Jesus Ben Pandira, the Historical Christ

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky · Buddhas and Initiates Series · 13 pages

The file opens with the definition it turns on: the Christos is the glorified individuality, Manas-Taijas or the higher Manas with the glory of Buddhi upon it, whereas Jesus is the perishable personality of the lower Manas. Jesus is taken to have been the highest adept of his epoch, though the real founder of Christianity was Paul — a claim developed at length in Paul, an Initiate, was the real founder of Christianity elsewhere in this series.

Three keys are offered. The first is the wordplay of Chrēstos and Christos: Jesus was Chrēstos, a virtuous man in his trial of life and a candidate for initiation, and had not passed the third degree to become Epoptes; the neophyte was admitted to the Christos condition at the end of his life, when Manas united with Buddhi, and his temple is the awakened soul in the inner sanctuary of the human heart. The second is historical — the Talmud and the Masters of Wisdom affirming that Jesus ben Pandira lived a century earlier, in the fourth year of the reign of Alexander Jannaeus, king of Judea from 106 to 76 BC. The last key is that a man may know of several great Initiates and still place his own ideal far higher than any of them.

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