Final Summation: Jesus in Alexandria
Presented on: Tuesday, July 4, 1989
Presented by: Roger Weir
Dead Sea Scrolls
Presentation 14 of 15
Final Summation Jesus in Alexandria
Presented by Roger Weir
Tuesday, July 4, 1989
Transcript:
We better close these. The traffic sound may be to much.
This is the last lecture in this whole six-year investigation. And you can see what effect it has on an inquire, on an inquiring population. The most important of all, the most important of all the psychological structures is the center of the self. And that's what we've been talking about. And you can see the interest and the effect. But those who were here at the beginning, if you remember, I specifically said that this is the blind spot in our psyche. It cannot be seen. It is not conscious. It is the farthest whole from consciousness. It is the nadir of what is available to be made conscious.
Four generations ago Freud made and fantastic discovery that by applying a very strict methodology with a mechanistic control sequence one could prove that the invisible existed. That there is such a thing as the unconscious. And Jung with his word association experiments was able to carry it further and show quite adequately that the unconscious does exist. That the unconscious was styled as an ocean. But in these four generations of experiment we know now that that ocean has a structure. That the unconscious is not a haphazard ocean, not a chaos. That is in fact structure. It is the underside of the conscious structure is the theory that the engenders. So that if you took all of the integrated forms of which the human mind is capable and **inaudible word or two** moment. That means all of the structures that have been made conscious in mathematics, for instance, and integrate them all into one grand structure, that would be one aspect of the total structure of consciousness. The structure of unconsciousness is at least co-equal to that extent in **inaudible word or two**. So, you can see that it is through any kind of, cursory inspection or any kind of determined inspections up until our work. But it is almost no chance whatsoever to understand the whole pattern of the unconscious. And the fact that that pattern must have a central focus.
And for us the central focus to Jesus. Jesus the man. He is the most hidden of all the unconscious. He's a dead center. It's like the unseen center of the galaxy.
And so, all of this work has been to try to find some way, some web of expressiveness, by which we can see the unseen, manifest that most arcane Medea, the center of the unconscious structure.
Now one of the appendages to the book Jesus in Alexandria is going to be on the magical language of Jesus. And I wrote this last year as a Tracy. Its called a Tracy(?). Its an intellectual introduction to the feeling with all of these notes and the harmonics and so forth, so that has a perspective of what the total view would be. And I'll give you a couple of these pages and then go on with the lecture.
This is still while we were dealing with styling our investigation as pioneers studies in the mysterious person archetype. that is to say, we were still so far away from being able to even talk about Jesus the person, about the center of the unconscious. And we were styling it at that time as just the mysterious person architype. Now we were having a lot of difficulty with that. Those who were, were here remember how difficult it was. Most people still are thinking in terms of like 50 years ago or 60 years ago in a kind of a union mode in the 1930s that there are many archetypes. There's a mother and the great mother. There's the father. And there's a child and all this. Well we were able to show that all of these were really mythic images of a single archetype. That the self has only one archetype. The archetype of the self is the presentation of its totality. And all of these others, expressions are mythic images. They are not architypes. The great mother is a mythic image. The father is a mythic image. The child is a mythic image. So that they belong in a mythological horizon of expression and are not in the symbolic integration level at all. They only occur in the symbolic horizon of language.
And because language is a transformational medium, they only occur in the talking about things. They do not occur anywhere else in the universe. They occur in the flow of the spoken discourse as constellating images that structure that discourse and nowhere else. For them to even occur in the mind takes a symbolic transposition. And the only way that that that transposition change take place is that there must be an integration in the mind that brings those images in and puts them into an integrated pattern. And the only transformer that can do that kind of sophisticated activity is the deep self. And the only way the deep self can do that is it takes on a function of having an archetype which integrates those mythol
mythological images. That's how it works. It has to work that way. There is no other way that it could possibly work.
The deep self in a phenomenological thing is only a focus. There's nothing there. But there is a focus. So that whatever meaning is brought in focuses. But in order to register the next seeds of meaning, which are carried by the mythological image base, the only way that that can register at all is that the self must take on an expressive archetypal form. Which then integrates that image base. and represents them in expressive consciousness as the embroidery on the costume of the symbolic self. We never see the symbolic self. We see the archetype with its image base, its mythological image base, being expressed then usually as feeling tone images or thinking tone ideas or combinations thereof. And that's all that we have.
And so, at this time we were working with pioneer studies in the mysterious person archetype in the self to try to see what was the archetypal garment that Jesus wore to integrate the old image base, the old mythological image base, of the ancient world and transform it. Make it into his pattern. And that archetypal self which he wore, that symbolic garment was the mysterious person archetype. And we saw that the previous integration some, 2,200 years before this, the clothing that was worn, the archetype of the self was the divine King. And we saw the divine kings come into power play about 2350 B.C. This give or take of a couple hundred years either way. but the person who constellated the divine King archetype most perfectly was Sargon of Akkad about 2350 B.C. And his archetypal clothing was such that he's the one that translates for the first time the Sun and the moon. And the reason of the moon is that his kingdom was the first fertile crescent stretching from the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean Sea. Fanning the Euphrates civilization and the Nile civilization. Bringing in the Phoenicians and everything in between.
And so, the crescent moon was an earthly symbol of his kingdom. and the Sun **inaudible word or two** was the power source that he had. And he as the divine king archetype has been between the Sun and the moon. He's in between his crescent kingdom and his sun like backing and so on all of the **inaudible word** that we have of Sargon and ever after, every divine king thereafter, takes Shamash the Sun and it takes the Moon, as the moon **inaudible word** and this is the source of his, of his power. That he in his person brings heaven and earth together. Brings the solar energy and the lunar changing earth together in his person.
But that whole era, that epoch, that 2,200-year epoch, was brought to a close. And we find at the time of Jesus that the divine archetype is no longer the garment of the symbolic self, the mysterious person displaces the divine King. And so, you have, you have a crunch. you have, you have an enormous power play between two oceans of meaning. One the traditional divine King ocean of meaning. And the other the new coming mysterious person.
