Western European stream·The Great Initiates·Jesus: The Mission of Christ

Source context

Theme

Christ as singular cosmic event distinct from prior initiatic missions, fulfilling and superseding the ancient mystery-stream

Soul-faculty

Consciousness Soul

Steiner

• GA 123, 1910-09-04Steiner traces the cosmic preparation for Christ through figures such as Abraham and Melchisedek, positioning the Christ-event as the culmination of a pre-Christian initiatic lineage rather than merely one more instance of it.
• GA 240, 1924-01-28Steiner acknowledges the biographical similarities between ancient initiates and the Christ-figure while insisting these parallels point toward a unique event that transcends the initiatic pattern they prefigure.
• GA 53, 1905-03-16Steiner identifies the great initiates as the originators of every major religious impulse, yet distinguishes the Mission of Christ as the central turning-point of earth-evolution to which all prior initiatic work was oriented.

Cross-tradition

• Christian theology (kenosis doctrine)Patristic and later Christian theology frames Christ's incarnation as a self-emptying (kenosis) of divine being into human form — a structural parallel to Schuré's treatment of Christ's mission as an act of cosmic descent irreducible to any prior initiatic pattern.
• Jewish messianismThe Hebrew prophetic tradition frames history as oriented toward a singular messianic fulfillment, showing cross-tradition congruence with Schuré's depiction of Christ's mission as the telos of the initiatic stream rather than one episode within it.
• Platonism (descent of the Logos)Platonic cosmology posits the Logos as the ordering principle of the cosmos that descends into matter; Schuré's chapter draws on this framework to articulate the metaphysical basis for Christ's unique mission as a Logos-incarnation.

Jesus: The Mission of Christ

The Mission of Christ

Think not that I am come to destroy the law or the prophets: Iam not come to destroy, but to fulfill. —Matthew 5:17

The Light was in the world, and the World was made by it, and the world knew it not. —John 1:10

For as the lightning cometh out of the east and shineth even unto the west, so shall also the coming

of the Son of Man be. —Matthew 24:27

38The Condition of the World at the Birth of Jesus
The world's destiny grew critical; the darkened sky was filled with sinister portents. Despite the efforts of the initiates in Asia, Africa and Europe, polytheism had ended with the collapse of civilization. This does not exclude the sublime cosmogony of Orpheus, so splendidly extolled but already weakened in the time of Homer. One can lay the blame on the difficulty human nature has in maintaining itself at a high spiritual level. For the great spirits of antiquity, the gods were merely a poetic expression of the hierarchical forces of nature, a speaking image of its internal organism. As symbols of cosmic and animate forces these gods continue to live in the consciousness of mankind. In the thinking of the initiates, this diversity of gods or of forces was superseded and penetrated by the Supreme God or pure Spirit. The chief goal of the sanctuaries of Memphis, Delphi and Eleusis had been to teach this unity of God, along with the moral discipline attached to it. But the disciples of Orpheus, Pythagoras and Plato failed in face of the egotism of the politicians, the meanness of the Sophists and the passions of the crowd. The social and political disintegration of Greece was the result of her religious, moral and intellectual deterioration. Apollo, the solar Word, the manifestation of the supreme God and of the supraterrestrial world through beauty, justice and divination, grows silent. There are no more oracles, no more inspired men, no more real poets: Minerva, Wisdom and Providence, veils herself before her people who are changing into satyrs, profaning the Mysteries, insulting the sages and gods in the theatre of Bacchus, by means of Aristophanic farces. The Mysteries themselves are corrupted, for sycophants and courtesans are admitted to the festivals of Eleusis. When the soul becomes clouded, religion becomes idolatrous; when thought becomes materialistic, philosophy falls into skepticism. Thus we see Lucian, a poor microbe born from the corpse of paganism, ridiculing the myths after Carneades misunderstood their scientific origin. Superstitious in religion, agnostic in philosophy, selfish and divided in politics, drunk with anarchy and fatally sworn to tyranny; this is what had become of this divine Greece which transmitted the science of Egypt and the Mysteries of Asia to us in forms of immortal beauty. If anyone understood what was lacking in the ancient world, if anyone tried to raise it again by an effort of heroism and genius, it was Alexander the Great. This legendary conqueror, like his father, Philip, initiated into the Mysteries of Samothrace, revealed himself much more as the spiritual son of Orpheus than the disciple of Aristotle. Doubtless this Achilles of Macedonia who set out with a handful of Greeks, crossing Asia to India, dreamed of a universal empire, but not through the oppression of peoples or through crushing religion and free science, as did the Caesars. His great idea was the reconciliation of Asia and Europe through a synthesis of religions, based upon a scientific authority. Thus motivated, he paid homage to the science of Aristotle as well as to Minerva of Athens, Jehovah of Jerusalem, Osiris of Egypt and Brahma of the Hindus. As a true initiate he recognized the same Divinity and the same Wisdom beneath all these symbols. This was the broad view, the superb divination of this new Dionysus! The sword of Alexander was the last lightning- flash of the Greece of Orpheus. It illumined both Orient and Occident. Philip's son died, intoxicated by his victory and his dream, leaving the remnants of his empire to rapacious generals. But his thought did not die with him. He had founded Alexandria, where Oriental philosophy, Judaism and Hellenism were ultimately to blend in the crucible of Egyptian esoterism, awaiting the word of the Resurrection of Christ. As the star-twins of Greece, Apollo and Minerva, faded on the horizon, men saw a threatening sign ascending into the stormy sky: the Roman She-Wolf. What is Rome's origin? The conjuration of a greedy oligarchy in the name of brute force; the oppression of human intellect, of religion, science and art through deified political power; in other words, the opposite of the truth, according to which a government draws its power only from the supreme principles of science, justice and economy. All Roman history is but the outgrowth of this pact of iniquity by which the Roman senators declared war first on Italy, then on the human race. They chose their symbol well! The brass She-Wolf, raising her wild hair and moving her hyena-head on the Capitoline, is the reflection of this government, the demon which will possess the Roman soul to the very last. In Greece, at least, men always respected the sanctuaries of Delphi and Eleusis. In Rome they suppressed science and art from the beginning. The efforts of the sage Numa, an Etruscan initiate, failed before the limitless ambition of the Roman senators. To Rome he brought the Sibylline Books, containing a part of the science of Hermes. He created arbitrating judges, elected by the people; he distributed lands to the latter; he erected a temple to Good Faith and Janus, a hierogram which means universality of law; he submitted the right of war to the Fecials. King Numa, whose memory the people did not cease to cherish, and whom they considered to have been inspired by a divine genius, seems therefore to be a historical intervention of sacred science in government. King Numa does not represent Roman genius, but the genius of Etruscan initiation, which followed the same principles as the Schools of Memphis and Delphi. After Numa, the Roman Senate burned the Sibylline Books, destroyed the authority of the flamens, demolished the judicial institutions and returned to a system where religion was merely an instrument of political domination. Rome became the hydra which swallowed up peoples as well as their gods. Slowly the nations of the earth were subjugated and plundered. The Mamertine Prison was filled with kings from North and South. Wanting no priests other than slaves and charlatans, Rome assassinates the last guardians of esoteric tradition in Gaul, Egypt, Judea and Persia. She pretends to worship the gods, but worships only her She-Wolf. And now in a bloody dawn appears the last son of that wolf, epitomizing the genius of Rome: Caesar! Rome has absorbed all peoples; Caesar, her incarnation, devours all powers. Caesar not only dreams of being Emperor of Nations; uniting the tiara and the diadem in his crown, he has himself named Pontifex Maximus. After the Battle of Thapsus he is deified as a hero; after Munda, he is declared a god; finally, his statue is placed in the temple of Quirinus and a school of curates is established, bearing his name: the Julian priests. As an example of supreme irony and supreme logic of events, this same Caesar who makes himself god, denies the immortality of the soul in presence of the Senate. Is it possible to say more clearly that there is no longer any god except Caesar? With the Caesars in control, Rome, heiress of Babylon, lifts her hand over the whole world. -- Meanwhile, what has become of the Roman State? It has destroyed all collective life outside the Capital. Dictatorship by the military is established in Italy, extortions by governors and publicans in the provinces. -- Conquering Rome settles like a vampire upon the corpse of ancient societies. Now the Roman orgies can parade openly with their bacchanale of vice, their procession of crimes. They begin with the voluptuous meeting of Mark Antony and Cleopatra; they will end with Messalina's outbursts and Nero's madness. They begin with a lascivious, public caricature of the Mysteries; they will end in the Roman Circus, where wild beasts fall upon naked virgins, martyrs of their faith, to the applause of twenty thousand spectators. Nevertheless, among the peoples conquered by Rome were those who were called the people of God, and whose genius was the opposite of Roman genius. How does it happen that Israel, worn out by internal struggle, crushed by three hundred years of slavery, had preserved their faith undaunted? Why did these conquered people rise up in the face of Greek decadence and Roman orgies like a prophet, head covered with sackcloth and ashes, eyes flashing in terrible anger? How did they dare predict the fall of the masters who had their feet on their neck, and speak of a yet unknown, final triumph, at a time when they too were approaching final ruin? It is because a great idea lived in Israel. This idea had been inculcated by Moses. Under Joshua, the Twelve Tribes had raised a memorial stone with the inscription, "This is a covenant between us and Jehovah, who is the only God." In the chapters on Moses we have seen how and why the law-maker of Israel made monotheism the cornerstone of his science, of his social law and of a universal religious idea. He had had the genius to understand that the future of mankind depended upon the victory of this idea. In order to preserve it, he had written a hieroglyphic book, built a golden Ark, raised a people out of the nomadic dust of the desert. Moses caused the fire of heaven to flash, the thunder to roar over these witnesses of the spiritual idea. Against them were pitted not only the Moabites, the Philistines, the Amalakites and all the peoples of Palestine, but also the passions and weaknesses of the Jewish people themselves. The book ceased to be understood by the priesthood, the Ark was captured by enemies, and again and again the people almost forgot their mission. Why then, in spite of everything, did they remain faithful? Why did Moses' idea remain engraved in letters of fire upon the brow and heart of Israel? To whom is this singular perseverance due -- this magnificent fidelity in the midst of the vicissitudes of a turbulent history filled with catastrophes, the fidelity which gives Israel its unique physiognomy among nations? One can answer, To the prophets, and to the institution of prophecy. By oral tradition, this dates back to Moses. The Hebrews had prophets in all periods of their history, even until the time of their dispersal, but the institution of prophecy appears in an organic form for the first time in the period of Samuel. It was Samuel who founded those brotherhoods of Nebiim, those schools of prophets, in the face of a rising royalty and an already degenerate priesthood. He made the schools the strict guardians of esoteric tradition and of the universal religious thought of Moses, as opposed to the kings, in whom the political idea and nationalism were to predominate. In effect, in these brotherhoods were preserved the remains of Moses' science, the sacred music with its modes and powers, occult therapy and, finally, the art of divination which the great prophets handled with great ability and outstanding reverence. Divination existed in the most varied forms among all peoples of ancient times. But in Israel prophecy was an unfolding, an elevation, an authority in which monotheism preserved the human soul. Prophecy, represented by the theologians of the earth as direct communication with a personal God, denied by naturalistic philosophy as pure superstition, is in reality but the higher manifestation of the universal laws of the spirit. "The general truths which govern the world," says Ewald in his fine book on the prophets, "in other words, the thoughts of God, are unchangeable and unassailable, entirely independent of the fluctuations of things, of the will and the actions of men. Man is originally intended to share in them, to understand them and to translate them freely into actions. Thus he reaches his own real destination. But in order for the Word of the Spirit to penetrate the flesh of man, man must first be shaken to his depths by the great upheavals of history. Then eternal Truth bursts forth like a stream of light. This is why it is so often said in the Old Testament that Jehovah is the one living God.' When man hears the divine call, a new life builds up within him; he no longer feels alone, but finds himself in communion with God and with all Truth. Now he is prepared to move from one truth to another, infinitely. In this new life his thought is identified with the universal Will. He has a clear view of the present and a complete faith in the ultimate victory of the divine idea. The man who experiences this is a prophet, that is, he feels irresistibly compelled to show himself to others as God's representative. His thought becomes vision, and that higher Power which makes Truth well up in his soul, sometimes by breaking it, constitutes the prophetic element. The prophetic manifestations in history have been the thunderbolts and lightnings of Truth." From this stream those giants, Elias, Isaiah, Ezekiel and Jeremiah drew their strength. In the depth of their caves or in kings' palaces, they were truly the sentinels of the Lord and, as Elisha says of his master, Elijah, "The chariots and horsemen of Israel." Often with perfect accuracy they foretell the death of kings, the fall of kingdoms and the punishments of Israel. Again, they are mistaken. Although lighted from the sun of divine Truth, in their hands the prophetic torch frequently flickers and grows dark at the breath of national passions. But never do they blunder in regard to moral truths, the true mission of Israel, or the ultimate triumph of justice among men. As true initiates they preach contempt for external cult, the abolition of bloody sacrifices, purification of the soul and charity. Their insight is particularly admirable in what concerns the ultimate victory of monotheism, its liberating and peacemaking role for all people. The most terrible misfortunes which can strike a nation, including foreign invasion and mass deportation to Babylon, were unable to shake that faith. Listen to Isaiah during Sennacherib's invasion: "Rejoice ye with Jerusalem, and be glad with her, all ye that love her: all ye that mourn for her, rejoice with her with a great joy. For thus saith the Lord: Behold I shall extend peace to her like a river, and the glory of the Gentiles like a flowing stream: then shall ye suck and shall be borne upon her sides, and dandled upon her knees. As one whom his mother comforteth, so shall I comfort you; and ye shall be comforted in Jerusalem. For I know their works and their thoughts; it shall come to pass that I will gather all nations and all tongues; and they shall come and shall behold my glory." Only today, before the tomb of Christ, is this vision beginning to be fulfilled; but who can deny its prophetic truth when one considers Israel's role in the history of mankind? No less unshakable than this faith in the future glory of Jerusalem, in its moral grandeur and its religious universality, is the faith of the prophets in a Savior or Messiah. All speak about him. Again, the incomparable Isaiah is the one who sees him most clearly, who describes him with most power in his bold language: "And there shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse, and a Branch shall grow out of his roots: And the spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord.... But with righteousness shall he judge the poor, and reprove with equity for the meek of the earth: and he shall smite the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips shall he slay the wicked." At this vision, the despairing soul of the prophet is calmed, lighting up like a cloudy sky at the tremor of a celestial harp, and all the storms vanish. For now it is truly the picture of the Galilean which is traced before his inner eye: "He shall grow up before him as a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry ground: he hath no form nor comeliness.... He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows.... Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed.... He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth: he is brought as a Iamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he openeth not his mouth." For eight centuries, above dissensions and national misfortunes, the thundering word of the prophets caused the idea and the image of the Messiah to be present, sometimes as a terrible avenger, sometimes as an angel of mercy. Born under Assyrian tyranny, amidst the exile of Babylon, unfolded under Persian domination, the Messianic idea continued to grow during the reign of the Seleucides and Maccabees. When the Roman domination and the reign of Herod came, the Messiah was living in the consciousness of all. If the great prophets had seen him as a just man and a martyr, a true son of God, the people -- faithful to the Judaic idea -- imagined him as a David, a Solomon or a new Maccabeus. But whoever this restorer of Israel's glory was to be, everyone believed in him, waited for him, called upon him. Such is the power of prophetic activity. Thus, just as Roman history ended fatally with Caesar by way of destiny's instinctive path and infernal logic, so Israel's history led freely to Christ by way of the conscious path and the divine logic of Providence, manifested in its visible representatives, the prophets. Evil is fatally condemned to contradict itself and to destroy itself because it is false; but the Good, despite all obstacles, engenders light and harmony in the succession of the ages because it is the fecundity of Truth. From its triumph Rome had only Caesarism; from its decline, Israel gave birth to the Messiah, lending truth to that beautiful saying of a modern poet, "Out of its own shipwreck, hope creates the thing contemplated." A faint expectancy hung over the peoples of the earth. In the excess of their evils, all humanity had a foreboding of a Saviour. For centuries all mythologies had dreamed of a divine child. Temples spoke of him mysteriously; astrologers calculated his coming; in their delirium the Sibyls had screamed of the fall of the pagan gods. The initiates had announced that one day the world would be ruled by one of their own, by a son of God. The earth waited for a spiritual king who would be understood by children, by the humble and the poor. The great Aeschylus, son of a priest of Eleusis, was almost murdered by the Athenians because through the mouth of his Prometheus he dared say in the public theatre that the reign of Jupiter-Fate would end. Four centuries later, in the shadow of the throne of Augustus, gentle Virgil announces a new age, and dreams of a marvelous child: "That last Age, predicted by the Cumaean Sibyl, has come. The great order of centuries past is beginning again; already from the heavenly heights a new race descends. Deign, chaste Lucina, to protect this Child, whose birth is to banish the Age of Iron and to restore the Golden Age to the world; already your brother Apollo reigns. .. . See the world in balance, see earth and seas in their immensity, the sky and its deep vault, all nature trembling with the hope of the Age to come." Where will this child be born? From what divine world will this soul come? By what lightning-flash of love will he descend to earth? By what wondrous purity, by what superhuman energy will he remember the heaven he has left behind? By what still more tremendous effort will he know how to arise once more from the depths of earthly consciousness, leading humanity in his train? No one would have dared admit it, but everyone awaited him. Herod the Great, Idumean usurper and protégé of Caesar Augustus, was dying in his palace in Jericho after a luxurious and bloody reign, which had covered Judea with marvelous buildings and human hecatombs. Stricken with a frightful malady, a decomposition of the blood, he was breathing his last, hated by all, eaten by fury and remorse, haunted by the specters of his innumerable victims among whom was his innocent wife, -- the noble Miriam, descended from the Maccabees, as well as three of his own sons. The seven women of his harem had fled before the royal phantom which, still living, already smelled of the sepulchre. Even his bodyguard had abandoned him. Impassive, watching beside the dying, was his sister Salome, his evil genius, the instigator of his blackest crimes. Diadem upon her brow, her breast shimmering with precious jewels, haughtily she watched, awaiting the last breath of the king so she could seize the royal power. Thus died the last king of the Jews. At that very moment, the future spiritual king of humanity had just been born. Silently, in profound humility and obscurity, the few initiates of Israel prepared for his reign. Notes for this chapter:

