RESURRECTION, ASCENCION, & PENTECOST - Author's Cut from FIFTH GOSPEL a Novel.

‘I am the light that is over them all, I am the All. The All has come forth from me, and the All has attained unto me. Cleave the wood: I am there. Raise up the stone, and you will find me there.’

Gospel of Thomas saying 77

THAT EVENING, when his followers were gathered in the Cenacle, Christ Jesus came to them. He bestowed peace upon them and the comfort of the Holy Spirit and showed them the nascent life forces and the creative power of his resurrected body of light.

Thomas did not believe that this body which stood before him belonged to his resurrected master and Christ Jesus bade him to touch it that he might believe. Though Thomas’ senses did not recognise Him, but his own soul could now do what Magdalena was not able to do in the garden, it could reach out and be one with his master’s soul, for the mystery of his resurrected body was consummated, that is Christ had raised up the perfected body and united with Jesus once more.

Thus did Thomas know him and yet Magdalena had known him even without touching him.

Now those disciples who had fled the garden on the night of his arrest could see all that transpired in their absence for within their Lord’s youthful body of light was written, like a great tableau, the memory of it.

Forty days did He remain with them and in that time He taught them sacred things and deeply moved were those who were able to partake of his words with full awareness, for they were like a food and drink, like an enrichment that formed the higher aspect of his last Passover meal. Lazarus-John, his beloved disciple, Mary Magdalena, his spirit pupil and his Mother and the  women were able to partake of it, however the other male disciples only heard his words with some lucidity here and there, so that all of it was experienced as in a dream.

Many times these teachings appeared to the male disciples as visions experienced in far off places - a garden of a new earth, which they accordingly likened to those places they had frequented with him: Mount of Olives, Mount Tabor, or Galilee. More than once did they see themselves on a boat, floating on the glittering Sea of Galilee with the sun upon its waters shimmering in their eyes, and in this state they saw themselves as naked as babes, for they were born again through their experiences and were purified and had cast off the garments of matter. Christ directed them to catch fish and years later they did catch many fish – those who in future times would be taught the teachings of Christ.

And the disciples said to themselves:

‘We are blessed above all men on earth because the Saviour has revealed this to us, for we have received the pleroma - the fullness of his teachings and the entire consummation of them!’

Christ Jesus said unto Simon-Peter, son of Jonah at these times, ‘Do you love me?’

And Simon-Peter answered him, ‘Yes, Lord, you know all things and you know that I love thee!’

‘Then feed my lambs, feed my sheep, take these words that I have spoken to those who are young and are old, feed them the outer knowledge, the outer teachings I have given you. For while you are yet young you may walk wherever is your want but when you are old you will stretch forth your hands and another shall take you where you do not wish to go, for you shall drink of my cup. You shall follow me and you shall glorify God through your own death…’

Simon-Peter turned around then, and his vision was raised so that for the first time he saw what grandness of spirit indwelt Lazarus-John and he asked his Lord, ‘What shall your beloved disciple, Lazarus-John, do, if I am to feed the old and the young?’

‘It is my will that he tarry, or come into the world, life after life in order to take into it what is appropriate only for a few, the inner teachings. This is not your concern for the inner teachings shall not unite with the outer ones until I come again. All of you shall walk after me!’

But as time passed the vision of Christ walking and talking among them began to fade and in their hearts it was as if the sun were descending in the west. They had been dazzled and dizzied to have his light and warmth these many days, but now a coolness was descending over them as their master’s spirit began to sink into the darkness of their souls and they fell upon their faces and were afraid when they could no longer see him. Loss and confusion and a mood of dullness came over them. Even the sacred meals had mislaid their meaning, for their master was no longer at the table in the Cenacle with them. Only Lazarus-John, Magdalena and the Mother of God knew this to be a further step reached, pointing to a promise - the promise that would soon find its fulfilment.

Full with despair, James, the step-brother of Christ Jesus, knelt in prayer from dawn to dusk, and so intensely did he beseech, with his questing heart, to know how he must draw close to the One whom he had not recognised until the very end, that Christ appeared to him in the fullness of his glory and said to him,

‘Fetch the bread and the wine, my brother, and eat and drink of it, do this in memory of me, for the Son of Man has risen! The sacrament of the bread and wine possesses the power to realize my presence if it is celebrated at the same time in many different places. It can cause my presence to light up in the fine airs of the earth so that it can shine forth and be experienced by you…for where two or three are gathered in my name; there I am in the midst of them. I am always with you, even unto the end of the earth!’

And so James, radiant as if he himself were the resurrected one celebrated the first Christian ritual with the disciples.

On the fiftieth day after Passover, the tenth day after the ascension of Christ and the failure of their spirit vision, the disciples were yet again in the Cenacle assembled to celebrate the ancient festival of Pentecost, which celebrated the gift of the Ten Commandments to Moses. During the night they observed the reading of the scriptures which was followed by the teachings and the soul loosening, heart-lifting, choral singing and dancing which evoked the mood of an offering before the Pentecostal sunrise. The breath of transubstantiation overshadowed the meal and its celebration lasted throughout the night until near sunrise when they heard the wind pick up outside the Cenacle. A wind had entered the city, an ancient wind called Ruach. It moved over the colossal bridge and swept through archways, forcing its way through the streets, curving its back around the walls of the houses and rising up to the upper room.

Ruach, Elohim, Aur! Breath, Elohim, Light!

They had heard it before, the roar of this wind and it turned their memory to the night of their Lord’s sacrifice when such a wind had blown through the city. Out of this recalling and the suffering that it evoked in their hearts they saw a vision as the mother of their Lord stood before them. She seemed to them like a pillar of light, full with a fire of holy enthusiasm, which was outspread towards all those present, descending like flames over their heads. A love filled their hearts to the very brim and overflowed in good will. This was a power of immortality, a divine spark, the spirit of truth that needed no outward law, was now birthed in each one individually through the agency of the Mother of God. This was the comforter, which caused an inner spring, an inner sunrise in peach blossom hues and the culmination of the Mother’s task prefigured in the marriage of Cana. For this was that community in which wine had turned to water, in which each soul had married the spirit! This was the moment foreseen by Simeon when he said that Mary would be pierced through her heart to become, once and for all, the mother of all!