And of course, the, the phrase that always was the constellating characteristic, even from that time to our own, the psychological power play was the contest between Caesar and Christ. That was the in a nutshell the entire symbolic struggle. Caesar being the last great divine king. And of course, the, the Caesar that all always once talked about in Julius Caesar. Julius Caesar was the first to characterize himself. He was esoterically known as divine Julius. But he had not been born divine, but he had achieved divinity by the power of his personality. If the divine thing began with Sargon claiming that he was, he was divine. The right to rule. And Julius Caesar claiming finally at the end he has a right to rule because he has made this power party from his own integrity. He had bought and sold enough people that he had it. And of course, he was assassinated and unable to carry through. And someone who is a little bit lesser than him Mark Anthony tried to don the divine kings archetypal garment and was electrocuted by it. The tragedy of Mark Antony is reported very accurately in the Shakespeare play Anthony and Cleopatra where he **inaudible word or two** all very clearly what happened to Mark Antony. He was a man who was electrocuted by divine fire. He was killed from the inside out. The vision ate him up.
But Julius Caesar's nephew Augustus Caesar was able to bring that power together. And he used the ploy which Julius Caesar had never used. And Augustus said that he was not the carrier alone of the divine archetype but that the Roman people as a whole were the carriers of the Divine archetype. in the form of the Roman, what came to be the Roman Empire, but Augustus never used to term Roman Empire. He used the term in Latin Princeps, from which we get the English word Prince. Or being this good principle. And what it meant was first, that on the pyramid of power Augustus Caesar was first. But the whole pyramid was the entirety of the Roman people. and while the people had done a republic at one time. He transformed them into an integrated divine structure, which became the Roman Empire the difference between the Roman Republic and the Roman Empire is that one is a divine King archetypal incarnation. And this is, this is the pyramid of power Christ as a person simply vanquished.
After Augustus see here all of the other Roman emperors, all of the other Caesars, were unable to conceive of themselves this first among many. They always considered themselves Im now the Caesar. Im now the Emperor's. and they suffered the same fate that mark Antony's did.
Tiberius, Caligula, Nero, Claudius. And finally, all of the Caesars played out. And the Flavians came in. And the **inaudible word or two** they all prayed and also apart. Until the time is Trajan. And Trajan realized that there was the equivalent of a curse upon the situation. And so, Trajan adopted the procedure of always expending in battle the edges of the Roman Empire and never going into Rome and staying there. He conceived the idea that Rome was like a power anvil and that the Emperor could be the Emperor but could not stay in Rome. And so, Trajan taught his adopted son Hadrian to do this also. Hadrian traveled. Hadrian was almost never was in Rome in all of the 35-36 years that he was Emperor. He traveled all the time.
It was impossible to handle the psychological power. Why? Because Jesus had raised that power to the nth degree. Had taken away the stability in the divine king archetype. So that it could only be kept together by external arrangements and power plays. And did not have any stability in itself. What has stability in itself was be individual who participated in the mysterious person archetype. Jesus said I am the way, follow me. Through me you will have your salvation. And the words are very clear in a psychological sense.
So, I wrote this last year when we were still struggling to try to be conscious of the full range of what this mysterious person archetypal self was.
Jesus in his personal life expresses most poignantly what can be seen attempted all over the Indo-European Semitic worl
world 20 centuries past. There were many candidates and some close approximations. Hellenistic sages fulfill a long tradition from Pythagoras through Apollonius of Tiana. The late stages invariably kin
claimed Godship as in the conspicuous face of Simon Magus. Yet these were symbolic figures.
And this should read more correctly now with our perspective, these were symbolic attempts, but they became mythic figures.
**inaudible word** was followed up by, by a mythic image. The divine king became a mythic image and not the synthesizing archetype itself. Yet these were symbolic figures their matrix is myth and magic. And that's where the pendulum is then, in the imbalance. Swings between myth and magic. Magic and **inaudible word** power to try and overcome it by some spells. Or some doctrine. Or some law. Or some theological or some logical argument. Always trying to cast the spell of magical language and make it happen.
And the greatest attempt in casting the spell of magical language that Augustus Caesar used was Virgil. Virgil writing The Aeneid. The Aeneid is the largest magical spell ever written. It is a magical spell in an epic form that Augustus Caesar personally commissioned from Virgil. And in the High Middle Ages where these things were still understood. There was a time in the High Middle Ages where all of this is very close to consciousness. Virgil had a reputation as a necromancer. The archetypal necromancer. Why? Because he was the greatest at making the use of the spell of magically **inaudible word or two**. Virgil's Aeneid that was the spell to make the Roman Empire. Is absolutely true. Did it work? It worked well enough so that for twenty centuries everybody has been trying to imitate and feed on that and, and, and do that. Amazing isnt it?
Yet these were symbolic figures, their matrix is myth and magic. Jesus penetrated through those horizons to the self and to the person. In other words, twenty centuries ago already Jesus penetrated all the way through. Just think of like a knife cutting through a chiffon pie that has been fantastic structure of power aspirations. And Jesus as a single person cuts through the whole thing right to the center. Split it wide open.
His life, not a doctrine. not a philosophy. Not a mythology. his life became efficacious in history. Jesus understood that psychic energy as a mythologican capable of being reductionistic. His vector probes history forward not in mythic circularity. That this is not fully appreciable in our time as a matter of grave concern. That, that, that at this particular juncture that it is still not understood. It is a serious matter. Its the most serious matter facing us today.
Jesus the person is important. Currently James H Charlesworth at the Princeton Theological Seminary is looking for a realm of **inaudible word** which is all Jesus research. **inaudible few words** in 1988. This area of study is indeed germane to the quest for wholeness for our deep selves. And concomitantly to the question of purpose for our civilization as a whole. A good whole.
