Gospel of John

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Ancient Rome: Rome, Essenes, Alexandria, and the Book of Enoch Presentation 49 of 54 Gospel of John Presented by Roger Weir Tuesday, November 12, 1985 Transcript: Open ourselves up to. Mainly because it's supposed to have been familiar to us since we were children. And it seems unusual to find so much mystery in what should have been familiar and old hat for us. Part of the difficulty. Is that this material is the skeleton of our minds. The skeleton, the bones of our belief and our personalities are formed on these bones. So that the experiences that we have in a lifetime have ordered themselves and arranged themselves in a human fashion on the structure. And it's very precarious to sense that we might discover a new shape for ourselves if the bones are rearranged. The ego is a complex. It's actually a psychological, um, temporary structure. And as a complex or to be more specific, a feeling tone complex. It is actually neurotic in its nature. That is to say, it is protective of its own domain and seeks to establish its hegemony and any rearranging of the bones and changing the shape of who we are is resisted by our own egos. So this material is very difficult to approach. The ego uses a double edged subterfuge to guard itself against intrusion. The kind of intrusion that would betoken a massive transformation and thus eclipse its, uh, hegemony. The double edge that it uses is incomprehensibility and mundane familiarity. In the incomprehensibility, we we draw a blank. It doesn't make sense to us, doesn't register. It seems very foreign, very alien. But in the overfamiliarity, it's as if. Oh, well, we know that. Let's go on to something else. We're already familiar with that. We're tired of hearing that. Both of these attitudes are defensive ploys that are thrown out like nets from the ego seeking to maintain its empire. And so the material that we have to deal with here, if we can understand in the depth at which we are enquiring, we are going to rearrange our bones. We're going to be a new shape of a person. And the shape, in fact, will be a personal shape rather than one which is doctrinaire or theological or legal. And instead of having a sense of logic based upon precedent, we are going to have a sense of order based upon presence, which is different. The one is of the mind, the other is of the spirit. It's very important for us then, to understand when we come to Saint John, as we are tonight, that Saint John is a freed spirit. He is not an ego operating in a mind, but he is a spirit operating in eternity. He was a man, lived a rather long life personally, knew Jesus was the disciple he loved, was young, probably a teenager. He lived on into the reign of Trajan, who was Roman emperor from 98 to 117 AD, so Saint John certainly lived into the beginnings of the second century AD for convenience sake. Usually people round it off to 100 A.D., so he probably lived into his late 80s. He was, in his language, originally an Aramaic speaking person who also knew Hebrew. Who also was exposed very young to the Greek language, and all of his writings are in the Greek language. But the processes of expression. The styles of language formation in Saint John have the telltale signs of a human being who was spiritually mature in a language other than Greek, before he was mature in the Greek language. Most certainly Aramaic, possibly Hebrew. Towards the middle of the 60s AD, the Romans taking umbrage against the Jews, which finally resulted in the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple in 70 AD. In the middle of the 60s, while Nero was reaching the apex of his madness, Saint John moved from Judea to Asia minor to what is today Turkey. And the place that he moved to was the capital city called Ephesus. Ephesus is on the Asia minor coast, what is today the Turkish coast facing Greece, the Aegean Sea. Ephesus had been an extraordinarily ancient center of learning. It had been established as a major center at least as early as the Trojan War, that is, the 13th century B.C.. It had several times during the, um late B.C. centuries, the fifth century, and again in the fourth, been completely destroyed by warfare and been rebuilt to be an extraordinarily beautiful capital. The pride of Ephesus was the fact that there was a temple there to a feminine goddess. Her name in Greek was Artemis. In Latin her name is Diana. Saint John, according to apocryphal tradition, destroyed the temple of Artemis by his spiritual power that he unhinged the foundations of the building, and when the doorways fell in, the statues fell over and the roof caved in. Apocryphally attributed to Saint John was his question to the people of Ephesus, where is the power of your goddess now? What hold has she over any reality in which you have your being? There is a new dispensation for those who can hear. The message is clear. Artemis as a goddess was pictured as a monolithic feminine with a hundred breasts. So that her nourishment was not personal, but was impersonal for the multitude, and that she could be addressed only by the multitude and not by any one personally. The very essence of Jesus teaching was that the person is now mature and now culminates. The ancient law, and by culminating it displaces it forever. And one of the great themes in Saint John, in his gospel, in his letters, in his Book of Revelation, is that Jesus as a man now embodies all of the law, and therefore the law is abrogated. That the old Torah no longer has any efficacy whatsoever. The difficulty in the gospel according to John is that we have for ever and always not had a way of understanding its structure. And only in the last quarter century has there been enough intelligence and advancement in archaeology and linguistics, and in just general critical acumen, to be able to finally understand that the structure in the Gospel of Saint John is one of revelatory culmination, that we