70How did Jesus become the Messiah? This is the original, most fundamental question in the
concept of the Christ, but the problem cannot be solved without intuition and without esoteric tradition. It is with this esoteric light, this inner flame of all religions, this central truth of all fertile philosophy, that I have attempted to reconstruct the life of Jesus in broad outline, while taking into account all the previous work of historical criticism which has prepared the way. As far as what concerns the historical and relative value of the Gospels, I have taken the three Synoptics (Matthew, Mark and Luke) as a basis, and John's Gospel as the arcanum of the esoteric doctrine of Christ, at the same time allowing for the posterior composition and symbolic tendency of this Gospel. The four Gospels, which must be compared with each other, are equally authentic, but in different ways. Matthew and Mark are the valuable Gospels of the letter and fact; the public acts and speeches are found there. Gentle Luke lets the meaning of the Mysteries be partly seen beneath the poetic veil of legend. This is the Gospel of the Soul, of Woman and of Love, John unveils these mysteries. One finds with him the deep foundation of the doctrine, the secret teaching, the meaning of the Promise, the esoteric reserve. Clement of Alexandria, one of the rare Christian bishops who possessed the key of universal esoterism, has well called it "the Gospel of the Spirit." John has a profound view of the transcendent truths revealed by the Master and a powerful way of summarizing them. His symbol is the Eagle, whose wings fly through space, and whose flaming eye observes the deepest secrets. (See also Rudolf Steiner's book, Christianity as Mystical Fact and the Mysteries of Antiquity, as well as his published lecture cycles on the four Gospels. Emil Bock's Studies in the Gospels and his The Three Years also contain useful material.--Ed.)

39Mary -- Jesus' Early Development
Jehoshoua, whom we call Jesus, from his Hellenized name, /esous, was probably born in Nazareth. It was certainly in this out-of-the-way corner of Galilee that his childhood was spent and the first, the greatest of Christian Mysteries was realized: the unfolding of the soul of Christ. Jesus was son of Myriam, whom we call Mary, the wife of the carpenter, Joseph. She was a Galilean woman of noble birth, and was related to the Essenes. Legend has embroidered a tapestry of wonders around the birth of Jesus. If legend harbors many a superstition, sometimes it also encloses little-known spiritual truths, because the latter are beyond common perception. One fact seems to stand out in the legendary story of Mary -- that Jesus was a child dedicated to a prophetic mission by the wish of his mother before his birth. The same is reported concerning several heroes and prophets of the Old Testament. These sons, dedicated to God by their mothers, were called Nazarenes. In this light, it is interesting to read again the stories of Samson and of Samuel. An angel announces to Samson's mother that she is about to become pregnant, that she will give birth to a son, that his hair will not be cut, "for the child shall be a Nazarite unto God from the womb: and he shall begin to deliver Israel out of the hand of the Philistines." Samuel's mother herself asked God for her son. "Hannah, the wife of Elkanah, was sterile .. . And she vowed a vow and said, O Lord of hosts, if thou wilt indeed . . . give thy handmaid a male child, then I will give him to the Lord all the days of his life, and there shall no razor come upon his head . . . Then Elkanah knew his wife . . . Sometime later, after Hannah had conceived, she bore a child and named him Samuel because, she said, I have asked him of the Lord." According to early Semitic roots, SAM-U-EL means The Inner Splendor of God. The mother, illumined by the one she was conceiving, considered him "the ethereal essence of the Lord." These passages are extremely important because they cause us to penetrate the constant and living esoteric tradition of Israel, reaching by this means into the true meaning of the Christian legend. Elkanah, the husband, is really Samuel's earthly father according to the flesh, but the Lord is his heavenly Father according to the Spirit. Here the figurative language of Judaic monotheism conceals the doctrine of the prior existence of the soul. The initiate woman makes an appeal to a higher soul in order to receive it into her womb, and to bring a prophet into the world. This doctrine, quite concealed among the Jews and completely absent from their official worship, was a part of the secret tradition of the initiates. It appears in the prophets. Jeremiah affirms it in these terms: "Then the word of the Lord came unto me saying, Before I formed thee in the belly, I knew thee; before thou tamest forth out of the womb, I sanctified thee, and I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations." Jesus will say the same thing to the scandalized Pharisees: "Verily, verily I say unto you: Before Abraham was, I am." How much of all this can one relate to Mary, the mother of Jesus? It seems that in the early Christian communities, Jesus was considered a son of Joseph and Mary, since Matthew gives us the genealogical tree of Joseph in order to prove that Jesus descends from David. Thus, like a few Gnostic sects they saw in Jesus a son given by the Lord in the same sense as was Samuel. Later, wishing to show Jesus' supernatural origin, legend wove its gold and blue veil: the story of Joseph and Mary, the Annunciation and even Mary's infancy in the temple. If we try to disengage the esoteric meaning from Jewish tradition and Christian legend, we shall say that providential action, or, more plainly speaking, the influx of the spiritual world which contributes to the birth of each man, whoever he may be, is more powerful and more visible at the birth of men of genius, whose appearance is in no way explained by the single law of physical atavism. This influx reaches its greatest intensity in the instance of one of those divine prophets, destined to change the face of the world. The soul chosen for a divine mission comes from a divine world; it comes freely, consciously, but in order that it can enter the scene of earthly life, a chosen vessel is necessary. This latter is the call of a mother from among the elite. She is one who by her moral bearing, by means of the desire of her soul and the purity of her life, senses, attracts, incarnates in her blood and in her flesh the soul of the Redeemer, destined to become a son of God in the eyes of men. This is the profound truth that the ancient idea of the Virgin Mother concealed. Hindu genius had already expressed it in the legend of Krishna. The Gospels of Matthew and Luke rendered it with simplicity and highly admirable poetry. "For the soul which comes from heaven, birth is a death," Empedocles said, five hundred years before Christ. However sublime a spirit may be, once buried in flesh it temporarily loses the remembrance of its entire past; once taken into the activities of corporeal life, the development of its earthly consciousness is subjected to the laws of the world where it is incarnated. It comes under the power of the elements. The higher its origin, the greater will be its effort to regain its dormant powers, its celestial qualities, and to become aware of its mission. Intense and sensitive souls need silence and peace in order to blossom. Jesus grew up in the calm of Galilee. His first impressions were sweet, austere and calm. His valley birthplace resembled a bit of heaven fallen upon the side of the mountain. The town of Nazareth has hardly changed in the course of centuries. Its houses, rising in rows beneath the rock, according to the reports of travelers, resemble white cubes scattered in a forest of pomegranate trees, fig trees and vineyards, over which fly great flocks of doves. Around this refuge of coolness and green blows the sharp air of the mountains; from the heights is seen the open, clear horizon of Galilee. To this impressive landscape add the serious home life of a devout, patriarchal family. The power of Jewish education rested from earliest times in the unity of the Law and of the Faith, as well as in the strong family organization, dominated by national and religious ideals. For the child, the paternal household was a sort of temple. Instead of the frescoed laughing fauns and nymphs which decorated the atria of Greek houses, such as could be seen at Sephoris and Tiberias, in the Jewish houses one saw only passages from the Law and the prophets, whose severe texts were inscribed over the doors and on the walls in Chaldean letters. But the union of the father and mother in the love of their children warmed and illumined the bareness of this interior with a completely spiritual life. In such a home Jesus received his early training; there, from the oral teaching of the father and mother he first learned to understand the Scriptures. From his early years, the long, strange destiny of the people of God unfolded before his eyes in the periodic Festivals which were celebrated in the family by reading, singing and praying. At the Feast of Tabernacles, a hut of myrtle and olive branches was raised in the courtyard or on the roof of the house as a reminder of the time of the nomadic Patriarchs. They lighted the seven-branched candlestick, unrolled the scrolls of papyrus and read the sacred stories. For the child's soul the Lord was present not only in the starry heavens but also in the candlestick which reflected His Glory, in the speech of the father, as well as in the silent love of the mother. Thus the great days of Israel cradled the childhood of Jesus -- days of joy and mourning, of triumph and exile, of afflictions without number and of eternal hope. In face of the burning, penetrating questions of the child, the father was silent. But the mother, raising her large eyes with their gaze like that of a Syrian dreamer, meeting the questioning look of her son, would say, "The word of God lives only in His prophets. One day the Essene sages, the hermits of Mount Carmel and of the Dead Sea will answer you." One also pictures the child Jesus mixing with his companions and exercising over them that singular prestige which precocious intelligence gives, along with his feeling for justice and active sympathy. We follow him to the synagogue where he hears the Scribes and Pharisees debate, where he himself is to use his dialectical power. We see him repelled by the dryness of these teachers of the Law who tortured the letter to the point of doing away with the Spirit. We also see him observing the pagan life, divining it and compassing it with a glance as he visits wealthy Sephoris, the capital of Galilee, home of Antipas, dominated by its acropolis and guarded by Herod's mercenaries: Gauls, Thracians, foreigners from many countries. Perhaps on one of these trips, so frequent in Jewish families, he visited one of the Phoenician cities, veritable human anthills, swarming at the edge of the sea. From afar he would have seen the low, thick-columned temples surrounded with dark bushes, from which came the chanting of the priestesses of Astarte, accompanied by mournful flutes. Their cry of pleasure, sharp like pain, awakened in his astonished heart a long tremor of anguish and pity. Then, with a feeling of deliverance, Mary's son returned to his beloved mountains. He climbed over the hill of Nazareth and looked upon the vast horizon of Galilee and Samaria. He saw Carmel, Gilboa, Tabor, the Sichem Mountains, ancient witnesses of the patriarchs and prophets. "The high places" unfolded in a circle; they stood out against the vastness of the sky like great altars awaiting fire and incense. -- Were they waiting for someone? Yet, however powerful the impressions of the surrounding world on Jesus' soul may have been, they all paled before the sovereign truth of his inner world. This truth opened within him like a luminous flower emerging from a dark stream. It resembled the increasing clarity which was developing within him when he was alone, and which he welcomed. Then men and objects, near or far, seemed transparent in their secret essence. He read thoughts and beheld souls. Then, in memory, as though through a thin veil, divinely beautiful, radiant beings were hovering over him or were assembled in the worship of a blinding Light. Marvelous visions haunted his sleep or stood between himself and reality through a virtual dividing of his consciousness. At the climax of these ecstasies which bore him from region to region in other worlds, he sometimes felt drawn by a dazzling Light, then immersed in an incandescent sun. He retained an ineffable tenderness and an extraordinary strength from these experiences. He felt reconciled with all beings, in harmony with the universe. What then was that mysterious Light which burst forth from within himself and carried him off to the most distant spaces, that Light which first touched him from his mother's large eyes and now united him with all souls by secret ties? Was this not the Source of souls and worlds? He called it his Heavenly Father. This primal feeling of unity with God in the light of love -- this is Jesus' first great revelation. An inner voice told him to seal it deep within himself, but it was to illumine his entire life. It gave him invincible certainty. It made him gentle and indomitable. Of his thought it made a diamond shield; of his word, a sword of light. This profoundly secret, mystical life was united in the adolescent with complete clarity in regard to the things of external life. Luke describes him for us at the age of twelve, "growing in strength, in grace and in wisdom." Religious consciousness was the innate thing in Jesus -- absolutely independent of the external world. His prophetic and Messianic consciousness could not be awakened except by a shock from outside, by the life of his time and finally by a special initiation and a long inner unfoldment. Traces of this are found in the Gospels and elsewhere. The first great crisis came to Jesus on that first journey to Jerusalem with his parents, of which Luke has spoken. That city, the pride of Israel, had become the center of Jewish aspirations. Its misfortunes had only served to excite men's minds. One could say that the more the tombs multiplied there, the more hope was exalted. Under the Seleucides, under the Maccabees, first by Pompey, finally by Herod, Jerusalem had suffered dreadful sieges. Blood had flowed like rivers; the Roman legions had slaughtered the people in the streets; mass crucifixions had polluted the hills with infernal scenes. After so many horrors, after the humiliation of the Roman occupation, after decimating the Sanhedrin and reducing the pontiff to the status of a trembling slave, Herod, as though in irony, had rebuilt the Temple more magnificently than that of Solomon. Nevertheless, Jerusalem remained the Holy City. Had not Isaiah, Jesus' favorite author, called it "the bride, before whom all peoples shall kneel?" He had said, "Thou shalt call thy walls Salvation; and thy gates Praise, and the nations shall come, to the splendor which shall arise over you." To see Jerusalem and the Temple of Jehovah was the dream of all Jews, especially since Judea had become a Roman province. Pilgrims came there from Perea, Galilee, Alexandria and Babylon. On the way, in the desert, under the palms, beside wells, psalms were sung; the travelers longed for the Temple of the Lord, they looked eagerly for Mount Zion. A strange feeling of oppression must have come over Jesus' soul when on his first journey he saw Jerusalem with its impressive walls, sitting upon the mountain like a dark fortress, when he saw the Roman amphitheater of Herod beside its gates, the Tower of Antonia overlooking the Temple, Roman legionnaires, spear in hand, watching from above. He climbed the steps of the Temple. He admired the splendor of the marble porticoes where the Pharisees paraded in sumptuous garments. He crossed the Court of the Gentiles, the Court of the Women. With the crowd of Israelites he came near the Gate of Nicanor and the balustrade three cubits long, behind which one could see priests in their robes of purple and deep red, shining with gold and precious stones, officiating before the sanctuary, sacrificing goats and bulls and sprinkling the people with the blood while pronouncing a benediction. This did not resemble the temple of his dreams nor the heaven of his heart. Then he went down into the more populous sections of the city. There he saw beggars pale from hunger, anguished faces reflecting the last civil wars, tortures and crucifixions. Leaving by one of the gates of the city, he wandered in those rocky valleys, in those dark ravines where quarries, pools and kings' tombs are found, forming a kind of sepulchral belt around Jerusalem. There he saw insane men coming out of caves, uttering blasphemies against the living and the dead. Then, descending by a broad stairway to the pool of Siloam, as deep as a well, he saw beside the yellowish water, lepers, paralytics, the wretched, covered with all kinds of sores. An irresistible impulse forced him to look directly into their eyes, to drink in all their pain. Some asked him for help, others were wan and hopeless; others, stupefied, seemed to suffer no longer. -- But how much time had been required for them to become like this? Then Jesus asked himself, What good is this Temple, these priests, these hymns, these sacrifices, since they cannot remedy all these sorrows? And suddenly, like a stream swollen by endless tears, he felt the sorrows of these souls, of this city, of these people, of all mankind, flow into his heart. He understood that no longer could he experience a happiness which he could not share with others. These looks, these despairing stares, were never to leave his memory. That melancholy bride, Human Suffering, walked beside him, saying to him, 1 will never leave you!' He went away, filled with sadness and anguish. When once again he saw the luminous peaks of Galilee, a profound cry came from his heart: Heavenly Father! . . . I want to know! I want to heal! I want to save!'

