APOLOGIA – A personal Assessment of my Faith

By Peter Longley,  M.A.  (Cantab)

Vocation defines many people’s lives from a very early age lasting until their deaths. It might be inspired by a close family connection, whereby a medical doctor’s child believes it is his or her destiny to also be a medical practitioner, or a professional footballer might have a child who sees his or her future to be entirely linked to aspects of the ‘beautiful game’. Farmers’ families often take up farming because it has surrounded them from their earliest memory. Then there are those discoveries, sometimes linked to our genes, that show some creative talent at an early age that leads to a lifelong pursuit of that talent, such as is found in the lives of dancers, painters, sculptors, actors, writers, musicians or gardeners. Vocation, however, truly means a ‘calling’ and it is most obviously found in those who believe in some kind of divine intervention that leads them down a certain path. Clergy often claim such a vocation.

Such a vocation came to me when I was nine years old. Irrational as it has seemed in the way my life panned out, I have always believed in it and will until the day I die. I was at a boarding preparatory school on the south coast at the time. It was 4:00 p.m. the time at Newlands when we boys had to attend roll call and drink our free, post-war, government-issue, third-of-a-pint of milk. The year was 1953. We were assembled in what was called the Big Schoolroom, actually three classrooms separated by open partitions. A large four-sash window looked out on the downland of Seaford Head, where dramatic chalk cliffs, known as the Seven Sisters, face the English Channel on the Sussex coast between Seaford and Eastbourne. Fully awake and totally lucid as I sipped on my milk through a paper straw, I saw a huge wooden cross rise up from the gorse and grass of Seaford Head until it was upright. There was no figure on the cross, but in my perception a voice boomed out from that rugged cross that only I could hear, “God needs you.”

I did not come from a religious background. Few of my family members were churchgoers, including at that time my parents, although occasionally my sister and I had been sent to a nearby congregational church Sunday school, mostly because the teacher was one of our primary school teachers—Mrs. Messent of St. Christopher’s the Hall, Beckenham. No clergyman had any influence at this point on my life, and the subject I disliked most in school was scripture. So, why did I have this peculiar visionary experience?

From that day on, however, even though I continued to dislike scripture in school, I believed that God had called me to be a clergyman.

I am now seventy-five years old and have never been ordained into the priesthood of any Christian denomination, but I hold a masters degree from Cambridge University in theology and can look back on a lifelong quest to fulfil that vocation.

* * *

The other day, two young student missionaries of the Jehovah’s Witnesses knocked on my door. “Are you going to be celebrating the anniversary of the death of Jesus?” they asked, to which I replied, “Yes.”  It might have occurred to me that this was a little strange as I would have expected them to say “Are you going to be celebrating the anniversary of the resurrection?” but they seemed to want to celebrate Jesus’ death more than the resurrection. It soon became apparent why. As is their custom, out came the text on their iphone – St. John 3:16. 

For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.

They then asked me if I believed in that, to which I answered “I’m not sure.” Quickly, then up came the next quote on the iphone – I Corinthians 15:21.  

For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. This was also supplemented with Romans 5:12,  Therefore as sin came into the world through one man (Adam) and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all men sinned.

At this point I would have liked to have got into a discussion about the Genesis creation story and the evolution of man, but being somewhat flustered at this point I allowed it to go. I let the two young ladies know that I was a theologian and that I thought a great deal about these things. “But this is the word of the Apostle John,” they said, to which I replied “Unlikely. John the apostle as a Galilean fisherman was almost certainly illiterate and more importantly the Gospel of St. John was probably written in the early Second Century long after the Apostle John would have passed away.” At which point they happily left saying they would love to come back and discuss these things more with me.

John 3:16 is often quoted as the kernel of Christian belief, and if so, then I would almost certainly have to repeat “I’m not so sure.” When I reflect on my vision, I always note that the cross was empty. There was no crucified Jesus on that cross dying to save me from my sins. This was probably in part because nobody had tried to teach me about this kernel of Christian belief, and I really did not encounter it until I became a theologian at Cambridge University in the early 1960s. On the contrary, all emphasis in my upbringing was on following Jesus’ principles of how to lead a good life, that for me are best found in St. Matthew 25:31-46.

When the Son of man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on his glorious throne. Before him will be gathered all the nations, and he will separate them one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, and he will place the sheep at his right hand, but the goats at the left.

Then the King will say to those at his right hand, “Come, O blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.”

Then the righteous will answer him, “Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? And when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?”

And the King will answer them, “Truly I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me.”

Then he will say to those at his left hand, “Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels; for I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not clothe me, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.”

Then they will also answer, “Lord when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick and in prison, and did not minister to you?”

Then he will answer them, “Truly, I say to you, ‘as you did it not to the least of these, you did it not to me.’ And they will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”

There are two strands of early Christian belief here. One claiming Jesus died on the cross as a sacrifice to save all believers from all their sins, and the other showing a judgement day, where we are saved only by our kindness and our good works. The second version in my belief is the more likely version that Jesus would have told as it would have been difficult for him to see himself as the ultimate sacrifice before he knew he was going to be crucified. It seems more likely that the sacrificial death version was attributed to Jesus by his followers after his death rather than before it.

The sacrificial death is also dependent on the idea that mankind brought sin into the world when Adam broke the divine rules of the Garden of Eden. This is hard to reconcile in a post-Darwinian world, but the early church was formed in a pre-Darwin world where divine mythology mingles with Graeco-Roman life.         

Our ideas of God have likewise greatly changed. Philosophically, we may be no further along in proving or disproving the existence of God, but how we perceive God has greatly expanded on the monotheist Jehovah model from which Judaism, Christianity and Islam arose. We were quite prepared to accept the idea of the monotheistic God, starting with the tribal God of the Hebrews, developing into the Christian God, and later Allah, as a supreme human with whom we can hold a dialogue and from whom we can receive guidance. From the Hebrew prophets through the resurrected Jesus, Christian saints, and on into Islamic holy men, we have believed that some can act as intermediaries for us, and in the post-reformation world we have also certainly taken on a more direct approach to believing we can all communicate with this one, all-powerful super human Lord of Heaven. Doesn’t this assume, however, that this universal God has knowledge of almost every language known to man? Does this God actually hear our prayers? “Yes,” we say, because at times our prayers are answered.

After my visionary experience, prayer became very important to me. I might be the only boy at that boarding school who was caught praying ‘out of bounds.’ It was difficult for the headmaster to punish a boy for praying, but leaving school grounds was a seriously punishable offense. I became very attached to the peace of nature in which to experience my encounters with God, however, and I still am. Woodland and fields around our more artificial school grounds were far more appealing to me as a young boy wishing to communicate with the God whom I believed had called me. I wasn’t punished, but I was summoned before the headmaster, which in my day always reminded me of that famed Anglican Hymn, Before Thy throne we sinners bend, as we waited for the swish of the cane.

It is interesting that although the most famous prayer in Christianity is the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus actually taught us very little about prayer, but what he taught us I believe is very significant. St. Matthew 6:7-14 is Jesus’ quintessential teaching on prayer.  

And in praying do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do; for they think that they will be heard for their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him. Pray then like this:

Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread; and forgive us our debts; as we also have forgiven our debtors; and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.

For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you; but if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.

I believe that for Jesus, in his instruction on prayer, it is not so much about the words we use, but more about the focus they engender in our lives. By offering our prayers to God we focus on the topic and receive the resulting reward. The power of prayer is the power of focus and forgiveness in our communities. It is summed up in the great Christian commandment of ‘Love’ in St. Matthew 22:37-40.  

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it, You shall love your neighbour as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets.                      

At an early age, I found that focus in nature, and in particular in the beauty of how light changes everything. How light effects the beauty we perceive in nature truly can give us a brief window into the divine. That is a dialogue with God and not a word is spoken.

* * *

So I must now return to that new exploration of God that started with the Darwin revolution and changed even more in my late teen years with Bishop John Robinson’s explosive little book, Honest to God.

