(1) INTRODUCTION – (2) THE GREATNESS AND NATURE OF JESUS – (3) WHEN DID JESUS LIVE AND WHAT IS GENUINELY KNOWN OF HIM? – (4) THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT – (5) WHO OR WHAT IS CHRIST OR CHRISTOS? – (6) THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH – (7) WHAT ABOUT MARY MAGDALENE?

1. INTRODUCTION

Among students of the original teachings of Theosophy, especially those who are very familiar with the writings of H. P. Blavatsky, one can sometimes encounter such ideas about Jesus as the following: “Jesus never actually existed and was purely symbolical,” “Jesus and his work were good but not actually of much real importance,” or, much more rarely, “Theosophy is critical of Jesus and he has no place in Theosophy.” That last notion is completely erroneous but we have very occasionally encountered it being expressed by purported HPB students. As for the first two ideas, which are encountered more frequently, these seem to be derived from inattentive or incomplete study of what HPB and her Adept-Teachers – those who we call the Mahatmas or Masters of Wisdom – have to say on the subject.

When one reads carefully all that which follows, it may become apparent why some people have arrived at such conclusions but it will also become apparent that these conclusions are mistaken and are not what Theosophy truly teaches.

It is true that in her first book “Isis Unveiled,” HPB states: “Whatever the faith, if the worshipper be but sincere, it should be respected in his presence. If we do not accept Jesus as God, we revere him as a man. Such a feeling honors him more than if we were to attribute to him the powers and personality of the Supreme, and credit him at the same time with having played a useless comedy with mankind, as, after all, his mission proves scarcely less than a complete failure.” (Vol. 2, p. 530)

But that “failure” is never attributed by HPB to Jesus but rather to his followers over the past two millennia, especially the so-called “Christian” Churches. No matter how well a great Teacher may do their work, its ultimate outcome lies in the hands of all those who come after them.

Although this compilation is lengthy, it is still only a small selection from the many statements relating to these subjects from the pen or words of H. P. Blavatsky. Hopefully it will provide a good overview and foundation of understanding and may inspire some to find out for themselves what else HPB has to say. We have endeavoured to keep our own words to a minimum and only added comments where it seemed helpful to provide some elucidation and clarification, particularly for the benefit of those who may not yet be very familiar with the finer details of the Esoteric Philosophy which we call Theosophy.

2. THE GREATNESS AND NATURE OF JESUS

“”How do the adepts guide the souls of men?”

“”In many ways, but chiefly by teaching their souls direct, in the spiritual world. That is difficult for you to understand. But this is quite intelligible: At certain regular periods, they try to give the world at large a right understanding of spiritual things. One of their number comes forth to teach the masses, and is handed down to tradition as the founder of a religion. Krishna was such a Master; so was Zoroaster; so were Buddha and Sankaracharya, the great sage of Southern India. So also was the Nazarene [i.e. Jesus of Nazareth].”

“”Have the adepts any secret records of his life?”

“”They must have,” she answered, “for they have records of the lives of all Initiates. Once I was in a great cave-temple in the Himalayan mountains, with my Master [i.e. the Master M. or Mahatma Morya]. There were many statues of adepts there; pointing to one of them, he said: ‘This is he whom you call Jesus. We count him to be one of the greatest among us.‘”” (from “A Meeting with HPB” by Charles Johnston)

“There was naturally considerable fear in the minds of H. P. B’s nearest relatives as to the character of this mysterious Hindu [i.e. Indian] teacher [i.e. her Guru, the Master M. referred to above]. They could not help regarding him as more of a “heathen sorcerer” than anything else. And this view H. P. B. took pains to combat. She told them that her Master had a deep respect for the spirit of Christ’s teachings. She had once spent seven weeks in a forest not far from the Karakoram mountains [Note: Technically speaking, the Karakoram range is north of the Himalayas and is considered a Trans-Himalayan mountain range], where she had been isolated from the world, and where her teacher alone had visited her daily, whether astrally or otherwise she did not state. But whilst there she had been shown in a cave-temple a series of statues representing the great teachers of the world, amongst others:

“”A huge statue of Jesus Christ, represented at the moment of pardoning Mary Magdalene; Gautama Buddha offers water in the palm of his hand to a beggar, and Ananda is shown drinking out of the hands of a Pariah prostitute.”” (“Letters of H. P. Blavatsky” Part II, compiled and published by William Q. Judge, “The Path” January 1895)

“Jesus . . . the Theosophists . . . see in him, or the ideal he embodies, a perfect adept (the highest of his epoch), a mortal being far above uninitiated humanity. . . . Some of us, a few learned Christian mystics among our British Theosophists included, deny but the Gospel Jesus – who is not an historical personage – . . . [but] believe in an ideal Christ. Others are inclined to see the real Jesus in the adept mentioned in the oldest Talmudic as well as some Christian books, and known as Jeshu ben-Panthera.” (HPB, “A Word with “Zero””)

“It is quite true that there are not a few such illogical persons who seek to dethrone Romanism and Protestantism by destroying the innocent cause of these – Jesus. But no theosophist is among that class. Theosophists, even those who are no longer, as those who never were, Christians, regard, nevertheless, Jesus, or Jehoshua as an Initiate. It is not, therefore, against the “bearer” of that name – in whom they see one of the Masters of Wisdom – that they protest, but against that name as travestied by pseudo-Christian fancy and clad in the pagan robes borrowed from heathen gods, that they have set their hearts. It is those “priests” whom our reverend correspondent denounces as “murderers” and “devils” . . . that every true theosophist ought to be ever ready to rise against. Few of them [i.e. Theosophists] refuse to see in Jesus a Son of God, as well as Chrêstos having reached by suffering the Christos condition. All they reject is, the modern travesty of the very, very old dogma of the Son becoming one with the Father; or that this “father” had ever anything to do with the Hebrew androgyne called Jehovah.” (HPB, “Miscellaneous Notes” from “Lucifer” magazine, August 1888)

“Jesus was an Initiate and a martyred Adept.” (HPB, “Facts Underlying Adept Biographies,” posthumously published)

“This is not rejecting “the authority of Christ” if the latter be regarded as we and Laurence Oliphant regarded Him, i.e.,as an Avatar like Gautama Buddha and other great adepts who became the vehicles or Reincarnations of the “one” Divine Influence. What most of us will never accept is the anthropomorphized “charmant docteur”of Renan, or the Christ of Torquemada and Calvin rolled into one. Jesus, the Adept we believe in, taught our Eastern doctrines, KARMA and REINCARNATION foremost of all. When the so-called Christians will have learnt to read the New Testament between the lines, their eyes will be opened and – they will see.” (HPB, “On Pseudo-Theosophy”)

“This “Mystery” is found, for him who understands its right meaning, in the dialogue between Krishna and Arjuna, in the Bhagavad Gita, chapter iv. [HPB then quotes Gita 4:4-9 and continues:] Thus, all the Avataras are one and the same: the Sons of their “Father,” in a direct descent and line, the “Father,” or one of the seven Flames becoming, for the time being, the Son, and these two being one – in Eternity. What is the Father? Is it the absolute Cause of all? – the fathomless Eternal? No; most decidedly. It is . . . called by the Hindus Ishvara, the Lord, . . . Truly, “for the salvation of the good and the destruction of wickedness,” the personalities known as Gautama, Shankara, Jesus and a few others were born each in his age, as declared – “I am born in every Yuga” – and they were all born through the same Power.” (HPB, “The Doctrine of Avataras,” posthumously published)

“The students of Esoteric Philosophy see in the Nazarene Sage a Bodhisattva with the spirit of Buddha Himself in Him.” (HPB, “The Mystery of Buddha,” posthumously published)

Theosophists often say that Jesus, like Buddha and others, started off as an ordinary human being just like the rest of us and then worked his way up through many lives to becoming a great Adept, Master, or Teacher. This is a more complex question than may at first appear. Based on the Theosophical teachings, it is certainly the case that no being is “created” perfect but has to earn its position through long evolution and arduous effort. However, it is indicated that there are some who are so vastly far ahead of our humanity that they must have gained the highest levels of perfection on other planets, long before our Earth came into being.

The following excerpts from “The Secret Doctrine” make plain, among other things, that Buddha, Jesus, Krishna, Zoroaster, and “many others,” were already Gods or Angels or Logoic from the moment they arrived on our Earth. And they arrived here as not “merely” Masters but as direct incarnations of one or another of the Seven Rays of the Logos. This makes them synonymous with the Seven Kumaras or Sons of Will and Yoga often referred to in “The Secret Doctrine.” The Maha-Guru or Great Sacrifice or Solitary Watcher or Wondrous Being (the Lord of Shambhala) is said to have taken up incarnation on our globe during the third or Lemurian Root Race, along with “those in whom are said to have incarnated the highest Dhyanis, “Munis and Rishis from previous Manvantaras” – to form the nursery for future human adepts, on this earth and during the present cycle.” (HPB, “The Secret Doctrine” Vol. 1, p. 207) In other words, the highest Beings in the Cosmos are also, at the same time, incarnated here on Earth; a truly wondrous and sacred thing to ponder! But since over the course of Their repeated incarnations here They become “mixed with matter” and “become truly only “the parts of a part” on earth” of what They fully and really are, it is not unthinkable that They do have to work Their way back up to consciously regaining and embodying as much as possible Their true divine nature.

“. . . there never yet was a great World-reformer, whose name has passed into our generation, who (a) was not a direct emanation of the LOGOS (under whatever name known to us), i.e., an essential incarnation of one of the “seven,” of the “divine Spirit who is sevenfold”; and (b) who had not appeared before, during the past Cycles.  . . . Zoroaster, . . . the Rishis and Manus . . . Krishna and Buddha . . . Osiris . . . Thoth-Hermes, . . . Jesus (in Hebrew, Joshua) of Nazareth . . .  The esoteric doctrine explains . . . that each of these (as many others) had first appeared on earth as one of the seven powers of the LOGOS, individualized as a God or “Angel” (messenger); then, mixed with matter, they had re-appeared in turn as great sages and instructors who “taught the Fifth Race,” [i.e. the “Aryan” or Indo-Caucasian] after having instructed the two preceding races [i.e. the Atlantean and, before that, Lemurian], had ruled during the Divine Dynasties, and had finally sacrificed themselves, to be reborn under various circumstances for the good of mankind, and for its salvation at certain critical periods; until in their last incarnations they had become truly only “the parts of a part” on earth, though de facto the One Supreme in Nature. This is the metaphysics of Theogony. And . . . every “Power” among the SEVEN has (once individualized) in his charge one of the elements of creation, and rules over it, . . .” (HPB, “The Secret Doctrine” Vol. 2, p. 358-359)

It may also be useful for us to consider that the great Master of Wisdom and Compassion who was once Jesus is hardly likely to still resemble or go by the name of Jesus, over 2,000 years on, but must have taken up numerous embodiments and personalities since then, and that this principle presumably applies for any of the celebrated religious and philosophical figures, including Buddha, Krishna, Zoroaster, Lao Tzu, Pythagoras, Plato, and so on. The manner in which the founders of religious and philosophical systems are immortalised and venerated therein implants in us the idea that those Teachers and Sages must always and forever remain in that name and form but this is hardly likely, especially if they are truly Bodhisattvas or Nirmanakayas who repeatedly incarnate when and where needed for the ongoing assistance and enlightenment of humanity. As we saw in one of the above quotes, Jesus is described as a “mortal.” But the inner Being who incarnated as Jesus is one of the true Immortals. In the modern Theosophical Movement, the idea that Gautama Buddha is still Gautama Buddha or that Jesus is still “The Master Jesus” etc. belongs to the Leadbeater–Besant and Bailey version of “Theosophy.”