40The Essenes -- John the Baptist -- the Temptation
He could learn what he wished to know only from the Essenes. The Gospels have maintained an absolute silence about Jesus' deeds and travels before his meeting with John the Baptist, when, as they relate, he assumed his ministry. Immediately afterward he appears in Galilee with a teaching which has been formulated with the assurance of a prophet and the consciousness of the Messiah. But it is evident that this bold and premeditated beginning was preceded by a long development and a virtual initiation. It is no less certain that this initiation must have taken place in the only association which then preserved in Israel the real traditions of the prophets, together with their way of living. This cannot be doubted by those who, raising themselves above the superstition of the letter and the mechanical mania for the written document, have the courage to discover the connection between things. This is apparent, not only from inner relationships between the teaching of Jesus and that of the Essenes, but also from the very silence Christ and his disciples maintained concerning this sect. Why does one who attacks all the religious groups of his time with unprecedented freedom, never name the Essenes? Why do the Apostles and writers of the Gospels not speak of them? Evidently because they consider the Essenes as their own group, because they are united with them by the vow of the Mysteries and because the sect was linked with the Christians. In Jesus' time the Order of the Essenes constituted the last remnants of those brotherhoods of prophets organized by Samuel. The despotism of the masters of Palestine, along with the jealousy of an ambitious and servile priesthood had pushed them into retreat and silence. They no longer fought as did their predecessors; they were content with preserving tradition. They had two main centers: one in Egypt beside Lake Maoris, the other in Palestine at Engaddi, beside the Dead Sea. The name "Essenes" which they had given themselves, came from the Syrian word, Asaya, meaning physicians, in Greek, therapeutes, for their sole avowed ministry, so far as the public was concerned, was that of healing physical and moral maladies. "They studied very carefully," said Josephus, "certain writings on medicine which dealt with the secret properties of plants and minerals." Some possessed the gift of prophecy like Menahim, who had predicted to Herod that he would reign. "They serve God," said Philo, "with a great piety, not by offering Him victims, but in sanctifying their spirit. They flee from cities and apply themselves to the arts of peace. There is not one slave among them; they are all free and work for one another." The rules of the Order were strict. In order to enter, a novitiate of one year was required. If one had given satisfactory proof of temperance, he was admitted to the ablutions but without entering into relationship with the masters of the Order. Two more years of trial were required before one was received into the Brotherhood. The members swore "by terrible oaths" to observe the duties of the Order and to betray none of its secrets. Then only did they take part in the communal meals, which were celebrated with great solemnity, forming the intimate cult of the Essenes. The garments they wore at these meals they considered sacred, removing them before returning to work. These fraternal love feasts, the primitive form of the Supper instituted by Jesus, began and ended with prayer. On these occasions the original interpretation of the sacred books of Moses and the prophets was given, but in the explanation of the texts as well as in initiation there were three meanings and three stages. All this resembled the organization of the Pythagoreans," but it is certain that it also existed in about the same form among the ancient prophets, for it is found in all places of initiation. In addition, the Essenes taught the basic ideas of the Orphic and Pythagorean doctrine, including that of the pre-existence of the soul, the consequence of and reason for its immortality. "The soul," as Josephus reported, "descending from the most subtle ether and drawn into the body by a certain natural charm, lives there as in a prison; freed from the bonds of the body as from a long servitude, it flies away with joy." Among the Essenes the brothers themselves lived in remote places under a community of property and in a state of celibacy, tilling the soil and sometimes educating the children of outsiders. As for the married Essenes, they constituted a sort of Third Order, affiliated with and subject to the other. Silent gentle and serious, they were seen here and there practising the arts of peace. Weavers, carpenters, vine growers or gardeners, they never were weapons makers or merchants. Spread in little groups throughout Palestine, in Egypt, even as far as Mount Horeb, they were dedicated to most generous hospitality. Thus we shall see Jesus and his disciples travel from city to city, from province to province, always certain of finding shelter. "The Essenes," said Josephus, "were of an exemplary morality; they strove to repress all passion and all emotion of anger; they were always kind, peaceful and of the highest good faith in their relations. Their word had more weight than an oath; they considered the oath superfluous in ordinary life. Rather than violate the least religious precept they bore the most cruel tortures with an admirable strength of soul and with a smile on their lips." Indifferent to the external pomp of the cult in Jerusalem, repelled by the hardness of the Saducees, by the pride of the Pharisees, by the pedantry and dryness of the synagogue, Jesus was drawn to the Essenes by a natural affinity." Joseph's premature death left Mary's son, now a man, entirely free. His brothers could continue their father's trade and maintain the home. His mother allowed him leave in secret for Engaddi. Welcomed as a brother, greeted as one of the elect, he must have rapidly acquired an invincible ascendancy over the masters themselves by means of his superior faculties, his ardent charity and that divine element which pervaded all his being. But from them he received what the Essenes alone could give him: the esoteric tradition of the prophets, and through this, his own historical and religious orientation. He understood the abyss which separated the official Jewish doctrine from the ancient wisdom of the initiates, the true mother of religions, forever persecuted by Satan, that is, the spirit of Evil, the spirit of egotism, hatred and negation joined with absolute political power and priestly imposture. He learned that under the seal of its symbolism, Genesis contained a theogony and a cosmogony as far removed from its literal meaning as the deepest science from the most childish fable. He contemplated the Days of the Elohim, of eternal creation through the emanation of the elements and the formation of the worlds, the origin of souls and their return to God by progressive existences, or The Generations of Adam. He was struck by the greatness of the thought of Moses, who desired to pave the way for the religious unity of nations by creating the cult of the One God and by incarnating this idea in a people. They then communicated to him the doctrine of the Divine Word, already taught by Krishna in India, by the priests of Osiris in Egypt, by Orpheus and Pythagoras in Greece and known among the prophets under the name the Mystery of the Son of Man and of the Son of God. According to this teaching, the highest manifestation of God is man, who by virtue of his constitution, his form, his organs and his intellect is the image of the Universal Being, possessing His faculties. But, in the earthly evolution of mankind, God is dispersed as it were, broken up and mutilated in the multiplicity of men and of human imperfection. He suffers, he seeks himself, nevertheless, he is the Son of Man, the perfect Man. The Man symbol, deepest thought of God, remains hidden in the infinite abyss of His desire and His power. However, at certain periods when it is a question of saving humanity from an abyss, of bringing mankind together in order to lift them higher, a chosen one becomes identified with Divinity, draws It to him through strength, wisdom and love and in turn, manifests It to men. Then the Divine, through the power and the breath of the Spirit, is completely present in him; the Son of Man becomes the Son of God and His living Word. In other ages and among other peoples there had already been Sons of God, but since Moses none had been raised in Israel. All the prophets waited for his Messiah. The seers even said that this time he would be called the Son of Woman, of celestial Isis, of the divine Light, who is the Bride of God, because in him the light of Love would shine with a brilliance as yet unknown to earth. These hidden things which the patriarch of the Essenes unveiled to the young Galilean on the arid shores of the Dead Sea in the solitude of Engaddi, seemed both marvelous and familiar to him. With great emotion he heard the leader of the Order explain these words which are still read today in the Book of Enoch: "From the beginning, the Son of Man was in the Mysteries. The Most High kept him in His presence, and manifested him to His elect . . . But the kings will be frightened and will bow their faces to earth, and fear will seize them when they shall see the Son of Woman sitting on the throne of his glory. Then the Elect will call all the forces of heaven, all the saints from on high, and the power of God. Then the Cherubim, the Seraphim, the Ophanim, all the angels of Power, all the angels of the Lord, that is, of the Elect and of the other Power, who serve on earth and above the waters, will lift up their voices." At these revelations, the words of the prophets, read and meditated upon a hundred times, flamed in the Nazarene's eyes with new, deep and terrible light like flashes of lightning in the night sky. Who then was this Chosen One, and when would he come to Israel? Jesus spent several years with the Essenes. He submitted himself to their discipline, he studied the secrets of nature and practiced esoteric healing with them. He completely blunted his senses in order to develop his spirit. Not a single day passed without his meditating on the destinies of mankind and in questioning himself. It was a memorable night for the Order of the Essenes and for its new adept when he received, in deepest secret, the higher initiation at the fourth stage, the one granted only in the special case of a prophetic mission, desired by the brother and approved by the Elders. They met in a grotto carved inside a mountain, a vast room containing an altar and seats of stone. The leader of the Order was there with a few Elders. At times two or three Essene women, initiate prophetesses, were admitted to the mysterious ceremony. Bearing torches and palms, they greeted the new initiate, who was clothed in white linen, as "Bridegroom and King," whom they had foretold and whom they now saw for the first time. Then the head of the Order, ordinarily a man of one hundred years (Josephus says that the Essenes lived to a very advanced age), presented the golden chalice to him, the symbol of supreme initiation, which held the wine of the Lord' vineyard, symbol of divine inspiration. Some said that Moses had drunk from it with the Seventy. Others believed that it dated back to Abraham, who received from Melchizedek this same initiation with the elements of bread and wine. The Elder presented the cup only to that man in whom he had recognized with certainty signs of a prophetic mission. But nobody could define this mission for him; he had to discover it for himself. For this is the law of the initiates: Nothing from the outside; all from within. Henceforth he was free, the master of his actions, liberated from the Order, himself a hierophant, left to the breath of the Spirit, which could cast him into the abyss or bear him to the summits beyond the region of torment and earthly passions. When the Nazarene took the cup after the songs, prayers and sacramental words of the Elder, a faint ray of dawn, slipping through a crevice in the mountain, gently touched the torches and the long white garments of the young Essene women. The latter trembled when the light fell upon the pale Galilean, for a great sadness appeared upon his beautiful face. Did his wandering gaze rest upon the sick of Siloam? Did he already see his path leading into the depths of that ever present suffering? Now at this time John the Baptist was preaching beside the Jordan. He was not an Essene, but was a prophet of the people, a member of the strong race of Judah. Driven into the desert by a fierce piety, he had led the most ascetic life in prayers, fasts and macerations. Over his bare skin, tanned by the sun, he wore a garment of camel's skin as a sign of the penance he wished to impose upon himself and his people. For he deeply felt the distress of Israel and awaited the deliverance. In line with the Judaic idea he imagined that the Messiah would come soon as an avenger and a judge; that, as a new Maccabeus, he would organize the people, drive out the Romans, punish the guilty, enter Jerusalem in triumph and reestablish the kingdom of Israel in peace and justice. John announced to the multitudes the imminent arrival of this Messiah; he added that it was necessary to prepare oneself by repentance of the heart. Borrowing the custom of ablutions from the Essenes, transforming it in his own way, he had conceived of baptism in the Jordan as a visible symbol, an external fulfillment of the inner purification he required. This new ceremony, this vehement preaching before immense crowds in the desert, which bordered the waters of Jordan between the rugged mountains of Judea and Perea, gripped imaginations, drew multitudes. It recalled the glorious days of the ancient prophets; it gave the people what they did not find in the Temple: the inner appeal, and, after the terrors of repentance, a dim but mighty hope. From all parts of Palestine they came to hear the saint of the desert, who announced the Messiah. Large groups, drawn by his voice, remained camped for weeks so they could hear him each day. They did not want to go away, for they were waiting for the Messiah to appear. Many asked to take up arms under his command, to begin the holy war again. Herod Antipas and the priests of Jerusalem were becoming troubled by this movement. Besides, the signs of the time were serious. Tiberius, seventy-four years of age, was ending his life surrounded by the debaucheries of Capri; Pontius Pilate re-doubled his violence against the Jews. In Egypt, the priests had announced that the Phoenix was about to be reborn from its own ashes. Inwardly aware that his prophetic calling was increasing, but still groping his way, Jesus also came to the desert of Jordan, accompanied by a few Essene brothers, who already were following him as a teacher. He wanted to see the Baptist, to hear him and to submit himself to public baptism. He wanted to enter upon his tasks by way of an act of humility and reverence for the prophet who dared lift his voice against the rulers of the day and to awaken the soul of Israel from its sleep. He saw the rude ascetic, shaggy and hairy with his visionary leonine head, standing in a wooden pulpit under a rustic tabernacle covered with branches and goatskins. Around him, among the sparse bushes of the desert, was an immense crowd, a whole encampment: tax collectors, Herod's soldiers, Samaritans, Levites from Jerusalem, Idumeans with their herds of sheep. Even Arabs had stopped there with their camels, tents and caravans at "the voice which cried in the wilderness." And that thundering voice rolled over the multitude: "Repent, prepare the way of the Lord; clear his paths!" He called the Pharisees and Sadducees "a generation of vipers." He added that "the axe is already at the root of the trees," and about the Messiah, he said, "I baptize you only with water, but he will baptize you with fire!" Then toward sunset, Jesus saw these masses of people pressing toward a cove on the banks of the Jordan, and Herod's mercenaries and brigands bent their rough backs beneath the water which the Baptist poured over them. Jesus went nearer. John did not know Jesus; he had heard nothing of him, but he recognized the Essene by his linen robe. He saw him, lost in the crowd, descend into the water to the waist, humbly bending himself to receive the baptism. When the neophyte stood up again, the fearful eyes of the wild preacher and the gaze of the Galilean met. The man of the desert trembled under this ray of wondrous sweetness, and the words escaped him involuntarily, "Are you the Messiah?" The mysterious Essene answered nothing, but bowing his thoughtful head and crossing his hands upon his breast, he asked the Baptist for his benediction. John knew that silence was the law of the Essene novices. Solemnly he raised his two hands; then with his companions the Nazarene disappeared among the reeds beside the river. The Baptist watched him depart with a mixture of doubt, secret joy and profound melancholy. What were his own knowledge and his prophetic hope before the light he had seen in the eyes of the Unknown, a light which seemed to light up all his being? If this young, handsome Galilean was the Messiah, he had seen the joy of his days! But his own task was finished, his voice was about to be silent. From that day on he began to preach with a deeper and more emotional fervor on the sad theme, "It is necessary that he grow and that I diminish." He began to feel the lassitude and sadness of old lions who are weary with roaring and lie down in silence, awaiting death. .. . Was he the Messiah? The Baptist's question also resounded in Jesus' soul. Since the unfolding of his consciousness, he had found God in himself and the certainty of the kingdom of heaven in the radiant beauty of his visions. Then human suffering had thrust into his heart its terrible cry of anguish. The Essene sages had taught him the secret of religions, the science of the Mysteries; they had shown him the spiritual decay of mankind, its expectation of a Saviour. But how could he find the strength to save mankind from the abyss? -- Here the direct call of John the Baptist fell into the silence of his meditation like the lightning of Sinai. -- Was he the Messiah? Jesus could answer this question only by withdrawing into the deepest part of his being. Hence that retreat, that fast of forty days, which Matthew sums up in the form of a symbolic legend. In reality, in Jesus' life The Temptation represents that great crisis, that sovereign vision of Truth which all prophets and all religious initiates must experience before beginning their work. Above Engaddi where the Essenes cultivated sesame and grapes, a steep path led to a grotto opening in the face of the mountain. It was entered between two Doric columns carved in the rock, similar to those of the retreat of the Apostles in the Valley of Jehosaphat. There one remained suspended over the deep abyss as though in an eagle's nest. At the end of a gorge below, one could see vineyards and human dwellings; in the distance was the Dead Sea, motionless and grey, while further away rose the desolate Mountains of Moab. The Essenes had obtained this retreat for their members who wished to submit themselves to the trial of solitude. Here were found several scrolls of the prophets, strengthening aromatics, dry figs and a little stream of water, the only food of the ascetic in meditation. Here Jesus came. First he reviewed in his mind all of mankind's past. He weighed the gravity of the present moment. Rome was dominant, and with her what the Persian Magi had called the reign of Ahriman, and the prophets, the reign of Satan, the sign of the Beast, the apotheosis of evil. Darkness was coming over humanity, the somber soul of the earth. From Moses the people of Israel had received the royal and priestly mission of representing the male religion of the Father, the pure Spirit, and of teaching it to the other nations, thus bringing about its triumph. Had Israel's kings and priests fulfilled this mission? The prophets who alone had had an awareness of it, answered with a single voice, No! Israel was dying in the grip of Rome. Was it necessary for the hundredth time to risk such an uprising as the Pharisees still wished, a restoration of the temporal royalty of Israel by force? Should he declare himself the son of David, crying out with Isaiah, "I will crush the people in my anger, and I will make them drunk in my indignation, and I shall overturn their power on the earth?" Should he be a new Maccabeus and have himself named pontiff-king? Jesus could attempt this. He had seen the crowds ready to rise up at the voice of John the Baptist, and the strength which he felt within himself was even greater still! But did might make right? Would the sword put an end to the reign of the sword? Would that not be merely providing new recruits for the powers of darkness, lurking in the shadows, waiting for their prey? Was it not necessary rather to make accessible to all, that Truth which until then had remained the privilege of a few sanctuaries and rare initiates, to open hearts to it, while waiting for it to enter the understanding through inner revelation and wisdom? In other words, should he, not preach the kingdom of heaven to the simple, to substitute for the reign of law that of grace, thus thoroughly transforming mankind while regenerating human souls? But whose would be the victory? Satan's or God's? Would it be that of the spirit of evil who reigns with the tremendous powers of earth, or of the divine Spirit who reigns in the invisible, heavenly regions and sleeps in the heart of men like a spark within the people? What would be the future of the prophet who would dare to tear the veil from the Temple, to show the emptiness of the sanctuary, to brave both Herod and Caesar? Nevertheless, it was necessary! The inner voice did not say to him as to Isaiah, "Take a great roll and write in it with a pen of man!" The voice of the Lord cried to him, "Rise up, and speak!" It was a question of finding the living word, the faith which moves mountains, the strength which breaks down strongholds. Jesus began to pray with fervor. Then, an anxiety, an increasing disturbance overcame him. He had the feeling of losing the marvelous felicity which previously had been his, and of sinking into a dark abyss. A black cloud, filled with shadows of all kinds, enveloped him. He distinguished the faces of his brothers, of his Essene teachers, of his mother. The shadows spoke to him, one after the other: "Fool who desires the impossible! -- You do not know what is in store for you! Give it up!" The invincible inner voice answered, "I must!" Thus he fought for a series of days and nights, sometimes standing, sometimes kneeling, sometimes prostrate on the ground. And deeper became the abyss into which he descended, thicker became the cloud around him. He had the sensation of approaching something terrible and indescribable. At last he entered the state of clear ecstasy to which he was accustomed, in which the deepest part of the consciousness awakens, enters into communication with the living Spirit of things, projecting the images of the past and future upon the diaphanous fabric of a dream. He closes his eyes; the external world disappears. The seer contemplates Truth by the light which floods his being, making of his intelligence a glowing furnace. Thunder rolls; the foundations of the mountain tremble. A whirlwind from the depths carries the seer away to the top of the Temple of Jerusalem. Rooftops and minarets shine below him like a forest of gold and silver. Hymns arise from the Holy of Holies. Clouds of incense ascend from all the altars, whirling around Jesus' feet. People in festival robes fill the porticoes; beautiful women sing hymns of ardent devotion for him. Trumpets sound, and a hundred thousand voices cry, "Glory to the Messiah! -- To the King of Israel!" "You will be that king if you will worship me," says a voice from below. "Who are you?" asks Jesus. Again the wind carries him away through space to the summit of a mountain. At his feet are the kingdoms of earth, spread out in their golden light. "I am the king of spirits and the prince of earth," says the voice from below. "I know who you are," cries Jesus. "Your forms are innumerable; your name is Satan! Appear in your earthly form!" The form of a crowned monarch appears, sitting upon a cloud. A dim aureole surrounds his imperial head. The dark figure is outlined against a blood-red cloud; his face is pale, his gaze is like steel. He says, "I am Caesar. Only bow, and I will give you these kingdoms." Jesus says to him, "Get behind me tempter! It is written, You shall worship only the Lord your God." At once the vision fades. Finding himself alone in the cave of Engaddi, Jesus asks, "By what sign shall I conquer the powers of the earth?" "By the sign of the Son of Man," answers a voice from above. "Show me this sign," says Jesus ... A shining constellation appeared upon the horizon. It consisted of four stars in the form of a cross. The Galilean recognized the sign of the ancient initiations, familiar to Egypt and preserved by the Essenes. In the dawn of the world, the sons of Japhet had worshipped it as the sign of earthly and heavenly Fire, the sign of Life with all its joys, of Love with all its marvels. Later the Egyptian initiates had seen in it the symbol of the great Mystery, the Trinity dominated by Unity, the image of sacrifice of the Ineffable Being Who is broken in order to reveal Himself in the cosmos. Symbol of life, death and resurrection, it covered innumerable tombs and temples ... The splendid cross grew larger, coming nearer as though drawn by the heart of the seer. The four living stars flamed into suns of power and glory. "This is the magic sign of Life and Immortality," said the heavenly voice. "Men once possessed it, but they lost it. Do you wish to give it back to them?" "I do," answered Jesus. "Then look! This is your destiny!" Abruptly the four stars were extinguished. Night fell. A subterranean rumbling shook the heights, and from the bottom of the Dead Sea came a dark mountain, surmounted by a black cross. A dying man was nailed upon it. A demon-ridden people swarmed over the mountain, shouting with an infernal mockery, "If you are the Messiah, save yourself!" The seer opened his eyes wide, then he fell backward, dripping with a cold sweat. For this crucified man was himself . . . He understood. In order to conquer, it was necessary to become identified with this frightful double, evoked by himself and placed before him like a sinister interrogation. Suspended in uncertainty as in the emptiness of infinite space, Jesus felt the tortures of the crucified one, the insults of men and the deep silence of heaven, all at the same time. "You can accept or reject it," said the angelic voice. The vision trembled, and the phantom cross with its tortured victim began to dim, when suddenly Jesus saw near him the sick people of the pool of Siloam, and behind them came a whole host of despairing souls, murmuring with lifted hands, "Without you we are lost! Save us, you who know how to love!" Then the Galilean slowly arose, and opening his arms with fullest love, cried out, "Give me the cross! -- And let the world be saved!" Immediately Jesus felt a great tearing in all his limbs, and he uttered a terrible cry... At the same time, the black mountain crumbled, the cross was swallowed up; a soft light, a divine happiness, flooded the seer, and in the azure heights a triumphant voice was heard saying, "Satan is no longer master! Death is conquered! Glory to the Son of Man! Glory to the Son of God!" When Jesus awakened from this vision, nothing around him had changed. The rising sun gilded the walls of the grotto of Engaddi, a warm dew like tears of angelic love moistened his aching feet and floating mists arose from the Dead Sea. But he was no longer the same. A definitive event had taken place in the unfathomable abyss of his consciousness. He had solved the riddle of his life; he had won the peace, and great certainty had entered into him. A new and radiant consciousness had come forth it the breaking of his earthly being, which he had trodden under his feet and thrown into the abyss. He knew that he had become the Messiah by an irrevocable act of his will. Shortly afterward he descended to the village of the Essenes. There he learned that John the Baptist had just been seized by Antipas and was imprisoned in the citadel of Makerous. Far from becoming frightened at this event, he saw in it a sign that the time was ripe, that now it was necessary for him to act. Therefore he announced to the Essenes that he was about to preach in Galilee "the Gospel of the Kingdom of Heaven." This meant that he was about to place the great Mysteries within the reach of the simple, to interpret for them the teaching of the initiates. Such courage had not been seen since the time that Sakya Muni, the last Buddha, moved by tremendous pity, had preached on the banks of the Ganges. The same sublime compassion for humanity moved Jesus. But to this he added an inner light, a power of love, a greatness of faith and a strength of action which were his alone. From the abyss of death, which he had fathomed and had tasted in advance, he brought to his brothers hope and life. Notes for this chapter:

