Urantia Book Paper 94 The Melchizedek Teachings In The Orient
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Paper 94 The Melchizedek Teachings In The Orient
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Introduction
THE early teachers of the Salem religion penetrated to the remotest tribes of
Africa and Eurasia, ever preaching Machiventa's gospel of man's faith and trust
in the one universal God as the only price of obtaining divine favor.
Melchizedek's covenant with Abraham was the pattern for all the early
propaganda that went out from Salem and other centers. Urantia has never had
more enthusiastic and aggressive missionaries of any religion than these noble
men and women who carried the teachings of Melchizedek over the entire Eastern
Hemisphere. These missionaries were recruited from many peoples and races, and
they largely spread their teachings through the medium of native converts. They
established training centers in different parts of the world where they taught
the natives the Salem religion and then commissioned these pupils to function
as teachers among their own people.
1. THE SALEM TEACHINGS IN VEDIC INDIA
In the days of Melchizedek, India was a cosmopolitan country which had recently
come under the political and religious dominance of the Aryan-Andite invaders
from the north and west. At this time only the northern and western portions of
the peninsula had been extensively permeated by the Aryans. These Vedic
newcomers had brought along with them their many tribal deities. Their
religious forms of worship followed closely the ceremonial practices of their
earlier Andite forebears in that the father still functioned as a priest and
the mother as a priestess, and the family hearth was still utilized as an
altar.
The Vedic cult was then in process of growth and metamorphosis under the
direction of the Brahman caste of teacher-priests, who were gradually assuming
control over the expanding ritual of worship. The amalgamation of the onetime
thirty-three Aryan deities was well under way when the Salem missionaries
penetrated the north of India.
The polytheism of these Aryans represented a degeneration of their earlier
monotheism occasioned by their separation into tribal units, each tribe having
its venerated god. This devolution of the original monotheism and
trinitarianism of Andite Mesopotamia was in process of resynthesis in the early
centuries of the second millennium before Christ. The many gods were organized
into a pantheon under the triune leadership of Dyaus pitar, the lord of heaven;
Indra, the tempestuous lord of the atmosphere; and Agni, the three-headed fire
god, lord of the earth and the vestigial symbol of an earlier Trinity concept.
Definite henotheistic developments were paving the way for an evolved
monotheism. Agni, the most ancient deity, was often exalted as the father-head
of the
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entire pantheon. The deity-father principle, sometimes called Prajapati,
sometimes termed Brahma, was submerged in the theologic battle which the
Brahman priests later fought with the Salem teachers. The Brahman was conceived
as the energy-divinity principle activating the entire Vedic pantheon.
The Salem missionaries preached the one God of Melchizedek, the Most High of
heaven. This portrayal was not altogether disharmonious with the emerging
concept of the Father-Brahma as the source of all gods, but the Salem doctrine
was nonritualistic and hence ran directly counter to the dogmas, traditions,
and teachings of the Brahman priesthood. Never would the Brahman priests accept
the Salem teaching of salvation through faith, favor with God apart from
ritualistic observances and sacrificial ceremonials.
The rejection of the Melchizedek gospel of trust in God and salvation through
faith marked a vital turning point for India. The Salem missionaries had
contributed much to the loss of faith in all the ancient Vedic gods, but the
leaders, the priests of Vedism, refused to accept the Melchizedek teaching of
one God and one simple faith.
The Brahmans culled the sacred writings of their day in an effort to combat the
Salem teachers, and this compilation, as later revised, has come on down to
modern times as the Rig-Veda, one of the most ancient of sacred books. The
second, third, and fourth Vedas followed as the Brahmans sought to crystallize,
formalize, and fix their rituals of worship and sacrifice upon the peoples of
those days. Taken at their best, these writings are the equal of any other body
of similar character in beauty of concept and truth of discernment. But as this
superior religion became contaminated with the thousands upon thousands of
superstitions, cults, and rituals of southern India, it progressively
metamorphosed into the most variegated system of theology ever developed by
mortal man. An examination of the Vedas will disclose some of the highest and
some of the most debased concepts of Deity ever to be conceived.
2. BRAHMANISM
As the Salem missionaries penetrated southward into the Dravidian Deccan, they
encountered an increasing caste system, the scheme of the Aryans to prevent
loss of racial identity in the face of a rising tide of the secondary Sangik
peoples. Since the Brahman priest caste was the very essence of this system,
this social order greatly retarded the progress of the Salem teachers. This
caste system failed to save the Aryan race, but it did succeed in perpetuating
the Brahmans, who, in turn, have maintained their religious hegemony in India
to the present time.
And now, with the weakening of Vedism through the rejection of higher truth,
the cult of the Aryans became subject to increasing inroads from the Deccan. In
a desperate effort to stem the tide of racial extinction and religious
obliteration, the Brahman caste sought to exalt themselves above all else. They
taught that the sacrifice to deity in itself was all-efficacious, that it was
all-compelling in its potency. They proclaimed that, of the two essential
divine principles of the universe, one was Brahman the deity, and the other was
the Brahman priesthood. Among no other Urantia peoples did the priests presume
to exalt themselves above even their gods, to relegate to themselves the honors
due their gods. But they went so absurdly far with these presumptuous claims
that the whole
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precarious system collapsed before the debasing cults which poured in from the
surrounding and less advanced civilizations. The vast Vedic priesthood itself
floundered and sank beneath the black flood of inertia and pessimism which
their own selfish and unwise presumption had brought upon all India.
