What role did vegetarianism play in early Christianity, did it play a role at all? What is it’s deep philosophy, and how significant is it’s message to the modern theosophical movement?
What can the symbolism of the Bible tell us about it if properly understood?Some 500 years before Jesus appearance another enlightened being had already come across that same question, Prince Gautama of India; solving this problem led him to the first step on the path to Buddha-hood we are told. This event is well described in the little jewel of a book “The Light of Asia” by Sir Edwin Arnold roughly like this:
The king wanted to show his son the riches of spring in nature, everything spoke of peace and plenty and at first Gautama rejoiced, it is said. But then he looked deeper and saw all the thorns which grew on the rose of life; how hard the peasants were working to earn a living, how every animal ate a smaller one and was in tern eaten by a bigger one, that each slew a slayer and in turn was slain. Life living upon death was a grim conspiracy of mutual murder, a constant war between week and strong for survival from worm to man. There was no refuge even in water.
Gautama was deeply irritated by this insight and overwhelmed by compassion and love for all living things, and he meditated about this deep disease of life, it’s source and it’s remedy for many hours, until his spirit attained Dhyana, the first step on the path to enlightenment.
Could Jesus have been any different as the celebrated Saviour of the World by Christianity, which influenced our Western Society so fundamentally?
Among the unpublished notes and papers of the great German Theosophist Beatrice Flemming, who died in 1986, I found two poems, who’s authors are unknown, which complement the subject of this talk perfectly. With one of them I will start the investigation of vegetarianism in early Christianity, it will probably shake your heart deeply; the second one I will read at the end of this talk, it might even break your heart. … (Appendix I: “Easter of the Animals”)
I vividly remember the day when my heart was hit with a thunderbolt of lightning in my early twenties, watching a cow’s desperate attempt to escape it’s fate in the delivery area of a slaughter house next to the Company where I worked. This big animal managed to jump over a fence, landed deep down on the rails of our commercial transport-system, broke all it’s legs and screamed in total agony.
Being born and raised in a typical devoted Christian family, I got the shock of my life, and I was determined to find answers to my deep nagging question, if these frightened, suffering and slaughtered animals were really meant to be our food. If there was a god somewhere in the universe, agreeing with all of this, he must be a monster, I thought, and I started my research for answers to my question.
The Bible did not seem of much help at first sight; the Old Testament seems to be literally dripping with blood from god-pleasing sacrifices. Even the pure and only son of this God was meant for slaughter to redeem us hopeless lot. But was that really true?
And what about Jesus with all the fish he freely distributed, the Easter lamb he was supposed to have eaten, and the gallons of wine he happily produced, but did he really?
I found one of the most interesting sources for research into vegetarian Christianity where I least expected it, a Minister of the Evangelical Lutherian Church, an extraordinary man, Dr. Carl Anders Skriver. His University Studies had culminated in a doctorate for which he wrote a thesis on Sanskrit Vedic Literature. He was a great opponent of Hitler’s Nazi Regime, was arrested in 1943, survived his ordeal, became a life member of the British Vegan Society, wrote several books, which he partly published with the help of family and friends himself, because they were so disturbing for the established churches, that no editor dared to take them on.
Skriver’s familiarity with Eastern Scriptures, his purity of life, his knowledge of ancient languages and total dedication to his course led him to a new and unique interpretation of well known sections in the Bible. As with the Alexandrian Philaletheians, there was no Religion higher than truth for him as also adopted by the TS; and it agrees with the famous saying in the Dhammapada, a Pali collection of discourses attributed to Buddha and his closest disciples, in the fourth collection called Anguttara Nikaya, not just to believe in what we have heard, or because it is tradition handed down many generations, or being written down by some old sage; not just to believe in conjecture, authorities, teachers and elders, but after careful observation and analysis, when it agrees with reason and will benefit one and all, then accept it and live by it.
