Theos-Talk Archives (May 2004 Message tt00078)

Thursday, May 06, 2004

 

RE: JESUS

 

Dear Friends:

 

 

Several postings have concerned themselves with questions relating to
the “historical” Jesus vs. the religious stories that surround his
work.

 

Here are some notes THEOSOPHY offers for consideration, based on the
records kept by the Ancient Lodge.

 

Beast wishes,

 

Dallas

 

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

 

 

WAS JESUS A REAL PERSON?

 

 

An impression seem to have arisen that H.P.B. denied that Jesus ever
lived at all. 

 

My understanding is that she never said that but only denied the
historicity of the Gospel’s “Jesus,” -- i.e., Jesus, as portrayed in
the four Gospels, she says is a fabrication, a concoction. 

 

She brings forward esoteric teaching to show that the Gospel account
is an historizing of the zodiacal signs and cycles of the most ancient
philosophers, under which they concealed some of their Cosmogonical
facts as myths, and she adds there indeed lived a great reformer, the
Adept Jesus. 

 

Let me offer some notes made in the course of studying ISIS UNVEILED
and The SECRET DOCTRINE. 

 

ISIS UNVEILED II 132 and 133 :- 

 

Whether Jesus belonged to the sect of the Nazarenes or Essenes is
difficult to establish but Jesus preached the philosophy of Sakyamuni,
the Buddha. 

 

While Nazars of olden time were the Chaldean Kabalists, the Essenes
were the converts of Buddhist missionaries who had overrun the Middle
East, Egypt, Greece and even Judea at one time, since the reign of
king Asoka [Glos. pp. 55-6], a zealous Buddhist, who sent out
missionary Buddhist monks far and wide -- even as far as Ireland it is
rumored. 

 

The Essenes [Glos. p. 115] were Buddhists, and have the honour of the
Nazarene reformer, Jesus, as a pupil, yet, the latter is found
disagreeing with his early teachers on questions of formal observance.
"He cannot strictly be called a Nazar, or a nazaria of the older sect.
What Jesus was, may be found in the Codex Nazaraeus, in the unjust
accusations of the Bardesanian Gnostics." (we must note this hint and
inquire into the Codex and accounts of Bardesanian Gnostics). [Glos.
pp. 226, 129, 50]

 

What does the Codex Nazareus [Glos., p. 86] say ? "Jesu is Nebu, the
false Messiah, the destroyer of the old orthodox religion." It is
further said in ISIS UNVEILED : He is the founder of the sect of the
new nazars -- a follower of the Buddhist doctrine. Nebu is from naba,
meaning inspiration in Hebrew, and Nebo is god of wisdom. "But Nebo is
also Mercury, and Mercury is Buddha in the Hindu monogram of planets.
Moreover, we find the Talmudists holding that Jesus was inspired by
the genius of Mercury [Bodha - Wisdom. Glos. p. 226]."

 

He preached the philosophy of Buddha--Sakhyamuni. He belonged to one
of these sects who were cursed by the Sanhendrin and was secretly
persecuted by the orthodox.

 

Both in the KEY TO THEOSOPHY and ISIS UNVEILED we see parallels drawn
between the two great Reformer--Teachers : Jesus and Gautama Buddha.
[see ISIS UNVEILED II p. 133] It is said that both of them had the
same motive: 1. to reform the current popular Jewish religion, and,
2. teaching pure Ethics, the true teaching having been concealed as
an exclusive property of certain esoteric sects.

 

 

ISIS UNVEILED II 135 :- Jesus is there said to be over 40 years of
age, according to Kabalists, when he arrived at Jerusalem.

 

I U II p. 136 and 137 -- an account is given of how Iranaeus
manipulated the Gospels to make it appear that 

 

(a) Jesus did not belong to the sect of Nazarenes, the school of John
the Baptist, and 

 

(b) that his appellation Nazarene is derived from the fact that his
father 's residence was at Nazareth, and not because he belonged to
the sect of Nazarenes.