The undue concentration on self led certainly to a fear of the nonevolutionary
perpetuation of self in an endless round of successive incarnations as man,
beast, or weeds. And of all the contaminating beliefs which could have become
fastened upon what may have been an emerging monotheism, none was so
stultifying as this belief in transmigration--the doctrine of the reincarnation
of souls--which came from the Dravidian Deccan. This belief in the weary and
monotonous round of repeated transmigrations robbed struggling mortals of their
long-cherished hope of finding that deliverance and spiritual advancement in
death which had been a part of the earlier Vedic faith.
This philosophically debilitating teaching was soon followed by the invention
of the doctrine of the eternal escape from self by submergence in the universal
rest and peace of absolute union with Brahman, the oversoul of all creation.
Mortal desire and human ambition were effectually ravished and virtually
destroyed. For more than two thousand years the better minds of India have
sought to escape from all desire, and thus was opened wide the door for the
entrance of those later cults and teachings which have virtually shackled the
souls of many Hindu peoples in the chains of spiritual hopelessness. Of all
civilizations, the Vedic-Aryan paid the most terrible price for its rejection
of the Salem gospel.
Caste alone could not perpetuate the Aryan religio-cultural system, and as the
inferior religions of the Deccan permeated the north, there developed an age of
despair and hopelessness. It was during these dark days that the cult of taking
no life arose, and it has ever since persisted. Many of the new cults were
frankly atheistic, claiming that such salvation as was attainable could come
only by man's own unaided efforts. But throughout a great deal of all this
unfortunate philosophy, distorted remnants of the Melchizedek and even the
Adamic teachings can be traced.
These were the times of the compilation of the later scriptures of the Hindu
faith, the Brahmanas and the Upanishads. Having rejected the teachings of
personal religion through the personal faith experience with the one God, and
having become contaminated with the flood of debasing and debilitating cults
and creeds from the Deccan, with their anthropomorphisms and reincarnations,
the Brahmanic priesthood experienced a violent reaction against these vitiating
beliefs; there was a definite effort to seek and to find true reality. The
Brahmans set out to deanthropomorphize the Indian concept of deity, but in so
doing they stumbled into the grievous error of depersonalizing the concept of
God, and they emerged, not with a lofty and spiritual ideal of the Paradise
Father, but with a distant and metaphysical idea of an all-encompassing
Absolute.
In their efforts at self-preservation the Brahmans had rejected the one God of
Melchizedek, and now they found themselves with the hypothesis of Brahman, that
indefinite and illusive philosophic self, that impersonal and impotent it which
has left the spiritual life of India helpless and prostrate from that
unfortunate day to the twentieth century.
It was during the times of the writing of the Upanishads that Buddhism arose in
India. But despite its successes of a thousand years, it could not compete with
top of page - 1030
later Hinduism; despite a higher morality, its early portrayal of God was even
less well-defined than was that of Hinduism, which provided for lesser and
personal deities. Buddhism finally gave way in northern India before the
onslaught of a militant Islam with its clear-cut concept of Allah as the
supreme God of the universe.
3. BRAHMANIC PHILOSOPHY
While the highest phase of Brahmanism was hardly a religion, it was truly one
of the most noble reaches of the mortal mind into the domains of philosophy and
metaphysics. Having started out to discover final reality, the Indian mind did
not stop until it had speculated about almost every phase of theology excepting
the essential dual concept of religion: the existence of the Universal Father
of all universe creatures and the fact of the ascending experience in the
universe of these very creatures as they seek to attain the eternal Father, who
has commanded them to be perfect, even as he is perfect.
In the concept of Brahman the minds of those days truly grasped at the idea of
some all-pervading Absolute, for this postulate was at one and the same time
identified as creative energy and cosmic reaction. Brahman was conceived to be
beyond all definition, capable of being comprehended only by the successive
negation of all finite qualities. It was definitely a belief in an absolute,
even an infinite, being, but this concept was largely devoid of personality
attributes and was therefore not experiencible by individual religionists.
Brahman-Narayana was conceived as the Absolute, the infinite IT IS, the
primordial creative potency of the potential cosmos, the Universal Self
existing static and potential throughout all eternity. Had the philosophers of
those days been able to make the next advance in deity conception, had they
been able to conceive of the Brahman as associative and creative, as a
personality approachable by created and evolving beings, then might such a
teaching have become the most advanced portraiture of Deity on Urantia since it
would have encompassed the first five levels of total deity function and might
possibly have envisioned the remaining two.
In certain phases the concept of the One Universal Oversoul as the totality of
the summation of all creature existence led the Indian philosophers very close
to the truth of the Supreme Being, but this truth availed them naught because
they failed to evolve any reasonable or rational personal approach to the
attainment of their theoretic monotheistic goal of Brahman-Narayana.
The karma principle of causality continuity is, again, very close to the truth
of the repercussional synthesis of all time-space actions in the Deity presence
of the Supreme; but this postulate never provided for the co-ordinate personal
attainment of Deity by the individual religionist, only for the ultimate
engulfment of all personality by the Universal Oversoul.
The philosophy of Brahmanism also came very near to the realization of the
indwelling of the Thought Adjusters, only to become perverted through the
misconception of truth. The teaching that the soul is the indwelling of the
Brahman would have paved the way for an advanced religion had not this concept
been completely vitiated by the belief that there is no human individuality
apart from this indwelling of the Universal One.