A main problem with the traditional Bible translations is the ignorance of the metaphysical character of it’s symbolism. In an attempt to make it mono-theistic, the many different operating creative agencies or forces is ignored. All of them end up under the term “God”. Dr. Skriver uses for his translations many scriptures in their earliest written forms, mainly Greek, Hebrew and Aramaeic texts. Comparing them he comes of course very often to quite different wordings, interpretations and conclusions.
The book of Genesis should have actually started with what is now chapter 2 and 3, where we are dealing with the garden of Eden. It is a pre-cosmic stage before materialization of the world, where we find totally different circumstances. Here the development starts from above rather than from below. Human beings are not last, but the first born (exactly what Theosophy teaches us today). Man is an androgynous symbiosis of man and woman, humanity develops before the animals, who do have some similar characteristics, but since no equal partner for a human being can be found among them, man is separated into two sexes in a kind of metaphysical narcosis.
Humans are purely spiritual beings, they have no material body yet, they are “naked or undressed”. Earth is still of subtle material, there are mythical trees like the tree of knowledge of good and evil and the tree of life, the Lord of the gods called Jahwe, the highest deity of the Jewish religious system, puts man into the garden of Eden to care for it (logically there must have been several other gods, otherwise there would not have been the need for an Over-Lord), man’s sole food are the fruits of the trees, only the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil are forbidden.
But disaster strikes, when through the diabolic power of a snake Paradise is lost. HPB tells us in the SD, that Jehova, one of the seven creative forces or Elohim, is also the serpent or dragon that tempted Eve, a dragon being an old glyph for Astral Light, the primordial principle, which is the “wisdom of chaos” on the plane of matter in contrast to the embodiment of divine wisdom in the region of the spiritual.
Next we plunge right into chapter I of Genesis and into the world of matter, where not the Lord of the gods creates heaven and earth, but the Elohim, the seven creative spirits or forces from the lower centres of consciousness or Sephiroth in kabbalistic terms. The animals come first, then the human beings already separated into two sexes.
But the Elohim are in harmony with the spiritual prototype of man concerning his food. It is a bit coarser than in Paradise, including not only fruit, but also green herbs as well as plants and trees that yield seeds, and this vegan food is not only meant for humans, but also for every kind of animal on the planet, which is completely overlooked in our modern Christian Society.
Dr. Skriver gives additional wider and deeper commentaries and references from other world scriptures, I can only touch here on the main subjects and characters symbolizing the unfoldment of humanity according to the Bible’s symbolism and his interpretation.
When we come to Cain and Abel, Skrivers insight is quite remarkable again. He does not see their story as a pre-historical event somewhere, but as a drama in mythical space, the brotherly argument as a first religious discussion which has a deadly ending; it is much more profound than generally understood and accepted as we shall see.
We all know what happened: As the first mortal children of Humanity or Adam and Eve, Cain became a farmer, still connected with the gardening vocation and plant food. Abel on the other hand was experimenting with animal husbandry, where the temptation to exploit animals is closely linked. He might have been a good shepherd at the outset without bad intentions, but one does not keep animals “in prison” without any intention of exploitation.
One day inside these two human children the idea of sacrifice was born, an attempt of humans, to come closer to Jahwe or the source of their being again. In trying to catch Jahwe’s attention by sacrifices in order to re-connect, re-ligio or religion is born, from the latin verb religare or re-connect. It is already a sign of their distance from their source of being, a mental derangement which can only remember vaguely what had been. In Paradise there was no sacrifice, and in the future kingdom of god there will be no temples, altars, priests or sacrifices any more, but direct communication with the source of our being as in Paradise the Bible tells us later on.
The first problem with the narrative of Cain and Abel is a wrong translation in the Lutherean as well as the King James Bible, where it is said, that god looked respectfully on Abel’s sacrifice but not on Cain’s. The word respectful does not appear in the original Hebrew script, nor in Greek or Latin translations or any other European language, Skriver tells us. Later on the prophets emphasize again and again, that god rejects every cultic sacrifice in what ever form.