The quest and the question, person and purpose, are intimately relational. Even to the limit that characterizes pure complementarity. That is to say the wholeness raised to perfection, that is the whole concern of our psyche and our civilization, of our person and our, our future directions is all tied up with this very issue. What is the issue? Is Jesus cannot be seen as a person then the circularity, which is then a juggernaut, will crush it. It's no longer a question of we've been able to carry us even another generation further.
If I can put it graphically, we're standing in a psychological ground where our own dynamic is gonna run us over if you don't turn off that machine and get out of the way. Were gonna run ourselves over. And it doesn't really matter what expressive form we choose to do that. Whether its a disease. Or nuclear war. Or madness. Or, or regression. it doesn't make any difference. Its an inevitability, unless we change. We have to transform. we have about, we have about 20 years before it becomes impossible to, to deal with. It'll become chronic in the next decade. Long before it becomes impossible, it will occur in people's psyches like a red-hot iron.
Even now in 1989 around the world you can see it. People are just beginning to realize that no structures that man has made can work anymore. There are no forms of government. There are no forms of societies. There are no psychologies. There are no philosophies. Nothing that man has made works anymore and will not work anymore. We have to do it a different way. Otherwise he is playing with death(?).
In this book our design is to identify the often-called historical Jesus. We want to know his personal life. We can know this. but in compliment to the personal quest there is a deeper and the largest **inaudible word**, the question of overall purpose of comprehensive background. The second part of our unified issue is a need to recognize, through amplified sensitivity, the ultimate Hellenistic sage. The Messiah. The symbolic self-achieved expression of a new archetype.
Now in setting our design, we finally came to this sequence, which is I, I think the sequence that will work to deliver the story. the sequence is in a 16-part movement to reflect the structure of thought. the first movement is, concerns the very beginnings of the discernible movement that led directly to Jesus. And the first movements were Pythagorean community. The Pythagorean communities the Greek word for their communities the Synestia. And it's the same word that we now get words like synthesis or synagogue. Why do Jews worship in temples called synagogues? The word is not a Hebrew word. Its not a semitic word. It comes from the Greek. All of the words for a Jewish temple, for the architect of a Jewish temple are Greek words. The whole structure is a Hellenistic structure, which has a Pythagorean background and context. So that while the roots go back indefinitely and eventually cover the entire ancient world, the initial focus which makes sense is with the Pythagorean. The 5th century B.C. Pythagorean.
So that chapter 1 will deal with the Pythagorean tradition. How that had continuity for 10 generations and then went underground. Why did it go underground? Because they had become political threats to the power structures that fed off the divine king architect. If you recall that even into Pythagoreus lifetime, all the Pythagoreans were killed. Their houses were burnt down. they were hunted like criminals. People who prayed together. Who sang together. Who fasted together. They were hunted like criminals. Why? Because they were a poignant psychological threat to the whole power fiction. You can't have a fiction of power when there are people for whom your whole power structure is extraneous. It doesn't mean a thing. You have to ex them out. You have to get rid of it.
The same thing that happened to the Pythagorean in the 5th century B.C. happen to be early Christians in Alexandria right after Jesus's crucifixion. The Christian, so-called, we have to use this term because it's the only term that **inaudible word**. The community that Jesus **inaudible word** in Alexandria was massacred and murdered. In 36, 37, 38, 39 A.D. And they were murdered with the personal backing of the Roman Emperor, who at that time is Caligula. It was his personal vendetta against these people because they were the challenge, the most poignant challenge, to his power structure. We have the document from the leader of the delegation that was sent from Alexandria to Rome to negotiate **inaudible word** Caligula. And the leader of that delegation was Philo of Alexandria. And we have his books delegation that went to Rome. And we have his personal detailed testimony of the psychological and political condition.
Now all of that event was erased from history when Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire at the time of Constantine. Up until that time, all of this material was generally known among the learned and esoteric people. The learned and esoteric tradition up until the 300s A.D. all understood this and kept this alive. How do you know that? Because the document that was written by Constantines right-hand man who brought all of the traditions of Christianity together with Eusebius. And in 325 A.D. a Eusebius wrote A History of the Christian Church and used the material from Philo and from many other sources that have since been conveniently lost. And so specifically, in his history written for the Roman Emperor Constantine, you think he's going to lie? He says that these were the beginnings of the Christian religion. The Therapeutae in Alexandria. how do we know he says? Because we still have in our churches today, in our communities today, the same practices. It's an unbroken tradition for three hundred and some years.
Now all of the other books and all the other documents and all the other material were burned. Were destroyed. That's why The Nag Hamadi material was hidden. That's why The Dead Sea Scroll material was hidden why were these things hidden? Because people being killed. The last Essene people who killed in the fortress of Masada. So, in The Dead Sea Scroll material was material that was found also in association with the people in the Masada.
In other words, the true spiritual tradition has always been a threat to the power structures of the world. And its advocates and those holding it up have always been killed. Jesus was killed.
So, the first chapter is about the Pythagorean Synestia.
The second chapter is the next ring where we can actually date and put a scenario together. first there was Pythagoras and his community. The second one is the Teacher of Righteousness. So, the first ring, it's like there's a whole ocean of material. And the first complete circle that we can put in there like starting the target is Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans. The second ring is the Teacher of Righteousness and the beginnings of the Essenes. There we have thanks to The Dead Sea Scroll material we have enough material now to understand pretty much what happened. And we know that in that circle of material not the Teacher of Righteousness wrote The Book Of Daniel. And he wrote The Book Of Job. He wrote The Thanksgiving Hymn. And all of this material when you put it together links together with other material that has survived. Apocryphal works. Or works that were in The Bible for many traditions, like The Wisdom of Ben Sira or The Wisdom of Solomon. The **inaudible word** literature. All of this material forms a circle around the Teacher of Righteousness. So that from Pythagoras to the Teacher of Righteousness.
Now the third circle that we have. It's like we're going into a bullseye. Jesus is in the bullseye and there are three circles, three levels, that go in. And we have to go by those three circles before we can get to the bullseye. Circle number one is Pythagoras. Circle number two is the Teacher of Righteousness. And circle number three is John the Baptist. So that in three steps Pythagoras, the Teacher of Righteousness, John the Baptist, we come into the area where we could see the aperture. Where we could see Jesus as the man. But we have to do these three circles in that order first before we can train our inner sight to see what, what there is to see. We don't even know how to look up until then.