In the doctrine of the merging of the self-soul with the Oversoul, the
theologians of India failed to provide for the survival of something human,
something
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new and unique, something born of the union of the will of man and the will of
God. The teaching of the soul's return to the Brahman is closely parallel to
the truth of the Adjuster's return to the bosom of the Universal Father, but
there is something distinct from the Adjuster which also survives, the
morontial counterpart of mortal personality. And this vital concept was fatally
absent from Brahmanic philosophy.
Brahmanic philosophy has approximated many of the facts of the universe and has
approached numerous cosmic truths, but it has all too often fallen victim to
the error of failing to differentiate between the several levels of reality,
such as absolute, transcendental, and finite. It has failed to take into
account that what may be finite-illusory on the absolute level may be
absolutely real on the finite level. And it has also taken no cognizance of the
essential personality of the Universal Father, who is personally contactable on
all levels from the evolutionary creature's limited experience with God on up
to the limitless experience of the Eternal Son with the Paradise Father.
4. THE HINDU RELIGION
With the passing of the centuries in India, the populace returned in measure to
the ancient rituals of the Vedas as they had been modified by the teachings of
the Melchizedek missionaries and crystallized by the later Brahman priesthood.
This, the oldest and most cosmopolitan of the world's religions, has undergone
further changes in response to Buddhism and Jainism and to the later appearing
influences of Mohammedanism and Christianity. But by the time the teachings of
Jesus arrived, they had already become so Occidentalized as to be a "white
man's religion," hence strange and foreign to the Hindu mind.
Hindu theology, at present, depicts four descending levels of deity and
divinity:
1. The Brahman, the Absolute, the Infinite One, the IT IS.
2. The Trimurti, the supreme trinity of Hinduism. In this association Brahma,
the first member, is conceived as being self-created out of the
Brahman--infinity. Were it not for close identification with the pantheistic
Infinite One, Brahma could constitute the foundation for a concept of the
Universal Father. Brahma is also identified with fate.
The worship of the second and third members, Siva and Vishnu, arose in the
first millennium after Christ. Siva is lord of life and death, god of
fertility, and master of destruction. Vishnu is extremely popular due to the
belief that he periodically incarnates in human form. In this way, Vishnu
becomes real and living in the imaginations of the Indians. Siva and Vishnu are
each regarded by some as supreme over all.
3. Vedic and post-Vedic deities. Many of the ancient gods of the Aryans, such
as Agni, Indra, Soma, have persisted as secondary to the three members of the
Trimurti. Numerous additional gods have arisen since the early days of Vedic
India, and these have also been incorporated into the Hindu pantheon.
4. The demigods: supermen, semigods, heroes, demons, ghosts, evil spirits,
sprites, monsters, goblins, and saints of the later-day cults.
While Hinduism has long failed to vivify the Indian people, at the same time it
has usually been a tolerant religion. Its great strength lies in the fact that
it
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has proved to be the most adaptive, amorphic religion to appear on Urantia. It
is capable of almost unlimited change and possesses an unusual range of
flexible adjustment from the high and semimonotheistic speculations of the
intellectual Brahman to the arrant fetishism and primitive cult practices of
the debased and depressed classes of ignorant believers.
Hinduism has survived because it is essentially an integral part of the basic
social fabric of India. It has no great hierarchy which can be disturbed or
destroyed; it is interwoven into the life pattern of the people. It has an
adaptability to changing conditions that excels all other cults, and it
displays a tolerant attitude of adoption toward many other religions, Gautama
Buddha and even Christ himself being claimed as incarnations of Vishnu.
Today, in India, the great need is for the portrayal of the Jesusonian
gospel--the Fatherhood of God and the sonship and consequent brotherhood of all
men, which is personally realized in loving ministry and social service. In
India the philosophical framework is existent, the cult structure is present;
all that is needed is the vitalizing spark of the dynamic love portrayed in the
original gospel of the Son of Man, divested of the Occidental dogmas and
doctrines which have tended to make Michael's life bestowal a white man's
religion.
5. THE STRUGGLE FOR TRUTH IN CHINA
As the Salem missionaries passed through Asia, spreading the doctrine of the
Most High God and salvation through faith, they absorbed much of the philosophy
and religious thought of the various countries traversed. But the teachers
commissioned by Melchizedek and his successors did not default in their trust;
they did penetrate to all peoples of the Eurasian continent, and it was in the
middle of the second millennium before Christ that they arrived in China. At
See Fuch, for more than one hundred years, the Salemites maintained their
headquarters, there training Chinese teachers who taught throughout all the
domains of the yellow race.
It was in direct consequence of this teaching that the earliest form of Taoism
arose in China, a vastly different religion than the one which bears that name
today. Early or proto-Taoism was a compound of the following factors:
1. The lingering teachings of Singlangton, which persisted in the concept of
Shang-ti, the God of Heaven. In the times of Singlangton the Chinese people
became virtually monotheistic; they concentrated their worship on the One
Truth, later known as the Spirit of Heaven, the universe ruler. And the yellow
race never fully lost this early concept of Deity, although in subsequent
centuries many subordinate gods and spirits insidiously crept into their
religion.
2. The Salem religion of a Most High Creator Deity who would bestow his favor
upon mankind in response to man's faith. But it is all too true that, by the
time the Melchizedek missionaries had penetrated to the lands of the yellow
race, their original message had become considerably changed from the simple
doctrines of Salem in the days of Machiventa.