Within Christianity, Honest to God changed how we perceived God the Father, moving from seeing God as a super human up there to a divine power within. I used to describe it as the telescopic and microscopic approach. The telescopic approach sees God as a giant in our image up in heaven, or a realm outside our universe experience, that can only be seen through a telescope. The microscopic approach sees God as the creative energy within the universe, ever becoming smaller and smaller but more powerful, mirroring our scientific understanding of our universe taking us back to the infinite big bang of creation. Seeing God then as an atomical force of creation makes it difficult to see exactly how Jesus could in human terminology be the son of God. But it opens up for a greater understanding of the man, Jesus of Nazareth, as a conduit for the divine within.

In a post-Darwin world it has become harder and harder to see man in the image of God, but rather as a temporary part of the cycle of divine creation. Science has outstripped the image of God that we have held in monotheism for four thousand years.

This does not diminish the power of God in our lives, and takes that power way beyond just the human experience. We now see the universe as vibration, its entirety, including ourselves, as a vibration of ever smaller particles fuelled by an energy that is indestructible. In essence, what drives all matter, including that of which we are composed, becomes one with God, the mysterious source of all that is. In mathematical and quantum terms we have even come to disprove time in such a way as past, present and future become one. In short, everything becomes God and nothing becomes God all at the same instant.  

At our stage of evolution in the life experience, we can only, along with a limited number of other animal species, experience life through the limitations of the electronic machinations of our brains within our created experience of time. But which is more real, that historic life experience or the forever infinity of eternal vibration? We can’t know because we can’t get outside our brains. It’s also possible, even probable that our brains may destroy our ability to live as we experience life on this planet. If at some point human life should end on this planet, life will go on. God’s creative energy will survive, and even if in the way distant future our perceived living planet shall become a lifeless sphere of rock, it will still be vibrating. In historical time, as we look at the projections for the future of humans (Homo Sapiens), it would seem highly likely that the dinosaurs would have historically reigned supreme very much longer than us, and the humble cockroach probably longer than both of us.

But if time is an illusion surpassed by the mathematics of infinity, none of this matters because the entire creation is one and only in an instant, which in turn would make every aspect of all creation God.

* * *

Through the limitations of his human brain, Jesus did not have the scientific tools and data we have today to try to explain the divine. It is probable that early Christians attributed to him the title ‘Son of God’ with reasonable ease in a world where gods and mortals were perceived to have mixed for generations. That he achieved miracles I have no reason to doubt, although in time they may be scientifically explained away. He obviously had great healing gifts, but so do many today. In fact, if Jesus were living today, with contemporary scientific knowledge, he might well sum up his teaching around the theory that we are all ‘Sons of God.’

This brings me to the famous quote of St. John 14: 12. 

Truly, truly I say to you, he who believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do, because I go to the Father. 

Of course, today, many in the medical and psychiatric professions do perform what in Jesus’ time would have been considered as great or greater miracles than he did. Yet some aspects of Chinese medicine practiced in the Han Dynasty contemporaneous with Jesus, but almost certainly unknown to Jesus, seemed miraculous. On my first visit to China in 1980, I witnessed major open-heart surgery performed painlessly through acupuncture, a science already 4,000 years old in China at the time of Jesus. The patient was talking to the surgeon and fully awake throughout. Shamanism today has spread from Far Eastern and Native American societies where it has been practiced for centuries. Today it has merged in western society with medical practices and quantum physics to heal through energy fields. Chiropractic care is a classic example of this.  It is claimed shamans in the Philippines have long been able to move freely into the human body with nothing but their bare hands to perform surgery. What we are really understanding here is the actual ability to separate molecular structures or the building blocks of all our bodily forms, even if many earlier shamans did not know that this is what they were doing.

Many of these practices are on the fringe, but to return to St. John’s gospel, we must remember the prologue that is somewhat in keeping with Greek Alexandrine philosophy of the first and second century. St John 1:1-4 

In the beginning was the Word (the Greek logos), and the Word was with God. He was in the beginning with God; all things were made through him, and without him was not anything made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

 There is a link here with the Gnostic gospels of the early Egyptian church, and one can quite easily see how such philosophy might have moved on the shipping lanes of first-century Roman trade from Alexandria to Ephesus, a most important port on the Aegean coast of Asia Minor, even though today the city’s ruins are a little inland as the coast has receded. Most scholars consider St. John’s gospel to be a gospel of very early second century origins in Asia Minor. In the light of the ‘Logos’ philosophy, Jesus could well have seen all mankind as ‘Sons of God.’

* * *

Judaism and Christianity have basically given us the moral code by which the whole world lives today, founded on the principles of the Ten Commandments, based loosely on the Code of Hammurabi introduced by the Sixth King of Babylon in about 1754 BCE. In Biblical tradition, Moses was born in Egypt (Exodus 2:5-10) where he was brought up by the Pharoah’s daughter as a prince in the Royal palace, about two hundred years after the Code of Hammurabi. The Egyptian and Babylonian Empires were in constant contact, sometimes friendly and sometimes at war, with information flowing pretty freely between the two powers along the fertile crescent. The Code of Hammurabi would almost certainly have been known by the scribes and scholars of Pharoah’s court and it is easy to see this information passing to Prince Moses, who in turn could have used this as the base of his Mount Sinaii code of laws—the Ten Commandments. On this surmise, the code is not really divine, but a code to create a better society and for the preservation of good order in that society. Moses placed divinity upon it, believing in a tribal God of the Jews, Yaweh, to be guiding his people out of slavery in Egypt to lead them to their promised land. That tribal God establishes the great Jewish faith of the Hebrews that Christianity and later Islam adapted. That, however, is the telescopic view of God. In the microscopic view, the Ten Commandments, lose their direct divine authority from the God on high, but take on a secular role as the guiding force of society seeking a means of self-preservation.

This brings us to the problem of good and evil. If the Creator’s divine law was not broken in the Garden of Eden by plucking an apple from the tree of knowledge—Satan in the form of a serpent setting himself up as the anti-God; what creates a moral code of good and evil, meaning ‘of God’ or ‘of the Devil’.  The monotheistic western religions, share the planet with billions who do not accept this legendary origin of the forces of good and evil even though post-colonialism their twenty-first century state laws are mostly founded on the Judaic-Christian-Islamic code. Eastern religions like Shintoism, Confucianism, Hinduism and Buddhism are based on a principle of attaining eternal harmony, a balance of the two perceived states of ‘yin’ and ‘yang’, and have a very different view of good and evil. Everything is balanced, which is not far from our atomic understanding of the universe today, where we see positive and negative electric magnetic fields among the building blocks of creative evolution. The forces of ‘yin’ and ‘yang’ do not equate to good and evil, but are more like the reverse currents of positive and negative electric fields. ‘Yin’ represents the cold, soft, slow and mysterious elements and ‘yang’ the hot, hard, fast and straightforward elements, and everything that vibrates is composed of both. Should they be in perfect harmony with each other the result will be good. Should they become unbalanced the result will be evil. The role of man is to maintain this balance as best we can through many reincarnated lives until reaching perfect harmony that then unites us with the divine.

Although this eliminates the problem of good and our interpretation  of evil, this is still within that human concept of us being individual souls on a journey back to a telescopic God rather than being ‘Sons of God’ sharing the divinity of the microscopic particles of all that is. The first theory can only be upheld within the concept of time, but the second theory can transcend time, being both the beginning and the end all in one. Past, present and future become the one eternal creative experience.

By emptying our minds through meditation, stillness, peace and the sound of silence, we can sometimes get glimpses into our own divinity, but the chatter of our minds will nearly always get in the way and our interpretation of that glimpse will still only be what our mind allows us to experience. But we can still ask ourselves which is real, the glimpse or the mental process that gave us the glimpse?