So, the first train is sensitize ourselves in first chapter to the Pythagoreans. The second **inaudible word** assumes with the Teacher of Righteousness. And the third to John the Baptist found a return of the Essene.
Now the Essene movement that was started by the Teacher of Righteousness also went underground. It panned out. It was no longer a tradition. We know from archaeology and from geologists and from history. We know that an earthquake destroyed Qumran in 31 B.C. Why 31 B.C.? Because 31 B.C. is his exact shape that Augustus became Caesar. That he sent for himself the world empire that became the Roman Empire. What happened in 31 B.C.? The Battle of Actium. The great naval battle where Marc Anthony's power, military power, was destroyed for all time there was no one else up to 31 B.C. that could hold a candle to the power that Augustus controlled. In fact, up until that time he used a name Octavius. After that time, he was using the word, which we now use for greatness August. From the name August. Augustus.
Are we okay on **inaudible word or two**?
We have a pattern. We've had trouble seeing the pattern. We've had trouble even understanding that there was a pattern. Much less a center for the pattern. With this material that I've been presenting we then come to focus ourselves. Pythagoras, the Teacher of Righteousness, John the Baptist now. Now when we get to that third circle, inside that third circle if we train our vision the person of Jesus is right there. He occurs exactly there.
Now if you go to the two most trustworthy doctrines that we have, Matthew and John. Both Matthew and John are eyewitness material. The Gospel According To John is most certainly by John. I was surprised in reading something from Mr. Hall from 1928 that he thought that The Gospel Of John was most certainly not by John. It was written in the 3rd century A.D. But that was in 1928 and he was only 27 years old.
The Gospel By John and The Gospel By Matthew are legitimate eyewitness accounts. The Gospel Of Mark and The Gospel Of Luke are secondary accounts. **inaudible word** Mark was just a little baby when Jesus was crucified. And Luke was a, was a doctor in Syria and a very young man. And had very little contact. Probably with **inaudible word**.
In both Matthew and John, we see that John the Baptist is the core, the spring, the trigger, of the mission of Jesus in Palestine. That is before John the Baptist comes in as a character, Jesus does not have a mission in Palestine. He has other concerns which we don't know too much about traditionally. As soon as he comes into contact with the circle of John the Baptist it's like an arrow that enters into this circle is now in place. As soon as Jesus enters the circle of John the Baptist his mission in Palestine begins. John the Baptist is the trigger. Both Matthew and John make it abundantly clear.
In fact, in The New Testament the last book in The New Testament, The Book Of Revelation, the apocalypse which is traditionally ascribed to John is by John. But John includes on Apocryphon from the circle of John the Baptist. He reaches back from 50 years and brings material that is current 50 years ago. A vision which perhaps John the Baptist himself had. And incorporates that into his own presentation to the seven churches of Asia. So, in The Book Of Revelation there is John, Saint John, who is writing a great vision for the seven churches of Asia but in the middle of that vision he puts John the Baptists vision of the last apocalypse. So, John the Baptist is extremely important and will be the third chapter.
First chapter Pythagoras. Second chapter the Teacher of Righteousness. Third chapter John the Baptist.
Then chapter four will be on the Alexandria Ecumenica. Before there was and Augustus Caesar there was a Julius Caesar but before there was anything like a Julius Caesar. But before there was anything like a Julius Caesar, there was Alexander the Great. Alexander the Great is like the base which the Caesars tried to seize. Pardon the pun.
In fact, we know that one of the great moments of history when Augustus finally conquered Alexandria. It was the last great place in the world that had any kind of a chance of a power struggle against him. And he knew that he could not grasp it. He knew that it had to come to him. Because he knew that Mark Antony in trying to grasp it had electrocuted himself. And he understood what his uncle Julius Caesar had told him. That when you deal with occult power do not reach for it. Prepare yourself to accept it if it comes, but do not reach for it. And so, he did not attack Alexandria. He encamped his enormous army, his legions, all around the city and waited. And sure, enough Mark Antony finally rode out and was given a soldier's death. Rode out by himself. Then when he came into Alexandria, he made sure that Cleopatra was not killed. She was detained in her own quarters and given freedom within her own quarters. And she understanding that she could not make the kind of deal with Augustus that she had made me his uncle Julius Caesar or with Mark Antony, killed herself. Had an act by her because it was a mythological death.
Augustus was very, very smart. He knew that the cycle would play itself out if he did not offer any kind of content, any kind of hope for her. She could see that that was the only way out.
END OF SIDE ONE
So, chapter 4 is on Alexander the Great's ecumenica. And just to finish this story up for those on the tape, when Cleopatra killed herself. When she accepted the mythic death of the snake bite. Augustus went alone into the Great Mausoleum that was at the center of the city of Alexandria. The two great boulevards that met. they were so wide that twenty chariots could ride side-by-side. Two great boulevards that cut Alexandria into quarters. And the mausoleum where the body of Alexander the Great lay in a great huge glass of coffin, open to view. Augustus went in and spent the entire night alone with the body of Alexander the Great. And when it came out, he was Augustus. He was the great Prince. He was forever changed. He was never the same. He felt that he had become, as we would say today, the incarnation of Alexander the Great. He had it. The world, the one world, was his.
And of course, he made that point of saying, well it's mine is the first of the Roman people. That's why under the banners of the Roman Empire, it does not say Roman Empire. It reads SPQR, the Senate and the Roman populace. Senatus Populusque Romanus Quorum. The Senate and the Roman people decree. And the emperor is the Prince, the Princeps, the first to be.
