The Universal Non-“Religious” Message of Jesus of
Galilee
1
Jesus of Galilee (as he is reported in the “New
Testament” Gospels) was a Spirit-oriented, rather than
merely a “religion”oriented, figure. According to the
reports about him, Jesus understood the Divine practice of
life in Spiritual, mystical, and personal terms rather than
in conventionally religious, dogmatic, and ritualistic
terms.
Therefore, in the “New Testament” Gospels, Jesus is seen
to be teaching the practice of “sacrifice” in Spiritual,
mystical, and personal terms. He taught that there is no
inherent separation or obstruction between living beings and
the Divine Spirit. He taught that the Divine Reality is the
Living Spirit, in Whom all exist, and in Whom all must
live.
Jesus of Galilee did not teach that living beings need a
mediator between themselves and the Divine, nor did he teach
that there should be or can be any substitute for one’s own
sacrifice of separate self as the means of Communing with
the Spiritual Divine. He did not represent himself as a
mediator or as a substitute sacrifice, since he did not
presume any inherent obstruction between human beings (or
any living beings at all) and the Spiritual Divine.
Jesus only taught a direct, non-ritualistic, Spiritual,
mystical, and personal Way of self-sacrifice (or of
ego-renouncing Divine Spiritual Communion), which, in his
view, represented and epitomized all of the ultimate Wisdom
of the ancients.
Paul of Tarsus (as he is reported in the “New Testament”)
was a conventional Jew, trained in the sectarian rabbinical
system of his time. He was not taught by Jesus or by the
disciples of Jesus, nor does the characteristic “point of
view” of his letters represent the unique Spiritual teaching
of Jesus. Paul eventually expressed his view that human
beings in general, including himself, are inherently
separated from the Divine. He could see no effective means
for restoring himself (or anyone) to the Divine, since there
is-it seemed to him-an inherent obstruction in any and every
individual, that cannot be undone by one’s own actions.
Then, as reported in his letters, Paul experienced a
spontaneous mystical phenomenon-which he, for whatever
reason, “interpreted” to be associated with, and even
identical to, the cosmically “Ascended” Jesus. Apparently as
a result of that experience, Paul felt encouraged to believe
that the inherent obstruction and separation between
“creatures” and the Divine had been removed, for everyone,
by means of the death (or ritual blood-sacrifice), and
“Resurrection”, and subsequent “Ascension” of Jesus.
Thus “converted” and “saved”, Paul spent the rest of his
life proclaiming this new religion he had, himself alone,
“discovered” (or self-generated, or invented)-which is the
“Christian” religion of faith in, or systematic belief in,
the effective power of Jesus’ self
sacrifice for the purpose of bringing everyone to
eventual Union (or Re-Union) with the Divine. In all of
this, Paul of Tarsus was more of a Greek “gnostic” than a
traditional Jew.
Jesus of Galilee taught. the practice of the sacrifice of
self by means of self-forgetting love of the Divine Spirit,
and of constant inherence in the Spiritual Divine, expressed
in daily life via tolerance, compassion, and service in
relation to all human beings. Jesus heartily proclaimed that
all human beings are inherently intimate with the Spiritual
Divine (Whom he described as the “Father” of all). He did
not,, at all subscribe to the view that living beings are
inherently evil or inherently separated from the Spiritual
Divine. He described every living being as a child of One
“Father”.
By referring to the Divine as “Father”, Jesus did not
mean that people should be childish (and, so, act in such a
loveless and self obsessed
manner that they effectively separate themselves from the
Spiritual Divine). Rather, Jesus’ idea of the “Fatherhood”
of the Divine was related to the conventions of Jewish laws
of inheritance.
Jesus conceived of every human child as the direct
inheritor (even through every human’s birth in his or her
mother’s womb) of the blessings and status of all that a
child may rightly receive from his or her parents. According
to Jesus, that which is inherited, in the case of a “child
of God”, is Blessing from the Spiritual Divine and Inherent
Union (or Unity) with the Spiritual Divine.
As it is recorded in the “New Testament” Gospels, the
teaching of Jesus of Galilee is that people are tending to
separate themselves from the Spiritual Divine. He described
the “Father” as always ready for, and even expecting,
intimate Re-Union with any and all who have separated
themselves from the Divine Person (Whom Jesus proclaimed to
Be One and All-Including). Jesus did not at all subscribe to
the view that people are inherently (rather than as a
temporary result of ignorant personal activity) separated
from the Spiritual Divine-and, thus, even as a result of
Divine Will, inevitably destined to death and hell, unless a
voluntary mediator, or substitute self-sacrifice,
can appear between them and the Divine, and, by means of a
unique action (or by conditional, or cause-and-effect,
means), create God-Union for all. Indeed, the idea of a
necessary mediator or ritual substitute is the most obvious
and conventional kind of priest-talk (or religion-speak) – a
kind of inherently “sinful” (or “off the mark”) presumption,
the kind relative to which Jesus was always shown to be
critical in the “New Testament” Gospels.