 

 

I U II p. 127 We are given a clue that Jesus was a true Nazarene.
With ideas of reform, we must not look for evidence in the Gospels,
which are fabrications, but seek in the true original Christianity --
the remnants of the Gnostics. H P B writs: "Thus, if we take into
account all that is puzzling and incomprehensible 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 in the so-called Syrian heresies. Only from
them can we extract any clear notions about what was primitive
Christianity".

 

 

ISIS UNVEILED II p. 144. Jesus belonged to and received initiation
from Nazarenes in the desert and separated himself from them and
became an independent wandering Nazaria -- a travelling therapeutae, a
healer.

 

 

Here we see parallel between Gautama Buddha and Jesus. The former
received initiation from Brahmin Initiates and learnt all from them,
and seeing that the great life-giving truths were withheld by this
proud and exclusive caste from the masses, he separated himself from
his teachers and began preaching pure ethics and the non-violent life
to despised out-castes, servants, villagers, and pariahs.

 

 

I U II p. 144 "Both Jesus and St. John the Baptist preached the
end of the Age ; which proves their knowledge of the secret
computation of the priests and Kabalists, who with the chief of the
Essene communities alone had the secret of the duration of the cycles.
The latter were kabalists and theurgists." We are told that the
meaning of the division of time into ages is esoteric, and Buddhistic.
The uninitiated Christians never understood this, and accepted the
words of Jesus literally, believing the world would end abruptly.

 

 

ISIS UNVEILED II p. 145 : Virtues such as renunciation, charity,
non-violence, etc., taught by Jesus were practiced by both Essenes and
Nazarenes. Christ was a teacher of ‘metempsychoses’ or reincarnation
-- repeating the Essenean teachings. The Essenes were Pythagoreans in
their doctrines and habits. Jesus spoke in parables and metaphors that
can be traced to the Essenes and Nazarenes.  

 

 

ISIS UNVEILED II p.147 : Like Pythagorean-Essenean methods Jesus
divided his teachings into the exoteric and the esoteric, and divided
his followers into “neophytes,” “brethren” and the “perfect.” "But his
career at least as a public Rabbi, was of a too short duration tallow
him to establish a regular school of his own ; and with the exception,
perhaps, of John, it does not seem that he had initiated any other
apostle.”

 

 

I U II p. 148 : Sadducees (Zadokites) accused and crucified Jesus
for practicing the magic of Egyptians.

 

 

I U II p. 150 : Here Jesus is shown to be a real historical
character, a great reformer. 

 

"All this points to the fact, that except a handful of self-styled
Christians who subsequently won the day, all the civilized portion of
the pagan world who knew of Jesus honoured 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
examination 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...."

 

 

I U II p. 152 : Early Nazarenes believed Jesus to have been
over-shadowed by the Divine and that its influence waned when he was
on the cross.

 

 

'THEOSOPHIST' for March 1883, has an article on the “Real Jesus.”
There it states that Jesus was never a historical personage but a myth
built on the historical Jeshu of Lydda -- a Jewish Adept who lived
from 120 to 70 BC, and that the real founder of Christianity was St.
Paul.

 

 

Jesus was also known as Ben Panthera [also PANDERA] (son of Panthera)
[Glos. p 248, 

I U II p. 201, H P B Articles III 173].

 

For the origin of non-existent Jesus of the Gospels we must turn to
accounts of the Gnostic sect of Marcion.

[ Glos. p. 207]

 

 

In I U II p. 137 we are told, "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 into account all that is
puzzling and incomprehensible 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."

 

 

Who were the Syrian Gnostics ? They are early sects founded by Marcion
and Bardesanes. Hence it would be highly profitable to study whatever
is available of these two sects and their philosophy. C. W. King
recalls (GNOSTICS AND THEIR REMAINS) that according to tradition they
were of Persian origin and Magians by religious training. In I U II
157-60 and 161-164 and in the Glossary more information is available.

 

 

Here is a brief summary of these references :

 

 

Gnostic doctrines held that Christ did not and cannot ever die but
only the bodily form which he had occupied died. 

 

But the Church regards this as a heresy. 

