(Benjamin Teixeira) – Eugenia, I watched Mel Gibson’s controversial movie, “The Passion of the Christ”. He’s been loudly accused of anti-Semitism in the United States and, regrettably (I don’t feel comfortable saying it), I feel obliged to affirm that I disagree with such accusation. I side with a Brazilian Catholic authority who postulated that if the movie is anti-Semitic, so are the Gospels. That’s what I realized. Mel Gibson and his colleagues made a movie very close to an accurate reproduction of the canonical gospel texts, in what regards to the final moments of the life of Jesus. Indeed, perhaps the focus on the pain of Christ, his torture, the horrific details of abuse, sounds of bad taste, but I do not think one can jump from that to an accusation of anti-Semitism. Even in what regards to the on-screen minutiae of the passion of Jesus, it seemed to me an excellent form of showing violence as it is, not as entertainment, but as something shocking, repulsive and abominable. The scenes of violence, on TV and in movies, have been vulgarized, and as Christ said that everyone’s pain was His pain, I believe that directly showing His pain seemed to me a good way to “scandalize” (in a good sense) people and take them to reject and deplore the violence that lately has been presented as a form of entertainment. I noticed that people left the movie theatres feeling sick, I found this very healthy, psychologically and spiritually. After all, nowadays, audiences are used to rave with pleasure in movies filled with scenes of brutality, savagery and cruelty. What would you have to say about this?
(Spirit Eugenia) – I totally agree with your conclusion in what regards to the effects of violence in the popular soul. Furthermore, regarding the accusation of anti-Semitism, we will have to thread along some not so “politically correct” reasoning, as it is said today, but extremely necessary. No one considers as abominable the initiative to clearly show what used to happen in Nazi concentration camps, portraying them in productions for television and cinema. Quite the contrary: critics applaud – very rightly – the warning propaganda against the savagery to which human beings can entrust themselves, free from the brakes of common sense. Up to this date, nobody has postulated that these movies are a hideous campaign against the German people. Conversely, the German people of today, conscious and informed, suffers from a deep moral pain, with the collective guilt of their ancestors, for recognizing the horrors committed by their nation in the past. This indicates maturity of collective psyche and, also, of the institutions of that old and respectable European nation. Unfortunately, we do not see this on the part of Jewish people, despite having already passed twenty centuries, and not only sixty years, since their great crime was committed. The Jewish pride and inflexibility seem to be, regrettably, immune to all sufferings, and, for this same reason, they multiply in the course of the centuries, because the objective of pain is spiritual growth, which will have to occur, one way or the other. Because of this low degree of self-consciousness, even today, Jews level off with the Arabs, in intestinal and bestial territorial disputes, as if they were still stuck to a tribal level of civilization. The Jewish people, such as the Arabic (referring mainly to its Shiite faction), still suffers from the arrogant illusion of those who feel exempt of guilt, of those who judge themselves to be the centre of the world (which denotes infantile narcissism) and do not admit making mistakes. Jesus was the greatest human luminary of all times. And we don’t say this because we’re Christians, but because He is the base of western civilization, today hegemonic, which, in its most powerful aspects, preaches democratic and individual freedoms and the respect to the human being, in a general sense, as no other civilization has ever done before or, nowadays scantly does it. This man was barbarously and unjustly sentenced to death, by a hideous process of political articulation of the Jewish authorities at the time. Rome, in that context, simply was strongly manipulated, in order to meet the murderous and fanatical fury of the Sanhedrin’s authorities, since the Romans’ pragmatic intention was always to avoid popular seditions in its provinces, something the bigwigs of Jewish people captiously made seem they believed would happen. This is, in fact, present in the synoptic Gospels and I agree that we would have to question not only the authority of the Gospels, but also of History’s, since we know Jesus was a historical character, and that there is even the record of his death, through the avant-garde system of administrative documentation of the roman people: April 07, 33. And it is known, however, that Rome would never be interested to execute publicly, someone who preached peace and obedience to constituted authorities (let’s remember the passage of “give to Cesar what is