What a mighty awakening was experienced now in each one! In them lived a force that could enable them to speak forth in a language that all men could understand, how Christ Jesus had died for all men and that each man now needed to come to his own knowledge of this mystery on earth, and not after death! To take this Good News to the world was to be their apostolic task.

But this awakening also caused a second realisation: they could see how they had been walking these last days since Gethsemane like sleepwalkers. Christ Jesus had returned after his sacrifice and had sat with them and had taught them over forty days and yet they had not clearly understood that he was that same man that had been with them for three years! Only now did they see Him truly, wakefully, consciously!

What joy! What sadness! What exquisite longing!

Only Lazarus-John, the Mother, Magdalena and Mary Cleophas had experienced these last fifty days in full consciousness and they had understood from the first, that just as the sun shines upon Thebes, upon Olympia, upon Jerusalem and Mecca, so too does His spirit live in the heart of every human being who chooses to hear His voice when he says: 

I am with you always, even unto the end of the world!

In the beginning, in the fine airs of heaven, was written the Eternal Gospel. And the Gospel was with God and the Gospel was God. All things were written therein and without it there was not a thing written that was written. It speaks of the life, the life that is the light of men. This light that shines into darkness of the heart and is not understood by men is Christ, the true light that enlightens every man. Christ came into the world and died and was resurrected.

Christ is the Gospel and the Gospel was made by Him.

But the world has not yet understood it.

Temptation - Excerpt from FIFTH GOSPEL - A novel.

TEMPTATION

T

HE man Jesus walked through the crowds on the shore swaying and stumbling, while the God in him saw the world as foreign and unknown, a distortion of faces and loud noises, of heat and sun and overwhelming smells. In the body, the muscles strained, air rushed in and out of the lungs and the heart pounded in the chest while in the mind thoughts flitted past like shadows. How painful it was to cram his mighty power into that mind and that body! A power that could harness nature and cause miracles so that his mere presence would seem to men like a world of marvels a tempest of splendours. It was not his purpose to enrapture and bewilder, to dazzle and astonish, so he directed Jesus into the wilderness in search of a quiet place wherein he could guard the birthing of his new forces.

That is how he came to be in the old cave situated high above the vast mountainous wasteland of Judea. From its lip he could observe the sun falling into the night, and partake for the first time in the splendour of colours that are separate from the self. Above Christ looked to the home of his heart, now distant and detached from him. From beyond those stars he had come, descending downwards aeon after aeon. Men had seen him in their mysteries and had worshipped him in their rituals and given him many names and now he would walk among them – a God extracted, separated out from heaven and born into the body of a man - and how many would recognise him?

His conception on earth was to his Fathers in the heavens, like a death. He was alone. 

He heard a lamentation. He listened. It came not from heaven but from the sleeping souls of the world. They were reaching out to him in their supplication as they had always done. And this reminded him of why he had come: to make this earth his heaven and rescue it from the maws of hell.

Jackals called as the moon made a rise. He had never seen such a moon nor heard such a sound and an intuition drew his attention to the shadows of the night. From them came the vision of a red-winged angel, falling from the sky and landing at the lip of his cave.

It thrust one sad, melancholic eye at him, and said, ‘If it isn’t the favourite come down from his high perch to visit his poor relations!’

‘What are you?’ Christ asked it.

‘Where are your manners, brother? Did no one tell you that this is my kingdom? Come, before you step across my threshold you must first recognise the master of the house!  Bend low before me and our little quarrel shall be forgiven…perhaps I’ll even share some of the riches and power I have gained from this wretched world with you? You have to concede this is more than you did for me!’

A vision came then of Jesus standing before a man who was running from the Devil on his shoulders. This was that Devil, he realised. This was Lucifer, his brother who was cast down from heaven.

‘Lucifer,’ he said to it now. ‘Look into my face! I see you haven’t changed...You think you can lure me with power because this is your weakness, but listen carefully to me…I have not come into this world to rule it, nor have I come to serve you, I have come to serve the rightful gods!’

Lucifer’s gloomy eye turned to white and a shiver passed over his wings. ‘The rightful gods…yes…what do they know of the world? Do they know anything about thirst? Well? Do they know that human thirst is unquenchable? You are a God, you need not thirst for puny human knowledge, when you can be an angel, like me, an angel is wisdom itself! Throw yourself from the lip of this cave and you will see, as the Psalms say, God will give his angels charge of you, and you will be among them, and they will bear you up with their own hands, so that your foot will not even strike one stone!’

But there was something more in the cave with them. From out of the shadowed corners of the cave came a blur of blue wings, desiccated and clawing and the world stirred to make way for it.

Another voice came into his ear:

‘Son of God! Do as your brother says, let us see? Jump! What can happen to you? Fear is something only mortals feel, angels are above such feelings!’  

What was this thing called fear? He felt it now, when he thought of jumping from the cave to that great distance below. He was not an angel. He was now birthed inside a man! If he jumped, Jesus would die and his task would die with him.

‘Listen to me, Lucifer, your arrogance is made weak by your companion who has just pointed out that fear is perfectly right for a mortal man! I am a mortal man and fear has given me wisdom! Again, it is written–do not tempt the Lord thy God, to whom you should surrender yourself!’

Lucifer cried an anguished cry, and flew off towards the moon, defeated. But that crawling malignant thing entered into Jesus now. He could feel its blue wings furl and unfurl inside his soul and he plunged in after it.

‘Son of God!’ the creature breathed. ‘Let me tell you something of hunger. Hunger is a terrible torment for a man; capable of driving even the most pious to sinful acts. But you need not suffer hunger, for you can so easily turn stones to bread merely by saying a word! Say it to impress us!’ 

