Knowledge of Life One
2. GNOSTICS
2. GNOSTICS
1Even before the beginning of the present era the religions of the Mediterranean area and of the Middle East were in their most profound decay, and the various national so called cultures were fast dissolving. Belief in an imminent universal catastrophe was widespread.
2Generally, an old “culture” dissolves and a new one is born at intervals of 2500 years, when the vernal equinox enters into a new zodiacal constellation. The views ruling during the age then just past have become ever more distorted and dogmatized. Instead of serving life and evolution they become factors increasingly hostile to life. Views that benefit those at lower stages are of course worthless for people at higher stages, but when the teaching cannot benefit even individuals in the lower, then it is just harmful and should be discarded.
3The life view teaches those who need to be taught how they should think in order to think right, feel in order to feel and act right. That gives man the security and certainty he needs and without which he would feel insecure and lost in the world. The more general and firm this view is, the more valid and securely founded, the greater will his inner certainty be. The fear of losing this irreplaceable certainty upsets people whenever somebody tries to deprive them of the views, which they have acquired with so much toil, which have been woven into cherished emotional complexes, and which have afforded them peace and trust in life. They are unable to change their old views for a new one.
4Ignorance makes ideas absolute that have a relative justification, and when the possibilities of misunderstanding there are in all views have been exploited so that the rational content of a certain view is lost, then critical thought gradually manages to clarify even to believers that the view is untenable. Superficial and therefore popular catchwords make parrotry easier and strengthen suspicion that there must be something wrong with the teaching. The old authorities lose their authority, and the loss of certainty brings about a general doubt of more and more, and finally a refusal to believe in anything at all. The dissolution of the ideas that gave stability to the old life view usually leads to disparagement of the legal norms that are necessary to a social life without friction, a chaos as to the ideas of right and wrong being the result. This shows the risks there are in connecting the norms for human frictionless social life with religious idea systems.
5Individuals at higher stages, being able to seek for themselves, begin an independent search instead of blindly accepting the religious form engrafted in them in childhood. If their latent experience of life is not sufficiently strong to assert itself as an instinct in life, then their search can long be without result, since in such times coxcomb prophets and mystagogues grow like mushrooms out of the ground, add to confusion and make orientation more difficult. Increasingly great is the need of, ever more widespread the longing for, a saviour who will be able to liberate men from their gnawing uncertainty and spiritual agony. And he comes in order to give to the eternal truth, the knowledge of life, a new form adapted to the possibilities of understanding that are in the spirit of the times.
6As is always the case, the coming of the new avatar is prepared so that those are informed about the rare opportunity who are able to profit by it for their development and who have acquired the right to study the new teaching.
1The planetary hierarchy considered that the best preparation was to found a new esoteric society, which would see to it that the teaching would not be misunderstood and misinterpreted, distorted and so foster superstition; also to hinder those from having knowledge who would abuse it for their own advantage.
2Thus the esoteric order of the gnosticians came into existence, being founded in Alexandria about 300 years “before Christ” (before the present era).
3Truth is one. There is only one religion but untold possibilities of new religious forms. Forms need to be constantly renewed, since the old forms are distorted more and more and made incomprehensible to the following generations. The ways of looking at things change constantly thanks to new experiences. Attempts to adapt the dogmas make them even harder to comprehend. The form must be entirely new. That will spare us the almost futile effort to weed out misinterpretation and superstition.
4New presentations of truth as a rule are studied and appreciated by those seekers who have seen the imperfection of the old forms, the insufficiency of the philosophic explanations; and by those who wish to have new facts beyond those which perchance can be obtained in the older societies.
5At that time ancient Chaldean kabbalism in Mesopotamia, magianism in Persia, hermetism in Egypt, hylozoics in former Graecia Magna led a languishing life for lack of new enthusiasts for what used to be regarded as a civic duty. Their steepening decline had its roots in many factors: the political and social turmoil, the impossibility of finding solutions of acute contemporary economical and social problems and, not least, the widespread doubt about the possibility of true knowledge of existence.
6The secret gnostic order of knowledge was founded by order of the planetary hierarchy and on the initiative of the head of its department of education, Christos–Maitreya, in preparation for his work, the proclamation of the unity and divinity of all life. The order was to be a centre for his teaching and to enable him to gather and teach initiates belonging to the Aryan race.
7The object was to institute an order that would absorb the members of all the orders. The Gnostic Order became an association of hermetists, Pythagoreans, kabbalists, Mithraists. It was a rallying order and the most inclusive of them in this respect.
8In the older orders, the members were not allowed to join any other order. The reason was that the teachers wanted to forestall confusion of ideas on account of the differences there were in terminology, presentation of symbols, etc. In the Gnostic Order we find the terminology of all these orders. It had no uniform exclusive symbolism, but every member had the right to his own symbolic expressions. It granted to its members the greatest possible freedom as for modes of presentation, although it had originally started from mainly emotional hermetism and mental hylozoics. The aim was to institute a “universal order” in which all kinds of symbols and symbolic expressions could be used and understood by all. Even the modes of presenting the knowledge were individual, so that everybody could treat his subjects at his own discretion. This was the reason why the teaching could be presented in symbolic form, be popularized, dramatized. There were risks to this method, of which fact Christianity is a proof.
9The Order had both a theoretical and a practical task. It wanted to present the esoteric knowledge of reality in a system of symbols that was easier to grasp for that age, and to explain that knowledge not demonstrated in action was a teaching without life.
10For the first time the idea of unity was to be proclaimed in its most obvious form, that of universal brotherhood.
11The present essay was originally called “The Teaching of Christos”. The reason for this was that the Order was founded in preparation for the appearance of the “world teacher” (the head of the department of education of the planetary hierarchy); that Christos himself had planned this Order, which was founded by his disciples; that Christos of course was the central figure of the Order and that he did his esoteric work within the Order; and that the novels by the gnostic monks made him the son of god of the Christian religion, so that his alleged sayings were made absolute and were misinterpreted.
12Thus gnostics can be called Christos’ secret doctrine, his true teaching which only his initiated disciples were allowed to study. Gnostics can also be said to include the original elaboration of hermetism and hylozoics, Jeshu’s esoteric teaching, and Christos’ esoteric sayings.
