The Carpenter from Nazareth - Seen in an Advaitic Perspectives

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This book, inspired by the advaitic experience of Benedictine monk, who got it a few months before he shed his body, presents the founder of the Christian religion as a normal common man, as the artisan known from the Gospels, who had the capacity of emptying himself (his-self) totally so as to be able to experience and live to the full his Real Divine Nature (like some Jivan-mukta especially in Hinduism, where it is said that it is a situation belonging to everyone ready to accept it and to pay the 'fee' for it). He was enchanted and tried his best to pass such a discovery to the masses of people, changing by this the expectation of a political liberation of their country from the occupation of the Romans (who at that time had colonized almost all the countries around the Mediterranean Sea) into an inner spiritual Kingdom realizable by each and every one ready to renounce to their little 'egos'. But the Transcendental God of Israel could not accept to loose his Inapproachability and through his clergy and politicians got him caught and condemned to Death in less than three years. His Message, however, remained–though not in the complete Advaitic manner—and spread all over the Roman Empire and is valid still today in Europe, America and here and there also in Asia and Australia.

Dr (Uma) Marina Vesci, was born in Roma, Italy, the 21st April 1935 (Easter that year). She got MA in Archaeology in 1958 and PhD in History of Religions in 1962, at the Roma University "La Sapienza". Through a Scholarship on Exchange basis she came to India in middle October 1963, and enrolled in Madras/Chennay University under the supervision of Prof. T.M.P. Mahadevan, but soon next year she shifted to the Benares Hindu University. She continued to live in India with other two Scholarships: one in Shimla at the Indian Institute of Advanced Studies (IIAS) and then in Visva-Bharati Shanti Niketan in Bengal. In 1972 she shifted to Pune in Maharasthra for a short while and then reached Delhi, at first working for the It. Inst. Of Culture .(where she taught Italian and organized cultural programs partly there, in Varanasi, Patiala and Bareilly), and now she is connected with the SIGFA Solution.

Her writings: Books:

Heat and Sacrifice in the Vedas, Delhi, (Motilal Banarsidas) 1985/1992 (2nd) Dharma, Survey Of Indian Cultural Religion and Spirituality Seen through Brahmanic Eyes. Varanasi (Pilgrims), 2005 Religion, Mysticism, Love and Personality. Varanasi (Pilgrims), 2007 (a small booklet).

Her articles, mostly in English but also in Italian with a couple translated into French and into German, amount to more than sixty or seventy.

She is working on another book about the ending of the present Era under the Astrological sign of Pisces toward the following oncoming Aquarium one. In Italy she is looking for a publication of a Novel and of a booklet of poetry, both in Italian.

This book has been born thanks to the two persons to whom it is dedicated, both of whom have now gone back to the 'origins', integrated again in their own natural divinity. The first, a French Benedictine Monk, who came to India to convert but got converted at his turn, has fought for long time within himself in order to conciliate his personal mystic experience of 'advaitic' identification to the Absolute, with the teachings of the Christian doctrine of which he felt himself the depositary as the priest he was. He had sworn fidelity to the Christ during his consecration, how could he overpass Him in order to admit his own direct identification with the Father or, as Meister Eckhart confirms, with the Divinity beyond the Trinity itself? The pacifying solution came a few months before his death, during his last experience shared with his first disciple, according to what is reported in his diary. Here Swamiji accepts at a conscious level a suggestion received a few months before in Pune (Maharashtra): the Christ has become what he has become through an Advaitic Experience. This has meant that his own experience of unity with the Divine could be justified also to the Christians: he was just following the Way pointed out by the Christ, his Master. The suggestion is hinted up in the diary, but with so vague words that only the one who has been partaker in it could recognise it. There, in fact, is written: 'U. has understood it, but put it in a too intellectual manner: she makes Him a realized man. Now U., that is me, remembers that her standard words to express what took her many years of laborious thinking to assert, were: 'for me the Master of Nazareth got an Advaitic experience in a wrong context'. In the monolithic Judaic world a direct identification with the Divine (Eli or Yahweh) could be received only in two ways: to kill the preacher as soon as possible as blasphemous, or to ,divinize him unifying him with the Transcendent God, though as a Son, and keep the devotees away. Both the things were done. When the death execution (soon transformed in the redemptive Sacrifice) could not stop the message involved, the other way to neutralise its effects and to save the absolute transcendence of Yahweh was to divinise his Son alone and close the same opportunity for the others, who, after the death of the body, could only enjoy their Vision in an enchanting contemplation.

This intuition, as just observed, was at its turn the fruit of long years of inner work in order to neutralise a discussion (which took place around November 1963 at the foot of the Arunachala Hill) on the merits of Christ and Ramana Maharishi: one was labelled as an Avatara, but the other as the Absolute. How to re-establish the primate of the Christ without diminishing the faith of the sadhu admirer of Ramana? Every faith has its own strength and its meaning in itself and can be attacked only if its results could be visibly and violently damaging humanity. But, if the faiths and believes are many, almost infinite (though they could be collected in five groups with five or six dominant religions) each with different and often contrasting assumptions, the basic spirituality at a certain level of mystic dept is common, because the direct experiences are the same, even if they are expressed through different terms according to the different traditions such 'experiencers' belong to. At that level, in fact, one can proceed with a certain security by analysing the inner experiences of the main spiritual leaders and by finding the connecting unity of their religious messages, even among the more diverging ones. What was the difference, then, between the experiences of Shri Ramana Maharishi and that of the Son of Man? It has to be found only in their respective cultural contexts because both of them had seen, realized, lived, discovered ... their identity with the Divine. Only that, while for the first there had not been problems with the prevalent religious mentality of his tradition, with the second one the conflict had been mortal. For the Hebrews, no born being can claim identity with the unique Transcendent Creator. If, as in the case of the Master of Nazareth, his charisma is such that he could have his experience accepted as authentic, the only way of saving the Absolute God was to incorporate the Master to such a God and leaving to the common mortals only the hope of a secondary affiliation and of at most to enjoy a beatific Vision of their Trinity from an external position.