Essene roots of Christianity
At the time of Jesus of Nazareth
there were two major currents
or sects within Judaism: the Pharisees and the Sadducees.
The Pharisees were extremely
concerned with strict external observance of their interpretation
of the Mosaic Law, ritual worship, and theology. The Sadducees, on the
other hand, were very little concerned with any of these and
tended toward a kind of genteel agnosticism. Today these two groups might be compared with the Orthodox and the Reformed branches of Judaism respectively. There was also a third sect which
both was and was not part of Judaism. They were the Essenes, whose very name means “the Outsiders.” (“Essene” is the Greek equivalent of the Hebrew Chitsonim –“the outsiders.” Since Philo and other Jewish historians used “Essene” in writing about them, that has become the common usage.) Whether they chose this name for themselves or whether it was applied to them by the disdainful Pharisees and Sadducees is not known.
But that they were incongruent (even incompatible) to the normal life of Israel at that time is certainly known. Jesus of Nazareth was an Essene, as were most of his followers, including the twelve Apostles. When Jesus said “I will build my church” (Matthew 16:18), the word used in the Greek text of the Gospels is ecclesia , which literally means “the called out” or “the separated” in the sense of “the aliens.” It is not far-fetched, then, to wonder if the correct translation should not be: “I will establish My Essenes .” Many elements distinguished and even separated the Essenes from the rest of Israel. Their claims about their very existence was certainly a controversial matter. For the Essenes averred that Moses had
created them as a secret fraternity
within Judaism, with Aaron and his descendants at their head. The prophet Jeremiah was a Master of
the Essenes, and it was in his lifetime that they ceased to be a
secret society and became a public
entity. From that time many of the Essenes began living in communities. Isaiah and Saint John
the Baptist were also Masters of the
Essenes. Their purpose was to follow a totally esoteric religious philosophy and practice that was
derived from the Egyptian Mysteries. As the grandson of the
Pharaoh, Moses had been an
initiate of those mysteries and destined to ultimately become the
head of the Egyptian religion. It was common in Egypt for the eldest son of the Pharaoh to inherit the throne, and the next eldest son to be made the head of the Egyptian religion. Although Moses was the only son of the Pharaoh’s daughter, he was adopted and his bloodline was not known. For this reason he could not be Pharaoh, but he could be put into the position usually given to the second son. The Egyptian Mysteries were themselves derived from the religion of India:
Sanatana Dharma, the Eternal
Religion. Because of this the Essenes had always maintained
some form of contact and interchange with India–a fact that
galled their fellow Israelites.
Regarding this, Alfred Edersheim,
in his nineteenth century classic
"The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah" , wrote: “Their fundamental tendency was quite other than that of Pharisaism, and strongly tinged with Eastern elements.”
The reality of this contact with
India is shown in the Zohar (2:188a b), a compilation of ancient Jewish mystical traditions and the major text of the Jewish Kabbalah. It contains the following incident regarding the knowledge of an illumined rabbi concerning the religion of India and the Vedic religious rite known as the sandhya, which is an offering of prayers at dawn and sunset for enlightenment.
“Rabbi Yose and Rabbi Hiyya were
walking on the road. While they
were walking, night fell; they sat
down. While they were sitting, morning began to shine; they rose
and walked on. Rabbi Hiyya said,
‘See, the face of the East, how it shines! Now all the children of the
East [in India], who dwell in the
mountains of light [the Himalayas],
are bowing down to this light, which shines on behalf of the sun before it comes forth, and they are worshipping it.…Now you might
say: ‘This worship is in vain!’ but
since ancient, primordial days they
have discovered wisdom through
it.” Their contact and interchange with Indian religion–Brahminical
practices in particular–were manifested in several ways among the Essenes:
1. They practiced strict non- violence.
2. They were absolute vegetarians and would not touch alcohol in any form. Nor would they eat any food cooked by a non-Essene.