13The teaching he imparted to his disciples was just a fraction of his enormous knowledge, and of the former only fragments have been allowed for publication. “Without a parable spake he not unto them” (the uninitiated). Whatever the four gospels of the New Testament have preserved of his discourses (particularly in the Gospel according to John), they reveal nothing of his esoteric doctrine, but contain only such as was intended “for the people”. In that respect the general intellectual level exhibits no appreciable rise, which fact also appears from ancient literature. It is also seen in the fact that esoterics has not been much considered, despite its now being public. However, two thousand years are just a brief moment in the many millions of years required for the development of consciousness. Mankind is still as enmeshed in its systems of emotional illusions and mental fictions. Esoterics can be publicized without risk for it will be understood only by former initiates all the same.
14The new society spread quickly in Egypt, Arabia, Persia, and Asia Minor. It had lodges at all important places, since at that time people were expecting something truly new and the gnosticians in their programme included the problems which occupied their contemporaries.
15The gnosticians’ radical reform of the manner of living was especially appreciated. It certainly made everybody wonder and inspired those to follow it who were tired of the ever more extravagant habits and longed for norms of a more rational way of life.
16It added much to the respect of the Order that only those were allowed to enter it who were serious in their search for truth and one-pointed in their striving after self-realization. It was no mere coincidence that the spread of the Order coincided in time with the birth of the founder of stoicism, Zenon. Neo-Platonism was a later attempt, using the ordinary methods and moving within the limits of the permissible, to unite Pythagorean and Platonic ideas with those taught in this society.
17Those who were given entry into the Order belonged to the elite of their time. They were well versed in contemporary literature; many of them were authors of philosophical works. In time, the gnostic writings grew considerably in quantity.
18The gnostic teaching was characterized by its freedom of presentation. All members of the Order knew the essential principles and expounded the symbols in their individual ways for different categories of readers. The symbols were often depicted as historical figures. They wanted to arouse interest, stimulate to attempts, in the art of living. The goal was, of course, the stage of unity; the path to it was self-realization.
19They preferred to treat that traditional esoteric theme, trinity. Some writers based their expositions on the three anchorages of the monad, the three triads, and spoke of the father (the third, the highest triad), the mother (the first, the lowest triad), and the son (the second triad). Those who had the second self as their next goal to strive for, treated the three units of the second triad in their three worlds as the three divinities. Usually the father was presented as the great carpenter, the architect of the universe; the son Christos as the carpenter’s son; and the mother as Mary (or Marga, Maya).
20Since the symbols were used by self-realizers who strived for the state of unity, the symbol of that state, Christos, was of course made the central figure of their tales. Their teaching, which was later worked into the so called gospels, was summed up in two tenets: Every man is a son of god. The path to freedom (the fifth kingdom in nature) is to give out love and sacrifice. Another saying was: Love god with all your mental, emotional, and physical powers.
21We find in this literature something of the same freedom in its mode of presentation as in modern theosophy. At first the theosophists taught the ancient doctrine of body, soul, and spirit; by “body” meaning the organism, by “soul” the emotional, and by “spirit” the mental. Then they presented man as a unity of seven principles, divided into four principles of the personality and three principles of the ego. Then they added the third self, or spirit. Finally they widened the perspectives on existence by multiplying the number of worlds by seven, etc. Little by little we are given new facts, which will gradually change our world picture. Science has explored about one per cent of reality, and it is obviously impossible to explain reality rationally by its all too few facts and ideas.
22The term, theosophy, derives from Alexandria, second century A.D., when the gnostic order of knowledge changed its name to theosophy. Thus outsiders did not know more about theosophy than the very name. More was not needed, however, for diverse mystics to call themselves theosophists. The old story once again: ignorance distorting everything. Of course this has caused a confusion of ideas, so that the data on theosophy given by so called experts have been misleading. Theosophy, the true gnostic teaching, has remained a secret doctrine to the present day. This order’s peculiar presentation of the esoteric knowledge has not been publicized as yet. We only know that those gnosticians who wrote the gospel stories used gnostic locutions very freely and popularized them, so that their import was often changed from the original one. Thus we cannot find the esoteric concepts of the genuine gnosticians in these stories.
23With their glad tidings of the glory and divinity of life, the gnosticians won many followers. It was a new message that life is happiness and not misery, that all higher worlds are filled with divine hierarchies who live in order to serve life. Man is a monad whose goal it is to reach the highest divine stage. The path to the goal runs through lower divine worlds in which the monad has its anchorages, divine forms, like vestures prepared for the monad which the monad reaches by following its links of contact and which it dons at the entry of the respective worlds. In the lowest divine world the monad unites with the holy ghost; in the second world it becomes the son, Christos; and finally the monad reaches the highest stage of divinity, the father, the fountainhead of all wisdom and power.
24Christos was the central figure, the central principle. He was presented now as the saviour of the individual, now as the state of salvation, the life of unity, the heavenly love. This theme was varied in several ingenious ways. It circled always, however, round Christos, the son of god. Therefore it was quite understandable that the later quasi-gnostic literature, which gave rise to Christianity, made him the central figure, the saviour of the world.
1One hesitates to use the word “religion”, since it has been so abused and totally misunderstood. It could better be replaced by “the science of the relation between the fourth and fifth kingdoms in nature”.
2The fifth kingdom, or the planetary hierarchy, has as its foremost task to supervise the evolution of consciousness in mankind. It has always been a truly superhuman task to try to teach a bit of common sense to a mankind idiotized by emotional illusions and mental fictions. As soon as man developed so far that he was able to think independently, this simple faculty acquired the well-nigh ineradicable qualities of self-importance, conceit, and unshakable faith in the reality content of its own brainwaves and fancies. Very few people have acquired that common sense which clarifies man’s enormous ignorance of reality and life. Very few people possess the ability rationally to apply the rule that says “never accept anything without sufficient grounds”. Please note the word “sufficient”, for it removes 99 per cent of the usual grounds. Sokrates was the wisest man of Greece because he was the only man in Greece who “knew that he knew nothing” (of course in the sense of knowledge of reality and life). Few are as wise in our time.
3When Christos spoke about the love of god, the kingdom of god, the kingdom of heaven, etc., he referred to the fifth natural kingdom. Only his “disciples” understood that. What Christos taught his “disciples” he did not preach to the people who did not have the prerequisites of understanding. And the gospels were written for the “people”. The literature published before 1875 was for the “people”, not for the “disciples”. The rehasher of Paul’s epistles, Eusebios, overlooked the fact that in these epistles there were certain statements that also witnessed the existence of the esoteric knowledge.
