Jesus and Apollonius
A reader brought up the discrepancy that the Bailey writings tell us that Apollonius and Jesus were the same person, yet they were apparently born around the same time period. She wants my thoughts on the matter.
JJ At the time this was brought up I had never heard of this discrepancy before. There are still a number of questions I have that I have not received an answer on myself. Sometimes I am just given the answer but more often than not I must search intensely for it. The general principle for all of us is this. Find out all you can on your own first. If that does still not yield the answer continue to place attention on it and search. This will build the point of tension and the answer will eventually come. But to be successful you must be as the little child and look at all things no matter how they differ with what you have been taught.
I have gathered together quit a bit of information on Apollonius, but have just taken the time to go through a portion of it and have not reached a final conclusion.
Here are some of my thoughts on the matter.
There are some mysteries associated with Jesus and the Christ which have not been clearly revealed by the Hierarchy. I think the reason for this is that the orthodox association with the Christ is so strong that they feel the time is not yet right to disturb the waters with strong authority which is associated with true revelation.
That said here is DK’s controversial statement:
“As Apollonius of Tyana, He (Jesus) took the fifth initiation and became a Master of the Wisdom.” Initiation Human and Solar, Page 57
Now the problem here is that most scholars believe that Jesus and Apollonius were both born right around the same time period, close to 4-1 BC. Therefore, by normal reasoning it would seem they were contemporaries and it would have been impossible for Jesus to have been Apollonius.
The most probable esoteric way around this dilemma is that, after the crucifixion that Apollonius vacated his body and Jesus walked in and continued with his work.
A second possibility is that Apollonius was overshadowed by Jesus.
A third possibility is that they both belonged to the same oversoul.
But some students of Apollonius have another exotic explanation. They say that Jesus and Apollonius are one and the same person. The story is that around the age of 30 Apollonius happened by the Jerusalem area and started teaching. He stayed there for over three years, as Jesus, and was crucified, but survived, left the area and never returned. He lived to around the age of 100.
Other explanations revolve around the idea that our history of that period is very vague and we have many dates and details wrong.
Around this direction Benjamin Crème actually presented an interesting possibility. He said: “The Disciple Jesus (24 BC to 9 AD), who is now the Master Jesus, was born in Palestine as a third-degree initiate. When He went out of incarnation at the Crucifixion, Jesus was a fourth-degree initiate. In His next incarnation, as Apollonius of Tyana (16AD to c.97 AD), He became a Master (fifth-degree initiate). He died in India.”
This is an interesting thought and it would harmonize DK’s controversial statement, but there is no historical evidence that Jesus was born as early as 24 BC or that the birth of Apollonius was as late as 16 AD.
Another interesting twist comes from H. P. Blavatsky and expanded somewhat by the Theosophical Society.
They do not accept the writings of Alice A. Bailey so they were not trying to harmonize DK’s paradox. Even so, they have an explanation that does this.
They say the real Jesus was born over a hundred years earlier than the Biblical Jesus. His real name was Jeschu Ben Pandira. He was really stoned to death and later “hung on a tree” as described by Paul. (See Galations 3:13) After the death of Pandira several initiates got together and compiled the Gospel story loosely based on his life with incidents and teachings from several other initiates mixed in. It was a combination of fact and fiction created to teach certain principles and subtly give out the principles of initiation. For some reason they moved the time frame ahead a hundred years and if this account is true they would have had to go to enormous pains to create a new historical background.
An interesting point supporting this point of view is that the Age of Pisces did not start at the orthodox birth of Christ but well over 100 BC. If the avatar of the age is supposed to come at the beginning of the age then Jesus would have missed it by some time if he was born at the orthodox date.
See below for an excerpt from Esoteric Christianity by Annie Besant who followed H. P. Blavatsky as President of the Theosophical Society.
Not all Theosophists and esoterists believe this approach. Rudolf Steiner thought that Blavatsky was deceived on the matter and Jesus was crucified April 3, 33 AD. He believed that Pandira was as forerunner of the real Christ.
Then there is the final possibility that seems to be accepted by Lucis Trust – that DK just made a mistake.
Here’s my thoughts on the matter. It is difficult to imagine that DK would have made such a black and white mistake such as this, especially when he had about thirty years to correct it before Alice A. Bailey’s death. One more mystery is why some student did not ask Bailey about it and then she could ask DK. We see no evidence of this happening. Maybe it did happen and we have no record. My logic would dictate that Apollonius was somehow linked to Jesus but at this point I do not have the full answer.
This may be a good exercise for the group. Read over this post and the writings below and contemplate and then give us your impressions.
From the writings of Annie Besant: “The thread of the life-story of Jesus is one which may be disentangled from those with which it is intertwined without any great difficulty. We may fairly here aid our study by reference to those records of the past which experts can reverify for themselves, and from which certain details regarding the Hebrew Teacher have been given to the world by H.P. Blavatsky and by others who are experts in occult investigation…
“The occult records partly endorse the story told in the Gospels, and partly do not endorse it; they show us the life, and thus enable us to disentangle it from the myths which are intertwined therewith.