3. The Brahman-Absolute concept of the Indian philosophers, coupled with the
desire to escape all evil. Perhaps the greatest extraneous influence in the
eastward spread of the Salem religion was exerted by the Indian teachers of the
Vedic faith, who injected their conception of the Brahman--the Absolute--into
the salvationistic thought of the Salemites.
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This composite belief spread through the lands of the yellow and brown races as
an underlying influence in religio-philosophic thought. In Japan this
proto-Taoism was known as Shinto, and in this country, far distant from Salem
of Palestine, the peoples learned of the incarnation of Machiventa Melchizedek,
who dwelt upon earth that the name of God might not be forgotten by mankind.
In China all of these beliefs were later confused and compounded with the
ever-growing cult of ancestor worship. But never since the time of Singlangton
have the Chinese fallen into helpless slavery to priestcraft. The yellow race
was the first to emerge from barbaric bondage into orderly civilization because
it was the first to achieve some measure of freedom from the abject fear of the
gods, not even fearing the ghosts of the dead as other races feared them. China
met her defeat because she failed to progress beyond her early emancipation
from priests; she fell into an almost equally calamitous error, the worship of
ancestors.
But the Salemites did not labor in vain. It was upon the foundations of their
gospel that the great philosophers of sixth-century China built their
teachings. The moral atmosphere and the spiritual sentiments of the times of
Lao-tse and Confucius grew up out of the teachings of the Salem missionaries of
an earlier age.
6. LAO-TSE AND CONFUCIUS
About six hundred years before the arrival of Michael, it seemed to
Melchizedek, long since departed from the flesh, that the purity of his
teaching on earth was being unduly jeopardized by general absorption into the
older Urantia beliefs. It appeared for a time that his mission as a forerunner
of Michael might be in danger of failing. And in the sixth century before
Christ, through an unusual co-ordination of spiritual agencies, not all of
which are understood even by the planetary supervisors, Urantia witnessed a
most unusual presentation of manifold religious truth. Through the agency of
several human teachers the Salem gospel was restated and revitalized, and as it
was then presented, much has persisted to the times of this writing.
This unique century of spiritual progress was characterized by great religious,
moral, and philosophic teachers all over the civilized world. In China, the two
outstanding teachers were Lao-tse and Confucius.
Lao-tse built directly upon the concepts of the Salem traditions when he
declared Tao to be the One First Cause of all creation. Lao was a man of great
spiritual vision. He taught that "man's eternal destiny was everlasting union
with Tao, Supreme God and Universal King." His comprehension of ultimate
causation was most discerning, for he wrote: "Unity arises out of the Absolute
Tao, and from Unity there appears cosmic Duality, and from such Duality,
Trinity springs forth into existence, and Trinity is the primal source of all
reality." "All reality is ever in balance between the potentials and the
actuals of the cosmos, and these are eternally harmonized by the spirit of
divinity."
Lao-tse also made one of the earliest presentations of the doctrine of
returning good for evil: "Goodness begets goodness, but to the one who is truly
good, evil also begets goodness."
He taught the return of the creature to the Creator and pictured life as the
emergence of a personality from the cosmic potentials, while death was like the
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returning home of this creature personality. His concept of true faith was
unusual, and he too likened it to the "attitude of a little child."
His understanding of the eternal purpose of God was clear, for he said: "The
Absolute Deity does not strive but is always victorious; he does not coerce
mankind but always stands ready to respond to their true desires; the will of
God is eternal in patience and eternal in the inevitability of its expression."
And of the true religionist he said, in expressing the truth that it is more
blessed to give than to receive: "The good man seeks not to retain truth for
himself but rather attempts to bestow these riches upon his fellows, for that
is the realization of truth. The will of the Absolute God always benefits,
never destroys; the purpose of the true believer is always to act but never to
coerce."
Lao's teaching of nonresistance and the distinction which he made between
action and coercion became later perverted into the beliefs of "seeing, doing,
and thinking nothing." But Lao never taught such error, albeit his presentation
of nonresistance has been a factor in the further development of the pacific
predilections of the Chinese peoples.
But the popular Taoism of twentieth-century Urantia has very little in common
with the lofty sentiments and the cosmic concepts of the old philosopher who
taught the truth as he perceived it, which was: That faith in the Absolute God
is the source of that divine energy which will remake the world, and by which
man ascends to spiritual union with Tao, the Eternal Deity and Creator Absolute
of the universes.
Confucius (Kung Fu-tze) was a younger contemporary of Lao in sixth-century
China. Confucius based his doctrines upon the better moral traditions of the
long history of the yellow race, and he was also somewhat influenced by the
lingering traditions of the Salem missionaries. His chief work consisted in the
compilation of the wise sayings of ancient philosophers. He was a rejected
teacher during his lifetime, but his writings and teachings have ever since
exerted a great influence in China and Japan. Confucius set a new pace for the
shamans in that he put morality in the place of magic. But he built too well;
he made a new fetish out of order and established a respect for ancestral
conduct that is still venerated by the Chinese at the time of this writing.
The Confucian preachment of morality was predicated on the theory that the
earthly way is the distorted shadow of the heavenly way; that the true pattern
of temporal civilization is the mirror reflection of the eternal order of
heaven. The potential God concept in Confucianism was almost completely
subordinated to the emphasis placed upon the Way of Heaven, the pattern of the
cosmos.
