Against The Stream ~ THINK ABOUT
IT
SOME OF MY IDEAS MIGHT
BE UNUSUAL and different, I know, and I make no apologies
for this, because what would be the point in writing
a book if there were nothing different in it than
in other books?
Now, today—at least in Western countries—we
have the precious freedom to investigate anything.
Nothing is sacrosanct and beyond honest scrutiny anymore,
unlike in medieval Europe, when people who had ideas
different—even slightly different—than
those taught by the Church of Rome, were branded as
‘witches’ or ‘heretics’, and
often horribly tortured and burnt to death. We have
made progress, therefore, and should take intelligent
advantage of our freedom to investigate—and
should protect it, too—so that we may break
the bonds of ignorance and superstition.
Yes, some of my ideas might be a bit strange,
but I ask no-one to believe me; on the contrary, I
ask people not to believe, but to keep their minds
open and to think clearly about things. Are you ready
for another ‘strange idea’?
It sometimes surprises people when I say
I feel closer to Jesus than to the Buddha, and I can
almost hear them thinking: "What’s he talking
about? He’s a Buddhist monk! How can he say
such a thing!?" Well, you see, in the Buddhist
scriptures, there is no record of the Buddha ever
displaying anger, fear or sadness, and, at my stage
of evolution, with an imperfect mind, I must admit
that I cannot understand such a state, although I
would like to be there. But, according to the Christian
Bible—insofar as it can be relied upon at all—Jesus
sometimes did get angry, afraid and sad, and this
is something I can relate to, because I am subject
to those emotions, too; aren’t you? This doesn’t
mean that I’m condoning or justifying them here,
but just being honest and realistic.
Christian apologists will say (and they
always have explanations and excuses for things, even
if their explanations are seldom convincing, and sometimes
obscure matters even further) that Jesus deliberately
showed anger, sadness and fear, so that ‘ordinary
mortals’, like you and I, could see to what
levels he was prepared to descend in order to help
us understand and accept him as ‘our personal
savior’; in other words, he was only pretending
to be sad, angry and afraid, but wasn’t really
so!
Like me now, Jesus had not yet gone beyond
these emotions, and so—although he was undoubtedly
further along the Way than I am—I can still
see him, and understand him very well, whereas the
mind of the Buddha, to me, is right now unfathomable.
This is why I feel closer to Jesus than I do to the
Buddha. The Buddha has crossed the Ocean of Existence,
while Jesus is still in the process of doing so; he’s
still walking on the water, somewhere between the
Buddha and myself.
The Teachings of these two Teachers, however,
is another matter—something apart from personality.
As they stand today, it is difficult to compare them,
because there has been plenty of time and opportunity,
over the centuries, to edit and change them. We cannot
reasonably suppose that they have come down to us
in the present exactly as they were spoken by those
Teachers so long ago. The recorded Teachings of the
Buddha are still quite clear, though undoubtedly there
have been additions. But those of Jesus are often
cryptic, ambiguous, contradictory, lacking in compassion,
and in parts, downright incredible—though this,
I suspect, is due more to those who controlled and
compiled the books of the New Testament than to what
Jesus actually said. Much has been put into his mouth
by people with vested interests who came after him.
Perhaps we shall never know what Jesus really
said, as the records have been so distorted; the New
Testament is probably the most-tampered-with book
in the world. And there is the 18 years’ blank—like
a deliberate erasure—in the account of the life
of Jesus, from when he was 12 years old until he was
30. I often wonder why the Christians never found
or invented things to fill up this mysterious and
glaring gap, when they were so good at falsifying
things. Can Jesus really have said nothing to his
intimate disciples about his activities during these
most-important formative years? It seems probable
that—like in the ‘Watergate Scandal’,
whereby Nixon and his henchmen erased or destroyed
incriminating evidence about the secret and unauthorized
bombing of Cambodia—some people got together
and decided to omit what, to them, seemed ‘unsuitable’
for the general public. Such practices are known as
‘editing’ or ‘censoring’.
This blank in the life of Jesus has provided
ample scope for speculation about what he was doing
during those years. One concept is that he went to
India to study the ancient wisdom there, and this
is why his teachings have an Indian flavor about them
in parts. But it would not have been necessary for
him to go so far to learn about Indian thought, for
the caravan-routes from the Orient to Egypt passed
through Jerusalem. And 250 years before Jesus was
born, the Indian Emperor Ashoka sent Buddhist missionaries
to many places beyond the boundaries of his empire,
including Damascus in Syria and Alexandria in Egypt,
to reach which they would have had to pass through
Palestine. So, the Teachings of the Buddha were known
in that part of the world long before Jesus lived.
There is speculation that the sect of the Essenes—whose
records, the Dead Sea Scrolls, were found in a cave
near the Dead Sea in 1947—came into being and
developed out of Ashoka’s missions. The Essenes
were ascetics who lived in desert communities, practicing
vegetarianism and—in some cases—celibacy,
which was something alien and unknown to orthodox
Judaism. Jesus is thought to have been a member of
the Essenes.
Now, the reason I have spoken abut this
here is to show that there are other ways of looking
at things than the ways generally accepted by the
masses of people—ways that are no less valid
than theirs, and maybe more valid and logical.
I once considered myself to be a Christian,
but not any more, and never will again—at least,
not in this life, and I don’t plan to be become
one in a future life, either. In my opinion—based
upon my research into Christian history—Christianity
is the greatest hoax that has ever been perpetrated
upon humanity. But this does not prevent me from respecting
Jesus, does it? He had no control over what his followers
did with his teachings after his death. I have said
that I understand him very well, and I respect him
greatly. He was a human being, like you and I, though
more highly developed spiritually, of course. What
a pity that his followers never understood him as
such, but insisted upon seeing him as someone forever
apart and different from them; no-one can follow in
the footsteps of a ‘divine being’, but
we can all follow those of a human being, can we not?
Where one has gone, we can all go, as the Buddha said.
Is this idea so different
that it cannot be considered a possibility?
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