71Points in common between the Essenes and Pythagoreans: Prayer at sunrise; linen clothing;
fraternal love-feasts; novitiate of one year; three stages of initiation; organization of the Order and community of property arranged by trustees; law of silence; oath of the Mysteries; division of teaching into three parts: 1) science of universal principles or theogony, which Philo calls Logic; 2) Physics or cosmogony; 3) morality, that is, everything that deals with man, the science to which the Therapeuts would be dedicated. (See also Rudolf Steiner's lecture cycle on the Gospel of Matthew and Bock's The Three Years-Ed.)

72Points in common between the teaching of the Essenes and that of Jesus: Love of one's neighbor
as a first duty; prohibition of an oath in attesting to truth as a witness; hatred of the lie; humility; institution of the Supper borrowed from the love-feasts, but with an entirely new meaning, that of Sacrifice.

73Book of Enoch, Chapters 48 and 61. This passage proves that the doctrine of the Word and the
Trinity found in John's Gospel existed in Israel long before the time of Jesus, and came from the depths of esoteric prophecy. In the apocryphal Book of Enoch, The Lord of Spirits represents the Father; The Elect, the Son, the Chosen One; The Other Force, the Holy Spirit.

41Jesus' Public Life -- His Esoteric Teaching -- The Miracles
I have tried to illumine with its own light that part of Jesus' I life which the Gospels have left in obscurity or hidden beneath the veil of legend. I have told by what initiation, by what development of soul and spirit the great Nazarene arrived at the Messianic consciousness. In other words, I have tried to reconstruct the inner genesis of the Christ. Once this genesis is recognized, the rest of my task will be easier. Jesus' public life has been related by the Gospels. In these accounts are divergences, contradictions and additions. Legend, concealing or exaggerating certain Mysteries, still reappears here and there, but from the totality appears such a unity of thought and action, a character so powerful and so unique that invincibly we feel ourselves in the presence of reality, of life. There is no question of reconstructing those inimitable accounts which, in their childish simplicity or their symbolic beauty tell more than all commentaries. But today it is important to clarify Jesus' connection with esoteric traditions and truths, to show the meaning and transcendent significance of his dual teaching. Of what great news was he the bearer, -- the already famous Essene who came from the shores of the Dead Sea to his Galilean homeland, there to preach the Gospel of the Kingdom? How was he to change the face of the world? The thinking of the prophets had reached a climax in him. Richly endowed in his being, he came to share with men this Kingdom of Heaven which he had conquered in his meditations and his struggles, in his infinite pain and boundless joy. He came to tear away the veil that the ancient religion of Moses had cast over the after-life. He came to say: "Believe, love, act, and may hope be the soul of your actions. Beyond this earth is a world of souls, a more perfect life. I know it; I come from there; and I will lead you to it. But it is not enough to aspire to it. In order to reach it, one must begin by bringing it about here below, first within yourselves, then in mankind. With what? -- With love, with active charity." The young prophet came to Galilee. He did not say that he was the Messiah, but he discussed the Law and prophets in the synagogues. He preached on the shore of the Sea of Galilee in fishermen's boats, beside the green oases which abounded near Capernaum, Bethsaida and Korazim. He healed the sick by the laying on of hands, with a look, or a command, and often by his presence alone. Crowds followed him; already many disciples were attached to him. He recruited them from among the men of the people: fishermen, tax collectors. For he wanted upright, unspoiled natures, ardent and believing, and he irresistibly won them over. In his choice of men he was led by that gift of spiritual insight which in all epochs has been the special possession of men of action, but especially of religious initiators. A look sufficed for him to fathom a soul. He needed no other test, and when he said, "Follow me," they followed him. With a gesture he called to him the shy, the hesitant, saying, "Come to me, all you who are heavy laden, I will give you rest. My yoke is easy, and my burden is light." He discerned the most secret thoughts of men who, troubled and disturbed, recognized their Master. Sometimes in a man's apparent unbelief he recognized uprightness. Nathaniel having asked, "Can anything good come out of Nazareth?" Jesus replied, "There is a true Israelite, in whom there is no guile!" He required neither oath nor profession of faith from his disciples, but only that they love him and that they believe in him. He put the community of property into practice, not as an absolute rule, but as a principle of brotherhood among his own. In his little group Jesus thus was beginning to bring about the Kingdom of Heaven that he wished to establish on earth. The Sermon on the Mount offers us a picture of that Kingdom already formed in embryo, with a resume of Jesus' public teachings. The Master is sitting on the top of the hill; the future initiates are gathered at his feet; down below, the assembled people avidly receive the words which fall from his mouth. What is the new doctor announcing? Fast? Mortification? Public penance? No. He says, "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven! Blessed are they that mourn, far they shall be comforted." Then in ascending order he unfolds the four sorrowful virtues: the marvelous power of humility, compassion for others, inner goodness of heart, hunger and thirst for righteousness. Then the active, triumphant virtues appear in radiance: mercy, purity of heart, loving-kindness and, finally, martyrdom for righteousness. "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God!" Like the sound of a golden bell, before the inner eye of the hearers this saying reveals a part of heaven, radiant with stars above the head of the Master. They see the humble virtues, no longer like poor, thin women in the grey robes of penitents, but transformed into beatitudes, into virgins of light, whose radiance dims the splendor of the lilies and the glory of Solomon himself. The gentle motion of their palm branches spreads the perfume of the heavenly kingdom over these transformed hearts. The wonder is that this kingdom does not unfold itself in the distant expanses of heaven, but within those who are listening to this teaching. The latter exchange astonished glances. These poor in spirit have suddenly become so rich! More powerful than Moses, the magician of the soul has struck their hearts; an immortal stream gushes forth. His popular teaching is contained in the words, "The Kingdom of Heaven is within you!" Now that he explains to them the means necessary for attaining this unknown happiness, they are no longer surprised at the extraordinary things he asks of them: to root out even the desire for evil, to forgive trespasses, to love one's enemies. So powerful is the river of love which overflows from his heart that he draws them to himself. In his presence, everything seems easy to them. They are struck by the great newness and extraordinary boldness of his teaching. The Galilean prophet places the inner life of the soul above all external piety, the invisible above the visible, the Kingdom of Heaven above all earthly possessions. He orders them to choose between God and Mammon. Finally, in summing up his teaching, he says, "Love your neighbor as yourself, and be perfect, as your Heavenly Father is perfect." Thus he set forth all the depth of morality and science in popular form. For the supreme goal of initiation is to reproduce divine perfection in the perfection of the soul, and the secret of knowledge resides in the chain of similarities and relationships which link ever more closely the specific to the universal; the finite to the infinite. Since this was the public and purely Moral teaching of Jesus, it is clear that along with it he gave his disciples a secret teaching which explained the first, revealing its inner meaning, penetrating to the depths of the spiritual truths which he had gained from the esoteric tradition of the Essenes and from his own experience. Since this esoteric tradition was violently stifled by the Church after the second century, the majority of theologians no longer knew the true significance of Christ's words, with their sometimes double and triple meanings, and saw in them only the basic or literal meaning. For those who have penetrated deeply into the teaching of the Mysteries of India, Egypt and Greece, the esoteric thought of Christ animates not only his least important words, but all his deeds as well. Already visible in the three synoptic Gospels, it stands out clearly in the Gospel of John. The following example relates to a basic point of his teaching: Jesus is on the way to Jerusalem. He is not yet preaching in the Temple, but he heals the sick and teaches among his friends. His work of love must prepare the ground where good seed will fall. Nicodemus, the educated Pharisee, had heard of the new prophet. Filled with curiosity, but not wishing to jeopardize his position with his friends, he requests a secret interview with the Galilean, which Jesus grants. Nicodemus arrives at Jesus' home at night, and says to him, "Master! We know that you are a wise man come from God; for no one could work these miracles that you work if God is not with him." Jesus answers, "In very truth I say to you that if a man is not born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God." Nicodemus asks if it is possible for a man to return to his mother's womb and be born a second time. Jesus replies, "Indeed, I tell you that if a man is not born of water and of the spirit, he cannot enter the Kingdom of God." In this evidently symbolic form, Jesus sums up the ancient doctrine of regeneration, already known in the Mysteries of Egypt. To be born again with fire and spirit, and to be baptized with water and fire, marks two degrees of initiation, two stages of internal and spiritual development in man. Here water represents truth perceived by the intellect, that is, in a general, abstract manner. It purifies the soul and develops its spiritual seed. Rebirth in the spirit, or baptism by heavenly fire, means the assimilation of this truth by the will so that it becomes blood and life, the soul of all actions. The result is a complete victory of spirit over matter, the absolute mastery of the spiritualized soul over the body, now transformed into a docile instrument, a mastery which awakens the soul's sleeping faculties, opens its inner significance, gives it an intuitive view of truth and of the direct effect of one soul upon another. This condition is equivalent to that heavenly state which Christ called the Kingdom of God. The baptism with water, or intellectual initiation, therefore, is a beginning of rebirth; the baptism with the spirit is a total rebirth, a transformation of the soul by the fire of intelligence and will, and, subsequently, in a certain measure, of the elements of the body. In a word, it is a radical regeneration, hence the exceptional powers it gives to man. This is the earthly meaning of the conversation between Nicodemus and Jesus. It has a second meaning, which can be called the esoteric doctrine of the constitution of man. According to this teaching, man is threefold, consisting of body, soul and spirit. He has an immortal and indivisible part, the spirit; a perishable and divisible part, the body. The soul which links them, shares in the nature of each. As a living organism, it possesses an etheric fluidic body, similar to the material body which, without this invisible double, would have neither life, movement nor unity. Depending upon whether man obeys the promptings of the spirit or the excitations of the body, whether by choice he attaches himself to the one or the other, the fluidic body etherealizes or densifies, unifies or disintegrates. Therefore after physical death the majority of men must undergo a second death, that of the soul, which consists in ridding themselves of the impure elements of their astral body, sometimes even in experiencing its slow decomposition, while the completely regenerated man, having formed his spiritual body here upon earth, possesses his heaven within himself entering that region into which his affinity draws him. -- And water, in ancient esoterism, symbolized infinitely transformable, fluidic matter, as fire symbolized the one Spirit. In speaking of rebirth by water and spirit, Christ refers to the double transformation of his spiritual being and his fluidic sheath which awaits man after his death, and without which he cannot enter the kingdom of glorified souls and pure spirits. "What is born of flesh is flesh (i.e., bound and perishable) and what is born of the spirit is spirit (1.e., free and immortal). The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its breath, but you do not know where it comes from nor where it goes. So it is with every man who is born of the spirit." Thus speaks Jesus before Nicodemus in the night-silence of Jerusalem. A small lamp, placed between them, barely lights the faces of the two men, and is faintly reflected on the ceiling of the high room. But in the darkness the eyes of the Galilean teacher shine with a mysterious glow. How can one not believe in the soul when one looks into those eyes, sometimes gentle, sometimes flashing fire? The Pharisee teacher has seen his wisdom of the letter crumble, but dimly he sees a new world. He has seen the light of the spirit in the eyes of the prophet, whose long, blond hair falls upon his shoulders. He has been attracted by the powerful warmth emanating from his being. He has seen three tiny white flames appear and disappear like a magnetic aureole around Jesus' head. Then he thinks he feels the breath of the Spirit pass over his heart. Deeply impressed, the silent Nicodemus steals away to his home in the dark night. He will continue to live among the Pharisees, but in his secret heart he will remain faithful to Jesus. Let us note a major point of this teaching. According to materialistic concepts the soul is an ephemeral and accidental result of the forces of the body. In the usual spiritual teaching the soul is regarded as an abstract thing, without any conceivable link with the body. In esoteric doctrine, the only rational point of view in this matter, the physical body is a product of the incessant activity of the soul, acting upon the physical through the organism of the astral body, just as the visible universe is but a result of the activity of the infinite Spirit. This is why Jesus gives this doctrine to Nicodemus as the explanation of the miracles he works. It can serve as the key to the spiritual healing practiced by him and by a small number of adepts and saints before as well as after his earthly activity. Ordinary medicine fights the ills of the body by acting upon the body. The adept or saint, as a center of spiritual and fluidic power, acts directly upon the soul of the sick, and, by his astral body, on his physical body. It is the same in all hypnotic cures. Jesus works with the powers which exist in all men, but he functions with strong doses through powerful and concentrated projections. He gives the Scribes and Pharisees his power of healing men's bodies as a proof of his power to forgive or heal their souls, which is his higher purpose. Thus physical healing becomes the counter proof of moral healing, which permits him to say to the completely restored man, "Stand up and walk!" Modern science seeks to explain the phenomenon which the ancients and men of the Middle Ages called "possession by devils," as a simple nervous disturbance. But this is an insufficient explanation. Psychologists who seek to penetrate further into the mystery of the soul, see in it an intensification of consciousness, an eruption of its latent part. This question is related to the various levels of human consciousness, which sometimes acts on one level, sometimes on another. This activity can be observed in the various somnambulistic states. It also relates to the supra-sensitive world. Hence it is certain that Jesus had the ability to reestablish balance in troubled bodies and to restore souls to their proper state. "Real magic," said Plotinus "is love, with hate as its opposite. By love and hate magicians act through their philters and charms." Love, in its highest manifestation and supreme power, was the "magic" of the Christ. Many disciples shared in his intimate teaching, but to make the new religion permanent, a group of active chosen ones was needed. They would become the pillars of the spiritual temple he wished to erect. Hence the institution of the Apostles. He did not choose them from among the Essenes because he needed vigorous, free natures and because he wanted to implant his religion in the heart of the people. Two groups of brothers, Simon Peter and Andrew, sons of Jonas on the one hand and John and James, sons of Zebedee, on the other, all four fishermen by calling, and of respectable families -- formed the nucleus of the Apostles. At the beginning of his activity Jesus comes to their home at Capernaum on the shore of the Lake of Gennesaret, where they did their fishing. He dwells among them, teaches and converts the entire family. Peter and John stand out as the two principal figures among the twelve. Peter is the upright of heart, simple, naive and limited, as quick to hope as to discouragement, but a man of action, capable of leading others because of his energetic character and absolute faith. John is the withdrawn, intense nature, filled with such bubbling enthusiasm that Jesus calls him "the son of thunder." John is the intuitive one with the burning soul, almost always turned inward, is generally dreamy and sad, with tempestuous outbursts, apocalyptic furies, but also with depths of tenderness which others are not capable of detecting and which only the Master has seen. John alone, the silent, contemplative one, will understand the Master's thought. He will be the Evangelist of Love and divine Intelligence, the esoteric Apostle par excellence. Persuaded by Jesus' speech, convinced by his works, directed by his great intelligence and surrounded by his magnetic radiance, the Apostles followed the Master from village to village. The popular preaching alternated with the intimate teachings. Slowly he unfolded his thought to them. Nevertheless he still kept a profound silence about himself, his role and his future. He had told them that the Kingdom of Heaven was near, that the Messiah would come. Already the Apostles whispered among themselves, "It is he!" And they repeated this to others. But with gentle gravity, he simply called himself, "The Son of Man," an expression whose esoteric import they did not yet understand, but which in his mouth seemed to mean, "The messenger to suffering humanity." For he added, "Wolves have their caves, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head." The Apostles saw the Messiah only in terms of the popular Jewish idea, and naively they conceived the Kingdom of Heaven as a political government of which Jesus would be crowned king and they would be the ministers. To combat this idea, to transform it utterly, to reveal to these Apostles the true Messiah, the spiritual royalty, to communicate to them this sublime truth he called "the Father," this supreme power which he called "Spirit," the mysterious force which joins all souls to the Invisible, through his word, his life and his death to show them a true son of God, to leave them the conviction that they and all men were brothers and could rejoin him if they wished, to leave them only after having revealed to them all the vastness of Heaven -- this is the prodigious task of Jesus for his Apostles. Will they believe, or will they not believe? This is the question of the drama which unfolds between them and him. There is, however, a more poignant and terrible drama which takes place in the depths of his own being. We shall speak of it later. At this time a wave of joy submerges the tragic thought in Christ's consciousness. The storm has not yet blown over the Lake of Tiberias. Now is the Galilean springtime of the Gospel; it is the dawn of the Kingdom of God; it is the mystical marriage of the initiate with his spiritual family. The latter travels with him as the procession follows the groom in the parable. The believing followers press close after the beloved Master, on the shores of the blue lake enclosed in its mountains as in a golden cup. They follow him from the cool banks of Capernaum to the orange groves of Bethsaida, to the mountains of Chorazim, where clusters of palms overlook the entire Sea of Gennesaret. Women have a special place among Jesus' followers. Mothers or sisters of the disciples, timid virgins or repentant sinners surround him in every place. Attentive, faithful, ardent, they perfume his steps with their eternal sadness and hope, like a trail of love. He does not need to prove to them that he is the Messiah. Just looking at him is enough. The strange happiness emanating from his presence, mixed with the note of a divine and inexpressible suffering resounding in the depth of his being, persuades them that he is the Son of God. Long ago Jesus had stifled the cry of the flesh within himself; he had subdued the power of the senses during his stay with the Essenes. In this way he had attained the dominion over souls and the divine power to forgive -- that privilege of the angels. He said of the sinning woman who, enveloped in a sea of dishevelled hair, crawled at his feet, while she lavishly spread balm over them, "She will be forgiven much because she has loved much!" This sublime saying contains a complete redemption, for whoever pardons, frees. Christ is the restorer and liberator of women, whatever Saint Paul and the Church Fathers may have said. In lowering woman to the role of man's servant, these writers have falsified the thinking of the Master. In Vedic times she had been glorified; Buddha deified her. Christ elevates her by restoring her mission of love and divination. The woman initiate represents the soul in mankind, Aisha, as Moses called it, that is, the power of Intuition, the loving and seeing faculty. The turbulent Mary Magdalene, whose seven demons Jesus had driven out according to the Biblical account, became his most ardent disciple. It was she, according to Saint John, who first saw the divine teacher, the spiritual Christ, risen from his tomb. Legend has insisted in seeing in this ardent and believing woman Jesus' greatest worshipper, the initiate of the heart, and legend is not mistaken, for her story represents the entire regeneration of woman as desired by the Christ. It was at the farm at Bethany, with Mary, Martha and the Magdalene that Jesus liked to rest from the labors of his mission and to prepare himself for the supreme tasks. There he freely gave his most gentle consolations and in loving conversations he spoke of the divine Mysteries he did not yet dare confide to his disciples. Sometimes at the hour when the gold of the sunset faded among the olive branches, when twilight slipped between their delicate foliage, Jesus became thoughtful. A shadow fell over his illumined face. He thought of the hardships of his work, the wavering faith of the Apostles, the powerful enemies in the world. The Temple, Jerusalem, mankind, with its crimes and ingratitude, rolled over him like a living mountain. Would his arms, raised toward Heaven, be strong enough to reduce this mountain to dust, or would he be crushed beneath its enormous weight? Then he spoke vaguely of a terrible trial which awaited him, and of his imminent death. Struck by the solemnity of his voice, the women did not dare to question him. However unchangeable the serenity of Jesus might be, they understood that his soul was as though closed in the coffin of an unspeakable sadness, which separated him from the joys of earth. They sensed the destiny of the prophet; they felt his unshakable resolution. Why did these dark clouds arise in the vicinity of Jerusalem? Why this burning wind of fever and death, passing over their hearts as over the blighted hills of Judea with their violet, cadaverous hues? One evening ... a star of mystery... a tear shone in Jesus' eyes. The three women trembled and their silent tears flowed in the peace of Bethany. They were weeping for him; he was weeping for all mankind.