So what happened? Jahwe must have been very surprised, that humans came up with the ridiculous idea of pleasing him by sacrifices. The plants Cain offered from his harvest as a kind of thanks giving were relatively harmless, and he did not pay much attention. But when Abel started to murder the animals, shedding their blood, the dismemberment of their bodies and offering their fatty parts to the deity, Jahwe “looked back” in disbelieve. Skriver tells us, that the word in question here is the verb sha-ah, looking for help restlessly, as if he wanted to make sure what the opinion of his companions in paradise might be, because Abel’s sacrifice was a new and hair-raising event.
To cut the story short, Abel was already indifferent to sentient pain, and when his brother got into an argument about this with him, he would not listen. Unfortunately Cain lost his temper, hit too hard and killed his own brother, the first murder of a human being.
When Jahwe talks to him later on, Cain is deeply repentant (in contrast to Abel, who would not listen to his brother) and he forgives him, although his punishment was severe, which meant a constant menace to life, and as we can see today, it progressed into a permanent deterioration of the world. The once harmless and vegetarian creation turned more and more into a carnivorous and corrupt world.
What this means is explained in the apocryphal Book of Jubilees, an explanation of Genesis, probably from the first Century BC, where it says “The violence increased on earth, and all flesh corrupted its way – human beings as well as big animals, smaller animals as well as birds, and all the creatures which wander on earth. They were all transformed and corrupted in their nature and in their customs, and they began to devour each other … And violence increased on earth, and all thoughts of reasoning of all people were bad every day. And God (Jahwe) was extremely angry with the angels (Elohim), which he had sent to earth, and he demanded, that they were driven out of their dominion”, with other words, some of the lower order of angels or forces in Nature were involved in the corruption.
The next great personage to appear on the scene is Noah. Dr. Skriver’s reasoning and insight into the next development is quite interesting again.
The Lord and the gods saw, that all flesh on earth had corrupted it’s way, and they regretted having made them at all.. They decided on a great flood, a desperate attempt for a new start with Noah, who was still a pious and blameless man leading a divine life at this time in accordance with the original vegetarian world order, and so were the animals he was supposed to rescue. But this attempt failed.
It is obvious, that Noah could only store plant food on his ark. He had the responsibility of preserving the pairs of animals and could not allow them to devour each other. But already at this point Noah succumbed to his first big temptation. Two absolutely different voices tried to influence him. The voice of the Lord told him to take seven pairs, male and female, of all the beasts that are pure, and only one pair of all the beasts that were not pure, birds included, to keep their seeds alive upon the face of the earth.
We can probably safely assume, that by pure plant eating animals were meant, and by impure those animals, which had already become meat-eaters before the flood. By a ratio of 7:1 there was a real chance, that the pure animals would get the upper hand again.
But there was a second voice, which did not come from Jahwe, but from the Elohim, whispering a different advice into Noah’s ear “You shall bring living creatures of every kind into the ark, male and female, to be kept alive, and Noah did as the Elohim had commanded him. With a ratio of 1:1 the bad will always get the upper hand in the end. Just as in Paradise, Noah listened to the voice of one of the seductive Elohim, thereby influencing the future development of the world in a negative way, which was his first big mistake, some more were to follow.
When Noah loaded all creatures on the ark according to the command of the Elohim, Jahwe locked the door behind him, they were divorced people, and Jahwe did not unlock the door later on, Noah had to take the roof off the ark to free himself. Finally it dawned on him what he had done wrong. He had a very bad conscience, and his only wish was to be reconciled with the Lord.
Now Noah became, like Abel before him, what Dr, Skriver calls the second inventor and discoverer of religion, of the superstition to push through the curtain, which in the temple served as the symbol of the great distance or separation between god and humans, to reconcile the Lord with a bloody sacrifice again of pure and innocent animals, which was quite out of the question for the Lord, and he accepted, that the experiment to have Noah as a raw-model for a new humanity had failed, that humanity cannot be improved by disaster, and he left them to deal with the blessings and hardship of the shift of the earth’s axis, which brought about the seasons.
