Publisher's Synopsis
No historical figure has had more written about them than Jesus. However, almost nothing is available today about his personal life as an ordinary man, and how it led to him to develop his particular version of spiritual enlightenment. Today, we are so far removed from what his life was like in the Palestine of his time, that we can hardly imagine what he went through. To our thinking Palestine was primitive and barely civilized, combining ancient Greek, Roman, Persian, Hebrew, and Egyptian cultures. there were gods of tribes and city-states, Hebrew, Persian Zoroastrianism, and Greek Stoicism, all sprinkled with magic, and sorcery. It was into this mix that a series of coincidences conspired to identify the unborn Jesus as the spiritual leader promised by Persian Magi astrology and Hebrew prophesy. And, when Jesus was born his role in life had already been scripted. It is a fascinating story how, as boy and man, he was able to struggle to live up to the role placed upon him. And, how this finally resulted in his developing a unique religious philosophy. It advocated direct communication with a universal creative spirit, bypassing established institutions. When he and John the Baptizer taught this religious philosophy in Palestine it created a religious revolution. That they were quite successful is documented by voluminous accounts of multitudes of adherents, and of Jesus' debates in Jerusalem with temple scholars and theologians. However, Hebrew priests put down the rebellion by having him crucified. It was his intent, after surviving the crucifixion, to continue his teaching in safe secluded locations, but an ultra-conservative Hebrew Pharisee named Paul claimed his crucifixion and his apparent recovery from the dead fulfilled a Hebrew prophesy, and founded Christianity. As a result most of the records describing his teachings were simply forgotten, or saved in the Gospels and translated to reflect Christian, and not Jesus' concepts. Therefore, the purpose of this book is to assist modern men and women to: 1. Understand how and why Jesus developed his spiritual philosophy, 2. Know what his spiritual philosophy entailed, that was misinterpreted., and 3. How this spiritual philosophy can be applied to modern lives. The first part Jesus the Man and Boy, addresses purposes 1 and 2, It is based on voluminous historical data that gives a picture of what life was like in the time and place in which he lived. In particular it provides a semi-fictional biography of his life in a cauldron of competing religious philosophies. It relies on many sources but should be read with the caveat: "this is the way it may have been." It has been purposely deleted of any vestige of religious concepts except those which affected Jesus, or he himself developed and taught. The second is applying Jesus' teaching which is what we call attaining enlightenment, or Cosmic Consciousness. This discusses the modern interpretations and the problems and rewards a modern person faces as they seek to attain Jesus' consciousness of spiritual oneness with creative forces. It is a sort of a reference manual on the evolutionary mental steps in the process. Everyone should be able to identify with at least a few of these steps. The rewards are well worth the effort.