So, the forth chapter is on the Alexandria ecumenica and Augustus Caesar. Bringing this enormous tapestry of material together. And incidentally we have because of, of fantastic historical luck we have preserved the Ara Pacis, the temple that Augustus built under what is today the ruins of the Roman Forum. And we have all of the, the frieze, the sculptural wall frieze, inside. And that Ara Pacis was the temple, which was meant to hold the mythic power, the mythic occult power, that our Augustus as the Caesar had brought into his
not his grasp but brought into his hands. And you can see that the, the figures are the figures of his own family. And his important generals and so forth. But they knot that holds all of these figures together is seated on the throne and is not Augustus. In fact, it's not a man into a civilian throne, its a woman. And her name is Tellus Motto, mother earth, is seated on the throne. And you can see that those are friezes are still extant. They have survived 2,000 years amazingly.
So, the fourth chapter is how Augustus Caesar brought himself to Alexandria and got Alexander the Great's ecumenica.
Now notice that the city of Alexandria becomes the most important part is not the city of Rome. Alexandria is the anvil of where the occult power is focused. Not in Rome. Augustus tried to shift it from Alexandria to Rome. Just like later Constantine tried to shift it from Rome to Constantinople and was partially successful. Augustus Caesar was partially successful. Constantinople never really replaced Rome. And Rome never really replaced Alexandria.
What I'm saying to you is that the power, the occult power, of the ancient world is still in Alexandria. it's still there. It has never been taken from there. Probably the most surprising worldly facts to come out of this whole investigation. That Alexandria is still charged with the occult power of the ancient world. You must understand that present-day Alexandria has no relationship to ancient Alexandria. There is nothing left physically of ancient Alexandria. It is all subsided into the sea. It's all been built over. So, there are no, there are no visible ruins of the ancient city at all. It's an invisible City. It is there only in a metaphysical sense. But I must tell you that it is really there metaphysically. Its really still there.
The fifth chapter will be on the Hermetic tradition in the therapeutae. And for that we had to do all kinds of investigation. I had to take the Hermetic tradition back to its Egyptian maker. And so, if you remember the series, I did at the PRS of going back to The Pyramid Texts of 3,000 B.C. and showing the Hermetic tradition doesn't start 180 or 300 A.D. It starts the first time we have any writing 3,000 B.C. It's already a mature full-blown tradition then. So that's by the time of Jesus its already 3,000 years old.
Notice that the Hermetic tradition is more ancient than the divine King archetype. A little bit of psychological karate here.
Notice how powerful and enormous and epical the shift from the mature mysterious person to displace the divine King archetype. But the Hermetic tradition is more ancient. That is to say it was constellated before there was anything like a divine King archetype. Its amazing. It means that there's an esoteric lineage that is even more ancient than the archetypal centers of the psyche.
Now in mystical theology this comes out to be an eternal line. And Jesus is said to be an eternal person. He's not just an ancient person. He's not just the person for the ages. Or for a new zodiacal age. Or for
he is an eternal person despite the revolutions of worldly things no matter how glacial and epical they might be. He is still other than that.
So, our characterization of looking for the mysterious person like archetype is a large-scale worldly pattern. A symbolic pattern. And still isn't adequate to characterize the eternal person **inaudible word** and that takes a little bit of concentration. And chapter five would be very difficult to write.
But the important thing here is the Hermetic tradition, which is so ancient that it's already got a full pattern in 3,000 B.C. In Jesus's time had constellated itself in a Pythagorean mode in the therapeutae community on the outskirts of Alexandria. We get that location down because of the maps of Stephen Schwartz was able to bring back from Egypt. He was able to pay off some officials and get some British topological maps. Even though it has Arabic writing on it, they're British topological maps. And they're very accurate. And we can get to within about a mile of where the therapeutae community was. Because you have the facilities of psychic archaeologists you can find the exact site. You can find it very place. Whether there's anything there in terms of stone. Or in terms of clay. Or canters or whatever. We can find the exact site and be the psychic archaeologists we can reconstruct the sketches and through their **inaudible few words** exactly what happened there.
You must understand that once that's established, we can follow the line from there into Alexandria. That line from the therapeutae community into Alexandria is taking the Hermetic tradition in its eternal entirety into play into this archetypal theatre. Of which Alexandra was the center stage. And which Augustus Caesar thought he was the great protagonist, the central character.
It turned out that he was not. It turned out that he is like a worldly shadow of the true central person who was alive in his lifetime and actually was doing these things. And while Jesus was actually doing this, it's like Augustus Caesar and his visions and in his imagination was recording the shadow of what Jesus was actually doing. That's why the great parable in The Gospel According To Matthew about the money and Jesus's poignant, symbolic statement. He says whose face is on the money? And the reply was Caesars. And he said the money belongs to Caesar. But the kingdom belongs to me. There's a beautiful accurate way of his powerful symbolic statement of what the real cases is. The money belongs to he whose face is on it. That's the limit of worldly power. That's all the further it goes. But what's real, that power is mine and the **inaudible word or two**.
So, chapter five will be on the Hermetic tradition in the Therapeutae.
Now the first five chapters out of the sixteen are setting up the stage for the life of Jesus. And only with chapter six do we begin the life of Jesus. And fortunately, we have a very accurate portrayal of the first five years of the life of Jesus. Now the Christianity that we all grew up with said that nobody knows anything about this. But the fact is, is that there are millions of Christians who know exactly about the whole career of Jesus for his first five years. How is this so **inaudible word**? Because Coptic Christianity in Egypt, and there over four or five million cops still today, have recorded in unbroken tradition back to the 1st century A.D. they have annual festivals and pilgrimages to the sites where the Holy family went in Egypt. The itinerary is exactly known in Coptic Christianity. It always has been. and we can reconstruct exactly because of the Coptic Christian tradition, the first 5 years of Jesus life. The Holy Family was constantly traveling. They didn't spend any more than one year in any one place. They were constantly traveling throughout Egypt. And went across the entire Delta in a big inverted W. And down the Nile River as far as Oxyrhynchus. And back up to what was Memphis, that is today Cairo. And in all this time it took five years.
