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FOOTNOTES TO “THE STATUS OF JESUS”
[In a communication on “The Status of Jesus” a correspondent writes: “The long procession of martyrs who died for the love of Jesus is unknown in the history of Buddhism”; and asks: “What is the exact position given to Jesus, by the Mahatmas, in the sacred order of adepts? departed from the earth? . . . Would Jesus now be termed . . . a Dhyan Chohan, a Buddha, or a Planetary Spirit? And is he now . . . interested or concerned at all with the progress of humanity on Earth?” H. P. B. replies:]
“There is often greater martyrdom to live for the love of, whether man or an ideal, than to die for it” is a motto of the Mahatmas.
The position THEY give to Jesus, as far as we know, is that of a great and pure man, a reformer who would fain have lived but who had to die for that which he regarded as the greatest birthright of man—absolute Liberty of conscience; of an adept who preached a universal Religion knowing of, and having no other “temple of God” but man himself; that of a noble Teacher of esoteric truths which he had no time given to him to explain; that, of an initiate who recognized no difference—save the moral one—between men; who rejected caste, and despised wealth; and who preferred death rather than to reveal the secrets of initiation. And who, finally, lived over a century before the year [one] of our vulgar, so called, Christian era.
We do not know which of the Buddhas our correspondent is thinking of, for there were many “Buddhas.” They recognize in him one of the “Enlightened,” hence in this sense a Buddha; but they do not recognize Jesus at all in the 604 Christ of the Gospels. Such questions, however, can hardly be answered in a public journal. Our correspondent seems to be ignorant of the fact, that though we live in India, surrounded by 250 millions of human beings, whose devotion and reverence to their respective avataras and gods is not less intense or sincere than that of the handful of Christians who grace this country to their Saviour, yet while it is deemed respectable and lawful to laugh at and abuse by word, and insult in print every one of the gods of our heathen Brothers, that journal which would presume to deny the Godship of Jesus and speak of him as he would of Buddha or Krishna, would immediately lose caste and have a hue and cry raised against it by its Christian subscribers. Such are Christian ideas of justice and Brotherhood.