#19 THE CHRIST, THE BUDDHA AND THE OLD MASTER
“Gatekeeper, some passages in The Way remind me of Jesus Christ. Could you compare him to the
Old Master?”
“Lao Tzu was indirectly Jeshua’s teacher because Jeshua studied the Tao. He became a Tao master in India in Northern Kashmir prior to his return to preach in Israel. You should be able to see the similarities even in his use of some of the same words. For example, when we hear Jeshua saying: ‘I am the way, the truth and the light’ and Lao Tzu was saying ‘the way is truth and the light of knowledge.” Remember the exercise in the storm when Jeshua walked on water and encouraged Peter to join him? This exercise is called, in Daoism, ‘holding the golden ball.’ Jeshua concentrated on the golden ball of divine light. The moment Jeshua’s trainee, Peter, loses his concentration is the moment the connection with the Divine was shattered because Peter looked down and saw the water. He took his eyes off his Master, took fright and sank. (Mathew 14, 22-33) Even after the Resurrection, at the event you call Pentecost, there is an illustration of the teacher of a Dao master. Each person heard something totally different and all heard and spoke in different tongues.”
“From your remarks, can I conclude that Jeshua was teaching his apostles the techniques he learned in Northern Kashmir.”
“Yes. The point of the story for Christians is that Peter doubted. The point of the story for a Buddhist is ‘keep your eyes on me and your concentration focussed’.” The Apostles must look to their guide, Jeshua, and not worry about his method or the way.”
“Was the method or the exercise of: ‘holding the golden ball’ developed by Lao Tzu or later, by his students?”
“It did not even originate with him but he used the idea because it is such a useful meditation tool. Lao Tzu would underestimate the importance of his own truth. The golden ball is a perfect means of focussing concentration on nothing, absolutely nothing. To empty your mind, you need something to capture your mind, although it may contain nothing. When we, monks, were in training we used to look at a bowl of water placed in front of us by the head monk to focus our minds on nothing.”
“Why did St Germain choose to incarnate as Lao Tzu?”
“His energy and gifts were needed to start, the basis of all Chinese philosophy.”
My next question was: “What was Lao Tzu’s greatest achievement?” and I expected that the Gatekeeper would answer: the writing of “The Tao,” However, his response surprised me. What he said was: “Lao Tzu was the founding father of classical education in China. He was responsible for welding history, calligraphy, mathematics, poetry, music, astronomy and law and welding them into one. ‘You can’t be a lawyer’, he used to say ‘unless you can sing.’ ‘You cannot be a poet unless you can write beautifully with a brush.’ He taught the interrelationship of weaving all together: poetry, music, mathematics. He taught the educated, the urbane, and the civilized and his teaching resounded through all the generations of the Middle Kingdom and scholars came to study there with him because he was so famous.”
“I am surprised you think that was his greatest achievement. Here is the man who wrote one of the seminal religious philosophical books of the world, who as you have said created one of the seven significant communications about the revelation of the Law between heaven and earth. Why did you choose education rather than the Tao?”
“Because before Lao Tzu, the East did not have a systematic philosophy. It was part of the nature of Athenians to think in a systematic manner but not for those in the Middle Kingdom. Lao Tzu’s influence by insisting that philosophy, healing, dance and rhetoric all had to be taught together and in a methodical formula, influenced not only the education of China but India and Indo China.It was more than 40% of the world’s population at that time. However, his role in the revelation of the law is really his most outstanding spiritual and intellectual achievement.”
“His pedagogical style seems quite autocratic like that of Master and student. Did he encourage inquiry?”
“His teaching style is more comparable to that of Aristotle(El Moyra) than to that of Socrates(Kuthumi). Lao Tzu, like Aristotle, did not like being challenged, while Socrates encouraged it. His followers would, therefore, retain a degree of inflexibility.”
“Where was his academy?”
“There is nothing there today because it was made of wood and with ceramic tiles on the roof- it’s all gone, the nearest city to it today is Harbin.”
“But that is one of the coldest places on earth, near Inner Mongolia! They carve brilliant palaces out of ice each winter which I see on television. So besides keeping warm, what was his spiritual challenge?”
“Two and a half thousand years ago, it wasn’t as cold there, then! You probably would not have known his spiritual challenge because he was so successful in concealing it but he had a natural impatience and he was a bit arrogant. While Kung Fu was abrasive, Lao Tzu believed you should pay honour to the older man. He disapproved that Kung Fu had not done this to him - there you can see his arrogance.”
“There is a tradition that Lao Tzu also met the Buddha. If the tradition is correct, could you describe their meeting?”
