Theos-Talk Archives (October 2003 Message tt00250)

Oct 21 2003


Dear Friends:

A question is asked:

"And can you do some papers on HPB's thoughts about Jews?"


Some answers are found included in the following 

Best wishes,

Dallas

======================================



JESUS in THEOSOPHY



"The position THEY [Masters] give to Jesus, as far as we know, is that
of a great and pure man, a reformer who would fain have lived but who
had to die for .hat which he regarded as the greatest birth-right of man
-- absolute Liberty of conscience; of an adept who preached a universal
Religion know-ing of, and having no other "temple of God" but man
himself; that of a noble Teacher of esoteric truths which he had no time
given to him to explain; that, of an initiate who recognized no
difference -- save the moral one -- between men; who rejected caste, and
despised wealth; and who preferred death rather than to reveal the
secrets of initiation. And who, finally, lived over a century before
the year of our vulgar, so called, Christian era."
THEOSOPHIST July 1883



[ This quotation is from an account by Charles Johnston
of his interview with H.P.B. when he met her for the first time in
London, in the Spring of 1887, soon after her arrival from Ostende
appeared originally in Theosophi-cal Forum (New York) for April, May,
June and July 1900-1 ] and was re-printed in The Theosophical Movement,
April 1964. 


Question: "How do the adepts guide the souls of men?"

H.P.B.: "In many ways, but chiefly by teaching their souls direct, in
the spiritual world But that is difficult for you to understand. This
is quite intelligible, though. At certain regular periods, they try to
give the world at large a right understanding of spiritual things. One
of their number comes forth to teach the masses, and is handed down to
tradi-tion as the Founder of a religion. Krishna was such a Master; so
was Zoroaster; so were Buddha and Shankara Acharya, the great sage of
Southern India. And, so also was the Nazarene. He went forth against
the counsel of the rest, to give to the masses before the time, moved by
a great pity, and enthusiasm for humanity; he was warned that the time
was unfavorable, but nevertheless he elected to go, and so was put to
death at the instigation of the priests." 


Question: "Have the adepts any secret records of his
life?"

H.P.B.: "They must have," she answered; "for they have records of the
lives of all Initiates. Once I was in a great cave-temple in the
Himalaya mountains, with my Master," and she looked at the picture of
the splendid Rajput; "there were many statues of adepts there;
pointing to one of them, he said: 'This is he whom you call Jesus. We
count him to be one of the greatest among us.' "But that is not the
only work of the adepts. At much shorter periods, they send forth a
messenger to try to teach the world. Such a period comes in the last
quarter of each century, and the Theosophical Society represents their
work for this epoch."
THE THEOS. FORUM, New York, Apl, 1900



"...what the Homilies do prove, is again our assertion that there was a
secret doctrine preached by Jesus to the few who were deemed worthy to
become its recipients and custodians. ... If we now recall the fact
that a portion of the Mysteries of the "Pagans" consisted of the...
aporrheta, or secret discourses; that the secret Logia or discourses of
Jesus contained in the original Gospel according to Matthew, the meaning
and interpretation of which St. Jerome confessed to be "a difficult
task" for him to achieve, were of the same nature; and if we remember,
further, that to some of the interior or final Mysteries only a very
select few were admitted; and that finally it was from the number of the
latter chat were taken all the min-isters of the holy "Pagan" rites, we
will then clearly understand this expression of Jesus quoted by Peter:
"Guard the Mysteries for me and the sons of my house," i.e. of my
doctrine. And, if we understand it rightly, we cannot avoid thinking
that this "secret" doctrine of Jesus, even the technical expressions of
which are but so many duplications of the Gnostic and Neo-platonic
mystic phraseology --that this doctrine, we say, was based on the same
transcendental philosophy of the Oriental Gnosis as the rest of the
religions of those and earliest days. That none of the later Christian
sects, despite their boasting, were the inheritors of it, is evident
from the contradictions, blunders, and clumsy repatching of the mistakes
of every preceding century by the discoveries of the succeeding one."
ISIS II 191



Question: "Do not the words and teachings of Jesus, taken in their
esoteric sense, point one (the) way to the Theosophic Path?" 