As I mentioned earlier, I personally often see that glimpse in light. Bearing in mind that everything we see, and therefore know, is vibrating atoms consisting of ever more smaller vibrating particles, is it really there, or is it only there because we can see it or feel it in the dark? If we feel it in the dark it is only because we have been conditioned by indoctrination through our brain to accepting a certain felt shape to be a certain thing. So it is only when light reveals it that it might become real. Without light everything would be nothingness. Likewise, perceived colours are only refractions of light. Sunlight is white light, but when reflected off moisture in our atmosphere it becomes the visible rainbow. And the rainbow is only the colours that we can see with the naked human eye, beyond it are the infra reds and the ultra violets of the aura only visible to the empty mind. Which is real and which is the illusion?

The sun is just one star among the billions within our ever-expanding universe, and yet it provides us with the light that defines all that we know. In a way, that light is the nearest we can come to observing a small part of that divinity that is all there is. It is no wonder that many of the ancients worshipped the sun as God. But if we are of the same vibrating stardust that creates it all—the smallest nanoparticles as yet revealed through the limitations of our brains–can we not see ourselves also to be a part of the oneness that is all that is?

This may be taking us a long way from vocation. But interesting though the discussion is, it has not explained, confirmed or denied the existence of God, but only that we might be of the essence of God within the limitations of our brain-created experience. There is still a boundary there, the infinity of the universe or universes, and within the illusion of life the truth beyond that boundary is rarely open to us except in ecstatic moments of unexplained bliss, our experience of nothingness or all that is, all in one, all at the same time. Whether we like it or not, we live our lives in the illusion of time and must be content to do so.

Those Jehovah’s witnesses asked me what would Jesus’ message be if he came back today. My off-the-cuff answer was “Love”. As homo sapiens we are a species of mammal living on the planet Earth within the constrictions of perceived time, and as such we are fighting for our survival like all other species living on our planet.  We will not go far wrong in that task if we try to live as Jesus taught us two thousand years ago by trying to love all our neighbours as ourselves, but I cannot subscribe to the belief that this historic religious teacher saves me from anything at my departure within time, whenever my human heart and brain should cease to function. What is there to be saved from? I am already that energy that can never be destroyed. I am one with all that is. Remember in that vocational vision the cross was empty.

* * *

As a theologian, I certainly believe that Jesus was crucified. The one concrete historical fact in the whole Jesus story is the prefecture of Pontius Pilatus, the Roman governor of Judea from 26-36 CE. Although there is no contemporary Jewish or Roman record of the crucifixion, there is plenty of circumstantial evidence in the records of the early Christian communities, culminating of course in the gospel accounts. The circumstances around his arrest and death I would not regard as prophetic, although in retrospect prophecy can be applied to the events. As I no longer believe in that divine God and son, human-style, relationship, so I cannot believe that the crucifixion was divine-planned in order for the divine son to be sacrificed by the divine Father to save the believer from sin.

This has considerable bearing on the character of Judas Iscariot, the very name ‘Iscariot’ meaning ‘the murderer’ that makes it look like this character was written in to the gospel story to show that Jesus’ betrayal was part of God the Father’s plan for his son. I had an interesting discussion with Dr. Jim Veitch, at that time in the Department of Religious Studies at Victoria University in Wellington, New Zealand. He reviewed my novel Two Thousand Years Later  in 1995 and wrote the following comment. ‘Your book is superb! I agree with almost all of your first century scenarios – only with Judas Iscariot I disagree. I don’t think he ever existed, and have put out the case some years ago (before Bishop Spong!) It was one of the conclusions I reached when I translated the New Testament in contemporary English and put the writings in chronological order – I don’t think Barabbas existed either, etc.’  In a trilogy of novels I wrote on a fictitious but plausible life of Mary Magdalene and her times, I gave Judas Iscariot a pretty significant role, making him the business leader of Jesus’ apostles, as implied in St. John 12:4-6  But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples, he who was to betray him, said, “Why was this ointment not sold for three hundred denarii and given to the poor?” This he said, not that he cared for the poor but because he was a thief, and as he had the money box he used to take what was put into it. As an ex-zealot I have Judas disenchanted with Jesus’ passivism, and jealous of the rising importance of Cephas (Peter), James and John over himself along with a general disapproval of Jesus’ elevation of Mary Magdalene. I doubt that these reasons in themselves led to the betrayal, but I suggest the machinations of a young Cilesian Pharisee named Saul from Tarsus, studying under the famed first-century Jewish scholar Gamaliel in Jerusalem (Acts 22:3), might have. Saul could have been sent by the high priests to investigate the man Jesus, who is attracting dangerous crowds at Bethany, just two miles from the city. Noting Judas is upset, maybe Saul uses Judas to gather information for the high priest, and bribes Judas to betray Jesus after the riot in the Temple over the money-changers?

The Romans were highly suspicious of Jewish crowds and the high priests in their quasi-role as allies of the Roman authorities, whose garrison, Antonia’s Tower, looked over the very Temple courts, were likewise careful to control crowds, especially around religious festivals such as the Passover. Jesus with his magnetic personality and healing abilities, attracted potentially dangerous crowds. Basically, he was arrested and probably ultimately crucified because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. In retrospect, this was able to make him the paschal lamb – the ultimate sacrifice to save us from sin.

I was not aware at the time I engaged with Dr. Jim Veitch in New Zealand that he was a prominent member of the ‘Jesus Seminar’ and editor of their scholarly publication, The Fourth ‘R’. Shortly after, I myself became a follower of the ‘Jesus Seminar’, and later an associate member of their ‘Westar Institute’.

The early role of Saul of Tarsus in my perception of the gospel story is certainly not mainstream Christian belief, but later as Paul the ‘apostle’, he  becomes such an important person in the establishing of early first-century ‘Christian’ communities that I think it is worthy of consideration.

Paul always affirmed that his meeting with Jesus was that meeting with the risen Lord at the time of his conversion (I Corinthians 15:1-9).

Now I would remind you, brethren, in what terms I preached to you the gospel, which you received, in which you stand, by which you are saved, if you hold it fast—unless you believed in vain. For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas and then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brethren at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me. For I am the least of the apostles, unfit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God.  

This claim is of course that Paul met the risen Lord. But could Paul, as Saul, have actually met Jesus before the crucifixion? As I have stated, to my knowledge, as yet, there is no Roman record of either Jesus’ trial or crucifixion, but all of the gospels describe the trial and crucifixion in some detail even if those details differ.

The Gospels certainly leave us to believe that most the apostles deserted Jesus after Gethsemane, except Peter. So who actually witnessed the events to give us the record?

In the accepted order of writing, St. Mark states this in Mark 14:50 – And they all forsook him and fled. But, Peter does appear at the high priest’s courtyard and St. Mark 14:54 does claim he followed him there.  St. Matthew 26:56 says: (Jesus said) ‘But all this has taken place that the scriptures of the prophets might be fulfilled.’ Then all the disciples forsook him and fled, except Peter, as St. Matthew 26:58 also says, who followed him at a distance. St. Luke 22:54 says only Peter followed Jesus to the high priest’s courtyard, but after denying he knew Jesus thrice, in St. Luke 22:62, He went out and wept bitterly, before the High Priestly trial, and he did not appear to follow him to Pilate either – St. Luke 22:66-71. In St. John’s Gospel, St. John 18:15 states that Peter follows Jesus to the high priest’s courtyard along with another disciple. Traditionally we consider this to be John, the beloved disciple. St. Mark, however also suggests another disciple, but not an apostle in St. Mark 14:51, And a young man followed him with nothing but a linen cloth about his body; and they seized him, but he left the linen cloth and ran away. Some suggest this was the author of the gospel placing himself in the narrative as a youth.

All the gospels agree that Peter somehow found his way as far as the high priest’s courtyard, so could he have witnessed anything further?

