FOURTEEN

THE MYSTERY OF JESUS

THE ADEPT WHO dwells in his aloneness is always safe, but the adept who ventures forth into public notice is always in danger. He is in danger of being misunderstood. One wandering Galilean adept suffered misunderstanding to such an extent that those he sought to save, slew him. Let us try to get a better understanding of Jesus Christ.

Nearly two thousand years have elapsed since his departure, and we have many accounts and interpretations of his life. Yet today our understanding of him has lessened rather than increased. If you read the current writings about him and his sayings you get distortions and misrepresentations and above all, misunderstandings.

You should realize in reading a book like the New Testament that all parts are not equal in inspiration and value. Because of the time which has elapsed since they were compiled, we find in these Scriptures interpolations, additions, mistranslation, and even misrepresentations.

In view of these facts, you will understand that every word embodied in a Scripture is not necessarily sacred, and you should, therefore, use your intuition and your critical faculty to sift what really matters from what does not.

When you consider that it was some centuries later than Jesus’ death that certain books were collected by a self-elected council and compiled as the New Testament; that other books were arbitrarily rejected by this council, it is little wonder that misunderstandings exist today.

There was great controversy as to which books and sayings were authentic. Some men in that council held out for reincarnation being included in the doctrine of Christianity. They would not have done this had they not been justified by some thoughts and sayings of Jesus. However, they were in the minority, and so the doctrine of reincarnation was rejected. Today it has disappeared completely from the Christian religion. Suppose that minority had been triumphant! Reincarnation would then have been included in the doctrine of Christianity today.

Examine the books of the New Testament. You will find very little about the personality of Jesus. When you consider the importance which was assigned to him and to his place in the history of religion of that time, it is strange that so little has been written about his personality. This should indicate to you how little was really known about him; that his fame was quite local and limited to a small sphere; that it spread only after his death.

Men doubt whether Jesus ever existed; they point to the paucity of historical proofs as convincing testimony to the fictitious nature of the story of his life. I can reply only that the paucity indicates how obscure he was and that no great movement stirs the world, as Christianity has done, without having the inspiration and impetus of a great person behind it. Nothing comes from nothing. Something stirs from something. The Christian religion came originally from Jesus “the Christed”! I hold strongly that Jesus existed, that he was a living man and a divine one, that he told high truth mercilessly and paid the price for this courage upon the bloodied cross.

The grossest misconceptions exist in the West about those beings, whether historical or known, whom we call variously, masters, adepts, teachers, sages, and even Messiahs. It is said in the East that only an adept can understand an adept, and that is true. The reason for this is that we have no standard by which to judge. The only ones we know are those who have perished, who belong to vanished history. We do not know of any in our midst, and so we have no real criterion. Some people think that an adept is someone who has hidden himself away in a cave, a jungle, or a monastery, and who lives in a perpetual trance. Others think he is a man who is able to perform the most amazing miracles, who can by a mere touch turn water into wine, lead into gold, or heal the sick. Others believe, as in the East, that he is sort of a glorified fortune teller. All of these are mere opinions; they are not knowledge.

It is the same with people who profess to prove that Jesus never lived. They talk vainly because the entire matter is beyond their limited range of experience. They can offer expressions of theory but not certitude.

Modern historians, who take nothing on trust, have focussed the beams of their electric torch upon this remote period of myth and gloom—but in vain.

We are told that ideas rule the world. But ideas must have a focus, they must appear vividly demonstrated in the life and person of one man, who becomes their progenitor among his fellows. The trite simile of the sun’s rays wasting their power, but becoming highly effective when concentrated in a burning-lens is apposite here.

The Overself Spirit streams all around us, but we are unaware of its existence until we meet it suddenly in one man’s life or in one book’s page, just as we are unable to perceive the rays of light which pass invisibly through space until they meet an object.

The usual picture of Jesus Christ is purely fantastic, being based upon what people would like Jesus to be, and not on what he really was. It is so with every other great sage. I have had the good fortune to come in contact with some of these sages and have observed how misunderstood they were by several who came in contact with them. Fairy tales and fables are being built up around them during their own lifetime, so what will happen when they have gone? If people who contact sages form misconceptions in the present, how much more will this be true after they have vanished for three or four hundred years?