Christ tasted ashes and felt the thickness of the bones under his skin, and the mind, imprisoned by a skull, found a memory of the leper…this malignant spirit had tempted that poor man and had eaten him alive. This was an archangel, and he was far mightier and more dangerous than Lucifer, his brother.

He knew his name.

He cried out to the ancient creature, ‘Satan, you father of lies! Leave me alone. It is written: man should not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from out of the mouth of God!’

‘That is what they say,’ whispered the creature, ‘those gods who know nothing of men. But men have turned a deaf ear to them, naturally, since they know that the belly must be fed, or the body dies! You see how I love men more than you? When you made life and death a law and left human beings to their own devices I showed them how to turn stones to coins, and coins to bread so that they could live. And so, as there are stupid men and cunning ones, there are also the rich and the poor. One man can feed his hunger while the other cannot, and each trespasses against the other, grasping for the daily bread. If you have come to preach love and eternal life to these animals called men, you might as well go back to that starry home from which you came, Son of God! Brotherly love is impossible while there is death! Over this mystery the will of the heavens cannot rule!’

Christ understood. These backward angels, Lucifer and Satan, had caused human beings to swing like a bell from one extreme to the other. But he had come to show how it was possible to overcome pride and arrogance through wisdom, and death through love. And here in Jesus’ soul he discerned a dual nature, a weaving of wisdom and love so endearing that it worked like a great power of attraction for him and he united his forces with it and became one with Jesus.

He felt a sting, a sudden gnawing in his bowels!

The blue archangel Satan gave a mocking laugh.

‘Now you’ve done it! Feel the tearing of hunger in Jesus? That is why men must live by the rule of the daily bread, and walk side by side with me…the archangel of death!’ The whisper came closer, ‘Listen to me, I am like you, I am stubborn and full of longing, I am eternal…and that is why I can wait. When the time comes, I will return for what is mine!

And he was gone.

Christ Jesus let out a gasp and fell to the earthen floor of the cave. Above him he sensed warmth; the love-radiant thoughts of the stars were making a way into his heart to comfort him.

And so the orphan from heaven closed his eyes then, and slept his first earthly sleep.

SCORPION~EAGLE - Excerpt from Fifth Gospel - a Novel

SCORPION~EAGLE

T

HEY came into Bethany and Judas followed last of all, his mind full of strange thoughts. The sun began to drop its bruised body into the godforsaken hills as they neared the township, and the men were weary, having travelled since yesterday.

It was now more than three days since word had reached them of Lazarus’ worsening sickness, and all feared that he was by now dead. But Judas was not concerned for it, something else made his brow dark and his eyes aflame. That spirit, which had plagued him these many months, had begun to make a way into his head and he could feel it, rearranging the rooms of his mind. It wrapped around his heart to combine his disappointments, his hate and his lust, into a poisoned leaven for his limbs.

For months now, he had waited for Jesus to bring back the glory days of the Maccabees, but benevolence and kindness, patience and love were all that he had offered. In Judas’ mind, all the deeds of salvation, enacted so inconspicuously by Jesus, whatever they might be, were worthless. Words of compassion and tolerance were not enough to change the world; only the sword could change it. Blood for soil! It had taken him time to see it, but finally Judas had realised that Jesus was not the Messiah. For revolution and war were not accomplished by a man deliberate in his desire to change nothing, but to leave all men free.

The other disciples spoke of Jesus as the Son of Man. They spoke of how he had fed thousands, how he had quietened storms, and produced otherworldly transfigurations of his being. For his part, Judas had seen nothing of it, and yet he had been with them always. How could they have seen what he had not? He supposed that they had seen dreams…only dreams…and even now none of them could see what he could see: that even in his body, once so youthful and strong, Jesus was less vigorous and obviously headed for decay, like a wasted old man.

But something more had stirred his hate, and made his rebellious spirit rip at his soul: a fire-laden desire had grown in Judas for the woman whom Jesus had named Magdalena.

From the first, he had disliked her brother, the Hellenistic youth, Lazarus, whose life was lived in luxury and privilege and whose soul was the opposite of his. However, in Magdalena, Judas had sensed something akin to his own restlessness, a soul full of dammed up passions. But it was not only her soul which drew him. The woman’s unparalleled beauty had stirred his loins–a beauty which time, and again, betrayed her attempts to mortify it, or to conceal it. For no matter how many veils the woman wore, or how coarse was the garment draped over her shoulders, a fundamental note of allure was plucked from the instruments of his manhood each time he saw her, and he would have the song played in full!

Each night, his daily thoughts rose up into the ecstasy of dreams full of the consummation of their mutual passion. In his dreams, she wanted him with a near crazed desperation, which fired his virility and turned the seed inside him and churned the waters of his soul.

During those long months apart from her, when the women were sent to Bethany for their safety, and the disciples were sent out, two by two, into the villages to announce the coming of the Kingdom, Judas’ lust had matured and curdled in the darkness of his soul, so that by the time he returned to the rich youth’s house, with the other disciples, it sought, by any means, to find its satisfaction. What dread force of hate had he felt then, on finding that in his absence, a love had grown between Magdalena and Jesus? A love that others said was warm, and calm of heart, full of wide spheres, and generous pastures, which cared nothing for itself but sought only the welfare of another.

A love he did not understand!

He suffered when he saw how Magdalena’s eyes were full of devotion, for a man who would never take her in his arms and ignite her womanly passions.

Even Simon-Peter had seen it, and had asked Jesus,

‘Why do you love her more than all of us?’

‘Think of it like this, Peter: I am the light of the world and your soul receives my light, my love, according to its capacity to see and to receive it. Magdalena’s soul has more capacity than yours, and for this reason she receives more love than you.’

Judas, blinded by anger, schemed and schemed.

Many of the disciples were simple fishermen and they did not know that Jesus had in the past months revealed secrets of initiation to ordinary people. The betrayal of these secrets was punishable by death and it was for this reason that the Pharisees and Sadducees sought vehemently to find witness of it. Judas would use this to his advantage, an advantage that became clearer at Perea, where Jesus finally unveiled his reason for leaving his ailing favourite, Lazarus, behind.