must take our cue from John's message that the important fulcrum of the new dispensation was the person of Jesus in the temples. By the first century BC. If one were in Jerusalem, one would have the officiating by the regular priesthood. But we have seen that in Alexandria and other cities there were maybe a hundred times the population, as in Jerusalem and in Alexandria, for instance, there was no central temple, no central synagogue. The temple was in Jerusalem. So all of the branch synagogues for the million plus Jews who lived in Alexandria had no direct contact. There was no high priest unique to officiate. And so the center of the service in the synagogue was not the priesthood, but the book, the Old Testament, the Torah. The book was the center, and the structure of the book of the Old Testament was so complicated, so difficult to appreciate. Especially because in Alexandria, after 2 or 300 years of the great explosion of Hellenistic thinking, the juxtaposition of many traditions together in Alexandria was developed. The notion of allegorical interpretation of the Old Testament of the Torah, personified mainly in our records by Philo Judaeus Philo of Alexandria. In order to help the population, the congregation, to understand their tradition. Only certain sections of the Torah were read on every Sabbath, but because the purpose was not just to give quips to the people, but to educate them to the pattern of the Torah, the readings for each Sabbath were linked together in a system, and the system was called the lectionary. Lectionary system, and this lectionary pattern was spread over a three year duration. Every three years, one would have gone through the entire cycle of the Old Testament in several layers. The first layer were were the five books of Moses, the Pentateuch. The first year would be Genesis, the second year would be most of Exodus, all of Leviticus and some of numbers. And the third year would have been Deuteronomy. But along with giving the Torah, the Pentateuch, the five books of Moses, the books of the prophets also had to be taught so that there were linked readings between the selections from the prophets and the selections from the Torah, and these were held together in tandem pairings throughout the three year cycle. Now, as other and these were called, incidentally, half Haftorahs haftorahs the selections from the prophets. As the newer literature. The wisdom literature, which came very powerfully into vogue in Alexandria from the Book of Job, um, on down to the Wisdom of Solomon and the wisdom of Ben Sira. Selections from these works also were added in certain synagogues, and in fact, sometimes the Psalms were added. And in fact, when we look at the number of Psalms, we can see that it matches for a three year weekly reading, so that the lessons on the Sabbath in the synagogues of Alexandria became study sessions. And the purpose of the study sessions was to put together the shape of the whole Torah by several different layers the books of Moses, the prophets, the Psalms, the wisdom literature, so that you had a parfait effect. And every week a new advancement along this parfait effect would be given to you. And this system went on for several hundred years with the advent of Jesus, because of the explosive, powerful summation that he presented of the entire tradition. The Gospel of Saint John is written on the pattern of the three year lectionary cycle, so that the person and the life and the meaning of Jesus could be read in this cycle and displace the old law, displace the old covenant, so that one could, if one wanted to study Jesus, along with the books of Moses, along with the prophets, along with Psalms, along with the wisdom literature, and after one had gone through this three year cycle a couple of times or a half a dozen times, one could see that Jesus adequately summed up and fulfilled the old law that his life, his person, his being, completely satisfied every expectation and fulfilled the entire pattern of the Old Testament so that one could finally wean oneself away from Judaism, wean oneself away from the Old Covenant, and accept the New Covenant and accept Jesus as a person in place of the Torah. And so the Gospel of Saint John is extremely sophisticated and very powerful. It is a transition document of weaning people away from the synagogues into Christianity, weaning them away from Judaism to Christianity by using the essential educational and religious structure of Judaism as refined, most certainly in Alexandria, and then transpired to other places now. The Gospel of Saint John was written probably around 90 to 95 A.D. in 85 A.D. in Jewish tradition, there was passed a rabbinical law that a certain recitation of 18 benedictions was required of everyone in the synagogue, and one of these recitations, the 12th of the 18, was a repudiation of Christianity, a repudiation of the divinity of Jesus. So that from 85 A.D. on, if anyone went to worship in a synagogue and most early Christians used the synagogues, there were no Christian churches separate. They used the synagogues. They used Jesus teaching to fulfill the understanding of the ancient law. There were no Christian churches other than the synagogues up until 85 A.D.. We have a skewed notion when we think that that the churches were made, that Peter made some church or somebody else made some church. It's not so. It just is not so. If there were meetings in catacombs, that was because of the clandestine nature forced upon them from moment to moment. But generally the synagogues were used until 85 A.D. not only was this rabbinical law passed about this 12th of the 18 benedictions of repudiating Christ, repudiating Christianity, but a few years later it was made mandatory that this particular benediction be taken twice publicly in the synagogue at every Sabbath. Just to make sure that no one was fudging, no one was hedging on it. So from the late 18th, from the late 80s, AD 87, 88 AD, it became