42Conflict With the Pharisees -- The Transfiguration
The Galilean springtime lasted for two years. During this time, at the words of the Christ the radiant lilies of the angels appeared to blossom in the perfumed air and the dawn of the Kingdom of Heaven shone over the attentive crowds. But soon the sky darkened, sinister lightning flashed; everywhere were omens of catastrophe. The storm finally broke over the little spiritual family like one of the tempests which sweep the Lake of Gennesaret, swallowing up the frail boats of the fishermen in its fury. If the disciples were dismayed, Jesus was not at all surprised, for he was expecting this. It was impossible for his preaching and growing popularity not to stir the religious leaders of the Jews. It was also impossible for the conflict between them and him to be other than a decisive one. More important still, light could come forth only from this encounter. In Jesus' time the Pharisees formed a compact body of six thousand men. Their name Perishin meant "the separated" or "distinguished ones." With an exalted, often heroic but narrow, proud patriotism, they represented the cause of national restoration; its existence dated only from the Maccabees. Along with written tradition the Pharisees accepted oral tradition as well. They believed in angels, a life after death and the resurrection, but they drowned these glimpses of esoterism which had come to them from Persia, in the darkness of grossly materialistic interpretation. Strict observers of the Law, but entirely opposed to the spirit of the prophets who put religion in the form of a love of God and men, their piety consisted of rituals and ceremonies, fasts and public penance. On the high Holy Days they were seen walking through the streets, faces covered with soot, praying aloud with a contrite air and distributing alms ostentatiously. In addition, they lived in luxury and eagerly sought for offices and power. They were also the leaders of the democratic party, holding the people in the palm of their hands. The Sadducees, on the other hand, represented the priestly and aristocratic party. They were composed of families which claimed membership in the priesthood by hereditary right from the time of David. Conservative to the extreme, they rejected oral tradition, accepting only the letter of the Law and denying the existence of the soul and of a future life. They ridiculed the practices of the Pharisees as well as their extravagant beliefs. For them religion consisted only in sacerdotal ceremonies. They controlled the pontificate under the Seleucides, agreeing perfectly with the pagans, even becoming imbued with Greek Sophistry and refined Epicureanism. Under the Maccabees the Pharisees had been evicted from the pontificate, but under Herod and the Romans they had regained their positions. The Sadducees were hard and tenacious men. As priests they were fond of good living, believing only in their superiority while holding but one fixed purpose: to keep the power they held by inheritance. What could Jesus see in this religion -- Jesus the seer of Engaddi, who sought in the social order the image of divine order where justice reigns over life, science over justice, love and wisdom over all three? In the Temple, in the place of supreme knowledge and initiation, he found materialistic and agnostic ignorance using religion as a source of power; in other words, priestly imposture. In the schools and synagogues, instead of the bread of life and the dew of Heaven falling into human hearts, he found a vested morality covered by a formalist devotion; in other words, hypocrisy. Far above them, sitting on a cloud of glory was the all-powerful Caesar, the apotheosis of evil, the deification of matter. Caesar, the sole god of the world at that time, was the only possible master of the Sadducees and Pharisees, whether they wanted him or not. Like the prophets, borrowing an idea from Persian esoterism, was Jesus wrong in naming this reign the rule of Satan, of Ahriman, that is, the dominion of matter over spirit, for which he wished to substitute the rule of spirit over matter? Like all great reformers he did not attack men, who with some exceptions could be excellent, but he fought the doctrines and institutions which shape the majority of mankind. It was necessary for Jesus to challenge, to declare war against the ruling powers of his time. The struggle took place in the synagogues of Galilee, continuing under the porticoes of the Temple in Jerusalem, where Jesus made long visits, preaching and combatting his adversaries. In this, and in his entire career, Jesus acted with that mixture of prudence and boldness, of meditative reserve and impetuous action which characterized his marvelously balanced nature. He did not take the offensive against his adversaries; he waited for their attack in order to repel it. And he had not long to wait, for from the prophet's beginnings the Pharisees had become jealous of his healing activities and his popularity. Soon in him they detected their most dangerous enemy. Then they approached him with that mocking urbanity, with sharp ill-will, veiled by that hypocritical gentleness which they customarily employed. As wise teachers, as men of importance and authority, the Pharisees asked Jesus the reason for his dealings with tax collectors and men of low life. Why, also, did his disciples dare to glean wheat on the Sabbath? Why did he tolerate many serious violations against their regulations? Jesus answered them with gentleness and broadmindedness, with tenderness and forebearance. He used words of love. He spoke to them of the love of God which rejoices more at a repentant sinner than at a few righteous men. He told them the parable of the lost sheep and of the prodigal son. Embarrassed, they were silent. But, having come together again, they returned to the charge, reproaching him for healing the sick on the Sabbath. "Hypocrites," retorted Jesus, with a flash of indignation in his eyes, "do you not take the chain from the neck of your cattle to lead them to the drinking-trough on the Sabbath? May not Abraham's daughter be freed from the chains of Satan on that day?" Not knowing what to reply, the Pharisees accused him of driving out demons in Beelzebub's name. Jesus replied that the devil does not drive himself out, and he added that sin against the Son of Man will be pardoned, but not sin against the Holy Spirit, by which he meant that he thought little of the insults directed toward his being, but to deny the Good and the True when it was declared was intellectual perversity, supreme vice and irremediable evil. This was a declaration of war. They called him a blasphemer. He answered, "Hypocrites!" They called him an imp of Beelzebub. He called them "A generation of vipers." From this moment on, the battle grew more and more vehement, more and more serious. Jesus displayed a terse, incisive logic. His words flayed like a lash and pierced like an arrow. He had altered his tactics. Instead of defending himself, he took the offensive and answered accusations with still stronger accusations, having no pity for vice and hypocrisy. "Why do you transgress the law of God because of your tradition? God commanded, "Honor your father and mother', you dispense with honoring your parents if money flows into the Temple! You follow Isaiah only with your lips; you are heartless bigots!" Jesus never lost his self-control, but he became more excited, more vigorous in the struggle. As they continued to attack him, he took a higher stand as the Messiah. He began to threaten the Temple, to predict calamities which would overtake Israel, to appeal to the pagans, to say that the Lord would send other workers into His vineyard. At this the Pharisees of Jerusalem became deeply worried. Seeing that they could neither shut his mouth, nor answer effectively, they changed their tactics. They planned to lure him into a trap. Therefore they sent deputations whose purpose was to make him utter heresy, which in turn would permit the Sanhedrin to seize him as a blasphemer in the name of the Law of Moses, or to have him condemned as a revolutionary by the Roman Governor. Hence the insidious question about the adulterous woman and about Caesar's penny. Always seeing through his enemies' schemes, Jesus disarmed them with his answers, which were those of a profound psychologist and skillful strategist. Observing that these tactics failed, the Pharisees tried to intimidate him by harassing him at every step. Now the majority of the people, stirred up by the Pharisees, were turning away from Jesus, since it was clear that he would not restore the external kingdom of Israel. Everywhere, even in the smallest villages he met cunning and suspicious faces, spies who were watching him, treacherous emissaries sent to discourage him. Some came and said to him, "Get out of here, for Herod Antipas wants to kill you!" He answered proudly, "Tell that fox that a prophet does not die outside of Jerusalem!" Nevertheless, he had to cross the Sea of Tiberias several times, taking refuge on its eastern shore in order to escape these snares. No longer was he safe anywhere. While these events were taking place, the murder of John the Baptist occurred. By order of Herod Antipas, he was beheaded in the Citadel of Makerous. It is said that when Hannibal saw the head of his brother Hasdrubel who had been killed by the Romans, he cried out: "Now I know the fate of Carthage!" In the death of his forerunner, Jesus could know his own destiny. He had no illusions about it from the time of his vision of Engaddi; he had begun his work by fully accepting his end in advance. Nevertheless this news, brought by the sorrowful disciples of the preacher in the desert, struck Jesus as a presentiment of his own death. He exclaimed, "They did not recognize him, but they have treated him as they wished. Thus shall the Son of Man suffer at their hands!" The Twelve were troubled, for Jesus hesitated on his path. He did not wish to let himself be captured, but rather to surrender himself willingly, once his work was finished, and to die as a prophet at the hour he himself would choose. Already followed by his enemies for a year, accustomed to escaping them by circuitous travels, disheartened with the people, whose coldness he sensed after the days of their enthusiasm, Jesus decided once more to flee with his friends. Arriving at the top of a mountain with the Twelve, he turned around to look for the last time at his beloved lake, on whose shores he had wished to cause the dawn of the Kingdom of Heaven to appear. His eyes rested upon those towns lying at the edge of the water or built in terraces on the mountainsides, partly hidden in their green oases and shining in the golden sunset -- all these beloved places where he had sown the Word of Life, he was now abandoning! A foretaste of the future came over him. With a prophetic gaze he saw the country transformed into a desert under the avenging hand of Ishmael, and without anger, but filled with bitterness and sorrow, the words fell from his lips, "Woe to you, Capernaum! Woe to you, Korazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida!" Then turning toward the pagan world, accompanied by the Apostles, he took the road which goes up the valley of the Jordan from Gadara to Cesarea Philippi. Sad and long was the route of the fugitive band across the great plains of reeds and the marshy land of the upper Jordan, under the burning sun of Syria. They spent the night among herdsmen or with the Essenes who had settled in little communities in this desolate country. The sorrowful, anxious disciples lowered their heads; the sad and silent Master was lost in meditation. He was reflecting upon the impossibility of convincing people of the truth of his doctrine by preaching, of the dreadful schemes of his adversaries. The final struggle was imminent; he had arrived at an impasse. How was he to come out of it? Moreover, his thought dwelt with infinite concern upon his scattered spiritual family, and especially on the twelve Apostles who, faithful and confident, had left all -- family, trade, fortune -- to follow him, and who, nevertheless, were about to be heartbroken and disappointed in their great hope of the triumphant Messiah. Could he leave them alone? Had the truth sufficiently entered into them? Would they believe in him and in his teaching, in spite of all? Did they know who he really was? Under the influence of this last question, he asked them, "Whom do men say that I, the Son of Man, am?" And they answered, "Some say that you are John the Baptist; others, Jeremiah or one of the prophets." "And you, whom do you say that I am?" Then Simon Peter answered, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living. God!" In Hindu, Egyptian and Greek initiation the term Son of God meant a consciousness identified with divine Truth, and a will capable of manifesting it. According to the prophets, this Messiah was to be the Son of Man, that is, the Elect of Earth and the Son of God, that is, the Messenger of Heaven, and, as such, having in himself the Father or Spirit, Who rules over the universe through him. At this affirmation of the Apostles' faith, Jesus experienced tremendous joy. He knew that his disciples had understood. He would live in them, and the link between Heaven and earth would be reestablished. Jesus said to Peter, "You are blessed, Simon, son of Jonas, for flesh and blood did not reveal this to you, but my Father who is in heaven." By this answer Jesus informs Peter that he considers him an initiate in the same sense as himself. Peter has attained this through his inner, profound vision of Truth. This is the real, the only revelation; this is the stone upon which Christ wishes to build his church, "against which the gates of hell cannot prevail." Jesus relies on the Apostle Peter only so long as he has this understanding. An instant later, when he has become the natural man again -- fearful and limited -- Jesus treats him differently. When Jesus announced to his disciples that he was going to be put to death in Jerusalem, Peter began to protest, "God forbid, Lord, that this should happen to you!" But Jesus, as if he saw in this movement of sympathy a temptation of the flesh which was trying to shake his great decision, turned around sharply to the Apostle, saying, "Get behind me, Satan! You are an offense, because you cannot understand the things of God, but only those which are of men!" And the firm gesture of the Master seemed to say, "Forward, across the desert!" Frightened by his solemn voice, by his severe look, the Apostles bent their heads in silence, resuming their way over the stony hills of Gaulonitide. This flight, by which Jesus led his disciples outside Israel, resembled a march toward the riddle of his Messianic destiny, the final solution of which he was seeking. They came to the gates of Caesarea. The city which had turned pagan since the time of Antiochus the Great, was sheltered in a green oasis near the Jordan, at the foot of the snowy crests of Mount Hermon. It had an amphitheater, and it shone with luxurious palaces and Greek temples. Jesus passed through Caesarea and went to the place where the Jordan arises as a bubbling clear stream from a cavern in the mountain, like life bursting from the deep womb of eternal nature. A little temple, dedicated to Pan, was there, and in a grotto near the river stood many columns, marble nymphs and pagan divinities. The Jews were horrified at these signs of an idolatrous cult, but Jesus looked at them without anger, and with an indulgent smile. He recognized in them the imperfect effigies of that divine beauty whose radiant archetype he bore in his soul. He had not come to curse paganism, but to transform it; he had not come to pronounce an anathema against earth and its mysterious powers, but to reveal Heaven to it. His heart was large enough, his doctrine broad enough to embrace all peoples, and to say to all cults, "Lift up your heads, and recognize that you all have the same Father!" Nevertheless, there he was on the extreme boundary of Israel, hunted like a wild beast, pressed upon, stifled between two worlds, each of which rejected him. Before him was the pagan world which did not yet understand him, in which his word was powerless; behind him was the Jewish world, which stoned its prophets and stopped its ears in order not to hear its Messiah. There the Pharisees and Sadducees awaited their prey. What superhuman courage, what extraordinary deed was necessary to break all these obstacles, in order to pass beyond pagan idolatry and Jewish hardness to the very heart of this suffering humanity which he loved with all his being, and to make it hear his word of resurrection? Then with a sudden turn his thought again followed down the course of the Jordan, the sacred river of Israel; it moved from the temple of Pan to the Temple of Jerusalem; it measured the entire distance which separated ancient paganism from the universal thought of the prophets. Finally, like an eagle returning to its nest, it passed from the distress of Caesarea to the vision of Engaddi! And again he saw surge forth from the Dead Sea that terrible phantom of the cross! . . . Had the hour of the great sacrifice come? Like all men, Jesus had two consciousnesses within him. The earthly one gently comforted him with illusions, saying to him, "Who knows? Perhaps I shall avoid fate!" The other, the divine consciousness, firmly said, "The way to victory passes through the gate of suffering." But was it necessary to obey the latter after all? In every great moment of his life, we see Jesus withdrawing to the mountain to pray. Did not the Vedic sage say, "Prayer sustains heaven and earth and rules the gods?" Jesus knew this power of powers. Usually he did not allow any companion to share the times when he descended into the arcanum of his consciousness. However, on one occasion he led Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, John and James, to a high mountain in order to spend the night there. Tradition has it that the place was Mount Tabor. There that mysterious scene which the Gospels describe under the name The Transfiguration took place between the Master and his three most initiated disciples. According to Matthew, the Apostles saw the luminous, diaphanous form of the Master appearing, in the transparent shadows of an oriental night, his face shining like the sun, his garments radiant as light. Then two forms, which they took for those of Moses and Elias appeared beside him. Trembling they came out of their strange prostration, which seemed to them like both a deep sleep and an intense waking state. Beside them they saw the Master, who touched them in order to awaken them completely. The transfigured Christ was never erased from their memory. But what had Jesus himself seen, what had he experienced during that night which preceded the decisive deed of his prophetic career? He passed through a gradual disappearance of earthly things under the fire of prayer and an ascension from sphere to sphere on wings of ecstasy. Slowly it seemed to him that through his deep consciousness he was returning into a previous existence, which was entirely spiritual and divine. Far from him were the suns, worlds, earths, whirlwinds of painful incarnations, while in a homogeneous atmosphere was a fluid substance, an intelligent Light. In this radiance legions of heavenly beings formed a moving canopy, a firmament of ethereal bodies, white as snow, from which emanated gentle rays of light. On the shining cloud where he himself was standing, six men in priestly clothing and of powerful stature are lifting a gleaming Chalice in their united hands. They are the six Messiahs who already have appeared on earth; the seventh is he himself, and this Cup signifies the Sacrifice which he must experience by becoming incarnate on earth in his turn. Beneath the cloud the thunder rolls, a black abyss opens, the circle of generations, the gulf of life and death, the earthly hell appear before him. With a supplicating gesture the Sons of God elevate the Cup. Heaven waits motionless ... With a gesture of acceptance Jesus spreads his arms in the form of a cross, as though he embraces the world. Then the Sons of God kneel, faces to the ground; angels with long wings and lowered eyes carry the shining Chalice upward into the vault of Light. Hosanna! rings out from heaven to heaven, melodious and ineffable . . . But without even hearing it, he plunges into the abyss ... This is what once took place in the world of Archetypes, in the Bosom of the Father, where the Mysteries of eternal Love are celebrated, and where the movements of the stars pass in waves of living Light. This is what Jesus had sworn to fulfill; this is why he was born, this is why he had struggled upon earth. And now the mighty promise gripped him again at the end of his work, through the fullness of his spiritual consciousness, by means of which he had entered into the revelation of a divine ecstasy. Impressive vow, dread Chalice! Nevertheless, it was necessary to drink from it. After the rapture of ecstasy, he awakened in the depths of the abyss, at the brink of martyrdom. There could be no further doubt; the time had come. Heaven had spoken, earth cried aloud for help. Then, slowly retracing his steps, Jesus again went down to the valley of the Jordan and took the road to Jerusalem.