4No avatar, messenger from the planetary hierarchy, incarnates without the consent of the planetary ruler, who is the “god” of our planet, if that term must be retained. The task of all avatars is to teach men to develop their common sense and to ennoble their emotionality. This is not done rapidly but only with a small step at a time. History bears sufficient evidence of the fact that each step is made absolute by those who earn their living by knowing everything better and being the only true interpreters.
5That love which Christos wished all mankind to acquire was the attraction to all life (the higher emotionality). He certainly knew that higher kinds of love belong to the consciousness of higher worlds – essential love, 46, and submanifestal love, 44 – the latter kind being the love that Christos had acquired. That divine love to which Christos bore witness was free from sentimentality, emotion, and personal egoism. That love sacrifices and understands. It sees to what is best for the whole, not for individuals and groups. Of course, the theologians have never understood that matter, being unable with their “odium theologicum” even to acquire the attraction of the higher emotionality, which at least expresses itself in life as ordinary, simple affection to and sympathy with every living creature. They have not even had the goodwill that tries to understand. Perhaps they can teach mankind to practise what is nowadays called “goodwill”. It is probably the highest thing of which mankind is capable at its present stage of development. Or perhaps that is too much. Regrettably, theologians have preached hatred, tyranny of thought, torture, and burning. The results of this evil should frighten us, but mankind is quick to forget its most terrible lessons. “Men do not want to learn anything from history” is an age-old insight.
6The planetary hierarchy have the conditions of acquiring the knowledge of reality, life, and the laws of life. There is nothing they desire more than to give this knowledge to mankind. But the difficulty is that men, in their insatiable egoism and their hatred (repulsive attitude to every living creature), only abuse the knowledge for their own advantage and at the cost of others. All power is abused, and as long as mankind takes that attitude, the simplest common sense should be able to grasp that man is not ripe for the knowledge. Only those who have forever renounced all power and decided to live in order to serve life in accordance with the laws of life can be entrusted with the true knowledge that confers power. Just those people have prospects of being noticed and “chosen” by the planetary hierarchy. Promises might be of some value but prove nothing. Anyone who lets himself be chosen, is put to tests which prove that nothing can make him abuse knowledge and power. Very few pass those tests under the most trying conditions.
7Ever since they were banished by mankind in Atlantis, the planetary hierarchy have worked for a rapprochement between the individuals in the fourth and fifth kingdoms, for bringing mankind to the point that it sees the enormous folly of banishing its true teachers of the knowledge of reality. Therefore, they await the day when at least a decisive minority will be able to guarantee their welcome return. Until then, there will be no “peace on earth”.
8Until then, just a few will let themselves be chosen, impelled by their instinct of life to do everything to reach a higher kingdom, whatever name they will give to it. They have seen the perverseness of hatred and thereby have taken that step which makes a contact with the planetary hierarchy possible. When they have learnt “harmlessness” in thought, feeling, word and deed, learnt to look upon all men as their brothers, learnt that all walk the same path (which individually may be of different length) to the same certain goal, the next higher kingdom in nature, then they have taken many steps in the right direction.
9During his long development man has acquired thousands of good (attractive) and bad (repulsive) qualities. Since hatred has ruled during millions of years, most qualities and the strongest qualities are repulsive. They are also the most easily aroused in each new incarnation. Is it strange then that theologians have ascertained this and have drawn the wiseacre conclusion from it that “man is utterly corrupt”, that “man is eternally the same”, that “mankind advances but man remains the same”? Appearances prove them right, and appearances are their only guide, since they lack the knowledge.
10Esoterics is the knowledge of reality. What has been publicized hitherto, however, is just a few basic facts about existence, fit to liberate mankind from its worst illusions and fictions, its most idiotic idiologies. In actual fact, esoterics consists of a great number of disciplines, which will gradually be publicized, in so far as men are able and willing to receive them and use them rightly.
11The discipline that the planetary hierarchy want to give to mankind next concerns the relation between the fourth and fifth kingdoms in nature. It will teach men how they will best get into contact with the hierarchy, how they will best acquire the qualities and abilities necessary for passing into the fifth kingdom. That will scatter the fog that theologians of all religions have spread over that matter.
1The Babylonian captivity: The Jews were a tribe of around 40 000 people, the majority being shepherds and robbers who plundered the caravans going between Asia and Africa. To put an end to this intolerable condition, the Babylonians decided to deport them in order to culture them. The Jewish children were brought up in temple schools.
2There was no Jewish nation before the second century B.C.
3Historians do not yet know that the Old Testament is a rehash of what the Jewish youth, educated in Babylonian temples, learnt from the temple archives, duly distorted to the glorification of the Jews. The object was to “create a national culture”, and all means were fair. Thus, for example, the tale of Solomon’s temple was originally an esoteric legend which symbolicly described the growth of the causal envelope through man’s incarnations.
4The fact that Jewish historian Josephus has been thought reliable and his fables have been uncritically accepted is proof enough that the ordinary study of sources is unable to tell truth from lie.
5Josephus lied the story of the seventy translators of the Old Testament into Greek. There was nothing to translate.
6The Hebrew language is a constructed literary language (for the “learned”), an Arabic-Ethiopic dialect with an admixture of Chaldean and Greek.
7Jehovah is Yodhewau (Adam and Eve).
8According to Jewish chronology, the prophet Ezekiel wrote in 605 B.C. of Daniel as of an ancient sage although Daniel had not yet been born, and Ezra wrote 40 books in 40 days 425 B.C.
1What exoterists know about “the life of Jesus” is almost nothing. Those scholars who have doubted whether he has existed at all, have in this evinced historical expertise and discrimination far superior to all their detractors. For the historical evidence extant cannot prove his existence. They are quite right in their assertion. The material handed down to us is entirely legendary.
2Let us hope that a causal self will be assigned by the planetary hierarchy to describe the genesis of the secret Gnostic Order as well as what really happened in Palestine during the existence of the Order, and the acting individuals.
3Mankind is not entitled to know anything concerning the members of the planetary hierarchy and their incarnations. Their lives are their private business, and human curiosity, ignorance, and (in the matter of these beings) total lack of judgement can only ruin any attempted description of them. Nor are the planetary selves the least interested in letting mankind know anything about them and the true facts of their physical lives.