Let us first recognize that Jesus came of obscure parentage. That suffices to account for the little that is known of his early infancy and childhood. The current and conventional picture of him is of a man who was ordained by God to fulfil a special mission; who, in fact, occupied a peculiar relationship to God, such as no man ever held before or since, and such as no man can hold again. That is why he is called the Son of God.

It is believed that his mother, Mary, conceived him while yet a virgin. Such a belief is not unknown elsewhere. It has occurred in other lands in ancient times. The Egyptians believed more than one of their ancient deities, such as Osiris, had been born under similar circumstances. In India births of a similar nature have been recorded. In other parts of the world you will also find the same account of a divine man born of a virgin and having for father either God or the Sun.

All this should make you very cautious about accepting this story. It has appeared in other parts of the world before and after the time of Jesus. You should realize that there is something of a universal rather than a merely local significance in it. And when you comprehend that mythological and religious traditions are fraught with esoteric, symbolical, superstitious stories of this type, you must then be doubly careful to investigate such so-called historical tales if you want the truth.

Physiologically, the virgin birth is impossible. Yet we are told it is possible as a miracle from God. This raises the question as to who or what God is, and when you begin to understand that you realize that this is not the way in which God works. God works through laws, established universal laws. Otherwise the universe could not properly exist; it would be queer and erratic.

Something unusual was connected with the personality of Jesus, and the one way his biographers could give expression to it was to repeat fantastic and marvellous tales in order to emphasize it. It does not follow that these tales are completely untrue and inaccurate. They are pointers indicating that there was something remarkable about the nature of this man. A number of the happenings in the Scripture stories of Christ are allegories, and have to be interpreted in this light; a number of the sayings attributed to the Messiah are interpolations; while a number of the real words of the Master were misunderstood by their recorders and hence wrongly set down.

I am sorry to disillusion you, but when you know the esoteric significance of the story of the virgin birth, you know on spiritual grounds why, quite apart from common sense, Jesus could not have been conceived in that miraculous way. However, that does not matter. The essential thing is, who and what was Jesus, and what did he really do?

Like some other great beings who have come down to teach our world, he did not belong to our planet. If you gaze up into the sky at night you will see that there are other planets besides ours, and since ours is inhabited there is no reason why others should not also be inhabited. Why should our earth alone be inhabited? Why should only we have that glorious privilege? The other planets are also inhabited and those planets which are nearer to the sun—the physical sun—have beings which are more evolved than ours. Those planets which are most distant from the sun have less evolved beings, and the sun, to all intents and purposes, can be taken as the heart of the Supreme Creator.

The intelligences on some planets—I call them that because they are not human in our sense, yet are individuals—are far ahead of ours in the understanding of life and of what you would call spirituality. Such beings naturally possess greater power and understanding and it is possible for them, because they have this power, to commune at times with other parts of the universe and to observe the precise spiritual condition of those parts. They may feel a great compassion for those on what might be regarded as backward planets. If they do, they may offer themselves to the Overself to be used as instruments to be sent to help such less evolved parts of the universe.

Some of these beings from the higher planets have taken pity upon mankind and have come voluntarily to this earth to help humanity. In order to do what man could not do for himself, they came. It was the Overself which sent them, using them to bring help to man. The wonderful telepathic communication throughout the universe is such that in the one cosmic Mind there is no distance and no separation. Hence, the need and the lack which was felt here produced a supply from infinitely distant planets from which these great teachers came. It was an echo answering a vibration. The Overself brought them here in the most beautiful manner, by making them aware of our lack, arousing their pity so that they were willing to come.

Such beings, therefore, have incarnated from higher planets onto ours. They did this before Jesus was ever born. Buddha and Osiris were Messiahs. That is the real meaning of the virgin birth. It indicates that there is something unusual about the birth of this particular person, something superhuman. They are not ordinary humans. They have come from planets where supermen dwell. To emphasize and symbolize this fact, stories are circulated of their divine origin. “Virgin birth” is a helpful doctrine by which simple minds can grasp the higher origin of such spiritual beings. But we who have matured must find the plain facts. The twentieth century is no time for symbolic statements when intelligence can grasp realities.

Jesus came down from such a planet and incarnated here. That is, his spirit incarnated in a human body on this planet Earth. He voluntarily did this because he wished to help our humanity.

