The Sage of Aquarius: A Centennial Study of the Aquarian Gospel of Jesus the Christ. Robert M. Price
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СКАЧАТЬ power in heaven and earth is thought” (84:22-28). Not faith, as in Mark 12:22-24, but thought. And there is the New Thought emphasis on wishing a thing and exercising divine power to get it, which strikes some as magical: “What he wills to gain he has the power to gain” (14:11).

      If God is within us, so are heaven and hell:

      My brother, man, your thoughts are wrong;

      your heaven is not far away;

      and it is not a place of metes and bounds,

      is not a country to be reached;

      it is a state of mind.

      God never made a heav’n for man;

      he never made a hell; we are

      creators and we make our own.

      Now, cease to seek for heaven in the sky;

      just open up the windows of your hearts,

      and, like a flood of light, a heaven will come

      and bring a boundless joy;

      then toil will be no cruel task. (33:8-10)

      The devil is the greatest power in

      our land, and though a myth, he dan-

      dles on his knee both youth and age. (56:20)

      At one juncture (34:4), when Jesus is sojourning among the Buddhists, and correcting them on a point or two, an interesting question arises, seemingly inevitably: Is Jesus the Buddha come again? “The priests and all the people were astounded at his words and said, ‘Is this not Buddha come again in flesh? No other one could speak with such simplicity and power’” (cf. Matthew 12:23; John 3:2). Of course, the implied answer is both yes and no. He is not Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha of the sixth century BCE, but he is one of that one’s successors, one of the pan-historical chain of Enlightened Ones. He need not be the same man reincarnated. The point is that no one individual need be the focus of Enlightenment—as if, without him coming back, we should be bereft of Enlightenment. If you or I were to give full vent to the Christ-potential we contain, we, too, should be Buddhas, at least Bodhisattvas, ourselves.

      Etheric Ethics

      One cannot really imagine a gospel without ethics, and, so to speak, plenty of them. After all, many people, hearing the word “gospel,” probably think at once: “Sermon on the Mount” and maybe nothing more.

      One thing we seldom find in the traditional gospels is metaethics, the prior thinking on the presuppositions on the basis of which we decide the morality of specific issues. We are used to referring to this lack euphemistically, as if it were a virtue for Jesus to have simply issued moral demands with no thought of an underlying system which we might propound in order to decide new questions on the same principles. By contrast, it is to the credit of our Aquarian evangelist that he has provided an important glimpse of his Jesus’ moral calculus:

      When men defy their consciences

      and listen not to what they say,

      the heart is grieved and they become

      unfitted for the work of life;

      and thus they sin. The conscience may

      be taught. One man may do in con-

      science what another cannot do.

      What is a sin for me to do

      may not be sin for you to do.

      The place you occupy upon

      the way of life determines what is sin.

      There is no changeless law of good;

      for good and evil both are judged

      by other things. One man may fast

      and in his deep sincerity

      of heart is blest. Another man

      may fast and in the faithlessness

      of such a task imposed is cursed.

      You cannot make a bed to fit

      the form of every man. If you

      can make a bed to fit yourself

      you have done well. (119:19-22)

      We catch, I believe, a hint of Aristotelian-style moral relativism whereby a broader principle is ever tailored to the individual’s particular abilities, needs, and options. The immediate inspiration for the passage may have been Romans chapter 14.

      At the same time, there appear to be some absolutes on which Jesus Aquarius is not willing to budge. At 74:24, we are enjoined to practice the Hindu-Jainist ethic of ahimsa, or non-harm.

      Whoever is not kind to every form of life –

      to man, to beast, to bird, and creeping thing –

      cannot expect the blessings of the Holy One;

      for as we give, so God will give to us.

      One wonders how the evangelist proposed to square this practice with the flexibility he allowed in the just-mentioned case of food. Surely it cannot be a private option whether or not to devour meat if I must already have sworn off shedding the blood of my animal cousins.

      But we may in the last analysis leave such calculations to karma. Justice will be served. Good and bad karma alike shall be accrued, and the Universe itself shall know how to value each good or bad deed, doling out reward or punishment accordingly. God need not trouble his wise head figuring out who was naughty or nice and designing his list accordingly. The calculations are run unthinkingly by the innate machinery of the universe. Chapter 114 sets forth the doctrine of karma and theodicy. Poor mortals are tempted to despair of justice in the world, chafing at their own fates or those of others. We accuse God or life or the world of being unfair. Jesus laments such worm’s-eye-view sentiments. How sad that only he can behold the Big Picture, the record of past incarnations passing unremembered like water under a bridge. If we could steal a glance at the scandals of the past, or the virtues, we should rest satisfied with the verdicts being meted out in this present life. For a man’s life does not consist in the number of years he amasses in a single lifetime.

      I believe I see in 105:28-32 a passage advocating good, honest Nietzscheanism: admit your hate rather than hiding it behind a pathetic tissue of phony forgiveness! Sin boldly! It’s not the worst thing you could do!

      You men, do not deceive yourselves

      in thought; your hearts are known;

      Hypocrisy will blight a soul

      as surely as the breath of Beel-ze-bub.

      An honest evil man is more esteemed

      by guardians of the soul than a

      dishonest СКАЧАТЬ