JESUS in THEOSOPHY
Jun 11, 2006 06:03 PM
by W.Dallas TenBroeck
Sunday, June 11, 2006
Dear Friends
Recent discussion, I believe, makes these quotations useful to consider
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 knowing
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. It appeared originally
in Theosophical Forum (New York) for April, May, June and July 1900-1 ] and
was reprinted in The Theosophical Movement, April 1964.
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 ministers 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, visited or heard from
India, it is more than probable that esoterically his teachings are
identical 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 universal
religion, which antedated the Vedic ages--we speak of that prehistoric
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 principles. It alleged that
1, everything existing, exists from natural causes;
2, that virtue brings its own reward, and vice and sin their own punishment;
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 Buddhism, 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 evidently 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 prophets, 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 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." 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 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." 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
additional 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 Talmudistic 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.
lOO, 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 crucified
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 anyone. 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 profane 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 language, 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, accepted 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
cherished 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
------------------------------------
Best wishes
Dallas
Dallas
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