The A-historical Jesus

The Jesus of experience is and remains a-historical, for we meet him outside of time and space. He is the Jesus who speaks to us from the Sayings of Thomas - whoever finds the meaning of these sayings will not taste death. He is the Jesus of the mystics, (and note that while a few were sainted, and some were not, most were never known!) He addresses our immortal self, and invites us to follow him. The same goes for A Course in Miracles, which is merely a more modern and profound version of his teachings, which integrates insights form philosophy, psychology, and even quantum physics, and non-dualism, and expresses his teachings in a thoroughly modern form. And yet, the teaching remains the same, being that it is fundamentally aimed at practicing what he says, "following him," without which we will never get what it is he says. Intellectual understanding is the boobie-prize, though the Course definitely does appeal to the intellect as a way of supporting us along the way.

    You have surely begun to realize that this is a very practical course, and one that means exactly what it says. I would not ask you to do things you cannot do, and it is impossible that I could do things you cannot do. Given this, and given this quite literally, nothing can prevent you from doing exactly what I ask, and everything argues for your doing it. I give you no limits because God lays none upon you. When you limit yourself we are not of one mind, and that is sickness. Yet sickness is not of the body, but of the mind. All forms of sickness are signs that the mind is split, and does not accept a unified purpose.
    The unification of purpose, then, is the Holy Spirit's only way of healing. This is because it is the only level at which healing means anything. The re-establishing of meaning in a chaotic thought system is the way to heal it. Your task is only to meet the conditions for meaning, since meaning itself is of God. Yet your return to meaning is essential to His, because your meaning is part of His. Your healing, then, is part of His health, since it is part of His Wholeness. He cannot lose this, but you can not know it. Yet it is still His Will for you, and His Will must stand forever and in all things. (ACIM:T-8.IX.8-9)

The Jesus of experience speaks directly to our immortal self, (Your Immortal Reality is the title of a book I once read). He asks us to follow him indeed, not to copy his words without comprehension, which is what preaching is. Preaching in any form is a way to keep him at a distance from us. We are then engaged in convincing someone else of the truth of his words, in a desperate attempt to really convince ourselves, who are not following him, and do not believe what he says. As everything else the ego comes up with, this is another strategy which is self-defeating, for it merely ensures we will not follow him, and focus instead on what anyone else thinks about him or not.

The path of inner experience always remains open, in spite of all the barriers of theology, as we can see from the lives of saints, many of whom undoubtedly had a very profound relationship with him, the experience of which clearly transcends all theology, even if people would often express their feelings in the context of their day and age. So the forms vary, but if we listen to the heart, we can understand that experientially the content of love is consistent. Having said that, it does seem as if the modern teachings from the Course do make it much easier to learn and understand his thought system, but the emphasis on practice remains the same:

     No one can withhold truth except from himself. Yet God will not refuse you the Answer He gave. Ask, then, for what is yours, but which you did not make, and do not defend yourself against truth. You made the problem God has answered. Ask yourself, therefore, but one simple question:

Do I want the problem or do I want the answer?

Decide for the answer and you will have it, for you will see it as it is, and it is yours already.
    You may complain that this course is not sufficiently specific for you to understand and use. Yet perhaps you have not done what it specifically advocates. This is not a course in the play of ideas, but in their practical application. Nothing could be more specific than to be told that if you ask you will receive. The Holy Spirit will answer every specific problem as long as you believe that problems are specific. His answer is both many and one, as long as you believe that the one is many. You may be afraid of His specificity, for fear of what you think it will demand of you. Yet only by asking will you learn that nothing of God demands anything of you. God gives; He does not take. When you refuse to ask, it is because you believe that asking is taking rather than sharing. (ACIM:T-11.VIII.4-5)

The promise of the Eucharist, and the Resurrection is exactly that he is present to us in our mind, as our Internal Teacher, whenever we call on him. The etymology of the name Jesus, Jeshua, means "God Helps," the Course calls him at times "the Manifestation of the Holy Spirit," to some he could be Krishna, Quan Yin, or the Buddha, and whatever works for you will do. Studying the history of what his bodily adventures may have been two thousand years ago, achieves the opposite of entering a relationship with him. It is a way to keep him at a distance, to ensure that we do not let him into the presence of the now. From the standpoint of the ego then, the studies of the "historical Jesus" are a way of making him unreal to us, and keeping him at a distance from us. For time and space are illusory experiential dimensions which are an expression of the separation. The whole experience of a past and a future is merely an example of the ego's sleight of hand, designed to rob us of the immediacy and the reality of the present by engaging our mind in a substitute reality, which we call "our life," but which is wholly illusory. The Course explains this here:

    Time is a trick, a sleight of hand, a vast illusion in which figures come and go as if by magic. Yet there is a plan behind appearances that does not change. The script is written. When experience will come to end your doubting has been set. For we but see the journey from the point at which it ended, looking back on it, imagining we make it once again; reviewing mentally what has gone by. (ACIM:W-158.4)

The power of the Thomas gospel and the Course is that he speaks to us directly from their pages, and by this immediacy these books appeal to us to choose him, to let him in by choosing another way but the ego. And if we had not begun to make that choice at some level, we would not find ourselves reading either the Course or the Thomas Gospel, but of course what we do with them is up to us. We could use to develop a new theory about "the historical Jesus," which has not been tried yet. Or we could choose the immediacy of our own relationship with our Internal Teacher, which the Course is designed to help us restore, as it says at end of the first section of the Preface:

The names of the collaborators in the recording of the Course do not appear on the cover because the Course can and should stand on its own. It is not intended to become the basis for another cult. Its only purpose is to provide a way in which some people will be able to find their own Internal Teacher. (ACIM, Preface)