 88. Jesus (His Truth) |
III
Who is this teacher, Jesus of Galilee? What is the evidence of his life-story? What did he do and say? Not what people said about him or for him after his lifetime-but what did he do and say? Not what is believable only from a scientific-materialistic perspective, or a humanistic perspective, or any such reductionist perspective-but what was Jesus himself actually like, as a representative of a tradition of ancient Wisdom associated with the first five. stages of life?
From the "point of view" of historical fact, the story about Jesus' physical "Ascension" to "Heaven" after his death is impossible - and even absurd. Jesus is said to have gone up into the air, in order to reach "Heaven" - yet, everybody now knows what is up there, in the air. People everywhere know that the "air" above the Earth is a virtually limitless space, full of many other galaxies. In the present day, it must be clearly understood that Jesus did not have anywhere to go by going up into the sky physically.
In the ancient tradition, however, there was a cosmological view that would have "understood" (and accepted as fact) that Jesus could literally fly up into the air, and travel higher and higher, and, eventually, reach "Heaven". According to that view, the Deity was above the "firmament" - which was a crystal vault, from which hung the many stars. That Jesus "Ascended" up to and via the "firmament" was, indeed, believable, according to the popular cosmological view of that time. Yet, that cosmological view has absolutely no relevance anymore, when examined in the context of present-day scientific knowledge of the actually observed universe - and, therefore, the "Ascension-of Jesus" story must now be seen, clearly, to be a myth (or a literary invention, intended to play upon the belief-structure current at the time of the writing of the "New Testament"). Simply stated, the scientifically-demonstrated evidence of how the physical world is actually structured conclusively and irrevocably proves that the "Ascension" of Jesus of Galilee is (and was originally) an intentionally fabricated myth - and not (as it pretends to be) an "eyewitness" account of an actual historical event.
If, however, the "Ascension" story about Jesus is seen in the context of the total fourth-to-fifth stage tradition (and authentic experiences) of Spirituality, it remains both relevant and true, as a symbol for the interior psycho-physical phenomenon of Spiritual Ascent into a state of mystical absorption (and brain-concentration) in the Self-Apprehended and Intrinsically Self-Evident Current of Conscious Energy That Self-Exists at the root and center of every living body.
If the "Ascension" story about Jesus is examined as a kind of esoteric (or hermetic, and intentionally cryptic) mode of language that speaks (and, yet, hides) a "secret" teaching (rather than describing an historical and outwardly physical event), then it is self-evident that the "Ascension" story (along with most of the other "New Testament" stories about Jesus) is a form of strategically fabricated public communication, and that it intentionally speaks in a conventional and deliberately "concretized" manner about "secrets" that, it was felt, should not, in public, be directly and openly stated. After all, according to the "New Testament" Gospels, Jesus' own policy, when speaking to the general public, was to speak only in cryptic "parables". And the principal "parables" in the "New Testament" Gospels are the "stories" of the bodily "Resurrection" and physical "Ascension" of Jesus.
In the time when Jesus is supposed to have lived, an esoteric (and already ancient) tradition of Spiritual Baptism existed, and it can (based on literary evidence) be presumed to have also been associated with Jesus himself. That tradition can (based on literary evidence, and on the experiential knowledge of esoteric Spiritual processes) be presumed to have included a process of direct Spiritual Transmission (from Master to disciple), and, also, a verbal transmission of esoteric instruction about inwardly-concentrated Spiritual Ascent - or the mystical (or Yogic) Spiritual process that is, by necessity, psycho-physically internal, and that, through the development of inward and upward concentration (ultimately, in the brain core), expands, experientially, into a cosmic and supercosmic understanding. That Spiritual process of Ascent is not about going up into the physically existing sky. It is about going up into the "sky of mind". It is about internal, or entirely Spiritual, Ascent.
Despite the fact that this ancient understanding and its Spiritual traditions existed long before the (presumed) time of Jesus, that Spiritual understanding is not conveyed or admitted by "official" Christianity. The message of "official" Christianity is, fundamentally, restricted to the gross physical domain (or to gross idealism, or exclusivistic universal "incarnationism"), and, on that basis, to the institutionalized governing of the social and moral behavior of human beings, by appealing to the "official" stories about Jesus in order to reinforce the desirable behavior.
