What purifies or defile man are not
the circumstances, but the subject of his thoughts.
Once, scribes and Pharisees were scandalized by
Jesus' disciples, and asked the Master why they did not observe the traditions
and ate without washing their hands first. They were not referring to the rules
of physical hygiene, but of moral impurity.
Jesus, the Christ, replied with the following
comparison:
"It is not what goes into the mouth that defiles
a person, but what comes out of the mouth; this defiles a person because from
the heart could born evil thoughts, adulteries, lust, murder, false witness,
blasphemies - and these are the things that make man unclean. Not washing hands
before eating does not defile man".
Persists for 20 centuries in Christendom, the
idea that objects and external actions can give to man purity or impurity - when
in reality, only his inner attitude is responsible to give him spiritual and
moral purity or impurity.
Certain ecclesiastical theologies ascribe power
of purification and sanctification to certain objects and words, ideology that
was inherited from the ancient "Mysteries" of the Roman paganism. The longing
for spiritual cleansing, sinners addressed the magicians and priests of the
temples; touching certain "sacred objects", or heard ritual words and believed
purified, redeemed.
The Greek word "mysterion" in Latin
means, "sacramentum". Ecclesiastical sacraments are the continuation
of the pagan mysteries; functioning as ritualistic magic.
Later, prevailed in much of Christendom, Jewish
magic, which attributed spiritual redemption and sanctification to the blood of
sacrificed animals. Solomon, according to the first book of the Kings, at the
ceremony to the dedication of the temple in Jerusalem, ordered to kill thousands
of animals. Each year on Mount Zion, the priest gather the people of Israel at
the temple entrance, sent a goat to come, put his hands over its head and
transferred to that innocent animal the sins of the people; then that
"scapegoat" was killed, and, according to the prevailing belief, with the death
of the goat, also died all people's sins. (1)
Christian theology replaced the innocent goat by
the only sinless man, Jesus, and attributed to his blood a redemptive and
spiritual effect - though Jesus himself had never considered his blood as an
elixir of redemption!
Therefore, according to those beliefs, the purity
of man comes from external circumstances, through objects, formulas, words,
rituals - always an external factor.
However, according to the Gospel, there is no
redemption by external factors, but only by self-redemption. Man is not saved
by something or someone - man is redeemed, saved, purified, sanctified not by
his human ego, but rather by his divine Self, who is the Father in him, his
inner Christ, the Kingdom of God, the Light of the world, which is in him and
that he should awake.
This self-redemption is Christ redemption,
Theo-redemption.
In today's terms, this Self-redemption is called
Self-realization.
When Jesus tells that the first and greatest
commandment of all is that man loves the Lord his God with all his soul, with
all his mind, with all his heart and with all his strength - what is that if not
Self-redemption, Self-realization? It is the purification that comes from
within, not from external circumstances. According to the words of the Master,
all impurity and also purity comes from within man. If from the human ego comes
impurity, from the divine Self... purity comes.
The whole purification and sanctification of man
comes from the awakening of his divine Self, who is also called "to be reborn by
the spirit".
Note:
(1)- The tradition says that in the feasts of the
tabernacles when they condemned to death the scapegoat was due to the fact that
in previous rituals, the innocent being was left deep in the desert to die, but
eventually, the goat came back, and that scandalized the people of Israel,
meaning to them that theirs sins were not redeemed. In order for the goat not
to come back again, it was better to kill it!
It is said also that it was customary to
differentiate the scapegoat with a red strip of cloth around its neck, but under
the scorching heat of the desert, the sun faded the colour red to the point of
whitewashing it and with that, they thought that white was the colour of purity
and therefore Israel's sins were forgiven!
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