Jesus did not belong to our earth. He came from a star where men live an infinitely higher life, a life that is nearer to the beauty, dignity, truth, and the reality of the Overself.

But you must remember that for such beings to come here is for them a form of self-sacrifice. It means they have to step down into a lower vibration in every way, physically, mentally, and spiritually; and that can only mean intense suffering. Jesus was crucified even before he was placed on the cross. He was crucified mentally and spiritually. He knew that his physical crucifixion would have to come, but that to him was the lesser. Even before Jesus incarnated, the greater Beings who watch and control the spiritual evolution and the material destiny of humanity upon this planet, as well as the governorship of the earth, showed him a picture of what he would have to do here, what he would have to experience, and what his end would be.

These mysterious spiritual Beings are four in number. They are the real executives who carry out the laws which God has laid down for certain departments of this planet. Their work is to see that as a whole it evolves through all its various experiences toward the goal which has been set for it. Apart from this, they have charge of the life and mass-fate of mankind. Jesus accepted the task shown by these four mighty archangels. In profound vision he saw the essential work which was required of him, and the dark fate which would be his.

Little can be said of these Intelligences. They suffer by devoting themselves to the welfare of the lesser species—man. They have descended from higher realms to benefit mankind. The supreme spiritual wisdom is under their guardianship and protection, and all earnest seekers receive inspiration on their quest from the general help imparted us.

Jesus had offered himself for the self-sacrificing task of planting peace in the hearts of men. He was really an instrument in the hands of the Sacred Four.

He knew the task which he had undertaken, but he had to pay the penalty of fleshly embodiment and pass through the loss of divine memory which such incarnations bring to the mind. But this loss was temporary, of course, in his case.

What he was in his infancy and early childhood does not concern us, because that does not represent the Jesus who came to give a message. That was only the beginning. Jesus had to find himself in the same way that you have to find yourself.

No God, no Deity, can incarnate in the flesh and take on a human body as a baby without having to suffer the limitations of a baby; without having to learn to operate his consciousness gradually through infancy and into maturity as all human beings have to. The laws of nature are inexorable. The only way in which he can avoid that is to take the full-grown body of an adult, and this can only be done under rare circumstances where a body has been specially prepared by some highly advanced soul.

Christs have to grow; they are not born ready-made. They are simply the Perfect Flowers of mankind. Even the ordinary human being has to spend roughly the first twenty years of his life preparing for his mature existence. Is it any wonder, then, that Christ did not announce himself until he was thirty years old? He had to prepare the spiritual man and so took longer at it.

A man like Jesus, who came for a special mission, one which involved helping mankind, and particularly the masses, could not have done other than he did. He had to know what human life was like. He had to know what it was to be a child and to be a youth if he was to help ordinary people. He had to understand what kind of a life the masses lived. He had to be born among them.

So he came in the natural way and went through the privations of human consciousness, through all that limitation of what he really was, suffering himself to be born in the ordinary human manner, to grow up in the ordinary human way, and gradually and slowly to awaken to his inner light.

He awakened a little more quickly than others. So much so that by the time of puberty he had begun to think, to reflect, to seek, and to understand something of the spiritual significance of life. Jesus, the boy, untutored, could confound the academic teachers of the Jewish temple. But he had not found himself.

It was not until the age of thirteen and a half that he realized that he must set out consciously to find himself and regain his higher consciousness. People think that he seems to have disappeared completely between the ages of twelve and thirty, when he suddenly reappeared again and made himself felt in the particular land where he was born. Under intuitive guidance he left his parents’ home and went to Egypt. He worked and studied there under strikingly different conditions. He was a student in the schools, imbibing ancient lore. He was a young workman who earned his living part of the time by the hard labour of his hands.

The world knows little of these youthful years. The books which give the fragments the world has of the history of Jesus were not written down during his lifetime. Therefore they were not contemporary historical records written at the same time as the events they recorded. Long after Jesus’ death the authors wrote down what they believed to be his history.

Once I stood under the tree where the young Jesus had been carried while his mother rested on the flight into Egypt. And I mused on the miracle of time. The republic of Rome and the kingdom of Chaldea have fluttered through history like vanished butterflies; the empire of Babylon and the civilization of Sumeria have become but desiccated dust. A century from now the world’s greatest conflict will mean no more than the history book’s description of the Napoleonic wars means to us today.

