The Mystery of Golgotha




“Fools believe themselves great when they overcome others; but the wise man makes himself small so that he might overcome himself.”

 

 

 

At the time of Kung fu tse there lived in the Middle Empire a wonderful wise man called Lao tse.

 

Kung fu tse, the great teacher of the laws of the happy life, heard of him and set off to visit him. Having returned from this visit, Kung fu tse went around for three days without saying a word, so that his pupils were astounded.

 

But Tseu Kong took courage and asked the teacher why he maintained his silence.

 

Upon which Kung fu tse answered and said:

 

“When I notice that a man uses his thoughts to escape me like a bird in flight, then I use my thoughts like an arrow which speeds from the bow.

Unerringly I strike such a man and become his master. –

 

If he wishes to escape me like a swift stag, I will pursue him like a skilful hound, catch him up and bring him to ground.–

 

If he wishes to escape me like a fish sinking down into the depths, I will cast my rod, catch him and bring him into my power. –

 

Yet a dragon which soars into the clouds and hovers in the air, – him I cannot pursue!

 

I have seen Lao tse and he is like the dragon!

 

When he spoke my mouth dropped open and I could not close it again. –

 

My tongue hung out of my mouth in astonishment and I could not retract it. –

But my soul was aroused and still has not found calm!” 

 

 

These few words, preserved in the Chinese scriptures, speak clearly of the enormous influence which the spiritual wisdom of Lao tse had on Kung fu tse, who truly was, in his way, a wise man. Yet he had but mastered the realm of the intellect, whereas the other teacher found his spiritual homeland far beyond all intellectual knowledge. –

 

It is reported that when Lao tse was advanced in years, approaching the end of his life, he left his country, – to travel westwards, – to the place where he had once received his teaching…

 

In the “Tao te king”, ascribed to him, one can search for the essential core of his teaching.

 

 

With certain justification it has been pointed out how close his teaching is to the Pythagoreans and the philosophy of Plato. It was even thought probable that Lao tse drew from the wisdom of ancient Egyptian mysteries and thereby were made the strangest connections.

 

There is a kernel of truth in all these suppositions, as almost always in such cases. For Lao tse, admired by the great wise man of the world of his time, was one of the few active masters of that spiritual community called symbolically the “White Lodge”, to which all old mystery-cults, to which also Pythagoras and Plato, owe their best.–

 

 

While this spiritual community as such worked fully concealed for thousands of years in a spiritual way, there were, at times, though extremely rarely, some of its members “living in the world” who were ready and willing to impart the most exalted spiritual teaching through the spoken and written word. One of these rare examples was Lao tse.

 

Not for nothing does he emphasise that the wise man must adapt his teaching to the age and circumstances. He was well aware that his message can only be understood among a given people and at a given time in a version which might hope to be accepted at least by those of a spiritual disposition.

 

Each one of those very few who sought, as members of the “White Lodge” living in the world, to teach with words had to adapt to time and circumstances. Also that “great Man of love”, who called this teaching “glad tidings”, was no less aware of his mission than of his duty to consider time and circumstances. And a sure hold is at the same time always: – resistance…

 

One will only understand, in its full greatness, the life, deeds and teaching of the most Sublime in his love amongst those who name themselves the “Luminaries of the First Light” and the “Words of the Word”, if one has comprehended that he too had to use time and circumstances wisely, and that he – perhaps more than others before and after him – sought to find a hold where there was  resistance. –

 

 

Far be it from me to disturb here the pious belief according to which the Master of the Gospels became the only “Son of God”! –

 

Whoever believes this and hopes to find salvation thereby may be certain that his hope will not deceive him, if he allows the teaching of the Master to live within him. The blessing which can be his is never bound to his opinion regarding those things which once caused his Master to appear.

 

If he feels strong in his belief, let him just read what is offered here and reject all those things which the roots of his belief cannot bear!

