The Sojourn at Rome

132:7.1Je­sus, Gonod, and Ga­nid made five trips away from Rome to points of in­ter­est in the sur­round­ing ter­ri­tory. On their visit to the north­ern Ital­ian lakes Je­sus had the long talk with Ga­nid con­cern­ing the im­pos­si­bil­ity of teach­ing a man about God if the man does not de­sire to know God. They had ca­su­ally met a thought­less pa­gan while on their jour­ney up to the lakes, and Ga­nid was sur­prised that Je­sus did not fol­low out his usual prac­tice of en­list­ing the man in con­ver­sa­tion which would nat­u­rally lead up to the dis­cus­sion of spir­i­tual ques­tions. When Ga­nid asked his teacher why he evinced so lit­tle in­ter­est in this pa­gan, Je­sus an­swered:

132:7.2“Ga­nid, the man was not hun­gry for truth. He was not dis­sat­is­fied with him­self. He was not ready to ask for help, and the eyes of his mind were not open to re­ceive light for the soul. That man was not ripe for the har­vest of sal­va­tion; he must be al­lowed more time for the tri­als and dif­fi­cul­ties of life to pre­pare him for the re­cep­tion of wis­dom and higher learn­ing. Or, if we could have him live with us, we might by our lives show him the Fa­ther in heaven, and thus would he be­come so at­tracted by our lives as sons of God that he would be con­strained to in­quire about our Fa­ther. You can­not re­veal God to those who do not seek for him; you can­not lead un­will­ing souls into the joys of sal­va­tion. Man must be­come hun­gry for truth as a re­sult of the ex­pe­ri­ences of liv­ing, or he must de­sire to know God as the re­sult of con­tact with the lives of those who are ac­quainted with the di­vine Fa­ther be­fore an­other hu­man be­ing can act as the means of lead­ing such a fel­low mor­tal to the Fa­ther in heaven. If we know God, our real busi­ness on earth is so to live as to per­mit the Fa­ther to re­veal him­self in our lives, and thus will all God-seek­ing per­sons see the Fa­ther and ask for our help in find­ing out more about the God who in this man­ner finds ex­pres­sion in our lives.”

132:7.3It was on the visit to Switzer­land, up in the moun­tains, that Je­sus had an all-day talk with both fa­ther and son about Bud­dhism. Many times Ga­nid had asked Je­sus di­rect ques­tions about Bud­dha, but he had al­ways re­ceived more or less eva­sive replies. Now, in the pres­ence of the son, the fa­ther asked Je­sus a di­rect ques­tion about Bud­dha, and he re­ceived a di­rect re­ply. Said Gonod: “I would re­ally like to know what you think of Bud­dha.” And Je­sus an­swered:

132:7.4“Your Bud­dha was much bet­ter than your Bud­dhism. Bud­dha was a great man, even a prophet to his peo­ple, but he was an or­phan prophet; by that I mean that he early lost sight of his spir­i­tual Fa­ther, the Fa­ther in heaven. His ex­pe­ri­ence was tragic. He tried to live and teach as a mes­sen­ger of God, but with­out God. Bud­dha guided his ship of sal­va­tion right up to the safe har­bor, right up to the en­trance to the haven of mor­tal sal­va­tion, and there, be­cause of faulty charts of nav­i­ga­tion, the good ship ran aground. There it has rested these many gen­er­a­tions, mo­tion­less and al­most hope­lessly stranded. And thereon have many of your peo­ple re­mained all these years. They live within hail­ing dis­tance of the safe wa­ters of rest, but they refuse to en­ter be­cause the no­ble craft of the good Bud­dha met the mis­for­tune of ground­ing just out­side the har­bor. And the Bud­dhist peo­ples never will en­ter this har­bor un­less they aban­don the philo­sophic craft of their prophet and seize upon his no­ble spirit. Had your peo­ple re­mained true to the spirit of Bud­dha, you would have long since en­tered your haven of spirit tran­quil­lity, soul rest, and as­sur­ance of sal­va­tion.

132:7.5“You see, Gonod, Bud­dha knew God in spirit but failed clearly to dis­cover him in mind; the Jews dis­cov­ered God in mind but largely failed to know him in spirit. To­day, the Bud­dhists floun­der about in a phi­los­o­phy with­out God, while my peo­ple are piteously en­slaved to the fear of a God with­out a sav­ing phi­los­o­phy of life and lib­erty. You have a phi­los­o­phy with­out a God; the Jews have a God but are largely with­out a phi­los­o­phy of liv­ing as re­lated thereto. Bud­dha, fail­ing to en­vi­sion God as a spirit and as a Fa­ther, failed to pro­vide in his teach­ing the moral en­ergy and the spir­i­tual driv­ing power which a re­li­gion must pos­sess if it is to change a race and ex­alt a na­tion.”

132:7.6Then ex­claimed Ga­nid: “Teacher, let’s you and I make a new re­li­gion, one good enough for In­dia and big enough for Rome, and maybe we can trade it to the Jews for Yah­weh.” And Je­sus replied: “Ga­nid, re­li­gions are not made. The re­li­gions of men grow up over long pe­ri­ods of time, while the rev­e­la­tions of God flash upon earth in the lives of the men who re­veal God to their fel­lows.” But they did not com­pre­hend the mean­ing of these pro­phetic words.

132:7.7That night af­ter they had re­tired, Ga­nid could not sleep. He talked a long time with his fa­ther and fi­nally said, “You know, fa­ther, I some­times think Joshua is a prophet.” And his fa­ther only sleep­ily replied, “My son, there are oth­ers—”

132:7.8From this day, for the re­main­der of his nat­u­ral life, Ga­nid con­tin­ued to evolve a re­li­gion of his own. He was might­ily moved in his own mind by Je­sus’ broad­mind­ed­ness, fair­ness, and tol­er­ance. In all their dis­cus­sions of phi­los­o­phy and re­li­gion this youth never ex­pe­ri­enced feel­ings of re­sent­ment or re­ac­tions of an­tag­o­nism.

132:7.9What a scene for the ce­les­tial in­tel­li­gences to be­hold, this spec­ta­cle of the In­dian lad propos­ing to the Cre­ator of a uni­verse that they make a new re­li­gion! And though the young man did not know it, they were mak­ing a new and ev­er­last­ing re­li­gion right then and there—this new way of sal­va­tion, the rev­e­la­tion of God to man through, and in, Je­sus. That which the lad wanted most to do he was un­con­sciously ac­tu­ally do­ing. And it was, and is, ever thus. That which the en­light­ened and re­flec­tive hu­man imag­i­na­tion of spir­i­tual teach­ing and lead­ing whole­heart­edly and un­selfishly wants to do and be, be­comes mea­sur­ably cre­ative in ac­cor­dance with the de­gree of mor­tal ded­i­ca­tion to the di­vine do­ing of the Fa­ther’s will. When man goes in part­ner­ship with God, great things may, and do, hap­pen.