"WQJ: Taken in the sense he intended the people to take them, they lead
to the way. Taken in the sense in which he desired his Disciples to
receive them, they are teachings upon the way. Taken in their esoteric
sense -- as he knew them -- they are the way. Were the wisdom of Egypt
and India today blotted out from both the seen and unseen worlds -- the
true seeker would find in his teachings, when rightly studied, all the
teachings of Isis and Buddha. As he received his instruction from
Egypt, heired from India, it is more than probable that esoterically his
teachings are identi-cal with both." WQJ ART II 459



"We can assert, with entire plausibility, that there is not one of all
these sects--Kabalism, Judaism, and our present Christianity included--
but sprung from the two main branches of that one mother-trunk, the once
uni-versal religion, which antedated the Vedic ages--we speak of that
prehis-toric Buddhism which merged later into Brahmanism. The religion
which the primitive teaching of the early few apostles most resembled--a
religion preached by Jesus himself--is the elder of these two, Buddhism.
The latter as taught in its primitive purity, and carried to perfection
by the last of the Buddhas, Gautama, based its moral ethics on three
fundamental princi-ples. It alleged that 1, everything existing, exists
from natural causes; 2, that virtue brings its own reward, and vice and
sin their own punish-ment; and, 3, that the state of man in this world
is probationary. We might add that on these three principles rested the
universal foundation of every religious credal God, and individual
immortality for every man -- if he could but win it." ISIS II 123



"... the secret doctrines of the Magi, of the pre-Vedic Buddhists, of
the hierophants of the Egyptian Thoth or Hermes, and of the adepts of
whatever age and nationality, including the Chaldean kabalists and the
Jewish nazars, were identical from the beginning. When we use the term
Buddhists, we do not mean to imply by it either the exoteric Buddhism
instituted by the followers of Gautama-Buddha, nor the modern Buddhistic
religion; but the secret philosophy of Sakyamuni, which in its essence
is certainly identical with the ancient wisdom-religion of the
sanctuary, the pre-Vedic Brahmanism. (p. 143) Already some time before
our era, the adepts, except in India, had ceased to congregate in large
communities; but whether among the Essenes, or the Neo-platonists, or,
again, among the innumerable struggling sects born but to die, the same
doctrines, identical in substance and spirit, if not always in form, are
encountered. By Bud-dhism, therefore, we mean that religion signifying
literally the doctrine of wisdom, and which by many ages antedates the
metaphysical philosophy of Siddartha Sakyamuni." ISIS II 142



"...the followers of Jesus evidently adhered to a sect which became a
still more exasperating thorn...It appeared as a heresy within another
heresy; for while the nazars of the olden time...were Chaldean
kabalists, the adepts of the new dissenting sect showed themselves
reformers and innovators from the first...The Essenes...were the
converts of Buddhist missionaries who had overrun Egypt, Greece, and
even Jude at one time, since the reign of Asoka the zealous
propagandist; and while it is evi-dently to the Essenes that belongs
the honor of having had the Nazarene reformer, Jesus, as a pupil, still
the latter is found disagreeing with his early teachers on several
questions of formal observance. He cannot strictly be called an
Essene...neither was he a nazar, or Nazaria of the older sect...He is
the founder of the sect of the new nazars, and...a follower of the
Buddhist doctrine...what is self-evident is that he preached the
philosophy of Buddha-Sakyamuni. Denounced by the later proph-ets,
cursed by the Sanhedrin, the nazars--they were confounded with others of
that name...they were secretly, if not openly persecuted by the orthodox
synagogue. It becomes clear why Jesus was treated with such contempt
from the first..." ISIS II 132



"The motive of Jesus was evidently like that of Gautama-Buddha, to
benefit humanity at large by producing a religious reform which should
give it a religion of pure ethics; the true knowledge of God and nature
having remained until- then solely in the hands of the esoteric sects,
and their adepts. p. 137 - To assure ourselves that Jesus was a true
Nazarene -- albeit with ideas of a new reform -- we must not search for
the proof in the translated Gospels, but in such original versions as
are accessible. ... Thus, if we take in account all that is puzzling and
incom-prehensible in the four Gospels, revised and corrected as they now
stand, we shall easily see for ourselves that the true, original
Christianity, such as was preached by Jesus, is to be found only in the
so-called Syrian heresies. Only from them can we extract any clear
notions about what was primitive Christianity."
ISIS II 133