43Last Journey to Jerusalem -- Last Supper -- Death and Resurrection
"Hosanna to the son of David!" This cry rang out at Jesus' entrance through the East Gate into Jerusalem; branches of palms were strewn before his steps. Those who welcomed him with so much enthusiasm, hastening from all parts of the city for this ovation, were followers of the Galilean prophet. They greeted the liberator of Israel, who would soon be crowned king. The twelve Apostles who accompanied him still shared this illusion, despite Jesus' express denials. He alone, the proclaimed Messiah, knew that he was walking toward torture, that even his disciples would not penetrate the sanctuary of his thought until after his death. He was offering himself resolutely, with perfect consciousness and a free will. Hence his resignation, his gentle serenity. As he passed beneath the great portal carved in the dark fortress of Jerusalem, the clamor became intensified, pursuing him like the voice of Fate seizing its prey, "Hosanna to the son of David!" With this solemn entry into Jerusalem Jesus publicly declared to the religious authorities among the Jews that he was assuming the role of Messiah, with all its consequences. The next day he appeared in the Temple, in the court of the Gentiles, and, going to the merchants and the money-changers whose usury and handling of coin profaned the sanctity of the holy place, he spoke these words from Isaiah, "It is written, My house shall be a house of prayer, and you make it a den of thieves!" The merchants flee, carrying with them their tables and money sacks, intimidated by the prophet's partisans who surround him like a solid rampart, but still more by his fiery gaze and commanding gesture. The priests are astounded at his boldness and are terrified at his power. A deputation from the Sanhedrin comes to him, demanding an explanation, "By what authority do you do these things?" At this cunning question, according to his custom Jesus answered with a no less difficult question for his adversaries, "The baptism of John, whence came it, from heaven or men?" If the Pharisees had answered, "It comes from heaven," Jesus would have said to them, "Then why did you not believe it?" If they had said, "It comes from men," they would have had cause to fear the people who considered John the Baptist a prophet. Therefore they answered, "We do not know." Jesus said, "Then neither shall I tell you by what authority I do these things." But now, having warded off the attack, he took the offensive and added, "Indeed I tell you that the tax collectors and prostitutes will precede you into the kingdom of God!" Then in a parable he compared them to the evil husbandman who kills the master's son in order to steal the inheritance of the vineyard, and he called himself "the cornerstone which will crush you." By these deeds and by these sayings it can be seen that on this last journey into the capital of Israel, Jesus had ended his retreating. For a long time the authorities had held the two major points of accusation necessary to destroy him: his threats against the Temple and his affirmation that he was the Messiah. And now his latest attacks exasperated his enemies. From this moment his death, already decided upon by the rulers, was only a matter of time. From the moment of his arrival, the most influential members of the Sanhedrin, the Sadducees and Pharisees, having become reconciled in their hatred for Jesus, agreed among themselves to have "the seducer of the people" die. However they hesitated to seize him in public, because they feared a revolt of the people. Several times previously, soldiers whom they had sent to capture him had returned, converted by his sayings or frightened by his throngs of followers. Several times the Temple guards had seen him disappear out of their midst in an incomprehensible manner. In this same way the Emperor Domitian, fascinated, hypnotized by the Magus whom he wished to condemn, saw Apollonius of Tyana disappear from before his throne, surrounded by his guards! Thus the struggle between Jesus and the priests continued from day to day with an increasing hatred on their part, and on his, with a vigor, impetuosity and intensity resulting from his certainty of the fatal outcome. It was Jesus' last attack against the powers of his time. He displayed tremendous energy and all that masculine force like armor covering his sublime tenderness, which can be called the Eternal Feminine of his soul. This great combat ended in terrible anathemas against the debasers of religion: "Woe to you, Scribes and Pharisees, who close the Kingdom of Heaven against those who wish to enter! You are fools and blind men, who pay the tithe but neglect justice, mercy and fidelity! You are like whitewashed tombs which appear lovely on the outside but inside are full of dead men's bones and all kinds of offal!" Having thus branded religious hypocrisy and false priestly authority for centuries yet to come, Jesus considered his struggle ended. He left Jerusalem followed by his disciples, taking the road to the Mount of Olives. From its heights one looked down upon Herod's Temple in all its majesty, with its terraces and vast porticoes, its white marble finish inlaid with jasper and porphyry, its shining roof, overlaid with gold and silver. The disciples, discouraged and sensing a catastrophe, asked him to look at the splendor of the building, and there was a nuance of melancholy and regret in their tone. For they had hoped until the last moment to sit in that Temple like judges of Israel, grouped around the Messiah, crowned pontiff-king. Jesus surveyed the Temple and said, "Do you see all that? Not one stone will remain upon another." He calculated the duration of the Temple of Jehovah by the moral worth of those who were attacking him. He understood that fanaticism, intolerance and hatred were not sufficient weapons against the battering-rams and battle-axes of the Roman Caesar. With his insight of an initiate becoming more penetrating through that spiritual perception which the approach of death gives, he saw the Judaic pride, the politics of the kings, all Jewish history ending in catastrophe. Victory was not there; it was in the thinking of the prophets, in that universal religion, in that invisible Temple of which he alone had full awareness at that hour. As for the ancient Citadel of Zion and the Temple of stone, he already saw the Angel of Destruction standing at its gates, torch in hand. Jesus knew that his hour was near, but since he did not wish to let himself be captured by the Sanhedrin, he withdrew to Bethany. Because he had a preference for the Mount of Olives, he went there almost every day to converse with his disciples. From this height there is a magnificent view, which includes the rugged mountains of Judea and Moab with their bluish and purple hues; in the distance is seen a bit of the Dead Sea, like a mirror of lead from which sulphurous vapors escape. Jerusalem spreads out at the foot of the mountain, dominated by the Temple and the Citadel of Zion. Even today when dusk descends into the gloomy gorges of Hinnom and Jehosaphat, the City of David and of the Christ, protected by the sons of Ishmael, rises in imposing majesty from these dreary valleys. Its cupolas and minarets retain the fading light of the sky, and seem always to be awaiting the Angels of Judgment. There Jesus gave his disciples his final instructions concerning the future of the religion he had come to establish, and regarding the future destinies of humanity. Thus he willed to them his earthly and divine promise, closely linked with his esoteric teaching. It is evident that the compilers of the Synoptic Gospels have transmitted to us the apocalyptic discourses of Jesus only in a confused form, which makes them almost incomprehensible. Their meaning only begins to become intelligible in the Gospel of John. If Jesus had really believed in his return on the clouds a few years after his death, as naturalist exegesis believes, or yet if he imagined that the end of the world and the final judgment of men would take place in the form conceived by orthodox theology, he would have been merely a very mediocre visionary instead of the initiate sage, the sublime seer, as is proved by each word of his teaching, each deed of his life. It is evident that here, more than elsewhere, his words must be understood in the allegorical sense, according to the transcendent symbolism of the prophets. John's Gospel, of the four Gospels the one which has best transmitted to us the Master's esoteric teaching, imposes on us this interpretation when it reports the words of the Master: "I have yet many things to say to you, but they are beyond your understanding . . . I have told you these things in allegories, but the time comes when I shall no longer speak to you in allegories, but I shall speak to you openly of my Father." Jesus' solemn promise to the Apostles points to four objects, four growing spheres: planetary and cosmic life; individual soul life; the national life of Israel; the whole human evolution. Let us consider each of these four objects of the promise, these four spheres where Christ's thought radiates before his martyrdom like a setting sun, filling all the earthly atmosphere with its glory, even to its zenith, before illumining other worlds.

1The First Judgment means the ultimate destiny of the soul after death. It is determined by the
soul's inner nature and by the acts of its life on earth. I have explained this above with reference to Jesus' conversation with Nicodemus. On the Mount of Olives, speaking on this subject, he says to his Apostles, "Watch that your hearts do not become heavy with cares and pleasures of this life so that this day takes you by surprise." Again he said, "Be ready, for the Son of Man will come at a time you know not!"