 

The stronger his belief truly is, so much more surely will he draw new strength from these disclosures, for: “To him who has, shall be given, so that he has in abundance”. If he feels weak and vacillating, and if his belief is only that weak consolation which doubting teachers of this faith, condemned to the duty of teaching, have to give, then let him rather not read on. For it is written: “to him who has not, shall be taken away that which he thought he had.” –

 

Those who would rather see the life-bringing message of Rabbi Joshua of Nazareth, glowing in holy love, as a pious myth, or who entertain doubts as to whether this man, one with God, ever lived, will find here some of what those know about him whose “brother” and representative he was, – the one of whom it was said that he taught “differently” than the teachers of his time, – that he spoke “as one who has power” – because, being what he was, he could not speak otherwise without being untrue to himself. – –

 

Much as the reports of his life and teaching had to take on mystical additions, there still remains more reality to consider than rationalist criticism, which suspects nothing of a deeper context, can allow for purely from the outside. –

 

 

The life and teaching of this man, who for almost two thousand years has been “God” for the peoples of the West, will never be fathomed just through philological investigation of the sources, whereas the edifice which rose on the foundations of this life and teaching as “Christendom”, is, despite many abstruse forms, far from lacking in interpretable symbols of highest knowledge, as is credulously accepted by many of its despisers. –

 

Surely, the cleansing that the honest, vigorous Augustinian monk of Wittenberg, sought to accomplish in his way with holy simplicity, must not be seen as successful for ever; we must not grant him, in blind admiration for his naïve peasant belief in God and the devil, that spiritual insight needed to carry out a genuine “reformation” with the most careful protection of the profoundest symbols which were inaccessible to him. –

 

The deed he believed he had accomplished remains to be done, and differently than he was capable with all the strength of his mighty will…

 

But he had to prepare the ground upon which he, who can complete this deed with profoundest knowledge, will find a secure position.

 

Only then will the original deep mysteries of Christianity, raised from rubble-strewn shafts, illuminate all mankind, and their light will finally lighten that darkness which makes the way impassable for so many, the way that the Master of Nazareth once prepared in himself for all those who wanted to follow him.

 

Only then will be understood why this wise Man of love was justified in saying to his disciples:

 

“Without me ye can do nothing!”

 

Why he called himself the “vine” and his disciples the “branches”, –– why he demanded that everyone who wanted to have “life” within himself, has to partake of what had become, “flesh and blood” in the Master himself. –

 

 

Truly here is primeval wisdom; but it can only be found if one knows who this “Son of Man” was and where he came from. Whoever comprehends this in its entirety may finally see with amazement that the “dogma” is in no way uprooted by the truth!

 

Those who have thought for centuries that they had to protect it, have no idea that its roots reach much deeper than their faith can go, and that under the windborne sand of theological speculation they sift again and again is to be found rich eternal soil. They fail to discover this because they tirelessly play their pointless game of drawing magical figures in the sand. They delude themselves that the salvation which the Master once promised to all who wanted to be one with him, would flourish from the magical strength of these signs alone.

 

 

The believing Christian sees in the Master, after whom he names himself, the only “begotten Son of the Father”. But the Master himself, “full of mercy and truth”, professes that in his Father’s house are “many mansions”, that it was not for him to determine who would sit on his right hand and on his left hand in his  Father’s kingdom and that “the Father is greater” than him. –

 

“If I bear witness of myself, then my witness is true, for I know whence I come and whither I go; but ye know not whence I come or whither I go.” –

 

Even until today contemplation and belief will not comprehend him purely in his most unique essence, unless he who contemplates and believes knows “whence” the Master came and “whither” he went, – knows that here stands before him one of the “Luminaries of the First Light”, revered in wonder by his “brethren” until this very hour, as the greatest “Man of Love” among them, departed from their circle and returned to it, in order, in invisible form, not to leave the spiritual aura of the earth before the last human spirit, here living in the beast, has come into the light. –

 

 

Whatever one of these “Luminaries of the First Light” may say of himself, in order to give “witness to himself”, he says as a representative of the eternal, spiritual unity-in-plurality of which he is part. It applies simultaneously to him and to all who, united with him, form the community of the “Luminaries of the First Light”. –

 

Without the existence of this cosmic spiritual unity, spiritual “man”, who through the “fall” got lost in a different dimension through his own impulse, would have fully gone to ruin within the benighted beast of earthly man long ago. This is the eternal and only real “death”, – the dissolution of his spiritual individual feeling, the return into unformed “chaos”, into the existential night of the primeval ground from which he once emerged having become form in this primeval ground, which is eternally propagating, not creating, itself into  form! – – –

 

 

Eternal love, burning like an incomprehensible fiery source of light in the midst of the primeval “Chaos”, –

eternal “First Light”, – utters itself as the “First Word”, hearing itself as it were,  in an unending “echo”, in an unending representation of itself. –

 