3. WHEN DID JESUS LIVE AND WHAT IS GENUINELY KNOWN OF HIM?

In her lengthy dialogue with the Abbé Roca, a French Canon of the Roman Catholic Church, HPB wrote the following:

“Jesus Christ, i.e., the Man-God of the Christians, copied from the Avatars of every country, from the Hindu Krishna as well as the Egyptian Horus, was never a historical person. He is a deified personification of the glorified type of the great Hierophants of the Temples, and his story, as told in the New Testament, is an allegory, assuredly containing profound esoteric truths, but still an allegory. It is interpreted by the help of the seven keys, similarly to the Pentateuch. . . . The legend of which I speak is founded, as I have demonstrated over and over again in my writings and my notes, on the existence of a personage called Jehoshua (from which Jesus has been made) born at Lud or Lydda about 120 years before the modern era [i.e. around 120 B.C.]. And if this fact is denied – to which I can hardly object – one must resign oneself to regard the hero of the drama of Calvary as a myth pure and simple. As a matter of fact, in spite of all the desperate research made during long centuries, if we set aside the testimony of the “Evangelists,” i.e., unknown men whose identity has never been established, and that of the Fathers of the Church, interested fanatics, neither history, nor profane tradition, neither official documents, nor the contemporaries of the soi-disant drama, are able to provide one single serious proof of the historical and real existence, not only of the Man-God but even of him called Jesus of Nazareth, from the year 1 to the year 33. All is darkness and silence. Philo Judaeus, born before the Christian Era, and dying quite some time after the year when, according to Renan, the hallucination of a hysterical woman, Mary of Magdala, gave a God to the world, made several journeys to Jerusalem during that interval of forty-odd years. He went there to write the history of the religious sects of his epoch in Palestine. No writer is more correct in his descriptions, more careful to omit nothing; no community, no fraternity, even the most insignificant, escaped him. Why then does he not speak of the Nazarites? Why does he not make the least allusion to the Apostles, to the divine Galilean, to the Crucifixion? The answer is easy. Because the biography of Jesus was invented after the first century, and no one in Jerusalem was better informed on the subject that Philo himself. We have but to read the quarrel of Irenaeus with the Gnostics in the 2nd century, to be certain of it. Ptolemaeus (180 A.D.), having remarked that Jesus preached one year according to the legend, and that he was too young to have been able to teach anything of importance, Irenaeus had a bad fit of indignation and testified that Jesus preached more than ten or even twenty years! Tradition alone, he said, speaks of ten years (Contra Haereses, lib. II, cap. 22, para. 4-5). Elsewhere, he makes Jesus die at the age of fifty years or more!! Now, if as early as the year 180, a Father of the Church had recourse to tradition, and if no one was sure of anything, and no great importance was attributed to the Gospels – to the Logia of which there were more than sixty – what place has history in all of this? Confusion, lies, deceit, and forgery, such is the ledger of the early centuries. Eusebius of Casearea, king of falsifiers, inserted the famous 16 lines referring to Jesus in a manuscript of Josephus, to get even with the Gnostics who denied that there ever had been a real personage named Jesus. Still more: he attributed to Josephus, a fanatic who died as he had lived, a stubborn Jew, the reflection that it is perhaps not correct to call him (Iasous) a man, because he was the Lord’s Anointed, i.e., the Messiah!!” (“Theosophy: Some Rare Perspectives” p. 83-85)

As stated above by HPB, the Christian myth or legend about Jesus is based “on the existence of a personage called Jehoshua (from which Jesus has been made) born at Lud or Lydda about 120 years before the modern era.” This person was also called Yeshua ben Pandira, who is mentioned in the Sepher Toldoth Jeshu text of Judaism, more typically written nowadays as Sefer Toledot Yeshu, which translates as “The Book of the Life of Jesus” or “The Book of the History of Jesus.”

It is important to be clear that when she says “Jesus Christ, i.e., the Man-God of the Christians, copied from the Avatars of every country, from the Hindu Krishna as well as the Egyptian Horus, was never a historical person,” she is not saying that there never was a historical Jesus (which would be an affirmation of the “Christ Myth” or “Jesus Myth” theory which began in the 18th century) but is saying that the Christian and Biblical portrayal and account of Jesus and his life – which is a purely religious and theological portrayal and account – should not be taken as fact or as accurately portraying the actual historical Jesus or Yeshua.

“All the commentators have agreed that a literal massacre of young children is nowhere mentioned in history; and that, moreover, an occurrence like that would have made such a bloody page in Roman annals that the record of it would have been preserved for us by every author of the day. Herod himself was subject to the Roman law; and undoubtedly he would have paid the penalty of such a monstrous crime, with his own life. But if, on the one hand, we have not the slightest trace of this fable in history, on the other, we find in the official complaints of the Synagogue abundant evidence of the persecution of the initiates. The Talmud also corroborates it.

“The Jewish version of the birth of Jesus is recorded in the Sepher-Toldos Jeshu in the following words:

“Mary having become the mother of a Son, named Jehosuah, and the boy growing up, she entrusted him to the care of the Rabbi Elhanan, and the child progressed in knowledge, for he was well gifted with spirit and understanding.

“Rabbi Jehosuah, son of Perachiah, continued the education of Jehosuah (Jesus) after Elhanan, and initiated him in the secret knowledge”; but the King, Janneus, having given orders to slay all the initiates, Jehosuah Ben Perachiah, fled to Alexandria, in Egypt, taking the boy with him.

“While in Alexandria, continues the story, they were received in the house of a rich and learned lady (personified Egypt). Young Jesus found her beautiful, notwithstanding “a defect in her eyes,” and declared so to his master. Upon hearing this, the latter became so angry that his pupil should find in the land of bondage anything good, that “he cursed him and drove the young man from his presence.” Then follow a series of adventures told in allegorical language, which show that Jesus supplemented his initiation in the Jewish Kabala with an additional acquisition of the secret wisdom of Egypt. When the persecution ceased, they both returned to Judea.” (HPB, “Isis Unveiled” Vol. 2, p. 200-201)

In the second of her series of three articles titled “The Esoteric Character of the Gospels,” HPB says, “Reference is made here to the Rabbinical tradition in the Babylonian Gemara, called Sepher Toldos Jeshu, about Jesus being the son of one named Pandira, and having lived a century earlier than the era called Christian, namely, during the reign of the Jewish king Alexander Jannaeus and his wife Salome, who reigned from the year 106 to 79 B.C. Accused by the Jews of having learned the magic art in Egypt, and of having stolen from the Holy of Holies the Incommunicable Name, Jehoshua (Jesus) was put to death by the Sanhedrin at Lud. He was stoned and then crucified on a tree, on the eve of Passover.”

In this, we can certainly see some basic commonalities between the Jewish and the Christian accounts of Jesus’ persecution and death, as well as references to the “missing years” in which the Gospels themselves say – without any detail whatsoever – the young Jesus was in Egypt. HPB doesn’t say that the assertions of this tradition are necessarily accurate in every single respect but, when informed that certain scholars consider it erroneous to say that Jesus or the spiritual Teacher on whom the Jesus of the Gospels is based lived “a century earlier” than is commonly believed, she responded by maintaining:

“I say the scholars are either lying or talking nonsense. Our Masters affirm the statement. If the story of Jehoshua or Jesus Ben-Pandira is false, then the whole Talmud, the whole Jewish Canon is false. He was the disciple of Jehoshua Ben Perahiah, the fifth President of the Sanhedrin after Ezra who re-wrote the Bible. Compromised in the revolt of the Pharisees against Jannaeus in 105 B.C., he (Jehoshua Ben Parahiah) fled into Egypt carrying the young Jesus with him. This account is far truer than that of the New Testament which has no record in history.” (“Theosophy: Some Rare Perspectives” p. 47)

Notice she does not say “This account is the truth” but rather “This account is far truer than” the Gospel version of Jesus and his life. Students of Theosophy today need to be aware of two things:

(1) Modern historians and researchers into the historicity of Jesus – and who are on the whole not Christians and thus have nothing ideologically to gain – consider there to be very sufficient evidence, albeit predominantly inferential evidence, that Jesus did live around the time period allotted to him in Christianity, i.e. the very first few decades A.D. or C.E. The idea that he may have been born a century before that carries absolutely no weight with them and is contrary to masses of evidence that has been brought to light since the time of HPB. However, they have found very little evidence to back up most of the claims and details found in the Gospels, but they are confident that Jesus did at least live extremely close to the time that Christians have always said. This is primarily due to all the evidence pointing to the conversion of the Apostle Paul and beginnings of the early Christian Church occurring in 30-something A.D./C.E.

(2) The scripture or text known as the Sefer Toledot Yeshu has a very bad reputation; not because of the mere fact of presenting a version of Jesus’ life and time that goes very much against the New Testament accounts, but because of how it goes about doing this. Although HPB speaks of this book as being the Rabbinical tradition and implies that it is an essential part of the Jewish Canon, it is actually neither, and this has been clearly and repeatedly demonstrated by many historians and scholarly researchers, both Jewish and non-Jewish. It is acknowledged as using mockery and vitriol towards Jesus throughout, as well as obscene and graphic references. The Wikipedia page about it describes it as “a medieval text which presents an alternative, anti-sectarian view, as well as a disputed biography of Jesus of Nazareth. It exists in a number of different versions, none of which is considered either canonical or normative within Rabbinic literature, but which appear to have been widely circulated in Europe and the Middle East in the medieval period. . . . The Toledot portrays Jesus (known as Yeshu by the author) as an illegitimate child who practiced sorcery, taught a heretical Judaism, seduced women, and died a shameful death. . . . The Toledot’s profane portrayal of the person Christians consider divine has provided fodder for Christian antisemitism and anti-Judaism. . . . Though its contents enjoyed a certain currency in the oral traditions of the Jewish masses, it was almost totally ignored by official or scholarly Judaism.”

Seeing as the Sefer Toledot Yeshu is a Jewish rather than Christian text, it would be unreasonable to expect that it would be pro-Jesus or uncritical of him. But when something is filled with mockery, vitriol, and obscenity, it is perfectly understandable why it is described by many as belonging to the most scurrilous level of polemical writings and thus not a respectable source or something to be taken seriously.

Bearing this in mind, the question then arises of whether HPB herself had ever actually personally read it, or whether she was only providing summaries about it based on what other prominent writers of her time on such matters had said, such as the English writer on mystical themes Gerald Massey, who had written in much the same vein about the Sefer Toledot Yeshu, and who HPB approvingly quoted and closely paraphrased on many occasions when dealing with the esoteric side of Christianity. Several of Massey’s assertions which HPB repeated or expressed in her own words in various articles are nowadays known to have been incorrect historically or factually.

Some students of HPB consider it unthinkable and impossible that HPB could ever have made any mistakes in her statements, and seem to think that everything she ever said and wrote was exactly what the Masters had told her. To doubt or question this even a little is treated by some as almost akin to blasphemy and as a sign that one does not accept the Masters’ written declarations that HPB was Their “Direct Agent.” But it does not necessarily mean that at all and in our case it certainly does not. We have no doubt that HPB was the Direct Agent of the Masters and an initiated Adept in her own right. Yet many who view HPB as nearly or even wholly infallible seem to forget that she herself repeatedly asserted that she was not infallible and that her closest colleague and ever-staunch supporter William Q. Judge wrote: “If any persons regard H.P.B.’s writings as the infallible oracles of Theosophy, they go directly against her own words and the works themselves; they must be people who do not indulge in original thinking and cannot make much impression on the times.” (“Forum Answers” p. 124)

But whatever the case may be, we ought to take note that HPB makes a strong statement regarding the real Jesus having lived a century “B.C.”: “Our Masters affirm the statement.” Whatever may be the truths and falsehoods of the Sefer Toledot Yeshu, it at least seems safe to say that the Masters of Wisdom are united in the declaration that Jesus lived around 100 B.C., all contemporary research to the contrary.

