Part One:
The Gnostic Gospels
PROFILE: Elaine Pagels
BOB ABERNETHY: Now, a profile -- and some religion history. It concerns the
early Christian movement, and documents discovered nearly 60 years ago that
reveal an early Christianity many find surprisingly diverse. This is also
the personal story of Elaine Pagels, historian of religion at Princeton
University. She has written best-selling books on what are called "The
Gnostic Gospels." Mary Alice Williams reports.
MARY ALICE WILLIAMS: Elaine Pagels seems comfortable keeping Christianity at
an academic distance. But in 1982, it got personal. Her only child had just
been diagnosed with a terminal lung disease. Pagels found herself outside
the Church of the Heavenly Rest, an Episcopal church in Manhattan, doubting
its orthodoxy, needing its sustenance.
ELAINE PAGELS (Author, THE GNOSTIC GOSPELS): I was extremely upset. I
hadn't slept in days. Distraught. I was trying to calm myself by running
that morning. It seemed to me the possibility of a church like this, the way
it engages the issues of life and death, put the prospect of losing a child
into a context that was much larger than an ordinary one.
WILLIAMS: Raised by nonobservant Protestant parents, Pagels shocked them by
joining an Evangelical church at the age of 13, then quit when the church
announced a friend of hers would go to hell because he'd not been "born
again."
Ms. PAGELS: I realized that I did not accept what they were saying. I didn't
agree with it. It didn't make sense to me.
WILLIAMS: But the passionate faith of the Evangelicals had affected her.
Ms. PAGELS: I was aware that something very powerful had engaged me. What
is so powerful about it? How does it transform people in the way that it
does? I remembered that very well. So I decided that I would have to seek
for myself.
WILLIAMS: No small search. She learned Greek and the ancient language Coptic
to study the origins of Christianity, and in 1972 became part of a
translation team with early access to a gold mine. In 1945, an Egyptian
peasant searching for fertilizer found an earthenware jar filled with
manuscripts in a cave near the village of Nag Hammadi. His mother burned
many of the documents for kindling. What survived were 52 sacred texts, some
as old as the four Gospels.
Ms. PAGELS: I realized that conventional views of Christian faith that I'd
heard when I was growing up were simply made up -- and I realized that many
parts of the story of the early Christian movement had been left out.
WILLIAMS: What came to be known as the Gnostic Gospels (from the Greek word
meaning "to know") is an explosive, some say heretical, look at
Christianity's evolution. And evidence of fierce theological debate before
Christianity was encoded into a set of beliefs.
Ms. PAGELS: What we find when we go back there is that the earliest evidence
is very diverse. That's not the story we were told as Christians, because
the Christian church chose to simplify it and give us a single version of
the story.
WILLIAMS: In order to preserve Christianity, scholars believe church fathers
had to unify a fractious lot of competing voices. They found many Gnostic
ideas intolerable. In particular, the idea that each of us can become
connected to God without priestly intervention was a threat to their
authority. Scholars believe the Gnostic texts were buried at Nag Hammadi at
the close of the fourth century because church fathers had ordered the monks
to burn them.
Ms. PAGELS: The bishop who wanted authority consolidated in himself told
them, "Get rid of all those books. You don't need all those books. All you
need are the ones that I will mention now." And then he mentions a list,
which is our first list of the 27 books of the New Testament. So he told
them.
WILLIAMS: And that was politically necessary at the time?
Ms. PAGELS: At the time, I think it was absolutely essential for the
survival of the movement, because it was so much threatened by persecution
and by complete scattering. So it was at that time necessary, probably, to
consolidate the church and try to make a simple message accessible and
universal.
WILLIAMS: Pagels's research resulted in her surprise best-seller, THE
GNOSTIC GOSPELS. In the wake of that triumph she found her soulmate,
married, and became a mother. Then the bottom dropped out. In 1987, their
child Mark, at the age of six and a half, died. A year after that, her
husband Heinz died in a climbing accident.
Ms. PAGELS: One can think, "Well, I've been doing it pretty well, and things
should turn out well." And when you do that and things turn out
horrendously, our impulse, because of our tradition, is to blame ourselves.
After all, if you read the book of Genesis, it says people who do good
things receive good things, and people who do bad things, you know, have
terrible things happen. It certainly would have shattered any kind of
conventional faith.
WILLIAMS: Elaine Pagels's intellect may have lacked conventional faith, but
she had the heart of a spiritual seeker. And her path was the church.
Ms. PAGELS: One somehow has to go on and find a way to hope again. And I
found in that church, the people gathered there in various ways, some solace
and some help.
WILLIAMS: Pagels transformed pain into scholarship, digging again into the
trove from Nag Hammadi. And this year hit the best-seller list with BEYOND
BELIEF: THE SECRET GOSPEL OF THOMAS. Scholars believe the Apostle Thomas's
Gospel was written at the time of Christ, along with the gospels of Matthew,
Mark, and Luke.
Ms. PAGELS: I was expecting it to be abominable, blasphemous heresy. That's
what I was told. What I now see is that it's not necessarily contrary; it's
complementary. And it can open up new vistas on that tradition. In fact, I
find it very moving and spiritually resonant.
WILLIAMS: Pagels believes John was written to counter Thomas.
Ms. PAGELS: The Gospel of John speaks of Jesus as the "light of the world,"
the "Divine One" who comes into the world to rescue the human race from sin
and darkness, and says, "if you believe in him, you can be saved. You can
have everlasting life. If you don't believe in him, you go to everlasting
death." The Gospel of Thomas, on the other hand, speaks of Jesus as the
"Divine Light" that comes from heaven, but says, "and you, too, have access
to that divine source within yourself" -- even apart from Jesus. That might
suggest you don't need a church, or a priest, or an institution.
WILLIAMS: Do you think that belief in Jesus as God has been overemphasized
in Christianity?
Ms. PAGELS: I think it has. Most people think that if you're talking -- if
you and I are talking about religion, we're talking about, "Do you believe
in God?" "Do you believe in Jesus as the son of God?" It's not all about
what you believe. It's about what values we share. It's about what
commitments we have to the sacredness of life, for example.
WILLIAMS: Some say that you smack of New Age religiosity.
Ms. PAGELS: People have said that this sounds like a New Age kind of
teaching, and that I find kind of humorous. I mean, if 2,000 years is "new,"
then I suppose it is.
WILLIAMS: Pagels's work in bringing these ancient texts to life and
spreading them beyond academia has challenged the historical view of the
western world's dominant religion. And rocked the Christian world.
