What is the inner reason for many Jewish people – even those who are otherwise quite open-minded and spiritually inclined – to be almost militantly against Jesus Christ? A similar reaction also exists in some rebellious Christians who strongly rebel against their early upbringing. What is the reason for this?
The Guide: This can be looked at from two different levels: psychologically and karmically. Psychologically, the Jewish person who denies Jesus is simply afraid of being accused of selling out and of betraying his ancestors. Sometimes this actually happens in an opportunistic way. They are then blinded that all acceptance of Jesus Christ is nothing more than an opportunistic selling out.
This blindness and one-sidedness is the result of being strongly dependent on parental approval; it is motivated by self-doubt and insecurity so that he or she cannot question the cultural environment they come from. They establish a false concept of decency according to which the only right thing to do is to continuously deny Jesus Christ. It is also an emotional reaction, a conditioned reflex response to anti-Semitism. It is a spirit of defiance that is ready to deny whatever truth may exist in order to assert one’s human rights.
Karmically, it is the exact perpetuation of the tradition that denied a new truth. Whenever tradition is made a god in itself, and thus supersedes the living spirit of the Creator, sin and evil must follow. The same is true when progressive forces deny the truth contained in tradition.
The collective guilt lives on as long as blind adherence to the past seems right, more important, and more expedient, than opening up to new possibilities about the true facts in respect to the issue under discussion. Guilt often induces a strong, defensive, stubborn close-mindedness in order not to face the pain of this guilt. It thereby creates a false reality in which one can feel self-righteous.
The Christian who rebels against his upbringing, thereby denying the truth of Jesus Christ, operates on the following premises: Jesus Christ is often distorted into the punitive, life-denying king of religiosity that stifles the living breath of free expression, of feelings and of creative movement.
When the parental environment has created this false image of Jesus, he is denied himself, alongside with the religiosity stifling the living spirit. This is a great mistake and a total confusion on the conceptual level. Obviously the two sides represent different facets of the same coin.
Both Jews and rebellious Christians need to examine this, as well as any other controversial question, in an entirely new way, as if the topic had never been discussed, reacted to, or never even existed before. Open up, make yourself empty and new, before you look into it.
Simply raise the question, “Could it be that despite my tradition and the beliefs of the elders of my cultural background, Jesus Christ was the Messiah? Could it be that my people were wrong in this respect? If they are, is my blind loyalty to their mistakenness not a greater disloyalty on a much larger scale?
“If Jesus Christ is indeed the truth, do I not betray more by being so careful not to betray the belief of my parents? Could I not love and honor my parents more and better if I put them in their rightful human place and see them as fallible human beings? Perhaps much of my hatred for them is nourished continuously by a false loyalty that I resent on a deeper level. If they cannot free me from this confusion, is it not my responsibility to free myself from this bondage that makes me deny one of the most important truths in human evolution.”
The rebel should pose the question like this: “Perhaps the reality of Jesus Christ has nothing to do with the narrow spirit that forbids all that my soul and body long for. Perhaps this is merely a mistaken interpretation because of certain Christian traditions. Do I not have a sufficiently wise mind to find the truth myself by reconsidering, questioning and selecting, so as not to be in the position of denying the greatest evolutionary truth, God’s greatest gift to mankind? Do I have to perpetrate age old human mistakes in thinking and understanding?”
Once you begin to raise such questions and open your mind to new modalities, you will see the simple logical mistakes in perception. Strong emotional ties and fears create these mistaken perceptions. In the one case, blind loyalty means denial of a greater truth. In the other case, Jesus Christ’s spirit and what he stands for is maligned – often unwittingly – and narrowed down so as to squeeze the living breath of people who wish to follow his footsteps.
Do not let these barriers persist in your consciousness. It is so important – not only because Jesus can become a living reality for you, and you deprive yourself of so much when you fail to allow this to happen – but also because when your mind operates continuously bound to unthinking old emotional reflexes, based on inner fears, guilt and parental bondage, you limit yourself and you close your most creative channels.
Refraining from re-examining what you consider an old topic curtails your whole organism. You simply avoid truth and you distort reality in many ways. You are enslaved, not free; you are limited, not flowing and creative; you are closed, not open. Blind traditional adherence, as well as blind rebellion, always keeps out life, the very spirit of God incorporated in Jesus Christ.
The truly free, liberated and self-realized person is also entirely free from all tradition and teachings that are either error or no longer hold true. This new man is not bound by his upbringing, but only by what is true. This is his only focus and his center of gravity. He knows no patriotism other than the planetary one. He knows no separated religious denomination, he only knows what is true for all mankind. If not betraying your parent’s means betraying the truth of divine reality, is it not necessary to forfeit the beliefs of your parents?
This is addressed extensively in Lecture #246 Tradition: It’s Divine and Distorted Aspects. You can love your parents much better if you adhere to what is true. Now you may say, “But I do not know what is true.” All you need to do is to want to find out whether Jesus Christ is indeed the Messiah.
Can you say, in your heart of hearts, that you want to find out? That you want to go on this particular journey within the total journey, to find out the truth in this regard? If you must answer No, and you do not want to look and find out, do not deceive yourself that it is unimportant. For if God has really sent you the Messiah and you refuse to recognize him, then many other ramifications must also come to pass.
The stubbornness, the pride, the fear of being criticized and ridiculed, may stand in the way of finding the treasure you so need and so desire in your deepest self. This is why Jesus said so clearly that you must forsake your mother and father and your mate in order to follow him. With this he meant exactly that.