In 1903, Theosophist G. R. S. Mead published a book titled “Did Jesus Live 100 B.C.?” which can be read online here. It provides some early Christian as well as Jewish sources to help back up the Theosophical claim. In 1947, the Qumran Scrolls, better known as the Dead Sea Scrolls, were discovered. These are ancient Jewish manuscripts, unearthed just two years after the discovery of the ancient Christian Gnostic Gospels at Nag Hammadi. Interestingly, some of the Dead Sea Scrolls speak of an individual who is unnamed therein but referred to as “The Teacher of Righteousness” and who is indicated to have lived around 100 B.C., during the reign of Alexander Jannaeus, and who spoke of himself in Messianic and mystical terms, with many of his statements being extremely similar to those attributed to Jesus in the New Testament. The “Teacher of Righteousness” was also an Essene and what the scrolls disclose of his life, popularity, and influence mirrors much of the basic or general details of the life of Jesus found in the Gospels, which were of course written two or more centuries later than the Qumran texts. Hardly any scholars and researchers have considered that this Teacher may possibly have been the real, actual Jesus, but the dates and the details certainly seem to imply that this was the same individual as the Jehoshua or Yeshua ben Pandira spoken of, however crudely, in the Sefer Toledot Yeshu which HPB refers to.

In the whole scheme of things, however, the exact details as to when the real Jesus really lived are far from being the most important thing when it comes to the subject.

HPB wrote that “Jesus the initiate (or Jehoshua) – the type from whom the “historical” Jesus was copied – was not of pure Jewish blood.” (“The Secret Doctrine” Vol. 1, p. 577-578) And: “The personage (Jesus) so addressed – whenever he lived – was a great Initiate and a “Son of God.”” (“The Esoteric Character of the Gospels”)

As we will find said in later quotes, Jesus was an Essene, although “As Jesus used oil and the Essenes never used aught but pure water, he cannot be called a strict Essene.” (HPB, “Isis Unveiled” Vol. 2, p. 133)

4. THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT

“Since happiness is but a dream on earth, let us be resigned, at least. To do this, we have but to follow the precepts of our respective great and noble Masters on earth. The East had her Sakyamuni Buddha, “the light of Asia”; the West her Teacher, and the Sermon on the Mount; both uttered the same great, because universal and immortal, truths. Listen to them: –

““Crush out your pride,” saith the One. “Speak evil of no one, but be thankful to him who blames thee, for he renders thee service by showing thee thy faults. Kill thine arrogance. Be kind and gentle to all; merciful to every living creature. Forgive those who harm thee, help those who need thy help, resist not thine enemies. Destroy thy passions, for they are the armies of Mara (Death), and scatter them as the elephant scatters a bamboo hut. Lust not, desire nothing; all the objects thou pinest for, the world over, could no more satisfy thy lust, than all the sea water could quench thy thirst. That which alone satisfies man is Wisdom – be wise. Be ye without hatred, without selfishness, and without hypocrisy. Be tolerant with the intolerant, charitable and compassionate with the hardhearted, gentle with the violent, detached from everything amidst those who are attached to all, in this world of illusion. Harm no mortal creature. Do that which thou wouldest like to see done by all others.”

““Be humble,” saith the Other. Resist not evil, “judge not that ye be not judged.” Be merciful, forgive them who wrong thee, love thine enemies. Lust not; not even in the secresy of thy heart. Give to him that asketh thee. Be wise and perfect. Do not as the hypocrites do; but, “as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise.”

“Noble words these. Only how far are they practicable, in the Nineteenth Century of the Christian era, and the tail end of the Brahmanical cycle?” (HPB, “Forlorn Hopes”)

“The life preached in the Sermon on the Mount, and the commandments left to the Church by her MASTER, are precisely those ideals that have fallen the lowest in our day.” (HPB, “The Fall of Ideals”)

“And why should Jehovah be called “the God of the Christians,”since he is not once named in the New Testament, and since no Theosophist could speak with more implied contempt of that tribal god and his commandments than Jesus himself? . . . read Matthew v [i.e. the 5th chapter of Matthew’s Gospel, in which begins the Sermon on the Mount],and see whether almost every verse in it does not demolish the Ten Commandments given by that angry and jealous Sinaitic Deity through Moses. . . . I would strongly advise “Leo” [i.e. a pseudonym used by a critic of “The Secret Doctrine”] before he finds fault with others and exposes their supposed “contradictions” . . . to study the Bible himself, and above all, to learn to read it understandingly.” (HPB, response regarding “The Secret Doctrine” in “Light” magazine, December 1888)

“Theosophy can be practised by Christian or Heathen, Jew or Gentile, by Agnostic or Materialist, or even an Atheist, provided that none of these is a bigoted fanatic, who refuses to recognise as his brother any man or woman outside his own special creed or belief. Count Leo N. Tolstoy [i.e. the famous Russian writer, 1828-1910, author of such celebrated novels as “War and Peace” and “Anna Karenina”; he later became a religious thinker and was held in very high regard by HPB] does not believe in the Bible, the Church, or the divinity of Christ; and yet no Christian surpasses him in the practical bearing out of the principles alleged to have been preached on the Mount. And these principles are those of Theosophy; not because they were uttered by the Christian Christ, but because they are universal ethics, and were preached by Buddha and Confucius, Krishna, and all the great Sages, thousands of years before the Sermon on the Mount was written. Hence, once that we live up to such theosophy, it becomes a universal panacea indeed, for it heals the wounds inflicted by the gross asperities of the Church “isms” on the sensitive soul of every naturally religious man. How many of these, forcibly thrust out by the reactive impulse of disappointment from the narrow area of blind belief into the ranks of arid disbelief, have been brought back to hopeful aspiration by simply joining our Brotherhood [i.e. meaning in this context the fraternity of the Theosophical Society or modern Theosophical Movement] – yea, imperfect as it is.” (HPB, “Is Theosophy A Religion?”)

“The Sermon on the Mount, which is the very embodiment of Christ’s teachings – Christianity in a nut-shell, so to say – is a code of preeminently practical as also impracticable rules of life, of daily observances, yet all on the plane of matter-of-fact earth-life.” (HPB, “Christian Science”)

In the preceding as well as in the following passage from “Isis Unveiled” we see HPB repeatedly making the point that the teachings of Jesus were not truly unique but were UNIVERSAL. This is not intended in any way to denigrate his work and teachings but rather, for those – such as Theosophists – whose motto is “There is no Religion higher than Truth,” it is in fact the greatest compliment of all.

“Jesus taught the world nothing that had not been taught as earnestly before by other masters. He begins his sermon [i.e. on the Mount] with certain purely Buddhistic precepts that had found acceptance among the Essenes, and were generally practiced by the Orphikoi, and the Neo-platonists. There were the Philhellenes, who, like Apollonius, had devoted their lives to moral and physical purity, and who practiced asceticism. He tries to imbue the hearts of his audience with a scorn for worldly wealth; a fakir-like unconcern for the morrow; love for humanity, poverty, and chastity. He blesses the poor in spirit, the meek, the hungering and the thirsting after righteousness, the merciful and the peace-makers, and, Buddha-like, leaves but a poor chance for the proud castes to enter into the kingdom of heaven. Every word of his sermon is an echo of the essential principles of monastic Buddhism.”

“When they find that – 1, all his [i.e. Jesus’] sayings are in a Pythagorean spirit, when not verbatim repetitions; 2, his code of ethics is purely Buddhistic; 3, his mode of action and walk in life, Essenean; and 4, his mystical mode of expression, his parables, and his ways, those of an initiate, whether Grecian, Chaldean, or Magian (for the “Perfect,” who spoke the hidden wisdom, were of the same school of archaic learning the world over), it is difficult to escape from the logical conclusion that he belonged to that same body of initiates. It is a poor compliment paid to the Supreme, this forcing upon Him four gospels, in which, contradictory as they often are, there is not a single narrative, sentence, or peculiar expression, whose parallel may not be found in some older doctrine or philosophy. Surely, the Almighty – were it but to spare future generations their present perplexity – might have brought down with Him, at His first and only incarnation on earth [i.e. as Christians view the incarnation of Jesus], something original – something that would trace a distinct line of demarcation between Himself and the score or so of incarnate Pagan gods, who had been born of virgins, had all been saviours, and were either killed, or otherwise sacrificed themselves for humanity.” (HPB, “Isis Unveiled” Vol. 2, p. 552-553, 337)

On two occasions, H. P. Blavatsky refers to Jesus as a Socialist, with a capital S. On p. 79 of her book “The Key to Theosophy,” she describes both Buddha and Jesus as “preaching most unmistakably Socialism of the noblest and highest type.” Likewise, in her article titled “Misconceptions,” she calls Jesus “the great Socialist and Adept.” She is not speaking of what we know of as political socialism but rather of socialism in its “noblest and highest” spiritual and ethical form, which one could call “transcendental Socialism” or “spiritual Socialism” . . . something which transcends all political forms but which consists of social service – open-hearted, compassionate service and unselfish conduct towards one’s fellow human beings on the basis of Universal Brotherhood.

Below is the text of the Sermon on the Mount from the New Testament of the Christian Bible.

Many people think the Sermon on the Mount is confined to the Beatitudes (the “blessed are . . .” statements) but it actually extends to three whole chapters (chapters 5 to 7) in Matthew’s Gospel. We reproduce those below, concluding with the first verse of chapter 8. After having read HPB’s words in this section, it might perhaps now take on a greater meaning and more Theosophical significance, even if a few parts of it – such as about petitionary prayer – may seem contrary to the usual Theosophical approach.

And seeing the multitudes, He went up on a mountain, and when He was seated His disciples came to Him. Then He opened His mouth and taught them, saying:

“Blessed are the poor in spirit,

For theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are those who mourn,

For they shall be comforted.

Blessed are the meek,

For they shall inherit the earth.

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,

For they shall be filled.

Blessed are the merciful,

For they shall obtain mercy.

Blessed are the pure in heart,

For they shall see God.

Blessed are the peacemakers,

For they shall be called sons of God.

Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake,

For theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are you when they revile and persecute you, and say all kinds of evil against you falsely for My sake.

Rejoice and be exceedingly glad, for great is your reward in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

“You are the salt of the earth; but if the salt loses its flavor, how shall it be seasoned? It is then good for nothing but to be thrown out and trampled underfoot by men.

“You are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hidden. Nor do they light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a lampstand, and it gives light to all who are in the house. Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven.

“Do not think that I came to destroy the Law or the Prophets. I did not come to destroy but to fulfill. For assuredly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle will by no means pass from the law till all is fulfilled. Whoever therefore breaks one of the least of these commandments, and teaches men so, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever does and teaches them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I say to you, that unless your righteousness exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven.

“You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not murder, and whoever murders will be in danger of the judgment.’ But I say to you that whoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment. And whoever says to his brother, ‘Raca!’ shall be in danger of the council. But whoever says, ‘You fool!’ shall be in danger of hell fire. Therefore if you bring your gift to the altar, and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar, and go your way. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift. Agree with your adversary quickly, while you are on the way with him, lest your adversary deliver you to the judge, the judge hand you over to the officer, and you be thrown into prison. Assuredly, I say to you, you will by no means get out of there till you have paid the last penny.