In St. Mark 15:54, Peter is at the high priest’s courtyard and could have followed the high priestly accusers  to Pilate as in St. Mark 15:1, but it is not mentioned and very unlikely that any other than officials of the high priest would have actually had access to the Praetorium palace of the Prefect for the Roman trial. The same conclusion follows in St. Matthew’s account. As stated above, St. Luke concludes Peter left after his denial of Jesus, St. Luke 22:62, before even the high priestly trial had taken place. In St. John’s account, St. John 18:28-33, Peter could have been following the high priestly officials to the Praetorium, but they specifically stayed outside after handing Jesus over to Pilate’s officials.

St. Luke brings a unique addition to the story in St. Luke 23: 6-7.

When Pilate heard this he asked whether the man (Jesus) was a Galilean. When he heard that he belonged to Herod’s jurisdiction, he sent him over to Herod, who was himself in Jerusalem  at that time.

All the Gospels acknowledge that Pilate had Jesus scourged, and that Jesus was mocked and crowned with thorns, but only in St. Luke’s Gospel does this mockery take place at Herod’s court. In all the other gospels it takes place at the Praetorium under Pontius Pilate. Who gave St. Luke this insight?

As there appear to be no definite disciple witnesses at the actual trial, but there appear to be pretty definite accounts of what was said and happened, who was the witness?

All the Gospels appear to acknowledge the presence of women followers of Jesus being present at the actual crucifixion. Possibly these women followers were present at the Praetorium gate, but almost certainly would not have had access to the Praetorium trial. The Gospels only actually introduce them at the crucifixion. St. Mark 15:40.

There were also women looking on from afar, among whom were Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James the younger and of Joses, and Salome , who, when he was in Galilee, followed him; and also many other women who came up with him to Jerusalem.

Two of these same women appear to be the first to visit the tomb on Easter morn, St. Mark 16:1, namely, Mary Magdalene and Mary, the mother of James and Salome, (who many believe to be the Virgin Mary). Mark 16, however, is generally thought to be a rather later addition to a Gospel that actually ended at St. Mark 15:47 stating that Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of Joses saw where he was laid.

The women are present at the crucifixion in St. Matthew 27:56 and include the addition of the mother of (James and John) the sons of Zebedee, and Mary Magdalene, and the other Mary were also the first to visit the tomb – St. Matthew 28:1. St. Luke 23:49 embellishes the story, And all his (Jesus’) acquaintances and the women who had followed him from Galilee stood at a distance (at the crucifixion) and saw these things. Were there male acquaintances here? Could any of the apostles or disciples have made their way to Calvary?

St. Luke is the first to mention Joseph of Arimathea – St. Luke 23:50-56. Joseph was a man of influence who appears to have had the ear of both Pilate and the high priests. Joseph must also have been acquainted with Jesus or he would not have offered his pre-purchased tomb for Jesus’ burial. Saul could certainly have been aware of him if he had been in Jerusalem at this time, and Luke in the Acts of the Apostles at Paul’s defense in Jerusalem, certainly claims in Acts 22:3 that Saul was a student of Gamaliel in Jerusalem about this time. (Paul says) I am a Jew, born in Tarsus in Cilicea, but brought up in this city (Jerusalem) at the feet of Gamaliel, educated according to the strict manner of the law of our fathers, being zealous for God as you all are this day.

St. John 19:38 does claim that Joseph of Arimathea who was a disciple of Jesus, but secretly, for fear of the Jews, asked Pilate that he might take away the body of Jesus, and Pilate gave him leave. Normally, a crucified victim’s body would have simply been buried in a common pit. The author of St. John’s Gospel probably took this story directly from St. Luke’s Gospel. In St. John 18:15, the Gospel says, Simon Peter followed Jesus, and so did another disciple. As this disciple was known to the high priest, he entered the court of the high priest along with Jesus, while Peter stood outside at the door. So the other disciple, who was known to the high priest, went out and spoke to the maid who kept the door, and brought Peter in.  Could this have been Joseph of Arimathea? Traditionally, it has been thought to be John, the beloved disciple writing his cameo part into the gospel story rather like St. Mark, but would one of the sons of Zebedee have been an acquaintance or friend of the high priests and Pilate? I would consider that to be very unlikely.

Almost all scholars today agree that the writer of St. Luke’s Gospel and the Acts of the Apostles is the same person. It is also thought that Luke was a physician and possibly Paul’s travelling physician. This is based on Acts 16:10 where after Paul’s vision of a man of Macedonia standing and beseeching him saying, “Come over to Macedonia and help us” the writer of the Acts says: And when he had seen the vision, immediately WE sought to go on into Macedonia, concluding that God had called US to preach the gospel to them.  At this time Paul was in Troas, close to Pergamon, one of Asia Minor’s great ancient Greek medical centres from which Luke may well have hailed. The specific Luke material in St. Luke’s Gospel could well have come from Luke’s association and travels to Macedonia and Greece with Paul.

It seems to me to be quite logical, but not a proven historical fact, that Paul as a bright student of Gamaliel and a right-hand man of the high priests could be the mystery witness to what happened at both the high priestly trial and the trial before Pilate. The two contestants seem to be either Paul or Joseph of Arimathea. Joseph could have been defending Jesus, and Paul conveying the Temple viewpoint. In the Acts, it is Luke who gives us the accounts of Saul’s (Paul’s) early antagonism to the followers of Jesus illustrated in the story of the stoning of Stephen. Acts 7:58-8:3.

Then they cast him (Stephen) out of the city and stoned him; and the witnesses laid down their garments at the feet of a young man named Saul. And as they were stoning Stephen, he prayed, ‘Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.’ And he knelt down and cried with a loud voice, ‘Lord, do not hold this sin against them.’ And when he had said this, he died. And Saul was consenting to his death. And on that day a great persecution rose against the church in Jerusalem; and they were all scattered throughout the region of Judea and Samaria, except the apostles. Devout men buried Stephen, and made great lamentation over him. But Saul laid waste the church, and entering house after house, he dragged off men and women and committed them to prison.                 

Luke wrote this knowing of Saul’s conversion and missionary work, so one can assume that Paul freely gave Luke this information confessing his guilt. Nowhere does it go so far as to say that Paul as Saul was at the trial and in part responsible for Jesus’ crucifixion, but it is logical, seeing he turned so ferociously against the earliest Jerusalem church. Maybe, the depth of Paul’s psychological guilt was that ‘thorn in the flesh’ he describes in 2 Corinthians 12: 7-9. The Asclepeion in Pergamon, from where possibly Luke came, was the nearest ancient Greek equivalent of a psychiatric hospital. It was also where the great Greek doctor Galen trained.

It is true that I am influenced by the ‘Jesus seminar’ group. Some of their conclusions might be misleading for orthodox Christianity, but possibly be at the forefront of re-evaluating Christian origins.

All historians must accept the reality that Pontius Pilate was the Roman Prefect in Judea from 26-36 CE at the likely time of Jesus’ death in 29 CE. This is an archaeologically proven historical fact. There is no historical fact proving that Jesus came from Nazareth outside the slightly confusing versions in the Gospels. St. Mark 1:9, certainly has Jesus as coming from Nazareth as an adult at the time of his baptism. St. Matthew 2, clearly says he was born in Bethlehem and fled to Egypt in his infancy and travelled later to Nazareth in Galilee. St. Luke has the fullest account of Jesus’ birth, and introduces the theme that shows John the Baptist to be his cousin. Again, Jesus is born in Bethlehem because of the census of Caesar Augustus, but there appears to be no slaughter of the Holy innocents and thus no flight into Egypt, with in Luke 2:39, the family returning to Nazareth, certainly supporting that the family came from Nazareth. In St. John’s Gospel neither Bethlehem or Nazareth are mentioned, but we do see the baptism of Jesus by John as taking place in Bethany-beyond-the-Jordan and shortly after that Jesus deciding to go to Galilee – St. John 1:43.

