Jesus Christ

By The Pathwork Guide

Greetings in the Name of God and Jesus Christ. Blessed are you, my friends; blessed is this lecture. My dear friends, I have been speaking to most of you for over a period of months, but I have not as yet mentioned Jesus Christ: who He is and what He has done. At this time of the year, when you are celebrating the birth of Christ, I feel that my choice of this subject is an appropriate one.

The light of Christ is spreading, not only on this earthly sphere, but also in the spiritual worlds. You may say, "but in the spiritual world there is no time," and this is true. Yet, as difficult as it is to explain about this period to you -- which is only drawn out much longer than on earth -- every year, according to your human year, after a certain regular period let us say, this light of Christ returns with renewed force in remembrance of the greatest deed that has ever been accomplished. This light is so strong, so penetrating, and so glorious that it is unimaginable. There is such bliss, such rejoicing, such happiness, and such wisdom coming from this light. For wisdom and light are one. You think of it in your human language as enlightenment. In the spiritual world light and knowledge, light and love are one and the same thing. At this period, this light penetrates down into the lowest spheres of gloom, at least to some small degree, into the worlds of darkness. There may be just a gleam of it, a small sheen, or just a glimpse of this divine light. Yet there is this influx. And during this period when these beings living in the world of darkness encounter this light, their reaction is different. Those who are ready to advance spiritually will welcome this light, and therefore they will follow it. Others who are not yet that far advanced will cringe from it, for it is very painful to them. It is an extreme pain, one which they cannot stand. Therefore, a human being who has succeeded in bringing out this light from within -- for it is one and the same light -- will be protected against the creatures from the world of darkness.

Who is Christ? There are some Christian religions who claim that He is God. This is not true. He Himself has said, as you can read in the Holy Scriptures, that He is not God, that He is not the Father, the Creator. There are some who say that Jesus was just a wise man, like a few others that history has known; a sage, a great teacher with great wisdom, but not unlike a few others who have lived at other times in other countries. This is also wrong. Whether you want to believe it now or not, the truth is that Jesus the man was the incarnation of the Christ. And this Spirit is the highest, the most exalted of all created beings. He is the first, the direct, the inborn Creation of God. His substance is the same as the substance of God. All of you possess some of this substance. It is that which I call the higher self or the divine spark, that which has to come out through spiritual development. But no other created being has this substance in quite the same degree as Christ. And there is the difference.

Again and again I see that human beings think or feel: "Why He? If He is the son of God, then so are we the sons of God. Why should He be better, more exalted, or higher? Why? This is not just." These thoughts and feelings are often lurking in the soul of man, even if he does not dare to make these thoughts conscious. In this very thought lies the germ of the Fall of the Angels. Once started -- long before the material earth existed -- this thought, this very attitude caused the coming into existence of disharmony and of evil. Certainly, no one who had ever thought it to be so realized at the time the danger of such an attitude or realized what results it might have. No one actually realized that in this -- let us call it jealousy -- lies a lack of faith in God and in His capacity of love. For even though God created in His First Son the Highest of all beings and He gave most of His substance to Him, if only you will have the trust and the faith in the Creator that He deserves, then you will not think that this is unjust or that you will lack anything. Though nowadays people do not go so far in thinking through these thoughts, nevertheless that slight feeling of resistance against Christ in a number of people represents the germ of the Fall, and therefore the germ of evil. This is the way in which the Fall started.

In what way has Jesus Christ saved mankind? In what way was His deed the greatest? What was the purpose of His life on earth, of His one-time incarnation? The purpose of His life was not only to spread His teachings, for as true and beautiful as these teachings are, they could be found elsewhere too -- perhaps in another form, but nevertheless basically the same. So this was certainly not the only purpose. The second purpose of His life, though still not the main one and the most important one, was that through His life and death He showed symbolically what the course of development, or the stages of the same, should be for man -- for each and everyone who wants to regain the kingdom of heaven. Testing, trials, remaining faithful to God in times of adversity, the crucifixion of the personal ego, with all its vanity and selfwill, was symbolized by the body of Jesus. The resurrection of His spirit signifies the life eternal of bliss and happiness of the spiritual being of each individual after the ego has been crucified. This cannot happen otherwise than through pain. But even this part of His task is not the main one and the most important one. The two purposes mentioned here can be considered as a byline or as accompanying purposes to the main purpose He had to fulfill. At a future date, and in greater detail, I will go into what way His main task meant salvation -- for He was the Messiah.