Ms. PAGELS: There are people who think that this kind of exploration is
faithless, is antithetical, is damaging to God's truth. Of course, I'm not
one of those people.
WILLIAMS: Following the deaths of her husband and son, Elaine Pagels never
imagined participating in life again. Now, 15 years later, she is remarried
and joyful. And perhaps more spiritual than she'd ever known she could be.
Ms. PAGELS: I realize that I cannot live without a spiritual dimension in my
life. I mean, I was brought up to believe that that was some archaic relic
that we could live without. I don't think that is true anymore. The sense of
a spiritual dimension in life is absolutely important and the religious
communities are also important. The question of believing in a set of
creedal statements is a lot less important, because I realize the Christian
movement thrived then and can now on other elements of the tradition.
WILLIAMS: For RELIGION & ETHICS NEWSWEEKLY, I'm Mary Alice Williams.
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/week706/profile.html
~~~~~
Part two: Radical Easter Story
Please Read and comment on this.
Transcribed from an audio recording of this lecture.
****************************************************************************
Lets' strip away the gossip from the gospels. When I began preparing for
this talk, I discovered I was collecting material literally for decades that
related to Easter. I have enough material for a two-day class.
My problem is trying to reduce everything into 60 Minutes. To get all this
into 60 minutes I'd have to be Mike Wallace (laughs) or a speed talker.
So I decided to cover the most important points without any annotation and
without much footnoting. I will identify the most important sources of this
material.
My purpose today is to redefine Easter, to radically reinterpret the
crucifixion, the resurrection and the ascension. In other words we are going
to rewrite history.
It is said that; "only the winners write history and they write it their
way". The true origins of Christianity are not known by hundreds of
millions of Christian followers, Christian believers. There was another
Christianity that existed immediately after the departure of Jesus. As a
matter of fact, there were many, many versions of Christianity at that time.
One in particular was a direct line from Christ called Gnosticism. All the
others were fraudulent. What happened to the true descendants of this line
this christic line? Well, they were persecuted and they were killed by the
more orthodox Christians. Orthodox Christianity systematically destroyed
almost every trace of the ultimate forms of early Christianity. That is
historically documented, it's not opinion.
If the dominant majority had not censored and suppressed the authentic story
of christ and the authentic story of today, Easter, we would be living in a
different world today. A correct interpretation of the life of christ would
have altered the thinking and behavior of the next twenty centuries.
This talk is going to be an expose' of a two thousand year-old fraud, which
has left the human race our race infant-alized and crippled. With the
official Easter story has left all of us narcotized by the physical senses,
de-humanized by inhibiting dogma and imprisoned in a Kafkaesque space-time
warp. The old model of Easter has left humanity divided against itself, male
against female, white against black, for that matter white against every
other color. The old model posits soul against body, spirit against matter,
good against evil, saved against un-saved, and man against God. We are
entombed in deadly dualities.
It is time now to roll back the stultifying stones of dualistic thinking
that has robbed humanity of its identity and its divinity. Its time to
re-sacrilize the resurrection. It is time scientifically correct the
crucifixion stage. And maybe, maybe we can ascend out of two thousand years
of mind controlling propaganda, mind-controlling indoctrination.
There is new model of Easter, there is a new Christology. It is emerging on
the earth today. It is based on the extraordinary discovery of the Gnostic
gospels, which were buried in the upper Egyptian desert for centuries and
centuries. The new model is also based upon the new physics. This new model
of Easter will restore humanity to its original innocence and to its
original unified field of consciousness. And hopefully your Easter will
never be the same again, and the Easter of the world once they become aware
of the new Christology, will never be the same again.
Before we actually begin, I would like to sum up what we are going to cover.
First of all we are going to re-examine the old model. We are going to
refute the old idea of Easter, and we are going to put it to rest forever.
We will reexamine the single savior theory. The theory that one man had died
for our sins. We will explore an idea that the brilliant German philosopher
Nietzche, believed in. He thought that there was the possibility of
individual salvation, without a savior. We will also explore the damage
caused by the traditional Easter story. The true Easter story is not in
crystal Cartesian plays, or in Stations of the Cross, or in giving up your
favorite chocolate moose for lent. There is new hard evidence about the
nature of man. It is coming from ancient sources, ancient manuscripts, which
are now accessible. There is new hard evidence about the nature of man
coming from pure science. Today we are going go full circle from ancient
mysticism to modern science.
There are two things I am not going to do, first of all, this is not going
to be a course on new age philosophy. This is not feel-good metaphysics.
This is not what I call the new narcissism of self-love and self-esteem.
This is not another way to meditate, or visualize or image, or affirm. It is
not even positive thinking.
Most of the new age teachings simply build more ego. There are dozens and
dozens of new age teachers today, getting very wealthy, particularly the
Hollywood guru new age teachers, just telling people how wonderful they are.
It makes people feel real good and it gives them the illusion of spiritual
growth. It is all doomed to failure. The egoic self, the self of social
conditioning, the self, especially of Christian conditioning is the cause of
our problem in the first place. All we seek to do is to get to the story
behind the story of Easter, because it is a message of transcending the ego
and not massaging it. This approach may upset some of you, because we are
going to traverse some really rough terrain, some negative terrain, before
we get to the truth. This is ultimately a celebrative message of Easter. I
promise you I will get there eventually.
The second thing I am not going to do is to search for the historical Jesus.
People have been debating for centuries and centuries weather a man called
Jesus really existed. I really don't care whether Jesus existed or not. It
is irrelevant. It really doesn't matter. If he didn't exist, who ever wrote
his words, was a better writer than Heimingway, and Falkner, better than,
Tolstoy and Dosteyevski put together. When all of you here what Jesus has to
say in the Gnostic gospels, you will say that whoever wrote the words was an
even better writer than Norman Mailer or Gore Vidal. Now that is saying a
lot. Who ever it was must have been a mystic of epic, extraordinary
proportions. A part from all of this, that the life of Christ his apparent
death and his apparent reversal of death, can be viewed as an archetype. It
is a recurring theme, a recurring pattern that can be found in virtually all
cultures throughout history. In other words the symbols of Easter are more
important, are more significant than the actual event. It is the
metaphorically meaning that counts here.
I am sure you are all familiar with the famous mythographer Joseph Campbell.