impossible for Christians to worship in the synagogues. Saint John's Gospel, written within 5 to 7 years of that event, shows us his tremendous comprehension of the pressing need to provide a legitimate transition vehicle for the Jewish Christians to become Christian Jews and then to become Christians. And so the Gospel of Saint John is that transforming matrix that helps those who are still leaning on the old law, the old law, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, the old law of thou shalt not, thou shalt not. The old law that God alone has power and man has only to do his bidding. The new law was not a law, but was a revelation of light and life and love. That the thou shalt nots were all brought together into a positive. All of the negatives brought together into a positive. The Legalisms. Of the Old Testament were all dispensed with by the veracity of the presence of the spirit. And in this, the Gospel of Saint John is the most important vehicle of all. In the Synoptic Gospels Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Jesus is presented as giving a short, pithy sayings, or occasionally, as in the Gospel of Matthew, there is a collection of five long um documents the sermon on the Mount being one of them. But in the Gospel of John, the teachings of Jesus are all very long, very involved. But attention is not paid to historical time. Attention is paid to this kind of lectionary time. Because the lectionary cycle was based upon the year the annual cycle of festivals, Jewish festivals. One had the festival of Passover, one had the Festival of Dedication, the Feast of Tabernacles. Um, all of the festivals, there were some ten of them. The new year. Uh uh, Yom Kippur, Day of Atonement, uh, Purim and so forth. These festivals were particular nodes in the annual year, they were the most important dates in the annual year, so that the Sabbaths that fell on these festival dates were the cornerstones of the meaning of the pattern. So then, in the Gospel of Saint John, what Saint John pays attention to is what did the master say on these particular days when the Feast of Tabernacles came up? And in his ministry of three years, there were three times that he spoke on the Feast of Tabernacles. And so what John Saint John would do would be to take the essence of what he said. On these occasions, and to try and rearrange the material so that it fit the pattern of the three year cycle. Not necessarily in chronological time, but in terms of this lectionary pattern, this three year pattern, so that the triennial cycle gives us a clue to the structure of the Gospel of John. And in fact, when we look at the, um, the material, we're able to notice. Let's turn for a second to Ben Sira Ecclesiasticus, or the Wisdom of Yeshua, the Son of Sirach, written about 132 BC in Alexandria. And he makes mention in here that, um, since many great things have been communicated to us through the law and the prophets and the others who followed after them, for which we must give Israel in praise due to instruction and wisdom. And since not only must those who read become expert themselves, but those who love learning must also be able to be useful to the uninitiated, both in speaking and in writing. My grandfather Yeshua, after devoting himself for a long time to the reading of the law and the prophets and the other books of our forefathers, and after attaining considerable proficiency in them, was led to write on his own account something in the line of instruction and wisdom, so that the lovers of learning and persons who become interested in these things might make still greater progress in living in accordance with the law. So as early as 132 BC in Alexandria, already there were additions to this cycle so that people could learn. And the Gospel of Saint John is along this line also in Philo, around the time of Jesus father was alive. In that time, Philo lived from about 20 BC until 50 AD, so his life span, um, overlapped that of Jesus. In his volume His Essay On Seeking Instruction, he talks about how there are two different ways to get instruction. One of them is a colloquial way. It's the sort of instruction that one would get. Um, he says, from a mistress of the mistress being one of Abraham's wives. Hagar, that it seems that. Hagar or the mistress of getting instruction through the mind. Um is prolific, gives birth to uh children, gives birth to sons, gives birth to ideas. And it seems that the legitimate wife of Abraham, Sarah, is barren. But this is only an apparent barrenness. It's only that the mind is apparently fruitful, and that the spirit is apparently barren. Because after a long while, because the spirit takes a long time for its gestation, when the spirit gives birth, it gives birth to veracity. And the birth that the mind gives is like the birth that a mistress would give. The yes, they are children of one's self, but they are not of the true lineage. The children of the wife, those are the true lineage. So that the products of our studying, if they come from the mind alone, will seem prolific to us, will seem fascinating to us in our daily life, and they'll seem colorful and profound and so forth. But as we live longer, we see that other thoughts from the mind come and displace them, and they in turn then are displaced by others. And after a while, when we live long enough, we see that the products of the mind are very facile. But the children of the spirit, the learning of the spirit, when it comes, it comes very slowly, but it comes finally with veracity. Saint John is saying that Jesus is like this product of the spirit, that he is the fulfillment of all of the dedication for thousands of years. That his birth then is legitimate in this sense, that he is a spiritual summation of the veracity of everything. In fact, Jesus tells his disciples many times over. Are you ready for the harvest? Look around you. It's harvest time. And the disciples say, but master, it's winter. And he