Deflating Jesus

            In Buddhism, when Buddha is quoted, it is not the man Siddhartha who is quoted. It is understood that Buddha is a universal consciousness that has been revealed through many teachers through the ages. This stands in stark contrast to how Christians feel that the same truth—pure consciousness—which they call Christ, revealed by the man Jesus, belongs only to that man.

All the world’s religions began with someone experiencing pure consciousness. They expressed it in their own way and then ego took over with guilt and fear and bloat so their simple experience, if it can be found at all, is buried in each religion’s mysticism, which is sought only by a few.

If you experienced pure consciousness in some form, in a moment, an episode, or maybe now in an ongoing way, you experienced the same truth that Siddhartha and Jesus and all the “master teachers” before and after experienced. Truth came to conscious awareness in you as in them. And as I’ve shared in recent weeks, all the loftiness and specialness, including concepts like “divine” and “holy”, around these experiences is ego. In pure consciousness, pure consciousness is plain and ordinary, blessedly so. I now realize that the bells and whistles around “mystical” experiences, the loftiness, the grandness, the twinkliness, the extreme nature of the love and joy, were forms of fear. Pure consciousness is different from ego, but those experiences were ego’s projections of its own bloat onto something it could not understand because it is the stranger in plain, ordinary consciousness. And those forms of fear and bloat served to make truth seem too different, lofty, and distant to reach.

Years ago, I saw a documentary about the historical Jesus. The scholars pointed out that early Christians emphasized his message of love. I’m quite sure that Jesus was someone who was simply aware of pure consciousness and was teaching that “the Kingdom of Heaven is within you”—the love and joy and peace that you seek is right here within your consciousness, beyond the seeming veil of ego. And early Christians got that and ran with it.

As children we all played the telephone game in school, where teachers demonstrate to us how a message gets distorted the further it gets from its source by having us pass along a message through a chain or circle of our classmates. By the time it reaches the last person, the message does not resemble what the teacher whispered in the first student’s ear. Jesus wasn’t written about until decades after he died, so we know we have lost whatever that man was really about.

The scholars went on to point out that in Jesus’s time, the Pharisees were a small, powerless sect. Yet, they play the villain role in his story. That is because when he was written about decades later, Christians were being persecuted by the Pharisees, who had risen to power by then. Those early writers projected their experience onto Jesus and emphasized his martyrdom. His simple message of love within you now was replaced by a story of guilt and fear. He became a savior and model to a people who felt victimized.

So, an ordinary guy, with what was then the common name of Jesus, comes to be aware of truth and starts talking about it with others. “Hey! It’s right here within you!” Perhaps he had some charisma as well, so he was appealing and people liked to listen to him, no matter his message. Yes, it was a threatening message to the religious in power at the time, just as the Protestant message was threatening centuries later when people were told that they didn’t need the Catholic Church to reach God. But Jesus’s message was no different from what the Hindus and Buddhists and other mystics had been teaching for millennia by then. (Some stories of Jesus have him going east and studying those religions.) Jesus was nothing special. He was just teaching ideas that were new to his time and place—and threatening to ego. His experiences and his message were the same as mine and any other mystic or anyone who has had a mystical experience. He was no different from you. He was just a man who had an awareness of truth.

What has been done to the guy is all ego. The romantic story of his birth, his mysterious life, his teachings elevated to a holy and supposedly unique message, crucifixion resurrection, and ascension—all of these are metaphors for ego death and enlightenment, made so dramatic by ego but having nothing to do with a man who lived 2000 years ago and had a simple, and already by then, ancient message.

I’m sure I don’t have to point out the guilt and fear promoted by ego through the man and his story, they are too obvious to students of A Course in Miracles. But even when they tout love, the elaborate religions that have grown up around him ultimately bury his simple and very present message that the truth is here within you with their emphasis on what is appearing in the world.

Stop and think about this guy who is just like you and who had experiences just like you. He was not a “special case” but was made into one. Making him so only seems to keep the truth away from you when it is right here within you now.

A Course in Miracles makes him a special case, but that had to do with Helen and her special relationship with the idea of Jesus. The Course also tries to bring him down to ground level by saying he is a brother who is simply more advanced in his awareness. It straddles. The Course is very clear that as long as you need certain things—purpose, symbols, relationships—they will simply be redefined to bring you closer to truth. But as your awareness of truth advances, they will evolve and perhaps fall away.

In the movie, Raiders of the Lost Ark, (spoiler alert!) Indiana Jones and a Nazi eventually find the Holy Grail, the chalice that Jesus supposedly drank from at the Last Supper. It is among many chalices, and the Nazi goes for the most elaborate, jewel encrusted chalice, fit for a king. But Indy knows better. Jesus was a humble carpenter and would have had just a plain wooden cup. This symbolizes how ego bloats truth into something grand when it turns out that truth is plain, ordinary, right here, accessible. Pure consciousness is not a lofty god to worship, but simply what is. And I’m sure Jesus was just trying to tell people this. 

>>>> 

If you have a question the answer to which you feel may be helpful to others, send it to Liz@acimmentor.com and indicate that you want it answered in this newsletter/blog.