The Universal Non-“Religious” Message of Jesus of Galilee

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
medi-ator 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-sacrificer, 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 judgement 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.

2.

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 every 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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