All the Gospels agree that Jesus met John the Baptist, and was baptised by him. Outside the Gospels the best historical proof we have of John the Baptist is found in Josephus’ Antiquities of the Jews-Book 18, but this places his death by Herod in 36 CE on the historical proof that John had been a public and vocal critic of the marriage of Herod Antipas to his own brother’s former wife, Herodias. Josephus says the wedding took place in 35 CE, a fact which is confirmed by the action of King Aretas of Nabataea, who attacked and defeated Herod Antipas in 36 CE because of the slight to his daughter, when Herod divorced her in order to marry Herodias. This also provides evidence that John the Baptist was executed in early 36 CE, because the Jews believed that the defeat of Herod was divine retribution for the execution of John the Baptist, meaning that the execution was still fresh in their minds. This is probably a little later than in the gospels and almost certainly would place his execution after the crucifixion of Jesus. This does not matter except that it is out of sync with the synoptic Gospels’ accounts. 

For me there is historical proof that Jesus lived and had disciples. The Gospels, including the non-canonical gospels, along with the letters of Paul and the other New Testament writers are all proof that there were disciples, as they are genuine first and second-century historical documents, even if the originals are lost.  They would not exist if people had not created the written and oral traditions behind them that ‘de facto’ means there were disciples and Jesus lived. The historical purists may still be looking for original documents, but as the New Testament is the nearest we can get, I consider that sufficient proof of a life and discipleship. I do not accept that the gospels are literal history, however. They were written for the agendas of their times, which is why I call them historical fiction.           

* * *

Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte left a legacy of philosophical thought in writings he composed on St. Helena before his death in 1821. How about this statement about religion? It is a statement made before the great scientific advances that challenged conventional religion in the latter nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

‘Everything is matter, more or less organised. The soul? It’s some sort of electrical or magnetic force. If I had to have a religion, I should worship the source of all life – the real God of the earth.’ Of the gospels he said, ‘Very beautiful parables, excellent moral teaching, but few facts.’

Napoleon was way ahead of his time, but I doubt he had read the New Testament in Greek. So now I must come back to the story of my vocation.

In 1957, I moved from my preparatory school Newlands to be a boarder at Tonbridge School in Kent. As I was now already well on my quest to answer that call “God needs you” that had boomed out to me from that wooden cross, I opted for classics as my main field of study. This was the path for a future clergyman. Classical Greek and I did not get along too well, and after a year of struggling I appealed to my headmaster asking if I could give up my Greek for Art. This was bold as the Reverend Canon Lawrence Waddy was not only a Doctor of Divinity but had a double first in Classics from Oxford University. He surprised me, however, saying, “Longley, this is the most extraordinary request, but you are an extraordinary artist.” I have painted all my life, and much of that was fostered at Tonbridge School, where in great liberality for the late 1950s my headmaster allowed me to spend every Thursday as a student at Tunbridge Wells School of Art to attend life class, learning to draw live naked female bodies. Of course, life class is the absolute foundation for drawing in fine art. Greek, however, is the absolute foundation for becoming a serious academic theologian.

Latin, I had – eight years of it. This was quite normal for all of us in private education in those days. When we sat for our ‘O Level’ exams in the General Certificate of Education, Latin, French and  Elementary Mathematics were required passes if we were to consider going to a university. Incidentally, ‘Elementary’ Mathematics included logarithms and trigonometry. Greek, however, was only required in the specialist stream, and apart from fine art my specialist stream had switched from Greek to History and English Literature by the time I sat for my ‘O Levels’.

In the Roman world of the first century, the time of the life of Christ, Greek was the prime language of commerce and had been so since the spread of Greek across the Middle East and as far as India through the conquests of Alexander the Great. Latin, although the language of Rome, was only widely spoken and written in the western half of the Roman Empire, and on official documentation. In Judea and Galilee, Jesus would have heard very little Latin, but would have heard, at least in literate circles, a fair amount of Greek, and could possibly have been literate in Greek himself. It is unlikely as Galilean fishermen that most of his disciples were literate, and their natural language was Aramaic. Literacy rates in the first-century Roman Empire ran at about 10 %. When oral traditions and possible early Aramaic records began to form first-century documents and creeds of early Christian communities, it was only natural that eventually among literate members they became Greek documents. Thus the importance of Greek in understanding the New Testament as it is made up entirely of Greek documents. As a theologian, Greek was going to catch up with me.

I did not need Greek for entry into Cambridge, but I was certainly going to have to learn it fast if I was to read theology. Learning New Testament Greek, however, is rather different to learning Classical Greek. It is learning colonial Greek and often rather badly written colonial Greek. It is like learning a dialect that breaks a lot of the sacred rules of Classic Athenian Greek. Things that would have got a red line through them in my early Greek classes at Tonbridge School could be applauded in New Testament Greek.

I can never say that I became a great Greek scholar, but I did eventually study the whole New Testament in Greek as well as sections of the Old Testament in Hebrew. My historical studies in theology, however, always for me outweighed my linguistic training. The linguistic training is important, though, as it does enable the student to better understand the arguments of the skilled linguistic New Testament scholars. This is one of the reasons why I have valued my association with the academic scholars of the ‘Jesus Seminar’ and the Westar Institute.

Just before I went up to Cambridge to read theology, I attended my obligatory Anglican Church Advisory Council for the Ministry conference. In 1962, I was turned down as an ‘unsuitable candidate for ordination’ at that time as they felt ‘I came from too sheltered and privileged a background and that I should spend some time working in industry before applying again.’ I had already won my place at St. Catharine’s College, Cambridge, so I went ahead and read for my theology degrees.

* * *

On coming down from Cambridge in 1966, I found myself in Ireland working as the Estate Manager of Tullamaine Castle in Co. Tipperary. The Church Advisory Council for the Ministry for the Anglican Church of Ireland accepted me for ordination with flying colours, now that I had my degree in theology. I became a licensed lay-reader and preacher. The Church of Ireland in the Republic of Ireland is pretty small in numbers and we would have one clergyman covering joint or multiple parishes. I would be very busy as a lay-reader and preacher. Possibly to test me out, my bishop had me address the clergy of my diocese where I read my own rather controversial paper. The next day it was written up in the newspapers as ‘Strong Stuff after Lunch.’ This launched me in the Church of Ireland where I remained a lay reader and preacher until 1977 and was for many years a member of the General Synod, representing the Diocese of Cashel and Emly, Lismore and Waterford. I was a contributor to the Church of Ireland’s radical periodical, New Divinity. In 1970, I was one of the three, lay group leaders for the Belfast Conference, celebrating the centenary of the disestablishment of the Church of Ireland. Later, in 1974, during an interregnum period, my bishop in essence asked me to act as Dean of Cashel Cathedral, even though I was as yet not ordained. The reality was I enjoyed being Estate Manager of Tullamaine Castle, and I was pretty much being treated as a member of the clergy in the Church of Ireland anyway, without actually being ordained.

In 1977, however, the American owners of Tullamaine Castle sold the property, and I then moved to the United States where I had visited with my employers frequently from 1966-77. I then pursued ordination in the Anglican Episcopal Church of America. I was accepted as a postulant for Holy Orders in the Diocese of Georgia, but difficulties in running through the hoops of US immigration caused the postulancy to be brought to an end after three years. At this point, I seriously questioned whether my vocation was to be ordained a clergyman, but I continued with my spiritual quest as to what it might mean.

One of the more interesting experiences in being a lay reader and preacher both in Ireland and the USA came to me from my role as a lay assistant administering the chalice at Holy Communion. Theologically I had difficulty with the exact meaning of the Eucharist. As an undergraduate at Cambridge I had considered Thomas Cranmer’s Eucharistic prayer based on the Latin Mass to be almost cannibalistic. There are, of course, within Christianity, widely differing views on the substance and purpose of the sacrament. It is, however, the oldest form of organised worship in the Christian religion, clearly found in St. Paul’s letters that pre-date any of the Gospel accounts of the Last Supper. In I Corinthians 10:16-21 – The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ? Because there is one loaf, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the same loaf. Later in the letter, he actually links this to a very early tradition that Jesusinstructed his apostles to link bread and wine directly to him. I Corinthians 11:23-26 – The Lord Jesus on the night that he was betrayed took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, “This is my body which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” In the same way also the cup, after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me. For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.” 