Egypt, its neighbour, had a far older culture than Palestine. The Jews had linked one land with the other. An entire chapter and a half of the Book of Proverbs in the Old Testament have been copied word for word from the text of the Egyptian sage, Amenemope.

Go into any Jewish synagogue today and you will see symbols, geometrical and otherwise, which you could have seen in any Egyptian temple of the past. It is a striking thought, yet a true one, that the religion which Moses gave to the Jews was a side-branch growing from the religion of Osiris, which in turn came to Africa from Atlantis. Attend, if you can, a Masonic lodge meeting and you will find the same spiritual heirlooms.

The first Christian monastery was established in Egypt.

It was inevitable that Jesus had to face the Sphinx. He went to Egypt because in those days that nation still had the tradition of spiritual culture and secret learning on a vast scale and of great antiquity, and this, he could not find in his own land. But Egypt had fallen on evil days compared with the grandeur of her past. There was a little left of the lost grandeur to furnish food for his soul.

He studied and practised the exercises which he was taught. He travelled in various provinces. Part of the time he worked in the humblest of capacities at menial and manual work. He left handwork at the age of eighteen and embarked upon purely intellectual study. The pathetic remnants of the Egyptian mystery schools and temples opened their doors to the young foreigner.

On the Mediterranean coast, he found a group of mystics, philosophers, students, and teachers gathered in the quest of Truth in the city of Alexandria. One mystics’ community which he joined in Alexandria practised meditation twice a day, at dawn and at eventide. As the sun rose they prayed for sunshine that their minds might be filled with spiritual light. As the sun set they prayed that their minds might withdraw into their own profound depths in concentration on the Truth.

In those days the city was not only the centre of much cosmopolitan learning but also a port on a great trade route. Ships carrying cargoes of grains and spices were constantly coming and going. Those ships kept up communication with Rome and Greece and other parts of Mediterranean Europe. At intervals convoys of ships would arrive at the point nearest to Alexandria on the south side of the Isthmus of Suez. The vessels were either Arabian or Indian, more especially South Indian. At that time there was quite a trade in spices and silks from India, which were carried across the Isthmus to Alexandria after being disembarked.

Portraits figuring Indian types of men and women have been unearthed at Memphis. The Egyptians used to trade with Muziris, the modern Cranganore (Kerala), the seaport of South India. Moses referred to cinnamon and cassia being used in worship. These are products peculiar to the Malabar coast where later the Apostle Thomas landed. The Mother Goddess was worshipped originally in the form of a cow in Egypt. The cow has ever been sacred to the Dravidians of India. The sacred bull of Egypt has its analogue in Shiva’s bull. The social institutions of the Nairs, a prominent Dravidian branch, were duplicated by those depicted in Egyptian literature as existing there originally. Palm leaves and iron writing pens were common to both Egypt and South India. Ancestor worship of Egypt is paralleled by ancestor worship of the Malabar Dravidians.

These ships sometimes brought passengers. Occasionally some Indian traders would arrive who had learned something of their scriptures by listening to the Brahmins, the caste of spiritual teachers of India. The Brahmins never came themselves, for they were forbidden to travel. But the traders, through listening to the priests at the local temples and to their family guides, would thus learn something of the spiritual aspects of their own religion, and in contact with the philosophers of Alexandria they would exchange experiences.

It was not for nothing that the first Christian missionary to land in India, landed likewise on the southwest coast. And he did not land in the eighteenth or nineteenth century, as most of us believe, but within the same century as Jesus’ death. That was St. Thomas. He was martyred and crucified. He had been an Armenian merchant.

Thus Jesus became acquainted with Indian (chiefly Buddhist) religious doctrines and yogic practices, esoteric teachings and metaphysical tenets. This stream of Far Eastern spirituality now flowed into his mind and there united amicably with the streams of Hebrew and Egyptian spirituality. The years passed and he returned to his own country, there to live far from the urban haunts of men, as a solitary recluse in the desert.

