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REDEMPTION.
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veil of a material edifice made of stone, mortar, or lime, but the veil which obstructs the higher, that is, clairvoyant vision; and the graves that were opened were not the graves in a burial ground of men, but in the cemetery of memory. If it were an historical fact that the graves gave up their carcasses on the occasion, it would have led a vast majority of those who witnessed the spectacle to rush to the fold of Christianity, and would not have escaped the contemporary historianJosephus*. What is intended is the recovery of the memories of the past lives of the soul (Jesus), and not the appearance of some rotten and worm-eaten bodies of the dead. The nature of the mechanism of memory will be explained in a later chapter; meanwhile it is clear that the Biblical text is not likely to yield anya thing but confusion and contradiction to the modern methods of research on historical lines.
In the following pages we shall endeavour to present to the reader a re-constructed version of the life of Jesus from the standpoint of religion, and shall also point out the causes of some of the more important discrepancies, which, as stated above, are due to a deliberate effort to contradict the historical interpretation.
Jesus of Nazareth had a mission in life, just as every one who acquires knowledge has. It has been considered the greatest sin to know the truth and not to spread it to others. The Hindu Scriptures have it :
"They who follow after Avidya (ignorance) enter into gloomy darkness ; into undoubtedly greater darkness than that go they, who are devoted to Vidya (knowledge) only, that is, who do not correct the wrong notions of others."—(Isa Vasya Upanishad).
* See The Historian's History of the World, Vol. II. p. 189.
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