It would definitely seem from this that Jesus instructed his followers to do this, and the synoptic gospels all suggest that this was right after Judas Iscariot was revealed to be Jesus’ potential betrayer, and in St. John 13:29-30 we actually see Judas leaving the table and going outside at this point.  

Then after the morsel, Satan entered into (Judas). Jesus said to him, “What you are going to do, do quickly.” Now no one at the table new why he said this to him. Some thought that because Judas had the money box, Jesus was telling him, “Buy what we need for the feast”, or, that he should give something to the poor. So after receiving the morsel, (Judas) immediately went out; and it was night.  

This is probably the moment when Jesus’ worst fears surface that he might be killed, thus, the sacrificial link of a memorial through food and drink being associated with his broken body and blood. Paul was not present at the last supper, but after his conversion he would have become familiar with the Jerusalem apostles observance of the ritual and Peter himself could have easily given Paul something close to Jesus’ original words.

Holy Communion was for me an act of ritual in Christian worship until I started to study the great Reformation arguments about the Eucharist as a theologian. I did not like the cannibalism, but once I started to administer the cup in the ritual, it started to take on an amazing power. I could not help but notice how focused people were when I passed the chalice from which they drank. As I indicated on the subject of prayer, the words seemed no longer important, but the emotional focus became all important.

My interpretation of the Eucharist that I do now see as central in any Christo-centric worship is very simple, and yet compatible with the microscopic viewpoint of God. At the time of Jesus  and today still very evident in the Jewish Seder, it was customary for Jews to bless their food. I believe Jesus followed on this tradition when teaching what early on became formulated as the Eucharist. He took the two food staples of his world, bread and wine, and probably said something on these lines: “Take this bread, bless it, and every time you eat remember that just as this bread feeds you with the energy of life so, too, does God feed us with his spirit. Likewise, when you drink, bless the cup and remember that just as drink is essential for living so, too, does the spirit of God give us life.”

Of course, Jesus would have seen God from the telescopic viewpoint as the superhuman creator God and protector of the Jews, and the Holy Spirit that he promised, as the direct gift of God to his people. However, if we should now view God from the microscopic viewpoint as the vibration of all that is, we will see the necessity to eat and drink as the means of keeping that creative energy alive in our historic experience of life, in the knowledge that everything is one in infinity and indestructible despite the restrictions of life in our human experience.

* * *

 I wrestled with my interpretation of divinity as I personally moved from the telescopic view of God to the microscopic. It did not all come to me at once. I went through a number of those ‘New Age’ concepts such as the power of positive thinking from Dr. Norman Vincent Peale to Dr. Wayne Dyer. In their wake, there followed a vast number of motivational speakers, and along with them a lot of very dubious practices that for me tarnished the ‘New Age’ movement. But was it really a ‘New Age’?

Dr. Norman Vincent Peale was a Christian minister as indeed was Dr. Billy Graham. They both motivated people into positivity, but from the telescopic viewpoint of God. Dr. Norman Vincent Peale gave many wonderful and inspiring quotes from:

 Change your thoughts and you change your world.

Believe in yourself! Have faith in your abilities! Without a humble but reasonable confidence in your own powers, you cannot be successful or happy.

The life of inner peace, being harmonious and without stress, is the easiest type of existence.

Such thoughts are inspirational and can be seen in early Christianity. Remember how the author of St. John’s gospel in the early second century placed those words into the mouth of Jesus:  “Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things…”

One of Norman Vincent Peale’s oft quoted comments is about Christmas.

Christmas waves a magic wand over this world, and behold, everything is softer and more beautiful.

It is true that Christmas does for many people in the western world make everything softer and more beautiful. This was certainly the motivation of Charles Dickens in A Christmas Carol, but despite his championing of the poor and downtrodden, Dickens was writing for a literate and moneyed middle class.  We have built up around the birth of Jesus a message of peace, generosity, goodwill, hope and light. But that is not the case for everybody. Some see the Christmas commercial train as the ‘Christmas calamity’ and many sigh with great relief when it is all over.

In the footsteps of the great motivators, like Peale and Dyer, came so many others who pinned their belief that ‘a life with inner peace, being harmonious and without stress, is the easiest type of existence’ on the peace of eastern thought. Countless gurus arose from enlightened yoga teachers to leaders of Indian ashrams that could bring us to that inner peace. Others formed spiritual courses to lead us to such inner peace.

I found much of this ‘New Age’ search disturbing, and saw most of it ultimately requiring the seeker to sell him or herself out to a controlling guru. This was still telescopic thinking about God or the divine.

I had a unique opportunity to test my adoption of the microscopic viewpoint of God through the 1980s and into the 1990s. Partly through the difficulties of US immigration, I found myself professionally working at sea. I became a cruise director. Interestingly enough, chaplains on cruise ships fall under the direction of the cruise director, and in the absence of chaplains, the religious life of the ship falls under the cruise director. Apart from conducting ecumenical Sunday services of worship, I always held a meditative ‘Quiet Time’ every morning at sea that attracted a surprising number of people. It gave me the opportunity to share spirituality in a unique way with my passengers, bridging a gap between an ecumenical Christian viewpoint and and exciting exploration of some of these ‘new’ ideas about the divine. It was also interesting that often my ship was in the Far East, where this program of inter-faith spirituality was an interesting exploration of our geographic area. In the conventional meaning of the term, I sometimes see this period as the best fulfillment of my ‘vocation’.

Interestingly  enough, too, as cruise director on Cunard’s Queen Elizabeth 2 in 1993, I was able to have my old headmaster, The Reverend Canon Lawrence Waddy, on my staff as the Protestant chaplain for part of a World Cruise. I was able to share with him at that time my working manuscript for The Flavian Trilogy. Lawrence Waddy imparted to me the knowledge that the Romans named the village of Magdala in Galilee as Taricheae at the time of Jesus. Taricheae means ‘town of the pickled fish’. We discussed at length how significant this was for the fortunes of Galilean fishermen who were, through salt pickling, able to send flat fish of Galilee to many parts of the Roman Empire. This would have provided the income behind the Jesus movement and was one of the reasons for my elevating the role of Judas Iscariot in my novels to that of their business manager.  

* * *

In 1999, I had an interesting revelation. In the summer of 1997, my wife Bettine Clemen, was persuaded to sit in on a resurfacing course of a spiritual self-awareness program called Avatar. She was so impressed with the course that she signed me up for one, too. I cannot say that I was too thrilled at the time, considering this the opinion of yet another guru to show me enlightenment.

I attended the two-day resurfacing course, which in many ways did not tell me anything that I had not concluded on my own search. One aspect of the course that I found interesting, however, was an exercise called ‘Minding the edges.’ It was an exercise in disciplined observation taking a centre and then finding its bounds in all dimensions. It interested me as it took me back to a moment in the Tonbridge School sanatorium when a boy challenged me as to whether I could write about anything. I had replied that I could, to which he had thrown down the challenge of a turnip field. ‘Minding the edges’ is the same discipline of multi-dimensional observation as I had described with reference to writing about a boring turnip field. In truly observing the turnip field it was necessary to draw lines out from the field and visually see the multi-dimensional bounds that actually defined the field. This at its ultimate level included not only the lateral bounds of trees and hedgerows, but also the clouds and birds above and the different chemicals and conditions defining the earth below. It can be taken further when ‘Minding the edges’ by including the sounds that are also a part of the multi-dimensional experience. This, to me is an exciting means of access that I have basically used all my life right back to praying in nature ‘out of bounds’. Nature, in all its dimensions has been my entry into the divine—the music of the spheres. 

Bettine was anxious for us to take our Avatar discoveries further, and although she had already become an approved Avatar at the next level, she signed us up to attend a course of training in Colorado. I was happy to accept, although I had no great interest in becoming an Avatar or member of another ‘New Age’ spiritual institution, but saw the prospect of at last visiting the American Rockies. Colorado would be my opportunity.