But the real disaster was still to come. Not the so-called god but the Elohim came into power now and led humanity further into perdition. The Lord was silenced, and according to Genesis 9 the Elohim laid down the law now, and what a law it was: The fear and dread of you shall fall upon the wild animals, birds and everything that moves upon the ground as well as the fish in the sea, every creature that lives and moves shall be food for you. The only restriction was, not to eat the meat while the life or blood was still in it, with other words – a license to kill and plunder the earth.
This led to the next fall of Noah/humanity: The addictive decay of meat eating is the inevitable consequence of the practice of making sacrifices. After the sacrifice comes the sacrificial feast, which is supposed to connect the sacrificer with god or his lost source again. The Christian Eucharist and Communion, although in a spiritualized form, still documents this ideology.
But Noah’s degradation still carries on and leads to his next fall: With the certainty of a lunatic, Noah as a meat eater invents wine-growing and the enjoyment of alcohol drinking. He probably became the first drunk in recorded history, which led to another fall. While being drunk, Noah lost control of his shame, and his embarrassed children took a dress and went backwards to cover him up with their faces turned away. But instead of repentance and getting rid of the alcohol and it’s consequences, he cursed his innocent grandchild Canaan, who first discovered him.
This is how the symbolism of Genesis describes the decline of humanity after the great flood with surprising logic in all it’s unfoldment; symbolical but still very anthropomorphic. Dr. Skriver reminds us, that the prophets as well as every enlightened being on earth, from Buddha to the Essenes, ran storm against the sacrifices. In the Bible it culminates in the prophecy by Isaiah, that a world re-newer was about to come. Skriver’s own translation of the Greek text is very powerful but too long to quote here at length. But the main part, that complete peace and harmlessness will reign again is well known: Wolf shall dwell with the lamb, leopard shall lie down with the child, calf and lion graze together, and a little child shall lead them, cow and bear shall feed together, and the lion shall eat straw like the ox etc.
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Turning to the New Testament now, it is quite significant, that the Order of the vegetarian living Essenes is completely excluded from the Bible, and it is exactly this group of people, that made the arrival of a re-newer possible. From what we have learned so far, it would be ridiculous, if such a re-newer could eat a slaughtered lamb or indulge in wine-drinking, and the enlightened Dr. Skriver gives us the proof.
In our traditional Bible the re-newer is always called Jesus of Nazareth. In the Greek New Testament the name Jesus of Nazareth is only mentioned three times, Jesus the Nazarene six times, but Jesus the Nazoraen or Nazoraios twelve times, which is of important significance.
In all those words we find the main consonants N-Z-R of the Hebrew word Nezer, which means the “green branch”. It refers to the before mentioned prophecy in Isaiah 11, and I will use Skriver’s translation from the original Greek text: “There shall come forth a winged branch from the stem of divine being, and a green sprout (Nezer) from it’s root will produce fruit. The spirit of the Lord (Adonaj, the Kyrios) will (from above) enter into it, the spirit of concentration and differentiation, the spirit of inspiration and strength, the spirit of Gnosis and surrender to God …”
Jesus of Nazareth is of course the definition of where he lived and came from, but interestingly the name Nazareth is neither mentioned in the Old Testament nor in any other contemporary Jewish literature. Nazareth was not a geographically registered dwelling at the time of Jesus, it was a closed secluded colony of the Essenes.
The term Nazarene is like Galilean, the name of his compatriots. But the term NaZoRaios is the most important one. Between the consonants N-Z-R we find the vowels of the Lord Adonai. It is said, that the Jews kept the name of their god “Jahwe” so holy, that it was not allowed to be pronounced. When reading the scriptures they replaced it with Adoni, the Lord.
Jesus then is the promised Nezer, on whom the spirit of the Lord Adonai rests, he is present in him, the spirit of the highest god speaks through him. When the New Testament was taken over into the Greek language, the masculine character of the Nazorai was expressed by the Greek ending “os”, which made Jesus the NaZoRaios, the promised one, through whom the Lord can express himself.
