Theos-Talk Archives (July 2006 Message tt00413)

VICARIOUS ATONEMENT .DOC
==========================

7/20/2006 6:22 AM

Dear  Steve:

		RE:  VICARIOUS ATONEMENT 


I believe your answer is one of the best I have seen and thought about.

Thank you,


	Dallas

See also, from SECRET DOCTRINE and  ISIS UNVEILED :

	
"The entire Christian scheme rests upon these Jakin and Boaz — the two
contrary forces of good and evil, Christ and Satan the agathai kai kakai
dunameiί . Take away from Christianity its main prop of the Fallen Angels,
and the Eden Bower vanishes with its Adam and Eve into thin air; and Christ,
in the exclusive character of the One God and Saviour, and the VICTIM OF
ATONEMENT FOR THE SIN OF ANIMAL-MAN, becomes forthwith a useless,
meaningless myth. "	S D   II  497 ....


"For over sixteen centuries the new masks, forced on the faces of the old
gods, have screened them from public curiosity, but they have finally proved
a misfit. Yet the metaphorical FALL, and as METAPHORICAL ATONEMENT AND
CRUCIFIXION, led Western Humanity through roads knee-deep in blood. Worse
than all, they led it to believe in the dogma of the evil spirit distinct
from the spirit of all good, whereas the former lives in all matter and
pre-eminently in man. 

Finally it created the GOD-SLANDERING DOGMA OF HELL AND ETERNAL PERDITION; 

it spread a thick film between the higher intuitions of man and divine
verities; and, most pernicious result of all, it made people remain ignorant
of the fact that there were no fiends, no dark demons in the Universe before
man's own appearance on this, and probably on other earths. Henceforth the
people were led to accept, as the problematical consolation for this world's
sorrows, the thought of original sin. 

The philosophy of that law in Nature, which implants in man as well as in
every beast a passionate, inherent, and instinctive desire for freedom and
self-guidance, pertains to psychology and cannot be touched on now. To show
the feeling in higher Intelligences, to analyse and give a natural reason
for it, would necessitate, moreover, an endless philosophical explanation
for which there is no room here. Perhaps, the best synthesis of this feeling
is found in three lines of Milton's Paradise Lost. 

Says the "Fallen One": — 

"Here we may reign secure; and in my choice,
To reign is worth ambition, though in hell!
Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven . . . ." 

Better be man, the crown of terrestrial production and king over its opus
operatum, than be lost among the will-less spiritual Hosts in Heaven. "
S D   II  484


"The hierophants had their atonement enacted in the Mystery of Initiation
ages before the Gnostics, or even the Essenes, had appeared. It was known
among hierophants as the BAPTISM OF BLOOD, and was considered not as an
atonement for the "fall of man" in Eden, but simply as an expiation for the
past, present, and future sins of ignorant but nevertheless polluted
mankind. 

The hierophant had the option of either offering his pure and sinless life
as a sacrifice for his race to the gods whom he hoped to rejoin, or an
animal victim. The former depended entirely on their own will. At the last
moment of the solemn "new birth," the initiator passed "the word" to the
initiated, and immediately after that the latter had a weapon placed in his
right hand, and was ordered to strike.§ This is the true origin of the
Christian dogma of atonement. "		I U  II  p. 42


"     We have often wondered at the extraordinary ideas of God and His
justice that seem to be honestly held by those Christians who blindly rely
upon the clergy for their religion, and never upon their own reason. HOW
STRANGELY ILLOGICAL IS THIS DOCTRINE OF THE ATONEMENT. 

We propose to discuss it with the Christians from the Buddhistic
stand-point, and show at once by what a series of sophistries, directed
toward the one object of tightening the ecclesiastical yoke upon the popular
neck, its acceptance as a divine command has been finally effected; also,
that it has proved one of the most pernicious and demoralizing of doctrines.


The clergy say: no matter how enormous our crimes against the laws of God
and of man, we have but to believe in the self-sacrifice of Jesus for the
salvation of mankind, and His blood will wash out every stain. God's mercy
is boundless and unfathomable. It is impossible to conceive of a human sin
so damnable that the price paid in advance for the redemption of the sinner
would not wipe it out if a thousandfold worse. And, furthermore, it is never
too late to repent. Though the offender wait until the last minute of the
last hour of the last day of his mortal life, before his blanched lips utter
the confession of faith, he may go to Paradise; the dying thief did it, and
so may all others as vile. These are the assumptions of the Church. 

But if we step outside the little circle of creed and consider the universe
as a whole balanced by the exquisite adjustment of parts, how all sound
logic, how the faintest glimmering sense of Justice revolts against this
Vicarious Atonement! 

If the criminal sinned only against himself, and wronged no one but himself;
if by sincere repentance he could cause the obliteration of past events, not
only from the memory of man, but also from that imperishable record, which
no deity — not even the Supremest of the Supreme — can cause to disappear,
then this dogma might not be incomprehensible. 

But to maintain that one may wrong his fellow-man, kill, disturb the
equilibrium of society, and the natural order of things, and then — through
cowardice, hope, or compulsion, matters not — be forgiven by believing that
the spilling of one blood washes out the other blood spirt — this is
preposterous! 

