Path: utzoo!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!rice!bcm!dimacs.rutgers.edu!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!christian From: uriel@oak.circa.ufl.edu (Scott Whitmore) Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: Review -- _In_The_Light_of_Truth:_The_Grail_Message_ Message-ID: Date: 5 Mar 91 05:24:13 GMT Sender: hedrick@athos.rutgers.edu Organization: University of Florida CIRCA VAX Cluster Lines: 130 Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu Since a great deal of time was spent discussing the Grail Message on this group, I felt that since I'd found said Message in my school library just recently and read it, many of you out there in net-land would like to hear my book report on Abd Ru Shin's _In_The_Light_of_Truth:_The_Grail_Message_. The University of Florida has it cataloged under Dewey 204 (I think), but not under Library of Congress. The Grail Message is composed of three volumes, the first being approximately 150 pages, the second and third being about 400 pages each, in this edition. The Grail Foundation reports that it has translated this work from German, and the date of publication is listed as 1954. I find it odd that no information whatever on the original manuscript was to be found, nor was there any biographical information on the author. I am also curious why a man with an Arabic name would write a book in German; this, plus the fact that a search through religious dictionaries and encyclopedias revealed no information, leads me to believe that Abd Ru Shin is perhaps an assumed name. Do any of you out there know enough Arabic to know if "Abd Ru Shin" has any significance besides being a person's name? I found out right away that the author is very self-assured. "Do not listen to the world's religious," he says (a paraphrase) right in the opening of Vol.1. This implies that we should listen to him, rather than to adherents of any other beliefs, of course; and this attitude, while never directly expressed, permeates the work. However, this would not surprise me in a purely religious writing except for the fact that Abd Ru Shin never once tells us *why* we should listen to him. He does not say he is a prophet or a guru or an apostle, and he does not say whether he got his information from mysticism, a visit from an angel (or God Himself), or from other textual source(s) tempered by his own wisdom. In effect, we are to believe what he says just because he says it, as though everything contained in his work were patently obvious to anyone who is not actively opposed to it (those indicated by the paraphrase above, which could include nearly anyone, I'm sure). In spite of his lack of stated authority, the author does make a few references to the Bible (the Gospels especially). While my knowledge of the Bible is far from academically thorough, still I found that the author must have done some mental gymnastics of context in order to use the passages he used for the purposes for which he used them. "As a man sows, so shall he reap" is used to justify the Law of Sowing and Reaping (more about that later). Somehow, he determines by scriptural analysis that the Son of Man and the Son of God are two different people; whether this is valid, perhaps OFM will tell us, but it seems to me to violate the plain sense of the text. Bible references are few here, however, so I will not dwell upon them. The beliefs presented in the work seem to be a combination of Gnosticism, Hindu thought (Karma and Reincarnation), and Theosophy. Somehow, the author manages to pull off a fairly good synthesis; material from these sources plus a few superficial references to other sources creates a workable hybrid. However, while in Vol.1 the author states that the Truth is understandable by anyone, not just the educated, a survey of the work shows a glut of loosely-defined and glibly-flaunted terms that an uneducated person might find great difficulty learning. The inclusion of the Holy Grail seemed almost parenthetic. Gnostic tenets are explicit. It is explicitly stated at least once that "Evil and wrong exist only in gross matter [as opposed to spirit]." Spirit is in all conceivable ways "higher" than matter. As a logical end to this stated premise, the author flatly denies the viability of the resurrection of the body of Jesus (and by implication, of anyone else after him). Immorality and sin are associated with matter, and it is said that when Lucifer fell, it was a descent into coarser and coarser ethers until he attained gross matter. (How an evil thought entered the mind of a highly refined spirit in the first place is not clear.) Gnostic thought forms a vital component of Theosophy, an occult system invented some 200 years ago (please correct me if you know different, someone) that proposes a graded organization of substances in the universe: God (by whatever name) is at the top, and different levels of spiritual "matter" are steps down to the level of "matter" as we know it, Ethereal and Gross Matter. Not only does the author reveal a graded system, but this system has the very same levels as those used by Theosophists such as Alice A. Bailey. In addition, the Theosophical theory of creation is included in the work: a passive God's "emanations" filter down through the various levels of creation and manifest in various ways therein. The idea of God as passive is prevalent enough to earn its own paragraph. "The Savior is waiting...but will not come and fetch..." says Vol.2, Chapter 43. "Only by adherence to God's Laws of Creation is grace received." This is a complete and total departure from Pauline doctrine on grace, and subsequently, from orthodox Christianity, wherein man is totally dependent on God for salvation. Vol.2, Chapter 45 says that Christ's mission on earth was not to die as sacrifice for sin, but rather that his death was a foul tragedy that ended his true mission: spreading the Truth by which man was to be saved. It is the Truth, a set of Laws, that set man free, says the author. The Grail Message seems to offer no improvements on the age-old belief in Salvation by Works, which belief sets it irrevocably apart from Christianity. The Truth is presented as a passive effort on God's part which man may either believe, or not, with no interference from Him. The Hindu intertwined concepts of Karma and Reincarnation are presented under the name "Law of Sowing and Reaping." Karma dictates that a man must always receive appropriate retribution for his actions; such retribution does not always come in this life, which means that often one must suffer for one's sins in a future life. In this case, one's own negative thoughts produce ethereal "thought-forms" which surround and weigh one's spirit down, preventing him from rising from the physical planes and ascending to the spiritual. While "redemption" is mentioned, there does not seem to be much room for it in the doctrines as described, if the Christian sense of the word "redemption" is meant. I had an active headache by the time I got to Vol.3, which covers the exact features of the entities and features of the various planes of existence -- the author's writing style is very disorganized and difficult to read. Perhaps future tranlsations will be released by the Grail Foundation which include commentaries that make the whole thing easier to digest. In spite of the protest I'm sure I will receive from the Grail Message's advocates, this essay is not intended to slander that work. I am merely showing (and I believe I have shown, beyond any doubt) that the Grail Message is thoroughly separate, even diametrically opposed to, orthodox Christianity as we know it today, and rather plainly to the Bible as well. As for my own opinion of the Grail Message's contents, I'm sure it is quite clear. In the interest of fruitful discussion, please send any question or comment regarding my opinions to me in E-mail; do NOT post flames on this group. Thank you. Scott Whitmore uriel@maple.circa.ufl.edu -- Scott Whitmore Internet: uriel@maple.circa.ufl.edu 24-510 Tolbert Hall or uriel@maple.decnet%pine.circa.ufl.edu Gainesville, FL 32612 (USA) Friendly Neighborhood Standard Disclaimer "The Devil...the prowde spirit...cannot bear to be mocked." --Thomas More (?) [Gnostic thought is far older than theosophy. It is one of the earliest Christian heresies. There's some debate as to when full-fledged gnosticism started, as opposed to predecessors that simply go somewhat in the direction, but there are certainly gnostic tendencies as early as the 1st Cent., and possibly earlier. --clh]