Cesar’s”), as he indeed showed with his attitude of not resisting to his arrest and prompt execution. Imagine if somebody would have the power of influence to confront the charisma and oratory of Jesus, the most persuasive man of all times? And yet, he surrendered himself to his enemies, offering no resistance, knowing it was the Will of God. The Jewish people, undoubtedly – we would have to deny all eternal truths if we said the opposite –, acquired a heavy and huge collective karmic debt with such ignominy. Not coincidently, only 37 years later, in the year 70 of our era, the people of Israel was cruelly slaughtered and finally expelled from their territory, spending almost two thousand years without a homeland, being persecuted and suffering atrocities wherever they went. And even after the formation of the State of Israel, in 1948, one sees what the Jewish people in that region has suffered. Obviously, we could never endorse any anti-Semitic attitude, as well as any kind of bigotry, discrimination, or prejudice with this or that people. But not to acknowledge a historic fact, especially one of criminal and hideous character, as the torture and murder of the greatest Man of all times, by way of seeming modern or informed, is equivalent to say that it is not worthy and fair to sentence a criminal to prison or submit him to a fair trial, under the excuse of this being a discriminatory and politically incorrect attitude. We cannot, for any reason, persecute or mistreat the Jewish people or any other people, ethnic group or minority on Earth. But, for the good of this same people, it would be fit to mature and review their history, their concepts about themselves, their exaggeratedly idealized self-image, still under the token of the fantasy of the victim and sanctity complex. It is in this way that we believe the posture of modern Jews is very immature. It is not up to us, now, to treat them differently – this was already done in the past and unfairly, because no one has the right to punish others for their mistakes, except in the exact extent to prevent that this individual go back to commit the same offense again, as in the case of criminals cast away from social life. Besides, we ourselves, as western civilization, have been, for several centuries, extremely self-critical in relation to our religious, political and philosophical ideals, reviewing and rebuilding our institutions and ideologies. This is why the Holy Crusades, the equivalent to today’s jihads, are past pages of our history, as well as the courts of the Holy Inquisition. Now is the time for the Israeli people to get out of their eternal spiritual adolescence, disguised as arrogance and pretension of superiority, to realize their crimes and mistakes, in order to not repeat them again in a collective scale, as we are realising today to be possible to happen, in the dangerous conflicts in the Middle East, which will inevitably have global repercussion.
(BT) – Eugenia, and for us non-Jews, especially Christians, how should we understand our relationship with the “Passion of Christ”?
(SE) – Firstly, let’s better contextualize ourselves. Jesus was a member of the Jewish people. Hence we have to immerse ourselves in His reality, in order to understand the complete symbolism of His final suffering, and, consequently, its underlying lesson. The Jewish people, especially in the study of the passion of Christ, the political and religious authorities of Israel, represent ourselves, who everyday betray the Christ, torture Him and crucify Him. That’s why we say that the anti-Semitic issue is stupid and it concerns to the consciousness of the Jewish people, invited by life to reach a greater level of psychological maturity. On our part, as Christians, we must understand that we all are the Jews of that time, in many cases, even literally, for those who directly took part on sponsoring or inciting the crime of the Cross, reincarnated, later on, within Christian rows to compensate for the evil done to the Christian Cause. Jesus, therefore, represents our superior ideal, our noblest vocations, our most worthy and elevated aspects of being, acting and feeling. We are Peter who denies Jesus, because of the fear of being harmed by the convenience of the material world. We are Judas, who prioritized political and economic issues over the spiritual ones, getting desperate by the realization that Christ did not react to the confrontation with the world’s power, being “defeated” by it. We’re also Judas, when instead of working for our redemption, we commit “suicide”, by abandoning the opportunities of hard service in our inner reform and of hard work to compensate ourselves for the mistakes of yesterday. We are also Pontius Pilate, with his selfish pragmatism, who despite not having the intention to harm Jesus and even trying to save Him from the murderous rage of the Jewish summit, “washes his hands”, in the lazy omission of those who do not want to compromise directly with higher causes.