4What we know about the messengers from the planetary hierarchy is just the legend about them. As long as mankind is capable of anthropomorphism and worship of gods, true biographies of them will not be allowed for publication. Still we have not understood the very explicit reference by Christos himself to “god immanent”. And the symbolic expressions he used before the uninitiated have all been misunderstood and misinterpreted. As long as mankind is so ignorant that it accepts descriptions by historians, who believe they can ascertain historical facts by “ransacking the records of the past”, so long the “Muse of History” will remain a storyteller.
5What has happened even in our time cannot be established even by witnesses present, since the actions of the principal persons behind the scenes are in the main beyond control and their public actions and statements are arranged. What people know is what the persons concerned think that people should believe they know. So much about the history of our time.
6Jeshu, in the gospels called Jesus, was born in Judaea by Israelite parents in the year 105 B.C. They were very wealthy and belonged to the highest social class. Mary had been offered to give birth to an avatar, and since both she and her husband Joseph were gnosticians, they knew what this meant. They left their son entirely free to develop in the manner he found suitable himself.
7At the age of 12 years he entered the Essene Order.
8The Essene Order was a secret society with headquarters in the southern Judaean desert. Outwardly it described itself as the “school for prophets” of Israel. It was founded in about 150 B.C. by a Jew who had been initiated into the ancient Chaldean kabbalism. He wanted to furnish the relatively young Jewish nation with a secret society and an esoteric doctrine of its own. The esoteric facts he compiled were given terms taken from the “sacred” writings of the Jews. Fanciful additions made up for the missing facts. The Jewish Kabbala thus created was revised several times down to modern times.
9Blavatsky says in Isis Unveiled that the gnosticians were “but the followers of the old Essenes under a new name”. This statement is clearly erroneous. The secret Essene Order was not founded by any disciple of the planetary hierarchy, whereas this was the case with all genuine esoteric knowledge orders. It is not very well known but needs to be emphasized that members of the black lodge have founded many such orders.
10From the very beginning this society had a wrong aim and direction. It was made exclusively Jewish. Religious fanaticism and national chauvinism had dictated its genesis and had put their indelible stamp on it. Everything taught in it was to remain strictly secret. Even fictitious unessentials later added were regarded as sacrosanct. Any attempted exoteric interpretation of its symbols was regarded sacrilegious and was prohibited on pain of death. It was the Essenes who pronounced the sentence of death upon Jeshu.
11This entire spirit was of course utterly incompatible with Jeshu’s being. He was perfect as a man, thus a causal self on his way to conquer the consciousness of unity and thereby to enter into the kingdom of the supermen. He is described as a being who thanks to his rare individual character was free from every subhuman trait, a being to whom so called temptations or tendencies to self-assertion were totally foreign. Individual character is that unique nature which becomes clearly distinguishable after causalization and puts its peculiar stamp on the incarnations, makes life easier or harder, the individual’s experiences of life lighter or darker. However, this inescapable seeming injustice is compensated for by the powers of destiny in another manner, so that justice is done. Jeshu was, of course, fully aware of his calling to become the instrument of the manifestal self Maitreya, by lending him his physical body.
12This being was free of any attraction to the lower, was just because of that looked at askance by the Essenes, and was opposed. When 19 years old he travelled to an Essene monastery at Mount Serbal, and took advantage of its library, which was sizable for its time. When he subsequently left the Essene Order, it was because he saw the hopelessness of remaining in that irremediably petrified dogmatism or trying to infuse a “new spirit” into it. Besides, during his seven years in that order he was in bad favour, since his wondrous being acted as a wordless accusation in all that self-deceptive hypocrisy. From Serbal he travelled to Egypt where, in an esoteric temple, he acquired essential consciousness. He travelled further to India and Tibet, where he stayed in a monastery until the fixed time had come for him to return to Palestine. This was in 76 B.C., when he was 29 years old.
13There he gathered around him a group of disciples belonging to various esoteric societies, gnosticians, kabbalists, and hermetists, whom he initiated further into esoteric knowledge. They called themselves fishermen, since the new epoch was characterized by the entering zodiacal constellation of Pisces, and moreover since they felt it to be their duty to become fishers of men.
14Their way of life was of course rational, purposeful, and in accordance with the laws for the refinement of envelopes and mind. Their food was vegetarian, and they absolutely excluded the use of alcohol.
15The true story about the life of Jeshu, as it is recorded in the planetary memory, has not been allowed for publication as yet. This will be permitted only when people have acquired the necessary conditions of understanding such a life. The story that was publicized, however, of course entailed a predictable distortion of truth, of which we have seen the aftermath of just a few millennia. When the esoteric history will be written some time, then we shall be able to study the law of cause and effect in the lives of individuals and nations.
16It might be added, however, that Jeshu in a new incarnation about 70 years later, as Apollonios of Tyana, acquired superessential consciousness, and so became an esoteric master.
17The manifest poverty and lack of detail of the gospels, particularly strange if any biography had been intended, should have clarified the fact of the matter to acute minds, especially since there are in the gospels numerous parallels to the lives of earlier avatars.
1Maitreya is that manifestal self (43) who took over Gautama Buddha’s function as the head of our planet’s second main department, when Gautama continued his extraplanetary consciousness expansion. Maitreya is the global hierarchy’s supervisor of philosophies and religions. He appears, at the end of each zodiacal epoch, to mankind in visible shape, when the end of the world seems near, in universal dissolution of culture, disorientation, and lawlessness.
2His heralds in the gnostic lodges had announced his coming, and those individuals who had attained the stage of culture and higher stages awaited his appearance.
3His coming was an attempt by the divine government of our planet to impress that exceptionally self-willed nation with the ideal of unity. He failed. That certainly strengthened their own inner solidarity, but at the same time sharpened their outer antagonism, their sense of being a chosen people and set apart from all the other nations. They are still as ignorant of the fact that only those can be chosen who lead evolution and show to others the path to unity, the goal of evolution.
4In the year 76 B.C., Maitreya took over that physical body which Jeshu had carefully fashioned for his task. During the following three years he worked chiefly in Palestine.
5To the people he preached the glad tidings of the divinity of life, of omnipotence as the loving father, of “the kingdom of heaven” within us all, of man’s inalienable share in this glory, which everybody could find if he but sought to contact it.
6To the circle of initiates which Jeshu had managed to gather around him he taught the unity and divinity of life. Also many facts which until then had not been imparted in the esoteric societies were communicated to the disciples, the circulation of life through involution and evolution as well as facts about the triad chain, for instance.