says, I'm not talking about grain. I'm talking about the harvest. That our work is not difficult at all. All the difficult work has been done throughout this long tradition, and now it's ripe and I've come to harvest. This becomes a problem for the disciples. And in fact, before we get to the Gospel of Saint John, we should look at the first letter of John, because it's in John's letters, his epistles, that we we find a tremendously, um, condensed presentation of his understanding. And remember now, his understanding is not of the mind but of the spirit. Remember in revelation last week, he talked about being in the spirit on such and such a day, being caught up in the spirit. Um, Alan Watts used the terms cloud hidden, hidden by mystery, no longer just seeing with the eyes, but seeing beyond even the mind's eye. Here's how the first letter of John goes. This is what we proclaim to you, what was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our own eyes, what we looked at and felt with our own hands. Our concern is about the word of life. For this life was revealed as we have seen and testify, and we proclaim to you this eternal life which was in the father's presence and was revealed to us. What we have seen and heard, we proclaim in turn to you, so that you may be joined in communion with us. Remember now that the notion in the in early Christianity was that the veracity was not in the church. It was not in the temple. It was not in the law. It was not in a doctrine. The making of Christian doctrine was a reverting back, a regression back to the Old Testament. Instead of fulfilling the Old Testament, they ran it. Competition. They did it all over again. They fell back into the old bad habits. The veracity in early Christianity was that Jesus in his person was the presence of the divine, and that by personal contact, the apostles were then filled with that presence and initiated a relationship called communion, and that they then could turn to others and pass that on, so that they became a part of that ongoing, ever expanding communion which was based on presence, the eternal occurring presence, and not upon any kind of doctrine or any statement of beliefs. All of that was totally extraneous, so that the expression that John is giving here is not theological, but sort of the witness high spiritual poetry of saying, this is so. And he writes, we proclaim in turn to you. Proclaimed, so that the contact is through the veracity of language. Through the word. Through the word that it isn't physical contact, and also it isn't mental contact. If one interprets it politically, that is in a physiological sense that you've got to have a. This, that, and the other in physical contact. You're missing it. If you think it's something in the mind that the mind has to understand logically, or ideational or in some psychological way, you're also missing the point because the point is a quality of presence rather than a quantity of precedent of any kind. And so he says, we proclaim and turn to you so that you may be joined in communion with us. Yes, for the communion we have is with the father and with his son, Jesus Christ. Indeed, we are writing this so that our joy may be fulfilled. Now, this is the gospel that we have heard from Christ and declare it to you. God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. If we boast, we are in communion with him while continuing to walk in darkness. We are liars and we do not act in truth. But if we walk in the light, as He Himself is in light, we are joined in communion with one another, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin. The blood of that body is light, not blood. It's not wine. If you're given a communion with wine, it is, um, unfortunately, on the level of superstition. The communion is with light. With light. When we turn to the beginning of the Gospel of John, we find a prologue in here. It's in fact written in Greek as a hymn. Um, hymn is not strong enough. The Greek word was paean. A paean was a hymn of celebration to the divine for its nourishing, life giving qualities. In fact, one quality was singled out in a pan, and the quality of that is singled out in the in the pan that begins the Gospel of Saint John is that this light is the life of men. It's the that light, that is the life of men. So it's written in a Greek form of a pagan. The first strofe is a quatrain. In the beginning was the word. The word was in God's presence, and the word was God. He was present with God in the beginning. And the second stroke. Through him all things came into being, and apart from him not a thing came to be. That which had come to be in him was life, and this life was the light of men. The light shines on in the darkness, for the darkness does not overcome it. Then there's a pros. Interlude where John writes, there was sent by God a man named John, who came as a witness to testify to the light, so that through him all men might believe, but only to testify to the light, for he himself was not the light. The real light which gives light to every man was coming into the world. Then the third strove. He was in the world, and the world was made by him. Yet the world did not recognize him. To his own he came. Yet his own people did not accept him. But all those who did accept him, he empowered to become God's children. Children. The old law was based upon a patriarchal line that was very refined. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, etc., etc., etc. that patriarchal line was very refined and with Jacob it branched out into 12 tribes and but still was refined according to those tribes. Jesus is saying he is the culmination of all those traditions. All the lineages culminate in him. So that those then who are in communion with him are of that basic lineage. There is no more exclusiveness. Everyone is capable. It is a universal family because the father, the patriarch, is no longer Abraham, but is God himself and that this is made. In a in a sense of veracity, because Jesus ensures that that lineage comes to man, because he is the first, um, human, the first son to receive that lineage, but that he doesn't do it in his own name, but does it in the father's name so that the communion with him is joining that family, the divine family, so that heaven, then, is not a destination, but is a home. It's not a place to strive to go to, but it is one's home. That one is wherever one is just visiting. This becomes a very poignant theme later on in Gnosticism that we're just travelers here in this life. We're just pilgrims in this particular world that our real home is in Paradise. Our real family is with the divine. So John then writes, but all those who did accept him, he empowered to become God's children, that is, those who believe in his name, those who were begotten not by blood, not by carnal desire, nor by man's desire, but by God. The fourth and last strophe in this pan that begins the Gospel of Saint John runs like this. And one might almost say, there, therefore, except that we're not dealing in logic, we're dealing in a ever widening spiral of realization. This pattern is a feminine pattern of completeness. So John is talking about perfection, but in a complete way. He's taking the, um, the still insight of clarity, of perfection, but rotating it through the whole circumambulation that gives us the complete life, um, pattern. So the fourth strove and the word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. And as we have seen his glory, the glory of an only son coming from the father, filled with enduring love. And then there's a prose interjection. John testified to him by proclaiming, this is he of whom I said, the one who comes after me ranks ahead of me, for he existed before me. Now the John who is speaking is not saint John, but John the Baptist. He's being quoted by Saint John because Saint John New was there when John the Baptist was still alive. Of course, he knew all of these people personally. Then he puts in a little three line poem, and of his fullness we have all had a share. Love in place of love a very refined statement. Not love equals love. Love in place of love. That the only way to receive love is to be giving love. And the only way to give love is to be receiving it. It is an instant two way communication. There is no way to receive love if you can't give it. And there's no way to give love if you can't receive it. The process of love. And of his fullness. We have all had a share. Love in place of love. And then a little prose ending. For while the law was a gift. Through Moses, this enduring love came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God. It is God, the only son ever at the father's side who has revealed him, so that the person of Jesus is the shape, the human shape of the divine. And is the presenter. The way Saint John expresses it is the presenter of the Divine Presence, which is experienced by human beings as light, an inner light. Um, I think the terms that we use traditionally was illumination. If one sees by illumination, one does not see mundane shapes, but one sees the veracity, the scintillating, um, actuality, the totalistic, uh, interconnectedness of whatever one sees. In fact, instead of saying sight, then one would say vision. One sees in vision and in vision. Then whatever one sees becomes a sign, becomes a sign. Not just an object. But the difficulty is, is that the mind makes a sham, a surrogate kind of a sense of reality, so that the mind can see that it's not just an object, but is an allegory. It has allegorical meaning or metaphorical meaning. And so the mind thinks that this is spiritual. But Saint John, to say this has nothing to do with the spirit whatsoever. This is a game, this is illusion. To think that the mind can see the significance is to be of the devil's own party. This is how he would talk. The devil is not so much evil, but a liar, a liar. Um, so that visioning, seeing as seeing objects as signs, is sort of the guide to the spirit. And that's why in the Gospel of Saint John, after this introduction. Comes starting with chapter two, what has been designated designated as the Book of Signs. The Book of Signs. And in fact, these signs are going to be portioned out so that the rest of the Gospel of Saint John will fall into several parts. The prologue that I read, that John is the first chapter, verses one through 18. The first book of signs, that is, of learning to see spiritually. And Saint John is trying through the gospel to show us how to see spiritually. How do we see by that inner light, so that what we see is illumined? The first section, the first third of the gospel, is showing that the manifestation of Jesus is to the entire world, and it runs from, um, the first chapter, verse 19, through the end of the fourth chapter, uh, 54 verses in the fourth chapter. So that is the what has been designated as the first book of Signs. And this is showing us how to see in terms of a worldwide vision. The second portion of the Gospel of Saint John deals with the Jewish tradition, showing from chapters five through 12. And in fact, one has to put chapter six in front of chapter five. They actually should be displaced by each other. Interchanged. So it runs six, five, seven, eight, nine, ten, 11, 12. Those chapters concern the way in which the Jewish tradition could not believe in the Sindh vision, because they had lost the capacity to see spiritually. They had become secularized. They had become mundane so that they were using their minds instead of their spirits to see. They were understanding mentally. They were understanding psychologically. But they were not understanding in the spirit. Those who could understand in the spirit were being weaned away from that tradition and brought into the New Kingdom. The third portion of the Gospel of Saint John deals with the manifestation of Jesus to his church, not the church as a church structure, but to the