We rented a car from Denver airport in the knowledge that we would be returning there for a booksigning at a local store carrying my novel Two Thousand Years Later. The weather was cold for August—dark and gloomy. It was not possible to see much of the impressive landscape as we moved into the mountain ranges as they were hidden in cloud. It rained. The wind blew. When we got to the road from Buena Vista, Colorado, that was supposed to lead to our destination—a resort called Cottonwood Springs—there was a partial clearance and a weak, watery sun tried to illuminate the monochrome landscape. At first, we passed the hotel thinking that we were to stay at one of those Colorado resorts that we associated with Aspen, Vail, or The Broadmoor at Colorado Springs. But, there was a sign that said Cottonwood Springs, and so, disappointed we looked at our destination.

“This place is a dump,” Bettine acknowledged, and I had to agree.

We drove in. It was a dump. A small hotel beside what seemed to be a trash disposal site for broken furniture, plumbing and rusting vehicles. True, it was set against the steep slope of a Colorado ravine and there were some enticing-looking sulphurous hot springs in man-made pools in the yard. Some residents were lounging in their lugubrious waters—possible fellow members of our nine-day course.

Shown to our room, we considered it crummy, and it smelled of stale sweat and mildew. But it did have one redeeming feature—teddy bears were sitting on the two beds! At that time, Bettine and I had a thing about stuffed bears. Indeed, at least five such furry friends were in our baggage looking forward to their trip to Colorado. One was a particular favourite as he was my first gift to Bettine, a medium-sized bear in a light, honey color with a white blaze on his chest. She called him Initiate Bear because he considered himself to be of a high spiritual path, initiated into wisdom that he considered to be lacking in other members of our bear family.

There is an expression sometimes shared on popular greeting cards that the world is composed of two types of people, ‘those who love and understand bears and those who don’t, and neither group understands the other.’ We were definitely in the former group. Our bears became mediators between us and always had the last word. They were playful and instructive all at the same time. They lived as a part of our extended family and took on their own personalities without us ever deciding their characters for them. They even affected their own voices in our ventriloquial efforts, so much so that an individual bear could be recognised over the telephone.

Now, all families are allowed their eccentricities, but an interesting discussion once arose between us about our bears that has deep philosophical meaning as we approached in Colorado the next level of our spiritual development. An important exercise in preparation for Avatar training was to conduct identity-feelings on both inanimate and animate objects. Bettine and I often concluded that our bears, whom we animated, but whom we knew to be inanimate objects, were actually in reality animate objects. Etymologically, an animate object should be a thinking creature, but in reality the terms animate and inanimate have been assigned to the broader interpretation of whether the item is living or dead. What, however, constitutes living? For animals, and humans in particular, we have used the yardstick of a beating heart, but although the death of one’s heart might pronounce one clinically dead, there are many who are struggling with moral arguments to the contrary, particularly in the area of life-prolonging hospital apparatus. This leads to the question of near-death, or the state of living in spiritual dimensions beyond human or animal life measured by the heartbeat, where people believe they have died, but from whence through some miraculous medical means or determined self-will, they return to their former lifetime with the revival of their beating heart. Persons in such a state are often considered clinically dead, but they obviously do not die. So it can not be the heart that determines the criteria of living.

In reality, all matter is living. If it is not the heart that determines life then it must be something deeper—an energy within. Scientifically that energy within can be labeled the vibration of atoms; others might like to equate that scientific vibration, for which there is no explanation yet known, to the energy of God or the Chi of the Orient—the life-force within. This is as much present in inanimate objects as it is in animate objects. All matter, in whatever known form, is vibrating energy, and that vibration is not subject to death, only to chemical change, because energy cannot be destroyed. This deep realisation can have a profound effect on the understanding of our spirituality, but Bettine and I first really discovered it in the defense of our bears. We were determined to prove that they were living entities!

But, it is easier to pronounce such philosophy than it is to put it into practice. To feel into a rock is much harder than to feel into an animal or plant. As I analyzed this on the Avatar course, I concluded that the reason was because we run the danger of feeling into animate objects with human emotions. If the sun is warm, a flower holds its head up to its embrace; or if the wind blows, it shelters its delicate petals facing them away from the direction of destructive force. But, in reality the flower does not make these decisions, but rather they are an example of how the forces of all nature work on each other. Energy fields are constantly reacting with each other creating changed circumstances, and at first it seems that these are forces over which we have little or no control, the famous ‘Butterfly Effect’, even if we may be the creative first cause.

As I was languishing behind others on this Colorado course because I was determined to analyse each process, I became disenchanted with the teaching. It frustrated me and seemed a poor substitute for the direct access to my inner consciousness that I had always experienced in my own communication with the natural world. In frustration, after a particularly hamstrung day, I drove from Cottonwood Springs up to the Continental Divide at dusk. Although it was relatively mild and sunny at the hotel it was perishing on the Divide at 12,000 feet and it was snowing. It was hard to believe that a drive of twenty minutes could show such a climatic change. I stood on the pass in the fading light as the snowflakes billowed around me and cried out in a joyful expression of freedom. Mysteriously, I took on my own power. I realised the strength of my own divinity. I came down a changed person full of confidence much as Jesus might have come down from Mount Tabor in the full knowledge of his own inner power at the gospel scenes of the Transfiguration. Or was this the experience of Moses when he came down from the mountain to lead his people? I sought out my long-suffering facilitator, the kindest and sweetest lady named Elleva Joy, and whom in no way I blamed for my failures on the course, and told her with authority that I had found my own power and that I was resigning from the course.

“I can give you your money back,” Elleva Joy agreed, “but I don’t want to. I feel you should stay with this, at least one more day. You are making me think. You are making us all think and I believe that this is very good for both of us.”

I slept on it.

The following morning, as always before going into the day’s instruction, we were sent out to do identity-feeling exercises on animate and inanimate objects. I took myself off into the beauty of the surrounding hills talking confidently to myself on my journey with no serious intent of trying to follow the exercises prescribed. I was again, determined that this course was not for me, and that I had come to discover my own power in my own independent way. The sun was shining brilliantly catching the last of the summer’s wildflowers in little splashes of red along with a sea of yellow and silver. I turned off the track into a glade of boulders and scrubby gnarled trees. I stopped and sat on a large flat boulder and looked into the glade. I half-closed my eyes as I saw the light catching the boulders and imagined how I would paint the scene in bold, Cezzane-like strokes. I had not painted much during recent years and I felt inspired to paint again. As I looked at the glade, I saw it through the eyes of an impressionist and re-learned the discovery that those French pioneers of realism had made in the latter Nineteenth Century—realism is light.

An impressionist does not paint form, but expresses light. Alone in the glade as I meditated upon this scene, I could hear the sound of silence. I was alone with my God. A strange contentment filled me. I stood up and walked to another flat boulder in the landscape. Standing on the boulder I looked up at the scurrying clouds. I held my arms above me and shouted, “I am free!”

But, in the joy of my freedom I also observed that the clouds really had no form. They were expressions of impressionist light. One minute they caught the sun’s rays and had a billowing shape and the next they had vaporised into nothingness. They were only transparent gasses given form by light. I then applied the same principles to the rocks and boulders whose shape was only determined by light; to trees in clumps whose merging forms were again only created by light; to the very mountainside which again was only defined by the contrast of light and shade. These were not new lessons for me as a painter. For just by squinting ones’ eyes in observation of the landscape one sees form in this way before transmitting the same to canvas. But, now I was philosophising on this exercise, wondering if form at all times is nothing but an illusion—our creation. Is this our power as co-creators with God?

That same afternoon Elleva Joy suggested that I again prepare myself by identity feelings before going on to a more advanced part of the course. Excited by my morning discoveries, I decided to take the exercise one stage further and make the light itself the object of my intense observation.