He practised the severest types of ascetism until the body became a completely obedient instrument to his will. He poured his heart out in deep silent and secret prayer, asking his Father not only for himself but much more for others whom he sought to serve when the time was ripe. And it was especially the common people whom he wished to help. He saw that they asked for bread and were given a stone. He knew that in his own country the fault lay with the official custodians of religion. These fatuous priests continued to mumble their vain invocations and their confident phraseology about the Unknown, dominating the people by terrible archaic superstitions, holding the country in their power for their own financial benefit and not to bring it nearer the God they presumed to represent. The religion which they sedulously maintained was but a ghastly travesty of the glorious faith which had enlightened early Israel. Jesus felt that it was his duty to denounce the rabid priestly element in contemporary Judaism, although he foresaw that his denunciation would cause them to determine upon his death.

The day came when Jesus was ready to fulfil his mission of service, his mind prepared by insight into the religious needs of the Western world and his inspirational power matured by experience to satisfy those needs. He inwardly received the divine mandate to go forth to give his message to those who were ready to receive it. The great teachers come but to help and to bless all. They make no reservations for a privileged few. Their love and knowledge flow out to all. They give the same essential teaching of devotion to the divine to everyone alike. Christ taught everyone who sought his help. He gave his pearls to the poor and illiterate equally as to those of higher station.

Before he began his public mission he had to pass through the test which all his like have to undergo; Satan, voice of conventional society, offered to make Jesus a king. But God, voice of lonely places, destined Jesus for something higher—a wandering revelator, teaching unpalatable and unwanted truths.

From the moment he entered into the market places in the villages of the so-called Holy Land he began his mission. Thus Jesus broke his long silence and returned to converse with men. The mysterious magic which had been kindling within him during the years without utterance, dwelt henceforth in each of his words and proved to man’s heart the divine truth of every phrase and every sentence. As is the custom in the East, which has always reverenced true mystics as deeply as we reverence cinema stars, the news slowly spread by word of mouth about the existence of this God-realized person. Devotees and pilgrims began to flock to him to ask for his blessing or his help, and some were permitted to become disciples. Though his teaching was destined to spread over many countries and most continents, still it was not a universal mission. There will never be a Christian world, because Christianity was not intended for the whole world, but it was intended for the West. The Carpenter of Nazareth came apparently to convert a small Palestinian sect; he succeeded in converting the whole Western world.

However, Jesus knew where his doctrine would spread, and he knew that it would not spread until after his death. Jesus stood in a particular geographical relation to his age and to the coming ages too. When Krishna spoke, his message flowed eastward from India, to Java, Sumatra, Cambodia, and even southward to Ceylon. When Buddha spoke, his message flowed still farther eastward, to China and Japan, northward to Tibet and southward to Ceylon. But in neither case did the message flow westward. Moses spoke, but his message was not carried in any direction, for the Jews kept it to themselves. For them in their arrogant pride, the rest of mankind were not of the chosen race.

Jesus did not desire to work for a certain people, merely because he was cooperating with the law of destiny. Inwardly he had no consciousness of being a Hebrew. But the words of Jesus were heard all over the West. Jesus did not limit himself to any one people, or to any one country, in his sympathies. He did not want to save particularly Greece or Rome. He knew that there would be only comparatively few during his own lifetime who would accept his words of truth. He sought those few. They were waiting ardently for him. For a true sage is very hard to find, because he does not advertise himself, and he never labels himself as such. He never says who and what he is, except when the gods give him a special mission in the world, as in the case of Jesus. It was quite all right for Jesus to proclaim publicly, “I and my Father are one.” But unless such a public mission has to be performed, the sage will say nothing and will leave men to discover him. All those who bore a message did not convert and did not want to convert. But to find the few, Jesus had to speak to the many. And so he appeared among the multitudes.

We need not only a teacher but also an inspirer. We need, in Emerson’s phrase, “Someone to make us do the best that is in us.” Let the man appear and we shall follow him. Let him bring not merely the aeons-old message of God, but divine fire to scatter among us.

From the very beginning Jesus knew what his end would be. He knew they would crucify him, or rather that destiny had ordained such an event. However, such is the power of divine love, he had to find his own, those few who were to be the bearers of his spirit and his work after he was gone.

In finding himself, what did Jesus find? He found the Overself. He found his innermost being. And because there is only one Overself, only one Universal Spirit, he found within himself that same condition which you also might find within yourself. There are not two Overselves, only one.