disciples. Now, there's a very difficult thing in our time of people claiming to be masters and taking on disciples. Krishnamurti has made the classic all time statement about this, that he was ashamed to see that his fellow countrymen were over here in the United States, not only collecting shekels, but collecting disciples. A spiritual teacher gives teaching as rain and sunshine. It's just given. There's no channeling of that information. That very terme is an abomination. There's no such thing as that. Only psychologically. Only mentally is there such a thing as tuning it to some frequency so it can be channeled from some one to some one else in particular. Spiritual teachings are like sunshine and fresh rain. They're open, they're universal. And it's a question of of noticing oneself to the openness. To the universal, to the sunshine. So that one begins to become illuminated. If you think that you get a channeled information that is esoteric and privilege to you, from some master to you as a disciple, you are fooling yourself. And the Gospel of Saint John is one of the great documents spiritually in world civilization to show us just how to see in terms of signs and terms of light, in terms of illumination, because there's no polarity. There's no electricity, there's no neurological circuitry, there's no brain involved. The spirit comes where it will come from and goes where it will go. No one knows. Only in its passing do we have an affinity to move with its purposes and find that they are our own, and that those purposes in every case are universal openness and the freedom. The truth will make you free. You will know the truth, and the truth will make you free. The truth will not give you some privileged, esoteric knowledge. It will make you free. That's what Saint John says. You're not going to be privy to some secret of some Ascended master or other, or some living master or other. There's no such thing. Only in the mind, only in an illusory world. But there is such a thing as the spirit being wakened up so that the light is there, so that the Gospel of Saint John, then, is for us the most miraculous of all of the documents of this time period, because it gives us a template to move from the Old Testament, from legalistic, mental, psychological habituation into deprogramming ourselves, de hypnotizing ourselves, demagnetizing ourselves into the openness where we experience the universal light. Now, in the very center of the Gospel of Saint John, when he deals with the Jews, when he deals with the incapacity of the Jewish mind, of the Jewish psychological habituation, to understand Jesus, to appreciate his person, to see illumined by that light of presence. He matches each chapter in the middle of the Gospel of Saint John with one of the feasts. Chapter six is matched with the Feast of Passover. Chapter five is matched with the festival of the New Year. The Festival of Tabernacles is seven, eight and nine is very important, and the Feast of Dedication is matched with chapter ten, and the feast of Purim is matched with 11. And then they're repeated in the last half of John, so that John six and John 13 run almost in parallel, almost in tandem. But where one goes to the Jews, showing how they cannot believe. Chapter 13 goes to the apostles to show how with illumination one can not only understand, but pass that understanding on spiritually to others. Because one is passing it by a quality of presence, not by arguments of precedent. One is not following a law. One is not following logic. It's not a psychological correlation that one is looking for. One is passing it in the way. The old traditional way that was used was that one passes it by laying on of the hands, the hand, of course, um, that which is able to grasp, that which is able to give, that which is able to receive universal symbol, if you like, but more than a symbol. The hands are the vehicle of prayer. And the old way the prayer was beseeching the father, help us, help us in the new way. The presence of the father was there. One bestows it. There's no need to beseeched. It's there. It's not up there needing to come down. It's here, ready to be passed on. That was what Jesus taught, and that's what he taught the apostles. The Gospel of Thomas says, split the rock, I am there. You don't have to have anything special. Whatever is going on that's workable right there. Whatever it happens to be. Are you making shoes? Pick up a nail. Use the hammer. Feel the leather. Is there anywhere? I'm not. Is there anywhere? The presence is not having veracity in illumination. Every bit of it sings. How could it not? So in the Gospel of Saint John, six and 13 run in tandem that way, one showing why it can't be believed by habitual mind that refuses to free itself from both logic and the negative of logic, which is fantasy. People who cling too much to rules, to purifications, to defenses, are prone at the same time to fantasies. To all kinds of prolific coloring outside the lines, these things go together. The chapter five is paired with chapter 14. They run in tandem so that one, if one reads it in the right way, you can use the Gospel of Saint John as a teaching technique. The whole program of how to see in an illumined way, so that the the person is filled with light, so that the mind then becomes clear. The mind becomes like a prism where the light shines through. That the line, the mind no longer makes up its own egotistical rules, its own egotistical, neurotic, complex center which it tries to project on the world and on oneself and on other people, but that the spirit in its freedom sends light clear through. How would two apostles see each other? It would be like two sunshine fresh days meeting. Are they different? No. So it's very easy for spiritual people to recognize spiritual people. There's nothing in between. Chapters seven, eight, and nine are paralleled through chapter 15 and the first part of 16. Later on, if you want, I can give