The teaching of Jesus that is documented in the “New
Testament” Gospels is that “sin”–or all that one may
ignorantly (or as a result of failed understanding and lack
of Spiritual awareness) do or think or believe or presume
that experientially separates oneself from the Spiritual
Divine, or obstructs one’s Inherent Spiritual Union with the
Divine-is not inherent. Jesus of Galilee taught that anyone
and everyone can and should and must repent of (or renounce)
“sin” or the ignorant tendency to actively separate oneself
from, or presume separation from, the Spiritual Divine.
Jesus taught that such repentance itself purifies the
individual-as long as it is practiced as a continuous and
real exercise, accompanied by changes of heart, and mind,
and bodily action. And Jesus
taught that such self-purification-rather than any
participation (or even any belief) in ritual (or substitute)
sacrifices-is the basic (or foundation) means for
participation in Inherent Union (or Perpetual Re-Union) with
the Spiritual Divine.
Now, repentance (or the renunciation of the tendency to
separate from the Spiritual Divine) is, basically, a process
of transcending the individuated self. Indeed, the separate
self (or ego, or self-contraction away from the Divine
Reality) is “sin”. Therefore, the practice taught by Jesus
is that of the transcending of egoity by means of
self-surrender into the Spiritual Divine.
Jesus of Galilee taught that once anyone has become aware
of “sin” as the ego-action of separation from the Divine
Spirit, and once, on that basis, one has become responsible
for egoic activity by freely renouncing it–one must live by
practicing the continuous transcending of the tendency to
separate from the Spiritual Divine. Jesus summarized that
ego-renouncing practice of life via the ancient Jewish
summary of the Divine Law, which is the admonition to love,
the Divine and all human others-or to sacrifice, or
transcend, separate self, in every moment, through the
practice of self-surrender to the Divine, and, subsequently,
by ego-transcending action in relation to one’s every human
association.
The teaching of Jesus of Galilee is a direct “method” (or
an inner and self-responsible esoteric means) of Union with
the Divine Spirit by means of self-sacrifice (or
self-surrender into Divine Communion). Paul of Tarsus
proposed a religion (or an externalized, or “objectified”,
and, thus, exoteric, means, or “substitution-method”) about
Jesus as a substitute sacrifice.
The teaching of Paul that is presented in the “New
Testament” is that one should accept, and (thus) believe in,
the objective sacrifice of Jesus as a substitute for one’s
own personal sacrifice. For Paul, the individual is
incapable of Divine Communion, and can participate in the
Divine only from a distance-or through belief. For Paul,
Divine Communion is, for all “creatures”, a mediated event.
For Paul, only Jesus participates in Divine Union-whereas
all others are like those who observe a priest performing an
objective ritual, done in the name of, and quite apart from,
the observers. For Paul, everyone-except for
Jesus-participates in the Divine only sympathetically,
indirectly, merely believingly, and, for now, only
partially.
Paul taught a religion in which people remain as egos,
made hopeful (and, it is expected, more loving and benign)
by what they believe about
Jesus. Therefore, in Paul’s view, one’s actual and full
entrance into Divine Union must wait for an always yet
future event-either in the universal righteous final
judgment and aggressive
transformation of humankind at the “second coming” of Jesus
or else in some other Divinely-destined time or place or
circumstance after death.
The Spiritual teaching of Jesus of Galilee stands in
direct contrast to the conventional (or “substitutionist”)
religious views of Paul of Tarsus. Jesus would not at all
have agreed that human beings are sinful inherently-or, as
it is said, “fallen”, or inherently, rather than merely
ignorantly and actively, separated from the Divine-nor would
Jesus have agreed that human beings (therefore) need a
mediator (rather than a Spiritual Master, or Sat-Guru), or
that human beings require (or could even use) a substitute
for their own necessary (and inherently salvatory) free
action of repentance and Divine Communion. Indeed, one of
Jesus’ primary efforts was to criticize such conventional
religious views. Jesus (as he is reported in the “New
Testament” Gospels) was committed to the view that every
human being is inherently free to repent of the acts of
egoic (or “sinful”, or separate and separative) self, and to
turn directly to the Ever-Living (or All-Breathing) Divine
Spirit in Which all exist.