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Concerning the feeding of the masses with 5 breads and at another time with 7 breads and two fish, Dr. Skriver explains in great detail, that we are dealing here with the decoding of cosmic and astrological mysteries, the Zodiac, the constellation of the star signs at that specific time, which are symbolized by the bread and the specific meaning of the area of Pisces, symbolized by the two fish. It was heavenly wisdom he fed them, not earthly food.
Just one example from several: Astronomy divides the 360 degrees of the ecliptic into 12 sections of 30 degrees each. But if we look at the Zodiac, we find that it’s signs are not equally distributed. If we draw a diameter from the first quarter of Pisces through the ecliptic, we arrive on the other side at the periphery right outside Scorpio.
If we count the star signs on both sides of the diameter, we find on one side Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn, Sagittarius and Scorpio, exactly 5, and on the other half Libra, Virgo, Leo, Cancer, Gemini, Taurus and Aries, which makes seven.
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Another example is the wedding at Kana, where we are dealing with a mystic wedding, a wedding with the universal Christ consciousness. The six water jugs symbolize the Jewish religious systems, the six-pointed star of Solomon. The wine has dried out, the old religion is finished, and at that moment Christ appears. The urging mother and her obedient servants symbolize matter/nature and her angels/forces. They fill in new water into old containers and Christ transforms the water of life into the wine of life, the holy ghost or spiritus sanctus. Like the sun, who transforms the water in the plant of the wine into pure, non-alcoholic juice in it’s fruit, the Christ-sun equally transforms matter/life into spirit.
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Now we come to the last supper, where and how it took place.
Jesus sent two of his disciples ahead to announce his coming, and he tells them, that when they enter the town they would meet a man, who would be carrying a water-jar, and that they should follow him into the house and ask for the goodman of the house to show them the guest chamber where he could eat the Passover with his disciples. He would show them a large upper room which they should prepare.
This passage gives away quite an important secret. There was a so called water gate at the south end of the city of Jerusalem, which everybody had to use when fetching water, so it must have been very busy. How on earth could the two disciples make out the right man whom they were supposed to follow?
Here is the clue: In the Orient only women collected water and they used water-jars, never a man. There are also some professional water carriers, but they carried water in sheep-skins. At a certain time shortly before sunset, an unusual event took place. A man dressed in a white garment walked through the water gate with a jar to fetch water. It was of course one of the Essenes, who’s Community House was close by. In their community slaves and servants were tabooed, fetching water and serving at the table was done by the higher ranks of their members, and because of this, the water gate was also called the Essene Gate.
A certain group of Essenes had recognized, that Jesus was the fulfilment of the Isaiah prophecy, and they gave their holy dining room in their community house to his and his disciples disposal. We know from historical documents, that the Essenes were vegetarians, and a group of them were already Jesus followers, calling him Nazoraios and themselves Nazoreans. It would therefore be very unlikely, that they would be feasting on an Easter lamb and alcoholic wine.
Now the synoptics Matthew, Mark and Luke are all made to agree in slightly different versions on Jesus and his disciples eating an Easter lamb. St. John’s gospel on the other hand has come down on us in the least manipulated form. It does not mention a lamb but only Passah, and it gives us a precise account of what happened next.
The High Priest and scribes had to catch Jesus cunningly to avoid an up-rise among the people. To do this on a sabbatical celebration was not advisable.
St. John tells us, that Jesus was crucified on a Friday, the 14th Nissan, and his body was taken from the cross before 6 pm in the evening, before the Sabbath. It was still a working day, because Simon of Kyrene, who had to carry Jesus cross, was just coming back from his fields. For that reason the last meal must have taken place on the 13th Nisan, it was not a Passah meal, but a normal supper in the Community House of the Essenes, and not an Easter lamb was eaten, it would have been unthinkable in the Community House of an Essene Brotherhood. We can be glad that the Gospel of John has past the centuries intact. Around the middle of the second century there was an attempt made to eliminate it as a fake.