Joseph Campbell said that; "We get into real trouble when we confuse the
symbols of mythology, with empirical facts." That is why the human race is
in deep trouble today. If we can decipher the symbol system correctly maybe
we will find out the crucifixion was a brilliant piece of theater, a kind of
spiritual stagecraft, a high drama that has universal implications. So you
might say then that we are going to go back-stage at a universal drama and
we are going to try to unravel the mystery of the Greatest Show On Earth.
There is some danger in doing this, in unveiling a prevailing, dominant
model of the universe.
One of the early Christian fathers Irenaeus said in the second century that
all, who rejected his version of Christianity, were false persons, evil
seducers and hypocrites. So that is what he thinks about us, today. He went
on to so that we are all apostates and heretics, even worse than Pagans. So
today, let's make a real attempt, to commit a real act of heresy.
The old model of Easter starts out with the single savior theory. That
reminds me of another assassination, two thousand years later. Are you
familiar with the single bullet theory? Do remember the one magic bullet
that defied the laws of physics, the laws of logic, and of gravity in the
killing of President Kennedy. Well both theories are equally illogical and
ludicrous.
The single savor theory is a particularly infantile belief. God, the father
sent his only begotten son, into the historical order, to save us from the
penalty of our sins. Now all we have to do is just accept that. That Jesus
spilled his blood, for us, and our sins are washed away, for all time. It
doesn't matter what we have done in the past, it's retroactive. Not only
that it is futuristic. It vaccinates us against sinning in the future. One
lone man, one savior, two thousand years ago, dissolves all the sins of all
mankind; past, present, and future. Now, the idea is pretty stuffed up, you
know. It is the ultimate in feel-good religion. It is kind of a designer
religion.
There is nothing to do and you gain the kingdom of heaven. You let somebody
else, some scapegoat, suffer and die for you, so you can sit forever at the
right hand of God. They've got all these billions and billions of people at
the right hand of God so that heaven is now tilting like the leaning tower
of Pisa. (laughs)
That is bad enough. I know there are a few things that you are supposed to
do if you are going to be a good Christian. You are supposed to feel real
pious at least once a week, on Sunday. You're supposed to love your
neighbor, and occasionally forgive your neighbor. We all know how easy that
is. In my neighborhood that would require an act of sainthood. (laughs) You
are not supposed to think impure thoughts. We know at least one president
that failed on that one. Well he had "lust in his heart". Don't forget to be
a good Christian, is to be a good patriot, a super patriot. If your
president says to go to war and kill some more dark skinned people, well we
can't wait to go out and kill for christ and country. All of this gives the
aura, the smell of spirituality. We can feel real superior to all
non-Christians. We can even feel superior to Christians of other
denominations, and have sort of dueling denominations, going on. I'm holier
than you are. The new age picked up on this you know the metaphysicians have
this today. Instead of holier than thou, the newager's have healthier than
thou. They eat sprouts, instead of smoking. They swig fruit juice instead of
Jack Daniels, and they think they are going to live forever. It is just
another side of the same Puritanism. It never occurs to Christians, that
some Christians live exemplary lives, and still experience every problem,
every vicissitude and every illness known to mankind. Being a good Christian
is no exemption from anything. The theologians have a way out. This is the,
veil of tears, they tell us. You get your reward when you die. We're here to
suffer. The more you suffer the holier you are. It is good for me if I hurt,
it is really good if I hurt real bad. It is a morbid approach to life anyway
you look at it. It has its origin in the sinful nature of mankind. We wouldn
't need a savior if we weren't sinners. The basic premise of Christianity is
sinfulness. You can't be a good Christian unless you're a sinner. The
original sin of Adam and Eve is passed down to us. We are told we are
conceived in sin and born in inequity. They accuse us of something, we did
not do. They make us feel guilty for something, we did not do. They even
denigrate the human body and its natural functions as something evil.
For twenty centuries organized Christianity has tried to control the erotic
and sensual nature of humanity. They have tried to police our desires. They
have tried to police our feelings. They have tried to police our love. The
Puritanical repression of life, has been the cause of maladaptive behavior,
sex related crime, perversity and far too much illness, for too long a
period of time.
Is it no wonder today that we have an incurable illness, a plague upon the
Earth, which can convert an act of transcendence, an act of love into an act
of death?
It is time to take back Eros from the priest-craft. Here is the point I am
driving at organized religion gives us our identity, before we are even
born. It is a deeply ingrained message that we are miserable, corrupt,
iniquitous, evil sinners. That's one hell of message to give to a beautiful
newborn baby.
The theory that we are physical and mortal, human beings, with a built in
fallibility, a built in sinful human nature is itself a human invention. It'
s a lie. It's a lie so pervasive that it has dominated western culture for
two thousand years. The Christian lie about human identity becomes so deeply
internalized, so driven into unconscious, into our unconscious; it is no
longer subject to examination. It becomes part of us it becomes our
identity. It is "us" and for the rest of our lives we act out this silly,
stupid script. This sinners script; We sin, we repent, we're forgiven. We
sin, we repent, we're forgiven. We sin, we repent, we're forgiven. Over and
over and over again, ad nausium. What is the result of being fallible
sinners, what is the result of two thousand years of internalizing the
hypnotic command that "you're no good"? What is the result of relying on a
single savior, a God outside of us, to wash away our sins and waiting to die
to get our "just deserts"? Well, the results are simply catastrophic.
The question of identity is lost forever. The question "who am I?" is never
asked again, we remain forever "asleep" to our true potentialities. We never
again search for the secret of life. We are told to; "never question, these
are the mysteries." I know when I was very young, growing up; I would be
reading metaphysical books thanks to my parent's interest in metaphysics and
philosophy. I would go up to the parish priest and I'd ask him; "what about
hypnosis? What about these yogis in India? What about all this stuff?" The
priest would always say; "Look these are the mysteries. Don't, don't ask
questions about this." So I asked even more questions.