(Edersheim says: “Its adherents
would have perished of hunger rather than join in the meals of the outside world.”)
3. They refused to wear anything of animal origin, such as leather or wool, usually making their clothes of linen.
4. They rejected animal sacrifice, insisting that the Torah had not originally ordered animal sacrifice, but that its text had been corrupted–in regard to that and many other practices as well. Their assertion was certainly corroborated by passages in the scriptures such as: “Will I eat the flesh of bulls, or drink the blood of goats?” (Psalms 50:13). “To what purpose [is] the multitude of your sacrifices unto me? saith the Lord:…I delight not in the blood of bullocks, or of lambs, or of he goats” (Isaiah 1:11). “For I spake not unto your fathers, nor commanded them in the day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt, concerning burnt offerings or sacrifices” (Jeremiah 7:22).
The quotation from Isaiah is
particularly relevant since he
was himself the Master of the Essenes.
It was the Essenes’ contention
that the “animals” originally
offered in sacrifice weresymbolic effigies of animals that represented the particular failing or fault from which the offerer wished to be freed. Appollonius of Tyana taught this same thing in relation to the ancient Greek sacrifices, and urged a return to that form. Long before that, in India dough effigies were offered in “sacrifice.
” (See page 42 of Ganesha , by Chitralekha Singh and Prem Nath,published by Crest PublishingHouse of New Delhi.)
In the Essene practice, each person molded the effigies with his own hands, while praying and concentrating deeply on the traits he wished to have corrected, feeling that it was being transferred into the image. The effigies were made of five substances: powdered frankincense, flour, water, olive oil, and salt. When these had dried, they were taken to the tabernacle whose altar was a metal structure with a grating over the top and hot coals within. The effigies were laid upon this grating and burnt by the intense heat. As they burned, through the force of the heat the olive oil and frankincense liquefied and boiled or seeped upward. This fragrant liquid was called “the blood” of the sacrifice. It was this with which Moses consecrated the tabernacle, its equipment, and the priests (Exodus 24:6,8), not animal blood. And it was just such a “lamb” whose “blood” was sprinkled on the doorposts in Egypt (Exodus 12:7).
For the Passover observance,
the Essenes would bake a lamb
effigy using the same ingredients–except for the frankincense they would substitute honey and cinnamon. (Or, lacking honey, they would use a kind of raisin syrup.) This was the only paschal lamb acceptable to them–and therefore to Jesus and His Apostles.
Consequently, the Essenes refused to worship in Jerusalem, but maintained their own tent tabernacle on Mount Carmel made according to the original directions given to Moses on Mount Sinai. They considered the Jerusalem temple unacceptable because it was a stone structure built according to Greco-Roman style rather than the simple and humble tabernacle form given to Moses–a form that symbolized both the physical and psychic makeup of the human being. Further, the Jerusalem temple was built by Herod who, completely subservient to Rome, disdained Judaism and practiced a kind of Roman agnostic piety.
Because of this the temple was
ritually unclean in their estimation. They placated the Jerusalem Temple priests by sending them large donations of money. On occasion they gave useful animals to the Temple in Jerusalem, but only with the condition that they would be allowed to live out their natural span of life.
5. They interpreted the Torah
and other Hebrew scriptures
in an almost exclusively spiritual, symbolic, andmetaphysical manner, as didthe Alexandrian Jewish philosopher Philo. They also had esoteric writings of their own which they would not allow non-Essenes to see. But even more objectionable to the other Hebrews was their study and acceptance of “alien” scriptures–the holy books of other religions–so much so that an official condemnation was made of this practice. In light of this we can say that the Essenes were perhaps the first in recorded history to hold a universal, eclectic view of religion.
6. Celibacy was prized by
them, being often observed even in marriage, and many of them led monastic lives of total renunciation.
7. They considered their male
and female members–all of whom were literate–to be spiritual equals, and both sexes were prophets and teachers among them. This, too, was the practice in Hinduism at that time, women also wearing the sacred thread.