And what about the wine for that supper? Dr. Skriver quotes from a learned Rabbi who lived in New York and who gave him this explanation: “In the Holy Land no fermented wine is usually drunk. For Jewish celebrations only the un-fermented fresh juice of the fruits is used, because fermentation is already a symbol of corruption”.
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It is also interesting to know about some vegetarian Pillars of the original Christian Community. The records of the Caesarian Bishop and Historian Eusebius reveal, that James the Just, whom Jesus disciples chose as his worthwhile successor, and who determined the direction of the original community, was vegetarian – no meat, no blood, no alcohol – and his successors were vegetarians as well.
Clement of Alexandria writes, that Matthew lived on seeds, fruits of the trees and vegetables without meat; and Peter testifies, that he lived on olives and bread and rarely added some vegetables.
Thomas was the first apostle in India, and was greatly admired for his miraculous deeds and vegetarian way of life. In the Acts of Thomas it is said, that he was incessantly fasting and praying, only eating bread and salt, his drink was water, that he took nothing from anyone and whatever he had he gave to others.
According to Epiphanius John was fasting, breaking bread, eating fruit and vegetables only, and Mark found open doors with the vegetarian Therapeutae in Alexandria. Even Paul became a late developer. In 1. Corinthians 8 verse 13 he proclaims: … If meat make my brother to offend, I will eat no flesh while the world standeth, lest I make my brother to offend.
But there is another unknown Paulus Word in World Literature, and it is the more amazing since it is an evil Jewish Libel against him, the Toldot Jeshu, where he says Jesus ordered me not to eat meat and drink wine, but only bread, water and fruit, That I be clean when he wants to talk to me.
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There is another scholar, from whom we can gather deep inside into the vegetarian beginnings of early Christianity: Dr. Edmond Bordeaux Szekely. He was a descendant of Csoma de Koros, a Transylvanian philologist, who compiled the first grammar of the Tibetan language, an English-Tibetan dictionary about 250 years ago. He was also Librarian of the Royal Asiatic Society. HPB mentions him a few times in the SD and CWs.
Szekely was a great philologist as well, earned his PhD from the University of Paris and other degrees from Vienna and Leipzig, held a Professorship of Philosophy and Experimental Psychology at the University of Cluj, knew Sanskrit, Aramaic, Greek and Latin, and spoke ten modern languages as well.
He was educated at the Catholic Monastry of the Piarist Order in France with the emphasis on ancient languages, graduated magna cum laude (or with distinction), and his headmaster organized for him further studies in the inexhaustable Archives and Library of the Vatican under the tutorship of the Prefect of the Archives, who had been his schoolmate and friend ever since.
During this time Szekely discovered the original aramaic text of the Gospel of Peace of Jesus Christ by his disciple John and other unknown books and scriptures of the Essene Brotherhood, which changed his life for ever. He published the Gospel of Peace first, many years later Book II and III under the title “The Gospel of the Essenes” as a sequel to book I, which dealt with other unknown books and scrolls of the Essenes, and in 1981, two years after his death in 1979, book IV “The Teachings of the Elect” was published by his wife according to his wishes.
The Gospel of Peace existed also in a slavonic translation, which Szekely had found in the Library of the Royal House of Habsburg in Austria, which is now the property of the Austrian Government.
The French author and Nobel Prize Winner Romain Rolland, who tirelessly propagated the need for universal brotherhood in his books, and who was deeply inspired by the “Essene Gospel of Peace”, founded with Szekely the “International Biogenic Society” in 1928. Szekely opened up a Health Farm in Costa Rica, where everybody lived and health problems were treated according to the Gospel of Peace with great success.
So what can we learn from this Essene Brotherhood?