This is a theology of closure and it has blocked our ever-ascending path to
intellectual expansion and spiritual enlightenment. It results in mind
numbing prohibitions, censorship and the ritual condemnation of creative
diversity anywhere it finds it. Organized religion imposed upon us a
worldview that is non-negotiable. It is rigid and inflexible, resistant to
change, and it stops all thought. The purveyors of guilt and shame exercise
a very powerful thought control. They terrorize they intimidate people into
living moral lives under the threat of eternal damnation. They alone
sanction what is real. We must look to them to tell us what to think, what
to feel, what to be. They alone give us our purpose for living. Their vision
of reality is the only lawful vision. There is no other lawful state of
consciousness. All other states of mind are unreal, sinful, illegal. This is
why our Christian politicians want to injure anyone who wants to alter
consciousness. Whether it is with drugs or weeds or even esoteric spiritual
practices. The priest-craft must own your consciousness. Christianity is a
corrosive fable that is anti-intellectual, anti-nature, anti-life and
anti-spiritual. It is a denial of life itself. And if all of this isn't
enough repression, something else happened that altered the western world
forever. That was the day they made God a male. That was the day made God a
man. Jesus was a male, so God is a male. Jesus, referred to "the father", so
we have a heavenly father. Of course, the idea of masculine deities
certainly predates Christianity. It goes way, way back. Christianity just
picked up on a mistake. We've all been told that we are made in the image
and likeness of God. So it takes a really simple logic to conclude; "unless
you're male you are not Godlike" and not only that you are not even fully
human. Traditional Christianity has always said that; "the normative human
being is male" and the rest is history. The sick pathological history of
patriarchy, The patriarchy, male dominated society, male dominated church
and state has dehumanized, mistreated and brutalized women for two thousand
years. Women have been treated as chattel for centuries. Their primary
function besides serving men was to pro-create. Pro-creation of course being
the penalty passed down from Eve's flirtation with a serpent. Even as recent
as the twentieth century women were not allowed to vote, or to attend law
school, or to become doctors. Even today women are not allowed to become
priests, bishops, cardinals, popes. There is precious little gender equality
in business, industry and politics. Christian patriarchy has caused a
cleavage, between men and women that is yet to be healed. Who can estimate
the damage caused by the loss of true intimacy between men and women and
between all other human beings? If the ultimate role model is a masculine
God, a wrathful God, who sits in eternal judgment over his creation, who
meets out perpetual retribution.; Is it no wonder then that our fundamental
approach to societal problems been authoritarian, and punitive? Instead of
non-violent, self-corrective and healing.
The patriarchy, the masculine model is based on competition and rivalry,
power and dominance, violence and war. It is an elitist worldview that is
obsolete and it is destroying life on this planet. The consequences of
patriarchy have been devastating and we are seeing it everywhere in society.
Just for openers we have over one million people in prison today. That is
more than any other time, in our history. That is more than any other
industrialized nation in the world. It is so bad; they are talking about
opening up military bases to warehouse more and more criminals. We can't
build prisons fast enough. We don't have the money to pay for them anyway.
The idea of banishment and punishment has never worked, and it will never
work. The high rate of recidivism proves it. The continuing crime rate
proves it. We have no sane rehabilitation. We have no sane psycho-emotional
corrective programs for prisoners. We have no sane restitution programs. We
have no properly trained caretakers of people who need it the most. Instead
in keeping with the Christian ethic we banish and brutalize our prisoners.
It is unconscionable that our antiquated and viscous prison system can
continue to exist as it has all these years.
Each year thousands of laws are being passed that we are unaware of, that
are slowly eroding our rights as free citizens, in a free society. More and
more activities are being criminalized. More and more "Sting" operations are
testing our morality. More mandatory sentences, harsher sentences for
activities which are not crimes in a sane rational society. We are a society
under relentless surveillance and the invasion of privacy today is almost
total. We have become so disinformed by the propaganda of fear. Fear of
drugs, fear of addicts, fear of terrorists, fear of dark skinned people,
that we don't even care that our basic civil liberties are being
systematically stolen away.
Our politicians, I call them our, "God Bless You, politicians" well they end
all of their speeches with "God bless you," it gets them elected. And they
get reelected, by telling us, that they will kill for us. So today we have
the reemergence of the death penalty. We are propagandized into believing
that if you just kill a few more people, we will all be a lot safer.
Logic, sanity, and statistics prove that capital punishment has never worked
and never will. It has the exact opposite effect, because it legitimizes
killing.When will we learn that legalized killing is killing? Anyone who
advocates it is an accomplice to murder. We are told today that we have an
epidemic drug problem. What do our leaders our Christian leaders say about
that? "Lock them up". "Murder the pushers". We are told today that most
crime is drug-related crime, I submit, that it is not drug-related crime, it
is prohibition-related crime. Prohibition always increases fascination and
usage. Society never asks the question "What's the cause of addiction?" If
you don't find the cause you'll never find the cure. Drug addiction is an
existential problem, a spiritual problem. It is not an irresponsible flight
from reality, it's a flight from unreality. The unreality of religions, of
educational, and political systems, that don't work anymore. They offer no
answers no substance, no nutrition in the modern age. Calling upon the
police to solve a psycho-spiritual problem is insane beyond belief.
We have recently learned that some of our police departments are as criminal
as our worst criminals. It has been like that for a long, long time.
Something is radically wrong when those that are sworn to protect us become
judge, jury, and executioner out on our streets. The truth is our certified
protectors are not equipped psychologically and spiritually to protect us
properly. Of all the people in this world who should be guided by morality
and ethics, by law and order, and by goodness, the police should. This goes,
beyond just the police, our entire criminal justice system has failed us.
From the cop on the beat, to a trial by a jury of our peers, it has failed.
Trial by jury you know means people who are untrained in thinking, untrained
in logic, untrained in ethics, untrained in morality, judging life and
death. Our intelligence services have demonstrated such covert malevolence;
they should have been disbanded decades ago. Our Supreme court masquerades
as the highest sense of justice in the world. It is composed of men and
women who influence and change our country according to their own private
ideological and religious prejudices. The point of all this is; is that we
must rid society of a punitive model of justice, because that's a travesty
of true justice. The punitive model is based upon retaliation, and revenge.
It goes way back thousands of years to King Hemarobbies code; "An eye, for
an eye and a tooth for a tooth." Religion borrowed the code, and it makes
for very bad religion. It is only is a failed society that you could
experience such an extraordinary rise in cases of rape, and child abuse,
homophobic violence, teenage suicide, gang murder, inner cities imploding
upon themselves. A country with a ravaged infrastructure and no money to
rebuild it, and millions of people going to bed hungry, that is if they have
a bed. It is Christian patriarchy, that allows millions of men, women, and
children to starve and to freeze on our city streets in every city in
America. How dehumanized, how sick is this society that it will not help
elderly women elderly men and children in the time of their greatest need.
Oscar Wilde once said "It is not the perfect, but the imperfect that have
the need of love." In other words it is easy to love the beautiful people.