8. They denied the doctrine of
the physical resurrection of the dead at the end of time, which was held by some Pharisees-who usually believed in reincarnation–and later became a tenet of Mediterranean Christianity.
9. They believed in reincarnation and the law of karma and the ultimate reunion of the soul with God.
This is clearly indicated by the
Apostles asking Jesus about a
blind man: “Master, who did
sin, this man, or his parents,
that he was born blind?” (John 9:2. See May a Christian Believe in Reincarnation? ).
10. They believed that the sun
was a divine manifestation, imparting spiritual powers to both body and mind. They faced the rising and setting sun and recited prayers of worship, refusing, upon rising in the morning, to speak a single word until the conclusion of those prayers.
They did not consider the sun
was a god, but a symbol of the
One God of Light and Life. It was, though, felt that appropriate prayers directed toward the sun would evoke a divine response. (See Jesus’ words to the king of Kashmir as recorded in the Bhavishya Maha Purana that are given later on.)
11. They believed in both
divination and the powers of prophecy.
12. They believed in the power
of occult formulas, or mantras, as well as esotericrituals, and practiced theurgy (spiritual “magic”) with them.
13. They believed in astrology,
cast horoscopes, and made “magical” amulets of plants
and gems according to astrological aspects. They also believed that angels had taught Moses the practice of herbalism.
14. They believed that miraculous cures were natural extensions of authentic spiritual life.
15. They would wear only
white clothes as a sign that
they worshipped God Who is
Light and were clothed by Him
in light. This so provoked the
other Israelites that praying in
white clothing was prohibited by the Pharisees and Sadducees, and laws were drafted accordingly. (The Mishnah begins with such a prohibition.) The disciples of Saint Thomas in India had a similar rule, only wearing white clothes in worship.
16. They observed the identical
rules of purity (shaucha/ shuddhi) as the Brahmins in India at that time, especially in the matter of bathing frequently.
17. They practiced the strictest
adherence to truthfulness.
(Travelers in past centuries
cited the strict adherence to truth by the Brahmins of India as a great and admirable wonder.)
It should also be noted that most of
these Brahminical practices were
observed by Buddhists as well, so it
is not out of place to consider that
the Essenes–and Jesus and His
disciples–possessed the qualities of
both Hindu and Buddhist religion
in “the West” at that time.
From all this we can see why Edersheim states that “In respect of
doctrine, life, and worship, it [the
Essene community] really stood
outside Judaism.” As a result of
these differences from ordinary
Judaism, the Essenes lived totally
apart from their fellow Hebrews,
usually in separate communities or
in communal houses in the towns
and cities. (The supposed “communal experiment” in the
book of Acts (4:32) was really a
continuation of the Essene way of
life. The Last Supper took place in
just such an Essene “house.”)
The History of Isha Messiah–Jesus
the Christ
Among the Essenes of Israel at the
threshold of the Christian Era, none were better known or respected than Joachim and Anna of Nazareth. Joachim was noted for his great piety, wealth, and charity. The richest man in Israel, his practice was to annually divide his increase into thirds, giving one third to the temples of Carmel and Jerusalem and one third to the poor, keeping only one third for himself. Anna was a renowned prophetess and teacher among the Essenes. Their daughter Mary [Miryam], Who had been conceived miraculously beneath the Holy of Holies of the Temple, had passed thirteen years of her life as a Temple virgin until her espousal to Joseph of Nazareth. Before their marriage was performed, She was discovered to have conceived supernaturally, and in time She gave birth to a son in a cave of Bethlehem. His given name was Jesus (Yeshua in Aramaic and Yahoshua in Hebrew).
This Son of Miryam was as
miraculous as his mother, and
astounding wonders were worked
and manifested daily in his life–for
the preservation of which his
parents took him into Egypt for some years where they lived with
the various Essene communities
there. But before that flight, when
the child had been about three years old, sages from India (Matthew 2:1, 2) had come to pay
him homage and to establish a link
of communication with him, for his destiny was to live most of his life with them in the land of Eternal Dharma before returning to Israel as a messenger of the very illumination that had originally
been at the heart of the Essene
order. Through the intermediary of
merchants and travelers both to
and from India, contact was maintained with their destined disciple.