Thus “the ‘word’ of the Lord goes to all the lands”, and in each of these “words” it becomes the adoring “answer”, in each it is the burning “sun”, propagating from itself its “planetary system”, – the individualised “godhead” of the individual spirit, to which it gives birth propagating from itself…

 

From this “heart of God”, the fiery centre of light of all being, from the original source in the unformed “Chaos” which no human word comprehends unless it is called: “the love which is from itself”, – – originates the “plan of salvation”, for eternity grounded in love, shaping the unity in plurality of the “Luminaries”, so that it may save what appeared lost, so that it might bring back to blessed certainty of being that which had dissipated itself and thereby lost the feeling for its own form. –

 

 

Compelled to speak in temporal images, I am well aware that many, proud and certain and happy in their conceptual understanding, will pronounce these events within the eternal to be “absurd”. But the real “eternal” is different from the concept created by intellectual thought; no wisdom of reason will ever be able to create a concept to cover reality…

 

Only in deepest feeling can those who “are of good will” grasp a little of what the eternal is in reality and all speculative will to think it up must shatter against this reality. –

 

Of all who live on earth, only someone who has “found his way back” to where he once came from as spiritual form, can give true witness to this “reality”.

 

“No man can come to the Father but through me!” – –

 

 The one who once uttered this word belongs to the few who had experienced the real “from face to face” long before they assumed the corporeal apparel of an earthly animal, in which they can teach in person what the “Father” has them tell.

 

 

Each of the “Luminaries of the First Light”, but only those who belong to them from the power and mission of “the First Light”, may use the same words as those reported of the Master of the Gospels, with the same meaning from the profoundest equality of spiritual being. Yet his brethren all revere him as the one who surpasses in power of love all those who have hitherto walkedupon the earth. –

 

Although every one who has ever belonged to the community lives from love, there has been none who could have offered his whole being transformed in love, as living help to the world, apart from the one they themselves call the “great Man of love”.

 

Only very few have suspected what he gave to mankind. –

 

His deed transcends all human powers of comprehension to the extent that those who were the first to suspect its greatness had to make him into a God in order not to feel crushed by such human greatness! – – –

 

Yet his work of redemption has no need of myths telling of a vengeful tribal god who sends mankind his “son” as  man of mankind, in order to satisfy his own thirst for revenge through its cruelty.

 

What this “great Man of love” offered mankind by way of an inheritance from the realm of the spirit was truly different from that “substitute satisfaction” which an easy need for salvation conceived in order to avoid the feeling of duty to perform any deed itself. –

 

On the cross of Golgotha the world was indeed “released” from a bondage, even if completely different from the way in which those who suspected tried to comprehend it! – –

 

 

When the Master of Nazareth finally suffered on the Roman gallows the death he had continually sought in his most exalted hours, he accomplished something which was incomparably greater than what so many before and after him did who sacrificed their lives on this earth to their conviction. –

 

The one who died on the cross at Golgotha was the only one there who knew in all clarity what was happening. Only he was able, through this “death of love”, to break the bars which had locked the gateway to freedom for spiritual man ever since he had been subjected to the beast of this earth and to the impulses and inclinations of this beast to such a degree that redemption from beastly destiny hardly seemed possible any more. –

 

Only “one with knowledge” could recognise that it was possible for the highest act of love of a man to reawaken a spiritual power within the sphere of human might, – to awaken it in such a way that it could be grasped by all who proved to be threateningly enveloped by the creepers of beastly instincts, – that only one who had merged the beast with his spiritual into a new being could pave the way for those who wanted to follow him. –

 

Truly: – this “one with knowledge” had to be, at the same time, a Man of love to an unheard of extent in order to be able to bring about the intended deed. For many before him possessed the same knowledge and yet were unable to overcome the horror of the deed, although certainly they were not lacking in love. – –

 

 

The path to the spirit was thus opened up by Jesus of Nazareth to all those who want to bring to life in themselves, that what was his life. –

 

The God in the beast had united within himself the beast into that new being which he was accustomed to call the “Son of Man”, the “Son” spiritual man propagates in the beast when he overcomes the beast which enslaved him by revealing to him his power and beauty. –

 

The same occurs in each of the “Luminaries of the First Light”, but none found within himself that over-abundance of love which would have led him to perform the deed by which the Master of Nazareth awoke a power to new life for which attainment the wisest always strove, however without being able to make it of use to others in the same way. –

 

 

It was not death in itself which led to the renewal of this power in the spiritual aura of the earth; nor was it achieved by the tortures which preceded the death of the Master.