It takes another kind of love, beyond ordinary Christian love to reach what
Oscar Wilde is talking about a healing love. By the way, that advice from
Oscar Wilde came from a man was the recipient himself of the worst kind of
Christian homophobic violence. Which eventually killed him. He was a great
creative genius. Bob Dylan wrote In one of his songs "How many times can a
man turn his head and pretend that he just doesn't see". How does
Christianity play itself out in the lives of our greatest political leaders,
on both sides of the ocean? Well, some of you will be shocked to find out.
Some of you will not believe it. This is just a very small brief sampling of
the world our Christian political leaders have given us. They participated
in a cold war we now know that most of it was fabricated. They risk our live
and the entire planet with nuclear weapons. They built up a military
industrial complex that left two nations; at least two nations bankrupt.
These same politicians sit on the boards of directors of multinational
corporations that reaped unbelievable profits from militarized culture.
These same men plundered the environment, destroyed the atmosphere, ruined
the oceans and the Earth and deprived the world forever millions species of
plants and animals. We now have nuclear waste, as you all know that will
remain radioactive for hundreds of thousands of years and there is nothing
that we can do with it. These same Christian politicians were responsible
for Watergate, the Pentagon scandal, the HUD scandal, The Iran-Contra
scandal, which killed at least thirty thousand innocent people in Nicaragua,
the savings and loan scandal. And let's not forget the infamous Vatican Bank
Scandal the very citadel of Christianity which, also involved assassination.
These same men experimented on unwitting citizens with chemical and
biological research in our own country and some of those people died.
Intelligence agencies illegally infiltrated our school, organizations and
media. And these same men have been de-stabilizing other governments for
decades. They have been influencing elections in other countries for
decades. They have been overthrowing democratic governments and other
governments for years. And replacing them with puppet regimes. They been
supporting petty vile and vicious dictators for years. You should all be
familiar with a recent example of this, in the Persian- Gulf War, we tried
to kill one dictator, while protecting another dictator and re-building the
guilded gold palaces of yet another dictator.
The Gulf War was a triumph all right, it was a triumph for the selective
morality of Christian men.
Christian politicians have been assassinating leaders of democratic
governments and other governments for years. They even hired the kosonowstra
to do the dirty work. I have only scratched the surface with all of this.
You could go on and on all day.
This I submit has been the un-holy harvest of the Christian mentality. All
of this has been documented and can be documented. A great deal of it was
validated and documented in a series of PBS specials hosted by Bill Moyers.
Experts tell us that since the end of World War II over fourteen (14)
million people been murdered by good upright outstanding Christian leaders
all voted into office by millions good Christian followers.
Two thousand years ago they assassinated an innocent man in the middle east.
Two thousand years later the most advanced Christian culture in the world
assassinated not one man but hundreds of thousands of innocent human beings
again in the middle east in Iraq. The most advanced technology this Earth
has evolved was used to dismember to burn, to cut, to maim, to blow apart,
and to kill, innocent, guiltless, defenseless human beings, babies, children
women, men, grandmothers, grandfathers, entire families. Some were buried
alive, some were shot in the back while retreating un-armed. Some were
killed as they were surrendering.
Our Christian leaders have rehabilitated war. War works, it gets votes. If
you can demonize someone long enough, it will seem like an act of mental
health to put them out of their misery.
To advocate diplomacy, non-violent negotiation, tolerance and peace was to
be labeled a traitor by most Americans. Even the United Nations the ultimate
in peaceful conflict resolution gave an ultimatum, a deadline for death.
To applaud, cheer and celebrate the wanton massacre of human flesh and blood
is profoundly pathological. The body of mankind is sick, the heart of
mankind is sick. To unleash in Iraq, to unleash that amount of pain and
suffering upon senescent life is unbelievably savage, and sadistic it is
caused by men and women who suffer the delusion that they are virtuous.
Genocide is the sickest and most immoral act in the history of the world.
How de-personalized have we become? How de-sensitized have we become that we
can allow this to happen over and over again? Again to paraphrased Bob Dylan
"How many deaths will it take to know that too many people have died." The
Christian God that endorses war is a mol-ithic fantasy.
Voltaire got it right when he said, "As long a people believe in absurdities
they will continue to commit atrocities." War is not inevitable, there is no
instinct to make war. War is unacceptable and it can be abolished forever.
Anyone, who does not love his neighbor, is in urgent need of ontological
intervention. Ontology is the science of being-ness, the science of
identity.
Anyone, who does not love all races, is in urgent need of radical
remediation. And almost the entire world qualifies. Organized religion has
lead to the spiritual decay of the human race. The possibility of the sacred
has been lost, to too many people, for too long a time. Religion is damaging
human beings. Betrand Russell the British philosopher said that; "Religion
is a disease born of fear and a source of untold misery" he went on to say;
"I regard it as to belonging to the infancy of human reason, and to a stage
of development which we are outgrowing". I am afraid we are not outgrowing
it fast enough.
Dakunan a Russian writer said, "Religion is collective insanity". Is it no
wonder Emerson wrote; "Men are better than their theology"?
Nietzche who loathed Christianity not only said that; "This virulent
Christian God was dead" he also said; "There was only one Christian and he
died on a cross"
Now if some of you are thinking "This is all pretty negative stuff,
especially on a religious holiday" you're right, it is. I did warn you
though, this is not feel good metaphysics. You can get that everywhere. This
is about transformation and healing. A radical transformation, a radical
healing. The Russian playwright Anton Chekov said "Man will only become
better when you make him see what he is like". Self-observation,
self-reflection and self-examination are basic principles of healing in
psychotherapy and in authentic spiritual therapy and in a health democracy.
It is my thesis that all of this trauma and travail, that all this suffering
and sorrow was unnecessary.
If Christianity had followed the path originally walked by Jesus, the world
would be radically different today. We are very fortunate today because
something happened in the Egyptian desert in 1945, that alters forever the
way we perceive Christianity. An Arab peasant who was out seeking to revenge
the murder of his father, which he eventually did do, made an incredible
discovery he accidentally dug up a red earthenware jar, that contained 13
papyrus books they are called codices they are all bound in leather. He
immediately took them home, unfortunately his mother immediately burned a
bunch of them, but she had to keep the house warm. Fortunately though 52
manuscripts survived and this discovery is now known as the Nag Hammadi
manuscripts after the town where they were found. They are also called The
Gnostic Gospels, because the earliest Christian who were responsible for
these writings were called Gnostics which mean those who know. I believe
this is the greatest archeological discovery in the history of all the
world. When the biblical scholars eventually got to examine some of the
manuscripts, they discovered they were secret Gospels in that they were
Coptic translations of the original Greek that went back two thousand years.
