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Jesus,
The Wayshower
And
there are also many other things which Jesus did, the which,
if they should be written every one, I suppose that even the world itself
could not contain the books that should be written.
—John 21:25
The
popular book and movie, The DaVInci Code, raises
many issues about Jesus' life and mission. Most notably,
it presents Jesus as both God and man, and as a wayshower
of the divine Christ potential that lies within each of
us.
To
understand Jesus and his teachings as they relate to each
one's "Sonhood" or Christ potential, it is important
to study the larger historical and more universal spiritual
context from which these teachings emanated. Jesus' ministry
was influenced by Judaism as well as by Buddhism, Hinduism,
Taoism, Egyptian mysteries, and Kabbalic and Essene mysticism.
For one, Judea was more than illiterate masses of people
living in near-desert conditions and conducting simple activities
like fishing and carpentry. It was also a cosmopolitan trade
center and an ethnic, cultural, philosophical, religious
and political melting pot.
East
and West Converge
The
two main Jewish sects at the time of Jesus were the Essenes
and the Pharisees. The Essenes believed in the immortality
of the soul as separate from the body, and pursued the mystical
union of man with God. The Pharisees, who dominated the
Jerusalem temple during Jesus' ministry, also believed in
reincarnation. Josephus, a first century Jewish historian,
testifies of the popular belief in reincarnation among Jews,
writing, "the souls of bad men are punished after death
and the souls of good men are removed into other bodies
where they will have the power to revive and live again."
Phylo of Alexandria, one of the greatest Jewish teachers
who also met with Jesus' disciple Peter, preached reincarnation,
union with God, and interpreted the Old Testament in a mystical
way.
Greco-Roman
influence within Judea was heavily influenced by Orphism,
a spiritual belief system that taught both reincarnation
and that man has a divine spark. And the trade routes with
India opened the door to silk, spices and Eastern spirituality.
As far as three hundred years before Jesus, India was already
sending Buddhist missionaries into Judea, Greece and Egypt,
where more than thirty Buddhist edicts have been found engraven
in stone.
Furthermore,
ancient manuscripts and oral legends reveal that Jesus received
direct training in Egypt and in the East. In
India and Tibet, Jesus is known as Saint Issa, where many
shrines to Saint Issa can be found. Jesus Lived in India
by Holger Kirsten, The Lost Years of Jesus by Elizabeth
Clare Prophet, and Heart of Asia and Altai
HImalaya by Nicholas Roerich irrefutably document that
Jesus went to India and Tibet several times in his life.
Tibetan manuscripts first discovered by Russian writer Nicolas
Notovitch in the19th century disclose that Jesus spent six
years between the ages of 14 and 21 travelling to Tibet
and to Indian holy cities like Juggernaut, Rajagriha and
Benares. (The story is documented in The Lost Years
of Jesus.) When Nitovitch found these manuscripts,
he went to Rome, where a high-ranking cardinal told him
the Vatican already possessed 63 complete or incomplete
documents brought back by Christian missionaries concerning
Jesus' activities in the East.
According
to the these manuscripts, Jesus insisted on teaching scripture
to the lower castes so the priests decided to kill him and
he fled to the birthplace of Gautama Buddha in the Himalayan
foothills. In Nepal, he mastered the Pali language, became
an expert on Buddhist sacred writings and performed miracles
at the feet of Hindu sages. He also taught karma and reincarnation,
as one passage quoting Jesus about skilled singers records,
"Whence
is their talent and their power? For in one short life they
could not possibly accumulate a quality of voice and the
knowledge of harmony and tone. Are these miracles? No, because
all things take place as a result of natural laws. Many
thousands of years ago these people already molded their
harmonies and their qualities. And they come again to learn
still more from varied manifestations."
Jesus left the Himalayas at the
age of 27 and slowly returned to Palestine, teaching along
the way. Back in Judea he sought to convey to many the path
of personal Christhood, be it through parables for the multitudes
or through the intimate instruction given to the disciples,
holy women and close followers of his message.
Unto
you is given to know the mysteries of the Kingdom of God
but to others in parables.
—Luke 8:10
Many
of Jesus' mystical teachings were recorded in apocryphal
gospels like The Gospel of Thomas, The Secret Book of
John, The Secret Gospel of Mark, The Gospel of Phillip,The
Gospel of Mary Madgdalene, and other texts discovered
in 1945 near Nag Hammadi Egypt. The Dead Sea Scrolls
discovered in 1947 near Qumran, Israel contain over 200
documents, including biblical commentaries, prophecy, and
community rules. These gospels, which predate the Biblical
gospels, supply further evidence that Jesus spoke of reincarnation,
performed secret initiation rites like those of ancient
mystery schools and taught precepts also found in Buddhism,
Taoism and Tibetan spiritual traditions, and upheld women.
Before
I formed you in the womb, I knew you;
before you came to Earth I consecrated you.
—Jer. 1:5
Karma
and reincarnation are key
concepts on the path of personal Christhood, as they explain
our opportunity to perfect the soul lifetime after lifetime.
It is true that our current personality only lives once.
Then our souls return, clothed with a new body and personality
to experience the next level of earth's classroom, balance
karma and fulfill divine purpose. When the alchemical marriage
takes place between the soul and Christ, we are ready for
permanent reunion with God are are freed from the cycle
of rebirth.
Perhaps the reason there are not many direct references
to reincarnation in the Bible is because the knowledge of
reincarnation was self-evident to the people Jesus addressed,
including the Essenes, the Pharisees and the Greeks.Still,
the concept of karma is very well illustrated in Biblical
scriptures like "whatsoever a man soweth, so shall
he reap;" "do unto others as you would have them
do unto you," "balancing every jot and tittle"
and "with the judgment you make you will be judged
and the measure you give will be the measure you get."