It is a universal existence, not a personal one, something which cannot be split up and separated into two different persons. It is not a mental state nor a physical state, but Something without limitation, shape, or form. When, at the age of twenty-eight, Jesus found and knew himself as THAT, he found his mission in life. Because, not until you find yourself, or at least not until you have begun partially to find and to know your Real Self, can you find your real work in life. Until then you are merely groping.

The sense of identity with the universal self replaces the ego. Therefore the man who understands who and what he is, cannot help but desire the welfare of all creatures, and he will not be satisfied with the mere desire, he will do something about it every day of his life. This is the final test of realization, this service of the world, whether it be secret or public, and this is why Jesus moved and taught ceaselessly among those who he knew would one day reward him with the cross. But every nail driven into it was driven also into their own dark destiny.

What was his work? In the succeeding three years before his so-called death, Jesus was able to do that for which he came. This was not what most Christians think. He did not come to found a new organization or to establish a new church. He came to plant an invisible seed in the hearts of men, a seed that would grow to maximum stature; but like all other trees and plants, the growth was destined to flourish for a while and then finally decay. Jesus founded no religious organization, no church. He advised his followers to pray in private, not in churches. He appointed no clergy, no priests. The whole superstructure of human organization was begun by others.

That which Jesus brought to the world is now going through the process of decay. Men like Lenin and Hitler are thrown up by their age, because they are merely instruments of destiny, whereas a Messiah like Jesus throws up his age. He gave what he came to give. It was something intangible, invisible. Something he planted in the hearts of men, which we can only call Spirit. He brought a new gift of Spirit onto this planet. All that you see of Christianity is the fragmentary manifestation of that Spirit struggling to express this Word.

The world believed, as ever, in force. It was always ready to bend or break a man when it sought to subject him to its will. Hence it looked—if it looked for one at all—for a saviour who would arise and compel it toward salvation in spite of itself. The world was disappointed. Jesus never interfered with the free will of another person. He stimulated souls toward truth; he gave an impetus toward self-discovery; he showed men what the spiritual life was really like, but he never compelled man to adopt it.

What Jesus did, therefore, was something which was not to be measured by outward achievement, in his own time or in later times, because it was something which lives inside the hearts of men forever. It is profound and priceless.

The New Testament carries something of the flavour of this divine man. The pages of the four Gospels are inspired; they glow like lamps. Although he has disdained to give the world any systematic framed philosophy, Jesus has given it something better—his own inner attainment of that which transcends all philosophy. Those terse paragraphs are lustrous with illumination. He says the last word and leaves us nothing to say. Jesus’ fine thoughts are caught and pinned to crisp and compressed sentences, which are not readily forgotten. It is not necessary to thread these thoughts upon a string of logic, because they are each superbly self-sufficient, undeniable, divinely authoritative.

The idea of an approaching advent of a Messiah has caused the usual crop of false teachers and fanatical prophets to appear. For the latter, consciously or unconsciously, create futile sidetracks down which the sincere-minded seekers waste their energies and lose their aspirations.

There are several self-proclaimed “Messiahs” in the public eye at the moment, and there must be many minor ones who command little notice. The resulting effect of all their work is but to mystify the thoughtful and to mislead the thoughtless. But when the truth is known, all those deluded and deluding ones vanish into unimportance and concern us no longer. The stupidities which misguide mankind and the sophisms which delude it will not last forever.

These men have nothing to say to us, although they open their mouths. What can they say that could compare with the master’s sparkling statement, “The kingdom of heaven is within you.” This truth which he gave to wondering hearers is a mind-opener. Its lucidity is lightning-bright. For we have mostly lost our heads and make the path we tread, the rites we observe, the dogmas we cherish, of greater importance than the salvation we would attain.

The only man I can worship as a Messiah is he who has the Power. From him one can acquire a new momentum. He alone is worthy to receive my highest oblation. Teaching does not touch me, but he who can give me a new orientation in character, or turn my will away from worldly foolishness or open the windows of my mind that the higher consciousness may shine in—him I will worship.

The coming of Jesus was a benediction to the world. He instructed and inspired men, he taught them the deepest secret of life and urged them to take to the divine path. He exemplified in his own everyday existence a holiness that casts our common life in the shade.

As I look back into the past pictures of history and see his figure file past me, bearing the high dignity of the apostolic mark upon his brow, I receive renewed comfort and assurance. We are not left quite alone; God still sends companions for our stumbling feet, and apostles of the Infinite for our groping minds.