“You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that whoever looks at a woman to lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to sin, pluck it out and cast it from you; for it is more profitable for you that one of your members perish, than for your whole body to be cast into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and cast it from you; for it is more profitable for you that one of your members perish, than for your whole body to be cast into hell.

“Furthermore it has been said, ‘Whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce.’ But I say to you that whoever divorces his wife for any reason except sexual immorality causes her to commit adultery; and whoever marries a woman who is divorced commits adultery.

“Again you have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not swear falsely, but shall perform your oaths to the Lord.’ But I say to you, do not swear at all: neither by heaven, for it is God’s throne; nor by the earth, for it is His footstool; nor by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King. Nor shall you swear by your head, because you cannot make one hair white or black. But let your ‘Yes’ be ‘Yes,’ and your ‘No,’ ‘No.’ For whatever is more than these is from the evil one.

“You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I tell you not to resist an evil person. But whoever slaps you on your right cheek, turn the other to him also. If anyone wants to sue you and take away your tunic, let him have your cloak also. And whoever compels you to go one mile, go with him two. Give to him who asks you, and from him who wants to borrow from you do not turn away.

“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbour and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven; for He makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what reward have you? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet your brethren only, what do you do more than others? Do not even the tax collectors do so? Therefore you shall be perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect.

“Take heed that you do not do your charitable deeds before men, to be seen by them. Otherwise you have no reward from your Father in heaven. Therefore, when you do a charitable deed, do not sound a trumpet before you as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may have glory from men. Assuredly, I say to you, they have their reward. But when you do a charitable deed, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, that your charitable deed may be in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will Himself reward you openly.

“And when you pray, you shall not be like the hypocrites. For they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the corners of the streets, that they may be seen by men. Assuredly, I say to you, they have their reward. But you, when you pray, go into your room, and when you have shut your door, pray to your Father who is in the secret place; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you openly. And when you pray, do not use vain repetitions as the heathen do. For they think that they will be heard for their many words.

“Therefore do not be like them. For your Father knows the things you have need of before you ask Him. In this manner, therefore, pray:

Our Father in heaven,

Hallowed be Your name.

Your kingdom come.

Your will be done

On earth as it is in heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread.

And forgive us our debts,

As we forgive our debtors.

And do not lead us into temptation,

But deliver us from the evil one.

For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.

“For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.

“Moreover, when you fast, do not be like the hypocrites, with a sad countenance. For they disfigure their faces that they may appear to men to be fasting. Assuredly, I say to you, they have their reward. But you, when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, so that you do not appear to men to be fasting, but to your Father who is in the secret place; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you openly.

“Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal; but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

“The lamp of the body is the eye. If therefore your eye is good, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in you is darkness, how great is that darkness!

“No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.

“Therefore I say to you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink; nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air, for they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? Which of you by worrying can add one cubit to his stature?

“So why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin; and yet I say to you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Now if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will He not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?

“Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For after all these things the Gentiles seek. For your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.

“Judge not, that you be not judged. For with what judgment you judge, you will be judged; and with the measure you use, it will be measured back to you. And why do you look at the speck in your brother’s eye, but do not consider the plank in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me remove the speck from your eye’; and look, a plank is in your own eye? Hypocrite! First remove the plank from your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.

“Do not give what is holy to the dogs; nor cast your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you in pieces.

“Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened. Or what man is there among you who, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will he give him a serpent? If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask Him! Therefore, whatever you want men to do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets.

“Enter by the narrow gate; for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and there are many who go in by it. Because narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it.

“Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves. You will know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes from thornbushes or figs from thistles? Even so, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Therefore by their fruits you will know them.

“Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven. Many will say to Me in that day, ‘Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?’ And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!’

“Therefore whoever hears these sayings of Mine, and does them, I will liken him to a wise man who built his house on the rock: and the rain descended, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house; and it did not fall, for it was founded on the rock.

“But everyone who hears these sayings of Mine, and does not do them, will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand: and the rain descended, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house; and it fell. And great was its fall.”

And so it was, when Jesus had ended these sayings, that the people were astonished at His teaching, for He taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes.

When He had come down from the mountain, great multitudes followed Him.

5. WHO OR WHAT IS CHRIST OR CHRISTOS?

The Greek term “Christos,” from which the anglicised word “Christ” is derived, literally means “anointed.” The equivalent in Hebrew is “Mashiach,” anglicised as “Messiah.” And since anointing was something usually done with oil, some translate “Christos” or “Christ” as “one anointed with oil.” As we all know, to the vast majority of Christians, “Jesus” and “Christ” are exact and perfectly interchangeable synonyms. There are even a lot of people who assume out of ignorance that Christ was the family surname of Jesus.

In modern esoteric and New Age circles, one often encounters terms such as “Christ Principle,” “Christ Energy,” “Christ Essence,” “Christ Self,” “Christ Consciousness,” and “Cosmic Christ,” and these are typically not directly identified or exactly equated with the historical figure called Jesus but they are spoken of as if connected or linked in some way with him.

But before any of that, there was Theosophy. How did H. P. Blavatsky – as a direct agent and initiated representative of the Great Brotherhood or Lodge of Masters on this Earth – use and explain the term “Christ”? The answer is that she used it in a few different contexts but the main one was as follows:

“Christos is neither the Christ of the Churches, nor yet the Jesus of the Gospels; it is only an impersonal Principle.” (HPB, “The Kabalah and the Kabalists”)

“Note well, “Christos” with the Gnostics meant the impersonal principal, the Atman of the Universe, and the Atma within every man’s soul – not Jesus.” (HPB, “The Secret Doctrine” Vol. 1, p. 132 – “Atman” or “Atma” in Sanskrit literally mean “Self” and this word is used in Theosophy for the Higher Self, our pure eternal spirit, which is not an individual spirit but the ONE Universal Spirit or Divine Essence equally common to all.)

“The Christ of esoteric science is the Christos of Spirit – an impersonal principle entirely distinct from any carnalised Christ or Jesus.” (HPB, footnote in response to the Abbé Roca’s “Esotericism of Christian Dogma”)

“Take Paul, read the little of the original that is left of him in the writings attributed to this brave, honest, sincere man, and see whether any one can find a word therein to show that Paul meant by the word Christ anything more than the abstract ideal of the personal divinity indwelling in man. For Paul, Christ is not a person, but an embodied idea. “If any man is in Christ, he is a new creation,” he is reborn, as after initiation, for the Lord is spirit – the spirit of man. Paul was the only one of the apostles who had understood the secret ideas underlying the teachings of Jesus, although he had never met him.” (HPB, “Isis Unveiled” Vol. 2, p. 574)

As a further example of this in the Apostle Paul’s writings (i.e. his epistles or letters in the New Testament to early Christian churches and believers), we can look at Colossians 1:26-27: “. . . the mystery which hath been hid from ages and from generations, but now is made manifest to his saints . . . the riches of the glory of this mystery . . . which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.” Quite often when speaking of Christ, Paul uses the word “which” rather than “who.”

“. . . “the coming of Christ,” means the presence of CHRISTOS in a regenerated world, and not at all the actual coming in body of “Christ” Jesus; this Christ is to be sought neither in the wilderness nor “in the inner chambers,” nor in the sanctuary of any temple or church built by man; for Christ – the true esoteric SAVIOUR – is no man, but the DIVINE PRINCIPLE in every human being. He who strives to resurrect the Spirit crucified in him by his own terrestrial passions, and buried deep in the “sepulchre” of his sinful flesh; he who has the strength to roll back the stone of matter from the door of his own inner sanctuary, he has the risen Christ in him.” (HPB, “The Esoteric Character of the Gospels”)

“No true theosophist will accept any more a carnalised Christ . . . than an anthropomorphic God, and still less a ‘Pastor’ in the person of a Pope . . .” (HPB, “On Pseudo-Theosophy”)

“Theosophy . . . hushes the “Lo here! and lo there!” and declares the Christ, like the kingdom of heaven, to be within. . . . With the advent of Theosophy, the Messiah-craze surely has had its day, and sees its doom.” (HPB, “Modern Apostles and Pseudo-Messiahs”)

“I write in every letter that a divine Christ (or Christos) has never existed under a human form outside the imagination of blasphemers who have carnalized a universal and entirely impersonal principle.” (HPB, “Reply to the Mistaken Conceptions of the Abbé Roca concerning my Observations on Christian Esotericism”)

“In carnalizing the central figure of the New Testament, in imposing the dogma of the Word made flesh, the Latin Church sets up a doctrine diametrically opposed to the tenets of Buddhist and Hindu Esotericism and the Greek Gnosis. Therefore, there will always be an abyss between the East and the West, as long as neither of these dogmas yields. Almost 2,000 years of bloody persecution against Heretics and Infidels by the Church looms before the Oriental nations to prevent them from renouncing their philosophic doctrines in favour of that which degrades the Christos principle. . . .

“The true Christians died with the last of the Gnostics, and the Christians of our day are but the usurpers of a name they no longer understand. As long as this is the case, Orientals cannot agree with Occidentals; no blending of religious ideas would be possible between them. . . .

“It is said that after the Kalki-Avatar (“He who is expected” on the White Horse, in the Apocalypse) the Golden Age will begin and every man will become his own guru (spiritual teacher or “Shepherd”) because the divine Logos, whatever name it may be given [“Whether it be Krishna, Buddha, Sosiosh, Horus or Christos, it is a universal principle”] will reign in each regenerated mortal. There can be no question, then, of a common “Shepherd” unless that Shepherd be entirely metaphorical. Moreover, the Christians, by localizing and isolating this great Principle, and denying it to any other man except Jesus of Nazareth (or the Nazar) carnalize the Christos of the Gnostics; that alone prevents them having any point in common with the disciples of the Archaic Wisdom.

“Western Theosophists accept the Christos as did the Gnostics of the centuries that preceded Christianity, as do the Vedantins their Krishna: they distinguish the corporeal man from the divine Principle, which, in the case of the Avatar, animates him. Their Krishna, the historical hero, is mortal, but the divine Principle (Vishnu) which animates him, is immortal and eternal; Krishna – the man and his name – remains terrestrial at his death; he does not become Vishnu; Vishnu absorbs only that part of himself which had animated the Avatar, as it animates so many others. . . .

“The Church of Rome was Gnostic – just as much as the Marcionites were – until the beginning and even the middle of the second century; Marcion, the famous Gnostic, did not separate from it until the year 136, and Tatian left it still later. And why did they leave it? Because they had become heretics, the Church pretends; but the history of these cults contributed by esoteric manuscripts gives us an entirely different version. These famous Gnostics, they tell us, separated themselves from the Church because they could not agree to accept a Christ made flesh, and thus began the process of carnalizing the Christ-principle. It was then also that the metaphysical allegory experienced its first transformation – that allegory which was the fundamental doctrine of all the Gnostic fraternities. . . .

