 88. Jesus (His Truth) |
The astrologically-based esoteric metaphor of the "Star within" appears as a kind of cosmological reference in the ancient traditions, in such aphorisms as "as above, so below" (meaning, what is outside is also inside). Likewise, where there is the process of Spiritual Ascent by means of the Blessings of a Spiritual Transmission-Master (and, thus, in the Yogic manner associated with Shaktipat), the inward and upward focus between the eyes is spontaneously stimulated and awakened, and internal phenomena appear that have, in their occurrence, some likeness to what can be called "happenings in the sky". Therefore, in the esoteric traditions, the "inward plane" is sometimes referred to as the "sky of mind", or the "interior sky", and as having some likeness to the cosmological "sky" - and a kind of cosmological journey (via interior Sun, and Moon, and hierarchies of sub-stars, and planes, or worlds, of experience, leading, at last, to the central Star, That Shines with the Light That is also all-Pervading) is suggested (and, in many cases, explicitly indicated) in the language of virtually all esoteric traditions associated with the fifth stage of life.
In the traditions based upon the culture of the ancients, there is a continuity within the domain of the fourth and the fifth stage traditions - that provides the basis for a single universal cultural structure. That cultural structure includes both exoteric and esoteric teachings and practices. The exoteric teachings are for the general public and the beginners-the yet "unconverted" and the newly "converted". The esoteric teachings are, necessarily, for practice (and not merely for thinking, and arguing, and rudimentary adaptation) - and, therefore, the esoteric teachings are exclusively for those who have already proven themselves in the domain of the exoteric culture.
On the basis of the principle of "the exoteric precedes and leads to the esoteric", the procedure followed by Jesus and his "inner-circle" devotees was to, first, bring responsive new "converts" into the exoteric domain (of beginner-instructions), and, then; at the appropriate time, the "tested and proven" individuals were invited into the "inner circle", where they received the esoteric teachings and the Spiritual initiation. On this basis, the preinstitutional school of Jesus of Galilee was built around a teacher (who was Jesus himself), and his school had both an exoteric and an esoteric dimension to its activities.
So, who were the people who were actually party to the "inner-circle" esoteric teaching and the Spiritual Transmission of Jesus? There are indications in the "New Testament" Gospels that Joseph of Arimathea was an initiate, and Nicodemus, too, who is said to have come with Joseph of Arimathea to collect the body of Jesus from the cross. Presumably, the twelve "disciples" were "inner-circle" initiates-but (according to the "New Testament" Gospels) they seem not to have known that Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus had taken the body of Jesus for "secret'.' burial.
The burial tradition of the time of Jesus involved placing the body in a closed tomb (often, with other bodies, of recently deceased persons) and left there for about a year-by which time only the bones remained. Then the bones were placed in a special vessel (called an "ossuary"), which might contain the bones of several other people (usually, from the same family). It is not indicated (in the "New Testament" Gospels) that Jesus was left alone in a tomb long enough for his bones to be collected. It is, however, commonly said (in the "Resurrection"-stories contained in the "New Testament" Gospels) that the body of Jesus "disappeared".
Perhaps the body of Jesus was secretly buried to protect it from mistreatment by strangers or that He was not really dead in the first place but only "drugged" (given in the wine as he hung on the cross) or passed into what is called a 'Yogic Swoon" in which the body shuts down but does not die(true spirit-energy cannot die) . It may very well be that only Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus knew of Jesus' burial places imply because Jesus' disciples (and the rest of his following) were absent (having returned to Galilee immediately after Jesus' death). Hence, the exoteric tradition, which became the dominant tradition of "official" Christianity, emphasized the mysterious bodily disappearance of Jesus - or, simply, his physical absence after death, and which absence soon became "concretized" by bodily "Resurrection" and "Ascension" myths.
The bodily "Ascension" of Jesus is the principal belief of "official" exoteric Christianity. The disappearance of the dead Jesus is reported (in the "absent-from-the-tomb" stories in the "New Testament" Gospels) but the fact of the "Ascended" Jesus is not otherwise experienced, except in the form of ghostly apparitions, mystical visions, and psychic visitations. The "after-death" physical "appearances" of Jesus are, clearly, examples of "concretization" work (or intentional myth-making). However, immediately after the death of Jesus, there may very well have been dreams and visions and other kinds of psychic experience on the part of some of Jesus' followers. Such "visions of the deceased" are common even in the present day. Over time, however, these "visitations" became "concretized", and, thus and thereby, were made into exoteric (or physically-based) "official" doctrines, describing the postmortem Jesus as showing his "Resurrected physical body" to his disciples, and, then, "Ascending" bodily into the sky, from the top of a hill (and disappearing-like the Sun-behind a cloud).
At any rate, whatever may actually have happened to Jesus' dead body, the information is now lost. In the year seventy of the Common Era, Jerusalem was destroyed by the Romans-and, perhaps in and as a result of that event, all evidence (and possible knowledge) of where the body had been placed (or, otherwise, where and how the bones were kept) was also destroyed. Perhaps, the people who actually possessed the bones of Jesus, or, otherwise, knew of their whereabouts, were killed in the event of the destruction of Jerusalem - or, perhaps, those people simply went elsewhere (with or without the bones of Jesus).
