The message of Jesus according to the Gospel, has no
- ritual,
- nor moral,
- nor intellectual,
- nor social character.
His message is essentially
- the search for knowledge of the primary causes,
- ontological, of Being and of this search,
- real,
- Cosmic.
As this message occurred in a human environment of low comprehension, it
was, at first, conditioned and infected by the atmosphere of that moment in
history. The divine content of the Gospel has been impacted by its fragile human
vessels.
Christianity inherited its ritualistic-sacramental colours from the pagan
mysteries of the Roman Empire, according to which the salvation of man consists
in certain magical and occult practices, related to certain objects, formulas,
gestures, etc.
Contemporary Judaism weakened nascent Christianity with the idea of
redemption through blood, according to the annual "scapegoat" ceremony in
Jerusalem, which was glorified by a former Jewish rabbi converted to
Christianity, initiating the barbaric conception of Jesus’s blood washing away
sins of mankind.
Later, in the early days of Renaissance, the message of Jesus was
interpreted intellectually, under the analysis of the Bible’s letters, and in
the act of trust in his blood as if that blood was converted as an elixir to
redeem mankind.
Finally, nowadays, Christianity has been identified with social
philanthropy, works of charity and altruism, related to the evolutionary idea of
successive reincarnations.
All these versions may to some extent be accepted as simultaneous phenomena
- but none of them represent the centre and root of the authentic message of
Christ Jesus.
Rites, sacrifices, studies, beliefs, altruism - all this still belongs to
the old horizontal conception that man is only his physical-mental-emotional
ego, a concept that Jesus totally surpassed. For him, man is not his casing, not
even in the most purified form, which he calls "new patch on old clothes"; man
is not his persona or personality, but his inner Self, his profound and divine
individuality, his soul or spirit that Christ calls the "Father", the "Light",
the "Kingdom", the "Hidden Treasure”, the "Precious Pearl".
This conception that Jesus has of man which forms the refinement of all his
message, is deeply metaphysical, ontological, realistic, cosmic.
The gospel message does not focuses primarily, in transforming the vicious
ego-man into a virtuous ego-man, whom Jesus rejects as "new patch on old
clothes"; but invites man to discover his divine reality, already existing in
him, but still unconscious; invites him to take his divine light from under the
bushel of his unconsciousness and place it on the chandelier of his conscience;
invites man to be conscious of the Father, the Light, the Kingdom, the Treasure,
the Pearl, what man is by nature, but ignores being; Jesus invites man to what
the Eastern philosophers and, ultimately, the Western psychologists, call
"self-knowledge", and which in the Gospel appears as "the first and greatest of
all the commandments."
The message of Jesus does not refer to something man should do, but to
someone man should be consciously; and from this being of the mystique of the
first commandment will spontaneously result the doer of the second commandment
of ethics - the ethical experience of universal fraternity is for him the
irresistible overflow of the mystical experience of God's unique paternity.
Mystical self-knowledge produces ethical self-realization.
In a word: Jesus' message revolves entirely around the Metaphysical Reality
of man whose centre and root is God, the Absolute, the Infinite, the Eternal.
When man still identifies himself with his human ego and seeks to make this
vicious and evil ego a virtuous and good ego, he walks the "narrow path" and
goes through the "small gate" of compulsory duty, always difficult and with
sacrifice; but, after being awakened to the consciousness of the reality of his
divine Self, he enters the zone of the "easy yoke and light burden" of
spontaneous desire; he goes through from moral virtuosity to the wisdom of
comprehension, and his painful morality turns into a joyful ethic - and only
then does he find "rest for his soul."
When Mahatma Gandhi wrote that "Truth is hard as a diamond
and delicate as a peach blossom", he comprehended that the hardness of duty can
be associated to the delicacy of wanting - I spontaneously want what I ought
necessarily - supposed that my virtuous ego enters the zone of my wise Self.
In this dawn of the third millennium, we find in all parts of the world men
who are beginning to suspect - to "suspect", as JW Hauer says -
that Jesus' message contains something infinitely deeper and more sublime than
we generally read and hear in the Christian West. We are beginning to discover
the soul of the Gospel. However, for this comprehension it is necessary that man
surpasses his analytical intelligece and enters into the new dimension of an
intuitive consciousness, of the perception of Truth - that the partial man of
today becomes the integral man of tomorrow.