The teachings of Lao have been lost to all but a few in the Orient, but the
writings of Confucius have ever since constituted the basis of the moral fabric
of the culture of almost a third of Urantians. These Confucian precepts, while
perpetuating the best of the past, were somewhat inimical to the very Chinese
spirit of investigation that had produced those achievements which were so
venerated. The influence of these doctrines was unsuccessfully combated both by
the imperial efforts of Ch'in Shih Huang Ti and by the teachings of Mo Ti, who
proclaimed a brotherhood founded not on ethical duty but on the love of God. He
sought to rekindle the ancient quest for new truth, but his teachings failed
before the vigorous opposition of the disciples of Confucius.
Like many other spiritual and moral teachers, both Confucius and Lao-tse were
eventually deified by their followers in those spiritually dark ages of China
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which intervened between the decline and perversion of the Taoist faith and the
coming of the Buddhist missionaries from India. During these spiritually
decadent centuries the religion of the yellow race degenerated into a pitiful
theology wherein swarmed devils, dragons, and evil spirits, all betokening the
returning fears of the unenlightened mortal mind. And China, once at the head
of human society because of an advanced religion, then fell behind because of
temporary failure to progress in the true path of the development of that
God-consciousness which is indispensable to the true progress, not only of the
individual mortal, but also of the intricate and complex civilizations which
characterize the advance of culture and society on an evolutionary planet of
time and space.
7. GAUTAMA SIDDHARTHA
Contemporary with Lao-tse and Confucius in China, another great teacher of
truth arose in India. Gautama Siddhartha was born in the sixth century before
Christ in the north Indian province of Nepal. His followers later made it
appear that he was the son of a fabulously wealthy ruler, but, in truth, he was
the heir apparent to the throne of a petty chieftain who ruled by sufferance
over a small and secluded mountain valley in the southern Himalayas.
Gautama formulated those theories which grew into the philosophy of Buddhism
after six years of the futile practice of Yoga. Siddhartha made a determined
but unavailing fight against the growing caste system. There was a lofty
sincerity and a unique unselfishness about this young prophet prince that
greatly appealed to the men of those days. He detracted from the practice of
seeking individual salvation through physical affliction and personal pain. And
he exhorted his followers to carry his gospel to all the world.
Amid the confusion and extreme cult practices of India, the saner and more
moderate teachings of Gautama came as a refreshing relief. He denounced gods,
priests, and their sacrifices, but he too failed to perceive the personality of
the One Universal. Not believing in the existence of individual human souls,
Gautama, of course, made a valiant fight against the time-honored belief in
transmigration of the soul. He made a noble effort to deliver men from fear, to
make them feel at ease and at home in the great universe, but he failed to show
them the pathway to that real and supernal home of ascending
mortals--Paradise--and to the expanding service of eternal existence.
Gautama was a real prophet, and had he heeded the instruction of the hermit
Godad, he might have aroused all India by the inspiration of the revival of the
Salem gospel of salvation by faith. Godad was descended through a family that
had never lost the traditions of the Melchizedek missionaries.
At Benares Gautama founded his school, and it was during its second year that a
pupil, Bautan, imparted to his teacher the traditions of the Salem missionaries
about the Melchizedek covenant with Abraham; and while Siddhartha did not have
a very clear concept of the Universal Father, he took an advanced stand on
salvation through faith--simple belief. He so declared himself before his
followers and began sending his students out in groups of sixty to proclaim to
the people of India "the glad tidings of free salvation; that all men, high and
low, can attain bliss by faith in righteousness and justice."
Gautama's wife believed her husband's gospel and was the founder of an order of
nuns. His son became his successor and greatly extended the cult; he
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grasped the new idea of salvation through faith but in his later years wavered
regarding the Salem gospel of divine favor through faith alone, and in his old
age his dying words were, "Work out your own salvation."
When proclaimed at its best, Gautama's gospel of universal salvation, free from
sacrifice, torture, ritual, and priests, was a revolutionary and amazing
doctrine for its time. And it came surprisingly near to being a revival of the
Salem gospel. It brought succor to millions of despairing souls, and
notwithstanding its grotesque perversion during later centuries, it still
persists as the hope of millions of human beings.
Siddhartha taught far more truth than has survived in the modern cults bearing
his name. Modern Buddhism is no more the teachings of Gautama Siddhartha than
is Christianity the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth.
8. THE BUDDHIST FAITH
To become a Buddhist, one merely made public profession of the faith by
reciting the Refuge: "I take my refuge in the Buddha; I take my refuge in the
Doctrine; I take my refuge in the Brotherhood."
Buddhism took origin in a historic person, not in a myth. Gautama's followers
called him Sasta, meaning master or teacher. While he made no superhuman claims
for either himself or his teachings, his disciples early began to call him the
enlightened one, the Buddha; later on, Sakyamuni Buddha.
The original gospel of Gautama was based on the four noble truths:
1. The noble truths of suffering.
2. The origins of suffering.
3. The destruction of suffering.
4. The way to the destruction of suffering.
Closely linked to the doctrine of suffering and the escape therefrom was the
philosophy of the Eightfold Path: right views, aspirations, speech, conduct,
livelihood, effort, mindfulness, and contemplation. It was not Gautama's
intention to attempt to destroy all effort, desire, and affection in the escape
from suffering; rather was his teaching designed to picture to mortal man the
futility of pinning all hope and aspirations entirely on temporal goals and
material objectives. It was not so much that love of one's fellows should be
shunned as that the true believer should also look beyond the associations of
this material world to the realities of the eternal future.