When Jesus told his worried disciples that Lazarus’ sickness was not unto death, but only a sleep, that his sleep was for the glory of God, Judas put two and two together: Lazarus was not dying, but undergoing an initiation, and this was the reason why Jesus waited a day before returning to Bethany, since the initiation must last three days.

Jesus wanted to make a show of his power near to Jerusalem; not those powers that had made possible the raising of the dead boy at Nain, but something more. Jesus would show to all men what lived only in the deepest recesses of the mystery temples:  the raising of an initiate from the tomb, from the underworld of the dead!

Everything now made sense. Throughout their time in Perea, when Jesus spoke of the good shepherd who gives life to his sheep, he was pointing to himself, as the priest, who is the awakener of initiates; when he had spoken of other sheep which were not of the fold, but which the shepherd must bring forth with a call, he had been speaking of Lazarus. But when Jesus had said that he and the Father were one, Judas recognised these as mystery words. Words that meant a priest was ready to use the forces of the Father, that is, to awaken the body of an initiate, and to raise him from his Temple Sleep.

No man came to the Father, that is, no man returned to the physical body from the three-day initiation sleep, except through a priest! 

Jesus was not a priest! This would be enough to destroy him.

When they came now near Bethany, some furlongs from the township, they passed that desolate place of burial, the tombs that were set into the walls of the hills. Here, near what they called the house of rest, many men stood mourning, without their women, as was the custom. The sun was near gone over the land, and made long shadows of those dry hills. The mourners turned to see Jesus, and rushed to tell him of Lazarus. Soon, Andrew was sent to fetch Martha. The woman came in her drab attire of lament and with her face the colour of ashes. She fell at Jesus’ feet and told him that Lazarus was dead. She said that had Jesus had been here he could have prevented his death by performing a miracle. She said her sister Magdalena was full of grief and was sat as still as death in the house, waiting for him to come.

Judas watched Jesus carefully, in his face was written pain for her sorrow and something other, which he did not discern. Jesus told Martha that Lazarus was not dead, for he was the resurrection and the life, and all who believed in him, though they were dead, would live. After that she fell on her knees and affirmed that he was Christ, the Son of God.

He said to her, ‘Tell Magdalena I call her. That she must arise, for I need her by my side.’ 

She took herself away then, and many came to gather around. Judas heard them mumbling, that if this was the man who had cured a blind man and lepers, and had cast out demons why had he not prevented Lazarus from dying? As they speculated on what he might do, from out of the sun’s vanishing luminance there emerged the figure of Magdalena.

Judas saw only her face, gazing out from that mourning veil, streaked with tears. What a face it was! Did her tears seem to him to be tears of joy or mourning? He could not tell. She was inscrutable. His blood made skips in his veins. He was restless. He waited for her to glance his way. He beckoned her to look just once.

The women of the town, who had followed Magdalena’s steps, now came upon the place where Jesus stood with his disciples. They wept and pulled at their clothes, while Magdalena fell at Jesus’ feet – without so much as a fidget of glance in Judas’ direction.

He waited. Quiet fell over the day, save the groaning and moaning of the mourners.

‘Had you been here, my brother would not have died!’ she said to him. But her words were spoken differently, for in them, Judas noted a tone of thankfulness that Jesus had not come sooner! Tears fell from her eyes. Were these tears of joy?

When Jesus saw it, he raised Magdalena’s chin with his hand and Judas saw then what passed between them, and this awakened in him a realisation. Rage and discontent surged through him, and he could taste gall in his spit. He wanted to howl like an animal for the anguish of it – not only for its intimacy, which must be clear to all, but also for its complicity, since he now understood that Magdalena was in some way entangled in Lazarus’ initiation.  

His bowels were full of thorns, and his spit was sour.

‘Where have you laid him?’

Jesus’ voice was soft and tender. His eyes were full with tears and Judas knew that he was harnessing a force of love in his heart, a force that would raise his pupil from his death trance.

Even those who were not his disciples sensed it, and said, ‘Look how Jesus loves Lazarus!’

Magdalena showed him the grave, covered with a great round stone.

Would he do it now? Judas leaned his mind in his direction, daring him to do it.

Jesus walked to the grave and paused before it, looking troubled. He turned and his eyes fell on Judas. Judas felt a gasp come, for it was as if Jesus had seen in that moment all of his thoughts.

Jesus turned around again, and said, ‘Take away the stone.’

Martha was alarmed, ‘But Lord! By this time there will be a smell, for he has been dead near four days.’

Jesus said to her, ‘Martha, did I not just say to you, that if you believed, you would see God glorified in Lazarus?’

Martha lowered her eyes, ‘Yes, Lord.’

When the men rolled away the heavy stone, and returned to the crowds, the people immediately put the corners of their garments about their faces to fend off the smell.

But there was no smell.

Jesus raised his eyes, and said, ‘Father, I thank you. That my word is one with you in spirit, and that you hear me always, but because of the people who stand by, I will say it out loud, that they too might hear how the Word, your Son, is in me, so that they might believe, that you have sent Him to me, and that through Him you and I are one!’

Judas knew, that by saying this, Jesus wished to reveal how in himself lived the Word, the Son of the Father, which he would make enter into Lazarus’ soul, to awaken him.

‘Lazarus come forth!’ resounded the forbidden words.

Nature drew a breath. Above, came the sound of a great eagle, making its noises as it rose upwards over the mountains, circling the skies, and falling away into the melting sun of day’s end.  The world followed it, and Judas also followed it as it soared aloft and died away. A thought came then, foreign to his experience: why could he not be like that bird, basking in the light of the sun with hopeful abandon? Must he live always like a scorpion, fearing the sun?

But this self-understanding was short-lived, for upon hearing a round of gasps, his concentration was now returned to see the beloved of Jesus, the initiate, coming from out of the black mouth of the cave, bound with graveclothes.

