Let us turn our gaze upon the bright Star of Bethlehem, lighting the thorny path to moral excellence

Book excerpt: The key to mystery of Jesus is hidden in the paronomasia of Chrēstos and Christos. Still the learned Egyptologist passes over in silence the real and profound meaning of the two appellations. The Talmud and the Masters of Wisdom affirm that Jesus ben Pandira was the historical Christ, who had lived a century earlier, in the fourth year of the reign of Alexander Jannaeus, King of Judea. An Initiate, who had succeeded in merging his spiritual being into the glorious state of Buddhi-Manas, may be regarded as a Christos after his last and supreme initiation, just as he was called Chrēstos before that. Carnalising the Christ-principle is an absurdity and a blasphemy. Theosophists will never accept a “Christ made Flesh,” or an anthropomorphic God, still less a “Shepherd” in the person of a Pope. However, a man of flesh assuming the Christ-condition temporarily is a matter-of-fact on the plane of matter, and a subjective reality in the spiritual realm, which is the proper habitat of he divine soul. We fully agree with our esteemed friend that the suppression and perversion of esoteric facts in the gospels is not so mischievously done as to prevent the Occultist from reading between the lines.