“First, some background. The followers of Lao Tzu were quite keen that their master should meet the Buddha although Buddha was only twenty-nine at the time. They had been told stories by an Indian Emissary to the Court, of this remarkably divine person living in India, who travelled widely. Lao Tzu expressed his interest so it was arranged for them to meet in Xinjiang province near the Tibetan border. When Lao Tzu arrived there, after many months of travelling, the Buddha was teaching and was not focussed on the newcomers. Lao Tzu sat humbly in the outer circle but the moment when the Buddha saw him, he stopped teaching and motioned to Lao Tzu to join him. Immediately they meditated together and enjoyed a telepathic conversation which took, in observed time, no more than half an hour. But where they went was into timelessness so they actually took an indeterminate amount of time. They got along well – asking questions of one another. Lao Tzu asked about the ordered structure of Chinese society with peasants downtrodden and abused under the layers of privilege on top. ‘Can this be the way of the celestial kingdom?’ he asked Buddha who replied, ‘each person is on this earth, in this kingdom of chaos, for a temporary period. When souls return to the garden of the spirit, they can see the orders are reversed whereby the peasant is blessed and the Mandarin is poor. Each one comes again and again into this kingdom of chaos until achieving nirvana or sanctity – that is - in Christian terms, means the union with their Creator.
The Buddha learned from Lao Tzu about formalized and structured philosophy and rhetoric. After their meeting the Buddha presented his ideas with greater logic and forcefulness. So they gave to each other an increased understanding. The sixty-three year old Lao Tzu would wander back to Harbin taking a year to arrive home. The Buddha continued on his journey to Nepal, the home of his mother’s ancestors, and then went down through India to Sri Lanka, travelling many miles by sea.”
“Was there anything else Lao Tzu took away from the meeting?”
“Lao Tzu, before he met Buddha, did not understand about peace… personal, inner peace. Up until then, he was a man driven, driven by the need to accumulate wisdom, obsessed with rules and words, with doggedly gathering a band of dedicated men around him so his ideas would be perceived. He was a man driven, until he met the Buddha, then for the first time, he found personal peace. And there were smaller things. He had been given to an intellectual arrogance, which would have been understandable, which he jettisoned after that meeting with the Buddha. He also increased his understanding of all creatures. Chinese, then, didn’t respect animals; they were either a beast of burden or a food source. And, finally, Lao Tzu gained a new technique of teaching. He had been used to the cut and thrust of debate. Instead, he learned to ask questions so his scholars could work it out for themselves. He no longer laid down the law but caused the law to be understood.”
“Where is the spot where they met today?”
“A Bodhi tree. It is indistinguishable and unmarked, a descendant of the one under which Buddha sat. It is on the outskirts of a tiny village and it was never intended for the meeting place to be marked. It is deliberately made unimportant. Instead, it was their dialogue which was important.”
“What qualities of St Germain did Lao Tzu bring in to this incarnation?”
“The inspired teacher, the traveller, the organiser with all his start-up energy. He also exhibited a refusal, bordering on arrogance, to be discouraged. He had St Germain’s practical qualities in his ability to express ideas clearly and briefly. He had his gift for aphorism and his charisma but not his wit, but he was mischievous and he could and still did puncture egos. Lao Tzu could write beautifully as a calligrapher and he wrote poetry as well but he was uncharacteristically stern for St Germain.”
“Can we talk about his travelling for a moment? Did he always have Harbin as his centre?”
“Lao Tzu spent sixty years of his life travelling which is typical of the voyager, St Germain. He taught for years in various parts of China: Tientsin(Tianjin), Nanking(Nanjing), Shanghai, Shangtong(Shandong), Jing how (Jinghao), and Gwee jong. He found Harbin refreshing and always returned there,”
“What was his life purpose?”
“To give to the Chinese, an essentially pragmatic people, a spiritual life.”
“And did he achieve his purpose?”
“Eventually, but not within his lifetime; progressively it was achieved; perhaps one thousand years later.”
“How did Lao Tzu die? Did he ascend?”
“He died of simple heart failure at ninety-two; he was extremely old for then. He did ascend at the moment of his death and therefore, he had no later incarnations.”
“Gatekeeper, you clearly love the Old Master. What do you like about him the most? What attracts you to him as a human being?”
“It’s his love of his fellow man. It is a golden thread which weaves through his whole life, his love and respect for humankind.”
“What did you learn especially from his teaching?”
“It would be his teaching about the use of a point of light, the golden ball of Divine Light and how to focus your concentration on it and empty the mind of everything else. That was his most important teaching for me. But there is something else unusual because it is not customary in China.
After his meeting with Buddha, Lao Tzu grew to love and respect animals. All animals came to him and his disciples would find him with a wild fox curled up at his feet, a deer standing near him and the birds flocked to the trees around him. The disciples would find him talking to the animals. We will see this again is his Egyptian protégé, Imhotep, and later we’ll see it in Merlin and again in Columba to some respect and finally, we will see it in Johnny Appleseed. This is very appealing about him, and them all, when the creatures of Earth were drawn to their radiance.”