Can the results of a crime be obliterated even though the crime itself
should be pardoned? The effects of a cause are never limited to the
boundaries of the cause, nor can the results of crime be confined to the
offender and his victim. Every good as well as evil action has its effects,
as palpably as the stone flung into a calm water. 

The simile is trite, but it is the best ever conceived, so let us use it.
The eddying circles are greater and swifter, as the disturbing object is
greater or smaller, but the smallest pebble, nay, the tiniest speck, makes
its ripples. And this disturbance is not alone visible and on the surface.
Below, unseen, in every direction — outward and downward — drop pushes drop
until the sides and bottom are touched by the force. More, the air, above
the water is agitated, and this disturbance passes, as the physicists tell
us, from stratum to stratum out into space forever and ever; an impulse has
been given to matter, and that is never lost, can never be recalled! . . . 

So with crime, and so with its opposite. The action may be instantaneous,
THE EFFECTS ARE ETERNAL. When, after the stone is once flung into the pond,
we can recall it to the hand, roll back the ripples, obliterate the force
expended, restore the etheric waves to their previous state of non-being,
and wipe out every trace of the act of throwing the missile, so that Time's
record shall not show that it ever happened, then, then we may patiently
hear Christians argue for the efficacy of this Atonement. ....

Or take another crime, one of the most selfish, cruel, and heartless, and
yet the most frequent, the seduction of a young girl. Society, by an
instinct of self-preservation, pitilessly judges the victim, and ostracizes
her. She may be driven to infanticide, or self-murder, or if too averse to
die, live to plunge into a career of vice and crime. She may become the
mother of criminals ... All this social disaster came through one man's
selfish passion; shall he be forgiven by Divine Justice until his offense is
expiated, and punishment fall only upon the wretched human scorpions
begotten of his lust? ...   receives the following answer: "Go, hunter,
through my favor, to Heaven, the abode of the gods. . . . 

Then the illustrious Christna, having united himself with his own pure,
spiritual, inexhaustible, inconceivable, unborn, undecaying, imperishable,
and universal Spirit, which is one with Vasudeva, abandoned his mortal body,
and . . . he became Nirguna" (Wilson's Vishnu Purana, p. 612). 

Is not this the original of the story of Christ forgiving the thief on the
cross, and promising him a place in Heaven? Such examples "challenge inquiry
as to their origin and meaning so long anterior to Christianity," says Dr.
Lundy in Monumental Christianity, and yet to all this he adds: "The idea of
Krishna as a shepherd, I take to be older than either (the Gospel of Infancy
and that of St. John), and prophetic of Christ" (p. 156). "		I  U
II  542 - 546


 
================================

-----Original Message-----
From: Steven Levey [mailto:levey_steven@hotmail.com] 
Sent: Wednesday, July 19, 2006 5:53 AM
To: 
Subject:  Re: Gospel of Judas, Belief and Faith


Dear Roy and friends,

     You write:

"However, this does not explain why Jesus had to endure the crucifixion,
unlike Buddha."

     In your comment about our useing the teachings given by our elder 
brothers as their method of "Saving" us", and then feel as if this does not 
answer the enigma of the crucifiction, 

I feel you are both correct and not. 

You are correct in the sense that the imparting of wisdom for the use of the

world does seem a completely unrelated act in comparison to this 
crucifiction. From one point of view, it might be possible to therefore 
rationalize that "he died for our sins".

      However, if one were to step back and see the entire history 
surrounding this being-Jehosheva (The word made flesh) as a mystery tale 
within which is contained a great passional teaching containing a 
reinactment of The Great Sacrifice, then in our inability to save ourselves 
with the utterences of 

(1) our Higher Self as Jehosheva, then we crucify through our neglect, 
that place in us which is synonomous with wisdom, as well as the 

(2)Teachers of Wisdom through our laziness and neglect of their 
teaching.

      What makes our neglect criminal and therefore carrying such a heavy 
Karmic weight for humanity, is the grandeur of the sacrifice of such beings.

And if we wonder at the personal Karma we face, it is similarly based in the

neglect of the sacrifice of the Higher Man within each of us, for its 
reflection in the world of karma. 

HPB explains that the Higher Man puts down a  plank of salvation for 
the lower. We are, therefore responsible for our personal, so-called, 
Karma Nemesis, and in being so we hold the Key to our 
own better life through clearing the way (Way-Tao) within ourselves for that

light which is actually our life.

    There are just to many similarities between the great ethic of personal 
self-realization as given in theosophical literature the world over, and the

Passion Tale surrounding the life of he who is called Jesus to overlook the 
Biblical Testamant as a text teaching just that. 

In fact, so far History is a testament to the failure incurred by our 
dogmatizing the teaching given therein and materializing the story into 
a life of one man, however powerfully good.

    Regarding your use of the Kabbalah to understand this. My experience 
teaches me that we need all of the great worlds mystical literature to shed 
light on each of them, regarding self-transcendence, and that is the 
sacrifice of HPB's writtings for us, in the name of Mahatmas. 

Perhaps we have gotten too used to the term "Mahatmas" and in doing 
so see them as this group of men/women seperate from the other great 
"saviours" of humanity. 

But that is part of our problem, as partially instigated by priestly casts
the 
world over. 

All of the great beings we hold in such esteem as the west oddly 
does Jesus, were and are members of that Great Fraternity of enlightened 
sacrificers, and the term Mahatma is what they are, not who they are.

Steve