So that Jesus did not enter into Palestine until he was five years old. And the traditional date given for his birth is the date of the entry back into Palestine. Because the whole Egyptian years, that whole entourage, was foreign, foreign to the Jewish mentality. And because of its mythic association Christianity was mythologized by a Jewish background. And the Egyptian mythological background and symbolic background was alien to the early Christians. They paid no attention to it whatsoever. So, they date Jesus's birth of 3 B.C. But he actually came back to Palestine at age five in 3 B.C. He was born in 8 B.C., is born in late 8 BC in Bethlehem.
We know exactly that the time of the flight to Egypt. And the only place in The New Testament where there is the recording of the flight to Egypt is in The Gospel According To Matthew. And if you go to Catholic stores even today you can find among the little trinkets you can still find little flight to Egypt things of Mary on the donkeys being led by Joseph being led by a star. That is stamped out a nice plastic and you can get for a dollar. Notice the fantastic imagery. The star, the man, the donkey. What is the donkey? The donkey is not the Mexican burro. The new world Mexican burro is kind of a gray haired, kind of a dumb beast of burden. The ancient Middle East donkey, so called, the ass was a black-haired animal that was extremely sharp and was in fact a beast of burden before the camel. Before the horse. When Abraham ran caravans his beast of burden was the black-haired ass. It was the emblem of his commercial power. And the sign for an Abrahamic Jew in Egypt was the donkey. And the name of the God Yahweh is the sound of the bring of the donk
Its not a derisive thing at all. It's an accurate symbolic designation.
the flight into Egypt has as its symbol the Holy family going on a donkey into Egypt. Its like an eternal caravan. You see? It's like a symbolic thing thats still there.
Now we know that that occurred in 7 B.C. It occurred early in 7 B.C. In fact, we can date it, it in occurred in about February of 7 B.C. Why? Because the threat against the innocents, the massacre of the innocents, Herod's madness of saying there will be there will be no secret king but me. Kill all the babies. It wasn't just babies that were killed. It was any son who was a potential possible jeopardy to Herod. And he not only killed the babies, but he killed his own two grown sons in February of 7 B.C. He was so demented. He was so psychologically fried. It was like an, a psychic nightmare to him. He has two wonderful, strong capable grown sons killed who were in their early twenties. Along with the massacre. It happened in February of 7 B.C. And the flight to Egypt must have taken place either contemporaneous with that or just know before. I would think that envision it would have been by January of 7 B.C. It would have been apparent to somebody sensitive to vision to go.
So, in a very special way Jesus is born in late 8 B.C. He's taken to Egypt in very early 7 B.C. perhaps the first month of the year. And spends about five years there. So that in late **inaudible number** B.C. he comes back in the Palestinian at age 5.
Now all of the infancy stories of Jesus all deal with Jesus at age five. There are about 40 or 50 infancy, so called, infancy stories of Jesus. they all deal with Jesus at age 5. There are infancy stories even in Islam carried on in the Arabic language. How old is Jesus in those days? 5. There are stories in Armenian and Syriac. In Hebrew. In Greek. And Latin. In Ethiopic. How are these Jesus in all those stories? Five. Why is he always 5 in the infancy stories? Because that's the first access to the mythic horizon in the Palestinian male. Five years old.
And in one of the stories also, is that he is uncontrollable. That he didn't fit in. he didn't fit in with the other boys. He didn't fit in with the schools. He didn't fit in anywhere. The, why didn't he fit in? Because he was totally different. He was other than. He was an alien to those life circumstances. So that we know that from the age of 5 until about the age of 12 that he was like what we would call a loner. That from the age of 5 the age of 12 he was probably kept at home, given instruction in a trade. His father Joseph was a carpenter. And that he lived with his own thought as a boy, from age 5 to 12. That he had no real contact with other people. Yes, they saw him. He was a loner. He wasn't included. He wasn't mulched in. He wasn't factored in.
So that the first time that we see him in an incident at the age of 12, the whole relation have gone to Jerusalem for religious purpose. And on the way back they check in the caravan and they find that Jesus is not there. They're worried and they go back to Jerusalem and they find him in the temple arguing with the elders. Arguing with the elders. And he refuses to go back with them. Now what happened?
What happens when you're 12 and your Jewish? And youre just about to **inaudible word** bar mitzvah. What happens at a bar mitzvah? You're given religious instruction to bring here, to bring you into the community. That's what a Bar Mitzvah is. You're no longer a child. You're no longer a little boy. You are now to be a man in the community. And the Bar Mitzvah is to bring you. He didn't want to go in. that's what this story means
Thats what that whole image is about. He said I'm not a part of this community. I'm not a man in this way at all.
And he refused to go back with the family. Where does somebody go? He's not gonna be able to stay in town. He's not, he can't go back. Where is he gonna go? The Essene network had contacts in all the various places, but he had spent five years of his childhood in Egypt. He went back to Egypt. And he went to the place where there was the most contact with the Essene type retreat communities. He would have had it's a retreat community. Well if I'm not a part of this world, what the hell am I a part of? See you get. You go to a place to think it out. He went to the therapeutae community outside of Alexandria in Egypt. And was there until he was 40 years old. He spent about 28 years there.
Now we know that there is a poignant moment in Philo's description of that community in his book on The Contemplative Life where he describes what I believe is Jesus teaching. That he spoke, said Philo, in such a way that there was a silence even beyond silence. That there was a silence not only in the room but there's a silence in the mind of everyone who is there. And that when he spoke, he spoke with kinds of words that engrave themselves upon the mind of the hearer. He spoke the way God speaks of engraving his words on the stones, but the new stone is upon the mind. And the description is very accurate. Its there in On The Contemplative Life. And that it was Jesus close to 40 years of age.
Now he did not go directly back to Palestine but went first to Alexandria. Said that the retreat communities in this Hermetic tradition, in this eternal tradition, had to come in and make this shift from the divine king to the eternal by bringing in the mysterious person archetype.