2The Destruction of the Temple and the End of Israel. "Nation shall rise against nation ... You will
be given up to the authorities to be tortured . . . Indeed I say to you that this generation shall not pass away until all these things happen!"

3The Earthly End of Mankind, which is not fixed at a definite age, but which must be attained by a
series of progressive and successive accomplishments. This goal is the coming of the social Christ, of the divine man on earth; that is, the organization of Truth, Justice and Love in human society, and subsequently the pacification of the peoples. Isaiah already had foretold this distant age in a magnificent vision which begins with the words: "Seeing their works and their thoughts, I come to gather all nations and all tongues together; they shall come and see my glory, and I shall put my sign upon them ..." Completing this prophecy, Jesus explains to his disciples that this sign will be the complete unveiling of the Mysteries, of the coming of the Holy Spirit which he also calls the Comforter, "the Spirit of Truth which shall lead you into all truth." "And I shall pray my Father, who will give you another Comforter so that it may remain eternally with you, that you may know the Spirit of Truth which the world cannot receive because it does not see it at all; but you know it because it remains with you and because it will be in you." The Apostles will have this revelation in advance; mankind will experience it later in the course of the ages. But each time that it enters into a consciousness or a group of human beings, it strikes through from top to bottom. "For as the lightning comes out of the east and shines even in the west, so shall the coming of the Son of Man be." Thus, when the central, spiritual Truth lights up, it illumines all truths and all worlds.