 

Gnostics taught the doctrine of Maya--Illusion, of the Real and the
Unreal, as Buddhists and Vedantins do. 

 

Orthodox Christians called the Gnostics 'Illusionists' for believing
that Christ did not and never could die. 

 

Gnosis was an off-shoot of Buddhism and held the same metaphysical
ideas. They made a clear distinction between Christos and the
illusionary Jesus. 

 

Christos was for them what it is for Theosophists -- the Higher Manas,
Ego, Son of the Universal Mind, MANASA-PUTRA, the Vedic VISWAKARMAN,
who sacrificed himself to himself [his Higher Self to serve the Lower
Self, and thus to redeem the worlds]. [S D II 167]

 

Christos or Christ--Krishna is explained as: "…the incarnating Egos
have taken upon themselves, voluntarily and knowingly, the burden of
all the future personalities. Thence it is easy to see that it is
neither Mr. A nor Mr. B, nor any of the personalities that
periodically clothe the Self-sacrificing Ego, which are real
sufferers, but verily the innocent Christos in us."
Transactions of Blavatsky Lodge, p. 68. [ BCW Vol. X ]

 

 

VICARIOUS ATONEMENT

 

The Church dogma of Vicarious Atonement arose from the
mystico-metaphysical doctrine that Jesus died on the cross to save the
world. This imposed as dogma and enforced by the Church is productive
of immorality (another can take our blame) and this is the source of
much evil in society. 

 

 

THE FIRST SON OF GOD

 

Gnostics held the old theosophical doctrine that described Christ as
the Logos, the first emanation from the invisible ABSOLUTE [the
God-Head] manifesting itself as tangible in Spirit. It is the same as
the Greek Logos, the Hebrew Messiah, the Latin Verbum, the Hindu Viraj
-- they are viewed metaphysically as “collective entities, flames
detached from the one eternal centre of Light.” (I U 1 p. 59).

 

"Thus Christos, as a unity, is but an abstraction : a general idea
representing the collective aggregation of the numberless
spirit-entities, which are the direct emanations of the infinite,
invisible, incomprehensible FIRST CAUSE--the individual spirits of
men." (I U II p. 159) 

 

In the majority of mankind this Christos [the HIGHER SELF] is latent.
It only overshadows the mortal, (which are its radiations [Rays] on
earth, but also, actively manifesting in such god-like figures as the
Buddha, Jesus, Krishna, etc., because all these succeeded earlier in
uniting themselves permanently with their divine prototype, their
"Father in Heaven." 

 

Gnostic sects held this view of Christ, and of the perfectibility of
all men, which the ambitious, ignorant Church Fathers sought to
destroy and declared, as “pre-existence” to be anathema.

    

Marcion, [Glos p. 207] one of the prominent Gnostics, wrote
“Antithesis" challenging the Church corruptions of the pure philosophy
regarding the true nature of the Christos, and the Church responded
with its "Refutations" -- full of lies and falsehoods -- Tertulian and
Epiphanius, also early Church Fathers, excelling in the art of
falsification. The Church destroyed most of the works of the Gnostics,
yet preserved a record of their doctrines in the “Refutations.”

 

Marcion recognised no other Gospel than a few Epistles of Paul. He
rejected totally the anthropomorphism of the Old Testament and drew a
clear line of demarcation between old Judaism and the new
“Christianity.” 

 

He looked on Jesus as neither a king, nor a Messiah of the Jews, nor a
“son of David.” He declared that he was "… a divine being sent to
revel to man a spiritual religion, and a God of goodness and grace
hitherto unknown"

( I U II p. 162). 

 

Jesus ignored Jehovah and preached against the religion of the
Siniatic god.  

 

The Marcionites showed that the Church made a great blunder in
identifying Jehovah as the "Father in Heaven" of Jesus. 

 

Marcion said that the mission of Jesus was to terminate the concept of
Jehovah being the Lord-God of the Israelites, and, instead, to
establish a pure spiritual religion, a universal faith based on
unadulterated Truth. The Universal Wisdom-Religion he desired to
establish, he had learned at the feet of the Gurus in the Himalayas,
not on mount Sinai. Marcion shows the contradictory character of
Jehovah and denies any relationship to Jesus, hence the so-called
Messianic prophecies of the Old Testament are done away with.

