The man let go his staff into the water. His knees seemed to buckle and he fell into it.
He cried, ‘I should be baptised by you! I cannot endure to do it!’
Jesus said to him, ‘In the same way that once my presence awoke your limbs in your mother’s womb, I shall awaken your thoughts to your duty!’
The man called John looked up and Jesus’ shadow fell over him. Jesus could now see, unclouded and undisturbed by the light, a reflected mirror image of himself in the other man’s face. An image of something he had misplaced. He was given the knowledge at Qumran that this man was the same as Elijah, and now he recognised in him the oldest soul of humanity, Adam, and he realised that some part of him belonged to this man and was conjoined by a remembrance of times lost in a dream.
When the baptiser stood, it was a signal to Jesus.
He crossed his arms over his chest and felt a support behind the small of his back. It seemed to him then, that although Yeshua was leaving him, little by little, the soul of the baptiser was uniting with him in order to sure up the pathway to the God whom he sensed descending. And he was comforted by it.
John guided him into the water and he was submerged into light and colour and sound. His soul was wedded to the element of the river. All the pictures of his life rushed past his eyes until he heard a flute song, and he could smell sheep, earth and grass. All of it was married to the warmth of friendship, the lulling breezes, the glow of the sun, the fingers of the wind, the soothing feel of his mother’s hand and the cry of a child in the wilderness.
Now, there was nothing more.
He did not breathe. He was lost. He was alone. A flame hovered over him. A sparkling, ever-tranquil, lilting radiance issued from the encircling round and above him the spirit of Yeshua gathered up to form the shape of a bird. It lingered a moment over him as if in a final farewell and was given up, with light in its wings and life in its breast.
Surrendered!
The majestic and wise spirit of Yeshua, which had fashioned his soul and body over eighteen years, was severed from him. Within him was left a hollow place, unopened yet to the spirit, like a spring bud that trembles in a cold wind.
How could he open it, when he had no forces left to him? A great lassitude overwhelmed him and threatened to extinguish him. He was alone. And yet…and yet…Jesus sensed the soul of his dead mother draw near. His mother, whose purity was the likeness of his own, came to his aid. She plucked tenderly at his heart, to unfold him in readiness for the descent of grace, for the pulse of heaven’s glory. When the clouds parted and rent was the veil that separates above and below, the God fell downwards, from the heart of the Father, like a brand of light moving through the spirit’s fluid stream. Jesus inhaled the breath of the God into his lungs, and the spirit orphaned from heaven, innocent of evil, immortal, blameless, without guilt and eternal, began its descent into the soul of Jesus.
Now, when Jesus opened his eyes, he saw the world differently for the second time in his life, and in his ears the thunder call came:
‘Thou art my beloved Son, in whom I behold my very own Self, in whom my own Self confronts me! Now you are begotten in Jesus!’
31
TEMPTATION
The man Jesus walked through the crowds on the shore swaying and stumbling, while the God in him saw the world as foreign and unknown, a distortion of faces and loud noises, of heat and sun and overwhelming smells. In the body, the muscles strained, air rushed in and out of the lungs and the heart pounded in the chest, while in the mind thoughts flitted past like shadows. How painful it was to cram his mighty power into that mind and that body! A power that could now harness nature and cause miracles so that his mere presence would seem to men like a world of marvels, a tempest of splendours. It was not his purpose to enrapture and bewilder, to dazzle and astonish, so he directed Jesus into the wilderness in search of a quiet place wherein he could guard the birthing of his new forces.
That is how he came to be in the old cave situated high above the vast mountainous wasteland of Judea. From its lip he could observe the sun falling into the night, and partake for the first time in the splendour of colours that are separate from the self. Above Christ looked to the home of his heart, now distant and detached from him. From beyond those stars he had come, descending downwards aeon after aeon. Men had seen him in their mysteries and had worshipped him in their rituals and given him many different names and now he would walk among them – a God extracted, separated out from heaven and born into the body of a man.
This conception on earth was to his Fathers in the heavens, like a death.
He heard a lamentation. He listened. It came not from heaven but from the sleeping souls of the world. They were reaching out to him in their supplication as they had always done. This was why he had come, to make this earth his heaven and rescue it from the maws of hell.