The Later Adult Life of Jesus

129:3.1The whole of Je­sus’ twenty-ninth year was spent fin­ish­ing up the tour of the Med­i­ter­ra­nean world. The main events, as far as we have per­mis­sion to re­veal these ex­pe­ri­ences, con­sti­tute the sub­jects of the nar­ra­tives which im­me­di­ately fol­low this pa­per.

129:3.2Through­out this tour of the Ro­man world, for many rea­sons, Je­sus was known as the Da­mas­cus scribe. At Corinth and other stops on the re­turn trip he was, how­ever, known as the Jew­ish tu­tor.

129:3.3This was an event­ful pe­riod in Je­sus’ life. While on this jour­ney he made many con­tacts with his fel­low men, but this ex­pe­ri­ence is a phase of his life which he never re­vealed to any mem­ber of his fam­ily nor to any of the apos­tles. Je­sus lived out his life in the flesh and de­parted from this world with­out any­one (save Zeb­e­dee of Beth­saida) know­ing that he had made this ex­ten­sive trip. Some of his friends thought he had re­turned to Da­mas­cus; oth­ers thought he had gone to In­dia. His own fam­ily in­clined to the be­lief that he was in Alexan­dria, as they knew that he had once been in­vited to go there for the pur­pose of be­com­ing an as­sis­tant chazan.

129:3.4When Je­sus re­turned to Pales­tine, he did noth­ing to change the opin­ion of his fam­ily that he had gone from Je­ru­sa­lem to Alexan­dria; he per­mit­ted them to con­tinue in the be­lief that all the time he had been ab­sent from Pales­tine had been spent in that city of learn­ing and cul­ture. Only Zeb­e­dee the boat­builder of Beth­saida knew the facts about these mat­ters, and Zeb­e­dee told no one.

129:3.5In all your ef­forts to de­ci­pher the mean­ing of Je­sus’ life on Uran­tia, you must be mind­ful of the mo­ti­va­tion of the Mi­chael be­stowal. If you would com­pre­hend the mean­ing of many of his ap­par­ently strange do­ings, you must dis­cern the pur­pose of his so­journ on your world. He was con­sis­tently care­ful not to build up an over­at­trac­tive and at­ten­tion-con­sum­ing per­sonal ca­reer. He wanted to make no un­usual or over­pow­er­ing ap­peals to his fel­low men. He was ded­i­cated to the work of re­veal­ing the heav­enly Fa­ther to his fel­low mor­tals and at the same time was con­se­crated to the sub­lime task of liv­ing his mor­tal earth life all the while sub­ject to the will of the same Par­a­dise Fa­ther.

129:3.6It will also al­ways be help­ful in un­der­stand­ing Je­sus’ life on earth if all mor­tal stu­dents of this di­vine be­stowal will re­mem­ber that, while he lived this life of in­car­na­tion on Uran­tia, he lived it for his en­tire uni­verse. There was some­thing spe­cial and in­spir­ing as­so­ci­ated with the life he lived in the flesh of mor­tal na­ture for ev­ery sin­gle in­hab­ited sphere through­out all the uni­verse of Neb­a­don. The same is also true of all those worlds which have be­come hab­it­able since the event­ful times of his so­journ on Uran­tia. And it will like­wise be equally true of all worlds which may be­come in­hab­ited by will crea­tures in all the fu­ture his­tory of this lo­cal uni­verse.

129:3.7The Son of Man, dur­ing the time and through the ex­pe­ri­ences of this tour of the Ro­man world, prac­ti­cally com­pleted his ed­u­ca­tional con­tact-train­ing with the di­ver­si­fied peo­ples of the world of his day and gen­er­a­tion. By the time of his re­turn to Naz­a­reth, through the medium of this travel-train­ing he had just about learned how man lived and wrought out his ex­is­tence on Uran­tia.

129:3.8The real pur­pose of his trip around the Med­i­ter­ra­nean basin was to know men. He came very close to hun­dreds of hu­mankind on this jour­ney. He met and loved all man­ner of men, rich and poor, high and low, black and white, ed­u­cated and un­e­d­u­cated, cul­tured and un­cul­tured, an­i­mal­is­tic and spir­i­tual, re­li­gious and ir­re­li­gious, moral and im­moral.

129:3.9On this Med­i­ter­ra­nean jour­ney Je­sus made great ad­vances in his hu­man task of mas­ter­ing the ma­te­rial and mor­tal mind, and his in­dwelling Ad­juster made great prog­ress in the as­cen­sion and spir­i­tual con­quest of this same hu­man in­tel­lect. By the end of this tour Je­sus vir­tu­ally knew—with all hu­man cer­tainty—that he was a Son of God, a Cre­ator Son of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther. The Ad­juster more and more was able to bring up in the mind of the Son of Man shad­owy mem­o­ries of his Par­a­dise ex­pe­ri­ence in as­so­ci­a­tion with his di­vine Fa­ther ere he ever came to or­ga­nize and ad­min­is­ter this lo­cal uni­verse of Neb­a­don. Thus did the Ad­juster, lit­tle by lit­tle, bring to Je­sus’ hu­man con­scious­ness those nec­es­sary mem­o­ries of his for­mer and di­vine ex­is­tence in the var­i­ous epochs of the well-nigh eter­nal past. The last episode of his pre­hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence to be brought forth by the Ad­juster was his farewell con­fer­ence with Im­manuel of Sal­ving­ton just be­fore his sur­ren­der of con­scious per­son­al­ity to em­bark upon the Uran­tia in­car­na­tion. And this fi­nal mem­ory pic­ture of pre­hu­man ex­is­tence was made clear in Je­sus’ con­scious­ness on the very day of his bap­tism by John in the Jor­dan.