7This activity was suddenly interrupted in the year 72 B.C., when by order of the Essene Order the Sanhedrin in all secrecy sentenced Jeshu to death, whereupon he was stoned by a stirred-up mob. It was not Christos who was stoned but Jeshu, since he had by then retrieved his lent organism.
8Christos-Maitreya did not at all “go up into heaven” but lived in his etheric envelope among his initiated disciples during many years after the stoning, teaching them. Most of them had acquired etheric vision as well as emotional clairvoyance.
9On two different occasions he made himself visible in the temple, and then the hawkers, overcome with terror of the apparition, fled head over heels, pushing over their own tables.
10He is still living in the physical world, awaiting the day when the leading portion of mankind (though not the theologians, who believe in their dogmas and gospel legends) request his reappearance.
1The world teacher regarded as his specific task to restore to mankind the one true religion, which is continually preached anew to a primitive mankind and is continually lost anew.
2Christos forgave sins. He could do so, since he knew that the concept of sin was a fiction that had been engrafted in mankind by the black priesthood in Atlantis.
3Christos knew very well that nobody can “abolish” any law of nature or law of life. He could remove the terrible illusion of a “crime against an infinite being who demands infinite punishment in an eternal hell”, just because “sins” are no crimes against god but mistakes as to laws of nature and laws of life, mistakes that become a sowing which we must reap according to the law of cause and effect.
4He wanted to save mankind from the terrible fall into sin. And this fall was not that Adam had eaten an apple but the blackest of lies, the lie of sin as a crime against god. The fall was to invent the lie of divine prohibitions and taboos, impossible for most people to apply, in themselves unreasonable and hostile to life with their satanic threat of eternal torture for everyone who erred against them. The fall was to transform the godhead of the one life into a brutal monster. The fall was to turn life, which is divine and could be a life of bliss and happiness, into hell. The fall was to try to bereave man of his inalienable co-partnership in the unity of all life. The fall was to make man, who incarnates in order to get to learn reality and life and in so doing gradually attains to higher stages of development, an evil demon.
5It is these lies of life, which in each new generation are ineradicably engrafted in trustful children’s minds and thereby poison people’s entire lives, arouse the repulsive hatred of life, kill out all tendencies to aspiration to unity, hamper the necessary work for self-realization, preclude the attempts at self-improvement as being meaningless under the alleged conditions.
6Maitreya announced, with formulations suited to the range of ideas and prospects of understanding there were in the common people, that we are all citizens in the kingdom of god; that there is not, on the part of the godhead, any sort of crime against god; that what men in their ignorance of life call sin is just the errors of ignorance and inability, which we ourselves will have opportunities to make good or blot out according to the law of sowing and reaping.
7By contrast with religious falsifiers of life and the moralists of the time, the Pharisees, he laid down that man is in essence divine, that the divine kingdom of unity is within him, that god is the father of all and that we shall always remain his children, whom he will never reject nor condemn. We are all gods in temporary exile, gods who can return to take possession of our divine heritage.
8We are all the children of god. From this it follows that we are all brothers and sisters making up one universal brotherhood. In order to take part in unity we only need to put this truth into living practice.
9To the public at large, who had never heard of anything but the law of Moses, he taught that anyone who obeyed these prescriptions fulfilled the law, that god did not demand more of them than that they would no longer do what they had themselves seen to be wrong.
10He showed them nature, the flowers on the ground, how perfect everything is in its kind, more perfect than any human creation and so because everything in nature unresistingly obeys its own inner law, the law of development.
11He showed them the children who in their original, uncorrupted ingenious nature spontaneously do what is right, and explained that we too must acquire their simplicity and spontaneity.
12He did not preach the same message to all but adapted his teaching to the perceptive ability of his audience. The “Sermon on the Mount” in its original form, for example, was addressed to his chosen disciples. In it, ideals are preached that cannot possibly be realized by those on lower levels. To teach such ideals to people at the stage of hatred is to bring ideals unattainable for them into ridicule and contribute to the destruction of the authority of the teaching. The impotent must draw the false conclusion that ideals are not to be realized but, like unreached stars in the sky, are beautiful things to be gazed at. And wiseacres reinterpret the axioms of wisdom, saying that you must “aim at the sky in order to reach the edge of the wood”. In so doing they have rendered the ideals ineffective, deprived them of their power and comforted the listless that they anyhow keep their good resolutions even though they still participate in the cult of appearances.
13The highest truths were reserved for those to whom they were longed-for revelations that transformed their lives. It is no use speaking of the law of sacrifice to those who cannot possibly grasp its import, who do not sense any attraction to, or need for, the life of service.
14The inner demands which the earnestly striving man makes on himself before they express themselves spontaneously in everyday life, cannot be preached to the uncomprehending who would mistake such demands for commands enforced from without, and then either see their absurdity or be unhappy, despair, and perhaps finally abandon the whole thing when it is no good anyhow.
15To the masses he spoke in parables which in their concise expressivity are matchless in world literature. Many of them can be found recorded verbatim in the gospel stories. But many others were much later reformulated into wonder stories, such as the miraculous draught of fishes, the feeding of the five thousand men, the marriage in Cana.
16The kingdom of heaven is like to a fisherman who has fished all night in vain, since he has used the net of his specious wisdom, but who, after seeing his mistake and using the net of unity, has got a miraculous draught. And the kingdom of heaven is like to a man who fed five thousand men with what he had brought with him on his wandering for his own provisioning. And again the kingdom of heaven is like to a man who gave to the assembled guests the water of life which they found to be better than any other drink.
17It was in order to defend the pseudo-Christian use of meat, fish, wine, etc. that such parables were later rewritten as descriptions of historical events.
18Speaking in parables he could affect all so that everybody received his share of the wisdom according to his self-acquired understanding of life. The most valuable gift from him to the masses was not intellectual material to analyse and discuss, but the strong vibrations they were exposed to. Thereby it became possible for them to grasp, at least temporarily, what they otherwise would not have been able to understand nor even have cared to understand. This also raised their emotions to the heights of attraction, so that they could have a foretaste of the bliss of unity.
19Of course this was true in an even higher degree of those who had the qualifications to realize the deeper truths.