“Once united to his Atman–Christos, the Ego, by that very act, loses the great illusion called ego-ism, and perceives at last the fullness of truth; that Ego knows that it has never lived outside the great All, and that it is inseparable from it. Such is Nirvana, which, for it, is but the return to its primitive condition or state. Imprisoned in its oubliette of flesh and matter, it had lost even the conception or memory of that condition, but once the light of Spirit has revealed to it the illusion of the senses, it places no more trust in earthly things, for it has learned to scorn them; the Son is now united to the Father; thenceforth the soul is one with Spirit! And when a man has reached this point in the Gnosis, or Theosophy, what has he then to do with the dogmas of any Church?” (HPB, Notes on Abbé Roca’s “Esotericism of Christian Dogma”)

“By “Lord” the HIGHER SELF is here meant – “that SELF which is the Redeemer of man” whether it be called Christos or Krishna.” (HPB, footnotes to “The Alchemists”)

In a few places she elaborated a little more on which of the three higher Principles or aspects or components of the sevenfold constitution of the human being is meant by the term “Christ” or “Christos”:

“. . . the Christos, the anointed by Alaya [i.e. the Universal Soul or Logos of the Cosmos, as well as the divinity within man] . . . the time for the final Initiation had come, when Jesus, or the Neophyte, would become Christ, or the Initiate; that is, at one with Buddhi or the Christ-principle.” (HPB, “Notes on The Gospel according to John”)

“The mystic name of the “Higher Ego” is, in the Indian philosophy, Kshetrajna, or “embodied Spirit,” that which knows or informs kshetra, “the body.” Etymologize the name, and you will find in it the term aja, “first-born,” and also the “lamb.” All this is very suggestive, and volumes might be written upon the pregenetic and postgenetic development of type and antitype – of Christ–Kshetrajna, the “God-Man,” the First-born, symbolized as the “lamb.” The Secret Doctrine shows that the Manasa-Putras or incarnating EGOS have taken upon themselves, voluntarily and knowingly, the burden of all the future sins of their future personalities. Thence it is easy to see that it is neither Mr. A. nor Mr. B., nor any of the personalities that periodically clothe the Self-Sacrificing EGO, which are the real Sufferers, but verily the innocent Christos within us. Hence the mystic Hindus say that the Eternal Self, or the Ego (the one in three and three in one), is the “Charioteer” or driver; the personalities are the temporary and evanescent passengers; while the horses are the animal passions of man. It is, then, true to say that when we remain deaf to the Voice of our Conscience, we crucify the Christos within us.” (HPB, “Transactions of the Blavatsky Lodge” p. 68-69)

“And . . . Jesus – recommends: “Whatsoever ye shall ask in my name (that of Christos) that will I do.” . . . if we accept it esoterically, with the full knowledge of the meaning of the term, “Christos,” which to us represents Atma-Buddhi-Manas, the “SELF,” it comes to this: the only God we must recognise and pray to, or rather act in unison with, is that spirit of God of which our body is the temple, and in which it dwelleth.” (HPB, “The Key to Theosophy” p. 71)

“One often finds in Theosophical writings conflicting statements about the Christos principle in man. Some call it the sixth principle (Buddhi), others the seventh (Atman). If Christian Theosophists wish to make use of such expressions, let them be made philosophically correct by following the analogy of the old Wisdom-religion symbols. We say that Christos is not only one of the three higher principles, but all the three regarded as a Trinity. This Trinity represents the Holy Ghost, the Father, and the Son, as it answers to abstract spirit [i.e. Atman], differentiated spirit [i.e. Buddhi], and embodied spirit [i.e. Manas]. Krishna and Christ are philosophically the same principle under its triple aspect of manifestation. In the Bhagavatgita we find Krishna calling himself indifferently Atman, the abstract Spirit, Kshetragna, the Higher or reincarnating Ego, and the Universal SELF, all names which, when transferred from the Universe to man, answer to Atma, Buddhi and Manas.” (HPB, “The Key to Theosophy” p. 67-68)

However, despite the above clarification as to the philosophically and esoterically correct usage of the name of the Christ or Christos principle within us, HPB breaks her own “rule” later in the same book, by defining the Christos state as specifically being that of our Buddhi principle. In our experience, most students of Theosophy today also equate it specifically with Buddhi, even if they have read HPB’s explanations otherwise. But it appears that it can be equated with either Atma or Buddhi or the Higher Manas, or all of these as an integral trinity, which indeed they are.

Some of the wording in the above quotes – such as “No true theosophist will accept . . . a carnalised Christ . . . a divine Christ (or Christos) has never existed under a human form outside the imagination of blasphemers who have carnalized a universal and entirely impersonal principle” – has very understandably led some Theosophists to conclude that it is thus incorrect and inappropriate to refer to Jesus as “Christ,” “The Christ” or even as “Jesus Christ.” Likewise, numerous of the above quotes easily lead one to consider that the notion that any coming Avatar could in any sense be termed “Christ” (even if this be presented as only one of the “names” of the Avatar) is pseudo-theosophical nonsense.

Thus, some time after her three part article “The Esoteric Character of The Gospels,” HPB felt it necessary to publish what she called “A Note of Explanation” in which we find such statements as these:

“The Gnostics called the “Word” “Abraxas” and “Christos” indiscriminately, and by whatever name we may call it, whether Ma-Kheru, or Christos or Abraxas, it is all one. That mystic state which gives to our inner being the impulse that attracts “the soul towards its origin and centre, the Eternal good,” as Plotinus teaches, and makes of man a god, the Christos or the unknown made manifest, is a pre eminently theosophical condition. It belongs to the temple mysteries, and the teachings of the Neo-Platonists.”

““Christ made flesh,” would be a claim worse than imposture, as it would be absurdity, but a man of flesh assuming the Christ-condition temporarily, is indeed an occult, yet living, fact.”

“I do not for one moment oppose Mr. Massey’s [i.e. Gerald Massey, quoted from by HPB in “The Esoteric Character of The Gospels” and elsewhere, and referred to earlier by us] conclusions, nor doubt his undeniable learning in the direction of those particular researches, i.e., about the words “Christos” and “Chrêstos.” What I say is, that he limits them to the negation of an historical Christ, and, for reasons no doubt very weighty, does not touch upon their principal esoteric meaning in the temple-phraseology of the Mysteries. . . . That which was really meant [i.e. by HPB in “The Esoteric Character of The Gospels”] was that, though the terms Christos and Chrêstos are generic surnames, still, the personage so addressed [i.e. as “Christ” or “Christos”] (not by Paul, necessarily, but by any one), was a great Initiate and a “Son of God.” . . . The two statements, viz., that Jesus or Jehoshua Ben Pandira, whenever he lived, was a great Initiate and the “Son of God” – just as Apollonius of Tyana was – and that [the Apostle] Paul never meant either him or any other living Initiate, but a metaphysical Christos present in, and personal to, every mystic Gnostic as to every initiated Pagan – are not at all irreconcilable. A man may know of several great Initiates, and yet place his own ideal on a far higher pedestal than any of these.”

It seems from the quotes shared earlier that what HPB really objected to, and considered a “carnalisation” of Christ, is the “localizing and isolating this great Principle, and denying it to any other man except Jesus of Nazareth,” i.e. such as done by 99.99% of all Christians on the planet.

In fact, she herself quite often referred to Jesus simply as “Christ.” In a quote which we will see later, she calls him “Jesus, the Christ.” But she also speaks of Christs plural, just as she speaks of Buddhas plural. “Yes; “our destiny is written in the stars!” Only, the closer the union between the mortal reflection MAN and his celestial PROTOTYPE, the less dangerous the external conditions and subsequent reincarnations – which neither Buddhas nor Christs can escape,” we read in “The Secret Doctrine” Vol. 1, p. 639. And in one of her very earliest articles – “A Few Questions to Hiraf,” published today under the title “Occultism or Magic” in the book “A Modern Panarion” by Theosophy Company – which was written four months before the Theosophical Society was even founded, she refers to Buddha and Jesus as “the two Christs.”

Numerous times in her writings, HPB refers to the Coming of the next Avatar and almost always uses the Hindu name “Kalki Avatar” (the name in some Hindu systems for the tenth and last Avataric embodiment or incarnation of Vishnu) or the Buddhist name of “Maitreya” (the future Buddha prophesied 2,600 years ago by Gautama Buddha) for him. However, in at least two places, she shows that the name of “Christ” or “Christos” is also applicable to the next Avatar:

“Hence, Zeus is represented as a serpent – the intellectual tempter of man – which, nevertheless, begets in the course of cyclic evolution the “Man-Saviour,” the solar Bacchus or  “Dionysos,” more than a man.

“Dionysos is one with Osiris, with Krishna, and with Buddha (the heavenly wise), and with the coming (tenth) Avatar [i.e. the Kalki Avatar, numbered as the tenth in some Hindu systems, and according to Theosophy synonymous with the Buddha Maitreya], the glorified Spiritual Christos, who will deliver the suffering Chréstos (mankind, or Prometheus, on its trial). This, say Brahminical and Buddhistic legends, echoed by the Zoroastrian and now by the Christian teachings (the latter only occasionally), will happen at the end of Kaliyuga. It is only after the appearance of Kalki-Avatar, or Sosiosh [i.e. Saoshyant, the future Saviour or Messiah figure described in Zoroastrianism], that man will be born from woman without sin. Then will Brahmâ, the Hindu deity; Ahura-Mazda (Ormazd), the Zoroastrian; Zeus, the Greco-Olympian Don Juan; Jehovah, the jealous, repenting, cruel, tribal God of the Israelites, and all their likes in the universal Pantheon of human fancy – vanish and disappear in thin air. And along with these will vanish their shadows, the dark aspects of all those deities, ever represented as their “twin brothers” and creatures, in exoteric legend, their own reflection on earth – in esoteric philosophy. The Ahrimans and Typhons, the Samaels and Satans, must be all dethroned on that day, when every dark evil passion will be subdued.” (HPB, “The Secret Doctrine” Vol. 2, p. 419-420)

Speaking of the Trans-Himalayan Brotherhood or Trans-Himalayan Esoteric School to which she and her Adept-Teachers belong, and also of Shambhala – the supreme Centre and location of the Masters’ Brotherhood in Central Asia – HPB states: “Many are the names of that School and land, the name of the latter being now regarded by the Orientalists as the mythic name of a fabulous country. It is from this mysterious land, nevertheless, that the Hindu expects his Kalki Avatara, the Buddhist his Maitreya, the Parsi his Sosiosh, and the Jew his Messiah, and so would the Christian expect thence his Christ – if he only knew of it.” (“A Few More Misconceptions Corrected,” posthumously published)

As we have written elsewhere:

“Multiple times in multiple places, HPB declares that the event known to Buddhists as the Coming of Maitreya and expected by Hindus as the advent of the Kalki Avatar and also spoken of under various different names in different religions and traditions will be essentially concurrent with the end of the Kali Yuga at the end of the Sixth Root Race and she usually gives the exoteric Hindu figure when speaking about when this will be . . . namely about 427,000 years from now. So, unlike virtually all later versions of Theosophy, there is no imminent promise or expectation of this great sacred event of the Coming of Maitreya–Kalki to be found in the original Theosophical literature. It is indeed mentioned numerous times but HPB always puts it extremely far off, several hundred thousand years away, in a future so distant as to be unimaginable and inconceivable to us at this present point in time.”

However, many Theosophists have not noticed that the figures and durations given to the Yuga, Root Race, and other cycles in the original Theosophical literature are repeatedly stated by H. P. Blavatsky, as well as William Q. Judge, to not be the real, actual, literal figures. And also, as said in our article The Avatar: “Based on repeated statements in the writings of HPB, most students of Original Theosophy say that the next Avatar will be Maitreya, the Kalki Avatar, but that this will not be until the end of the Kali Yuga in around 427,000 years from now, and that this will coincide with the end of the future Sixth Root Race and start of the Seventh Root Race. HPB does indeed make statements of this sort. But perhaps most have never gone beyond the surface of the statements to analyse the matter properly, for if they did they would find numerous contradictions and incompatibilities.” In that article we then demonstrate those contradictions and incompatibilities, using the calculations and figures given in “The Secret Doctrine.”

There is also this statement of H. P. Blavatsky from “Miscellaneous Notes” that appeared in her magazine “Lucifer” in February 1888:

““Any Brahminical or Buddhist Initiate . . . while deploring the present degenerated state of things, would place all his hope in the transient character of even the Kali Yuga, and trust in the speedy coming of the Kalki Avatar.”

