They who shall be accounted worthy to obtain that world [Nirvâna][112] ... neither marry ... neither can they die any more,
which shows that they had already died, and more than once. And again:
Now that the dead are raised even Moses shewed ... he calleth the Lord the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, for he is not a God of the dead but of the living.[113]
The sentence “now that the dead are raised” evidently applied to the then actual re-births of the Jacobs and the Isaacs, and not to their [pg 066] future resurrection; for in such case they would have been still dead in the interim, and could not be referred to as “the living.”
But the most suggestive of Christ's parables and “dark sayings” is found in the explanation given by him to his Apostles about the blind man:
Master, who did sin, this man or his parents, that he was born blind? Jesus answered, Neither hath this [blind, physical] man sinned nor his parents; but that the works of [his] God should be made manifest in him.[114]
Man is the “tabernacle,” the “building” only, of his God; and of course it is not the temple but its inmate—the vehicle of “God”[115]—that had sinned in a previous incarnation, and had thus brought the Karma of cecity upon the new building. Thus Jesus spoke truly; but to this day his followers have refused to understand the words of wisdom spoken. The Saviour is shown by his followers as though he were paving, by his words and explanation, the way to a preconceived programme that had to lead to an intended miracle. Verily the Grand Martyr has remained thenceforward, and for eighteen centuries, the Victim crucified daily far more cruelly by his clerical disciples and lay followers than he ever could have been by his allegorical enemies. For such is the true sense of the words “that the works of God should be made manifest in him,” in the light of theological interpretation, and a very undignified one it is, if the Esoteric explanation is rejected.
Doubtless the above will be regarded as fresh blasphemy. Nevertheless there are a number of Christians whom we know—whose hearts go out as strongly to their ideal of Jesus, as their souls are repelled from the theological picture of the official Saviour—who will reflect over our explanation and find in it no offence, but perchance a relief.