What would Jesus say?

That is a standard I’ve used occasionally over the years.

Whether mythical or not, the archetype we have of Jesus Christ is essentially one of perfection in human form, the embodiment of brotherly love.

So, what would he say about various world affairs now? What would he say about Russia’s war on Ukraine and all the lives lost to it? What would he say about the starving people in Gaza and all the lives lost in the Israel-Hamas conflict? What would he say about the evolving brutality and mean-spiritedness in the United States?

I don’t have to answer the above questions. You know that he would denounce it and all those who perpetrate it. And he would point out the obvious hypocrisies of perpetrators who claim to be “Christians” or members of any other religious groups. As he purportedly did in his own time on the planet.

I suspect that the main perpetrators of needless human suffering today have long ago lost any hope or belief in anything related to spirituality. And who’s to say they’re wrong about that? Life may be a one-shot affair, with no karma to pay once we shed our mortal coils. Brotherly love is for chumps, they may believe. It’s get it while you can, and do whatever it takes to get it. Lie. Steal. Oppress. Kill.

They’re gambling, of course. Because as Voltaire wrote, “it’s not more surprising to be born twice than once.” If there is any sort of spiritual design to our world and universe — as so many sages have insisted there is — then there is a price to pay for not following the tenets of brotherly love.

Personally, as a Theosophist (more or less), I feel deep inside that there is indeed more to it all than one life to live. And I have a gut feeling that our lives on planet Earth are a form of hell, that we have all incarnated here because we haven’t reached the spiritual level the sages like Jesus and Krishna taught us to strive for. I think, in the grand scheme of things, there may be myriad higher realms where we can exist in many forms once we are worthy of them, or as Jesus said, “in my Father’s house are many mansions.”

As someone who also believes in reincarnation (all Theosophists do), I have sometimes wondered if people who live like brutes here were some sort of animals in a former life, perhaps mistreated  on farms and brutally killed in slaughterhouse,s and they have carried their rage over into their human lives.

Anything is possible.

While we have no definitive proof of anything in spirituality, most people know deep in their  hearts that brotherly love is a code we should be striving to live by. And the good news is that the majority of people on the planet probably do strive for it, and are disgusted by events in aforementioned countries.

But brutes seem to be in control in key countries these days, and brotherly love is falling by the wayside. I urge all of you not to get sucked into the growing vortex of hate. Don’t lose sight of the code.

— Jillian

The great lost chord of modern civilization is forgetfulness of the fact in nature of universal brotherhood, which means not merely a sentimental or political brotherhood; it means that we are all of one common cosmic or spiritual origin, and that what affects one affects all . . . – G. de Purucker

Top photo: Statue of Jesus seated among two children, in Virginia. (Credit: ariyandhamma/Wikimedia Commons)