Sensei of Shambala - Anastasia Novykh (english novels for students .txt) 📗

Jerusalem, where he arranged a meeting with Bodhisattva Issa and his enlightened pupils Abraham and Moses. Through these travels in time, Gabriel showed him the elusiveness and frailty of the material world in comparison with true knowledge and showed that only God has real force and is worthy of worshiping. All this knowledge sown in his strong soul bore rich fruits. The worthy pupil justified Gabriel’s hopes. At that stage, Mohammed had done for mankind more good than anybody else could have done.”
“But what about Jesus??
“Make no mistake, Jesus was a Bodhisattva, which means he was already born as God. But Mohammed was a person who managed to awaken the divine essence in himself. So when archangel Gabriel felt that Mohammed was prepared enough, he said to him, ‘Now you should go to the world and bring this knowledge to other people.’. Mohammed answered, ’How can I explain to people in words the ideas that I learnt from you in spirit?’ ’Go and tell them that there is one God and He lights everything up like the sun with His Divine Love. I am like the Moon in the night of human life, I am reflecting the light of God and light the way in the darkness of consciousness. You are a guiding star showing the way to divine light.’
“Inspired by this conversation with Gabriel, Mohammed left the cave in which he meditated, and the first thing he saw was a breathtaking view of nature. In the huge evening sky, a young crescent shone dazzlingly, and a bright star glowed next to it. In that same instant, he had an insight and understood how to express this teaching to people. He understood that God is love, that God is a permanent action. God does not speak with words, He communicates with people through mediators, archangels, who bring His will to the consciousness of people. But a human himself is free to choose whether to understand God through his soul or not.”
“What did Mohammed do? Did he give people belief?”
“Mohammed gave people not only belief, but also knowledge. Unfortunately for 600 years, people have falsified the teaching of Christ, having transformed it into religion. But Mohammed tried to bring people the lost knowledge in his renewed teaching. He told people everything he knew himself without concealing anything. Moreover, if you read history books, what kind of state was Arabia in before the year 610 when Mohammed began to preach? The country was in a general chaos of various idolatry and because of its leaders there often rose enmity between Arabian tribes. Mohammed did a great deed. He united militant people, Arabs, into a general brotherhood and in belief in the One worthy of worshiping. He told the truth about God, about things that Jesus taught: that God is eternal, omniscient, and almighty; that all people are equal before Him. He spoke about the immortality of the soul, about reincarnation (the resurrection of the dead), about judgment, about punishment beyond the grave for those who create evil in this world, about the necessity to establish justice, mercy, and moral duties in relations between people. Due to his wisdom, Mohammed managed to lead Arabs out of their deepest ignorance and political chaos and to show them the way to civilized cultural growth and prosperity.”
“Perhaps it was really so. But what should we do with the ‘sacred war against the unfaithful’? In fact, Muslim people claim that Mohammed himself preached it.”
“During those dark times, Mohammed had to deal with wild tribes that understood only force. The word ‘moslem’ comes from a word ‘muslim’ which means ‘obedient,’ that is, obedient to Mohammed but not ‘faithful.’ This meaning, the word ‘moslem’ got much later. So, in those days, devoted people were those who were obedient to the Prophet and who followed him, spreading the teaching to other territories of Arabia to transform the chaos there into order. Unfaithful people were people who were not following his teaching. Mohammed was not only a great prophet, but he was also an ingenious commander and a wise politician. It was not easy to calm down the passion of wild militant tribes. Besides, Mohammed had to declare ‘sacred war’ against those religious priests who usurped authority and who were not interested in the unification of Arabs nor in worshiping their Gods. He struggled against those who had mercenary purposes, deceived people with the help of their belief, and corrupted human souls. In these actions, he is similar to Christ. So, the Prophet struggled for the same purity of belief, as Jesus did, for worshiping the Holy One, for direct spiritual connection of each person with God.”
“Well, let's admit that time was dark and tribes were wild,” the novice pressed Sensei. “But now so many years have passed and still a strange ‘sacred war’ is being conducted. If God is the only one, why does the war still continue? How can you understand a person who winds explosives around his body and voluntarily goes into a crowd of peaceful inhabitants for death in the name of God, carrying away lives of other people with him?”
Sensei explained, “Because instead of the teaching that was given by the Prophet, the Muslim got religion, the leaders of which are more interested in mercenary purposes, personal well-being, and political influence in the world than in the souls of individual Muslims. They convince him that after his ’pious’ action, his soul will get to Mohammed, to paradise. In fact, it will not get there, as the way to God is closed to everyone who creates evil. And this Muslim will be reincarnated repeatedly and again pass through all terrestrial circles of hell to make his soul as clean as it was before the creation of evil by this person. These deceived people are victims of religion. But the real guilty people are those who distorted the true teaching. This is the victory of the Devil over any religion.”
