The
Christian Idol
The popular Myth of Jesus is an Idol of mass religion. It was
created by the exoteric Christian Church, when it moved to legitimize
itself in the eyes of the secular State of Rome. That Idol is
worshipped by popular belief, and many have been and continue
to be deluded and oppressed by the Cult of that Idol.
Like every
Idol, the Myth of Jesus contains a secret about Man himself. But
that secret is locked away in the features of the Image men worship.
Men worship Jesus as an exclusive human embodiment of God because
they are unwilling or unable to accept the kind of responsibility
for themselves that Jesus accepted for himself.
Jesus did
not teach the worship of himself as an Idol of God or a Substitute
for the responsibility of each man for his own religious and spiritual
sacrifice. And even if he did, it would be our responsibility
to liberate ourselves from that Doctrine.
The popular
Myth of Jesus is founded on archaic cosmological archetypes. Jesus
is believed to have come down from Heaven (or the sky of stars
above the Earth) and become a blood sacrifice (in the ancient
style of cults that ritually killed animals and men), and then
he is supposed to have risen up into the sky again — back to Heaven.
The man Jesus is popularly believed to be God, the Creator of
the Universe, and his death is glorified as a necessary Cosmic
Event that somehow makes it unnecessary for any believer to suffer
permanent mortal death.
All of this,
and more, may have made some kind of imaginative, street-level
sense in the days of the Roman Empire, but it is nothing more
than benighted silliness in the last quarter of the twentieth
century. And, in any case, none of this Idolatry was the teaching
or the intention of Jesus or any of the other great spiritual
Adepts of the world. All of the mythological idolization of Jesus
was the creation of the exoteric and popular cultism of the early
Christian Church. And the time has come for the world to renounce
this nonsense — even if the Christian Church itself is yet unwilling
to renounce its obnoxious absolutist claim on all of humanity.
The Myth and
the Idol of Jesus have nothing to do with true religion or the
spiritual responsibility of Man — as I have tried to explain in
these essays and in many other writings. And it is time we stopped
glorifying the martyrdom of Jesus. Even though it seems possible
that he personally survived the crucifixion and went on to continue
his work outside Israel, the popular belief is that he died on
the cross. And the persecution and attempted assassination of
Jesus by the hypocritical religious cultists of his time was not
in any sense good for mankind. It was a grave misfortune, and
a prime example of the stupid, unillumined, and aggressive mentality
that still characterizes the popular or mass level of subhuman
existence. The world would have profited much more if Jesus had
been able to work openly and live to a remarkable old age as a
great prophetic Teacher of Israel. In that case, the true esoteric
foundation of religion might have begun to become the basis of
human culture two thousand years ago. And, at the very least,
mankind could have avoided the long tour of domination by yet
another impenetrable Idol of the mind
The idea that
the martyrdom of Jesus was the literal and final Sacrifice of
God is a perversion of the Truth. The true sacrifice of Jesus
occurred while he was still alive. That sacrifice was of an esoteric
spiritual nature, and it is of no inherent value to any other
human being, unless that individual will duplicate that same sacrifice
in the processes of his own body-mind.
Why do we
persist in a retarded and negatively cultic understanding of religion?
The Truth is plain — and it has been plainly preached and demonstrated,
not only by Jesus, but by many Adepts in every epoch of human
history. But the Idol of Jesus persists — because it is one of the
great archetypal alternatives to authentic personal religious
or spiritual responsibility. It is time for mankind to awaken
to Wisdom and to the understanding of Jesus in Truth. Then perhaps
some benefit will have come to us at last from that ancient outrage
performed in Jerusalem.
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