“Why did Lao Tzu incarnate?”
“To draw together the strings of disparate wisdom. Daoism already existed. He codified it. He gathered together the roads of enlightenment so it could be taught to us as the Tao - the Way and to teach a later teacher who would learn it to say- ‘I am the way, the truth and the life.’
“Could you ask him if he had any regrets?”
“He says his main regret was that he didn’t seek out powerful patrons earlier on to kick-start his mission sooner. He only thought in terms inside himself because he was obsessed with his mission and the scope of his ideas and had no room for personal relationships. So often we will see this regret in men of single-minded genius.”
The Gatekeeper paused and began a dialogue with someone off-stage in what sounded to me like Mandarin. A few minutes later he returned.
“The Old Master would like to speak to you. He will speak in Classical Chinese and I will translate for him. He is an avatar, he is so far into the realm of light that it is impossible for him to communicate directly so he must use me as an intermediary, as his circuit breaker.”
Lao Tzu says:
“The way is long, hard and stony
It has not rest nor ease,
At its end is poverty.
In poverty, there are riches”
“Thank you, master.”
“And my lady, I have one thought for your spiritual path. It is: ‘God has to push you away when you need Him most.’”
“This thinking is contrary to the Christian tradition that I’ve been brought up in.”
“It is the Christians who reach for God in a crisis and cannot find Him. Who was it who said, ‘Father, why have you forsaken me?’ Take a moment to think about what I have said.”
“I will. Thank you.”
“It’s time, my friend, for you to start on your next task and that is to understand the Chosen People.”
Thinking about these Lives
This teaching embraces two contrasting, almost contradictory, lines of St Germain. One was of Krishna who revelled in war, the other was Lao Tzu who contemplates peace. Krishna was the performing artist who dances, sings, plays the flute and seduces maidens as he conquers vast territory across nations. On the other hand, Lao Tzu is an abstract teacher whose story is taught through the gentle contemplation of nature while he abstains from almost all physical pleasures.
Both travel immense distances; Lao Tzu in spiritual meditation and in walking from one end of China to the other as an itinerant teacher, while Krishna travels in battle across India to Cambodia as a conqueror and an entertainer. Krishna debates philosophy with Akuna prior to the excitement of battle while Lao Tzu debates philosophy with the Buddha when they are timeless in a meditative state. One dies, still a young man, in excruciating agony but the other master dies quietly in his mid-nineties and presumably in his own bed. These two spiritual masters explore the Universal Mind, God and the Tao, as well as immortality, enlightenment, compassion, wisdom, alleviating suffering and renunciation. While they both took vastly different paths to enlightenment but their deep truth was shared.
We also have the opportunity to explore two lives of Mary; one as a man, Akuna, who revelled in war as the companion of Lord Krishna, while as Maya she is a Nepalese woman of peace, the mother of one of the world’s greatest spiritual teachers and the abused and denigrated wife of a provincial king. The Gatekeeper, who is our Tibetan guide, assumes a teaching role and introduces the stages in the revelation of the law of God; he identifies the role of the Son/Daughter of God, Lord Sananda, as Buddha and introduces the role of two other Masters, Saint Germain and Hilarion as they have revealed the law. Lord Sananda also reveals the law; he sets its purpose and direction, building to a life when he returns to fulfil the law as Jeshua ben Joseph.
Of all the twelve energies which carry the spiritual DNA of God, only Mary has the right and the spiritual capability to carry a Divine Being, if He has to be born as a spiritual leader, because only she possess the spiritual wisdom to instruct him as a child. Her preparation, over many different lives for her central role, as Jeshua’s mother, was to test her devotion to God. In her life as Buddha’s mother, Maya, she lost her son twice; just after he was weaned only to lose him again in her premature death. She needed to experience every challenge to be prepared for being, as Mary, the God-bearer.
Finally, Lao Tzu speaking through the Gatekeeper, introduces a reoccurring theme of The Line to God. When you progress spiritually you go through a gateway, and at this point you are alone, as alone as Krishna was in his death and alone as the Son of God was dying on the Cross. Jesus feels abandoned by his Father because in everything he did on Earth he must follow the same rules set down for life as everyone else must follow. He must be born, he must die and he must go through that gateway, and he must go through alone. Lao Tzu was saying human spiritual progress is solitary, so solitary it creates a feeling of desperation and abandonment. It is at this point where despair leaves you frozen, or if anger draws you back only trust in God or faith can pull you through.
The different lines of Mary and St Germain described in this chapter are linked in a contradictory embrace. This will provide an insight into their life stories which follow.