He did not mean that you must hate your parents or have contempt for them. It means that you should grow up and find your own truth, that you should free yourself from all preconceived notions and ideas and thus make yourself sufficiently empty and new so that new truths can fill you.
There never need to have been a split between Jews and Christians, if the Jews, who were at that time the highest developed people, would have asked this same question I pose to you. Do not associate Jesus Christ with a primitive, distorted and often cruel Christianity that has no more to do with the real Jesus Christ than the Jewish resistance to him.
Jesus Christ is not “another kind of God.” He is the humanized manifestation of God in totally pure form, without a lower self, without any of the human blindness and errors that pertain to humans who go through their cycles of development.
There is no force that you must accept Christ. But there is always the question why you think you cannot – what are the real inner reasons? What are the ramifications of these reasons? If it is indeed true that Jesus Christ is the light and the way, your denial of him deprives you of the most needed spiritual nourishment.
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I have two questions. First, why do you place so much importance on the New Testament, when, as you have pointed out, it is so encrusted by time, faulty translation and outright manipulation. Why not let it be, instead of resurrecting it, and go on to the new clear and pertinent material that you have given us, which seems to me to be a genuine rewriting and expansion on the basic truths in the other?
I see my second question as an extension of the first. As a Jew, I have, because of my upbringing, a deep-seated prejudice that comes up at the mention of Jesus. I feel that to accept the Christian concept of Jesus as God and Savior – Messiah – would be a betrayal of my people and myself. Your three early lectures on the meaning of the Christ were very helpful to me in understanding the nature and function of the Christ consciousness in the epic of universal evolution and its special significance to us human beings.
But the actual existence and acceptance of Jesus Christ, Son of God, seems to me beside the point. I value and appreciate the message of love and it’s power that Jesus was supposed to have brought, but seem to hear you ask me to buy the whole story. I can see I need help here to find my way through my prejudices and understand your true meaning. One more thing: you mentioned that material pertaining to reincarnation was deleted from the Bible. Is there knowledge of such material?
The Guide: I have also said that the New Testament contains much truth and beauty that could be helpful to you. Is it perhaps not significant that you remember only what I said about the distortions and mistranslations, and do not remember about the truths and the divine messages contained in this document?
The reason for this is, of course, contained in your second question. It is good that you ask this question because it is of utmost importance. You see, my dearest friend, the truly free, liberated and self-realized person is also entirely free from all tradition and teachings that are either in error or no longer hold true.
This new man is not bound by his upbringing, but only by what is true. This is his only focus and his center of gravity. He knows no patriotism other than the planetary one. He knows no separated religious denomination, he only knows what is true for all mankind. If not betraying your parent’s means betraying the truth of divine reality, is it not necessary to forfeit the beliefs of your parents?
I have talked about this extensively in one of the last lectures [Lecture #246 Tradition: It’s Divine and Distorted Aspects]. You can love your parents much better if you adhere to what is true. Now you may say, “But I do not know what is true.” All you need to do is to want to find out whether Jesus Christ is indeed the Messiah.
Can you say, in your heart of hearts, that you want to find out? That you want to go on this particular journey within the total journey, to find out the truth in this regard? If you must answer No, you do not want to look and find out, do not deceive yourself that it is unimportant. For if God has really sent you the Messiah and you refuse to recognize him, then many other ramifications must also come to pass.
The stubbornness, the pride, the fear of being criticized and ridiculed, may stand in the way of finding the treasure you so need and so desire in your deepest self. This is why Jesus said so clearly that you must forsake your mother and father and your mate in order to follow him. With this he meant exactly that.
He did not mean that you must hate your parents or have contempt for them. It means that you should grow up and find your own truth, that you should free yourself from all preconceived notions and ideas and thus make yourself sufficiently empty and new so that new truths can fill you.
There never need to have been a split between Jews and Christians, if the Jews, who were at that time the highest developed people, would have asked this same question I pose to you. Do not associate Jesus Christ with a primitive distorted and often cruel Christianity that has no more to do with the real Jesus Christ than the Jewish resistance to him.
Jesus Christ is not “another kind of God.” He is the humanized manifestation of God in totally pure form, without a Lower Self, without any of the human blindness and errors that pertain to humans who go through their cycles of development.
There is no force that you must accept Christ. But there is always the question why you think you cannot – what are the real inner reasons? What are the ramifications of these reasons? If it is indeed true that Jesus Christ is the light and the way, your denial of him deprives you of the most needed spiritual nourishment.
It is very true what you say about creating a common spiritual form and energy when you are gathered here. This should in no way stop now – on the contrary. I wish that my words help you to open your channels where it is most needed at any given time. Sometimes I will make suggestions, as I did here in regard to creating rituals. But there are many other topics that need to be treated in this way.
For instance, the very question you asked me here. Why do you not, after this reading is over, ask for this truth, all of you together. Those who wish to find it will lend their energy to this, those who do not wish to know, should at least admit this and thus know that their denial cannot possibly be truth, since they have a stake in not wanting to know the truth.
You will be able to feel his distinct presence amongst you. Never terminate a lecture or a Question & Answer reading without spending some time together in opening your own channels. It is best to focus on a specific topic, perhaps difficulties that the community may have in any area, or any part of the lecture you may not quite understand. Full blessing will be given to all of you for this.
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