The Mysteries of the Kingdom: reasons i am stunned (Part 1)
Dear All,
i would like to extend the Silence over the week-end please. When
its over i will explain the reasons why i am stunned. So please
bear with me the delay which can be used to better comprehend Jesus
and His teachings. "The Mysteries of the Kingdom" should be read
very slowly, line by line, paragraph by paragraph. We must begin to
remember and meditate on our Primordial Father/Spirit/Brahman and
Mother/Holy Spirit/Adi Shakti--to recognize our true nature as
children of these 'spiritual' parents--from within! Thanks for the
cooperation.
regards to all,
jagbir
The Mysteries of the Kingdom:
"The 'Gospel of Judas' does not stop with condemning erroneous views
about God and sacrifice, or practices of eucharist and baptism. On
the contrary, such criticism of mistaken church leaders marks only
its beginning. From this point, this gospel goes on to show "divine
mysteries" revealed only to Judas – about God, about Jesus and the
divine source whence he comes, and about how he – and the disciple
who follows him – may enter that spiritual reality.
Reason I am stunned:
i know for a fact that centuries of rules, rituals and debates over
Christ's teachings have created massive volumes of confusing, even
contradictory, human interpretations that have little to do with God.
Shri Mataji too has criticized religious institutions, condemning
their erroneous views about the Divine which have led their followers
astray, preachings that have nothing to do with Self-realization.
The Mysteries of the Kingdom:
Jesus teaches Judas that at death, the bodies of all human beings
will perish – there is no resurrection of the flesh. Only the souls
of the great and holy race will be lifted up when their spirits
separate from them (Judas 8:3-4). At the beginning Judas does not
really understand, for when he has a dream, Jesus laughs at him, a
clear indication that Judas has made some error. But rather than
dismissing Judas, Jesus promises to support him. He encourages Judas
to speak about his distress when he dreamed that "the twelve"
disciples were stoning and persecuting him. But Judas also had a
vision of the heavenly Temple – a glorious vision of a great house
filled with brilliant light, and, high above, dense green foliage
(Judas 9:9-12). (P.78) People would immediately recognize this as the
infinite light in which God dwells – the house of God. That, of
course, is what Jews called the Jerusalem Temple; but what Judas
sees - in stark contrast to "the twelve's" dream about bloody
sacrifice in the earthly Temple – is the spiritual reality beyond
this world, the divine reality that Israel's prophets often described
simply as "light", the glory of God's presence, at which humanly
built "houses of God", from the Jerusalem Temple to the cathedral at
Chartres, can only hint.
Reason I am stunned:
"The doctrine of bodily resurrection, linked closely to the soul's
nature and destiny, suffers like a fate. The ancients knew little or
nothing about the human organism — its chemical constituents, its
functioning parts, its psychology — and even less about the nature of
death. Modern man has measured corruption, can detail the chemical
changes that take place when bodily life ceases, has a clear idea of
what precisely corruption and decay of the human frame connote, and
defines human death precisely by the cessation of the observable
functions of the body. The three religions define death as the moment
when the soul leaves the body.
On the other hand, the scientist cannot accept the "outside"
explanation: that a god will "resurrect" the corrupted body. He knows
that in a living body today the actual molecules which compose it
were not part of it some time ago. In another decade it will be made
up of molecules which at present are elsewhere: in African lions, in
passion-flowers of the Amazon, in Maine lobsters, in earth in
Patagonia, and in the fur of a Polar bear. For the scientist, the
body as such has truly ceased to exist. No "shade" or reduced form of
the body exists in an "underworld" or in Elysian fields. The body has
ceased to exist. He therefore finds the resurrection of the body
unintelligible."
Malachi Martin, The Encounter,
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1970, 286.
The Mysteries of the Kingdom:
But when Judas asks to go there and join the distinguished elders who
surround the divine presence, Jesus rebukes him: "Your star is
leading you astray, Judas" (Judas 9:15). This shows that although
only Judas, of "the twelve," caught a glimpse of what Jesus meant
when he began to speak to them about the mysteries that are beyond
the world – for Judas alone perceived that Jesus came from the
immortal realm above (Judas 2:22-23) – he still has not fully
understood what Jesus is trying to tell him. No mortal is worthy to
go there, Jesus insists, because that place is reserved for the holy
ones – that is, for people who are no longer subject to the sun and
moon and the other angels who rule over the realm of chaos. So even
though Jesus has already told Judas that he is able to reach the
immortal realm (Judas 2:27), the disciple still doesn't understand
fully Jesus' most central teaching – that for human beings to gain
eternal life, they have to perceive the deeper vision of God that
emerges from within. That is why Jesus began by challenging the
disciples "to bring forth the perfect human." (P.79) Those who do so
discover that they have within them spiritual resources of which they
were unaware.