In fact some of the manuscripts were older than the New Testament, older
than Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.
One of the sources I am going to be using comes from a book called "The
Gnostic Gospels" by Professor Elaine Pagels. She is a Ph.D. from Harvard and
she too was recently interviewed by Bill Moyers on PBS. If you want more
information on Gnosticism, her book is a great book to have. The Gnostic
Gospels offer up an entirely new perspective on this man called Jesus.
Who was the man that they called the Galleon, the Nazarene, the Christ.
Who was this man who was a carpenter, a rabbi, a rabble-rouser, a rebel, a
paradigm breaker, a fulfiller of the law? This man who was a teacher, a
mystic, a healer, a resuscitator of the dead, this man they called an
Avatar. Who was this man who freely associated with every manor of person. A
man born of a virgin, well because sex is evil. A man who never married, A
man who never wrote one word, I mean he didn't even leave us a tape
recording. Who was this man who became the model for so many road-side neon
crucifixes? So many bumper stickers that read "Jesus saves" or "Jesus loves
you" This man whose name we so often use as a curse. And in whose name
millions have been murdered. And whose name brings such peace and beauty to
large numbers of people who dedicate their entire lives to him.
Above and beyond all of this; who was this man, who they called the savior?
Let's examine the single savior theory first. The earliest generation of
Christians did not consider Jesus as the savior. As a matter of historical
fact we now know in the original language of Jesus, Aramaic there was no
word for salvation. Salvation was understood simply as a bestowal of life.
To be saved originally meant to be made alive. In other words salvation was
not a movement away from sin. It had nothing to do with sin and repentance.
In the ancient Aramaic traditions, the esoteric transformation occurred when
he emerged from his initiation in the Jordan River. You know, we read where
the heavens opened up and a spirit like a dove descended upon him. It was at
that point that Jesus was given a special designation, he was now known as
the unified one. And his disciples or initiates became known as those who
are one. This is extremely significant, because Aramaic Christianity did not
identify with a martyred Christ. The biblical scholars called this earliest
religion Spirit Christology. It's based on the premise that only through the
indwelling of the spirit that one can receive a bestowal of life. Which is
the real meaning of salvation. And it was only in this way an enlarged life
was possible and this life was a unified life. Now this is where all the
trouble began, because not everyone could understand this kind of mysticism.
The Aramaic word for unified one became translated as monk, became
mistranslated as hermit or solitary. So the way of the monk then,
monasticism became the single most important path of Christianity. In fact
until this very day, we are told the priest-craft is always closer to God
than we seculars. The Gnostic call to be one was misinterpreted to be
solitary or alone. It was no longer an invitation to become unified or at
one. And as a result of this misinterpretation we've had a long and very sad
Christian history, a history of self-sacrifice, giving up the things of the
world, self-mortification giving up the pleasures of the flesh usually
sexual. We've had accatism, denials of all sorts. Confession, repentance,
doing penance, forgiveness, fasting, fighting of the temptations of the
devil, commandments, dogmas, and of course rituals without end. It was this
early monastic tradition that established a literal interpretation of the
bible. The Gnostics said there was a symbolic message an esoteric meaning
hidden in the stories of the bible. And that these stories were allegories
representing a higher truth. The early church fathers reduced them to one
single meaning, which then became the only true meaning of the scriptures.
So by the year 200 we have the origin of infallibility. That the early
Christian fathers spoke God's word and that was it. It was infallible, that
all there was to it. It was a closed case. The Gnostics disagreed with this
vehemently. They thought that you could not interpret the scriptures
accurately using your ordinary frame of mind. There had to be they said an
opening of a larger mind.
A number of years ago Norman O. Brown wrote a very strange book called Love'
s Body. And he sounds just like a Gnostic when he says, "literalism kills
everything including the human body. Symbolic consciousness is to remember
the unity." Symbolism reconstitutes the lost hidden unity. The unity is the
invisible reality. And Professor Elaine Pagels tells us that this is exactly
what the Gnostics wrote in the Nag Hammadi manuscripts, in the secret
Gnostic Gospels. Professor Pagels says that the author of the newly
discovered Gospel of Philip said that "symbolic language is a language of
internal transformation." It points to something beyond the literal. It has
the power to alter consciousness and human behavior.
Now, was Jesus the savior of mankind? Well not according to the Gnostics. In
the famous Gnostic manuscript the Gospel of Thomas, which is very popular
today. You see it quoted in a lot of books. And in this Gospel, Jesus said
something really strange, to Thomas. Jesus said, "I am not your Master.
Because you have drunk, you have drunk from the bubbling stream, which I
have measured out. He who will drink from my mouth will become as I am. I
myself shall become he and the things that are hidden will be revealed to
him." Jesus is telling Thomas and the world that, they both receive their
substance, their being, their existence, from the same source. Which is this
invisible unifying reality.
Over and over again Jesus said "Don't look up to me as the messiah."
In another Gnostic manuscript Matthew asks Jesus to show him the place of
life, which is the pure light. And Jesus answers "Everyone of you who has
known himself, has seen it." This is the very essence of the teaching
methodology of Jesus. Stop looking outside of ourselves for the answer. The
answer is always right where we are. And no one else can give it to us.
Jesus functioned very much like a Zen roshea, a Zen master. Instead of
answering a question Jesus would deflect the question. He would answer the
question with a question, you know like Socrates. He would always throw his
disciples back upon themselves. His words were like Zen koans, forcing the
disciples to breakthrough intellect. In order to get to genuine intuitive
answers. Jesus was a Fourth Way teacher. His job was to shake students up.
His job was to shock people out of their mechanicalness, out of the sleep of
automation.
And, this the exactly the same thing in this Century that the great, two
great Zen uh two great Fourth Way teachers, which is like Zen. Guirgeff and
Thane of Hawaii, that was their teaching methodology. Again and again Jesus
pointed his students toward their own self-discovery. When the disciples
asked: "Who is the one who seeks and who is the one who reveals?" Jesus
answered "The one who seeks the truth is the one who reveals it."
Jesus never made himself out to be the savior. Jesus never said he was on a
mission to save us from sinning. The word sin itself comes from Greek
archery, it means to "miss the mark". Not an indelible mark, that is with us
for all eternity. Sin is just a mistake. A special kind of ignorance, it was
not a foul kind of baseness that contaminates and stains our soul for all
time.