The moral commandments of Gautama's preachment were five in number:
1. You shall not kill.
2. You shall not steal.
3. You shall not be unchaste.
4. You shall not lie.
5. You shall not drink intoxicating liquors.
There were several additional or secondary commandments, whose observance was
optional with believers.
Siddhartha hardly believed in the immortality of the human personality; his
philosophy only provided for a sort of functional continuity. He never clearly
top of page - 1037
defined what he meant to include in the doctrine of Nirvana. The fact that it
could theoretically be experienced during mortal existence would indicate that
it was not viewed as a state of complete annihilation. It implied a condition
of supreme enlightenment and supernal bliss wherein all fetters binding man to
the material world had been broken; there was freedom from the desires of
mortal life and deliverance from all danger of ever again experiencing
incarnation.
According to the original teachings of Gautama, salvation is achieved by human
effort, apart from divine help; there is no place for saving faith or prayers
to superhuman powers. Gautama, in his attempt to minimize the superstitions of
India, endeavored to turn men away from the blatant claims of magical
salvation. And in making this effort, he left the door wide open for his
successors to misinterpret his teaching and to proclaim that all human striving
for attainment is distasteful and painful. His followers overlooked the fact
that the highest happiness is linked with the intelligent and enthusiastic
pursuit of worthy goals, and that such achievements constitute true progress in
cosmic self-realization.
The great truth of Siddhartha's teaching was his proclamation of a universe of
absolute justice. He taught the best godless philosophy ever invented by mortal
man; it was the ideal humanism and most effectively removed all grounds for
superstition, magical rituals, and fear of ghosts or demons.
The great weakness in the original gospel of Buddhism was that it did not
produce a religion of unselfish social service. The Buddhistic brotherhood was,
for a long time, not a fraternity of believers but rather a community of
student teachers. Gautama forbade their receiving money and thereby sought to
prevent the growth of hierarchal tendencies. Gautama himself was highly social;
indeed, his life was much greater than his preachment.
9. THE SPREAD OF BUDDHISM
Buddhism prospered because it offered salvation through belief in the Buddha,
the enlightened one. It was more representative of the Melchizedek truths than
any other religious system to be found throughout eastern Asia. But Buddhism
did not become widespread as a religion until it was espoused in
self-protection by the low-caste monarch Asoka, who, next to Ikhnaton in Egypt,
was one of the most remarkable civil rulers between Melchizedek and Michael.
Asoka built a great Indian empire through the propaganda of his Buddhist
missionaries. During a period of twenty-five years he trained and sent forth
more than seventeen thousand missionaries to the farthest frontiers of all the
known world. In one generation he made Buddhism the dominant religion of one
half the world. It soon became established in Tibet, Kashmir, Ceylon, Burma,
Java, Siam, Korea, China, and Japan. And generally speaking, it was a religion
vastly superior to those which it supplanted or upstepped.
The spread of Buddhism from its homeland in India to all of Asia is one of the
thrilling stories of the spiritual devotion and missionary persistence of
sincere religionists. The teachers of Gautama's gospel not only braved the
perils of the overland caravan routes but faced the dangers of the China Seas
as they pursued their mission over the Asiatic continent, bringing to all
peoples the message of their faith. But this Buddhism was no longer the simple
doctrine of Gautama; it was the miraculized gospel which made him a god. And
the farther Buddhism spread from its highland home in India, the more unlike
the teachings of Gautama it became, and the more like the religions it
supplanted, it grew to be.
top of page - 1038
Buddhism, later on, was much affected by Taoism in China, Shinto in Japan, and
Christianity in Tibet. After a thousand years, in India Buddhism simply
withered and expired. It became Brahmanized and later abjectly surrendered to
Islam, while throughout much of the rest of the Orient it degenerated into a
ritual which Gautama Siddhartha would never have recognized.
In the south the fundamentalist stereotype of the teachings of Siddhartha
persisted in Ceylon, Burma, and the Indo-China peninsula. This is the Hinayana
division of Buddhism which clings to the early or asocial doctrine.
But even before the collapse in India, the Chinese and north Indian groups of
Gautama's followers had begun the development of the Mahayana teaching of the
"Great Road" to salvation in contrast with the purists of the south who held to
the Hinayana, or "Lesser Road." And these Mahayanists cast loose from the
social limitations inherent in the Buddhist doctrine, and ever since has this
northern division of Buddhism continued to evolve in China and Japan.
Buddhism is a living, growing religion today because it succeeds in conserving
many of the highest moral values of its adherents. It promotes calmness and
self-control, augments serenity and happiness, and does much to prevent sorrow
and mourning. Those who believe this philosophy live better lives than many who
do not.
10. RELIGION IN TIBET
In Tibet may be found the strangest association of the Melchizedek teachings
combined with Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, and Christianity. When the Buddhist
missionaries entered Tibet, they encountered a state of primitive savagery very
similar to that which the early Christian missionaries found among the northern
tribes of Europe.
These simple-minded Tibetans would not wholly give up their ancient magic and
charms. Examination of the religious ceremonials of present-day Tibetan rituals
reveals an overgrown brotherhood of priests with shaven heads who practice an
elaborate ritual embracing bells, chants, incense, processionals, rosaries,
images, charms, pictures, holy water, gorgeous vestments, and elaborate choirs.
They have rigid dogmas and crystallized creeds, mystic rites and special fasts.