Reason I am stunned:
The eternal Spirit World exists and that is where Jesus descended
from. It is an immortal realm where countless liberated souls live.
Jesus demonstrates that no human being can enter the immortal realm
until and unless humans have realized their Self i.e., perceived the
deeper vision of God that emerges from within.
The Mysteries of the Kingdom:
For in the process of bringing forth the perfect human, one becomes
aware of the deeper meaning of the 'Genesis' account, which tells how
God created humankind:
Then God said, "Let us make humankind in our image, according to our
likeness..." So God created humankind in his image, in the image of
God he created them; male and female he created them" (Genesis 1:26-
27).
If human beings are created in the image of the divine, why is this
image so hard to perceive and why does it take such courage to
discover? Here Jesus goes on to explain that creation "in the image"
refers to our original, spiritual nature, hidden deep within what we
seem to be as ordinary men and women. It is that original quality of
human being that was created in the image of a spiritual being called
Adamas, who dwells in the light, where the true God dwells, hidden
even from the angels (Judas 11:1-2). The human Eve, too, is created
after the image of the heavenly race – because, like Adamas, Eve is
also a heavenly being – and it is she who most deeply represents
humanity's spiritual nature. For within the luminous cloud of light
where Adamas dwells on high there also dwelt Eve. In Greek her name
("Zoe") means "Life," drawing on the wordplay found in Hebrew, in
which "Eve" means "life," as the 'Genesis' account shows: "The man
called his wife's name Eve, because she was the mother of all living"
(Genesis 3:20). (P.80) Here Jesus teaches that "the whole race" of
humans should seek eternal life 'in her name' (Judas 13:2-4). What
this means for human beings now is that those who come to recognize
their true nature are children of these 'spiritual' parents – not
children like Cain and Abel, enmeshed in the story of the first
murder, but children who resemble the lesser-known one, Seth, whom
'Genesis' says Eve bore to Adam as their third son:
When God created humankind, he made them in the likeness of God ...
When Adam had lived one hundred thirty years, he became the father of
a son in his likeness, according to his image, and named him Seth
(Genesis 5:1,3)
All humanity, then, belongs to "the incorruptible race of Seth"
(Judas 11:5), since everyone is a child of Adam and Eve, created
according to the likeness and the image of God.
Reason I am stunned:
When God said, "Let us make humankind in our image, according to our
likeness", that image is that of the same substance as that of the
Creator i.e., of a spiritual nature. Thus our soul (Atma) is the same
as that of Spirit (Paramatma). All humanity are created according to
the likeness and the image of Brahman and they have to recognize
their true nature as children of the creator i.e., as eternal souls
of the Spirit. They have to remember again their original, spiritual
nature, hidden deep within what seems to be as ordinary, physical men
and women.
"One of the messages of the Upanishads is that the Spirit can only be
known through union with him, and not through mere learning. And can
any amount of learning make us feel love, or see beauty or hear
the `unheard melodies'? Some have only seen the variety of thought in
the Upanishads, not their underlying unity. To them the words in the
sacred texts might be applied: "Who sees variety and not the unity
wanders on from death to death."
The spirit of the Upanishads is the Spirit of the Universe. Brahman,
God himself, is their underlying spirit. The Christians must feel
that Brahman is God, and the Hindu must feel that God is Brahman.
Unless a feeling of reverence independent of the barriers of names
can be felt for the ineffable, the sayings of the Upanishads is
true: "Words are weariness," the same idea expressed by the prophet
that "Of making many books there is no end."
The Holy Spirit may be the nearest translation of Brahman in
Christian language. Whilst God the Father and God the Son are in the
foreground of the mind of many Christians, the Holy Spirit seems to
receive less adoration. And in India the Brahman of the Upanishads is
not as popular as Siva, Vishnu or Krishna. Even Brahma, the
manifestation of Brahman as creator, and not to be confused with him,
is not living in the daily devotions of the Hindu, as are the other
two gods of the trinity, Siva and Vishnu. The Upanishads doctrine is
not a religion of the many; but rather the Spirit behind all
religions in their central theme repeated in such a wonderful variety
of ways.
