Responses to the "Old Bones" Class

The question has been posed, regarding the Basic Records seminar, “Is there still life in those old bones, and should we care? – A discussion on the study of the historical Jesus.”

Bones are the most mineralized part of the human being, and thereby the closest to death, which is why the skull and cross bones are used as a symbol of death. If our focus is “old bones,” does it reveal a lack of life in our thinking, which needs to be living if it is to have any relevance to Truth?

Science views the human being through anatomy and physiology basically as a solid, physical entity – and ultimately as a corpse. Despite vast advances in this realm, we still cannot claim to understand life, let alone something as intangible as soul, psyche, the unconscious, or spirit. Given that most of us would consider our being as having more reality and significance than a corpse, how can we extend this experience of reality to our field of inquiry?

In the Buddhist teaching story, where four blind monks each examines only a small part of an elephant, and each one thinks that his particular part is a description of the whole, we can see how misguided the results would be.

I have never taken the Basic Records seminar, so I am a relative outsider to this discussion. I realize that my questions and frame of reference may not be the same as the founders of the seminar, but my hope is that this perspective may allow new insights to emerge. Since first hearing about the seminar several years ago, I was intrigued about its nature. What is the mindset that decides a priori to limit our questioning about the being of Jesus to an historical context? Why do we assume that restricting our view to historical facts could possibly give us a complete picture of anything (although maybe that wasn’t the goal)?

I am reminded of Einstein’s famous sayings: “You can never solve a problem on the level on which it was created.” "Everything that can be counted does not necessarily count; everything that counts cannot necessarily be counted."

Is the “historical Jesus” what humanity needs today? The fact that the question about old bones has been posed suggests not. If we truly want to understand Jesus, we have to expand our arc of inquiry and look beyond the merely historical. Historical contexts can add to our understanding but never be the totality of it, just as going back to original languages can correct misinterpreted translations, but original meanings still need to be understood on a deeper level. It is only when we are willing to expand our world-view to include higher realms that we can expect to glimpse the Big Picture. This does not mean taking on unexamined the dogmas of various religions, but it does mean opening to the realm of the spiritual through spiritual research. Such a spiritual perspective can give context and significance to the historical. Even Einstein recognized, "There comes a time when the mind takes a higher plane of knowledge but can never prove how it got there. All great discoveries have involved such a leap."

In a story of Nasrudin, he drops his keys one night and is looking for them under the streetlight. When a passer-by stops to help him, he asks Nasrudin where he dropped his keys. Nasrudin replies that he dropped them “over there,” but decided to look under the streetlight, since there was more light!

By looking to the material realm of history, where there is “more light,” are we succumbing to the materialistic tendency of our time, even in our pursuit of soul/spiritual questions? Our distancing ourselves from the spiritual and diving into a materialistic view of the world has been a necessary step in the evolution of humanity, even as the child eventually has to leave his parents to find himself. But we are entering another phase now. It is interesting that Elizabeth Howes apparently felt compelled to add Jung’s insights about the reality and nature of the unconscious to Sharmon’s Records. Perhaps she sensed the dangers of narrowing the focus too much.

It has been said that God created man in His image - and then man returned the favor. When we limit our view of Jesus to our preconceived notions of what his reality could have been, do we find out more about Jesus - or about ourselves? Where does the Christ come into the picture? Would Jesus of Nazareth even have significance if it weren’t for the Christ event? And what is the significance of Christ for us – as opposed to the historical Jesus?

Rudolf Steiner made a poignant observation in the early part of the 20th century, which seems even truer today. “It is becoming increasingly clear that for the [Christian] religious faiths of the present, the Mystery of Golgotha [Christ’s Death and Resurrection] is greatly decreasing in significance. They see no value in understanding that event with the consciousness of this age; they see value only in continuing to spread and propagate their teachings. However, these teachings are losing the ability to grasp the meaning of the Mystery of Golgotha. Moreover, the result is that we now have a new and strange kind of theology in the world, one in which people no longer speak of the Christ, but only about Jesus, the man of Nazareth – the ‘simple man’ who wandered about in Palestine like a kind of Socrates. As a result, people cannot understand why the few who do still speak of the Christ see him as the pivotal point in the entire development of humanity.”

Alchemy speaks of the “second birth” of the spiritual embryo, the “I” being or True Self, which is brought to term by the conscious working of the student, through what in many traditions is referred to as mystery training. As we come to know ourselves and go through our own process of individuation, our challenge in this time is to rediscover the spiritual out of our full consciousness, no longer restricted to dream-life or the unconscious, and reconnect with it out of our free will. Ultimately, this can be seen as our work here on earth.

If the Basic Records seminar is losing interest and relevance, I would suggest that is because another level has now been reached. To address the needs of present day participants, we need to open to this next level, the spiritual aspect that seeks to make itself felt through all things in the world, and most especially through the cosmic significance of the deed of Christ, which must come to be understood anew in each age. Only though a spiritual understanding of the Cosmic Christ will we begin to grasp the historical significance of Jesus Christ.

Even as in our work together we strive to connect with soul or psyche, and in alchemy, to dialogue with the beings who stand behind nature as archetypes, I feel we are now being called to bring this same openness of consciousness to bear on how we approach the question of Jesus – and perhaps even to reframe the question from “an historical and literary critical approach.” Let’s let Jesus out of the box.