4The Last Judgment means the end of the cosmic evolution of humanity or its entry into a
definitive spiritual condition. This is what Persian esoterism called the victory of Ormuzd over Ahriman, or of the Spirit over matter. Hindu esotericism called it the complete reabsorption of matter by the Spirit, or the end of a Day of Brahma. After thousands and millions of centuries a time must come when, having gone through series of births and rebirths, of incarnations and regenerations, the individuals who compose humanity will have definitively entered the spiritual state, or have been annihilated as conscious souls by evil, that is, by their own passions which the fire of Gehenna and the gnashing of teeth symbolize. "Then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in the sky. The Son of Man will come on a cloud. He will send his Angels with a great sound of the trumpet, and he will gather together his chosen from the four winds." The Son of Man, a generic term, here means mankind in its perfect representatives, that is, the small number of those who have raised themselves to the rank of Sons of God. His Sign is the Lamb and the Cross, that is, Love and Eternal Life. The Cloud is the image of the Mysteries become translucent, as well as of subtle matter transfigured by the Spirit, of fluidic substance which is no longer a dense, obscure veil, but a light transparent garment of the soul; no longer a gross fetter but an expression of truth; no longer a deceiving appearance, but spiritual Truth itself, the inner world instantaneously and directly manifested. The Angels who gather the chosen are the glorified spirits who themselves have come from mankind. The Trumpet which they sound symbolizes the living Word of the Spirit, which reveals souls as they are and destroys all deceitful appearances of matter. In this way, sensing that he was nearing his death, Jesus opened to the astonished Apostles those great perspectives which from most ancient times had been a part of the doctrine of the Mysteries, and to which each religious founder has always given a personal form and color. To engrave these truths upon their minds, to facilitate their propagation he summed them up in images of extreme boldness and incisive energy. The revelatory picture, the speaking symbol was the universal language of the ancient initiates. Such a symbol possesses a communicative power, a power of concentration and duration which is lacking in the abstract term. In using it, Jesus simply followed the example of Moses and the prophets. He knew that his ideas would not be understood at once, but he wanted to imprint them in letters of fire in the simple souls of his friends, leaving to later centuries the task of generating the powers contained in his speech. Jesus felt at one with all the prophets of earth who had gone before him and who like himself were messengers of Life and of the eternal Word. In this feeling of oneness and firmness in changeless Truth, before these limitless horizons of heavenly radiance which are seen only from the zenith of First Causes, he dared speak the proud words to his sorrowing disciples: "Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words shall not pass away!" Thus the mornings and evenings slipped by on the Mount of Olives. One day, in one of those gestures of sympathy so native to his ardent and impressionable nature, which made him return abruptly from the most sublime heights to earth's sufferings, which he felt as his own, he shed tears over Jerusalem, over the Holy City, and over his people whose terrible destiny he sensed. Meanwhile, his own destiny was approaching with giant steps. Already the Sanhedrin had deliberated over his fate and had decided upon his death; already Judas Iscariot had promised to surrender his Master. This sinister betrayal was not the fruit of sordid greed but of ambition and wounded vanity. Judas, an individual of cold egotism and absolute positivism, incapable of the least idealism, had become a disciple of Christ only because of worldly speculation. He counted on the immediate earthly triumph of the prophet, and on the benefit which would come to him from it. He had understood nothing of that profound saying of the Master, "Those who would like to gain their life shall lose it, and those who will lose it will gain it." In his boundless charity Jesus had admitted Judas to the circle of his friends in the hope of changing Judas' nature. When the latter saw that things were turning out badly, that Jesus was lost, his disciples threatened and himself disappointed in all his hopes, his deception turned to rage. The wretched man denounced the one who in his eyes was only a false Messiah, and by whom he considered himself deceived. With his penetrating insight, Jesus understood what was taking place within the unfaithful Apostle. He resolved to avoid destiny no longer, for he felt its net tightening around him with each passing day. It was the eve of Passover. He ordered his disciples to prepare the meal in the city at a friend's house. He sensed that this would be his last meal, hence he wanted to give it unusual solemnity. We have reached the final act of the Messianic drama. In order to grasp the soul and work of Jesus at their source it was necessary to describe from within the first two acts of his life, to show his initiation and his public career. The inner drama of his consciousness paralleled the latter. The last act of his life, the drama of the Passion, was the logical consequence of all that had gone before. Since it is known to all, it is self-explanatory, for the nature of the sublime is to be simple, broad and clear. The drama of the Passion has contributed powerfully to establishing Christianity. It has drawn tears from all men who have hearts, and has converted millions of souls. In describing all these scenes the Gospels manifest an incomparable beauty. John himself descends from his spiritual heights, and his circumstantial account bears the poignant truth of an eye-witness. Each one can relive in himself the divine drama, but no one can recreate it. Nevertheless, in order to complete my task, I must focus the rays of esoteric tradition upon the three principal events by which the life of the divine Master ended: The Holy Supper, the Trial of the Messiah and the Resurrection. If light is shed upon these three it will illuminate all of the Christ's previous career and will cast its radiance over the entire history of Christianity following the Resurrection. The Twelve, forming thirteen with the Master, had assembled in the upper room of a house in Jerusalem. The unknown friend, Jesus' host, had decorated the room with a rich carpet. According to the oriental custom, the disciples and Master reclined three by three on four large divans in the form of a triclinia arranged around the table. When the Passover Lamb had been brought, the cups filled with wine, along with the precious golden chalice, loaned by the unknown friend, Jesus, placed between John and Peter, says, "I have ardently desired to eat this Passover with you, for I say to you that I shall eat no more of it until it is accomplished in the Kingdom of Heaven." After these words, faces grew sad, the air became heavy. "The disciple whom Jesus loved," and who alone guessed everything, inclined his head in silence toward the Master's heart. According to the custom of the Jews at the Passover meal, they ate the bitter herbs, the haroseth, without speaking. Then Jesus took the bread and, having given thanks, he broke it and gave it to them, saying, "This is my body which is given for you; this do in remembrance of me." In the same way he gave them the cup after supper, saying to them, "This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is shed for you." Such is the institution of the Supper in all its simplicity. It has a much deeper content than is generally known or described. Not only is this symbolic and mystical act the conclusion and summary of all of Christ's teachings, but it is also the consecration and rejuvenation of a very ancient symbol of initiation. Among the initiates of Egypt and Chaldea, as well as among the prophets and Essenes, the fraternal agape marked the first step of initiation. Communion in the form of sharing of the bread, the fruit of the wheat, signified knowledge of the Mysteries of earthly life as well as a partaking of the goods of earth and finally a perfect union of the intimately associated brothers. On the higher level, communion in the sharing of wine, the blood of the vine penetrated by the sun, meant a partaking of heavenly goods, the sharing in spiritual Mysteries and divine science. In giving these symbols to the Apostles, Jesus amplified them. For through them, he extends fraternity and initiation, once limited to the few, to all mankind. To these symbols he adds the deepest of Mysteries, the greatest of forces: his Deed of Sacrifice, making of it a chain of invisible but inviolable love between himself and his own. This will give his glorified soul a divine power over their hearts and over the hearts of all men. The cup of Truth coming from the depths of prophetic ages, that golden chalice of initiation which the Essene had offered him in the rapture of his ecstasy as The Son of God -- that cup in which he now sees his own blood glow, that cup he now extends to his beloved disciples with the ineffable tenderness of a last farewell. Do the Apostles understand this? Do they recognize this redemptive thought which embraces the worlds? It shines in the deep, painful look of the Master as he looks from the Beloved Disciple to the one who is about to betray him. No, they do not yet understand. They sigh painfully, as though in a bad dream; a heavy red vapor seems to float in the air and they ask each other whence comes that strange radiance around the head of the Christ. When at last Jesus declares that he will spend the night in prayer in the garden on the Mount of Olives and rises, saying, "Let us go there! " -- they do not doubt what will follow. . Jesus has experienced the anguish of Gethsemane. With frightening clarity he has seen the infernal circle about, him growing steadily tighter. In face of the terror of this situation, in the dreadful waiting, knowing he is about to be seized by his enemies, he trembles; for an instant his soul shrinks before the tortures awaiting him; a sweat of blood forms itself in drops upon his forehead. Then prayer strengthens him. Now come sounds of confused voices, lights of torches under the dark olive trees, the clash of arms. It is the soldiers sent by the Sanhedrin. Judas who leads them, kisses his Master so they may recognize the prophet. Jesus returns his kiss with ineffable pity, saying, "My friend, what do you want here?" The effect of this gentleness, of this fraternal kiss, given in exchange for the darkest betrayal, will make such an impression on this hard soul that shortly afterward, seized with remorse and horror at his deed, Judas will commit suicide. With rough hands the soldiers have seized the Galilean Rabbi. After a brief resistance the frightened disciples flee like a handful of seed scattered by the wind. Only John and Peter remain nearby in order to follow the Master to the tribunal. Their hearts are broken, their souls intent upon his destiny, but Jesus has regained his calm. From this moment on, not a word of protest or complaint will come from his mouth. The Sanhedrin has assembled hastily for a plenary session. Jesus is led there in the middle of the night, for the tribunal wishes to put a quick end to this dangerous prophet. The sacrificers, the priests in deep red, yellow and purple tunics with turbans on their heads, are solemnly seated in a semicircle. In their midst on a more elevated seat, sits Caiaphas the high priest, wearing the migbah. At each end of the semicircle on two small platforms stand the two recorders, one for acquittal, the other for condemnation, advocatus Dei, advocatus Diaboli. Dressed in his white Essene robe, Jesus is standing impassively in the center. Surrounding him, bare-armed, fists on hips and with evil expressions, are officers of justice, armed with thongs and ropes. Only witnesses for the prosecution are present, none for the defense. The high priest as supreme judge is the main accuser; the so-called trial is a measure of public safety against the crime of religious treason. In reality however, it is the preventive vengeance of a worried priesthood which feels its power threatened. Caiaphas rises and accuses Jesus of being a seducer of the people, a mesit. A few witnesses taken at random from the crowd, make their deposition, but they contradict one another. Finally, one of them reports the saying, considered blasphemous, which the Nazarene more than once had thrown in the faces of the Pharisees in the porch of Solomon, "I can destroy the Temple and raise it again in three days." Jesus is silent. "You do not answer," says the high priest. Knowing that he will be condemned, not wishing to waste his words, Jesus remains silent. But this saying, even if it were proven, would not justify capital punishment. A more serious confession is needed. In order to draw one from the accused, Caiaphas, the clever Sadducee, asks him a question of honor, the vital question of his mission. Caiaphas well knows that the greatest cleverness often consists in going directly to the essential point. "If you are the Messiah, tell us so!" At first Jesus answers evasively, showing clearly that he is not fooled by the strategy: "If I tell you, you will not believe me; but if I ask you, you will not answer me." Having failed in his role of examining magistrate, Caiaphas exercises his prerogative as high priest, beginning again with solemnity, "I command you, by the living God, to tell us if you are the Messiah, the Son of God!" Thus challenged, summoned to retract or to affirm his mission before the highest representative of the religion of Israel, Jesus hesitates no longer. He calmly answers, "You have said it; but I tell you that from now on you will see the Son of God sitting at the right hand of Power and coming on clouds from heaven." By thus expressing himself in the prophetic language of Daniel and the Book of Enoch, the Essene initiate Jehoshoua is not speaking to Caiaphas as an individual. He knows that the agnostic Sadducee is incapable of understanding him. He addresses all future pontiffs, all the priesthoods of the earth, saying, "After my mission, sealed with my death, the reign of religious law without explanation is ended in principle and in fact. The Mysteries will be revealed, and through the human, man will see the Divine. Religions and cults which do not fertilize one another, will be without authority." According to the esoterism of the prophets and Essenes this is the meaning of "the Son sitting at the right hand of the Father." Thus understood, Jesus' answer to the high priest of Jerusalem contains the intellectual and scientific testament of the Christ to the religious authorities of the earth, just as the institution of the Supper contains his testament of love and initiation to the Apostles and to all humanity. Over and beyond Caiaphas, Jesus has spoken to the world, but the Sadducee, who has obtained what he wanted, no longer listens to him. Tearing his fine linen robe he cries out, "He has blasphemed! What need have we of witnesses? You have heard his blasphemy! What do you think?" A unanimous, ominous murmur arises from the Sanhedrin, "He has merited death!" Immediately vile insults and brutal behavior by inferiors answer the condemnation from above. The soldiers spit on him, strike him in the face, shouting, "Prophet! -- Guess who struck you!" Under this outpouring of fierce hatred, the sublime, pale face of the great sufferer again assumes its calm, visionary fixedness. It has been said that there are statues which weep. There are also sorrows without tears, and the silent prayers of victims which terrify executioners and pursue them for the rest of their lives. But all is not finished. The Sanhedrin can pronounce the death penalty, but in order to carry it out, the secular power and approval of the Roman authority are necessary. The interview with Pilate, reported in detail by John, is no less remarkable than the one with Caiaphas. This strange dialogue between Christ and the Roman Governor, in which the violent interjections of the Jewish priests and the cries of a fanatic mob play the role of the chorus in an ancient tragedy, has the persuasiveness of great dramatic truth, for it reveals the soul of a people, and shows the struggle among three powers: Roman Caesarism, strict Judaism and the universal religion of the Spirit, represented by the Christ. Pilate is entirely indifferent to this religious quarrel, but is very much annoyed with the affair because he fears that Jesus' death will stir up a revolution among the people. Therefore he questions Jesus with care, extending to him a means of escape, hoping he will take advantage of it. "Are you the king of the Jews?" "My kingdom is not of this world." "Then are you a king?" "Yes, I was born for that, and I came into the world to bear witness to the Truth." Pilate no more understands this affirmation of Jesus' spiritual royalty than Caiaphas understood his religious testament. "What is Truth?" asks Pilate, shrugging his shoulders. And this answer of the cavalier Roman skeptic reveals the attitude of pagan society of that time and of all society in decadence. Nevertheless, seeing in the accused only an innocent dreamer, Pilate says, "I find no fault in him." And he proposes to the Jews that he release him, but the mob, prompted by the priests, shouts, "Release Barrabas to us!" Then Pilate, who detests the Jews, gives himself the ironic pleasure of having their so-called king flogged. He believes this will be sufficient for these fanatics, but they become all the more furious, screaming in rage, "Crucify him!" Despite this manifestation of mob passion, Pilate still resists. He is weary of being cruel. Through his entire life he has seen so much blood flow, he has sent so many rebels to be tortured, he has heard so many groans and curses without being disturbed in the least. But the silent, stoic suffering of this Galilean prophet under the scarlet cloak and crown of thorns arouses a strange fear in him. In a curious, fleeting inner vision, without measuring their significance, he utters the words, "Ecce homo! Behold Man!" The stern Roman is almost moved; he is about to pronounce the acquittal. But the priests of the Sanhedrin, watching him with eager eyes, have seen this emotion and are frightened by it; they feel their prey escaping them. Craftily they confer among themselves. Then, in a single voice they cry out, extending their right hands and averting their heads in a gesture of hypocritical horror: "He has made himself the Son of God!" John reports that when Pilate heard these words, "he became even more afraid." Afraid of what? What could this expression do to the unbelieving Roman, who with all his heart hated the Jews and their religion, and believed only in the political religion of Rome and of Caesar? Nevertheless, there was a real cause for this fear. Although it has been given different meanings, the name Son of God was quite widely used in ancient esoterism, and Pilate, though a skeptic, had his share of superstition. At Rome, in all the lesser Mysteries of Mithras, into which the Roman officers had themselves initiated, he had heard it said that a Son of God was a kind of interpreter of divinity, and that whatever his nation or his religion, to make an attempt on his life was a great crime. Pilate hardly believed these Persian dreamings, but the saying disturbed him nevertheless, and increased his distress. Observing him carefully, the priests now throw at the Proconsul the supreme accusation: "If you free this man, you are not the friend of Caesar; for whoever makes himself king, declares himself against Caesar... we have no other king than Caesar!" This argument is irresistible. To deny God is very little; to kill is nothing, but to conspire against Caesar is indeed the crime of crimes! Pilate is forced to pronounce the condemnation upon Jesus. Thus at the end of his public career Jesus finds himself again facing the master of the world whom he has fought indirectly as a secret adversary throughout his entire life. The shadow of Caesar sends him to the cross. Thus the profound logic of things: the Jews captured him, but it is the Roman specter that kills him, merely by extending its hand. Rome kills the body, but it is he, the Christ glorified, who by his martyrdom will forever take away from Caesar the usurped crown, the divine apotheosis, the infernal blasphemy of absolute power. Having washed his hands of the blood of the innocent, Pilate utters the terrible words, Condemnor ibis in crucem. -- Already the impatient crowd is pressing toward Golgotha. .. . We stand on the barren height, the ground strewn with human bones, overlooking Jerusalem. This place is called Gilgal, Golgotha, the Place of the Skull, a sinister spot, for centuries dedicated to horrible punishments. The mountain is without trees: only gallows grow here. It is here that a Jewish king, Alexander Janneus and his harem had attended the execution of hundreds of prisoners; here Varus had had two thousand rebels crucified; here the gentle Messiah, foretold by the prophets, was to undergo the frightful punishment invented by the atrocious genius of the Phoenicians and adopted by the implacable law of Rome. The cohort of legionaries has formed a large circle at the top of the hill; with their spears the soldiers scatter the last of the faithful who have followed the condemned one hither. These are the Galilean women; silent, in complete despair, they throw themselves down, their faces to the earth. For Jesus the supreme hour has come. The defender of the poor, the weak and oppressed must complete his work in that condition of abject martyrdom reserved for slaves and thieves. The prophet, consecrated by the Essenes, must let himself be nailed to the cross he had accepted in the vision of Engaddi; the Son of God must drink of the Chalice partly seen in the Transfiguration; he must descend to the depths of hell and of earthly horror. Jesus has refused the traditional drink prepared by the devout women of Jerusalem, intended to dull the senses of the condemned. In full consciousness he will suffer these agonies. While he is being bound to the infamous gibbet, as rough soldiers with heavy hammer blows sink the nails into those feet adored by the oppressed, into those hands which know only how to bless, a black cloud of heart- rending suffering closes his eyes, stops his throat. But from the depth of these convulsions of infernal suffering, the consciousness of the still living Saviour has but one word for his tormentors: "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do!" The bottom of the Chalice now appears; the hours of agony last from noon to sunset. The moral torture increases, and is even greater than the physical torture. The initiate has surrendered his powers, the Son of God is about to be eclipsed; only a suffering man remains. For a few hours he will lose his view of Heaven, in order to experience the abyss of human suffering. The cross stands there with its victim and its inscription, a last touch of irony by the Proconsul, "This is the king of the Jews!" Now the crucified one sees Jerusalem through a cloud of anguish, the Holy City he wished to glorify, and which had hurled anathemas at him. Where are his disciples? They have disappeared. He hears only the insults of the members of the Sanhedrin, who, thinking that the prophet is no longer to be feared, glory in his agony. "He saved others," they exult, "and cannot save himself!" Beyond these blasphemies, beyond this perversity, in a terrifying vision of the future, Jesus sees all the crimes which unjust rulers, and fanatical priests will commit in his name. They will use his Sign in order to curse! They will crucify with his cross! It is not the dark silence of the heavens veiled from his sight, but the light lost for humanity, which wrings from him the cry of despair, "My Father, why have you forsaken me?" Then the consciousness of the Messiah, the will of his entire life, springs forth again in a final ray of light, and from his soul comes the cry, "Everything is accomplished!" O Sublime Nazarene, O divine Son of Man, already you are no longer here! With but a single movement of your wings, in radiant light, your soul has again found your Heaven of Engaddi, your Sky of Mount Tabor! You have seen your Word soaring victorious through all the ages, and you have desired no other glory than the uplifted hands and eyes of those you have healed and comforted.... But your last cry, misunderstood by your torturers, caused a tremor to pass over them. Astonished, your executioners, the Roman soldiers beholding the strange radiance left by your spirit upon the calm face of this corpse, look at one another and ask, "Could he have been a god?" Is the drama really finished? Is the severe though silent struggle between divine Love and death, which beat upon him with help of the ruling powers of earth, ended? Where is the conqueror? Are the victors these priests descending from Calvary, satisfied with themselves, pleased with their deed since they have seen the prophet die, or is the pale, crucified one the victor after all? For these faithful women whom the Roman legionaries have allowed to come near, and who sob at the foot of the cross, for the terrified disciples, who took refuge in a grotto in the Valley of Jehosaphat, all is finished. The Messiah who was to sit on the throne of Jerusalem has perished miserably under the infamous punishment of the cross. The Master has disappeared, and with him hope, the Gospel, the Kingdom of Heaven have vanished. A mournful silence, a deep despair hangs heavily over the little community. Even Peter and John are dismayed. Around them all is dark; not a ray of light shines in their soul. Nevertheless, just as a blinding light followed the intense darkness in the Mysteries of Eleusis, so in the Gospels, this deep despair is followed by a sudden, instantaneous, overwhelming joy. It radiates, it bursts forth like the light of sunrise, and the joyful cry is carried into all Judea: "He is risen!" First it was Mary Magdalene, wandering near the tomb in the throes of her grief, who saw the Master, recognizing him by his voice as he called her by her name, "Mary!" Overcome with joy, she threw herself at his feet. She saw Jesus look at her, make a gesture as if to forbid her to touch him, and then the appearance vanished suddenly, leaving the Magdalene surrounded by the warmth and comfort of a real presence. Then the Holy Women met the Lord, and heard him say, "Go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee, and that they will see me there." The same evening the Eleven had assembled and the doors were closed. Then they saw Jesus enter, take his place in the midst of them and gently reproach them for their unbelief. Afterward he directed them, "Go into all the world and preach the Gospel to every human creature!" It was strange that as they were listening to him, all of them were as though in a dream; they had completely forgotten his death; they thought him alive, and were convinced that the Master would leave them no more. But just as they were about to speak, they had seen him disappear like a vanishing light. The echo of his voice still rang in their ears. The astonished Apostles went to the place where he had been; a dim light floated there. Suddenly it went out. According to Matthew and Mark, Jesus reappeared soon afterward on a mountain before five hundred of the brethren who had been called together by the Apostles. He appeared once more to the Eleven. Then the appearances ceased. But the Faith had been created, the Impetus was given, Christianity was alive. The Apostles, filled with the sacred fire, healed the sick and preached the Gospel of their Master. Three years afterward, a young Pharisee by the name of Saul, violently hating the new religion and persecuting the Christians with all the vigor of youth, was traveling to Damascus with several companions. On the way, he was suddenly surrounded by a light so blinding that he fell to the ground. Trembling from head to foot, he cried out, "Who are you?" And he heard a voice say to him, "I am Jesus, whom you persecute. It is hard for you to kick against the pricks!" His companions, as frightened as he, lifted him up again. They had heard the voice without seeing anything. Blinded by the light, the young man recovered his sight only after three days... . He became converted to the faith of Christ, and is known as Paul, the Apostle of the Gentiles. It is universally agreed that without this conversion, Christianity would have remained confined to Judea and would never have conquered the West. These facts are reported by the New Testament. However one may minimize them and whatever religious idea or philosophy one may attach to them, it is impossible to regard them as legend or to deny that they are authentic in all essentials. For eighteen centuries the waves of doubt and negation have attacked the rock of this testimony; for the last hundred years, criticism has beaten upon it with all its instruments and weapons. The attack may have succeeded at certain points, but the basic tenets have remained firm. What is behind the visions of the Apostles? -- From the point of view of the conscientious historian, that is, from the authenticity of these facts as spiritual facts, there is no doubt that the Apostles saw these appearances and that their faith in the Resurrection of Christ was unshakeable. If one rejects the account of John because it is said to have been compiled nearly one hundred years after Jesus' death, and considers that of Luke in regard to the appearance at Emmaus as mere poetry, then there remain the simple, positive affirmations of Mark and Matthew, which are the very root of tradition and Christian religion. However, there yet remains something more solid and even more undeniable: the testimony of Paul. In attempting to explain to the Corinthians the reason for his faith and the basis of the Gospel which he preaches, he enumerates in order the six successive appearances of the Risen Christ: to Peter, to the Eleven, to the five hundred, "the majority of whom," he says, "are still living," to James, to the assembled Apostles, and finally, his own vision on the road to Damascus. Now these facts were communicated to Paul by Peter and by James three years after Jesus' death, and shortly after Paul's conversion on the occasion of his first journey to Jerusalem. Of all these visions, the most unquestionable is not the least extraordinary. I refer to the experience of Paul himself. In his Epistles he constantly returns to it as the source of his faith. Considering Paul's previous psychological condition and the nature of his vision, the latter came to him from the outside, not from within; it is entirely unexpected and electrifying; it changes his entire being. Like a baptism of fire, it penetrates him from head to foot, arrays him in an impenetrable armor, making him the invincible knight of Christ in the eyes of the world. Thus the testimony of Paul has a double authority, in that it affirms his own vision and corroborates those of others. If one wishes to doubt the sincerity of such affirmations, it would be necessary to reject all historical evidence. With Celsus, Strauss and Renan, one can refuse objective value to the Resurrection, considering it a phenomenon resulting from pure hallucination. But in this case one is forced to attribute the greatest religious revolution of mankind to an aberration of the senses and to a delusion of the mind! Now there is no denying that faith in the Resurrection is the basis of historical Christianity. Without this confirmation of the teaching of Jesus by a radiant Deed, his religion would not even have begun. This Deed brought about a radical change in the Apostles' souls. From being Judaic, their whole mental outlook became Christian. For the glorious Christ is living, he spoke to them, Heaven opened, the Beyond entered the earth below, the aurora of immortality touched their foreheads, embracing their souls in a fire which never can be extinguished. Above the crumbling earthly kingdom of Israel they have seen the heavenly universal Kingdom in all its splendor. Hence their eagerness for battle, their joy in martyrdom. From Christ's Resurrection comes that overwhelming impulse, that boundless hope which carries the Gospel to all peoples, and eventually to the uttermost parts of the earth. In order for Christianity to succeed, two things were indispensable, as Fabre d Olivet said: that Jesus was willing to die, and that he had the power to rise again. In order to grasp the fact of the Resurrection and to understand its religious and philosophical significance, it is necessary to consider only the successive appearances of the Risen Christ, putting aside the idea of the bodily resurrection, one of the greatest stumbling blocks of Christian dogma which, on this point is completely elementary and childish. The disappearance of Jesus' physical body can be explained by natural causes, and it is to be noted that the corpses of several great adepts have disappeared without a trace in as completely mysterious a manner. Among others the corpses of Moses, of Pythagoras and of Apollonius of Tyana disappeared without anyone having been able to discover what became of them. It is possible that the brothers destroyed the Master's remains with fire in order to remove them from the profanations of his enemies. Be that as it may, however, the scientific aspect and the spiritual grandeur of the Resurrection appear only if one understands the latter in the esoteric sense. Among the Egyptians, the Persians of the Mazdan religion of Zoroaster before as well as after the time of Jesus, in Israel and among the Christians of the first two centuries, the Resurrection has been understood in two ways: the one materialistic, the other spiritual. The first is the popular concept finally adopted by the Church after the repression of Gnosticism; the second is the profound idea of the initiates. In the first sense, Resurrection means the return to life of the material body, in a word, the reconstruction of the decomposed or scattered corpse, which one imagined must occur at the coming of the Messiah or at the Last Judgment. It is hardly necessary to point out the gross materialism and absurdity of this idea. For the initiate, Resurrection has a very different meaning. It is linked with the doctrine of the threefold constitution of man. It means the purification and regeneration of the sidereal, ethereal and fluidic body, which is the very organ of the soul and, to some extent, the vessel of the spirit. This purification can begin in this life through the inner work of the soul and a certain way of existence, but for the majority of men it is fulfilled only after death, and then only for those who in one way or another have aspired to righteousness and truth. In the other world, hypocrisy is impossible. There, souls appear as they are in reality; they manifest themselves in the form and color of their essence: dark and ugly if they are evil, radiant and beautiful if they are good. This doctrine is expounded by Paul in the Epistle to the Corinthians. He says, "There is a natural body and a spiritual body." Jesus speaks of it symbolically, but with more depth, in the secret conversation with Nicodemus. Now the more spiritual a soul is, the further it will be from earthly atmosphere, the higher the cosmic region which attracts it by the law of affinity, the more difficult its manifestation to men. As a result, higher souls hardly manifest themselves to men at all except during a condition of deep sleep or ecstasy. Then, the physical eyes being closed, the soul, half detached from the body, sometimes sees souls. Nevertheless it does occur that a very great prophet, a true Son of God appears to his brothers in the waking state in order to convince them by appealing to their senses and imagination. In a similar sense, the excarnated soul succeeds momentarily in giving its spiritual body a visible, even a tangible appearance by means of a specific dynamic which spirit exercises over matter. Apparently this is what happened in the case of Jesus. The appearances reported in the New Testament belong to either of these categories: spiritual vision or perceptible appearance. It is certain that for the Apostles they were supremely real. The Eleven would rather have doubted the existence of the sky and earth than their living communion with the Risen Christ, for these visions of their Lord were the most radiant thing in their lives, the most profound experiences of which they were conscious. The Resurrection, understood in its esoteric sense, was both the necessary conclusion to Jesus' life and the indispensable preface to the historical evolution of Christianity. The conclusion was indeed necessary, for Jesus had announced it many times to his disciples. That he was able to appear to them in triumphant splendor after his death was due to the purity, the innate power of his soul multiplied a hundred times by the grandeur of his effort and his fulfilled mission. Viewed exoterically and from the purely earthly point of view, the Messianic drama ends on the cross. Sublime in itself perhaps, nevertheless this lacks the fulfillment of the promise. Seen esoterically, from the depths of Jesus' consciousness and from the heavenly point of view, there are three high points in the divine Drama: the Temptation, the Transfiguration and the Resurrection. These three represent the Initiation of Christ, the Total Revelation and the Crowning of the Work. They correspond to what the Apostles and Christian initiates of the first centuries called The Mysteries of the Son, of the Father and of the Holy Spirit. This is the necessary crowning, as I have said, of the life of Christ, and the indispensable preface to the historical evolution of Christianity. The boat built on the beach needed to be launched upon the ocean. The Resurrection was a great light thrown upon the entire esoteric background of Jesus. It is therefore not surprising that the first Christians were so overwhelmed and blinded by this extraordinary event that they often took the Master's teaching literally, misunderstanding the meaning of his words. But today, now that the human spirit has traveled through ages, religions and sciences, we surmise what a Saint Paul, a Saint John, what Jesus himself meant by the Mysteries of the Father and of the Spirit. We recognize that they contain the highest and truest that the science of the spirit has known. We also see the power of the new amplification the Christ gave to ancient, eternal Truth by the greatness of his love and the strength of his will. Finally, we perceive both the metaphysical and practical side of Christianity, the essence of its power and vitality. The Brahmins of old found the key to the past and future life by formulating the organic law of reincarnation and the alternation of lives. But because they plunged themselves into the Beyond and into the contemplation of Eternity, they forgot earthly fulfillment: the tasks of individual and social life. Greece, originally initiated into the same truths under veiled and more anthropomorphic forms, by its own genius attached itself to the natural, earthly life. This enabled Greece to reveal the immortal laws of the Beautiful by example, and to formulate the principles of the sciences by observation. But, meanwhile, its concept of the Beyond narrowed and gradually darkened. By his broadness and universality, Jesus embraces the two sides of life. In the Lord's Prayer, summing up his teaching, Jesus says, "Thy kingdom come, on earth as in heaven." And this divine reign on earth means the fulfillment of the moral and social law in all its richness, in all the radiance of the Beautiful, the Good and the True. Thus the magic of his teaching and his power of development -- in a certain sense unlimited -- reside in the unity of his ethics and his metaphysics, in his ardent faith in eternal life and in his need to begin the latter here on earth by his Deed and his active Love. To the soul overburdened with all the heaviness of earth, the Christ says, "Arise, for your home is in Heaven! -- But in order to believe in Heaven and in order to reach Heaven, prove Heaven here on earth in your work and in your love!"

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