Brahman in the Universe, God in his transcendence and immanence is
also the Spirit of man, the self in every one and in all, Atman. Thus
the momentous statement is made in the Upanishads that God must not
be sought as something far away, separate from us, but rather as the
very inmost of us, as the higher Self in us above the limitations of
our little self. Thus when the sage of the Upanishads is pressed for
a definition of God, he remains silent, meaning that God is silence.
When asked again to express God in words, he says "Neti, neti," "Not
his, not this"; but when pressed for a positive explanation he utters
the sublimely simple words" TAT TWAM ASI," "Thou art That." "
Juan Mascaro, The Upanishads
The Mysteries of the Kingdom:
Why, then, does Jesus speak of 'two' kinds of human races? Why is it
that not everyone automatically understands the spiritual nature? To
help Judas understand, Jesus tells him that Saklas was the one who
decreed that human beings should only live for a short time and then
perish. People have been led astray and polluted with the foolish
"wisdom" of the world (Judas 8:7), because the rulers of chaos and
oblivion "lord it over them." They've come to believe that this life
of the flesh, our present life in this world, is all that really
exists. (P.81) When they try to imagine eternal life, they imagine it
only as living on forever in the flesh, just as Justin, Irenaeus, and
Tertullian say. But Jesus insists they are wrong. Although
the 'Gospel of Judas', like the New Testament gospels, says that
Jesus' teaching offers a path to eternal life, the key to that path
is not what happens to the physical body; it is understanding
humanity's spiritual connection to God. Those who understand the
deeper secrets of creation, aware that they are created "in the
image" of the divine source, may come to dwell above in the realm of
the Spirit.
Reason I am stunned:
Jesus says there are two types of human races; the overwhelmingly
vast majority that thinks in terms of the physical body and the
miniscule minority that has attained knowledge of their original
nature, hidden deep within. The former have been led astray and
polluted with the foolish "wisdom" of the world by political leaders
and guardians of religious regimes — priests, pastors, reverends,
bishops, popes, rabbis, clerics, imams, mullahs, shaikhs, ulema,
ayatollahs, gurus, swamis, pandits, brahmins, acaryas, bhagwans,
granthis, gianis, lamas, monks, dalai lamas. Even when they try to
imagine eternal life, they imagine it only as living on forever in
the flesh – graves opening up during resurrection, 72 virgins in
heaven to fornicate at will for all eternity, heaven and eternal life
on earth etc.
Jesus' teaching offers a path to eternal life. The key to that path
is not what happens to the physical body. Instead it is understanding
humanity's spiritual connection to God> Only the miniscule minority
have taken this path to eternal life by attaining Self-realization
i.e., realization of the Self/God/Brahman within. Only the few who
understand the deeper secrets of creation are aware that they are
created "in the image" of the divine source. Jesus promises that only
they will come to dwell above in the realm of the Spirit.
The Mysteries of the Kingdom:
Jesus explains to Judas that God did not abandon humanity to the
lower angels but made sure that Adam and those with him learned that
the image of God they carry deep within makes them superior to the
rulers of chaos (Judas 13:16-17). Judas is astonished when he hears
this. At first he can't believe it is true, but gradually he comes to
understand what it means. Jesus explains that because everyone
received a divine spirit, everyone can worship God truly. Those who do
so free themselves from the power of the lower angels, so that when
their physical bodies die, their souls – now joined with spirits of
the great and holy race above – ascend to the heavenly realm above
(Judas 8:2-4; 9:22; 13:12-15). Judas finally understands Jesus'
teaching, so that this time he does not turn his eyes away, but he
lifts up his eyes so that he sees the cloud of light, and he enters
into it (Judas 15:15-19).
Reason I am stunned:
This is nothing but Self-realization! Jesus explains that because
everyone received a divine spirit, everyone can truly worship that
divine spirit (God) from within. Those able to worship their Self can
free themselves from this physical world and their liberated souls
ascend to the immortal heavenly realm of the Spirit above ...... and
live forever. This is the eternal afterlife promised by all the Holy
Scriptures.