They did not believe in nor did they describe an anthropomorphic god. Their book of creation starts “Without beginning the Law creates thought and life”, present tense instead of past tense, an ongoing process, in the place of God they placed the Tetragrammaton, which for them symbolized the Law. Heaven is replaced by thought, earth by life or living matter. (The Tetragrammaton, symbolizing the four consonants YHWH for the Jewish highest god Jahwe. Since this shows some very interesting ratio relationships, assigning numerical value to a word, it is likely, that the term derives from the order of the Greek alphabet, gamma being the 3. letter, gamma + tria from Greek geometria, which is very well explained on the web under “The Tetragrammaton and it’s relationship to Phi, the Golden Ratio). Similar to the SD where we are also told, that deity geometrizes, working in cycles and on a strictly geometrical and mathematical scale of progression.
God is always mentioned with the word Law, which has the same validity in the past as now or in the future; it is behind all manifestation of life, concretely or abstractly, materially or immaterially. It is our teacher in all of nature if we have eyes to see. We punish ourselves when we deviate from it; creation (Theosophy would call it emanation/materialization) is continuous and eternal, is permanently active in human consciousness as well as the material Universe; it is the Cosmic Ocean of life made up of the totality of all living beings on all the life-containing Planets in cosmic space, there is no distinction of organic or inorganic matter, everything is alive (this could not be more theosophical).
Besides the cosmic ocean of life there is the cosmic ocean of thought, regarded as a cosmic function and not restricted to our planet or man living upon it, a solidarity between all forms of life; things are not finished and complete, but connected in a permanent dynamic activity, a reality that moves and lives, there is no static point in either nature nor man, everything moves and evolves, but behind the totality of the laws of life and the universe was a supreme power, the ocean of thought is it,s vehicle, to which every enlightened being contributed.
In the SD we find a similar description: Mind is a name given to the sum of states of consciousness grouped under thought, will and feeling. During sleep, ideation ceases on the physical plane. Thus for the time being “Mind is not”, because the organ through which the Ego manifests ideation and memory on the material plane, the brain, has temporarily ceased to function. A Noumenon can become a Phenomenon on any plane of existence only by manifesting on that plane through an appropriate basis or vehicle.
The same happens during the long night of Cosmic rest called Pralaya in Sanskrit, when all existence is dissolved, the “Universal Mind” remains as a permanent possibility of mental action, or as that abstract absolute thought, of which mind is the concrete relative manifestation. In Sensar/Sanskrit the Ah-hi or wise serpents or dragons of wisdom are the collective hosts or vehicles for the manifestation of the divine universal thought and will. They are the intelligent forces that give to and enact in Nature her laws, themselves acting according to laws imposed upon them in a similar manner by still higher Powers. They are no personifications, but could be compared to the unity of an “Army” or corporate company with it’s different divisions and sub-divisions, each contained within a larger individuality, to which it’s own interests are subservient, and each again containing lesser individualities in itself.
That is also how the Essenes sensed it: Light had two aspects, it is the eternal cosmic ocean of thought/consciousness, and secondly it is human consciousness as an individualized part of the eternal cosmic ocean of thought. Evil is the result of deviation from the law, it has no reality in itself, man gives it reality in the moment of deviation from the law, when he experiences and knows good and evil. By communion with the forces of nature or earthly mother a healthy body could be sustained. They called these forces the angels of sun, water, air, earth, life and joy; the angels of the heavenly father could sustain the healthy spiritual and eternal aspect of a human being by constant communion with the forces of love, wisdom, strength, eternal life, work and peace.
Jesus did not teach in temples but in nature, along river-banks, lakes or mountains. He did not use complicated esoteric terminology, but simple words for simple people which even a child could understand.
Before anybody was permitted to the higher metaphysical teachings, or the teachings of the elect, they had to go through a complete cleansing process of body and mind for seven years. The body had to be rinsed by the angel of water through enemas for at least seven days, and then the life forces of pure plant food could build up a new and pure body again within seven years, when all the cells had been renewed, and the regular communion with the forces of the heavenly father had made the mind receptive and pure again for the direct experience of the true higher Self within a clean vehicle.
