 88. Jesus (His Truth) |
II
As a book based on legend and myth, the "New Testament" is not different from traditional storybooks found elsewhere in the religious traditions - for instance, the stories in Hinduism about Krishna and Rama. There exists, among many people of the world, a popular tradition of naive belief that characters such as Krishna, and Rama, and Jesus are (simply as described in the storybooks) historical persons even somehow presently existing in realms of a concrete but subtle kind. However, there are growing numbers of other kinds of people, who do not require personal belief in the historical reality of mythological characters, and who accept religious storybooks as traditional literatures that convey certain kinds of human truths (and only some suggestion of ultimate Truth).
The religious figures in all the world's ancient traditional stories are largely mythological persons, and the stories may or may not have anything to do with historical persons who ever existed. Whatever any individual may think about such religious figures now, long after the time when those religious figures could possibly have lived, is strictly that individual's own mode of thinking or believing.
The mythological stories about figures such as Krishna and Rama were often, it seems (based on the profound depth of presentation of the traditional literatures about Krishna and Rama), made by people of some significant level and degree of Spiritual development - and, from their view, they were communicating about Spiritual Truth (Itself), by making popular stories that could be instructive to ordinary (or at least less Spiritually developed.) people. The "New Testament", however, has virtually no content that suggests it (or any part of it) was written by persons of great Spiritual development-but, rather, the "New Testament" bears the characteristics of "authorship" that suggest it is the product of ordinary popular storytelling (or Spiritually undeveloped religious fantasizing) combined with the overriding voices of institutional managers, who control and modify and build upon the popular tradition, in order to "concretize" a propagandistic institutional intention.
The only religious and Spiritual "genius" that has any voice in the "New Testament" is the person of Jesus. And, because of this solitary evidence, it would seem appropriate to presume there actually was a Spiritual Master Jesus of Galilee - whose life and teachings (although much covered up and distorted by the institutional and otherwise naive popular mentality that made the "New Testament" Gospels) are, nonetheless, at the root of the "official" myth of Jesus of Galilee.
Completely apart from all the institutionalized Jesus-making, and all of the institution-based speculation, and all the post Jesus' lifetime imaginings and propaganda, a (very likely, historical) person, named "Jesus of Galilee", is presented via a traditional genre of religious "fiction" - and that Jesus is (by means of literary devices) associated with certain kinds of characteristics, and portrayed to be demonstrating and otherwise 'speaking in a manner that conveys an ancient, already-existing, tradition of moral, devotional, and Spiritual representation.
Ultimately, it makes no difference if Jesus is a myth or not just as, ultimately, it makes no difference whether Krishna, or Rama, or Osiris, or Zeus existed or not. What is of significance is the Truth and, otherwise, any kind of human truths - pointed to by the "concretized" myths.
The "New Testament" conveys the suggestion of a Spiritual message (or some kind of underlying "secret" of a Spiritual kind) that is in the domain of the fourth stage of life and the fifth stage of life - and not at all beyond the fifth stage of life-as well as, of course, communications of religious (or devotional) and moral instruction in the domain of the first three stages of life.
There is, in the "New Testament", a mythological representation (or God-"idea") of the Divine Nature, and a rather covertly communicated message about "Communion" with the Spiritual Divine, and, coincidently, there are communications of "Wisdom" about human existence and right life. Therefore, the "New Testament" is very much like many other traditional texts that communicate in the context of the fourth stage of life," and which also include material relative to at least some aspects of the fifth stage of life.
In this regard, the "New Testament" is very much like the literature about Rama, in the Hindu tradition. Unlike the "New Testament" communications about Jesus, some traditional texts speak of Rama in the manner of what could be called sixth stage (or Transcendentalist) teachings about Realization of That Which Is without (or Perfectly Prior to) form. However, like the "New Testament" communications about Jesus, most of the Rama literature is in the domain of the first four stages of life, with some levels of suggestiveness about Spiritual matters that may be understood to extend into the fifth stage of life.
In the case of the Bbagavad Gita (which is the principal text of the Krishna tradition), there are elements of communication that point toward an Ultimate Realization That Is of a formless Transcendental (and sixth stage) Nature-but, fundamentally, the Bhagavad Gita is a moral, devotional, and mystical text, in which the mythological figure of Krishna is presented as the means for conveying the full range of ideas associated with the synthesis of first-stage-through-sixth-stage Hinduism (as a progressive, or developmental practice) that the Bhagavad Gita is principally intended to provide. Thus, Krishna is fashioned (by literary means) as the principal figure around which to speak the general tradition of Realization (or Spirituality) and right human life that is otherwise represented by the totality of the traditions of Hinduism. Similarly, the "New Testament" Gospel tradition about Jesus fashions Jesus (by literary means) as the principal figure around which to convey a summary of all the moral, and devotional, and (cryptically represented) Spiritual Wisdom-ideas otherwise associated with the ancient totality that included exoteric Judaism and all of the (both exoteric and esoteric) traditions of the ancient world of Greece, Rome, Egypt, the Middle East, and, to some extent, of India.