And so, he went to Alexandria probably for a year or so and then he went back to Palestine. And his, the length of the stay there, has always been a matter of conjecture it is somewhat around three years. And the reason for three years is that in order to bring a mythological cycle to the end you have to run it through a one last time. It is the only effective way, the only way to bring an image base into its entirety is to run it through one last time in complete sequence. The image for that in the Hermetic tradition is the serpent swallowing its tail. The Ouroboros. It is not a symbol of eternity. The Jungians are completely wrong about that. It is a symbol of bringing the mythic horizon full circle. That's what it's a symbol of.
And so, when he went to Palestine the way that Torah was taught, had been taught from the times of Ezra and Nehemiah around 450 B.C. For 500 years the way that The Torah was taught was that on every Sabbath, a part of the law, a part of The Torah is read publicly to all of the men. All the men from 13 to, to the end of their life, all of the men on the Sabbath heard a part of the law. They heard exactly a part of the law so that in three years they would have heard the whole of the law. The whole of The Torah. This is called the lectionary cycle. And the lectionary cycle was the three-year cycle of the public recitation of the law. Every three years The Torah will have been heard in its entirety. And Jesus in his three-year teaching gave the last teaching of The Torah. He rounded it out. That was it.
And the last day in that lectionary cycle, I talked to you about last week, is the day of Pentecost. Not the crucifixion. The crucifixion is not the crucial point. The crucifixion is not the crucial point in that whole cycle in the ecology of those **inaudible word** events. The crucial event is Pentecost. The glossolalia. The descent of the Holy Spirit. So that one can understand all languages.
Why? Because in an archetypal complement to it, at the time when the divine king archetype was coming in the event that was constellated was the Tower of Babel. The Tower of Babel where language is divided then. in the day of Pentecost where the vision of true spirit brought all languages together and thus all men together again. It was the closeout of that full archetypal cycle from the Tower of Babel to the day of Pentecost is one whole unit. And synchronized with that is the last three-year lectionary cycle of the reciting of The Torah.
So that Jesus in his lifetime was actually the last rabbi. he is called by those are close to him, like their Mary Magdalene, rabbi. Teacher. Why? Because in a very real way he is teaching The Torah for the last time. He is the last rabbi. And when he is gone, that law is also gone. What is it replaced by? By what the Holy Spirit brings. The Paraclete to use the Greek term. The Paraclete.
I have to go, he said. Because if I do not go the Paraclete will not come. So, I'm going. But I will send you the Paraclete and he will make all things known to you. So, the gift of the Holy Spirit is the new Torah. The new law. The New Covenant. The New Testament.
Now you can see, and you can hear the interference of the world. You can see that the Christianity that has come down to us is a Roman Empire mythologized bastardization of the actual approach. It just simply is a schmeer and a blur. So that consciousness could never find its way to fullness in terms of that. The best that you could do was to accept the authority of those who are giving that particular message. You can accept their authority. That's the best that you can do. There is no way that you can in any conscientious and detailed and personal way live that with personal integrity. The best you can do is just accept their authority.
And of course, one of the, one of the great expresses of this is Soren Kierkegaard. Kierkegaard's famous phrase I would love to be a Christian, but it is very difficult, and I don't know if I'll be able to do it. in all of his books Attack On Christendom and various things saying, it's not this. it's not that. It's not what we thought and it's not what we hoped. It's totally different from that. And I read to you a couple of weeks ago some of the Prayers Of The Heart or Soren Kierkegaard. And so, you could see how close his Prayers Of The Heart were to like the early Christian hymn and poems became, like The Ode To Solomon. That came with people who had personal contact with Jesus.
And you can see how in our time starting with just a few individuals slowly this is fanned out until there is the whole tradition.
So, chapter six was the Coptic Holy Family. Chapter seven was the infancy stories. chapter Eight Jesus as a Therapeut. Chapter nine follows on the contemplative life. Chapter 10 Jesus in Alexandria and Philos mission to Caligula.
I'm putting together that first Christianity in Alexandria with Philo's delegation to Caligula because they have to be put together. and incidentally one of the clues in that is The Epistle To The Hebrews. If you read the Acts Of The Apostles, which is the second part of The Gospel According To Luke. In The Acts Of The Apostles before there was anything like missions, Paul's missions and so forth, there was a very powerful Alexandrian. Luke says he was powerful in the scriptures. He was named Apollo. And his work The Epistle To The Hebrews tells us that in Alexandria there are clouds of witnesses to Jesus. It's a famous phrase. And you can read it for yourself in The Epistle To The Hebrews. That in Alexandria, he says there are many of us who understand exactly what Jesus did and what he was because we have clouds and witnesses with us even now. He wrote that around 50 A.D. About 14, 15 years after Jesus crucifixion.
The traditional Roman Empire scam is that Christianity began in Alexandria with Saint Mark, who went to Alexandria about 65 A.D. And that's not the case at all. In fact, Mark never stayed in Alexandria. the place where Mark taught and died is on the outskirts of Cairo not an Alexandria. Alexander is hundreds of miles away. Mark taught on in what is the outskirts of Cairo today. It was, the name of that place is called Babylon. old Babylon. It was a Roman fortress. And it was a place that Peter went to. And there's both letters of Saint Peter in The New Testament are written from that place. Everyone who writes on this conveniently taking a Roman mythological reductionist tack says well Saint Peter's not really writing from Babylon, he's writing from Rome. And characterizing Rome as if it were metaphorically Babylon. But I must tell you that Saint Peter was not a metaphorical person. He was like one of those Michelangelo large necked old seafaring of a character. He's not a metaphorical or allegorical person. He's spoke extremely directly. He didnt have any hesitation. He's like an old senior. And he said I'm writing this from Babylon, its the old Babylon in Egypt. That's why, that's why Mark went back there. Mark is a protégé of Saint Peter. And Saint Peter said you can't go to Jerusalem. And you can't stay in Rome. And Asia doesn't have any place for you. And things are tough in Alexandria, dont go there. Go back to Babylon.