Right now I want to say this to you. If He had have failed, then another spirit would have tried, for it was not absolutely certain beforehand that He would fulfill the task, though He was the natural choice and the logical conclusion. Someone had to to come to earth and go through all these sufferings completely alone, at certain times barring all divine protection, and resisting all evil and all temptation out of his own free will. In this way alone could the spiritual laws continue to remain unbroken so that in justice -- extended even towards the very forces of evil -- each individual could find its own way back to God. God is the power and with this power He could certainly have done anything, including breaking His own laws. But that would have meant that at the time such a decision would have been made by God a great number of creatures who were not yet ready to find their way back would have been permanently separated from God -- eternally damned -- and therefore from the eternal life of bliss. That might have included any one of you. Only by the vast and elaborate plan of salvation is it possible that all, to the very last, of the fallen creatures can one day time find their way back to God. This is difficult to understand now, but in the future I will explain it in more detail. For the present this should suffice in giving you an idea of how extremely grave and serious the task was. For only in this manner will people never be able to say that God is unjust, or that God has used His power to break His own laws. Naturally, His power has to be the greatest. No one will be able to say that God has used His power to violate His gift of free will given to each individual. All this could only have happened through the fulfillment of such a task. Thus, no free will is broken and no power is used unduly. Jesus Christ has proven this completely.

Naturally, the question may come up: "Can we find and reach God, can we attain perfection only through Jesus Christ?" The answer is Yes and No, my friends. It is one of those apparently paradoxical cases where both answers are correct. I will try to explain how this is. You can reach a stage of development through every one of the great religions, including the non-Christian ones, in which you can experience Absolute Truth. And no spirit of the world of God will ever tell you to leave your church or your temple or your faith. For if you have found what you seek and what you need in happiness and in spiritual food in the faith that you are accustomed to, then remain there. Enough of basic, fundamental truth, and enough of what you need for your spiritual development is contained in all the great religions. It is up to you to find out what are these truths that you need for your personal development and then to put them into practice. When I speak of satisfaction in your faith, I do not mean that it satisfies your surface conscience. That is not enough. But if you follow the teachings of your religion whereby you learn and do the one thing that really matters -- self-knowledge, self-purification, and utter self-honesty -- then the religion to which you belong or which you have chosen will satisfy your spirit. This purification and the crucifixion of your lower self is the one, the all-important thing that matters. Where you are able to find the necessary help, the necessary guidance, and the necessary inspiration to accomplish this does not matter so much, even if for manifold reasons you cannot recognize Christ in a religious affiliation. By self-purification alone you will raise your consciousness to such a degree that you will be open for truth in all of its aspects concerning the part that Christ played in the history of Creation, or anything else for that matter. So in this respect the answer is No to the question of whether it is a condition that you recognize Jesus Christ right now and that you can reach God only through Him. In other words, the perception of Absolute Truth regarding any question can happen through such a process of self-purification, whether recognition of some factors comes during this life or afterwards. (Unfortunately, few people are doing this.)