We are the Roman soldiers who tortured Jesus, we are the other disciples and beneficiaries of the nights before who fled in terror at the great-hour; we are Christ himself, within the tortured ideal, feeling alone in the middle of the multitude of forces contrary to the spirit and to faith. But without any shadow of doubt, we too are the higher authorities of the Jewish people who, cynically and irresponsibly, arrest and arrange to sentence, torture and execute our higher ideal, the inner Christ.
(BT) – I see Eugenia… that is why so many feel so bad in the movie theatres when they watch the movie. Projection, isn’t it?
(SE) – It is not the only reason, but the psychological projection does happen, even if unconsciously. The anti-Semitism, therefore, would be a great loss of opportunity of inner growth, because we would divert the focus from ourselves to seek culprits outside. The culprit is each one of us. We are the ones crucifying our fragile inner-god, every day. Our inner-Christ is not like the powerful Jesus of the Sermon of the Mount, but that pale, cadaverous and bloodied, condemned and dying Jesus on the cross. However, if we don’t assume our portion of responsibility for each psychological aspect of the mystical crucifixion of our inner-Jesus, we will never leave the drama of crucifixion, passing to the glory of Resurrection.
(BT) – Interesting this view of yours. It means then that many of us are tied up to the drama of the Cross, symbolically, for entire incarnations…
(SE) – Exactly. And there are those who prefer to die the way they are rather than change. There are incarnations-passion of Christ, as there are incarnations-grave of Christ, and, finally, rare incarnations-Resurrection, in which our inner-Jesus is manifested vigorous and above all vicissitudes of the outside world. The overwhelming majority of the Earth’s population, though, is either in the phase of torturing the divine-self or in the incubation stage of it, for a stronger resurgence in the future.
(BT) – How would incubation incarnations be?
(SE) – A classic example would be the people who, in the past, left the world so they cliuld more deeply meditate and, one day, return secure of their divine connection, to the contact and interaction with the crowd, serving it in the name of God. This, obviously, can no longer be interpreted literally, because such existential paths denote much more negligence than a sanctification process. However, metaphorically, we find people who, although active externally, diligent in their professional and personal lives, internally, feel nurturing, polishing or fermenting their spiritual self, so that, in a distant future, It can emerge with all its magnificence. These are people who no longer live the great dramas of the passion and the cross, that is: they no longer suffer cruel conflicts between good and evil or between following their consciousness or the impulses of the ego, nevertheless, they also cannot be called saints, because they do not fully devote themselves to the spiritual ideal. One day, however, they will, in this or in other future reincarnations. Most people, however, must try to find in themselves – this is the best way to use this tripartite developmental paradigm of spiritual awakening – the three phases, in different percentage and areas of their soul. Thus, no one is fully in one of the stages, but in all three of them at the same time, experiencing, in different departments and extents of their lives, each one of them, until they are completely assimilated by the higher plane of the Risen-Christ and, therefore, dispense, even, the need to undergo reincarnations.
(BT) – Very interesting, Eugenia. Do you have anything else to say about the subject?
(SE) – Yes, because we focus so much the symbol of the cross – what clearly shows the majority’s identification with this phase of spiritual awakening – we end up by fixing our minds on this pattern of pain and moral “failure”. It’s time, however, to understand, spiritually and psychologically, that the drama of the cross is a period and not a destiny; a transition and not the essence of the process, so that we do not evade our efforts of spiritualization, inner growth and to give our best, because we do not want defeat. Let’s remember and focus on the Risen-Christ, the Jesus conqueror of death, because this is our purpose, our universal and wonderful destination. We must keep in mind that the passion of Christ lasted for a few hours only and that the glory that preceded it and, specially, the one that followed it, is both immeasurable and endless. With this new model of understanding the conflictive reality of being incarnated and of being a spirit in process of transition between evolutionary levels, it becomes easy to place pain into perspective and, thereby, to understand its implicit purpose of learning and happiness, so that, one day, in fact, we can fully immerse in the eternity of the absolute connection with the Creator.
(Mediumistic dialogue held on March 23, 2004.)