The Sage of Aquarius: A Centennial Study of the Aquarian Gospel of Jesus the Christ. Robert M. Price
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heart is grieved and they become
unfitted for the work of life;
and thus they sin. The conscience may
be taught. One man may do in con-
science what another cannot do.
What is a sin for me to do
may not be sin for you to do.
The place you occupy upon
the way of life determines what is sin.
There is no changeless law of good;
for good and evil both are judged
by other things. One man may fast
and in his deep sincerity
of heart is blest. Another man
may fast and in the faithlessness
of such a task imposed is cursed.
You cannot make a bed to fit
the form of every man. If you
can make a bed to fit yourself
you have done well. (119:19-22)
We catch, I believe, a hint of Aristotelian-style moral relativism whereby a broader principle is ever tailored to the individual’s particular abilities, needs, and options. The immediate inspiration for the passage may have been Romans chapter 14.
At the same time, there appear to be some absolutes on which Jesus Aquarius is not willing to budge. At 74:24, we are enjoined to practice the Hindu-Jainist ethic of ahimsa, or non-harm.
Whoever is not kind to every form of life –
to man, to beast, to bird, and creeping thing –
cannot expect the blessings of the Holy One;
for as we give, so God will give to us.
One wonders how the evangelist proposed to square this practice with the flexibility he allowed in the just-mentioned case of food. Surely it cannot be a private option whether or not to devour meat if I must already have sworn off shedding the blood of my animal cousins.
But we may in the last analysis leave such calculations to karma. Justice will be served. Good and bad karma alike shall be accrued, and the Universe itself shall know how to value each good or bad deed, doling out reward or punishment accordingly. God need not trouble his wise head figuring out who was naughty or nice and designing his list accordingly. The calculations are run unthinkingly by the innate machinery of the universe. Chapter 114 sets forth the doctrine of karma and theodicy. Poor mortals are tempted to despair of justice in the world, chafing at their own fates or those of others. We accuse God or life or the world of being unfair. Jesus laments such worm’s-eye-view sentiments. How sad that only he can behold the Big Picture, the record of past incarnations passing unremembered like water under a bridge. If we could steal a glance at the scandals of the past, or the virtues, we should rest satisfied with the verdicts being meted out in this present life. For a man’s life does not consist in the number of years he amasses in a single lifetime.
I believe I see in 105:28-32 a passage advocating good, honest Nietzscheanism: admit your hate rather than hiding it behind a pathetic tissue of phony forgiveness! Sin boldly! It’s not the worst thing you could do!
You men, do not deceive yourselves
in thought; your hearts are known;
Hypocrisy will blight a soul
as surely as the breath of Beel-ze-bub.
An honest evil man is more esteemed
by guardians of the soul than a
dishonest pious man. If you would curse
the son of man, just curse him out aloud.
A curse is poison to the inner man,
and if you hold and swallow down a curse
it never will digest; lo, it
will poison every atom of your soul.
And if you sin against a son of man,
you may be pardoned and your guilt be cleansed
by acts of kindness and of love;
Levi the evangelist seems to want to exonerate Christianity from Nietzsche’s accusations that it promotes a pathetically hypocritical slave morality in which a seemingly noble willingness to forgive merely masks one’s well-nursed ressentiment. “Oh I’ll forgive you all right, buddy! But when the Son of Man comes, he’s going to kick your butt!”
Rather than the sentimental/radical assumption that the poor are the pious saints of Yahve, such as we find everywhere in the gospels, The Aquarian Gospel takes a more hard-nosed position. Poverty is no sure sign of piety.
It is no sign that man is good
and pure because he lives in want.
The listless, shiftless vagabonds
of earth are mostly poor and have to beg
for bread. (62:18-19)
On the other hand, such squinting at the poor certainly fits this gospel’s sense of karmic comeuppance. Would the casual observer not be justified in inferring that the indigent man has himself to blame, if not for being a lazy bum in this present life, then for doing something wrong in a previous life for which his present poverty is recompense?
If Jesus’ (Levi’s) enthusiasm for the poor is a bit restrained, he displays in no uncertain terms the classic liberal conscience based on both the fallacy of the “limited good” and on survivor guilt. “How could I seek for pleasure for myself while others are in want?” (51:16). As to the “limited good,” it is the same belief that leads to the idealization of the poor. There being only so much of any good commodity to go around, the rich must have gained their goods by depriving the poor of theirs. While in ancient times this may have been true, it has long ago become a phantom and a fantasy, ever since Capitalism made it possible to expand the pie, no longer to have to cut thinner and thinner slices of it. As to survivor guilt, or “bleeding heart” liberalism, like that of Father Paneloux in Camus’s The Plague, it stems directly from our feeling of unworthiness to have avoided the arbitrary blows which struck those to either side of us. Why did we survive when so many others became glowing shadows at Hiroshima?7 Why are we prosperous when other nations are not? We must have exploited them. And so on. Purely as an exercise in ascetical pietism, we seek to atone for our success by renouncing it, or by feeling guilty for keeping it. We vow never to enjoy life till everyone can, oblivious of the fact that our misery, self-imposed, can never lift another out of his. We cannot get sick enough that it will heal another, poor enough that it will lift another out of poverty. It is really too bad that Jesus/Levi falls prey to this way of thinking, as it is the mirror image of the very same ressentiment that broods and seethes rather than acting. How so? Well, if the rich person feels guilty for being rich, he could renounce his wealth as Francis of Assisi did (though the real poor, those who did not choose it as a penance, would mock him as a fool). At least when the vaguely-imagined judgment struck all the rich and exalted all the poor, he would be guaranteed safety. But our hero lacks the guts to do that, just as Nietzsche’s Christian coward turns the other cheek only because he lacks the courage to hate and to strike back. Likewise, the conscience-stricken liberal is content to simmer with self-hatred while continuing guiltily to enjoy what he neurotically thinks he has no right to.
In any ancient Jewish context such as an historical Jesus might be placed, the question of ethics could not have been raised without connection to the Torah of Moses. In the canonical gospels the issues of Torah-observance and Jewish customs come up constantly. We see a running battle between Jesus and the scribes over whether his followers are living in accord with the Torah. Some of these stories seem to reflect disputes among Jewish Christians who did mean to keep the Law but interpreted its stipulations differently from their critics. Others appear