Only the fruits of the trees, plants and seeds were their food; and Jesus reminded them of the commandment “You shall not kill”, for all life proceeds from the earthly mother, and he who kills kills his brother, and the flesh of slain beasts in his body will become his own tomb. “For I tell you truly” he said, “he who kills kills himself, and he who eats the flesh of slain beasts eats of the body of death … He who kills a beast without a cause, though the beast attack him not, through lust for slaughter, or for its flesh, or for its hide, or yet for its tusks, evil is the deed which he does, for he is turned into a wild beast himself”.
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Before coming to a close, I would like to give the last sobering words to our Mahatma KH.
About true knowledge and discipleship he says in ML p. 283: “The truth is, that till the neophyte attains to the condition necessary for that degree of Illumination to which, and for which he is entitled and fitted, mostly if not all of the Secrets are incommunicable. The receptivity must be equal to the desire to instruct. The illumination must come from within. Till then no Hocus Pocus of incantations or mummery of appliances, no metaphysical lectures or discussions, no self-imposed penance can give it. All these are but means to an end … fasting, meditation, chastity of thought, word and deed; silence for certain periods of time to enable nature herself to speak to him who comes to her for information, government of the animal passions and impulses, utter unselfishness of intention etc. have been published as the means since the days of Plato and Iamblichus in the West and since the far earlier days of our Indian Rishis…
The greater the power of an Adept the less he is in sympathy with the natures of the profane, who often come to him saturated with the emanations of the outside world, those animal emanations of the selfish, brutal crowd that we so dread – the longer he is separated from that world and the purer he has himself become, the more difficult the self-imposed task”.
During the period of correspondence with Mr. Sinnett it was decided, that KH was ready to take his last initiation, the highest possible on this sphere. Coming back from these high vibrations of Cosmic Consciousness, KH told Mr. Sinnett, that he was not able to tolerate the flesh-eating and wine drinking group of spiritualists he had been in contact with before with the following words “Since my return I found it impossible for me to breathe – even in the atmosphere of the Headquarters. Morya had to interfere and to force the whole household to give up meat/alcohol, and they had, all of them, to be purified and thoroughly cleansed with various disinfecting drugs before I could help myself to my letters … In a year or so, perchance earlier, I may find myself hardened again. At present I find it impossible – do what I may.
In letter 18 KH says to Sinnett about flesh-eating and liquor drinking, that their eating habits, operas and drawing room would not follow them onwards towards spiritual progress, and that the 6th and 7th round men would regard the British flesh-eating and liquor drinking Estethics of the Royal Society Period as savages. That reasonable temperance would not be enough, that Occult Science is a jealous mistress who does not allow a shadow of self-indulgence.
And finally in the CWs Vol. III p. 268 we find the following quotation:
“True there is no need of going absolutely to Tibet or India to find some knowledge and power – which are latent in every human soul – but the acquisition of the highest knowledge and power requires not only many years of the severest study enlightened by a superior intelligence and an audacity bent by no peril, but also as many years of retreat in comparative solitude, and association with but students pursuing the same object, in a locality where nature itself preserves like the neophyte an unbroken stillness if not silence, where the air is free for hundreds of miles around of all mephitic influence; the atmosphere and human magnetism absolutely pure and – no animal blood is spilt …”
“The Doctrine of the Eye is for the crowd” says the “voice of the Silence”,the “Doctrine of the Heart for the Elect”. The first repeat in pride ‘Behold I know’, the last, they who in humbleness have garnered, low confess “thus have I heard”.
Appendix I: “Easter of the Animals”
Appendix II: “Doe Mother”
Ref.: “Light of Asia”, Sir Edwin Arnold
Dr. Carl Anders Skriver: “The forgotten Beginnings of Creation and Christianity”
“Die Lebensweise Jesu und der ersten Christen”
Dr. Edmond Bordeaux Szekely: “The Essene Book of Creation”
“The Essene Gospel of Peace”
Mahatma Letters, HPB “Voice of the Silence”, CW III, CW XII