 

I U II p. 164 shows a set of tables that compare the teachings of
Manu, Buddha and Jesus and thus demonstrate them to be identical. 

 

In summation, we could observe that the amount of evidence brought
forward is overwhelming.

 

One might repeat: Theosophy, is not a creed or dogma invented by
theologians, by fallible men, but ANCIENT and UNIVERSAL KNOWLEDGE. It
is the cumulative testimony of an innumerable, endless series of
Seers. [S D I 272-3] It is not a religion, not a creed nor does it
have dogmas. It is not built on anything but that ancient foundation
upon which every one of the religions of the world have been based.

 

 

Concerning the Knowers of the Wisdom of the Universe, We find H P B
wrote:  

 

 

"Their spiritual visions, real explorations by, and through, physical
and spiritual senses untrammeled by blind flesh, were systematically
checked and compared one with the other, and their nature sifted. All
that was not corroborated by unanimous and collective experience was
rejected, while that only was recorded as established truth which, in
various ages, under different climes, and throughout an untold series
of incessant observations, was found to agree and receive constantly
further corroboration." [Key, p. 85]

 

 

"Let no man set up a popery instead of Theosophy, as this would be
suicidal and has ever ended most fatally" has been the plea of H.P.B.
to students.( "Five Messages to American Theosophists” from H. P.
Blavatsky. First Message). 

 

 

Students are invited to seek for and make their own in-depth study for
of all the keys H.P.B. gives out in her books: ISIS UNVEILED, SECRET
DOCTRINE, and other of her numerous articles pertaining to the roots
of Christianity, the pagan origins of Church rituals and dogmas ; of
those Keys, we might mention: the Anthropological, Mystical,
Historical, Astrological, Astronomical, Metaphysical, Cosmogonical,
Psychical, Physiological, Numerical, Ethnological Keys she has
furnished in respect to both Old and New Testaments, especially, the
Book of Genesis, the Gospels and the Revelations, and some Kabalistic
texts.

 

-----------------------------------------------------

 

Other notes:

 

 

“Epiphanius brings it as an idolatrous charge against the
Carpocratians that “they kept painted portraits, and even gold and
silver images, and in other materials, which they pretended to be
portraits of Jesus, and made by Pilate after the likeness of Christ. .
. . These they keep in secret, along with Pythagoras, Plato, and
Aristotle, and setting them all up together, they worship and offer
sacrifices unto them after the Gentiles’ fashion.”

 

What would the pious Epiphanius say were he to resuscitate and step
into St. Peter’s Cathedral at Rome! Ambrosius seems also very
desperate at the idea — that some persons fully credited the statement
of Lampridius that Alexander Severus had in his private chapel an
image of Christ among other great philosophers. “That the Pagans
should have preserved the likeness of Christ,” he exclaims, “but the
disciples have neglected to do so, is a notion the mind shudders to
entertain, much less to believe.”

All this points undeniably to the fact, that 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
examination 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 supported 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.

 

In a pretended letter of Lentulus, a senator and a distinguished
historian, to the Roman senate, there is a description of the personal
appearance of Jesus. The letter itself, written in horrid Latin, is
pronounced a bare-faced forgery; but we find therein an expression
which suggests many thoughts.  

 

Albeit a forgery it is evident that whosoever invented it has
nevertheless tried to follow tradition as closely as possible. The
hair of Jesus is represented in it as “wavy and curling . . . flowing
down upon his shoulders,” and as “having a parting in the middle of
the head after the fashion of the Nazarenes.” This last sentence
shows:  

 

1. That there was such a tradition, based on the biblical description
of John the Baptist, the Nazaria, and the custom of this sect. 

 

2. Had Lentulus been the author of this letter, it is difficult to
believe that Paul should never have heard of it; and had he known its
contents, he would never have pronounced it a shame for men to wear
their hair long,* thus shaming his Lord and Christ-God.  