"...except a handful of self-styled Christians who subsequently won the
day, all the civilized portion of the Pagans who knew of Jesus honored
him as a philosopher, an adept whom they placed on the same level with
Pythagoras and Apollonius. Whence such a veneration on their part for a
man, were he simply, as represented by the Synoptics, a poor, unknown
Jewish carpenter from Nazareth? As an incarnated God there is no single
record of him on this earth capable of withstanding the critical
examina-tion of science; as one of the greatest reformers, an inveterate
enemy of every theological dogmatism, a persecutor of bigotry, a teacher
of one of the most sublime codes of ethics, Jesus is one of the grandest
and most clearly-defined figures on the panorama of human history. His
age may, with every day, be receding farther and farther back into the
gloomy and hazy mists of the past; and his theology -- based on human
fancy and sup-ported by untenable dogmas may, nay must with every day
lose more of its unmerited prestige; alone the grand figure of the
philosopher and moral reformer instead of growing paler will become with
every century more pronounced and more clearly defined. It will reign
supreme and universal only on that day when the whole of humanity
recognizes but one father -- the UNKNOWN ONE above -- and one brother --
the whole of mankind below." ISIS II 150



Ebionites (Heb.). Lit., "the poor"; the earliest sect of Jewish
Christians, the other being the Nazarenes. They existed when the term
"Christian" was not yet heard of. Many of the relations of Iassou
(Jesus), the adept ascetic around whom the legend of Christ was formed,
were among the Ebionites. As the existence of these mendicant ascetics
can be traced at least a century earlier than chronological
Christianity, it is an addi-tional proof that Iassou or Jeshu lived
during the reign of Alexander Jannaeus at Lyd (or Lud), where he was put
to death as stated in Sepher Toldos Jeshu." T. GLOSSARY, p. 108-9



"... Talmudist says, in substance, the following: Jesus was thrown in
prison, and kept there forty days; then flogged as a seditious rebel;
then stoned as a blasphemer in a place called Lud, and finally allowed
to expire upon a cross. "All this," explains Levi, "because he revealed
to the people the truths which they (the Pharisees) wished to bury for
their own use. He had divined the occult theology of Israel, had
compared it with the wisdom of Egypt, and found thereby the reason for a
universal] religious synthesis." ISIS II 202



[A similar description is given in H.P.B.'s Theosophical
Articles, Vol. III, pp. 180-181 ]

"...Jesus, whether of Nazareth or Lud,* was a Chrestos, as undeniably as
that he never was entitled to the appellation of Christos, during his
life-time and before his last trial.

*Or Lydda, reference is made here to the Rabbinical tradition in the
Babylonian Gemara, called Sepher Toldoth Jeshu, about Jesus being the
son of one named Pandira, and having lived a century earlier than the
era called Christian, namely, during the reign of the Jewish king
Alexander Jannaeus and his wife Salome, who reigned from the year 106 to
79 B.C. Accused by the Jews of having learned the magic art in Egypt,
and of having stolen from the Holy of Holies the Incommunicable Name,
Jehoshua (Jesus) was put to death by the Sanhedrin at Lud. He was
stoned and then crucified on a tree, on the eve of Passover. The
narrative is ascribed to the Tal-mudistic authors of "Sota" and
"Sanhedrin," p.19 Book of Zechiel." Isis Unveiled, II. 201



"Alexander Jannaeus, or Alexander Yannai (d. 76 B.C.), Hasmonean
(Maccabean) king of Judaea, succeeded his brother Aristobulus I tq.v.)
in 103 B.C. Alexander imposed his rule on the Palestinian coast and on
areas east of the Jordan and the Dead Sea. He was an ally of the
Sadducees and persecuted their opponents, the Pharisees. He was
succeeded by his wife, Salome Alexandra, who reversed his pro-Sadducee
policy." Encyclopedia Britannica, 15th Ed. 1981