20Those who could receive his message, experienced that these words raised them up in a state where everything they heard was truth that could never be lost. They experienced that these forces of higher worlds were living life that could transfigure them, transform all who removed the hindrances to their reception, into powerful tools in the service of evolution. The chosen ones, who were allowed to study the esoteric teaching, experienced the realities the wonderful teacher spoke of. Live facts went past their astonished sight. They were made to see what they called the “glory of god”. Within the compass of his huge aura they themselves became what they were seeing. Future possibilities were moved into present reality, and their godhood took shape already. The thorny, steep path of suffering, which was to bring them to these heights, seemed wonderful to tread to them; and the conditions of reaching the goal, which to outsiders seemed so strict and hard, appeared to them easy and sweet to strive for, to obey, to realize. They understood that what they had hitherto regarded as difficult, if not impossible altogether, was simple and easy, if they would rid themselves of the enormous burden they were dragging along, everything that civilization and culture had laid upon them, everything they perhaps thought to be among the necessities of life. After having been complicated they had to become simple, inwardly emancipated from everything they had been clinging to in the world they were living in. The only thing they anyhow would take with them when entering the next higher kingdom was their light envelope of unity, for in the world of unity they would find everything they would ever need.
21By the simple application of the laws of life they could always keep the contact with the divine worlds open. Following that path they would receive the guidance they needed, a guidance that would mostly appear in external circumstances and conditions, in people’s attitudes and behaviours.
22Those who had thought of going out to proclaim the kingdom of god, understood that it was not the words of the message, not the exposition of texts, but the power to put the audience into contact with unity, make them experience the Christos state, which helped people to selfrealization. For they had themselves reached the insight that it was best just as it was, it is best as it is, it will be best as it will be. They had themselves come to know that the exhaustless powers of higher worlds were at their and everybody’s disposal, and they knew that also others receiving these powers could realize the divine in the human.
1The masses had soon forgotten the wonderful avatar. For the gnosticians, however, he remained the matchless teacher who had shown them the unity and divinity of all life.
2And so arose the idea of reviving the memory of him and of spreading his message of love in a simple manner among a mankind sunk deep in a negative attitude to life, hopelessness and superstition, by depicting a perfect human life, the harrowing tragedy of which would exhort people to imitation and give them food for thought.
3The idea existed before, in an ancient Egyptian symbolic tale of human life. A Jewish gnostician by the name of Matthew rewrote it in an ingenious manner into a novel, using the gnostic method of presenting esoteric symbols as historical personages. The novel was to describe, in a short life, the five stages which the individual covers in passing from the fourth to the fifth natural kingdom. In so doing, the author utilized three different literary sources and an event he had witnessed himself, the crucifixion of Jesus Barabbas, a communist agitator, by the governor Pontius Pilate. Jesus, the son of Abbas (Bar Abbas), born in the year 4 B.C., was a revolutionary and a disciple of John the Baptist. The latter, born in 8 B.C., was a politician, fanatic, and agitator.
4Matthew’s three sources were: an ancient Egyptian tale of man crucified on the eternally revolving wheel of existence; two hundred years old gnostic writings containing gnostic symbols, for instance trinity (the father, the son, the holy ghost = the three triads); what tradition had preserved of traits of the master’s life, what could be recollected of his sayings and parables. All this was worked into a first draft (the primitive gospel), which was subsequently elaborated on by about fifty gnostic monks in Alexandria in the forties A.D.
5When these Alexandrian gnosticians worked out their christological novels, they had no thought of describing the life of the master, which, besides, would never have been permitted.
6The most authentic of all the gnostic legends is the so called Gospel of St. John, which utilized in a very free manner notes left by one of Christos’ own disciples. These were used particularly in the 17th chapter.
7Innumerable copies were made by the admirers of these literary masterpieces and were spread in all directions. The effect surpassed all expectations. A religious mass movement came into being, which seemed to threaten even the existence of the state. The authorities tried at first by fair means and later by force to stifle the “rebellious movement”. They failed, as we know. The doctrine had got too large a following. General decline and political dissolution aided in eventually making the new form of religion prevail and be cunningly exploited for political ends. Christianity was turned into a state religion.
8In about 300 A.D. they decided to shape a uniform and authoritative doctrine. Out of the many gnostic gospels four of the most realistic and mutually most harmonious were selected and were elaborated on together with a collection of kabbalistic letters. Everything was rewritten several times in such a manner that passages were omitted or added as it suited the rulers at the time. On the orders of Emperor Constantine, the father of the church Eusebios was specially commissioned to create the New Testament, which was accepted at the first Nicene ecumenical council in 325 A.D. It deserves to be mentioned that of all the participants at the council only two were able to read: the Emperor and Eusebios.
9Thus there is much in the gospels of the New Testament that is by no means historical but fanciful fiction. Much has been attributed to Jeshu which he cannot ever have said and which gnostic authors cannot ever have written.
10It is desirable that a causal self should go through the four gospels verse by verse, specifying the origins: said by Christos, said by Jeshu, current gnostic saying, the gospel author’s own formulations, passages altered and added by Eusebios. These are the original five sources. Such an enquiry would put an end to undiscerning letter-slavery and awaken common sense. And that is important.
1Those fifty-odd Alexandrian gnosticians, who after a prearranged design composed their religious novels about the “life of Jesus”, certainly did not suspect what misery was to ensue from their imaginative excesses. They wanted to reform the world, offer ideals to the masses in a graphic way, help the ignorant of life to get a better life view. If they had suspected that their novels were to be regarded as the “word of god”, their symbolic sayings were to be interpreted literally by spiritual illiterates, and that the black priesthood from Atlantis were to take over their legends and drown mankind in blood, then they would have designed them differently.
2Whether Christos ever preached any sermon on the mount is irrelevant. However, if he did so, then it is certain that he did not say what has been reported in the gospels. There the author has gathered what he thought to be the gist of Christos, message to the people as well as to his disciples, and in so doing he has caused irreparable harm, irremediable misunderstanding with idiotization as its result.
3The gnostic gospel authors made a grave psychological mistake when pretending that the popular sayings they used when speaking to the uninitiated were the words of Christos to his disciples. “Without a parable he spake not unto them” is true as to the “multitude”. Whatever he told his disciples, however, is not found in the gospels. It was part of the esoteric knowledge, belonged to the Order, and was never to be divulged. “Unto you is given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it is not given.” That is right. And you need only to use your common sense to understand that whatever Christos of the gospels says to his disciples could not be anything to keep secret. If people would not read it with a prejudiced mind, they would easily see that. The disciples were not such imbeciles as the gnostic authors made them. In that case they would not have understood more than the “multitude”. And where in all the gospels is there anything told about the “mysteries of the kingdom of heaven”? Which might not or could not be told to all? A little bit of common sense would have “worked miracles”: cleared away all theological follies.