This speaks of Hindu and Buddhist Initiates – whose knowledge of cycles we expect all students of Theosophy would acknowledge must far exceed their own – and says that they know the Kali Yuga to be transient and that the Coming of the Kalki Avatar (Maitreya) will come about speedily, i.e. quickly, i.e. soon. 427,000 years from now or the end of the next Root Race is not soon, but the Eastern Initiates of 1888 knew that it would be soon, and put their trust in that.

But it is not our purpose to go into all that in this section of the present article; what we have endeavoured to do is to show that the name of “Christ” has been used in the Theosophy of H. P. Blavatsky in at least three different contexts: (1) For the divine Spirit in man as well as in the Cosmos, (2) As an honorific title for great spiritual Teachers of the past, including but not limited to Jesus, (3) As one of many possible synonyms for “the coming Avatar” who has been promised by almost all major world religions and anticipated or expected by masses of their adherents.

Many would likely feel disheartened upon learning from “The Secret Doctrine” that the “reign” or “kingdom of the next Avatar” – seemingly implied by HPB to be the Master Morya – “will be purely Spiritual and “not of this world.”” (“The Secret Doctrine” Vol. 1, p. 378)

6. THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH

In the previous section, we saw HPB remark that “The true Christians died with the last of the Gnostics, and the Christians of our day are but the usurpers of a name they no longer understand. . . . The Church of Rome was Gnostic – just as much as the Marcionites were – until the beginning and even the middle of the second century; Marcion, the famous Gnostic, did not separate from it until the year 136, and Tatian left it still later.” (Notes on Abbé Roca’s “Esotericism of Christian Dogma”)

When saying that “the last of the Gnostics” died long ago, she is referring specifically to Christian Gnosticism or Gnostic Christianity. Gnosis itself is a pre-Christian and universal term, literally meaning “knowledge” but in the sense of spiritual knowledge or divine wisdom. It is synonymous with the Jnana and Vidya of Hinduism and also with Theosophy or Theosophia itself, which is also an ancient Greek term literally meaning “Divine Wisdom.” The true Gnosis undoubtedly still exists today and not only in ancient literary fragments. The Masters behind the modern Theosophical Movement once wrote: “Having found Gnosis we cannot turn our backs on it and become agnostics.” (“The Mahatma Letters” p. 54)

From the Theosophical perspective, the truest of the early Christians, esoterically considered, were the Gnostics . . . although we should remember that there were many different schools of Christian Gnostics, some with quite different philosophies and practices from one another, so it would be mistaken to imagine that all Christian Gnostics were proponents of pure and reliable esotericism. Since the seemingly “accidental” discovery of many of the ancient Gnostic Gospels at Nag Hammadi in 1945 and the subsequent translation into English of those texts, we have been able to understand and assess more clearly the teachings of some of the different Gnostic schools.

Writing in 1877, H. P. Blavatsky had to a large extent prophetically foretold such a discovery as occurred at Nag Hammadi, saying: “They ignorantly supposed that the most dangerous writings of this class had perished with the last Gnostic; but some day they may discover their mistake. Other authentic and as important documents will perhaps reappear in a “most unexpected and almost miraculous manner.” . . . a premeditated design. Is it so strange that the custodians of “Pagan” lore, seeing that the proper moment had arrived, should cause the needed document, book, or relic to fall as if by accident in the right man’s way?” (“Isis Unveiled” Vol. 2, p. 26)

Nonetheless, the Gnostics did not exactly constitute a “Church” but rather esoteric groups or mystical fraternities. They considered their doctrines to be the esoteric or secret teachings of Jesus, as preserved by one or another of his disciples. The Bible readily admits that Jesus gave secret teachings to his disciples only but it sheds no light on what those teachings actually were. To repeat something from the article Reincarnation and Christianity:

“It is clearly stated in the Gospels by Jesus himself that he had an esoteric teaching as well as an exoteric teaching. In the fourth chapter of Mark’s Gospel he relates a parable to the masses, concluding it with that mystic phrase mentioned a moment ago – “He who has ears to hear let him hear.” The disciples then ask him about this parable, to which he responds, “To you has been given the secret of the kingdom of God, but for those outside everything is in parables, so that they may indeed see but not perceive, and may indeed hear but not understand.” (Mark 4:11)

“So Jesus’ trusted disciples were apparently permitted by him to receive a secret teaching, a significantly deeper explanation of things, a doctrine which the King James Version of the Bible calls “the Mystery of the Kingdom of God,” and which was deemed unsuitable for the masses or the masses unsuitable for it. All but those few disciples were deemed to be “outside.” Outside what? Outside the esoteric circle of the Middle Eastern Initiate who most Westerners call “Jesus.” That which he taught the general public was sufficient to enable them to “indeed see” and “hear” but not to “perceive” and “understand,” presumably because he saw that they were not sufficiently inwardly advanced or spiritually ready to be able to receive those deeper and more profound teachings which could bring about true perception and understanding.”

It is unrealistic and unreasonable to suppose that all the many different Gnostic Gospels – most of which are presented as if relating Jesus’ own words to his disciples – genuinely contain the actual secret words or teachings of Jesus. But it is perfectly reasonable to suppose that some or a few of them authentically do so, whether wholly or in part.

But leaving the purely esoteric aside for a moment (we will return to Gnosticism later in the final section of this article), what about the established, publicly visible, exoteric Christian Church itself?

Beginning in her first book “Isis Unveiled,” HPB speaks positively about the very early and now long defunct Jewish Christian group or sect known as the Ebionites, whose name literally means “the poor ones.” Historians and scholars today generally share HPB’s assertion that the Ebionites were probably the very earliest Christians.

“Ebionites (Heb.). Lit., “the poor”; the earliest sect of Jewish Christians, the other being the Nazarenes. They existed when the term “Christian” was not yet heard of. Many of the relations of Iassou (Jesus), the adept ascetic around whom the legend of Christ was formed, were among the Ebionites. As the existence of these mendicant ascetics can be traced at least a century earlier than chronological Christianity, it is an additional proof that Iassou or Jeshu lived during the reign of Alexander Jannaeus at Lyd (or Lud), where he was put to death as stated in the Sepher Toldos Jeshu [Note: This was referred to and discussed in our earlier section titled “WHEN DID JESUS LIVE AND WHAT IS GENUINELY KNOWN OF HIM?”].” (HPB, “The Theosophical Glossary” p. 108-109)

“And we know that the Ebionites, the first of whom were the friends and relatives of Jesus, according to tradition, in other words, the earliest and first Christians, “were the direct followers and disciples of the Nazarene sect”, according to Epiphanius and Theodoret (See the Contra Ebionites of Epiphanius, and also “Galileans” and “Nazarenes”).” (HPB, “The Theosophical Glossary” p. 221, Entry for “Nabatheans”)

“The Ebionites were the first, the earliest Christians, whose representative was the Gnostic author of the Clementine Homilies, and as the author of Supernatural Religion shows, Ebionitic Gnosticism had once been the purest form of Christianity. They were the pupils and followers of the early Nazarenes – the kabalistic Gnostics. They believed in the Aeons, as the Cerinthians did, and that “the world was put together by Angels” (Dhyani-Chohans), as Epiphanius complains . . . “They decided that Christ was of the seed of a man,” he laments.” (HPB, “Facts Underlying Adept Biographies,” posthumously published)

Despite what we have just read, the Ebionites are not typically thought of or referred to as Gnostics, however. But the Wikipedia page on “Ebionites” summarises various points the same as or very similar to the things that HPB says about them. From Wikipedia: “The Church Fathers generally agree on key points about the Ebionites, such as their voluntary poverty and rejection of proto-orthodox Christian beliefs in Jesus’ divinity, pre-existence, and virgin birth; they argue the Ebionites believed that Jesus was a mere man, born the natural son of Joseph and Mary, who, by virtue of his righteousness in perfectly following the Law of Moses, was adopted as the son of God to be a Messiah in the mold of a new “Prophet like Moses.” . . . Epiphanius of Salamis stated that the Ebionites engaged in excessive ritual bathing, possessed a separationist Christology, which claimed that Jesus and the Christ are two different beings, and, therefore, the Christ is an angel of God who was incarnated in Jesus when he was adopted as the son of God during his baptism [Note: This is considered a form of “adoptionist” theology],  denied parts of the Law deemed obsolete or corrupt, opposed animal sacrifice, practiced vegetarianism and celebrated a commemorative meal annually on or around Passover with unleavened bread and water only, in contrast to the daily Christian Eucharist.”

But as far as we have seen, HPB – who held a high opinion of the Apostle Paul and considered much of his writings to have become distorted and misinterpreted over time – never mentions that the Ebionites were extremely opposed to Paul and rejected completely him and his work and teachings. According to Epiphanius, this was because the Ebionites maintained their Jewish identity (the very earliest Christianity was, after all, an offshoot or branch of Judaism) and thus disagreed with the ex-Jew Paul’s position that neither circumcision nor the Law of Moses needed to be followed by Christians. In the Ebionites’ view, they did need to be followed.

Moving forward in time, when we look at the Christian Church as it exists today, what branch or denomination of it is closest – even if perhaps still not very close – to the early established Christian Church? We mean distinctly Christian and thus not including the Ebionites, etc. HPB’s answer: The Eastern Orthodox Church, which exists as the Greek Orthodox Church, Russian Orthodox Church, and others.

“So far, and as the “interpreters” of Neo-Christianism, the Popes have most undeniably the right to call themselves successors to the title of Peter, but hardly the successors to, least of all the interpreters of, the doctrines of Jesus, the Christ; for there is the Oriental Church, older and far purer than the Roman hierarchy, which, having ever faithfully held to the primitive teachings of the Apostles, is known historically to have refused to follow the Latin seceders from the original Apostolic Church, though, curiously enough, she is still referred to by her Roman sister as the “Schismatic” Church.” (HPB, “Peter, A Jewish Kabalist, Not An Initiate,” posthumously published – Her wording shows that by “the Oriental Church” she is referring to the Eastern Orthodox Church.)

“We denounce the claim, that the Roman Catholic Church is “the Mother and Mistress” of all Christian Churches, as one of the many arrogant assumptions made by Papism, and which are neither warranted by history nor by fact. . . . Thus it would seem that it was Latinism which broke off from the Greek Oriental Church and not the latter from Rome. Ergo, it is the Roman Church which has to be regarded not only as guilty of a schism but of rank heresy in the eyes of every impartial Christian acquainted with history. Hence, also, it is the Greek Oriental Church which is the “Mother and Mistress” of all other Christian Churches – if any can claim the title. Assumption of authority is no proof of it. As to the rules of life taught by Jesus, if the Roman Church had ever accepted them, surely she would never have invented the infamy called the Inquisition; nor would she have slaughtered, in her religious fury and in the name of her God, nearly 50,000,000 of human creatures (“heretics”) since she came to power. As to her rules and ethics, she may pretend to teach people to “forgive their enemies from their hearts,” but she takes good care never to do so herself. Nor can Christian endurance or “renunciation of self” ever reach the grandeur in practice of the Buddhist and Hindu devotee. This is a matter of history too.” (HPB, “Unsupported Claims of The Roman Catholic Church”)

“The Filioque of the Orthodox Greco-Russian Church is that which is nearest to the Esotericism of the Orient.” (HPB, “Reply to the Mistaken Conceptions of the Abbé Roca concerning my Observations on Christian Esotericism”)

Most people will never have heard or seen the word “Filioque” before but it is one of the central causes of disputation and schism between the Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic Churches.