INNOCENTS A nick-name given to the Initiates and Kabalists before the
Christian era. The "Innocents" of Bethlehem and of Lud (or Lydda) who
were put to death by Alexander Jannaeus, to the number of several
thousands (B.C. 100, or so), gave rise to the legend of the 40,000
innocent babes murdered by Herod while searching for the infant Jesus.
The first is a little known historical fact, the second a fable, as
sufficiently shown by Renan in his Vie de Jesus." T. Glossary, p.156-7



"We believe that it was the Sadducees and not the Pharisees who
cruci-fied Jesus. They were Zadokites--partisans of the house of Zadok,
or the sacerdotal family. In the "Acts" the apostles were said to be
persecuted by the Sadducees, but never by the Pharisees. In fact, the
latter never persecuted any one. They had the scribes, rabbis, and
learned men in their numbers, and were not, like the Sadducees, jealous
of their order." ISIS II 148



"A thick film of allegory and blinds, the "dark sayings" of fiction and
parable, thus covers the original esoteric texts from which the New
Testament--as now known--was compiled. Whence, then, the Gospels, the
life of Jesus of Nazareth? Has it not been repeatedly stated that no
human, mortal brain could have invented the life of the Jewish Reformer,
followed by the awful drama on Calvary? We say, on the authority of the
esoteric Eastern School, that all this came from the Gnostics, as far as
the name Christos and the astronomico-mystical allegories are concerned,
and from the writings of the ancient Tanaim as regards the Kabalistic
connection of Jesus or Joshua, with the Biblical personifications. One
of these is the mystic esoteric name of Jehovah--not the present
fanciful God of the pro-fane Jews ignorant of their own mysteries, the
God accepted by the still more ignorant Christians--but the compound
Jehovah of the pagan Initiation. This is proven very plainly by the
glyphs or mystic combinations of various signs which have survived to
this day in the Roman Catholic hieroglyphics.

The Gnostic Records contained the epitome of the chief scenes enacted
during the mysteries of initiation, since the memory of man; though even
that was given out invariably under the garb of semi-allegory, whenever
entrusted to parchment or paper. But the ancient Tanaim, the Initiates
from whom the wisdom of the Kabala (oral tradition) was obtained by the
later Talmudists, had in their possession the secrets of the mystery
lan-guage, and it is in this language that the Gospels were written."
HPB ART III 197



"... belief in reincarnation has nothing in it that can militate against
the teachings of Christ. We affirm, furthermore, that the great
Nazarene Adept distinctly taught it. So did Paul and the Synoptics, and
nearly all the earliest Church Fathers, with scarcely an exception,
accept-ed it, while some actually taught the doctrine." HPB ART I
172



"Jesus, the Adept we believe in, taught our Eastern doctrines, KARMA and
REINCARNATION foremost of all. When the so-called Christians will have
learnt to read the New Testament between the lines, their eyes will be
opened and -- they will see." HPB ART I 175


"Know ye not ye are Gods ?"
John I.12 Isis I p. 2



"...in common with Pythagoras and other hierophant reformers, Jesus
divided his teachings into exoteric and esoteric."
ISIS II 147



"I have no intention of repeating here stale arguments and logical
exposes of the whole theological scheme; for all this has been done,
over and over again, and in a most excellent way, by the ablest
"Infidels" of England and America. But I may briefly repeat a prophecy
which is a self-evident result of the present state of men's minds in
Christendom. Belief in the Bible literally, and in a carnalised Christ,
will not last a quarter of a century longer. The Churches will have to
part with their cher-ished dogmas, or the 20th century will witness the
downfall and ruin of all Christendom, and with it, belief even in a
Christos, as a pure Spirit. The very name has now become obnoxious, and
theological Christianity must die out, never to resurrect again in its
present form. This, in itself, would be the happiest solution of all,
were there no danger from the natural reaction which is sure to follow:
crass materialism will be the consequence and the result of centuries of
blind faith, unless the loss of old ideals is replaced by other ideals,
unassailable, because universal, and built on the rock of eternal truths
instead of the shifting sands of human fancy.
"The Esoteric Character of the Gospels." H.P.B.
Articles III, 194










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