Esoteric Christianity, or The Lesser MysteriesBesant, Annie
Religion
Esoteric Christianity, or The Lesser Mysteries
Besant, Annie
Christianity -- Miscellanea; Mysticism; Theosophy
Moreover these same disciples and their earliest colleagues wrote down
from memory all the public sayings and parables of the Master that they
had heard, and collected with great eagerness any reports they could
find, writing down these also, and circulating them all among those who
gradually attached themselves to their small community. Various
collections were made, any member writing down what he himself
remembered, and adding selections from the accounts of others. The inner
teachings, given by the Christ to His chosen ones, were not written
down, but were taught orally to those deemed worthy to receive them, to
students who formed small communities for leading a retired life, and
remained in touch with the central body.
The historical Christ, then, is a glorious Being belonging to the great
spiritual hierarchy that guides the spiritual evolution of humanity, who
used for some three years the human body of the disciple Jesus; who
spent the last of these three years in public teaching throughout Judæa
and Samaria; who was a healer of diseases and performed other remarkable
occult works; who gathered round Him a small band of disciples whom He
instructed in the deeper truths of the spiritual life; who drew men to
Him by the singular love and tenderness and the rich wisdom that
breathed from His Person; and who was finally put to death for
blasphemy, for teaching the inherent Divinity of Himself and of all men.
He came to give a new impulse of spiritual life to the world; to
re-issue the inner teachings affecting spiritual life; to mark out again
the narrow ancient way; to proclaim the existence of the "Kingdom of
Heaven," of the Initiation which admits to that knowledge of God which
is eternal life; and to admit a few to that Kingdom who should be able
to teach others. Round this glorious Figure gathered the myths which
united Him to the long array of His predecessors, the myths telling in
allegory the story of all such lives, as they symbolise the work of the
Logos in the Kosmos and the higher evolution of the individual human
soul.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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