‘Loosen him, and let him go!’ Jesus told the women.

Martha, shocked, remained behind. Only Magdalena went to Lazarus to help. After that, Jesus, thronged by all those who had come to the burial place, was swept away to Bethany, but not before turning once more to look upon Judas.

That glance made a path clear from Judas’ head to his heart. He was standing upon the soil of freedom, between his hope and his fear. Here, it seemed to him, was his last occasion to love this man; to love him despite his urge to betray him; to recognise his greatness, despite his impulse to follow his destiny.

But he could not.

The eyes, multicoloured and endless-deep, held and held him, until they held no more. Gasping, with his head turning in circles, Judas was let go, and he sat upon a rock to get his breath back. After a moment he rose to make his way to Bethany, his eyes tethered to the ground.   

High above him, the eagle scooped wind with its wings and circled him, its eye ranged the sky…its gaze was upon him, unblinking, open, shut, perfect...

But Judas did not see it. He told himself,

‘The time for pruning has come!’

DO NOT TOUCH ME! - Excerpt from Fifth Gospel - A Novel.

DO NOT TOUCH ME!

I

N the early hours before day rise, the mother of the Lord and the other women went to the rock-hewn tomb in  Joseph’s garden, to see to the proper anointing of their master’s body. Magdalena was late in following, and she had not yet reached the garden when she was met by the mother and the others returning from the tomb. They told her that on arriving they had found the tomb open and empty. In and around the tomb, they had seen visions of angels who had said their lord was already risen, and that they must look for him among the living.

Magdalena full of concern, returned with the others to the cenacle to tell the men and found only Lazarus-John with Simon-Peter in the upper room.

Upon seeing them, Simon-Peter came directly to the Lord's Mother, to beg her forgiveness. He recounted how on the night of Passover he had fled the court of Caiaphas, and that afterwards he had denied his Lord three times for fear of his life. Because of this, full of shame, he had gone to Olivet, where he found a cave. In it he had slept fitfully, until awakened by an overwhelming effulgence – the brilliant form of his master illuminating the gloom of his cave! His master told him to go and tell the others what he had seen.  

The Mother of the Lord now recounted what the women had seen: angels, rolled away stones, and an empty grave. Full of wonder, the men resolved to see it for themselves and took themselves out of the city with Magdalena following in their train. 

By the time the three of them arrived at the tomb, a red-gold promise of sunrise lay on the margins of the horizon. Lazarus-John, carrying the lamp, was first through the low door of the sepulchre and he told them what he saw: a great gash in the earth, a deep cleft had opened up, and now the linen cloths were lying on one side of it, and the head napkin on the other.

Simon-Peter, having by now entered the sepulchre himself, confirmed that the grave was empty. There followed some discussion between them and not knowing what they should do, they left to find the other disciples.

Magdalena remained behind.

Alone, at the entrance to the sepulchre, a deep sense of loss beckoned tears from her eyes; her master was gone, his body was not found, and she did not know how he could return without it.  Not having seen the angels like the others, she wanted to know it for herself. She watched the sun rise over the hills and when it cast its benevolent rays on the mouth of the tomb, she braced herself and dared to look inside.

She gasped.

Lit up by the birthing light were two angels, one at the head of the great stone bier and the other at the foot of it.

Woman, why do you weep?

She harnessed her mind to answer. ‘Because they have taken away my Lord and I know not where they have taken him!’

Fearful, she turned to go, but there was a man standing before her, haloed by sun. She did not know him, but he seemed full of the power of bourgeoning and sprouting life –  as if he were a gardener, a planter, or a cultivator. To see him made her hope that he might know where her master’s body might be.

He took the words from out of the mouths of the angels,

‘Woman, why do you weep?’

‘Sir, if you have borne his body from here, tell me where you have laid it, and I will take him away.’

The man now called her by her old name, ‘Mary!’

The memory of her master’s words rose up into her thinking:

Unite with the bridegroom in the bridal chamber of your heart, and from this union will arise in you a knowledge of Who I Am!

Her eyes saw Him now! The youthful body of Jesus, in all its flawless fullness!

‘Master!’ She moved to go to him, but he forestalled her.

‘Touch me not, dear Magdalena, for it will pollute me, the mystery is not yet consumed. Christ must yet unite fully with me. Go, tell the others to wait, tell them not to be sorrowful, for I will soon come to them!’

Joyful and obedient, she ran all the way back to the cenacle.

Excerpt from Fifth Gospel - A Novel

Lea gave me her quiet, patient attention.‘You should know that when an army enters into a city, faith soon leads to murder.’  

‘Should I? Why should it be so…I have no idea!’

‘Think of it pairé, what you call faith is not really faith at all, it is only religion. Religion is only a short step from zeal, and zeal only a margin away from fervour, which is only a hair’s breadth from frenzy–the cradle of hate and murder. The truth is, pairé, that evil and good share the same small space in the soul.’ 

‘What makes one man evil and one good, then?’

‘How close he is to the good gods or to the evil gods.’

‘And what is the compensation for the atrocities committed against innocent people…children!’ I said with vehemence, for the memory of Bezier’s had come unbidden and was stirring up an anger I had not let myself feel all these years.  

She turned towards me and fixed her steady gaze on my face. ‘There is another way to look at it, pairé. It could be that destiny has brought these souls together to a place where they can suffer in order that in the future they can return again, together, for a good cause…’

This did not ease my heart. ‘I know we are told to forgive our enemies their sins…but what of God? Has he turned away from the innocent?’

‘God is just,’ she said.

‘But is that all he is? What of love?’

‘God is Love, and his wrath is also his love.’

‘How can wrath be love?’

‘Do you remember, what Buddha said to Jesus? Suffering leads to Compassion. When God spills out his wrath it causes suffering. But suffering gives us wisdom, it allows us to recognise the suffering of others, isn’t that so?’

‘Yes.’