 

3. If Jesus did wear his hair long and “parted in the middle of the
forehead, after the fashion of the Nazarenes (as well as John, the
only one of his apostles who followed it), then we have one good
reason more to say that Jesus must have belonged to the sect of the
Nazarenes, and been called NASARIA for this reason and not because he
was an inhabitant of Nazareth; for they never wore their hair long.  

 

The Nazarite, who separated himself unto the Lord, allowed “no razor
to come upon his head.” “He shall be holy and shall let the locks of
the hair of his head grow,” says Numbers (vi. 5). Samson was a
Nazarite, i.e., vowed to the service of God, and in his hair was his
strength. “No razor shall come upon his head; the child shall be a
Nazarite unto God from the womb” (Judges xiii. 5 ).  

 

But the final and most reasonable conclusion to be inferred from this
is that Jesus, who was so opposed to all the orthodox Jewish
practices, would not have allowed his hair to grow had he not belonged
to this sect, which in the days of John the Baptist had already become
a heresy in the eyes of the Sanhedrim.  

 

The Talmud, speaking of the Nazaria, or the Nazarenes (who had
abandoned the world like Hindu yogis or hermits) calls them a sect of
physicians, of wandering exorcists; as also does Jervis. “They went
about the country, living on alms and performing cures.Ӡ Epiphanius
says that the Nazarenes come next in heresy to the Corinthians whether
having existed “before them or after them, nevertheless synchronous,”
and then adds that “all Christians at that time were equally called
Nazarenes”!‡ [. from vol II, 151-53 of Isis Unveiled.] 

 

 

In the very first remark made by Jesus about John the Baptist, we find
him stating that he is “Elias, which was for to come.” This
assertion, if it is not a later interpolation for the sake of having a
prophecy fulfilled, means again that Jesus was a kabalist; unless
indeed we have to adopt the doctrine of the French spiritists and
suspect him of believing in reïncarnation. Except the kabalistic
sects of the Essenes, the Nazarenes, the disciples of Simeon Ben
Iochaï, and Hillel, neither the orthodox Jews, nor the Galileans,
believed or knew anything about the doctrine of permutation. And the
Sadducees rejected even that of the resurrection.

 

“But the author of this restitution was Mosah, our master, upon whom
be peace! Who was the revolution (transmigration) of Seth and Hebel,
that he might cover the nudity of his Father Adam — Primus,” says the
Kabala.* Thus, Jesus hinting that John was the revolution, or
transmigration of Elias, seems to prove beyond any doubt the school to
which he belonged.

 

Until the present day uninitiated Kabalists and Masons believe
permutation to be synonymous with transmigration and metempsychosis.
But they are as much mistaken in regard to the doctrine of the true
Kabalists as to that of the Buddhists. True, the Sohar says in one
place, “All souls are subject to transmigration . . . men do not know
the ways of the Holy One, blessed be He; they do not know that they
are brought before the tribunal, both before they enter this world and
after they quit it,” and the Pharisees also held this doctrine, as
Josephus shows (Antiquities, xviii. 13).  

 

Also the doctrine of Gilgul, held to the strange theory of the
“Whirling of the Soul,” which taught that the bodies of Jews buried
far away from the Holy Land, still preserve a particle of soul which
can neither rest nor quit them, until it reaches the soil of the
“Promised Land.” And this “whirling” process was thought to be
accomplished by the soul being conveyed back through an actual
evolution of species; transmigrating from the minutest insect up to
the largest animal. But this was an exoteric doctrine. We refer the
reader to the Kabbala Denudata of Henry Khunrath; his language,
however obscure, may yet throw some light upon the subject.

 

But this doctrine of permutation, or revolution, must not be
understood as a belief in reïncarnation. That Moses was considered
the transmigration of Abel and Seth, does not imply that the kabalists
— those who were initiated at least — believed that the identical
spirit of either of Adam’s sons reappeared under the corporeal form of
Moses. It only shows what was the mode of expression they used when
hinting at one of the profoundest mysteries of the Oriental Gnosis,
one of the most majestic articles of faith of the Secret Wisdom. It
was purposely veiled so as to half conceal and half reveal the truth.
It implied that Moses, like certain other god-like men, was believed
to have reached the highest of all states on earth: — the rarest of
all psychological phenomena, the perfect union of the immortal spirit
with the terrestrial duad had occurred. The trinity was complete. A
god was incarnate. But how rare such incarnations!