The Gnostics taught that sin was living in ignorance, a dream like state of
mind. An illusion, a nightmare, from which we all must one day awaken.
False belief is the sin and the sinner. This was the true message of Jesus.
In another Gnostic manuscript called the Gospel of Truth, there is a famous
parable which scholars now call the "nightmare parable." It is actually
very incredible. Here is what it says. "This is the way everyone has acted,
as though asleep at the time when he was ignorant, and this is the way he
has come to knowledge, as if he had awakened. As with someone's ignorance
when he comes to have knowledge, his ignorance vanishes by itself. As the
darkness vanishes when light appears, so also the deficiency vanishes in the
fulfillment" To the Gnostics sin is only a deficiency, a sleep. They thought
it was a dangerous deficiency. They thought that self-ignorance is a form of
self-destruction, a kind of death sleep. They thought that anyone who does
not understand the elements of the universe, and themselves, anyone who does
not do this is bound for annihilation. This was also echoed in the secret
Gospel of Thomas when Jesus said: "If you bring forth what is in you. What
you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is in you,
what you do not bring forth will destroy you." And this is what we are
experiencing today all the old patriarchal institutions are falling apart at
the seams. And that's because the are unable to recognize the intrinsic
truth of androgynous being.
The Gnostic approach to enlightenment not only shocked the orthodox
Christians, it would shock most of today's New Age Metaphysicians. The
search for truth has nothing to do with exercises or special foods. It has
nothing to do with meditation, or visualization, or chanting, or channeling,
self-love, or self-esteem, or even reincarnation. It has nothing to do with
following some special swami or shaman, or charismatic guru. Instead the
earliest Christians were always directed, by Jesus, to themselves. According
to Professor Pagels the students were always directed to their own capacity
to find their own direction to the Inner Light. And this is clearly stated
in yet another Gnostic Gospel the Testimony of Truth. It states that "The
Gnostic becomes a disciple of his own mind. And he then discovers that his
mind is the father of the truth"
This brings us to the real meaning of the word gnosis. Gnosis is a Greek
word, which means: knowledge. It is not intellection, it is not rational
knowledge, but an interior knowing, an interior knowledge, or insight, an
intuition. To the Gnostic God is not an anthropomorphic man on a throne, up
in heaven somewhere. To the Gnostic, gnosis this new self-knowledge, is
knowledge of God. In other words the self and the divine are identical. This
new sense of God is not a masculine God, the Gnostics speak of the feminine
element in the divine. They celebrate God as mother and father. In exactly
the same way Mary Baker Eddy did and Thane of Hawaii did. The Gnostic Jesus
himself put an end to the artificial division of the sexes. In the secret
gospel of Thomas, Jesus says something that is really, cryptic; "When you
make the male and the female one and the same, then you will enter the
kingdom." "When you make the male and the female one and the same, then you
will enter the kingdom." This is the highest understanding of sexuality, and
it's all about androgyny.
This brings us to the crucifixion of Christ. Traditional Christianity was
wrong about sin, they were wrong about salvation. And the man they thought
was crucified was not. The Nag Hammadi manuscripts give a radically
different view of the martyrdom of Christ.
In the secret gospel called the "Apocalypse of Peter", we find Peter saying
something really strange. Peter says, "I saw him apparently being seized by
them, and I said "What am I seeing Oh Lord? Is it really you, whom they
take? And are you holding on to me? And are they hammering the feet and
hands of another? Who is this one above the cross, who is glad and
laughing? " The savior said to me "He who you saw who is glad and laughing
above the cross is the living Jesus. But, he into who they are driving the
nails, is his fleshly part, which is the substitute. They put the shame that
which remained in his likeness. And look at him and look at me." And that is
the end of that quote.
In another strange manuscript the Second Treatise Of The Great Seth. Jesus
said, "It was another who drank the gall and vinegar. It was not I. They
struck me with a reed. It was another Simon, who bore the cross on his
shoulder. It was another upon whom they placed the crown of thorns. But I
was rejoicing in the height over of their error. And I was laughing at their
ignorance."
In one of the most famous Gnostic manuscripts, The Acts of John, Jesus
appears to John in a cave, in Getsemady. And here is what he says I have
suffered none, of the things they will say of me. Even the suffering which I
show to you and the rest in my dance, I will that it be called a mystery."
So what is going on here? Professor Pagels tries to explain the mystic O.G.
of the crucifixion, by telling us that the Gnostics did not believe that
Jesus was a human being at all. Instead he was a spiritual being, that
adapted himself to human perception. And as strange as it seems this is
exactly what our school teaches. Jesus did not die physically on the cross.
The corporeal Jesus that apparently died on the cross never did exist. Jesus
died to the belief, to the dream that existence can be material. The belief
that life or mind could ever be imprisoned in a finite form is a lie. It's
an illusion. The reality of Jesus never entered matter and therefore was
never raised from matter. The word crucifixion means to cross out the egoic
self. The little local self that exists, in time and space, the self the
identity that seems to be encapsulated in dimensional form. Crucifixion also
means sacrifice. The archetype of sacrifice goes back thousands of years
before Christ. The crucifixion means to sacrifice the fiction we have
become. Sacrifice or cross out this programming that I am Doctor, Lawyer,
Plumber, President, that I am male or female, I am brother, father, sister,
mother. We have to sacrifice the propaganda that I am rich or poor, stupid
or bright. We have to sacrifice all the roles we play the scripts we act
out. For what lies beneath the role, beneath the flood of words. Beneath the
drama of humanness, And We have to sacrifice the insane belief that we are
physical mortal creatures with a mind inside a cranium. And simultaneous
with this sacrifice, this crossing out will be the release, the seeming, the
apparent resurrection, of the non-local self that exists outside of space
and time. The identity in back of the identity.
The resurrection is given a very different "spin" in the Nag Hammadi
manuscripts in particular the one called "Treatise on Resurrection." Here is
what it says. "Ordinary existence is spiritual death. But the resurrection
is the moment of enlightenment. It is a revealing of what truly exists, and
a migration into newness."
Another Nag Hammadi manuscript ridicules the ignorant Christians who
interpret the resurrection literally. The Gospel of Philip says "those who
say they will die first and then rise are in error. Instead they must
receive resurrection while they live."