At the age of twelve, during the
passover observances on Mount
Carmel (not in Jerusalem), Jesus
petitioned the elders of the Essenes for initiation–something bestowed only on adults after careful instruction and scrutiny. Because of his well-known supernatural character, the elders examined him
before all those present. Not only could he answer all their questions
perfectly, when the examination
was ended he began to examine
them , putting to them questions and statements that were utterly beyond their comprehension. In this l way he demonstrated that the Essene order had nothing whatever to teach him, and that there was no
need for him to undergo any initiation or instruction from them. Upon his return to Nazareth preparations were begun for his
journeying into India to formally
become a disciple of those masters
who had come to him nine years before. The necessary preliminaries
being completed, Jesus of Nazareth
set forth on a spiritual pilgrimage
that would end at the feet of the
three masters who would transform Jesus the Nazarene into Isha the Lord, the Teacher of Dharma and Messiah of Israel. Nicholas Roerich, in his book Himalaya:
A Monograph , said that according to the Tibetan scrolls he found in 1925, Isha was thirteen when he left for India. The Nathanamavali of the Nath Yogis, which we will be considering later on, says that Isha reached India when he was fourteen.
The spiritual training of Jesus
In India the masters initiated Jesus
into yoga and the highest spiritual
life, giving him the spiritual name
“Isha,” which means Lord, Master,
or Ruler, a descriptive title often
applied to God. It is also a title of
Shiva. The masters also instructed Jesus in the form his spiritual teachings should take and the specific yogic practices that should be given to his disciples. It was also decided that one of those disciples should be sent to India for the identical spiritual empowerment and instruction that was being imparted to Jesus.
For some time Jesus meditated in a
cave north of the present-day city
of Rishikesh, one of the most sacred
locales of India. In the years He
spent in the Himalayas, He attained
the supreme heights of realization.
To augment the teachings he had
received in the Himalayas, Jesus
was sent to live in Benares, the
sacred city of Shiva. The worship of Shiva The worship of Shiva centered in the form of the natural elliptical
stone known as the Shiva Linga
(Symbol of Shiva) was a part of the
spiritual heritage of Jesus, for His
ancestor Abraham, the father of
the Hebrew nation, was a worshipper of that form. The Linga which he worshipped is today enshrined in Mecca within the
Kaaba. The stone, which is black in
color, is said to have been given to Abraham by the Archangel Gabriel,
who instructed him in its worship.
Such worship did not end with Abraham, but was practiced by his
grandson Jacob, as is shown in the
twenty-eighth chapter of Genesis.
Unwittingly, because of the dark,
Jacob used a Shiva Linga for a pillow and consequently had a vision of Shiva standing above the Linga which was symbolically seen as a ladder to heaven by means of which devas (shining ones) were coming and going. Recalling the devotion of Abraham and Isaac, Shiva spoke to Jacob and blessed him to be an ancestor of the Messiah. Upon awakening, Jacob declared that God was in that place though he had not realized it. The light of dawn revealed to him that his pillow had been a Shiva Linga, so he set it upright and worshipped it with an oil bath, as is traditional in the worship of Shiva, naming it (not the place) Bethel: the Dwelling of God. (In another account in the thirty-fifth chapter, it is said that Jacob “poured a drink offering thereon, and he poured oil thereon.” This, too, is a traditional form of worship and offering.) From thenceforth that place became a place of pilgrimage and worship of Shiva in the form of the Linga stone. Later Jacob had another vision of Shiva, Who told him: “I am the God of Bethel, where thou anointedst the pillar, and where thou vowedst a vow unto me” (Genesis 31:13). A perusal of the Old Testament will reveal that Bethel was the spiritual center for the descendants of Jacob, even above Jerusalem.