 

That expression, “Ye are gods,” which, to our biblical students, is a
mere abstraction, has for the kabalists a vital significance.  

 

Each immortal spirit that sheds its radiance upon a human being is a
god — the Microcosmos of the Macrocosmos, part and parcel of the
Unknown God, the First Cause of which it is a direct emanation. It is
possessed of all the attributes of its parent source. Among these
attributes are omniscience and omnipotence. Endowed with these, but
yet unable to fully manifest them while in the body, during which time
they are obscured, veiled, limited by the capabilities of physical
nature, the thus divinely-inhabited man may tower far above his kind,
evince a god-like wisdom, and display deific powers; for while the
rest of mortals around him are but overshadowed by their divine SELF,
with every chance given to them to become immortal hereafter, but no
other security than their personal efforts to win the kingdom of
heaven, the so chosen man has already become an immortal while yet on
earth. His prize is secured. Henceforth he will live forever in
eternal life. Not only he may have “dominion” over all the works of
creation by employing the “excellence” of the NAME (the ineffable one)
but be higher in this life, not, as Paul is made to say, “a little
lower than the angels.”

 

The ancients never entertained the sacrilegious thought that such
perfected entities were incarnations of the One Supreme and for ever
invisible God. No such profanation of the awful Majesty entered into
their conceptions.

[. from vol II, 151-53 of Isis Unveiled.] 

 

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

 

 

---
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dallas

 

-----Original Message-----
From: Mary Workman [mailto:maryworkman@earthlink.net] 
Sent: Wednesday, May 05, 2004 8:55 AM
To: study@blavatsky.net
Subject: [bn-study] RE: "Satan"

 

Hi L.R. - The way I've learned to interpret Jesus' comments that he is
the only way to heaven is to see Jesus as a symbol of the higher self
- the Christos ("The Path" in mystic symbology.) As HPB says in the
Theosophical Glossary: "Every good individual, therefore, may find
Christ in his "inner Man" as Paul expresses it (Ephes. iii.16,17),
whether he be Jew, Mussulman, Hindu or Christian." The way to truth
is through the higher self.

 

The only document that makes sense to me regarding the horrors of war
is the Bhagavad-Gita - Arjuna's despondency and the insights he is
forced to develop through his conversations with Krishna are
revelations. While typically, as Theosophists, we look at these works
esoterically - sometimes I try to gain insight into humanity and the
unspeakable crimes of war by looking at the Gita with an exoteric
perspective.

 

Hope this helps somehow.

 

M


 

-----Original Message-----
From: L.R. Andrews [mailto:liberty722980@yahoo.com]
Sent: Tuesday, May 04, 2004 6:36 PM
To: study@blavatsky.net
Subject: [bn-study] "Satan"

Hello friends,

 

In keeping with the Theosophical motto, "There is no religion higher
than Truth" and with the fact that we can all KNOW, rather than just
believe blindly in some dogma, feedback on the following will be
welcomed:

 

Religious tracts are often left at my place of work. One said, "Jesus
is the ONLY way to heaven." Having been indoctrinated by priests and
nuns from early childhood, I and I daresay many others, actually
believe or believed this. Many feel guilty or even have psychological
conflicts when common sense enters the picture. It seems impossible to
reason with those who insist that if one does not accept Jesus as the
only door to heaven, one is "damned to eternal separation from God in
hell." 

 

Another tract says most people would not kill anyone and most people
are essentially good. The tract goes on to say that despite this
general human goodness, wars and other atrocities keep happening. They
attribute this to an unseen evil force, Satan. This seems terribly
simplistic if not downright superstitious. The seeker of Truth wants
Truth, not exoteric fairy tales.

 

Thanks for your comments.

 

L.R.


_____  


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