 88. Jesus (His Truth) |
Narasimha Swami, who lived in the company of Ramana Maharshi for a while, wrote a biography of the Maharshi - and, afterwards, Narasimha Swami went on to become an ardent devotee of the then no-longer-living Sai Baba of Shirdi. Narasimha Swami compiled much of the early myth-making literature about Shirdi Sai Baba on which people have expanded since. The literature about Shirdi Sai Baba is a useful example, therefore, of the process whereby myth-of-"God" stories develop within the popular context of traditional Deity-oriented devotionalism in India. A large portion of the stories about Shirdi Sai Baba are no longer about that historical person - although there does exist some underlying Historical and reliable biographical information, including a record ) of some of his sayings, and so forth, that has provided an underying substratum, upon which the myth-making has proceeded, given to this day.
Broadly public and merely popular religious institutions are, by nature and by necessity, businesses - and they must, like all businesses, function competitively in the "marketplace" of the common world. Therefore, in order to defend and define themelves, popular religious institutions (which must pander to the broadest kind of mass public) tend to develop literature and methods that are based upon a strategic alteration in the subject of their propaganda - an alteration that transforms the subject into a popularly sellable myth.
It must be understood that the "New Testament" Gospels convey, not "history", but a summary of ancient (and not at all exclusively, or, otherwise, originally, "Christian") teachings about moral, devotional, and (at least in a cryptic manner) Spiritual matters and that they do so in an anciently accepted literary form, by inventing a (thus) fictional story about a particular person and his teachings and doings. And, technically, such intentionally fictional propaganda - literature is, in general, made without merely telling "lies" about that particular person and his teachings and doings (even though the stories that are told are not, in actual or historical fact, true).
Apart from the institutional and speculative effects that appear in the language of the "New Testament" Gospels, Jesus himself is not represented therein as an institutional functionary (or religious "official"). Whether as the myth, the fictional legend, or the real historical Jesus, the central character of the "New Testament" Gospels is not (in the context of his storied lifetime) portrayed as an "institutional" figure. The "Jesus" of the "New Testament" Gospels always intentionally stands outside the Jewish "official" religion of his own time - just as he also inherently stands outside the Christian "official" religion of the present time. Jesus was (apparently) a Jew, by birth, and (thus) he lived within the context of Judaism during the Roman occupation of his country. In that sense, Jesus is .represented as an historical figure in the "New Testament" Gospels.
In the "New Testament" Gospel stories, Jesus sets himself apart from Greco-Roman cultural ideas, and apart from the institutional culture of Judaism. Therefore, Jesus of Galilee can, himself, be seen to be simply a great teacher, associated with traditions, but standing apart from them, within the sphere of his own Spiritual understanding - not merely within the context of his thinking, but within the super-normal Condition of his Spiritual Realization and the experientially-based process of his Spiritual demonstration - The Spiritually-based Blessing-powers and visions and teachings of the "outsider" Jesus, as well as the apparent Spiritual Transmission from his Guru, John the Baptist, are among the basics of the core story of the Jesus of the "New Testament" Gospels.
Jesus himself (even as he is shown in the "New Testament" Gospels) stood outside institutionalization, yet (paradoxically) he became the most institutionalized and the most mythologized human being in history. Consequently, there are countless versions of "Jesus of Galilee" in everybody's thinking (and in everybody's talk). However (at least as the story goes), Jesus himself was, in his lifetime, a non-institutional figure who, in fact, differentiated himself from the larger public institution, and from the larger public world-including not only the Greco-Roman world, and the Hellenistic world, but also the temple world, or the "official" world of Judaism. Jesus simply and repetitively preached a moral, devotional, and (ultimately) Spiritual message, using the terms and modes of the daily language that was associated with the cultural environment in which he lived and into which he was (according to tradition) born.
The teaching reported in the "New Testament" Gospels is the expression of an independent Spiritual Master - as is generally the case with Spiritual Masters in all traditions. True Spiritual Masters may themselves become institutionalized within a cultural (or cultic) setting, and they may even live and speak within the context of some kind of institutional (or cultic) framework - yet, they truly and inherenty stand apart from, and transcend, the institutional or cultic context. True Spiritual Masters (or authentic Spiritual Zealizers) always (inherently, actually, and truly) speak and funcion freely.