‘So, the memory of our own suffering is what allows us to understand and to forgive those who have done some wrong to us…this is true love pairé. Wrath seen from the other side, is true love; a Love that cancels out sin.’

I looked out of the window to the hard snow falling over the crests and peaks and valleys and chasms of our mountains. I realised more than ever how far I was from perfection. 

Chapter Cut from Fifth Gospel - A Novel - TEMPLE SLEEP

TEMPLE SLEEP

‘And the youth looked at him and loved him.’

The secret Gospel according to Mark

To Lazarus Christ Jesus said, ‘Soon you will pass into spiritual worlds, and your sister shall prepare you for your burial, she will sit with you and hold you in her heart, for she shall be the guardian of your soul until I return…Have faith Magdalena,’ he said to her, ‘support your brother as you support me…for in every death there is a rebirth…Wait for my call, then shall you see the last sign before the Son of Man begins his journey to his death. In your brother shall be resurrected what lives in me, the eternal Word, the light and the life that comes from those heavenly spheres from which I have come to earth. He shall be the first to see the Kingdom in all its fullness on earth, for his illness is not unto death, but to the glory of God, to the revelation of the eternal Word.’ Now to Lazarus he said, ‘Through this initiation, you shall venture into spirit worlds and you will become another man, you shall have another name and they shall call you John the beloved disciple of Jesus. It is true that every birth is accompanied by an illness, the illness of the mother. But this illness does not lead to death, but to new life.’

Lazarus was amazed by these words but his eyes were heavy laden and his heart seemed to falter. At this point he heard his sister Martha hurrying into the booth. ‘Lord,’ she said, ‘do you not care that my sister has left me to serve you alone? Please tell her to come and help me!’

Mary answered, ‘Martha, sit with us…the master is speaking of eternal truths.’

But Martha’s voice, very far away now, came into his mind, irritated and unhappy, ‘There is so much work to do! I should also like to sit and to listen to eternal truths, but who shall feed the master, then?’

‘Martha, Martha,’ came his master’s gentle words, ‘you are careful and troubled about the food, which is your task for you must care for my physical well-being; in you lives what is active. But one other thing is also needful - Mary listens to my words because she has a task that is different from yours, she cares for my soul, what lives in her is contemplative…and as you have chosen, so too has she chosen what is suited for her part…and this shall not be taken away from her.’

Lazarus heard his sister’s voice say, ‘Yes, my lord,’ and after that her footsteps in the courtyard.

Christ Jesus continued with his teaching and as his words were spoken Lazarus felt his body at peace, its turmoil stilled. The world too seemed quiet, the sea, and air and the very heavens came to rest and among this harmony did his acquiescent soul lift up from him.

And he fell out of his head.

                        

               Lazarus sees himself stripped of all earthly pretensions standing beside his master in the temple of Jerusalem, before the Pharisees.

          ‘Verily, verily,’ Christ says, and it is as if Lazarus himself were saying it, and it seems not strange at all but the most simple thing, for he feels as if he is one with Christ. ‘I say unto you, if a man keep my saying, he shall never see death…’

The Pharisees answer, ‘Are you greater than our father Abraham which is dead, and the prophets which are dead? Who makes you so great?’

Christ tells them, ‘If I honour myself, my honour means nothing: it is my father who honours me, of whom you say that he is your God…but you do not know him! I know him! And if I were to say that I do not know him to please you, then I would be a liar, like you. I know him and I keep his word, you only speak of Abraham. Abraham himself rejoiced to see my day; and he saw it and was glad.’

‘You are not yet fifty years old, how can a man so young have entered so deep and risen so high as to have seen the father Abraham in the blood of his generations?’

‘I am not an initiate. I am the initiator, and yea more than that, I am the subject of initiation itself! I am the foundation of the very world! I am not only one with Abraham, but with what pulses in the entire cosmos, I was before Abraham was. Before Abraham was, existed the one who is I AM and I AM He.’

The people grow angry. They take up stones to cast at him and he has to flee. There are hindrances all around. He feels pain as stones strike him but they are not stones, it is that his soul is being wrenched from the temple, the grave of his body.

He realises that Christ is the door and that through Him he can enter a higher sphere, a glorious mountain.

From the outspread widths of space comes to him an angel, the self of his great teacher, John the Baptist, whose words had so often warmed his heart. His mighty cosmic form seems to Lazarus like Adam and he blesses him with his greatest gift – the gift of his own spirit. Lazarus feels it enter into his emptied soul.

I am John!

Now in the upper airs the moon’s snow face cuts the night’s skirt, and is stirred by delicate green whirlwinds that move from star to star inscribing in astral light grand pictures for his seeing.  He rises higher through the agency of another angel, upwards to a sea the colour of peach blossom that stretches out to distant purpling plains and resounds in glorious songs. This angel points to the father of his people. 

Abraham!

He is one with Abraham. his ancestor.

A light rises over the horizon of this unpolluted, immeasurable landscape. A sun, suspended, luminous, diaphanous. incandescent and transparent all at once permeates the heaven-opened world from all sides like the rays of a dawn sun. These throw their luminance upwards to the hems of a lowering cloud making it gleam all gold.

The Sun is the light and life and love of the world and it is born now in me!

I am a Son of Man!

I am one with Christ who is the light of the world.

From those mighty cosmic reaches, come the resounding words,

‘Lazarus…come forth!’

And Lazarus tells himself, 

‘Now do I truly recognise without hindrance what lives in the soul of Jesus…Him who has awakened me - the sublime being of Christ!’

             

Excerpt - Author's Cut Fifth Gospel - A Novel

EVIL COUNTERPARTS

‘He maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good

and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.’

Matthew 5:45

AT THE MOMENT the mother of God was receiving the essence of virgin-hood from the far-spread dominions of the Divine Sophia, leagues away upon an Island that faced Vesuvius called Capri, Caesar Tiberius was making room in his soul for a demon.