you correlations on all of these. Chapter ten is correlated with the end of 16 with 17 and the beginning of 18, and chapter 11 correlated with the end of 18 and the beginning of 19. One can take one's time. You can take a couple of weeks if you want. Take the Gospel of Saint John, learn it, learn to use it, go through it. And you can go through these cycles and you can see what a tremendous transformation was there. Now in the Jewish lectionary system, it took three years to read through the whole of the Old Testament in all its various ways. The Gospel of Saint John was not read bit by bit, sad death by Sabbath over a three year period, but showed that that whole monstrous, unwieldy structure could be presented if need be, in a single day. You could present the Gospel of Saint John in a single day. This showed the tremendous comprehension of Jesus, not only of Jesus, but of the way in which Jesus was able to pass that presence on to Saint John. And Saint John was capable of condensing the whole significance of the pattern of the Old Testament. Into a couple of hours if you had to. This was powerful. Truly powerful. It was revolutionary. When that was understood. It was such a fracturing of the old habitual mentality that people could simply never go back. Now, what happened was that the Hellenistic mind, which it increasingly melded Greek thought and Jewish thought together in Alexandria, had brought them together. When the new revelation of Jesus came and was presented in the Greek language in this way, it not only fractured the old habitual patterns of the Hebrew mind, but of the Greek mind as well. The old Greek mythological cycles, which had held for thousands of years, were at the same time fractured and discredited. The Christians became liberated, they became illuminated, their spirits woke up. And not only was the old, uh, image of Yahweh bankrupt, but the image of Zeus was also bankrupt in one and the same stroke. All of these pagan mythologies were no longer of any value whatsoever. They were chafed. That could be thrown away. But for those who were not in the spirit, for those who did not receive the presence, who were not joined in communion, the Christians were crazy. They were weird. They were all very nice people, and they treated each other really nice. But they didn't believe in any gods. They didn't worship any idols. They were not superstitious. They weren't really fearful. They were just odd. They got along with each other. They had families, they had homes, they had communities. They were really weird. They must be. They must be naive is what they must be. That's what the ancient world thought. And if they're not naive, then they're really dangerous because they're going to make us all naive. That kind of naivete will get us all killed. That's the way a cosmopolitan mind would assess the beautiful simplicity of the spirit that the early Christians were able to bring in, and so they were seen as jeopardizing all of the values and structures because they were not susceptible to power plays, that you couldn't bribe them, you couldn't manipulate them. There was nothing you could do with them except just let them live the way that they were living, and they were slowly bringing other people into their way of life. Where is it all going to end? We're all going to end up having nice families and nice homes and trustworthy communities. And where's the profit? How is anybody going to be important when nobody's particularly important? So the enraged, maddened, egotistical, manic depressive mode. Of the bedeviled ancient persona, still magnetized, still hypnotized, still habituated to the Old Greek or the Old Hebrew. Or the old Roman models began in the first half of the second century AD to really be mistrustful and suspicious of the Christians for the first time. But the mistrust and the suspicion were based upon a deep rooted fear. It's the kind of fear that the ego has when it gets its first intuition that someone's going to wake up. Oh, and the first thing the ego does is says this is death. Don't don't think about that. We're not going to be around if we think about that, because the liberation of the spirit is the death of the ego. Absolutely bona fide. Guaranteed. There are no egos in Paradise. Not even vestiges. And so the intuition operating under the tyranny of the ego says, oh, and in the ancient world the same thing happened, and the Christians were beginning to be persecuted by the beginning of the second century AD and as the second century goes on and on, and the Christian communities prove viable, more and more that persecution rises. And in the third century AD, we'll see that it becomes almost fanatical. And by the end of the third century AD, under the reign of Diocletian, he becomes absolutely maniac that all Christians whatsoever have to be killed 100% because they are ruining the whole show. We're not going to have anything to lord it over. We're not going to have any people. We're not going to have any prophets, any lands. We're not going to have anything to work with. The Synoptic Gospels Matthew, Mark and Luke were used by the Roman mind to co-opt. The Christian presence into a Christian doctrine. Into a Christian theology, making a Christian church, and the first maker of the Christian church was the Roman Emperor that followed, Diocletian, Constantine. He was never a Christian. He was a Roman emperor, and he is the one who said, we can't beat them by rubbing them out. So let's beat them by co-opting them into our system. Let's make them partners. Real mafioso. We can't rub them out, so let's let them buy in. People say Constantine was a Christian when he was on his deathbed. He sort of nodded when they said, are you a Christian? He sort of nodded as he died. Last minute, uh, something or other. But in Alexandria the Gospel of Saint John was taken. And by 130 A.D. in Alexandria, you begin to find a whole new outlook. And the Gospel of Saint John very, very