1“Paul of Tarsus” was initiated into the Jewish Essene Order at the age of twelve, the minimum age.
2On a journey to Damascus he met a member of the Gnostic Order. Their conversation had the result that Paul requested to be admitted to the Order. Subsequently he tried to work for his new view among his former co-religionists. He was a particularly diligent letter-writer. When Eusebios had been commissioned by Emperor Constantine to compile the “doctrine”, he collected all letters by Paul that he could lay hands on, rewriting them for his aims. Symbolic sayings that he could not misinterpret he allowed to remain. Esoteric history will some time disclose how he proceeded in his work with these letters and with the gnostic legends (the “gospels”). And then we shall also have a true account of Jeshu’s life. No life of an avatar or even of an initiate has ever been truthfully described. And this will not be possible until man’s reason has been developed so that he will see that the ruling religious fictions are fictions.
3The black priesthood’s satanic invention of “sin as a crime against an infinite being who requires infinite punishment” had been so engrafted in the subconscious of all mankind that Paul thought it was ineradicable. Therefore he chose to base his presentation on that fiction, believing he could liberate mankind from it by his new fiction that Christos’ work of salvation was that he had offered himself up as a sacrifice to satisfy god’s demand for righteousness.
4Had the kabbalist, then gnostician, Paul known what a failure his attempt was to identify the god of Christos, the king of the planetary government, with that bloodthirsty elemental of the Jews, Jehovah, in order to win the Jews over to the message of Christos, then he would have kept to the teaching of Christos, his one esoteric teaching, that god is love and all men are brothers. So it is certainly true what the poet understood and all history bears witness to, that “human wisdom is vanity”.
1The gnosticians called everything that was related to the essential world (46) “Christos”. This explains Paul’s use of that word in different senses. “Christ in you” meant essential atoms in man’s envelopes, or “god immanent” quite simply.
2The theologians have never been able to interpret that symbol correctly. “God immanent” had three different meanings in gnostic parlance: the essential consciousness of essential matter, which consciousness is latent in the “uninitiated”; the three triads (especially the second triad); the participation in the cosmic total consciousness. The three triads were called the “father, the son, and the mother” (The “mother” was later changed into the “holy ghost”).
3Paul: “I live; yet not I, but Christos lives in me”, was a gnostic saying. By “Christos” the essential consciousness (46) was intended. The meaning was: My self (the monad) is no longer enclosed in the causal envelope but in the essential envelope. It is very doubtful whether Paul said this of himself or had just heard the expression and then used it. The fact is that Paul in that incarnation was not even a causal self but a mental self.
4Gnostic sayings interpreted:
5“I live; yet not I, but Christos lives in me.” I live no more in the first but in the second triad.
6”In that light we shall see the light.” To the consciousness of higher worlds, the light of lower worlds appears as darkness. With each higher world everything gets quite another meaning. The saying also means that by the light which esoterics bestows on mankind we will find the path to the source of light, the planetary hierarchy.
7“The just shall live by faith.” The just will understand the incorruptible justice of life. Life is justice and there is no injustice in life. Seeming injustices are due to the infallible Law.
8“Faith without works is dead.” By works the gnosticians understood “obedience to the Law”, in which knowledge of the Law, understanding of the importance of frictionless application, and ability of application were prerequisites.
9The well-known saying “take the kingdom of heaven by force” has reference to those aspirants to discipleship who have decided to “make a rapid career” and who with one-pointed purpose live only in order to reach the fifth natural kingdom as quickly as possible.
10Paul’s expression, “We were the children of wrath”, has been interpreted by theologians as meaning that we are the “children of the wrath of god”. This demonstrates the perception of these theologians, corresponding to their level of development. They ascribe to god a quality belonging to the lower stages of human development. They lack too much in judgement to understand that this is blasphemy.
1There never existed any persons corresponding to Jeshu’s twelve apostles, nor any original church in Jerusalem. Jeshu’s disciples were members of the secret knowledge order of the gnosticians and did not preach to the people. They were fishermen only in the symbolic sense of “fishers of men”.
2The first Christian churches were quite different from the description of them given by Eusebios in the Acts of the Apostles. They were mostly made up of illiterates who (like communists in all countries) were dreaming about a dictatorship of the proletariat. Christianity won its followers by its “beatitudes” in which the poor and the persecuted were promised paradise and to inherit the earth. They had the word of god that they were the foremost. The silliest were the greatest in the kingdom to come. There was not more religion in those revolutionaries than in the agitators of the French and Russian revolutions. The educated, who were originally led by members of the esoteric knowledge orders, were amazingly few in number.
3The Acts of the Apostles is in its entirety a forgery by the father of the church, Eusebios. That is what the “pure, unadulterated word of god” looks like.
4All these facts from esoteric history were well-known to initiates of higher degrees. So strong was the fanaticism ruling, however, that nobody dared to give these facts out. It was only at the end of the 19th century and in theosophical circles that they disclosed the secret orally and internally.
1The four gospels of the New Testament were selected from about fifty gnostic legends. They were intended to depict, in symbolic form, the life of an “initiate” among the uninitiated. It is the best proof of the theological lack of judgement that they have not yet been able to see that these gospel stories do not represent historical events but are gnostic symbols. These they have never been able to interpret, and therefore the esotericians firmly maintain that Christianity in its historical formation through the centuries is not Christos’ teaching but an imaginative construction. All the Christian dogmas are the results of misinterpretation of symbols.
2Historical Christianity is an obvious distortion and falsification of Christos’ teaching.
3Man has been deprived of his divine nature and been made an even worse sinner than ever before, an incurably evil creature. The divine has been satanized, the human has been trampled in the dirt, life has been deprived of its wondrous beauty and glory, the god of love has been made a monster who in his unquenchable hatred has invented the tortures of hell.
4Christos taught that the law is in all and thus also in us. The law is our one true authority. But only he who has got a knowledge of reality and life can descry the workings of the law everywhere.
5He taught that life is a unity and that all life is divine in essence. But only he who has attained to the stage of unity knows what unity, divine love, is.