“I heard that in the Koran there are some ‘suras’ that reject your words.”
“In the Koran?” Sensei asked incredulously. “Do you know that the Koran was written after death of the Great Prophet? The adopted son of Mohammed, Zaid Ibn Thabit, collected all records of his sermons and, pay attention, he made an edition of the Koran in 651. Mohammed himself preached only orally. Sketchy records of his sermons and lessons were made by his first followers who partly remembered and partly wrote down the words of Mohammed. But even despite further additions to the Koran during the creation of religion, the knowledge that was truly given to Mohammed from the archangel Gabriel is still there. Now scientists are simply struck by the fact that while deciphering some ‘original parts’ of the Koran, they find real scientific knowledge…”
At that moment, Tatyana jabbed me in the side and whispered that she ought to call her parents so they didn’t worry. I looked at my watch and realized that we should have been home already. We apologized and ran into the club where the nearest phone was located. After our long and persistent knocking, at last the door was opened by an old watchman with sleepy eyes. He had probably already begun to carry out his professional duties. Having scolded us a little because strangers were hanging around and he had not gotten any rest, he nevertheless allowed us to make a call. While Tatyana was speaking to her parents, I had time to jot down in my diary some of Sensei’s words. Having informed our parents that we would be late, we hastened to the exit to join our company. When we came out, Sensei was still addressing the novice.
“You refer to the Bible with too much prejudice, as if it is a primary source. I understand that you were taught this way in your sect. But you are a journalist, you should be much more curious than ordinary people. The Bible, like the Koran or the Tripitaka, was written by followers. Moreover, these books went through numerous changes, meaning they already reflected religious points of view instead of the initial teaching that was given by the Great. To focus your attention, I repeat that literally for 600 years the teaching of Christ was greatly distorted and it was necessary to give a new teaching to Mohammed; it was the same, however, as Christ taught. But later this teaching was also transformed into religion by people who left only its form but changed its contents.”
“But the Bible and the New Testament in particular were written from the words of Jesus by his followers.”
“If you had had an opportunity to hear the teaching from Jesus Himself and to compare it to the one that you can read now in the Bible, you would find huge blanks and the absence of much knowledge,” Sensei said with bitterness in his voice. “You assert that it was written by His followers, but you don’t even wonder how. They were not the first followers, they were followers of followers. The teaching of Jesus was preached orally for a long period of time. Then lists of sayings of Jesus started to appear. One of the most ancient fragments from the Gospel according to St. John is dated 125 A.D., and the earliest and the most complete manuscript is dated to 200 A.D. You can imagine how the oral sermons could be mangled in two hundred years. One person understood in one way, another person did not understand, the next one concealed something, and so on. Moreover, in 325 the first Nicene ecumenical council, under the direction of the emperor Constantine, selected and canonized the four Gospels included in the New Testament out of numerous versions, with the purpose of strengthening the Church and personal authority. Exactly at that time, the teaching of Christ was completely altered, and a powerful lever of authority for managing crowds was made from it. Exactly at that Council, the orthodox point of view on corporeal revival was authorized under pressure of the emperor Constantine. All otherwise-minded Christians and the supporters of spiritual revival were declared heretics, and subsequently they were pursued and slaughtered all over the Empire, even though early Christians professed the ideology of reincarnation. Mention of it can be found in the Bible. As a result, a natural question arises: why were authorities so afraid of it? Why did Constantine finally alter the teaching, having transformed it into religion? What was the reason behind that? Because the teaching gave people knowledge that released them from their fear of existence in our frail world. Knowledge brought people true freedom and the awakening of their souls. They were not afraid of death, they knew about reincarnation, about things beyond the border. And the most important thing is that they realized there was only God above them instead of any emperor or bishop. But it was terribly frightening for politicians and churchmen to lose their authority, for they were more absorbed by their material interests. The teaching of Jesus, which should have made people free, was transformed into religion and knocked into people's heads on penalty of death. Expansion of Christianity succeeded through violence, crusades were arranged, and so on.
“Besides, the Bible was rewritten by hand many times by different people, up to 1455 when Gutenberg's Bible was printed. Division of the text into chapters was first made in the 13th century by cardinal Stephen Lengton. The division of chapters into verses and their numeration was made by a Parisian publisher, Robert Stefan, who published the complete text of the Bible in 1553 for the first time. I won’t even mention the fact that in the modern world, for example, the Catholic church considers itself authorized not only to interpret the Bible according to their opinion, but also to supplement it.
“Despite all of these corrections and distortions, the genius of Jesus lies in the