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Nº. XXXIII
CONCERNING THE ACTUAL JESUS (1)
I AM shown the Descent from the Cross. I see Jesus
carried by Joseph of Arimathea to his house. The house
communicates with a sepulchre; and Jesus is carried to the house where they do
something to revive him; for he has swooned rather than died. The clothes are
placed in the sepulchre, but not Jesus. I see a rupture of the pericardium, but
no fatal injury to the heart. I see plainly that he is not dead. There is no
organic lesion; and the wound heals like a simple wound, without suppuration,
and by incessant bathing with water. What a lovely climate it is there! And how
curious that there should have been a Joseph at both birth and crucifixion!
I am now shown the truth respecting
the birth of Jesus. It was most certainly an ordinary birth. I see that quite
distinctly. The names are all altered. The birth-name of Jesus is not Jesus, or
anything like it. Nothing is real as I have thought it. Very little happens as
related. The losing and finding in the temple and the feeding of the five
thousand are allegories of which the signification is spiritual. The miracles of
the raising of the ruler’s daughter and widow’s son are real facts. Jesus saw
clairvoyantly that the former was not dead, and that the body was uninjured by
disease, so that the soul could return to it. For disease is gradual death, and
when death occurs through it the soul is set free altogether. In violent or
sudden death the soul is slow to get away, and the separation is a long process.
In his own case Jesus instructed his
friends beforehand what to
do. Joseph of Arimathea
was a friend of Mary Magdalen; and she procured for
him the requisite balms. I see her running with them through the sepulchre to
the house. Jesus was not organically dead at all, for the heart never ceased to
beat. He foreknew all the particulars of the event, and provided accordingly.
Nor is Jesus well again on the third
day. He is at least ten days under treatment in Joseph’s house. Three days is a
mystical period, having no relation to actual time. All about him are women
except one, the old man. Jesus’ name begins with M.
I do not see the rest of it.
The perfect adept is he who has
attained in himself the Philosopher’s Stone of a spirit absolutely quiescent,
and is in union with the Divine Will. Being without ardour, sympathy and
compassion are for him but other names for justice; and, incapable of anger, his
temperament is always cool and equable. I now see faults in Jesus which I did
not see before. I mean Jesus as he actually was, and not as he is depicted in
the Gospels. They are faults from the adept’s point of view. I am shown a
passion-flower as the emblem of his character. He sacrificed himself for others,
but would have been able to do more had he been more careful, – especially in
respect of his diet. His liability to give way continually to indignation or
pity prevented him from getting higher. He allowed himself to be drawn too much
out of himself to reach the highest possible.
I see him bidding his followers
good-bye. It is on a hill which he ascends, and he disappears from their view,
lost in cloud or mist. He now becomes a hermit. I see him in the wilderness
alone; and there he attains the higher life which constituted his true
ascension.
Jesus was able to influence persons
at a distance by means of an emanation which he projected from himself; so that
it was not necessary for him to be dead when supposed to be seen by Paul.
I now see some one with him on his
mountain. It is John, writing down the Apocalypse at the dictation of Jesus.
Jesus recollects all his past incarnations, and epitomises them in the
Apocalypse, which is the history of his, and of every perfected soul. He is
quite an old man at this time.
And now I see the panther’s skin of
Bacchos, and whence Jesus got the name which has been given him of “Rabbi
Ben Panther,” and why he was said to be the son of one Panther. It is a play on Pan and theos, and means all the gods. The
panther’s skin
represented the raiment, or attributes, of all
the gods, with which Jesus, as a “Son of God,” was held to be endowed.
I am shown that there is but little
of real value in the Scriptures. They are a mass of clay, comparatively modern,
with here and there a bit of gold. The angel whom I saw before, and who told us
to burn the Bible, (1) now puts it in the fire, and
there comes out a few pages only of matter which is original and divine. All the
rest is interpolation or alteration. This is the case with both Old Testament
and New, Isaiah and the prophets. Isaiah is a great mixture. It is all fragments
from various sources, just thrown together. The book of Genesis is one large
parable; and so are all the legends of the wanderings and wars of
As for the gospels, they are almost
entirely parabolical. Religion is not historical, and
in no wise depends upon past events. For, faith and redemption do not depend
upon what any man did, but on what God has revealed. Jesus was not the
historical name of the initiate and adept whose story is related. It is the name
given him in initiation. (2) His birth, the manner
of it, his being lost and found by his parents in the temple, his lying three
days in the tomb, – all are parabolic, as also is the story of the Ascension.
The Scriptures are addressed to the soul, and make no appeal to the outer
senses. The whole story of Jesus is a mass of parables, the things that occurred
to him being used as symbols. Thus, the Crucifixion represents the soul’s
sufferings; the Resurrection its transmutation; and the life and Ascension are a
prophecy of what is possible to man.
The real original gospel is that of
John. The others came long afterwards, and all were written long after the time
of Jesus. Jesus largely wrote the Apocalypse by the hand of John, as he sat with
him on the mountain. This was many years after the “Ascension,” as his
disappearance on the hill was termed. The Apocalypse was rather a recovery than
an original composition
of Jesus. The gospel life of Jesus is made up of
the lives of all the divine teachers before him, and represents the best the
world had then, and the best it has in it to be. And it is therefore a prophecy.
The recorded life of Jesus epitomised all the teachers before him, and the
possibilities of mankind some day to be realised.
The “beautiful feet of the messengers
on the mountains” are the first rays of the rising sun of the coming salvation,
seen by the watchers from the spiritual heights, – the “shepherds who tend their
flocks,” – even their own pure hearts and thoughts. They it is who see from the
“hills” the coming God, the demonstration of the divinity that is in humanity,
while the world below is wrapped in darkness.
Footnotes
(84:1)
(86:1) In a vision
received some time previously. E.M.
(86:2) See Part II, No. XI, “Hymn to Phoibos”,
v. 9.
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