OPENING PAGES EXTRACT

© Ian Lawton 2015

‘I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these.’ (John 14:12)

Is it really possible that no Christian scholar has ever understood the true meaning, indeed the enormous power, of this statement?

Is it really possible that this and selected other quotations that still survive, scattered amongst the four gospels of the New Testament, are echoes of messages that had become seriously distorted and misunderstood within only a few generations of Jesus’ death?

Is it really possible that these echoes have had to wait until such time as various scientific and other developments could properly illuminate them – thereby restoring Jesus’ true, original messages in all their majesty?

This book will contend that the answer to all these questions just may be ‘yes’.

In recent decades many secular researchers have applied themselves to seeing through the distortions in the Bible. They have fascinated us with stories about Jesus’ supposed bloodline, or about the holy grail that supposedly once contained his blood. Perhaps most important so far, they’ve suggested that Mary Magdalene may not only have been his lover but also very much his equal in what was a truly revolutionary movement – and in doing so they’ve exposed the potential manipulation of a patriarchal Church that may have suppressed this truth for millennia to serve their own political ends.

But it’s entirely possible that all this has really just been a series of sideshows waiting for the main event – a complete reinterpretation, arguably indeed a restoration, of Jesus’ fundamental messages for humanity.

There is one major difference between this modern presentation of his messages and the way in which they were originally given to us – this time there is no one who can be worshipped. Although as we’ll see it was essential that Jesus incarnated in the physical world as a human being to give us practical demonstrations of just what we’re capable of, in hindsight the downside was that back then the people he was dealing with simply weren’t ready to worship themselves in their own magnificence – so they naturally worshipped him instead.

It seems that the many millions of people to whom the Christian message has spread in the intervening millennia have been no more ready. But perhaps now, in a less religiously controlled world that allows more freedom of thought, conditions are more ripe – at least for seeds to be planted that may, eventually, blossom into an entirely different future.

These restored messages are sufficiently powerful that they could usher in a whole new era in human development and evolution. They could allow us to finally break away from all our superstitions about Jesus and the countless other gods and prophets we’ve invented or misunderstood – ever since we first started to recognise our mortality as physical beings and to wonder ‘what lies beyond’.

This is a chance for each of us to be empowered as individuals – for each of us to take responsibility for our own life experience, and to recognise that we ourselves are creating it. But, if enough of us wake up this time, it’s also a chance for the human race as a whole to leave childish things behind and to finally mature into collective adulthood.

This may sound a little harsh, but all the evidence suggests that we’re still so far from a true understanding of who and what we really are that only strong words will awaken those who are ready from their slumber.

Of course many won’t be ready yet, and that’s fine. We just need to make a start. Indeed the ball has already been rolling for some time, thanks to the many books and films about ‘positive thinking’, the ‘law of attraction’ and so on that have proved extremely popular in recent decades. Some may have contained a somewhat limited, even somewhat distorted, perspective, but they have nonetheless sowed hugely important seeds.

So conditions may now be ripe for a new and powerful understanding to spread until at some point it becomes unstoppable. And what lies at the heart of this new understanding?

The only difference between us and Jesus is that he knew he was divine, whereas we’ve yet to realise that we are too.

That’s it. So simple. So concise. But are we really ready to take that message on board?

One reason some people have struggled with this is that they have a confused view of what being divine means, so let’s clarify this right from the outset. At its simplest it means knowing that as human beings we’re not minnows swimming around hopelessly and helplessly in a huge pond of someone else’s making, but instead are completely in charge of the illusion we call physical life on planet earth. It means knowing that, subject to just a few limitations, each of us is creating every single experience we’re having. No one else. Just us.

Of course many people believe that our real aim on this planet is to pursue an often complex and long drawn out path towards ‘enlightenment’ or ‘ascension’. But if this reinterpretation-cum-restoration of Jesus’ messages is accurate, it’s a pretty good bet he would adopt a quite different stance:

Simply recognising that we’re the master of our own creation is all we need to do to reconnect with our true divinity.