easily leads into that tradition called Gnosticism. That the Gospel of Saint John. Very, very easily leads into the Gnostic tradition of understanding. The only difficulty is that in the Gnostic tradition, as we'll see, a kind of a dualism of thinking that this world is evil, made by a demiurge or creeps in. But for Saint John, deliberation is to see that it is sunshine and fresh rain everywhere in the universe, and that openness is the light of the father, which is everywhere. And what else could it be that all of these other distinctions are psychological and mental? Now, in the Book of Signs, when we get to chapter five, the teaching that John has here is working on the Sabbath. Jesus had healed somebody, an old man who had been crippled for almost all of his life and had told him to take up his mat and walk. And the man had taken up his mat, and one of the priests saw him carrying a mat and said, you're not supposed to do any work on the Sabbath. And the man said, well, somebody, I was ill for all my life, and someone just pick up your mat and walk. And that's what I'm doing. Who is he? Who is he? And later on, Jesus met him again in the crowd and said, now don't backslide. Don't start thinking about this. Go and live the right life. That's how to keep healthy. And so the man went to the priest and then said, oh, that's him. That's him over there who cured me. And they asked him, did you cure him? Yes, I cured him. I said, man doesn't have that capacity. Are you are you a prophet? Are you? What are you? And this was his reply, I solemnly assure you, the son cannot do a thing by himself, only what he sees the father doing. For whatever he does, the son does likewise. For the father loves the son, and everything that he does, he shows him. Yes, much to your surprise, he will show him even greater works than these. Indeed, just as the father raises the dead and grants life, so also the son grants life to those whom he wishes. In fact, it is not the father who judges anyone. No, he has turned all judgment over to the son, so that all men may honor the son, just as they honor the father. He who refuses to honor the son refuses to honor the father who sent him. I solemnly assure you, the man who hears my word and has faith in him who sent me possesses eternal life. He does not come under condemnation. No, he has passed from death to life. I solemnly assure you. An hour is coming and is now here, when the dead shall hear the voice of God's son. And those who have listened shall live. Indeed, just as the father possesses life in himself, so he granted that the son also possess life in himself, and he has turned over to him power to pass judgment, because he is Son of man. No need for you to be surprised at this. For an hour is coming in which all those in the tombs will hear his voice and will come forth. Those who have done what is right will rise to live. Those who have practiced what is wicked will rise to be damned. I cannot do anything by myself. I judge as I hear, and my judgement is honest, because I am not seeking my own will, but the will of him who sent me. Now the dead that he is speaking of are the human beings who are living and walking around, those who are in the tombs or in the tomb of the mind? The mind is the tomb. The only way to be resurrected from that tomb is to come out of the mind, come out of the psychological, habitual fog. And that coming forth is coming forth into life, coming forth into life. It's not an arcane document. It's not esoteric. It's what is called the truth, which is different. There's a little bit more, but what I want to do is then save it for next week, because I want to take the Gospel of John and take it back into the Book of Revelation. But we have to go into the Gospel of John just a little bit more, and we have to bring up with it the gospel according to Thomas. So next week we'll have a little bit more on John, a little bit from Thomas. And taking those two, then we'll go back into revelation, take that back into the book of revelation, and I think we'll be able to see how, at the close of the first century AD, that the world was prepared for a watershed. And that the whole second century AD was a confused struggle by people to try and find out what was happening. That in the second century AD, the whole century was like these tremendous winds blowing, these tremendous revolutions happening. And most people had no idea of what was going on. And there was like a superficial calm on the surface. In fact, the second century in the Roman Empire is called the Golden age, the age of the Antonines, Marcus Aurelius, Antoninus Pius, Hadrian, Trajan. All of the great calm majesty of the Roman Empire comes to a whole maturation there. But underneath the surface is this tremendous scattered confusion. And in the third century, we'll see the most crucial century in history. Before the 20th century, the third century, all of it comes to the surface again. And what was up there in miniature in the first century AD, in the third century AD, comes out almost like earthquakes and monolithic, uh, um, crashings and thunderings. And the third century is really, uh, the century that shredded the ancient world. By the end of the third century, there was nothing left of the classical tradition, nothing whatsoever. Everything was on the level of superstition and pastiche. So we've come to the end of the first century AD, and next week we'll will culminate it. And when this material from the Gospel of Saint John went into the greco-egyptian, uh, esoteric traditions of Egypt, it woke up in those persons, their spirit and their spirit woke up and produced what we call the Hermetic writings. All of the Hermetic tradition is born at the beginning of the second century AD in Alexandria, because of the tremendous illumination that came to them. Via these Christian spiritual templates, the Gospel of Saint John being the major one. Well, let's call it an evening. END OF RECORDING