Some time ago, fascinated by the occult, Tiberius had become addicted to the pagan cults and rituals of the mysteries belonging to his conquered peoples. Ill prepared for the accelerated initiations to which he had subjected himself, his ignoble nature, already impetuous and prone to indulgence, became unfettered through a loosening of the mind from the heart and the will.

This loosening caused his thoughts to become crowded with hallucinations and delusions. He saw enemies around every corner, he heard of conspiracies, all men lay in wait to put a dagger into his back. Having succumbed to madness and fury, he plunged into a chaotic program of revenge. In the night his men seized unwary men, women, sometimes children, those whom his disordered mind suspected of treachery and in the day, loved ones would drag the countless bodies with hooks from the Tiber River, afraid to burn their loved ones or even to grieve, lest it be seen as a sign of treason. Some poor victims were made to drink poison, others were strangled and those young virginal women, who were protected by the law while inviolate, were first raped by his torturers before Tiberius’ sentence was carried out.

Not only delusions but also fits of excitement seized him, where his self love soared upwards in grand overestimations of his divine powers, of his status as a superhuman being whose surroundings in Rome could not hope to match his intoxicating grandness! In Capri he abandoned himself to sensual excesses, treating his deviant guests to grand orgies of food and wine that lasted days, with scores of naked dancers engaging in multiple lurid unions for entertainment, or with romps in the woods and groves where, in feverish stupor, his guests could find those boys and young women who, dressed as Pans and nymphs, would solicit their attentions in any way they desired.

At other times he experienced a pitching of his gloom into an abyss of despair. Unfettered by clarity of thought, he fell into states of anguish and hopelessness, which he sought to console through acts of cruelty against others. More and more did a depraved delight in suffering surface from out of the depths of his volcanic temper, whose volatile hungers increased with the distortions of his deranged thoughts and the fire of his disordered passions.

One day, he was taken by a stroke of genius, he ordered his guards to drag the half living and tortured carcasses of his imagined enemies and their supporters to the high cliffs where he had them cast headlong onto the rocks below. He was surprised and elated when he experienced the profoundest sexual raptures on observing his men break the bones of the dead with boathooks and oars!

Thus was his Satanic empowerment accomplished while at the same time two other events were occurring, side by side in Judea - the sublime spirit of the Sun was entering into the soul of Jesus, and not far off, in the province of Perea, the son of Herod the Great, Herod Antipas, friend and admirer of Tiberius, was taking his demonic sister in law, Herodias for a wife.

It was a resplendent wedding, followed by a feast to rival those feasts on the isle of Capri. Midway through the banquet, whose excess could have fed an entire village for months, Herod stood, with a goblet in hand and made a toast.

‘To Caesar Tiberius! The noble Wolf!'

WISE MEN, RICH MEN AND LEPERS - Excerpt From Fifth Gospel - A Novel.

              

JESUS walked the road that led from Nazareth to Judea with his feet moving of their own accord and his thoughts vacant in his head.

During his conversation with his stepmother, what had lived embedded in him like a seal on wax had begun its leave- taking. This had made him feel bewildered and abandoned. As he walked now, he could no longer think coherent thoughts, and his movements followed only a predetermined design, towards the man who would take his destiny further.

At daybreak, a wind-storm announced itself in the anger of a red sky. Soon the air had picked up around him to sting his eyes. He stumbled and fell. Two men dressed in white garments with hoods over their heads and scarves over their faces, came from the road ahead, leading an overburdened mule.

The taller man helped him up, and said loudly over the din, ‘What is this? Jesus of Nazareth, is that you? Where are you going alone, my son?’

Jesus looked up at him, trying to understand words that no longer made sense. When his voice came from his mouth it sounded hollow, as if it came not from him but from the wind, ‘I am going to where people like you do not wish to direct your vision, where human pain can find the consolation that comes from what you have forgotten!’

‘Jesus of Nazareth!’ the other man shouted. ‘Do you not remember us from Engaddi?’ The man took the scarf from his face momentarily. ‘Do you see who I am?’

The shorter did likewise and said, ‘I once sat with you in the grotto...do you remember?’

Jesus did not see them. He saw only what they represented.

‘Come away from this scorching wind!’ the taller one said, ‘The Lord is a storm come to sweep away the world.’

‘You are lost lambs!’ Jesus coughed, walking away.

‘We are all lost, Jesus!’ the shorter one cried, ‘It does not matter how many psalms we sing, or how many temples we build, God continues to deny us our Messiah!’

Jesus stood in the tempest of elements and looked at them. ‘And when I become your shepherd,’ he said, ‘when you realise who I am, you will run away again and become lost, just as you ran away from me long ago.’

The men put scarves to their mouths to ward off the dust and debris. The shorter man said, ‘you must come with us...you are not well, there is a house of the order not far from here, where you can rest.’

‘Leave me be!’ he said to them. ‘I won’t go to your secluded house! You wear white, and you pretend to be pure, but you are not pious men in your hearts, because in you burns a fire that has not been kindled by God, but by your own ambitions. You bear the mark of the tempter! It is the tempter that has made you arrogant, so that your wool glitters with his fire!’ He put his fingers to his face. ‘The hair of this wool pricks my eyes but it will not blind me!’

The taller man shouted, ‘Rest assured, Jesus, it is the dust that pricks your eyes! You know we have shown the tempter the door, he has no part in what we do...you should’ve stayed with us, now look at what the world has made of you! Let us help you!’

‘Oh what arrogance and pride! You are only greater than others because you stand on their backs!’

They did not know how to respond to this, and he left them standing in the desert. Behind him the mule made its loud complaints, shaking its head, as the breath of Jehova carried the world away to blot out the sun.

The storm abated, and days passed without beginning and without end.

It was night.

Fatigued and cold, Jesus wandered towards a light in the distance. When he drew near to it, he saw a man sitting by a fire preparing to eat a meal. When the man looked up, he stood in a hurry, afraid, and called out to him with a mustered boldness, ‘Who are you? I am alone but I have a knife, and I shall not be afraid to use it!’