In as short and simple a way as possible: around 1,500 years ago, some branches of what was then essentially the one Church altered the original Nicene Creed, which said that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father, to say that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son. Later, in 1014, this was officially incorporated into the liturgical practice of Rome. Since this seemingly minor alteration can have serious consequences on how a person perceives and understands the Trinity, it played a major part in the Great Schism, also known as the East–West Schism, of 1054, which resulted in the two denominations we know of today as the Eastern Orthodox Church and Roman Catholic Church. That seemingly very small change accepted by the Catholics was one of the major contributors to so many Christians – including multitudes today who are not Catholic – viewing “The Son,” or Jesus Christ in their understanding, as equal to or essentially identical with “The Father.” In her “Lucifer” (used in Theosophy in its literal, original, and pre-Christian meaning of “Lightbringer” or “Light-Bearer”) magazine for August 1888, HPB called this “the modern travesty of the very, very old dogma of the Son becoming one with the Father.”

“. . . the Christian Church began her existence as a colony of Greek Christians, and of Grecianized, Hellenic Jews. The first and earliest Church Fathers, such as Clement of Rome, Irenaeus, Hippolytus, etc., etc., wrote in the Greek language. The first Popes were Greeks, not Italians, the very name “Pope” being a Greek not a Latin name, “Papa”meaning father. Every Greek priest is called to this day “papa,”and every Russian priest “pope.” The first quarrels which led to the separation of the Church, into the Latin and the Greek or Eastern, did not take place earlier than the IXth century, namely, in 865, under the Patriarch Photius; while the final separation occurred only in the XIth century, when the Latin Church proclaimed herself with her usual arrogance the one universal Apostolic Church and all others Schismatics and Heretics!” (HPB, “Unsupported Claims of The Roman Catholic Church”)

“It is more than likely, that the Protestants in the days of the Reformation [i.e. the ecclestiastical developments of 1517 in Europe under the instigation of Martin Luther and which became the birth of Protestantism or Protestant Christianity in its now myriad forms; those involved were literally protestants or protestors against the Catholic Church into which they had been born] knew nothing of the true origin of Christianity, or, to be more explicit and correct, of Latin Ecclesiasticism. Nor is it probable that the Greek Church knew much of it, the separation between the two having occurred at a time when, in the struggle for political power, the Latin Church was securing, at any cost, the alliance of the highly educated, the ambitious and influential Pagans, while these were willing to assume the outward appearance of the new worship, provided they were themselves kept in power. There is no need to remind the reader here of the details of that struggle, well-known to every educated man. It is certain that the highly cultivated Gnostics and their leaders – such men as Saturninus, an uncompromising ascetic, as Marcion, Valentinus, Basilides, Menander and Cerinthus – were not stigmatised by the (now) Latin Church because they were heretics, nor because their tenets and practices were  indeed “ob turpitudinem portentosam nimium et horribilem,” “monstrous, revolting abominations,” as Baronius says of those of Carpocrates; but simply because they knew too much of fact and truth. Kenneth R. H. MacKenzie correctly remarks:

““They [i.e. the Christian Gnostics] were stigmatized by the later Roman Church because they came into conflict with the purer Church of Christianity – the possession of which was usurped by the Bishops of Rome, but which original continues in its docility [i.e. readiness to submit to guidance and influence] towards the founder, in the Primitive Orthodox Greek Church.”” (HPB, “Old Wine in New Bottles,” posthumously published)

But, remembering HPB’s and the Masters’ dire and repeated warnings about the evils of the Society of Jesus – better known as the Jesuits – within the Roman Catholic Church, one should bear in mind that “The Jesuits . . . have crept even into the Greek Church.” (HPB, “Theosophy or Jesuitism?”)

The Eastern Orthodox Church may be much closer, in many respects, to the earliest official Church of Christianity, but the fact remains that –

“No mystic, whether calling himself Rosicrucian, Cabbalist, Theosophist, Christian, or Buddhist, would either intellectually or spiritually accept the narrow dogmas and intolerant views of the Christian church, even when to some extent cleansed of many of its grosser abuses by the energy of Martin Luther’s Reform.

“The two lines of thought are essentially different. In the case of the Christian, no matter of what denomination, his thoughts are bound down and paralysed within the rigid circle drawn by the materialistic reading of Christ’s birth, life, and death. The true occultist takes those episodes spiritually or allegorically, finding their correspondences within himself as well as in the universe. To say that a human being can at one and the same time be an occultist, and a sectarian Christian, is as impossible as to speak of a Christian Jew. A true Christian, i.e., one who understood and followed absolutely the teachings of Jesus, would be also a true Rosicrucian. Membership of particular churches or societies does not unfortunately endow the individual immediately with the virtue, knowledge or power, that is the theoretical goal of his initial action. Such membership is, or may be, a step in the direction of Divine Wisdom, but one step does not carry him to the summit of the path. Men do not become either Rosicrucians, Christians, or Theosophists merely by joining the Societies working under those particular names. But certain tendencies in their temperaments urge them into the special Society where the mode of thought seems best fitted to help them, to realise the magnitude and glory of the possibilities inherent in their own souls.” (HPB, Review of “The Real History of The Rosicrucians”)

Addressing the Christian clergy in general, HPB utters this challenge, in her article “Sunday Devotion to Pleasure”:

“The Church has lost the key to Wisdom and Truth, and has endeavoured to bolster itself upon authority. The people have educated themselves to ask “Why?” And they will have an answer, or they will reject the Church and its teachings, for they will not accept authority. Religion and its principles must be demonstrated as mathematically as a problem of Euclid. But are you able to do so? Are any of the Church’s dogmas worth any of the tenets of Christ’s Sermon on the Mount, or the similar utterances to be found in all religions? Do you carry them out in their entirety in your lives, as the Episcopi [i.e. translated as “pastors,” “shepherds,” “bishops,” “overseers” etc.] of the Church? Do you, as such, take care that all your clergy do so? You may reply with a counter-question:– “Do you, our critics, do so and set us an example?” Our answer is, that we do not claim to be the “elect” or the “anointed of the Lord.” We are unpretending men and women, endeavouring to carry out the Golden Rule, apart from the ordinances of any form of worship. But you – you occupy a position which makes you an example to all men, and in which you have taken a large responsibility. You stand before the world as exemplifying the effect of the dogmas of the Church you lead. That Church had and has its work to do, but that it has lost its power is plain . . . In the language of your Scripture, how would it be if, as regards your trust, this night an account should be required of you?”

7. WHAT ABOUT MARY MAGDALENE?

Today most people have heard of Mary Magdalene but nowadays this is usually due to the popularity and influence of Dan Brown novels or learning about legends and claims – often having a European medieval origin – that Jesus and Mary Magdalene were married and may have had a child and relocated to France.

But leaving all that aside, anyone who has read through the four Gospels in the Christian Bible will have encountered her name numerous times. She is in fact mentioned by name twelve times in the Gospels, which some say is more frequently than any of the twelve apostles. We have not tried to do such analysis ourselves, however, but the figure of twelve times is accurate. So even if one disregards the still greater emphasis on Mary Magdalene in the Gnostic Gospels, no-one can deny that she must have been an important figure and played a prominent role in Jesus’ entourage.

Unfortunately, just as has happened with a number of other subjects and names over the centuries, the personal opinion and speculation of one of the Catholic Popes has led to the vast majority of Christians of all denominations equating Mary Magdalene with both the unnamed “sinful woman” who is described as anointing Jesus’ feet in Luke 7:36-50 and the unnamed woman “caught in adultery” in John 8:1-11. The Gospels themselves do not say or even suggest or hint that either of those women was Mary Magdalene. It was Pope Gregory I in 591 A.D. who first made that assertion and it took root strongly, even to the extent that most Christians and even non-Christians now automatically associate the name of Mary Magdalene with promiscuity or, more often, prostitution, with her often being thought of as a repentant and reformed prostitute, whereas there is no evidence whatsoever – either historically or Biblically, nor in the Gnostic Gospels, numerous of which greatly revere her – for such an idea. Interestingly, the Eastern Orthodox Church, which we referred to in the preceding section, has always maintained that Mary Magdalene was a virtuous woman all her life and present her simply as a faithful and important disciple, “Equal to the Apostles.”

Curiously, however, both Mark 16:9 and Luke 8:2 make brief mention of her as having had seven demons cast out of her by Jesus. But what that exorcism – if indeed it can be legitimately considered as ever actually having happened – related to is not mentioned. In the Gospels, the casting out of demons or devils often relates merely to sickness and physical infirmity or disability, rather than having to be connected with immoral conduct or sensuality or any type of sin on the part of the possessed person. Luke 8:1-2 says that as Jesus “went on through cities and villages, proclaiming and bringing the good news of the kingdom of God,” his twelve male disciples accompanied him, along with a number of female disciples, apparently fairly wealthy and independent women, since it was they – Mary Magdalene is named first, followed by Joanna and Susanna, about whom nothing more is revealed, “and many others” – “who provided for [Jesus and the twelve] out of their means.”

But what does Theosophy have to say, if anything, about Mary Magdalene?

As we saw earlier, when writing to the Abbé Roca, H. P. Blavatsky speaks of “the year when, according to Renan, the hallucination of a hysterical woman, Mary of Magdala, gave a God to the world.”

And in her article “Progress and Culture” we read:

“Indeed, so long as the Church – the deadliest enemy of the ethics of Christ – was in power, there was hardly any progress at all. It was only after the French Revolution that real culture and civilization had a fair start. Those ladies who claim day after day and night after night with such earnest and passionate eloquence, at “Woman’s Franchise League” meetings, their legitimate share of rights as mothers, wives and citizens, and still attend “divine” service on Sundays – prosecute at best the unprofitable business of boring holes through sea water. . . . It [i.e. the clinging of well-educated and independence-minded women to the Christian Church and religion] is the Karma of the women of our era. It was generated with Mary Magdalene, got into practical expression at the hands of the mother of Constantine, and found an ever renewed strength in every Queen and Empress “by the grace of God.” Judean Christianity owes its life to a woman – une sublime hallucinée [i.e. “a sublime hallucinator”], as Renan puts it. Modern Protestantism and Roman Catholicism owe their illegitimate existence, again, to priest-ridden and church-going women; to the mother who teaches her son his first Bible lesson; to the wife or sister who forces her husband or brother to accompany her to church and chapel; to the emotional and hysterical spinster, the admirer of every popular preacher. And yet the predecessors of the latter have for fifteen centuries degraded women from every pulpit!”

These are references to the book “Vie de Jésus” or “The Life of Jesus,” published by Ernest Renan in 1863. HPB occasionally quotes approvingly from that book and from other writings by Renan but if one looks up all of her mentions of him, they are predominantly negative and critical, sometimes extremely critical of some of his ideas as being warped, materialistic, and excessively sceptical. That applies to his “Life of Jesus,” which she more often criticises than praises, although there are elements brought to light in it which she considers important and useful. Nowadays, Renan’s “Life of Jesus” and some of his other writings are recognised as racially motivated and as being a forefather to some contemporary antisemitic conspiracy theories.

It is indeed the case that in the above two quotes, HPB seems to be endorsing Renan’s idea that Christianity as a religion is derived from hysterical hallucinations experienced by Mary Magdalene. This hardly portrays Mary Magdalene in an elevated or spiritual light.

But if such an assertion is the truth, it renders the larger part of Christian Gnosticism and some of the most important of the Gnostic Gospels – including the Pistis Sophia, so deeply respected and promoted by HPB – null and void.