“The child whose Jewish name has been turned into that of Jesus was born in Palestine B.C. 105, during the consulate of Publius Rutilius Rufus and Gnaeus Mallius Maximus. His parents were well-born though poor, and he was educated in a knowledge of the Hebrew Scriptures. His fervent devotion and a gravity beyond his years led his parents to dedicate him to the religious and ascetic life, and soon after a visit to Jerusalem, in which the extraordinary intelligence and eagerness for knowledge of the youth were shown in his seeking of the doctors in the Temple, he was sent to be trained in an Essene community in the southern Judaean desert. When he had reached the age of nineteen he went on to the Essene monastery near Mount Serbal, a monastery which was much visited by learned men travelling from Persia and India to Egypt, and where a magnificent library of occult works — many of them Indian of the Trans-Himalayan regions — had been established. From this seat of mystic learning he proceeded later to Egypt. He had been fully instructed in the secret teaching which were the real fount of life among the Essenes, and was initiated in Egypt as a disciple of that one sublime Lodge from which every great religion has its Founder. For Egypt has remained one of the world-centres of the true Mysteries, whereof all semi-public Mysteries are the faint and far-off reflections. The mysteries spoken of in history as Egyptian were the shadows of the true things “in the Mount,” and there the young Hebrew received the solemn consecration which prepared him for the royal priesthood he was later to attain. So superhumanly pure and so full of devotion was he, that in his gracious manhood he stood out pre-eminently from the severe and somewhat fanatical ascetics among whom he had been trained, shedding on the stern Jews around him the fragrance of a gentle and tender wisdom, as a rose-tree strangely planted in a desert would shed its sweetness on the barrenness around. The fair and stately grace of his white purity was round him as a radiant moonlit halo, and his words, though few, were ever sweet and loving, winning even the most harsh to a temporary gentleness, and the most rigid to a passing softness. Thus he lived through nine and twenty years of mortal life, growing from grace to grace.
“This superhuman purity and devotion fitted the man Jesus, the disciple, to become the temple of a loftier Power, of a mighty, indwelling Presence. The time had come for one of those Divine manifestations which from age to age are made for the helping of humanity, when a new impulse is needed to quicken the spiritual evolution of mankind, when a new civilization is about to dawn. The world of the West was then in the womb of time, ready for the birth, and the Teutonic sub-race was to catch the sceptre of empire failing from the failing hands of Rome. Ere it started on its journey a World-Saviour must appear, to stand in blessing beside the cradle of the infant Hercules.
“A mighty “Son of God” was to take flesh upon earth, a supreme Teacher, “full of grace and truth” — One in whom the Divine Wisdom abode in fullest measure, who was verily “the Word” incarnate, Light and Life in outpouring richness, a very Fountain of the Waters of Life. Lord of Compassion and of Wisdom, such was His name — from His dwelling in the Secret Places He came forth into the world of men.
“For Him was needed an earthly tabernacle, a human form, the body of a man, and who so fit to yield his body in glad and willing service to One before whom Angels and men bow down in lowliest reverence, as this Hebrew of the Hebrews, this purest and noblest of “the Perfect,” whose spotless body and stainless mind offered the best that humanity could bring? The man Jesus yielded himself a willing sacrifice, “offered himself without spot” to the Lord of Love, who took unto Himself that pure form as tabernacle, and dwelt therein for three years of mortal life.
“This epoch is marked in the traditions embodies in the Gospels as that of the Baptism of Jesus, when the Spirit was seen “descending from heaven like a dove, and it abode upon him,” and a celestial voice proclaimed Him as the beloved Son, to whom men should give ear. Truly was He the beloved Son in whom the Father was well-pleased, and from that time forward “Jesus began to preach,” and was that wondrous mystery, “God manifest in the flesh” — not unique in that He was God, for: “Is it not written in your law, I said, ye are Gods? If he called them Gods, unto whom the word of God came, and the scripture cannot be broken; say ye of Him, whom the Father hath sanctified and sent into the world, Thou blasphemist; because I said, I am the Son of god?” Truly all men are Gods, in respect to the Spirit within them, but not in all is the God-head manifested, as in that well-beloved Son of the Most High.
“To that manifested Presence the name of “the Christ” may rightly be given, and it was he who lived and moved in the form of the man Jesus over the hills and plains of Palestine, teaching, healing diseases, and gathering round Him as disciples a few of the more advanced souls. The rare charm of his royal love, outpouring form Him as rays from a sun, drew round Him the suffering, the weary, and the oppressed, and the subtly tender magic of His gentle wisdom purified, ennobled, and sweetened the lives that came into contact with His own. By parable and luminous imagery He taught the uninstructed crowds who pressed around Him, and, using the powers of the free Spirit, He healed many a disease by word or touch, reinforcing the magnetic energies belong to His pure body with the compelling force of His inner life. Rejected by the Essene brethren among whom He first laboured — whose arguments against His purposed life of loving labour are summarized in the story of the temptation — because he carried to the people the spiritual wisdom that they regarded as their proudest and most secret treasure, and because His all-embracing love drew within its circle the outcast and the degraded — ever loving in the lowest as in the highest, the Divine Self — He saw gathering clouds of hatred and suspicion. The teachers and rulers of His nation soon came to eye Him with jealousy and anger; His spirituality was a constant reproach to their materialism, His power a constant, though silent, exposure of their weakness. Three years had scarcely passed since His baptism when the gathering storm broke, and the human body of Jesus paid the penalty for enshrining the glorious Presence of a Teacher more than man.” From Esoteric Christianity, Or, The Lesser Mysteries, Annie Besant, Pages 126-135
“If at first you don’t succeed, then skydiving definitely isn’t for you.” Steven Wright
Sept 7, 2003
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