In Egypt: After the annual flood of the Nile begins to sink down,the first hillock is symbolic of the reborn world.

Look at the pyramid on the left.A pyramid has four sides.There are four points of compass.
There is somebody at this point.,there is somebody at that point.when you are down on the lower levels of this pyramid, you will be either on one side or another side,but when you get up to the top,the point all comes together,and their eyes of Gods opens.

If you look behind that pyramid,you see a desert .
if you look before it.you see plants growing.

Creation-Died and resurrection.
That’s the sense of that part of the pyramid.

Now look at the right side of the dollar bill. Here’s the eagle, the bird of Zeus. The eagle is the downcoming of the god into the field of time. The bird is the incarnation principle of the deity. This is the bald eagle, the American eagle. This is the American counterpart of the eagle of the highest god, Zeus.

He comes down, descending into the world of the pairs of opposites, the field of action. One mode of action is war and the other is peace. So in one of his feet the eagle holds thirteen arrows-that’s the principle of war. In the other he holds a laurel leaf with thirteen leaves-that is the principle of peaceful conversation. The eagle is looking in the direction of the laurel. That is the way these idealists who founded our country would wish us to be looking-diplomatic relationships and so forth. But thank God he’s got the arrows in the other foot, in case this doesn’t work.

Now, what does the eagle represent? He represents what is indicated in this radiant sign above his head. I was lecturing once at the Foreign Service Institute in Washington on Hindu mythology, sociology, and politics. There’s a saying in the Hindu book of politics that the ruler must hold in one hand the weapon of war, the big stick, and in the other the peaceful sound of the song of cooperative action.

All religions have one side of the pyramid
referring to the point where all sides meet.

Marriage is a relationship. When you make the sacrifice in marriage, you’re sacrificing not to each other but to unity in a relationship. The Chinese image of the Tao, with the dark and light interacting-that’s the relationship of yang and yin, male and female, which is what a marriage is. And that’s what you have become when you have married. You’re no longer this one alone; your identity is in a relationship. Marriage is not a simple love affair, it’s an ordeal, and the ordeal is the sacrifice of ego to a relationship in which two have become one.There are two completely different stages of marriage.First is the youthful marriage following the wonderful impulse that nature has given us in the interplay of the sexes biologically in order to produce children.But there comes a time when the child graduates from the family and the couple is left.
Now,they interpret their union in terms of their relationship through a child.
They did not interpret it in terms of their own personal relationship to each other.Second stage of marriage (Alchemical stage):At this level,two are experiencing that they are one.If they are still living as they were in the primary stage of marriage,they will go apart when their children leave.
Daddy will fall in love with some little nubile girl and run off and mother will be left with an empty house and heart, and will have to work it out on her own,in her own way.
That’s because you don’t make a commitment.If you go into marriage with a program, you will find that it won’t work.Successful marriage is leading innovative lives together, being open, non-programmed. It’s a free fall: how you handle each new thing as it comes along.As a drop of oil on the sea, you must float, using intellect and compassion to ride the waves.

Buddhism and Christianity as two vocabularies for speaking about the same thing. In Buddhism we are lost in the world of fear and desire, the field of maya, illusion. This is, in Christian iconography, the Fall. Redemption is losing those fears and having the experience of eternal life. You experience that through the act of Jesus in affirming the world, in participating in the world with joy.

The Buddha is saying, “Don’t be afraid of those gate guardians. Come in and eat the fruit of the tree.’ The act of communion is eating the fruit of the second tree in the Garden. The fruit is symbolic of the spiritual nourishment that comes when you have reached the knowledge of your eternal life. There are various ways of interpreting these mysteries. I am not telling you something I invented.

The imagery of rebirth is of two main orders. The moon which dies and is resurrected is the chief symbol of this miracle of rebirth in time. The moon sheds its shadow as the serpent sheds its skin. The serpent also plays a role as the symbol of this same principle of life that is reborn from its own death. In traditional mythologies, the sacrificial bull, too, is associated with this symbolism of death and rebirth. The horns of the moon are rendered in the horns of the bull. The sacrifice of the bull is symbolic of the sacrifice of that mortal part in us which leads to the release of the eternal.

The sun is our second symbol of rebirth, evoking that idea of not coming back at all, of not being reborn here but of passing beyond the spheres of rebirth altogether to a transcendent light. The typical image for this is the sun. The moon carries darkness within it but wherever the sun goes there is no darkness. There are only the shadows of those forces that do not open themselves to its light. The image of the sun- door speaks of yet another kind of rebirth, that of the return of the lost one-that is, the one who is lost in the spheres of shadows and time, who returns to that eternal root which is his own great root.

As the bull is symbolic of the moon, so the lion, with his great radiant solar face, is the symbolic animal of the sun. As the rising sun quenches the moon and the stars, so the lion’s roar scatters the grazing animals, just as the lion’s pouncing on the bull symbolizes the sun’s extinguishing the moon. If we recall the serpent, we recognize the eagle, the solar bird, as its counterpoint. So we have these parallels: eagle against serpent, lion against bull, Sun against moon.