Jesus of Galilee clearly felt that his role, as a
Spiritual Master, was to criticize and purify the minds and
institutions of his time, and (by means of Spiritual Baptism
and right Spiritual instruction) to Awaken people to the
Spiritual practice of life. Thus, Jesus served his intimate
(or “inner-circle”) devotees as a Spiritual Transmitter (or
Spirit-Baptizer) – and, thus, as a Spiritual Master with the
unique Power to directly Awaken committed practitioners to
profound Awareness of the Spiritual Divine. However, Jesus
was not otherwise disposed to be regarded or proclaimed as a
priestly (or “objectified” cultic religious) substitute for
the necessary personal practice of others. Therefore, Jesus
always shunned the attempts of people around him to declare
him to be the “Messiah”, or, otherwise, to put him in a
position of worldly or institutional responsibility.
Therefore, it was only after Jesus’ purported death that
an institutional cult (or emerging new religion) began to
develop around the person of Jesus of Galilee-and Paul of
Tarsus made himself the leading literary (or doctrinal)
exponent of that new religion.
3.
Only by abandoning its exclusivist claims, and by ceasing
thus to confront and reject all religions other than
“official” Christianity and all Spiritual Adepts other than
Jesus, will Christianity begin to actively demonstrate the
Wisdom, the love, the all-inclusive tolerance, and the truly
self-sacrificial “method” of the Spiritual Master Jesus.
Therefore, if Christianity is to be thus transformed, it
must freely abandon the ego-based beliefs and
substitutionist cultic presumptions of Paul of Tarsus, and,
on that basis, embrace the free Spiritual Wisdom
communicated by Jesus of Galilee.
The path proposed by Paul of Tarsus cannot achieve the
“salvation” (or Divine Re-Union) that it seeks and
proclaims. The myth of the sacrifice of Jesus is not a
sufficient substitute for anyone’s real sacrifice of
conditional self. As long as the. conditional self (or
ego-“I”) is the basis of human living, no Re-Union with the
Spiritual Divine is possible. As Jesus himself is reported
to have taught, there, is no substitute for the individually
initiated and personally practiced self-transcending love of
the Spiritual Divine, and there is no “right life” without
self-transcending love, tolerance, and cooperation in
relation to all others.
The eventual (and early) “Christian” institutionalization
of Jesus of Galilee (as he is portrayed-and, otherwise,
interpreted, and promoted-in the “New Testament”) was not
developed on the basis of the esoteric teachings
communicated by Jesus himself. The “official” Christian
Church merely substituted a new form of priestly
“objectification”-religion–which, as such, is based on
external (or non-personal, or substitute) “sacrifices”-as a
replacement. for an older religion that was, itself, already
institutionalized on essentially the same priestly basis.
Therefore, Christians, to the present day, are tied to the
myth of Jesus as priest and substitute sacrifice.
4.
There is only one “guilty party” that is constantly
addressed by Jesus of Galilee in the “New Testament”
Gospels-and that “guilty one” is not (by Jesus himself)
“objectified” and universalized in the mythic (and
“substitutionist”) form of the “Devil” (or “Satan”). Rather,
the “guilty one” that Jesus always addresses is each and eve
human (apparent) self. That “guilty one” is the ego, the
actual doer of “sin”-or the doer of the dissociative and
Spiritually ignorant activity of the individual bodily (or
psycho-physical) self.
According to Jesus of Galilee, the one (and, really
Divine, rather than merely “religious”) necessity is that
the Wisdom quenching ego-self
must be transcended in every single case. And, according to
Jesus of Galilee, until there is a growth of right Wisdom
and true Spirituality in the world, neither religion nor
secular society is a refuge from falsehood and
suffering.
Spiritual Adepts are born to help humankind to Realize
the Divine Spiritual Truth-not to prevent themselves, as
well as all others, from Realizing the Divine Spiritual
Truth. Therefore, says Jesus of Galilee (along with all
other Spiritual Adepts), it is time that all human beings
surrender themselves, one by one, to the Divine Spiritual
Reality, and, thus, approach the Divine nakedly, free of all
self-armor, all presumptions of superiority, all moral
righteousness, and all of the will toward dissociation from
other lovers of Truth.
In every generation, the Spiritual Masters of the past
are dead (and now gone on to their destiny in the Divine).
Therefore, in every generation, those who have Realized what
the Spiritual Masters taught in the past must come forward,
alive, to teach the people. Those who have not themselves
Realized what the past Spiritual Masters taught must remain
silent, and submit to the process of Realizing the Truth-but
the Adept-Realizers and their Realized devotees must give
their Self-Radiant Witness and Demonstration. Only thus does
the Truth survive, uncorrupted and alive, generation after
generation. And, if any generation is without a living
Spiritual tradition (able to be continued, from generation
to generation, by real and effective Spirit-Baptizing
means), then its children are, likewise, without the
Liberating Light-even while the holy books are piled up, one
upon the other, like a fortress in the night.
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