Although this tradition of Shiva
[Linga] worship has faded from the
memory of the Jews and Christians,
in the nineteenth century it was evidenced in the life of the stigmatic Anna Catherine Emmerich, an Augustinian Roman Catholic nun. On several occasions when she was deathly ill, angelic beings brought her crystal Shiva Lingas which they had her worship by pouring water over them. When she drank that water she would be perfectly cured. Furthermore, on major Christian holy days she would have out-of body experience in which she would be taken to Hardwar, a city sacred to Shiva in the foothills of the Himalayas, and from there to Mount Kailash, the traditional abode of Shiva, which she said was the spiritual heart of the world.
Benares and Jagannath Puri
Benares, the spiritual heart of
India, was the major center of
Vedic learning. During his time in
the Himalayas, Jesus’ endeavors
had been centered almost
exclusively on the practice of yoga.
In Benares Jesus engaged in intense
study of the spiritual texts of Sanatana Dharma, especially the
upanishads and the Bhagavad Gita–
which he later quoted in his discourses in Israel.When Jesus had come to the point where the acharyas of Benares were satisfied with his level of tscriptural and philosophical knowledge, he was sent to the sacred city of Jagannath Puri, which at that time was a great center of the worship of Shiva, second only to Benares. In Puri Jesus lived some time in the famous Govardhan Math, today a major center of the monastic order of the foremost philosopher-saint of India known as Adi Shankaracharya.
There he perfected the synthesis of
yoga, philosophy and renunciation,
and began to publicly teach the
Eternal Dharma. In the nineteen-
fifties, the former head of the Govardhan Math, and head of the
entire monastic Swami Order of Shankaracharya, Jagadguru Bharat
Krishna Tirtha, claimed that he had discovered “incontrovertible historical evidence” that Jesus had
lived in the Govardhan Math as well as in other places of India. He was writing a book on the subject, but died before it could be finished. Unfortunately the fate of his manuscript and research is presently unknown.
As a teacher Jesus was as popular
as he was proficient in teaching, and gained great notoriety among
all levels of society. However, those who were making religion into a business became intensely jealous and even began to plot his death. Therefore he left Puri and returned to the Himalayan regions. There final instructions were given him regarding his mission in the West and the way messages could be sent between Jesus and his Indian teachers. Jesus also lived in various Buddhist monasteries in the Himalayan region at this time.
Jesus was aware of the form and
purpose of his death from his very
birth. But it was the Indian masters
who made everything clear to him
regarding them. They promised
Jesus that he would be sent a container of Himalayan Balsam to
be poured upon his head by a close
disciple as a sign that his death was
imminent, even “at the door.” When Saint Mary Magdalene performed this action in Bethany, Jesus understood the unspoken message, saying: “She is come a forehand to anoint my body to the burying” (Mark 14:8).
Return to the West
Jesus then set forth on his return journey to Israel with the blessings
of the masters. All along his way,
Jesus taught those who were drawn
to his spiritual magnetism and who
sought his counsel in the divine life. He promised that after some years he would be sending them one of his disciples who would give them even more knowledge and benefit.
Arriving in Israel, Jesus went directly to the Jordan where his cousin John, the Master of the Essenes, was baptizing. There his Christhood was revealed to John and those who had “the eyes to see and the ears to "hear” (Deuteronomy 29:4). In this
way His brief mission to Israel was
begun. Its progress and conclusion
are well known, so we need not recount it here except to rectify one point.
Misunderstanding becomes a Religion
Throughout the Gospels we see that
the disciples of Jesus consistently
misunderstood his speaking of
higher spiritual matters. When he
spoke of the sword of wisdom they
showed him swords of metal to
assure him they were well equipped (Luke 22:36-38). When he warned them against the “leaven” of the Scribes and Pharisees they thought he was complaining that they did not have any bread (Mark 8:15,16). Is it any wonder, then that he said to them: “Perceive ye not yet, neither understand? have ye your heart yet hardened? Having eyes, see ye not? and having ears, hear ye not? How is it that ye do not understand?” (Mark 8:17, 18, 21). Even in the moment of his final departure from them, their words showed that they still believed the kingdom of God was an earthly political entity and not the realm of spirit (Acts 1:6).