Four
passages in the New Testament directly point to reincarnation.
In the first, Jesus asks his disciples, " Whom do men
say that I the son of man am?" Their answer illustrates
that the understanding of reincarnation was self evident
among Jesus' followers. "And they said, some say that
thou art John the Baptist, some Elias and others Jeremias,
or one of the prophets." (Matt. 116:13-14) The next
two passages relate to John the Baptist as Elijah come again.
When John is imprisoned, Jesus delivers a public tribute
to him saying, "he, if you will believe me, is the
Elijah who was to return."(Matt. 11:14) Later, when
John is martyred, Jesus explains, "I tell you that
Elijah has come and they have treated him as they please
(Mark 9:12). The Gospel of Matthew (17:13) adds to this
statement, "The disciples understood then that he had
been speaking of John the Baptist."
The third passage related in John 9 refers
to the man born blind whom Jesus healed and whom the disciples
questioned, "Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents
that he was born blind?" This question presupposes
reincarnation, for how could a man sin before birth had
his soul not lived before?
[The
main Biblical scripture used to deny reincarnation is Hebrews
9:27, "men only die once, and after that comes judgment."
It is probably correct to assume here that the author is
refering to the body, not the soul especially in light of
other events, including Jesus' raising of Lazarus and Jairus'
daughter from the dead.]
I
disclose my mysteries to those who are worthy of my mysteries.
—Jesus in the Gospel of Thomas
Following Jesus' ministry, reincarnation
and the path of personal Christhood was taught for several
hundred years by Christian gnostics, until their ministry
was shut down by church hierarchy for human power and political
gain.
In the second century AD, Origen taught
on the preexistence of the soul and explained that earth
was a place for man to experience free will. His defense
of personal spiritual freedom threatened church fathers
like Jerome, who held a far more orthodox viewpoint and
professed in the physical resurrection of the dead down
to the "flesh, blood, bones and genital organs."
Origen was eventually arrested, tortured, and imprisoned
by Jerome.
A
century later, Libyan priest Arius' defense of man's Christ
potential led to the fourth century Nicean council and Nicean
creed, where church fathers voted to set Jesus apart from
other men as the "only begotten son of God." Remaining
gnostics were martyred or fled, Origen's work was declared
anathema and destroyed, and secret gospels and apocryphal
texts were buried. Church father St. Augustine spun the
doctrine of original sin to shame the soul, to rob man's
awareness of innate Christ potential and to substitute a
personal punishing God for impersonal divine laws of karma
and reincarnation.
Through the centuries, these political
moves were forgotten and self-serving human dogma became
spiritual foundation. Millions of mystics who sought
the earlier mysteries, like the Cathars in France, were
persecuted as heretics and their legacy destroyed. (Their
history is recorded in Reincarnation: The Missing Link
in Christianity by Elizabeth Clare Prophet.) And sadly
to this day, in many Catholic and Protestant churches, an
orthodox interpretation of Jesus as "only son"
and of an arbitrary and despotic God made in man's image
yet prevails.
I will tell you the
decree of the Lord. He said to me,
"You are my son; today I have begotten you."
—Psalm 2
Those who pursue the path of personal Christhood understand
that the only begotten son of God refers to the Christ consciousness,
not to Jesus as a flesh and blood idol. Scriptures about
other "sons of God" and about becoming a son of
God can be found in both the old and new testaments regarding
King David, Melchisedec and others, as well as in Jewish
texts like the Book of Levi. In Galatians 4:5, Saint Paul
teaches that Jesus came as the "firstborn" to
"enable us to be adopted as sons." Hebrews 7:28
states "the word of the oath, which was since the law,
maketh the Son, who is consecrated forevermore." And
Revelation 21:7 declares, "He that overcometh shall
inherit all things; and I will be his God, and he shall
be my son."
In the New Testament, Jesus commends
us to address God as "our Father" and tells us
that those who do the will of God are his brothers and sisters.
When Jesus said, "I AM the way, the truth and the life:
no man cometh to the Father but by me (John 14:6), he was
speaking of the Christ consciousness also referred to by
Paul when he said, "Let the mind be in you that was
also in Christ Jesus" (Phil. 2:5) and "we have
the mind of Christ (1Cor. 2:16).
The Christ consciousness is the way, the truth
and the life that saves us from our human ignorance and
separation from God. Souls become immortal when they fulfill
this consciousness and reunite with the presence of the
I AM THAT I AM revealed to Moses in the burning bush. This
is what Jesus was referring to when he said, "whosoever
liveth and believeth in me shall never die (John 11:26)
and when he told the parable of the vine and the branches.
.
Verily,
verily I say to you, he that believeth in me, the works
that I do shall he do also;
and greater works than these shall he do; because I
go unto my Father.
—John 14:12
Today,
with the rediscovery of these ancient teachings and the
freedom of religion secured for us by our founding fathers,
we have an unparalelled opportunity to right all wrongs,
to follow in the footsteps of our elder brother, master,
savior and teacher, to become Christ in our own right and
to ascend back to God.
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About
the painting Issa and the Skull of the Giant by Nicholas
Roerich: According to the Teachings of the Ascended
Masters released through Mark and Elizabeth Clare Prophet,
the soul of Jesus had many incarnations prior to his final
embodiment. These include incarnations on Atlantis as well
as the lives of Abel, Joshua, Joseph, King David and Elisha,
chronicled in the Old Testament. Perhaps Jesus' embodiment
as David defeating the giant is what Nicholas Roerich was
attuned to in creating this mystical painting of Issa and
the Skull of the Giant.
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