6He taught that life is happiness. But only he who has forgone his lower self in order to find his higher self, thereby to enter the kingdom of supermen, knows what bliss is.
7The history of Christianity demonstrates how Christos’ mission of salvation was largely thwarted through Paul and the Christian theologians.
8Starting from Paul the theologians have expounded his words so that they serve to connect Christos’ message of a loving father with the Jews’ hateful Jehovah (Jahveh) who demanded bloody sacrifices instead of the services of love. They managed the unbelievable, the satanic trick of bridging two absolutely incompatible worlds. It was a cardinal mistake to bind the Old and New Testaments together in one “Bible” (the “word of god”). The Old Testament is Judaism, the New Testament is the Christian way of thinking. They are two totally different views of life. To call the Old Testament the “word of god” is a proof of aberration.
9The theologians defend their mistake of uniting the Old and New Testaments by asserting that the Old Testament prophecies of Messiah were fulfilled in the New Testament. They are ignorant of the fact that the gnostic authors of the gospel stories fashioned their Jesus precisely on the prophecies in order to make their message more easily acceptable to the Jews. They made a mistake about that as about everything else and in so doing have misled the theologians now almost for two thousand years.
10If the Bible is the word of god (according to the theologians written by men impelled by the holy spirit), then it may be asked why that spirit contradicts himself in the Old and New Testaments. “Ye have heard that it was said to them of old time... But I say unto you.” The fiction is evident.
11Are they so blinded by their fictions that they are unable to see how miserably poor both the Old and New Testaments are? The holy spirit who dictated that material must in truth have been of a poorer quality than a skilful novelist.
12The (forged) gospels bristle with sheer absurdities: Jeshu is said to have cursed a fig-tree that did not bear fruit when “the time of figs was not yet”, to have made water wine, to have eaten lamb, to have outraged a herd of swine, etc.
13You cannot “make disciples of all nations”, raise them up to the stage of humanity.
14They still do not seem to have understood that Christianity is not Christos’ teaching but they make these two identical and ascribe to Christianity merits which it cannot claim merely because Christos’ teaching is intimated in the gospels. Christianity is the teaching of theologians and not of Christos. It is wrong to derive humanism from historical Christianity. Humanism derives from individuals whom the Church first persecuted during their lifetime but later counted among its sheep. By its persecution the Church has forfeited any right to claim them. There is a perfect confusion of ideas in this respect.
15The expositions of the theologians that Jeshu died to save us from the wrath of god, that his resurrection from the dead signifies a victory over death, that man is a mortal being, that the soul dies along with the body, that on the last day god will give man a new body, etc., are as many grotesque lies of life. There is no death, only a dissolution of the monad’s envelopes of incarnation, and then reincarnation. The monad, or self, is immortal. The fact that the envelopes of incarnation dissolve when the monad has left them and has no more use of them, is no death of the self.
16Relying on the epistles of Paul, which were forged by the father of church, Eusebios, the theologians have also spread the lie of sexuality as being “sinful”, etc. Sexuality is a natural function, as divine as everything else.
17To believe that Christos–Maitreya would be able communicate his view of life to mankind is to be wanting in both knowledge of life and discernment. Part of it he could communicate to his disciples, who were initiates of esoteric knowledge orders. They possessed a knowledge of the nature of existence, the meaning of life (the development of consciousness), and the laws of life, and were far ahead of the rest of mankind, which is still at or near the stage of barbarism. What he taught them is known only to esotericians, not to theologians who must rely on decisions and interpretations by ecumenical councils. If, contrary to expectation, there had been an esoterician among those prelates, then he would not have been able to make himself understood. That “life more abundant” which Christos–Maitreya spoke of is the energies of the second triad and is inaccessible to men.
18The Christians pray to an imaginative construction of god and “Jesus”, having no idea as to who god is. They do not even know Jeshu’s true name. Christos promised to stay on earth, which he has done. He just awaits the day when the religious people will do everything that lies in their power for him to be able to reappear. He will not come alone, however, but will bring his staff of 44-selves, 45-selves, and 46-selves with him. He will come when mankind has learnt to see that it cannot solve its political, social, economical, cultural problems and, above all, that it has failed in its consciousness development. The last twelve thousand years of world history is the story of a continuous fiasco. The victims of blind hatred, the martyrs to truth, can be numbered in billions. No wonder that our planet is regarded as a veritable lunatic asylum by those who are able to visit our earth from other planets and also solar systems.
1Before Christos of the gnostic gospels left the visible world (in 72 B.C.) he declared that he would always remain with this his mankind and that he would return at the beginning of each new world epoch, that is, when the vernal equinox every 2500 years wanders into a new zodiacal constellation.
2He is now preparing for his return. The exact date cannot be fixed, since it depends on the attitude of mankind. It is true that he knew he would not find peace on earth when he returns. But a considerable portion of mankind must nevertheless find time to turn away for a while from the strivings of the physical world, tired of its quarrels and strife, longing to receive higher life, and do what they can to help his visible work to make the greatest possible impact.
3By his personal presence he can give those who long for him the opportunity of meeting him while they are still imperfect beings; he can in a particular manner inspire those who wish to be instruments in the spread of the knowledge of the kingdom, the fifth natural kingdom; he can enable them all to have an ineffaceable, and therefore also for their future lives infinitely valuable, impression – slumbering in their subconscious – of the ineffable beauty of the Christos state.
4He says himself of this:
5Henceforth I come not solely through groups with recognized officials, through organizations rendering me what is often no more than lip-service in their proclamation of the brotherhood of all.
6I come to each and all who love me, no matter of what race, class or creed. The greatness of their need of me, the strength of their desire to see me, shall be the measure of their power to see me. I come if their inner vision be true enough to recognize me, if there be in their hearts that which responds to the love which eternally flows forth to them from mine.
7By this power which I hold, this power of almighty love, I seek to draw the hearts of men into unity with that good, that happiness, which is for all men the goal, no matter what name they ascribe to it, no matter under what guise and seeming it appears to them.
8The ways of search be manifold, but on each of these I am ready to meet my own, those who listen to my voice. I will speak to them and through them to all in whom has been kindled that spark, which some time will be the warming flame of love and the clear light of wisdom.
The above text constitutes the essay Gnostics by Henry T. Laurency. The essay is part of the book Knowledge of Life One by Henry T. Laurency. Copyright © 1999 by the Henry T. Laurency Publishing Foundation.