Their hierarchy embraces monks, nuns, abbots, and the Grand Lama. They pray to
angels, saints, a Holy Mother, and the gods. They practice confessions and
believe in purgatory. Their monasteries are extensive and their cathedrals
magnificent. They keep up an endless repetition of sacred rituals and believe
that such ceremonials bestow salvation. Prayers are fastened to a wheel, and
with its turning they believe the petitions become efficacious. Among no other
people of modern times can be found the observance of so much from so many
religions; and it is inevitable that such a cumulative liturgy would become
inordinately cumbersome and intolerably burdensome.
The Tibetans have something of all the leading world religions except the
simple teachings of the Jesusonian gospel: sonship with God, brotherhood with
man, and ever-ascending citizenship in the eternal universe.
11. BUDDHIST PHILOSOPHY
Buddhism entered China in the first millennium after Christ, and it fitted well
into the religious customs of the yellow race. In ancestor worship they had
top of page - 1039
long prayed to the dead; now they could also pray for them. Buddhism soon
amalgamated with the lingering ritualistic practices of disintegrating Taoism.
This new synthetic religion with its temples of worship and definite religious
ceremonial soon became the generally accepted cult of the peoples of China,
Korea, and Japan.
While in some respects it is unfortunate that Buddhism was not carried to the
world until after Gautama's followers had so perverted the traditions and
teachings of the cult as to make of him a divine being, nonetheless this myth
of his human life, embellished as it was with a multitude of miracles, proved
very appealing to the auditors of the northern or Mahayana gospel of Buddhism.
Some of his later followers taught that Sakyamuni Buddha's spirit returned
periodically to earth as a living Buddha, thus opening the way for an
indefinite perpetuation of Buddha images, temples, rituals, and impostor
"living Buddhas." Thus did the religion of the great Indian protestant
eventually find itself shackled with those very ceremonial practices and
ritualistic incantations against which he had so fearlessly fought, and which
he had so valiantly denounced.
The great advance made in Buddhist philosophy consisted in its comprehension of
the relativity of all truth. Through the mechanism of this hypothesis Buddhists
have been able to reconcile and correlate the divergencies within their own
religious scriptures as well as the differences between their own and many
others. It was taught that the small truth was for little minds, the large
truth for great minds.
This philosophy also held that the Buddha (divine) nature resided in all men;
that man, through his own endeavors, could attain to the realization of this
inner divinity. And this teaching is one of the clearest presentations of the
truth of the indwelling Adjusters ever to be made by a Urantian religion.
But a great limitation in the original gospel of Siddhartha, as it was
interpreted by his followers, was that it attempted the complete liberation of
the human self from all the limitations of the mortal nature by the technique
of isolating the self from objective reality. True cosmic self-realization
results from identification with cosmic reality and with the finite cosmos of
energy, mind, and spirit, bounded by space and conditioned by time.
But though the ceremonies and outward observances of Buddhism became grossly
contaminated with those of the lands to which it traveled, this degeneration
was not altogether the case in the philosophical life of the great thinkers
who, from time to time, embraced this system of thought and belief. Through
more than two thousand years, many of the best minds of Asia have concentrated
upon the problem of ascertaining absolute truth and the truth of the Absolute.
The evolution of a high concept of the Absolute was achieved through many
channels of thought and by devious paths of reasoning. The upward ascent of
this doctrine of infinity was not so clearly defined as was the evolution of
the God concept in Hebrew theology. Nevertheless, there were certain broad
levels which the minds of the Buddhists reached, tarried upon, and passed
through on their way to the envisioning of the Primal Source of universes:
1. The Gautama legend. At the base of the concept was the historic fact of the
life and teachings of Siddhartha, the prophet prince of India. This legend grew
in myth as it traveled through the centuries and across the broad lands of Asia
until it surpassed the status of the idea of Gautama as the enlightened one and
began to take on additional attributes.
top of page - 1040
2. The many Buddhas. It was reasoned that, if Gautama had come to the peoples
of India, then, in the remote past and in the remote future, the races of
mankind must have been, and undoubtedly would be, blessed with other teachers
of truth. This gave rise to the teaching that there were many Buddhas, an
unlimited and infinite number, even that anyone could aspire to become one--to
attain the divinity of a Buddha.
top of page - 1041
3. The Absolute Buddha. By the time the number of Buddhas was approaching
infinity, it became necessary for the minds of those days to reunify this
unwieldy concept. Accordingly it began to be taught that all Buddhas were but
the manifestation of some higher essence, some Eternal One of infinite and
unqualified existence, some Absolute Source of all reality. From here on, the
Deity concept of Buddhism, in its highest form, becomes divorced from the human
person of Gautama Siddhartha and casts off from the anthropomorphic limitations
which have held it in leash. This final conception of the Buddha Eternal can
well be identified as the Absolute, sometimes even as the infinite I AM.
While this idea of Absolute Deity never found great popular favor with the
peoples of Asia, it did enable the intellectuals of these lands to unify their
philosophy and to harmonize their cosmology. The concept of the Buddha Absolute
is at times quasi-personal, at times wholly impersonal--even an infinite
creative force. Such concepts, though helpful to philosophy, are not vital to
religious development. Even an anthropomorphic Yahweh is of greater religious
value than an infinitely remote Absolute of Buddhism or Brahmanism.
At times the Absolute was even thought of as contained within the infinite I
AM. But these speculations were chill comfort to the hungry multitudes who
craved to hear words of promise, to hear the simple gospel of Salem, that faith
in God would assure divine favor and eternal survival.