Norman O. Brown also writes about the resurrection and he gets it right. He
said "In the resurrection of Jesus is a Melkesedek, with out father without
mother or descent. This Melkesedek king of Salem, which is king of peace,
having neither beginning of days or end of life, but made unto the son of
God. Without genealogy, no more generations. The world of generation and
death transcended." Brown goes on to say "We are dead and our life is hid."
The true nature of life is resurrection. All life is life after death, a
second life.
Engarta the great German playwright wrote "As long as you do not know how to
die and come to life again you are but a sorry traveler on this dark Earth."
This is a radical Easter Story. It is a subversive Easter Story. It will
eventually undermine the Christian caricature. And it is fully validated by
the new physics. As you all know a long time ago we learned about the
indestructibility of the atom. It can transform itself an infinite number of
times. It can never die. From Einstein and the other physicists we learn
that all matter is energy. And that this energy can neither be created or
destroyed. And of course that puts an end to all the born-again Christians
and their creationist's theory. Energy can never be created and can never be
destroyed.
The physicists have destroyed the illusion of matter as solid, as opaque.
The material world and the physical body are Miya, the old eastern concept,
the illusion. The old materialist world-view is now obsolete. The concept of
materiality no longer has meaning. According to Einstein's theory of
relativity even space and time are no longer the same.
They are no longer separate and independent. One can't exist without the
other. They are continuos as space-time, period. Not space and time, just
space-time, a continuum, and they are both relative to the observer
observing them. The observer always participates in the observation.
This means that space and time necessarily are only mental constructs,
period. Space and Time are mental constructs. And this is exactly what Jesus
and the Gnostics said two thousand years ago.
In Quantum Mechanics we discovered that sub-atomic particles have no
objective or independent existence of their own. In other words everything
is related to everything else, and that answers, forever, the question "Am I
my brothers keeper".
There is no separateness, there is no estrangement, there is no
disassociation from the cosmos. The universe is an eternal continuum.
The great German physicist Erwin Schrodenger said, and this is a remarkable
quote; "inconceivable as it seems to ordinary reason, you and all other
conscious beings as such are all and all. Hence, this life of yours, which
you are living, is not merely a piece of the entire existence, but in a
certain sense, the whole."
Philosophy is no longer a matter of speculation or feeble Idealism.
Metaphysics is no longer a subject of mockery and ridicule. Pure science
proves Gnosticism. Pure science demonstrates that the flow of life is
continuous, it transcends sharp dividing lines, it transcends opposites and
dualities. Pure science redefines the world as non-dual, unified, and one.
And that takes us right back to the original Christians, the ones who got it
right, the Gnostics and Jesus, who said our evolutionary goal was to become
unified.
The Jesuit paleontologist Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955) caught a glimpse
of this message when he wrote; "Mysticism is the science of sciences, it is
the great science and it is the great art. The only power capable of
synthesizing the riches accumulated by other forms of human activity "
And last week I had an opportunity to have a conversation with Martin Sheen
the movie actor and the human rights activist. And we had a short yet very
fine conversation, about theology, which is his favorite subject, and
Easter, which is one of my favorite subjects. He reminded me, Martin did,
that it was on this day Easter Sunday, that Father Chardin passed away in
New York City, in 1955. I think it is very fitting. Also after being ignored
by his church, for decades. I think Father Chardin would be delighted to
know that his books today are best selling books and held in very high
regard by all of us.
The true story of Easter is a continuing message to each of us. It is not a
message of sacrifice and death. It is not a message of fallen redemption.
Redemption cannot be vicarious. Evolution requires work on ourselves, a
great deal of work. And that's why in the arcane traditions it's been called
the razor edged path. It is not easy, but it is a sacred work, and it is a
healing work.
Theologians for two thousand years have missed the true significance of
Easter. And their mistake has yielded a dysfunctional world. So it is time
to reclaim our authentic historical heritage. Which points us to our cosmic
heritage, our cosmic lineage. It is time to regain knowledge of a spiritual
path that was suppressed, forgotten and lost.
The crucifixion and the resurrection signified the liberation of an
indestructible identity, a self that has never known death, which is beyond
all human invention, all human categories. That the ascension is simply a
movement out of false belief it is an awakening, out of the cultural trance
to the truth of being. We ascend out of the collective mesmerism. Which has
mesmerized and entranced us and imprisoned us.
Easter is the revelation of a sinless self. Easter is the revelation of a
guiltless self. This new understanding offers the world a new communion, and
a new Eucharist. Communion is universalized, no longer supplicants begging
for forgiveness, begging for blessings, from an anthropomorphic God that
never did exist. We are cosmic communicants, participating in an infinitely
unending, universe, as our natural state of being.
The Last Supper will no longer be trivialized by literalist's distortions.
The Eucharist and transubstantiation have a radical new and improved
meaning. We here a great deal today about substance abuse, relating to
drugs. I know of no greater substance abuse than the conversion of the Last
Supper into a mock cannibalistic ritual. When the Gnostic meaning of Easter
is finally apprehended, the substance of flesh and blood is transformed back
into what it was in the beginning "substancia," that is a Latin word mean
"that which stands underneath."
It is the reality beneath the mask, beneath the persona. Substancia is our
true identity and it is the true Eucharist.
The real Savior is Christic thinking a new way of knowing, a gnosis. It is
the transformative consciousness the Gnostics spoke of. It is a mutation in
consciousness and it will alter the world forever. The new Easter paradigm
will be civilizing. It will be a civilizing force in the hearts and minds of
men and women across the Earth. We will no longer be dominated by a kill or
be killed mindset.
A demilitarized world begins which a demilitarized mentality. The planet
will become safe again for living, safe again for our evolutionary journey
toward wholeness. Christianity is redefined. The Gospel of Philip tells us
that "Whoever achieves gnosis becomes no longer a Christian, but a Christ."
The long, long descent into matter is over, the materialist dream is
finished. The journey from Bethlehem to Calvary, is ever human's journey
from sense to soul. Most importantly the original Christology is a new way
of loving. Jesus of Nazareth called it Agape. Thane of Hawaii called it
Aloha. They both have the same meaning, unconditional love.
We do not have to remain a race of wounded human beings. There is no problem
so intractable that it cannot be solved. There is no illness so terminal
that it cannot be healed. Christic love will release a new kind of human
being, that is absolutely incapable of harming another.
And it will be a healing force that will transfigure the Earth.
I want thank all of you for your attention and I want to wish all of you a
very happy Gnostic Easter.
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