This being so, the Gospels
themselves must be approached
with grave caution and with the
awareness that Jesus was not the
creator of a new religion, but a
messenger of the Eternal Religion
he had learned in India. As a priest
of the Saint Thomas Christian Church of South India once
commented to me: “You cannot
understand the teachings of Jesus if
you do not know the scriptures of
India.” And if you do know the
scriptures of India you can see where–however well-intentioned
they may have been–the authors of the Gospels often completely missed
the point and garbled the words
and ideas they heard from Jesus,
even attributing to him incidents
from the life of Buddha (such as
the Widow’s Mite) and mistaking
his quotations from the Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gita and the Dhammapada for doctrines original to him. For example, the opening verse of the Gospel of John, which has been cited through the centuries as proof of the unique
character and mission of Jesus, is
really a paraphrase of the Vedic
verse: “In the beginning was Prajapati, and with Him was the
Word.” (Prajapati vai idam agra
asit. Tasya vak dvitiya asit. Krishna
Yajurveda, Kathaka Samhita, 12.5,
27.1; Krishna Yajurveda, Kathakapisthala Samhita, 42.1;
Jaiminiya Brahmana II, Samaveda,
2244). Having confused Christ with Jesus, things could only go downhill for them and their followers until the
true Gospel of Christ was buried
beneath two millennia of confusion
and theological debris.
Return to India–NOT ASCENSION
It is generally supposed that at the
end of his ministry in Israel Jesus
ascended into heaven. But Saint
Matthew and Saint John, the two
Evangelists that were eye-witnesses
of his departure, do not even mention such a thing, for they
knew that he returned to India
after departing from them. Saint
Mark and Saint Luke, who were not
there, simply speak of Jesus being
taken up into the heavens. The
truth is that he departed to India,
though it is not unlikely that he did
rise up and “fly” there. This form of
travel is not unknown to the Indian
yogis.
That Jesus did not leave the world
at the age of thirty-three was
written about by Saint Irenaeus of
Lyon in the second century. He
claimed that Jesus lived to be fifty
or more years old before leaving
the earth, though he also said that
Jesus was crucified at the age of
thirty-three. This would mean that
Jesus lived twenty years after the
crucifixion. This assertion of Saint
Irenaeus has puzzled Christian
scholars for centuries, but if we put
it together with other traditions it
becomes comprehensible. Basilides
of Alexandria, Mani of Persia, and
Julian the Emperor said that Jesus
had gone to India after His
crucifixion.
Why did Jesus return to India?
Anna Catharine Emmerich said that
in her visions of Jesus’ life she
clearly saw that in India Jesus
loved the people and was wholeheartedly loved in return.
Even more, everyone there understood everything Jesus had to
say and teach. In contrast, he was
little liked in Israel and virtually
no one knew what he was talking
about. This would certainly be an
inducement to return. There may
be another reason.
Some contemporary anthropologists and historians believe that Abraham
was a member of the Yadava clan
of Western India, the family of
Krishna, who disappeared from
India after Krishna’s departure
from this world. Swami Bhaktivedanta, founder of the Hare
Krishna movement said the same.
If this is so, then Jesus was really
returning to the homeland of his
ancestors.
And finally, Jesus may have
realized that his teachings could
only be preserved in the context of
Eastern religion and philosophy.
An ancient Chinese text on the
history of religions and their doctrines, known as The Glass
Mirror, had this to say about Lord Isha (Jesus) and His teachings:
“Yesu, the teacher and founder of
the religion, was born miraculously.…His doctrines did not spread extensively, but survived only in Asia .”
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