a modern scientific audience. The Tibetan Lama Thubten Yeshe used more of a traditional Buddhist vocabulary to describe his tummo practice of “flaming and dripping”:
Inner Fire meditation is far more effective than ordinary deep meditation. It quickly grows into an explosion of nonduality wisdom, an explosion of telepathic power, an explosion of realizations. It is the key to countless treasures... In inner fire meditation the approach is made through the navel chakra... igniting the inner fire, blazing the inner fire, blazing and dripping, and extraordinary blazing and dripping.86
“Blazing and dripping” explains why the god of fire, Agni, was considered interchangeable with Soma juice. In the Rig Veda’s “Funeral Hymn,” the hymn distinguishes between levels of spiritual attainment. For some, the Soma juice has already been purified, but for others, they must use a “sitting” practice and “sing” to invoke the “inner heat” for the “butter” to “flow like honey.”87
“With a heart longing for cows [the milk of cows, or Soma] they sat down while with their songs they made the road to immortality.”88
We have yet to discuss details of the “song” of the practitioner, as described by the mathematical discipline of music. There has always been an Eastern tradition of meditating in the quiet seclusion of caves. When we think of Himalayan monks, we often think of them meditating in caves. In the hymn, “The Cows in the Cave,” we are reminded of the sacred “cave practice” as a legacy of early man’s time spent in caves during the Ice Age.
The wise ones struck a path for those who were in the cave; the seven priests drove them on with thoughts pressing forward. They found all the paths of the right way; the one who knew was the one who entered them, bowing low.89
Within the Abrahamic and Vedic traditions, as well as the Tibetan Bon and Buddhist traditions, liberating the soul is a direct result of perfecting a “sitting” practice to simulate death. A man must “bow low” as he meditates, metaphorically surrendering one’s ego and all attachments to the material world if liberation is to occur. The Jewish tradition takes this simulation of death very seriously. An oath is recited to bind the soul to the body “for those traveling to the highest realms.”
• For some, the Soma is purified; others sit down for butter. Those for whom the honey flows — let the dead man go away straight to them.
• Those who became invincible through sacred heat, who went to the sun through sacred heat, who made sacred heat their glory — let him go away straight to join the immortal fathers.90
The Hindu Sun god, Sūryā, drives his chariot through Heaven harnessed by seven horses (the seven chakras of the soul). Sūrya represents both the sun and the soul. In the Vedic hymn, “The Marriage of Sūryā” (Sūrya’s daughter), we learn that the moon is Soma (it retains its identity as the sacred elixir, but appears only this once in the Rig Veda as the moon). The Aryans were known for their great chariots. Sūrya’s Chariot, like Ezekiel’s Chariot, is a vehicle for meditation that “presses the Soma” and liberates the soul for its journey through the Heavens.
Soma became the bridegroom... The two luminaries [Sun and Moon] were your wheels as you journeyed; the outward breath was made into the axle. Sūryā mounted a chariot made of thought as she went to her husband.91
In the Vedic hymn Yama and the Fathers “This funeral hymn centers upon Yama, king of the dead, the first mortal to have reached the other world, and the pathmaker for all who came after him.”92 The priesthood was eternal insofar as three-quarters of each man was an immortal hybrid of “divine creatures,” while the fourth creature was mortal. By 1500 BCE, the Babylonian legend of Gilgamesh describes the hero as two thirds divine, and one third human.93 Christianity’s First Ecumenical Council was convened in 325 CE at Nicea by the Emperor Constantine for the express purpose of discussing exactly how the two natures of God and man were conjoined in Christ. Without degrading Christ by imposing a fraction of divinity, the Church’s orthodox position stated that Christ was both “true God and true man” simultaneously. Since the dawn of religion, the measure of man’s divinity was determined by the four fixed signs of the zodiac. Joseph Campbell elaborates on this mythology as a function of Mesopotamian astronomy:
The winged lion-bull with human head combines in one body those four signs of the zodiac that in the earliest period of Mesopotamian astronomy marked the solstices and equinoxes: the Bull (spring equinox and eastern quarter), Lion (summer solstice and southern quarter), Eagle (later Scorpio: autumn equinox and western quarter), and Water Carrier (winter solstice and northern quarter).94
The Eagle and Serpent Holder as Primordial Wind
Ophiuchus (or Serpentarius), the Serpent Holder, was the 13th constellation of the Zodiac. It appears directly above the 12th constellation, Scorpio. In Greek mythology, Ophiuchus is identified with Asclepius, the Greek god of medicine and healing, who had the power to bring people back to life. Asclepius was always depicted as an older man with a beard carrying a walking stick entwined with a wooden serpent (Figure 12b). Hades, the god of the Underworld, complained to Zeus that Asclepius threatened his trade in dead souls, and asked him to strike him down with a thunderbolt. Asclepius had already brought victims of Zeus’s thunderbolts back to life, so Zeus was afraid Asclepius would teach the healing arts to mankind. Zeus then killed him with a thunderbolt and set him in the sky as Ophiuchus, holding Serpens (the Serpent) for eternity, just as he carried his pole-serpent walking stick staff. To this day, it is the pole-serpent that is the symbol of medicine (Figure 12b), rather than the Caduceus (Figure 12c: the staff of Hermes within Greek Mythology). Next to Opiuchus in the sky is Aquila, the Great Eagle, that carried and retrieved the thunderbolts of Zeus (Figure 12a).
Worshipped in Sumer as Aquila: the Golden Eagle, it was later adopted into Hindu and Buddhist mythology as Garuda: a half-man, half-eagle hybrid, and the mount of Vishnu, the Great Dreamer of the world illusion. The Garuda exists in rivalry with Nagas (serpentine sea creatures). The Vedas provide the earliest reference to Garudas, calling them Syena (Sanskrit: Eagle), which fetches Soma juice (Kundalini: Serpent Energy) from Heaven.
Figure 12a - The Golden Eagle Holding the Thunderbolts of Zeus and the Roman God Jupiter.
Holding a Banner (Serpent) in its Beak was Inspiration for the Great Seal of the United States
Figures 12b & c - The Staff of Asclepius as Medical Symbol
Predynastic Egyptian mythology also pairs a bird of prey with the serpent. Nekhbet, the white vulture, was the symbol of Upper Egypt (Figure 13a). She is one of the earliest images in predynastic Egypt, and her white color symbolizes purification and fertility. In the Book of the Dead, Nekhbet is said to be: Father of Fathers, Mother of Mothers, who hath existed from the beginning; and is Creatrix of this world. She clutches a shen (a symbol of the all; eternity; infinity) in both talons. Upper Egyptian Pharaohs wore a white (conehead) crown in homage to Nekhbet (Figure 13b).
Figure 13a & b- Nekhbet, the White Vulture, and the White Crown as Symbols of Upper Egypt
Wadjet, the cobra (as symbolized by Uraeus, an upright form of an Egyptian spitting cobra) was the symbol of lower Egypt as was the Red Crown (Figures 13c & d). Wadjet is also one of the oldest predynastic images in Egypt. Egyptians believed that Wadjet would spit fire at their enemies. These “Two Ladies” were joint protectors of a unified Egypt, enabling the pharaohs to wear the double crown of white and red,