Chapter 11 is the mission back to Galilee and Jerusalem. And chapter 12 is The Gospel According To Matthew, which is the most important of all the gospels. The Gospel According To Matthew is exactly our most important document. And we have incidentally now reconstructed from a medieval Jewish diatribe against The Gospel According To Matthew. A reconstruction of the original Hebrew Gospel According To Matthew. The Gospel According To Matthew that we've always have is the Greek. And Matthew wrote it in Greek and in Hebrew.
But it's important to compare the Greek and the Hebrew. And scholars in the 20th century have said well there are some oddities in the way Matthew talks about things in the Greek translation from the Hebrew. And they couldn't find it in Hebrew text for The Gospel According To Matthew. But an ingenious scholar who went back to some of the medieval Rabbinic records found that there was such a detailed criticism of The Gospel Of Matthew that it was quoted in its entirety in order to **inaudible word** in its entirety. And it was quoted not in Greek but in Hebrew. And the Hebrew turns out to be an original Hebrew. You can tell if something's been translated from one language to another. It's not just a translation from the Greek, it is The Gospel According To Matthew written in Hebrew. And that was a made just four years ago. All of this material is surfacing now.
So, we have the original Gospel According To Matthew in the Hebrew. Why is that so important? Because by the 2nd century A.D. The Gospel According To Matthew in Greek had already been amended so much that it is not trustworthy for the esoteric line of the true shape to be given. What am I talking about? I'm talking about the fact that the gospel According To Matthew has 28 chapters. why 28 chapters? Because it's a complete lunar cycle. It's a complete earthly cycle. It's a quaternary of four sevens. And each seven chapters in Matthew is a shape of a quarter of that whole story.
So, The Gospel According To Matthew is a mandala of wholeness presenting Jesus in his wholeness. But by the 2nd century A.D. it had been so edited by power structure theological minded, mythologically regressed people that the head of the first Christian University, the Catechetical School in Alexandria, the teacher of plummet of Alexandria. Whose name is Pantaenus. Went all the way to India to get on an original Gospel Of Matthew. How did that get to India? Who is the Apostle he went to India? It is Thomas. Thomas did not take The Gospel According To Matthew with him because it is written there. Thomas went to India about 41 A.D. How do we know? Because the Indian tradition, the Indian Christian tradition that is descended from Thomas is also extremely accurate. Thomas is the only apostle of Jesus whose tomb we know the location of. You can go today to India and see the tomb of the Apostle Saint Thomas. Its there. The author of The Gospel According To Thomas. You can go to his burial site. And that tradition goes back and is quite accurate.
But The Gospel According To Matthew was taken by the Apostle whose name is mistranslated as Bartholomew. Now there was never an apostle named Bartholomew. His name was Nathaniel Bartoma. Nathanael son of Toma. But there were people who spoke Greek who had no idea of Jewish tradition. Never knew anything about Semitic languages. And thought that Bartoma that his name was Bartholomew. Thats what they shortened it to. But its not that at all. He was Nathaniel. He's the one that Jesus said behold the Jew without guile. And Nathanael said sir. And Jesus said I saw you under the tree. Thats a beautiful way. Because Nathanael had been practicing meditation by himself and always meditated under trees. Why? Because he had heard about the Buddhist tradition of the Buddha achieving enlightenment under the Bodhi tree. And so, he was practicing that. And Jesus telling him and said I saw you under the tree. And Nathaniel knew that he was a very special person. Because he was the only person who knew about that aspect of himself.
So, The Gospel According To Matthew was brought back from India by Pantaenus around 175 A.D. Brought back to Alexandria to correct the amended and over edited version of Matthew that they have. How do we know this? Because Clement of Alexandria was there when Pantaenus brought it back. He was his teacher.
So that we have a very accurate Gospel According To Matthew from 175 A.D. up until the time of the 3rdcentury, the 300s, the 4th century AD. The first generation who were taught on the correct, complete Gospel of Matthew were Clement of Alexandria and Oregon. The first great Christian theologians are from Alexandria. Are from that Catechetical School. Why? Because they had the accurate mandala of the presentation of the pattern of Jesus. The Gospel According To Matthew in its pristine primordiality really did present. It was like a Mandela that presented the accurate experience of the person of Jesus.
Now we have Matthew perfected. Edited back to perfection. Both in the Greek and the Hebrew. That is to say by the 20th century we again have The Gospel According To Matthew exactly as it was written. We have the mandala whole. And anyone who knows how to use a mandala can take The Gospel Of Matthew and meditate with it and bring it all back into your experience. I've done it myself.
So, chapter 12 is The Gospel According To Matthew, the pattern of the wholeness. Chapter 13 is The Acts Of The Apostles and Apollo Saint Paul. We've got to get the issue of Paul dealt with. Chapter 14 The Gospels of Thomas, Matthew and Philip.
In other words, The Gospel Of Matthew is in the center and it's appended by two other Gospels. Both of which were excised for the whole tradition. In the time of Luke, they were still there. In the 2nd century A.D. they were begun to be used in a Gnostic way. And so, when the great councils met in the 3, late 300s A.D. they were taken out. The Gospel Of Thomas and The Gospel of Philip were both taken out. But their sequence is preserved in that wonderful document, the Pistis Sophia.
Thomas, Matthew and Philip are three giant steps. Thomas is for inner meditation. Matthew for complete visualization. And Philip for the amplification in the community. Thomas is for the inner person. Matthew for the whole person. And Philip for the community. Notice one, two, three. Three steps back out from the person of Jesus. Thomas is the complements of John the Baptist. Matthew is a complement to the Teacher of Righteousness. And The Gospel Of Thorpe is a complement to the Pythagorean Synestia.
Its Jesus's way of not only bringing the transition into the center and changing it. But then radiating it back out in the way in the form and the sequence in which it came in. So that it would be restored in such a way that history would not care but would bend. Like a Mobius **inaudible word**. Not tears that was the apocalyptic fear. The end of the world. Judgement Day. Yom Yahweh. But what he did is he gave it a new twist. Now the inner person is more important than the outer circumstance. Before the outer circumstance is more important, now the inner person is more important. That was the twist. And The Gospels Of Thomas, Matthew and Phillip in that order were the
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