Anyone going through this process of self-purification, difficult as it is, will prepare the ground to be able to receive -- and therefore to experience -- Absolute Truth in all its facets, whether some of this takes place during this incarnation or, due to certain circumstances, afterwards. But the ground has to be prepared. And this means to achieve perfection through purification. For instance, as long as there is a certain stubbornness in the soul regarding anything, then Absolute Truth -- first the perception of it and then the experience of it -- is impossible. For this stubbornness, this selfwill is exactly that which hinders you from raising your consciousness, since each imperfection is a hindrance. I cannot stress emphatically enough that only he who crucifies his lower self is ready for pure truth concerning anything in connection with the creation and the Divine. The fact that Christ is the Messiah and that Christ is the most exalted of all created beings is a very important part of the great truth and of the history of creation. Whether you are able and willing to recognize them yet does not belie the great truth. It does not mean that you should pray to Christ. Only God, only the Creator should receive your prayers. What God expects from you, and what is part of perfection and of development, at least from a certain degree on, is GRATEFULNESS to the person without whose deed no one could come back into the divine light. In other words, without whose deed the stream back to God would have been broken for all those creatures who were not yet ready at the time such a decision would have been made by God. Once the time comes, even if some of you are not ready for it as yet and even if there are still other things to accomplish, when this gratefulness for the greatest deed -- without which you would be lost -- pervades you, then you will be able to give it to the One to whom it is due. That is God's will. You should not disregard Christ so easily. You should think about all this, even if you do not recognize officially the Christian religion. Just as all religions have enough truth contained within them to enable your purification, by the same token all religions also contain errors. So it is important for you to follow only that which your spirit demands, that which your higher self longs for. The rest will come by itself. But that does not change the fact that you should open your hearts and not put aside completely the one Person to whom you owe most next to God. I hope you have understood me and I hope you do not misinterpret these words.

There need never have been a split between Judaism and Christianity. This was never meant to happen by God and by the spirit world. And if this has happened, then it is the fault of man. You have made these names and labels to which you attach a special implication. For us, Judaism and Christianity, this and that, does not mean anything. When Christ was born as Jesus at that particular time and among these particular people, it had its good reasons. It was meant that one and the same truth should expand, should grow, and there should never have been this splitting. Splitting is chaos; splitting is the nature of the Fall of the Angels, or the result of it, with all its miseries and hatred. Splitting is the separation from God. And this initial tragedy -- which took place long before the earth existed -- repeats itself again and again in the course of time until one day this disease will be cured forever. Union with God, which is the aim and the goal, is the contrary of splitting and of separation. If this splitting between Judaism and Christianity occurred after the life of Jesus, then it is, again, the fault of man, a fault grown out of the same bad root of the initial splitting. There should have been a oneness between Judaism and Christianity, one wholeness, and one completion. Therefore, since Christ represents such an important part of your returning to God -- and thus He deserves your personal gratefulness and some contact with Him -- you will not be able to reach God without Him in the very last analysis. He is the best friend you could ever have and He is your strongest helper. In this respect -- concerning the question of whether you can reach God only through Him -- the answer is Yes. For the constant denying of these facts would imply a stubbornness of your heart that is a sympton of imperfection. And as long as any imperfection is alive within you, then you cannot unite with God.

And now I want to say to each one of you that regardless of what religion you belong to, try to open your hearts and your minds. Be broadminded! Do not leave the faith you are accustomed to, for that is not necessary, unless you wish to do so. But consider that what I have spoken to you is true, even if you do not believe that this is a spirit who talks to you, a spirit of the spirit world who has the knowledge and the insight that these are facts, and not mere opinions as you on earth are able to have on these subjects.

Even if you have these doubts -- and probably most of you still have some -- consider that it may be this way after all. What your fathers and your forefathers, or the people in whom you trust and who have influenced you in your life, have said may not be entirely right. Certainly they have spoken some truth, for truth exists everywhere, but no one group among all of mankind has all the truth. And as a spiritually searching person you should open the door for the truth, no matter from what side it may present itself to you. Do not be stubborn. Do not believe that this means to "give in" or that it may mean to show a "lack of character," my friends. What an immature notion this is! This is not the question here at all. The question remains: "What is true?" God is truth, as well as freedom and love. If you deny the truth for any silly, stubborn, and childish notion, then you are denying God, at least in one aspect of your personality. This is the only question that counts. Nothing else ever does, for it can only be part of man's lower self, even if clothed with apparently high sounding motives and coatings.