In HPB’s own commentaries on the Pistis Sophia, she speaks only positively of Mary Magdalene, acknowledging that “Mary, called also Mariham and Maria Magdalena . . . is by far the most intuitive (pneumatic), and the most prominent interlocutor of all the disciples,” and quotes these words attributed to Jesus in the Pistis Sophia: “My Twelve Servants (Diakonoi) shall also be with me, but Mary Magdalene and John the Virgin shall be the most exalted.” Or as that verse of the Pistis Sophia (2:96) says in full, in more recent and accurate translation: “But Mary Magdalene and John, the virgin, will tower over all my disciples and over all the elect who shall receive the mysteries of the ineffable. And they will be on my right and on my left. And I am they, and they are I.” HPB also acknowledges that Origen and others among the more respected early Church Fathers stated that there were Gnostic schools who derived all their knowledge from Mary Magdalene.

At no point in these commentaries – written after the above apparent endorsements of Renan’s opinion – on the Pistis Sophia does HPB say or even suggest that Mary Magdalene was hysterical, or an hallucinator, or someone delusional or unreliable. HPB students are thus left with apparently very contradictory perspectives about Mary in the original Theosophical literature, which necessitates doing one’s own research and forming one’s own opinions, unless one prefers to just leave the whole question unanswered and unexplored, as is one’s right. Either way, one cannot consider it to be an unimportant subject.

During HPB’s era, almost none of the Gnostic Gospels were accessible, the Nag Hammadi discovery of 52 different scriptures or texts not having occurred until 1945, as mentioned earlier. The Pistis Sophia, discovered in 1773, was virtually the only Christian Gnostic text of any significance that was accessible and known to still be extant during her time. It is often considered an expression of Valentinian Gnosticism, i.e. the school of Gnosticism established by Valentinus, who was the best known and one of the very earliest among the Gnostics, living around 100 to 160 A.D./C.E.

In “The Secret Doctrine” HPB speaks of the Pistis Sophia as “the great Valentinian Gospel” (Vol. 2, p. 512) but she and 21st century scholarship seem to agree in not considering it to have actually been written by Valentinus: “Pistis Sophia is an extremely important document, a genuine Evangel of the Gnostics, ascribed at random to Valentinus, . . . In the text itself the authorship of this Book is ascribed to Philip the Apostle, whom Jesus bids to sit down and write the revelation. It is genuine and ought to be as canonical as any other gospel.” (Vol. 2, p. 566) Of the various different forms of Christian Gnosticism, Valentinian Gnosis appears to be that which most closely approaches the Esoteric Philosophy of Theosophy.

The Pistis Sophia is one of the four main Gnostic Gospels which present Mary Magdalene in a very elevated light, as Jesus’ closest, most trusted, and most esoterically advanced and knowledgeable disciple, the other three being The Gospel of Philip, The Dialogue of The Saviour, and The Gospel of Mary Magdalene itself. Historians believe she really was viewed in this way by the majority of Jesus’ male disciples and the later disciples of those disciples, since none of the early Christians had anything to gain from making such a claim; on the contrary, they would have known how emasculating it would be for them in the eyes of others in that part of the world at that time to admit that a woman was more spiritually and philosophically learned and advanced than they . . . yet many of them admitted it nonetheless, which in the historians’ perspective can surely only indicate that it was true.

In the Pistis Sophia, as in the Gospel of Philip, Mary Magdalene is called the “companion” of Jesus. No-one but her is spoken of in this way. This perhaps makes it understandable why many people have assumed that the Gnostic Gospels themselves present her as either the wife or romantic partner of Jesus but no Gnostic Gospel describes or hints at anything romantic, sensual, or sexual in their relationship. It is perfectly possible for even non-Initiates and non-Adepts of the opposite sex to have a powerful spiritual bond and work together in a spiritual mission but in a purely platonic manner. The term “companion” is also a well known term in esoteric phraseology, such as in Masonry, where it is quite common for members of a Masonic lodge or fraternity to address and refer to one another as “companions.” Similarly, after the passing in 1919 of Robert Crosbie, the founder of the United Lodge of Theosophists, an obituary article in the ULT’s “Theosophy” magazine spoke of him as “friend and Companion of William Q. Judge.”

Nonetheless, even if there was some romantic element or aspect of physical attraction between Jesus and Mary Magdalene, who are we to judge? What we object to is the dragging down of Yeshua or Jesus – a great Master of Wisdom and even an Avatar, according to Theosophy, as shown in the first section of this article – to the level of an ordinary sensually-driven person feeling and acting on lustful carnal attractions, which is how quite a lot of people nowadays like to imagine and describe the sacred bond between these two souls.

The Pistis Sophia is essentially a long dialogue in which Jesus answers questions put to him by his disciples, including but not limited to the twelve disciples. But importantly, it is set after the resurrection of Jesus, and claims to summarise the deeply esoteric teachings imparted by Jesus to his disciples over a period of eleven years following the crucifixion and resurrection. The best known and most popular of all the Gnostic Gospels, the Gospel of Thomas, discovered at Nag Hammadi, is also thought by some to be a post-resurrection Gospel. Mary Magdalene is the most featured disciple in the Pistis Sophia and provides many questions and scriptural interpretations, while the Apostle John – called there “John the Virgin” – is the second most prominent. In the Pistis Sophia, Mary Magdalene either asks questions or offers explanations a total of 83 times, while all the other disciples combined only do so a total of 48 times.

Jesus often praises and exalts her in the text. We saw one example several paragraphs ago: “But Mary Magdalene and John, the virgin, will tower over all my disciples and over all the elect who shall receive the mysteries of the ineffable. And they will be on my right and on my left. And I am they, and they are I.” But other instances include: “Mary, thou blessed one, whom I will perfect in all mysteries of those of the height, discourse in openness, thou, whose heart is raised to the kingdom of heaven more than all thy brethren,” and “Well done, Mary. You are more blessed than all women on earth, because you will be the fullness of fullness and the completion of completion.” That last sentence is far more than a word of encouragement or praise; it suggests that incarnated in and as Mary was a great and highly advanced soul with a profoundly important mission and attainment ahead of her.

As in other Gnostic Gospels – including the very last verse of the Gospel of Thomas – Peter or Simon Peter becomes annoyed with and resentful of Mary Magdalene. Here, he complains to Jesus: “My Master, we cannot endure this woman who gets in our way and does not allow any of us to speak, even though she speaks continually.” Mary responds to Peter’s remark by addressing Jesus: “My Master, I understand in my mind that I am allowed to come forward at any time to interpret what Pistis Sophia has said, but I am afraid of Peter, because he threatens me and hates the female gender.” Jesus endeavours to settle the matter with the words: “Any of those filled with the spirit of light are able to come forward to interpret what I say; no-one will be able to prevent them.”

In the Gospel of Philip, we read:

“The companion is Mary of Magdala. Jesus loved her more than his other students. He kissed her often on her face, more than he did all his students, and they said, “Why do you love her more than us?” The Saviour answered, saying to them, “Why do I not love you like her? If a blind man and one who sees are together in darkness, they are the same. When light comes, the one who sees will see light. The blind man stays in darkness.””

In both these passages, from these two Gospels, we see Jesus implying that Mary Magdalene was filled with a quality of light or spiritual perception which none of his other disciples and immediate followers possessed.

While some translations of the Gospel of Philip, such as the above, say that Jesus kissed both her and the other disciples (which mostly consisted of men) on the face, but kissed Mary more than the others, other translations render it as “kissed her often on the mouth, more than he did all his students.” Scholars do not claim to know what is really meant but most suspect that “on the face” is the most accurate translation, since it was apparently perfectly normal in the Middle East at that time for men to greet men as well as women with a kiss on the cheek. But even among those who argue in favour of translating it as “on the mouth,” most do not take this literally and physically, but believe the “kisses of Jesus’ mouth” to symbolically mean the spoken words through which he imparted his esoteric knowledge to his disciples. Either way, it is one more reminder of the exalted position accorded to Mary Magdalene by Jesus.

The Gospel of Mary, also known as the Gospel of Mary Magdalene, was discovered before the Nag Hammadi texts. It was one of the four Gnostic texts constituting the Berlin Codex discovered in 1896, five years after H. P. Blavatsky passed away. These originated in Egypt over 1,500 years ago and were written in a Coptic dialect. The Gospel of Mary is missing large portions and no other version of it has so far been discovered, meaning that we have no idea what it says in its full version. It is apparent that it is set after Jesus had made his final departure from his disciples. From the fragments that are complete we quote the following, taken from the fifth and ninth chapters:

But they were grieved. They wept greatly, saying, “How shall we go to the Gentiles and preach the gospel of the Kingdom of the Son of Man? If they did not spare Him, how will they spare us?”

Then Mary stood up, greeted them all, and said to her brethren, “Do not weep and do not grieve nor be irresolute, for His grace will be entirely with you and will protect you. But rather, let us praise His greatness, for He has prepared us and made us into Men.” [Note: It is obvious that “Men” in this context has some other and deeper meaning than a physiological one, seeing as most of the disciples were male already.]

When Mary said this, she turned their hearts to the Good, and they began to discuss the words of the Saviour.

Peter said to Mary, “Sister, we know that the Saviour loved you more than he loved any other woman. Tell us the words of the Saviour which you remember, which you know, but we do not, nor have we heard them.”

Mary answered and said, “What is hidden from you I will proclaim to you.” And she began to speak to them these words: “I,” she said, “I saw the Lord in a vision and I later said to Him, ‘Lord I saw you today in a vision.’ He answered and said to me, ‘Blessed are you that you did not waver at the sight of Me. For where the mind is there is the treasure.’ I said to Him, ‘Lord, how does he who sees the vision see it, through the soul or through the spirit?’ The Saviour answered and said, ‘He does not see through the soul nor through the spirit, but the mind that is between the two – that is what sees the vision and it is . . . [remainder of the sentence is missing].’” . . .

When Mary had said this, she fell silent, since it was up to this point that the Saviour had spoken with her.

But Andrew answered and said to the brethren, “Say what you wish to say about what she has said. I at least do not believe that the Saviour said this. For certainly these teachings are strange ideas.”

Peter answered and spoke concerning these same things. He questioned them about the Saviour: “Did He really speak privately with a woman and not openly to us? Are we to turn about and all listen to her? Did He prefer her to us?”

Then Mary wept and said to Peter, “My brother Peter, what do you think? Do you think that I have thought this up myself in my heart, or that I am lying about the Saviour?”

Levi [i.e. another name of the Apostle Matthew] answered and said to Peter, “Peter, you have always been hot tempered. Now I see you contending against the woman like the adversaries. But if the Saviour made her worthy, who are you indeed to reject her? Surely the Saviour knows her very well. That is why He loved her more than us. Rather let us be ashamed and put on the perfect Man, and separate as He commanded us and preach the gospel, not laying down any other rule or other law beyond what the Saviour said.”

And when they heard this they began to go forth to proclaim and to preach.

Finally, the Gnostic Gospel known as The Dialogue of The Saviour calls Mary Magdalene “a woman who understood everything.”

As quoted in our compilation on The Elevation of Woman, the Master K.H. once wrote to the English Theosophist A. O. Hume that “On the elevation of woman the world’s redemption and salvation hinge.” Perhaps giving Mary Magdalene her rightful, proper, and original place in the story of Jesus and of early Christianity is an essential component of that, particularly for the West.

~ * ~

We realise it is doubtful that this extensive compilation “Jesus, Christos or The Christ Principle, and Christianity” will have any transformative effect on fundamentalist, evangelical, and closed-minded or dogmatic Christians. It was not written with them in mind but rather for the benefit of the many open-minded, universally oriented, unsectarian, true mystics among the multitudes of Christians. They may constitute only a small minority at present but Theosophy holds that the future of Christianity belongs to them.

~ BlavatskyTheosophy.com ~

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