Jesus showed him his empty hands. ‘I thirst,’ he said, knowing he must pause, for his legs would soon give out from under him.

The man came to Jesus and helped him to a place beside the fire. ‘Forgive me...I am constantly afraid of being robbed by thieves, or killed by bandits! I see you are no thief, and no bandit...come...be my guest...eat at my table. I have made soup,’ he said, showing him the watery stew which he was pouring into a bowl. ‘There’s crow in it and wild mushrooms,’ he pointed out those meagre morsels with an approving eye, ‘and some other wild things I have no name for....once, you know, I would have spat at the thought of such a meal, but now I shake with anticipation. Look at my hands how they shake. Because of the crow, I have made it boil a good long while to kill the poison...that is what it has come to...still...thanks be to God, I have something!’ He sighed. ‘Israel mourns...Israel hungers...its people cry out in pain for deliverance, but first I must cry out for something to feed the hunger of my body! Something to put in my belly! After that, a man can turn his mind to the hunger of the soul. Until then, we are all animals...’ he looked at Jesus, ‘You need something in your belly too I’ll wager...you look like you have eaten nothing in days...come...it's good you will see, I have let it boil long to kill the poison...’

Jesus shook his head, ‘I want only water.’

‘Only water...!’ the man said, peering at him with more intensity. ‘Are you a prophet? Yesterday, I heard tell from a holy man, of a prophet in these parts...So help me God! He was described to seem just like you! Many don’t trust prophets, they think them mad people with one foot in heaven and the other in hell...but I believe it a good thing to know a prophet who can speak to God.’ 

The man gave him some water, which Jesus drank with gratitude. ‘I thank you for the water...but I am not a prophet.’

‘What a shame!’ The man’s spirit drooped. He took a thoughtful gulp of his soup. ‘If you were a prophet,’ he continued, ‘I would ask you to speak to God on my behalf...on account of the paths my soul has taken.’

Jesus was directed to an apparition that loomed large and red over the man. ‘What are these paths? I have seen you before...a thousand years ago. You were different then!’

The man grew fearful. ‘What do you see? Oh, dear God of Abraham, what do you see? Is it the Devil sitting on my shoulders? Is it? Yes...?’ He shuddered and moaned, and shuddered again. ‘Would you send it away? It hounds me. I have given up everything, and yet it follows me! I admit that I was never a pious man. My heart was always bent on acquiring riches and high honours. I thought that I was of greater value than others. One day I had a terrible dream. I saw what had made me rich. It was not I, myself, it was a black angel with huge red wings, and I was terrified because I knew that it was the devil! I took to my heels to escape him, abandoning everything, and I have been going about for a long time, fleeing from what sits on my own shoulders...’ when he said this, his eyes clouded with tears and he seemed to be lost in a vision of his own wretchedness.

‘I have seen this spirit that hounds you before,’ Jesus said to him, ‘at the pagan altars...it is the spirit of pride and arrogance!’

‘Yes...yes...!’ the man said, with eyes wide. ‘Pride and arrogance! Exactly! That is my weakness!’

Jesus could not help him, he could not help anyone, not yet...something was waiting for him in the Jordan and he had to go. He stood and with a heart full of woe, left the man in his misery.

He walked day after day with the sun’s fingers on his brow, and spent the nights huddled, trembling from cold, with his teeth chattering and only his thin, white robe wrapped around him. On the morning of the thirteenth day when the fire-ball came out of its rocky bed he was up again, walking, and came upon the disfigured shape of a man sitting beneath a solitary tree.

Already the world was a furnace and he knew he must have shade, but as he neared the tree the man sitting there raised his head and Jesus could see that his skin was covered in pustules, leaking with suppurations, that his nose was a hole in his face and that the lids over his eyes were gone missing, giving him the look of a living cadaver. The leper tried in vain to cover his malignancies with a hand eaten and ravaged. ‘Go away!’ he said to Jesus. ‘I am foul! Hurry! Don’t come near, for the path I walk is not your path, my son. I beg you to leave while you can...!’

Jesus sat near the man and wiped his brow with a sleeve and said. ‘It is hot.’

‘Yes, yes...it is hot...but please, save yourself! Must I take upon my soul your death on top of everything else I have to bear?’

Jesus heard snakes hissing behind rocks and when he looked at the leper he saw blue wings and a cold eye. He had seen this eye before in the faces of those Temple priests. The eye looked at him while its wings enfolded the man.

‘Tell me,’ Jesus said to him, ‘where has the path your soul has taken led you? I know you, I saw you thousands of years ago, but you are now changed, you are come down to earth!’

The leper was terrified. He sucked in a breath through the purple edged crater that was his mouth, and from within this cavern he emitted a strangled voice, ‘Do you see it? Oh the misery! Where is the Messiah? When will he come to release me from this dreadful thing that claws into my flesh? He came so gradually, you know. At first I thought he was the Archangel Gabriel and I adored him but I soon realised that he was another...I realised he was the angel of death! Death itself gnaws at my bones and feeds on my flesh...look at me! Me, a learned rabbi, a powerful man in the synagogue! Now I am defiled and no one will have me near them, and I have to

walk alone in desolate places like this, scarcely able to beg for what scraps people will give me at their doors.

‘When you came I was waiting for death to tear me to pieces with his jaws...I have waited! But he wants to torture me more...’ He began weeping then into his ulcerated hands.

‘I have seen it,’ Jesus told him, putting a hand on the man’s shoulders, ‘It is the sharpness of your dead thoughts, rabbi...these are like corpses and rotting carcasses.’

The man was so frightened that he put both hands over his face to ward off the picture of it.

Jesus pointed his head to the sun and bellowed an ‘Ahhh!’ into that white light that blinded his eyes. ‘I am a grain of sand in the desert! What can I do?’ he said to it. He got up, hot tears falling on the dirt, and with exhaustion in his limbs went on his way.

And like the wise men and the rich man, this leper did not see him go until he was a speck on the horizon.