 

The power of love alone was able to bring about the miracle! – – –

 

The fact that he who suffered torture and death, could “forgive” humanity, forgive until the last death rattle, that alone was his effective “redemptive deed”. For according to spiritual law, spiritual man, wherever he lives on earth, overcome by the beast and thus entangled in debt, is released from his dependence through love, – in as far as he just takes the hand offered him in help; in as far as he assimilates within himself what had become “flesh and blood” of the Luminary, in order to unite the beast to the spirit within him…

 

Only the one to whom “the Father had given everything” could bring such “forgiveness” encompassing all humanity!

 

Profound truth is concealed under the mantle of myth when the old account has the Master “descend” after his death on the cross to the souls of the righteous from ancient times. For the consequence of his deed is not fixed in time, – it makes itself felt to those departed long ago as well as to those born only after thousands of years. –

 

 

Much of what is to be said here may appear to be tasteless folly to those who only accept what can be touched by those senses they share with the beasts.

 

They can literally not “grasp” that the deed of a single man was capable of changing the spiritual possibilities for everything called human.

 

Truly I do not seek to “convert” those who cannot or will not follow here!

 

I will only give a reminder of what the whole of humanity in this age owes to certain individuals in those areas perceptible to all through the beastly senses! –

 

 

But the extent of the effectiveness of one who has been called from the spiritual side does of course escape the external eye. Only he who was charged with the task of acting within the spirit and from the spirit is able to grasp a little of this. – –

 

Let the one to whom the Master of Nazareth appears from deepest intuition as the great performer of a work which no other one ever carried out for mankind, test and ask himself in a holy, sacred hour whether he is willing to use this work’s fruit through his own actions: – by binding himself to the power which the Master has awoken anew, by tearing himself from the conflict between the godhead and the beastly, – by assimilating of what in his Master had become “flesh and blood”, so that it might also bring about in him the union of earthly man and the divine!

 

 

Many great deeds enacted by noble and sublime men have been lost to memory in the course of the millennia. But the last generation on this planet will still know about the mystery of Golgotha; indeed, it is to be hoped that they will experience much more of it than could be revealed until this day.

 

As a shining beacon of incomprehensible greatness of love the word of the Gospel shines through the ages: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do!”

 

Only a “Luminary of the First Light” could utter it, and yet none dared what is condition to it, apart from one! – the “great Man of love”…

 

Even today, and till the end of the days of earthly man, this “great Man of love” is close to the souls which call upon him! Upon him, who lives in spiritual form united with all those who, like him form that spiritual chain binding the transient sensual with the eternal!

 

“He who can comprehend, let him  comprehend!” –

The writer of these words gives witness of him in the way he could give witness of the existence of the sun…

 

 

No member of the unity in plurality of the “Luminaries of the First Light” has ever been separated from the other members of this spiritual communality; none has ever acted on his own accord!

 

Even he who once, almost two thousand years ago, heralded in love and power the “glad tidings” to his all too unwise pupils, acted and still acts, as before so today, never simply on his own  accord. – –

 

He too obeys the instruction which comes to him, just as to all his brethren, from the “First Word”, whose “words” are all those acting on earth in unison with him. –

 

 

He too is subject to “the Father”, – to the sublime spiritual essence which transcends all  power of comprehension, the real “Master” in each of the “Luminaries”, – the sacred head of all brethren on earth, who is unnameable, who is as he is from eternity to eternity, – remaining in the “First Word” and yet  ever present in spiritual form to the “Luminaries”, revealed to their gaze, and through each, – according to his strengths and his nature, – effecting the work of eternal love…

 

 

United in this unnameable one, where the first self-comprehension of the “First Word” takes form and effect, – as the “Word” which is “with God” and that is “God” in the Godhead, – all “Luminaries of the First Light” are eternally only one in will and consciousness! – –

 

Unity is the keystone and crown of fundamental plurality in all spiritual cosmic existence, just as the plurality of colours shows itself united in pure white light. –

 

The One which is All works itself out in endless multifariousness to become unity again, without ever sacrificing its endlessness. –

 

Love is the deepest origin of this existence!

 

Love is its never ending life!

 

Love is its eternal deed!

 

The one who died on Golgotha was the most perfect vessel of this love ever to offer itself on earth; a love which is unending although knowing  its own limits within itself…

 

Blessed are those who recognise his word amongst all the rubble!

 

Blessed are those who can find him in the depths of their hearts!

 

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Bô Yin Râ