12. THE GOD CONCEPT OF BUDDHISM
The great weakness in the cosmology of Buddhism was twofold: its contamination
with many of the superstitions of India and China and its sublimation of
Gautama, first as the enlightened one, and then as the Eternal Buddha. Just as
Christianity has suffered from the absorption of much erroneous human
philosophy, so does Buddhism bear its human birthmark. But the teachings of
Gautama have continued to evolve during the past two and one-half millenniums.
The concept of Buddha, to an enlightened Buddhist, is no more the human
personality of Gautama than the concept of Jehovah is identical with the spirit
demon of Horeb to an enlightened Christian. Paucity of terminology, together
with the sentimental retention of olden nomenclature, is often provocative of
the failure to understand the true significance of the evolution of religious
concepts.
Gradually the concept of God, as contrasted with the Absolute, began to appear
in Buddhism. Its sources are back in the early days of this differentiation of
the followers of the Lesser Road and the Greater Road. It was among the latter
division of Buddhism that the dual conception of God and the Absolute finally
matured. Step by step, century by century, the God concept has evolved until,
with the teachings of Ryonin, Honen Shonin, and Shinran in Japan, this concept
finally came to fruit in the belief in Amida Buddha.
Among these believers it is taught that the soul, upon experiencing death, may
elect to enjoy a sojourn in Paradise prior to entering Nirvana, the ultimate of
existence. It is proclaimed that this new salvation is attained by faith in the
divine mercies and loving care of Amida, God of the Paradise in the west. In
their philosophy, the Amidists hold to an Infinite Reality which is beyond all
finite mortal comprehension; in their religion, they cling to faith in the
all-merciful Amida, who so loves the world that he will not suffer one mortal
who calls on his name in true faith and with a pure heart to fail in the
attainment of the supernal happiness of Paradise.
The great strength of Buddhism is that its adherents are free to choose truth
from all religions; such freedom of choice has seldom characterized a Urantian
faith. In this respect the Shin sect of Japan has become one of the most
progressive religious groups in the world; it has revived the ancient
missionary spirit of Gautama's followers and has begun to send teachers to
other peoples. This willingness to appropriate truth from any and all sources
is indeed a commendable tendency to appear among religious believers during the
first half of the twentieth century after Christ.
Buddhism itself is undergoing a twentieth-century renaissance. Through contact
with Christianity the social aspects of Buddhism have been greatly enhanced.
The desire to learn has been rekindled in the hearts of the monk priests of the
brotherhood, and the spread of education throughout this faith will be
certainly provocative of new advances in religious evolution.
At the time of this writing, much of Asia rests its hope in Buddhism. Will this
noble faith, that has so valiantly carried on through the dark ages of the
past, once again receive the truth of expanded cosmic realities even as the
disciples of the great teacher in India once listened to his proclamation of
new truth? Will this ancient faith respond once more to the invigorating
stimulus of the presentation of new concepts of God and the Absolute for which
it has so long searched?
All Urantia is waiting for the proclamation of the ennobling message of
Michael, unencumbered by the accumulated doctrines and dogmas of nineteen
centuries of contact with the religions of evolutionary origin. The hour is
striking for presenting to Buddhism, to Christianity, to Hinduism, even to the
peoples of all faiths, not the gospel about Jesus, but the living, spiritual
reality of the gospel of Jesus.
[Presented by a Melchizedek of Nebadon.]
top of page - 1042
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Subjects Archive The Urantia Book Urantia Book PART III: The History of Urantia
: The Origin Of Urantia Life Establishment On Urantia The Marine-life Era On
Urantia Urantia During The Early Land-life Era The Mammalian Era On Urantia The
Dawn Races Of Early Man The First Human Family The Evolutionary Races Of Color
The Overcontrol Of Evolution The Planetary Prince Of Urantia The Planetary
Rebellion The Dawn Of Civilization Primitive Human Institutions The Evolution
Of Human Government Development Of The State Government On A Neighboring Planet
The Garden Of Eden Adam And Eve The Default Of Adam And Eve The Second Garden
The Midway Creatures The Violet Race After The Days Of Adam Andite Expansion In
The Orient Andite Expansion In The Occident Development Of Modern Civilization
The Evolution Of Marriage The Marriage Institution Marriage And Family Life The
Origins Of Worship Early Evolution Of Religion The Ghost Cults Fetishes,
Charms, And Magic Sin, Sacrifice, And Atonement Shamanism--medicine Men And
Priests The Evolution Of Prayer The Later Evolution Of Religion Machiventa
Melchizedek The Melchizedek Teachings In The Orient The Melchizedek Teachings
In The Levant Yahweh--god Of The Hebrews Evolution Of The God Concept Among The
Hebrews The Melchizedek Teachings In The Occident The Social Problems Of
Religion Religion In Human Experience The Real Nature Of Religion The
Foundations Of Religious Faith The Reality Of Religious Experience Growth Of
The Trinity Concept Deity And Reality Universe Levels Of Reality Origin And
Nature Of Thought Adjusters Mission And Ministry Of Thought Adjusters Relation
Of Adjusters To Universe Creatures Relation Of Adjusters To Individual Mortals
The Adjuster And The Soul Personality Survival Seraphic Guardians Of Destiny
Seraphic Planetary Government The Supreme Being The Almighty Supreme God The
Supreme Supreme And Ultimate--time And Space The Bestowals Of Christ Michael
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