The Mysteries of the Kingdom:
Yet the 'Gospel of Judas', like the New Testament gospels, shows that
Jesus' teaching is not limited to words; he also teaches through what
he does. What he reveals is not complete when he finishes speaking –
but only when he dies. His death demonstrates that the death of the
body is not the end of life, but only a step into the infinite.
Reason I am stunned:
Jesus Christ is the only incarnation who has demonstrated and given
evidence through His crucifixion and resurrection that "the death of
the body is not the end of life, but only a step into the infinite".
Shri Mataji is absolutely right when She heaped this praise on
Jesus: "He was the Holiest of the Holy. You accept that position."
And for more than 30 years She has glorified Jesus Christ and declared
the Good News of the Kingdom of God--the promised Resurrection and
eternal afterlife in the Spirit World--month after month, year after
year, decade after decade. The end of this physical life is but a step
into the spiritual infinite!
The Mysteries of the Kingdom:
What meaning, then, does Jesus' death have? Jesus shows Peter that he
should not fear death, because what dies is only the mortal body, not
the living spirit. To show him this, Peter is given a vision of
Jesus' passion to prepare him to face his own suffering and death.
The Savior reveals to Peter that if he perceives the crucifixion not
with his physical ears and eyes but with spiritual apprehension, he
will be able to perceive the truth. The one into whose hands and feet
they drive the nails is only the fleshly part; the living Jesus is
untouched by this suffering and death ('Apocalypse of Peter' 81:4-
24). [4] Peter expresses astonishment, for in a kind of double
vision, he seems to see one person being seized and nailed to the
cross while another, joyful and laughing, stands nearby. When Peter
asks Jesus what this means, Jesus explains that when the body suffers
mortal agony, it releases "the Spirit filled with radiant light"
(83:9-10). Human beings are not saved by dying as martyrs but only by
accepting God's forgiveness and standing fast against those who teach
error and violence.
Reason I am stunned:
First Falsehood: "But They Killed Him Not... But So It Was Made To
Appear To Them"
"Islam denies Shri Jesus' crucifixion contrary to massive scriptural
and historical evidence. This might be quite a shock to non-Muslims,
but it is true. Ask any Muslim and he or she will tell you that
Christ was never crucified. All Muslims firmly believe so, thinking
that the Qur'an says so!
That they said (in boast), "We killed Christ Jesus the son of Mary,
the Messenger of Allah" —
But they killed him not, nor crucified him,663 but so it was made to
appear to them,
And those who differ therein are full of doubt, with no (certain)
knowledge, but only conjecture to follow,
For a surety they killed him not.
surah 4:157 Al Nisa (The Women)
(Abdullah Yusuf Ali, The Holy Qur'an, Amana Corporation, 1989.)
"663. The Qur'anic teaching is that Christ was not crucified nor
killed by the Jews, notwithstanding certain apparent circumstances
which produced that illusion in the minds of some of his enemies.;
that disputations, doubts, and conjectures on such matters are vain."
Abdullah Yusuf Ali, The Holy Qur'an
(Abdullah Yusuf Ali, The Holy Qur'an, Amana Corporation, 1989.)
The critical words "but so it was made to appear to them" clearly
indicates that humans did see Him being crucified. They saw Him being
crucified and killed (and the body later removed and entombed.) All
this did happen but it was made to appear to them that they had
crucified and killed Him. But in Reality, "for a surety they killed
him not." This means that they `killed' Him physically, but
spiritually He was alive. He never died because the Spirit is
eternal. So, for sure they never killed Him just as no human ever
dies as we are all eternal spirits. Shri Jesus was physically
crucified but He did not die spiritually. In other words, He was not
crucified although it was made to appear so. The spirit is eternal
and cannot be crucified, killed, maimed, burnt, or cut, i.e., it is
indestructible. This was probably the simplest way of explaining a
very subtle and complex Truth to illiterate tribal folks.
The Qur'an does not deny the crucifixion; it only affirms that Shri
Jesus was not killed, although in all appearance it seemed so. And
the only way this is possible if humans saw Shri Jesus `dead' on a
cross. All His disciples and followers knew about His death by
crucifixion because there were many who witnessed it. Even though
they buried his dead body, He resurrected Himself three days later.
So He did not die even though He `died.' So He did die by crucifixion,
a common form of Roman punishment. If this is not the case then will
one billion Muslims please enlighten the precise nature of His death.
We are dying to know what you know."
Shri Adi Shakti: Kingdom of God, pages 2993-94
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