understand this name we have to look at translations from the original Hebrew. In Hebrew, this is accepted as a form of "To be." Or, another commonly accepted translation, and the one which I will use, is "I Am What I Am." Yes, Popeye uses the Tetragrammaton all the time. It's just one of life's ironies.

The reason you cannot use it is because when you say "I am what I am" it means identifying yourself as God. This is forbidden for various reasons, most of which involve control and keeping us all asleep. There are pitfalls and perils in realizing your God nature, for one thing, you're in a mortal situation right now for a reason. No, you do not have powers attributed to God as most understand him, but that's because you're not ready. For another thing, you might not realize that everyone else is also God. There are a lot of things that come with this realization in kind of a domino effect, it really does change how you live. For instance, if we are all God, that means we are all the same person in a spiritual sense. That also means that while we are people like Buddha and Jesus we are also people like Hitler and George W Bush, or myself, who is clearly crazy.

But is "I am what I am" really the meaning of the Tetragrammaton? I would have to say yes, and I will tell you why. I read about the meaning of it, kind of but not really understood it, and then I read the Book of John in the New Testament. This is where some of the really interesting things Jesus said show up. We have to remember that the Bible has been gutted for political reasons, so certain things are vague just because then they could get through 2000 years of censorship. Just before he ends up being crucified, he's asked to explain himself and if he really does think he is God or the Messiah. He responds "It is you who say 'I am what I am.'" This is not just some bizarre affirmation, he's using the Tetragrammaton, and in a very wise way I would say. He also says in another passage (and I'm paraphrasing) "You have been told that you are all gods."

However, being god does not preclude being a stupid mean motherfucker, and that's one of the pitfalls. I could get into my Big Bang theory of spiritual evolution, but maybe I will do that in a different post.

The problem with what has happened with the things Jesus said is that he became the supreme being, the god. Like since he became aware, that is not available for anyone else. We can't say "Crucifixion was bad for Jesus, because he really was the son of god, but it's fine for everyone else." No. Doing something like that is horrid to do to anybody, "son of god" or not. And this is where Buddha catches us up, because he was really insistent about the fact that he was a mortal, like all life forms on earth, he really wanted people to know that enlightenment was possible for everyone, not only a select few.

One of the things which has frustrated me in my lifetime thus far is not that people don't understand, it's that they don't WANT to understand. Everything you need to know is right here. This is a prime place to grow as a spiritual being, and if humanity ends without us waking up, we're going to have to do it in a different form. And I don't know about you, but having to evolve while living as a gaseous entity in space would take me a really really long time.