There were two small fishponds close to the entrance into Cottonwood Springs. The sun was reflected in one of the pools as a perfect pulsating orb. But, all of a sudden the orb was shattered as a fish broke the surface of the pond; it became divided into a host of dancing balls of light. Then a breeze scattered those balls of light on the surface of the water and the orb became unrecognisable in form. And yet this change of form was only visible to me; was purely my interpretation and my joint creation with the wind and the fish.

Next, I observed the reflection of sunlight on the chrome frame of a car’s windscreen. The reflection would pulsate and change according to my stance, and yet at the same time it was invisible to others. Was it really there? Did these powerful rods of light have real form? But, they had energy. They had life.

The surface of the sulphurous pools next caught my attention. At first they were flat surfaces of grey light, but when the wind stirred their water creating ripples, they became ablaze with sparks of light—reflections of the reflected sun, but in their own way creating a new and different definition of the sulphurous pools.

In the same way, I applied this technique of light observation to boulders and rocks confirming my discoveries of the morning. Their form is only defined by the light. Their crevices and shapes are determined by light’s intensity. Their solidity is only created by light’s illusion.

In all of these cases, however, each creation was unique. All creations are unique, purely in the eyes of the beholder, which leads us to the greater discovery learned from these lessons of light. We are the creators of our world. If God is the Creator then we are exercising our divine power in co-creating with the whole universe. We are all equal partners in the co-creation of our illusion, which is the universe, because in reality, if there is any reality, we are the universe. Everything, animate and inanimate is inter-connected in our universe—our creation.

Excitedly I expressed my discoveries to Elleva Joy and tried to write them down in the form of a poem of poetic prose, which I called Lessons of Light:

“A Reflection of the Sun on the Surface of a Fishpond”

 ‘I am the reflection of the sun.  I don’t have form—some just call me “Water.”’ A fish breaks my surface. I am no longer the reflection of the sun, I am a divided circle of dancing balls of light—shimmering light. But, the breeze stirs my bed; I expand before its force. My shape is now undefined, but my feeling is expanded. So many balls of light—expanded balls of light. I am not the sun. Nor am I a reflection of the sun. I am now the energy of the sun’s light.’

“A Reflection of Sunlight on a car’s windscreen”

‘I don’t exist except in your creation. Your stance, your pose, has determined my form. I am a reflection of light that only you can see. You think I’m on the windscreen, but the windscreen doesn’t know I’m there! I am a reflection of the sun’s brightness, boring my energy into your selected spot. My centre has no form—just intensity. It is only known to you. Focus on me—feel my power. Can you see my rays—Rods of brilliance pulsating from my centre–my radiating energy in union with the source? You can see them; you can feel their force; but they are not there. They are only known to you. You have become at one with our secret.’

“Hidden Reflections of Light formed by the Breeze”

‘I am the grey light. You think that I am “Water”—A pool of liquid. You have constrained me in my edges—stones, grass, natural bounds; these have made me into something that I am not. I am the grey light—the tone of the middle distance. Darker tones form the foreground of your vision, lighter tones its backdrop. I am the grey light in between. Do I hear the wind? I can respond to the wind. It races across my surface of light rippling your vision of water.  It reveals my power—a thousand sparks of freedom—a burst of eternal energy—a split second of the source, vanishing as fast as it came, but changing you forever.’

“Definition by Light”

‘You call me “Rock”, but I don’t know such a name. I am light. My form is defined by light, I am at one with the light. Light gives me my flow; light gives me my texture; light creates my shadows. Light gives me the form that you perceive. Feel my flow—when I plunge you into darkness, I destroy this perception, but my darkness is necessary. Then, you still call me “Rock”. This is your label; but I am only vibration. Feel me in the darkness—feel the constraints of my density—sense my radiation, the heat of my vibration—the life-force of my existence. But, my density is not your perception; not until my form is revealed; not until my light-being is restored—then I am complete. My density is now defined by my light—now, I am whole. Call me “Rock” if you like, but I am your co-creation. You have experienced the oneness of the source.’

“The Lesson of a Dull Day”

‘Where is your shadow? What has become of your shape? Rock, tree, pillar and post, What are you now? There is no sunlight to define your form, only defused light beamed down from the greyness above. Soft shadows fail to clearly define those forms I thought I knew. We are changed. New forms have emerged in the grey tones of this reflected light. That tree is no longer there. We have become one with our surroundings—a sweep of grey-green shows the form of a copse, we have become a clump of trees—or a dark area of foreboding woods. The rocks have also joined with their companions—there is only one form now—a group of rocks, a cliff, a mountainside. It is the grey light—without defined shadows. It has recreated our universe. It has shown us that our perception is not static, but, a constant creation.’

“Guided by Light”

‘So, as light I have become your guide; I have shown you your form—your vibration is cushioned within the limits of my light. My light creates your density—feel its flow. It holds your life-force and contains the atoms of your existence. Without me you would not know yourself, but together we have become a creation. Through your perception you can create all things. Allow me to be your guide. Together we are the source; and all that we create is united with our source. You have felt the invisible power that has made what you call the “Universe”. Don’t call it the “Universe”. We are the “Universe”.

I have thought long and deep of my experiences in Colorado. By unorthodox means, I completed the course and was given the status of Avatar. But, this has not given me a sense of belonging. Avatar is a state, not an institution. I am no different for being an Avatar other than it has helped me to find my light. I have always known that the light was there, but I still had to find that blend between my skeptical scientific mind and my internal spirituality. I see the Colorado experience as only one on the long path that took me from my initial vision of that empty cross to my understanding.

* * *

Jesus has unquestionably played an enormous part in the spiritual consciousness of the Western world. But, I do not believe that his death on a Roman cross was of any significance in his message. It might well have been unjust, although we are not really to know, for we are not party to the true historic circumstances that led to his arrest and condemnation. We only have the coloured version of his established followers in the mid and latter decades of the First Century CE. In The Flavian Trilogy, I gave my deductions as to what led to these events and they are certainly not part of any divine plan for salvation. Jesus attracted crowds at his healing ministry in Bethany. The Romans didn’t like crowds. They were suspicious of any mass gatherings, as are most extremist and oppressive governments even today. Crowds were considered to be the breeding ground of unrest and rebellion. It was expedient, therefore, to nip this problem in the bud and arrest the healing miracle-worker, prophet and teacher, who was drawing these crowds. Jesus was then crucified, maybe in part because of his own rage at his unjust arrest. We do not know exactly how he conducted himself at his trial, relying only on the words of persons who were not there, unless Saul of Tarsus was a witness. In the gospel story, even Peter, who at least followed him to the outer court of the Herodian Palace, then disappears. There are no Roman records except to establish that Pontius Pilate was indeed the Prefect of Judea at the time and was considered a fairly ruthless man. If Jesus had upset the Romans at his trial it is not a great surprise that he was then condemned to crucifixion.

But, if Jesus’ death was a tragic accident, his life was not. It seems that he was a genuine healer, among many of his time. It also seems that he showed no partiality in his healing powers, prepared to help Jews and Gentiles, even Romans. It seems that Jesus was a remarkable teacher who certainly preached a message of love. But, this does not make him unique either. Nearly all masters have taught a message of love and peace in both Western and Eastern cultures. Jesus seemed by his followers’ interpretation, to have been a prophet of the end time, again not an uncommon theme in first-century Palestine. In the gospel stories of Christianity, John the Baptist has a similar message, and times of conquest and upheaval have often led, even in our own times, to belief in the end time. Even such magical round numbers as 2000 in a totally man-made dating system, ironically and probably inaccurately, based on the date of the birth of none other than Jesus, caused rumbles of end-time thinking. The conquest of Palestine by the Roman General Pompeius after a relative century of independence and peace under the Macabbean high priests was indeed a cause for such thinking in the time of Jesus and was obviously fostered in such organisations as the Essenes or those responsible for the important contemporary documents of the Dead Sea scrolls. But, I believe that given the world, in which he lived, Jesus did have a unique message. Did he teach us that we are all sons of God, and that we are all equally divine? The ‘Christos’ or anointed state that he may have applied to himself, he also applied to all of us. We can all acknowledge our state of living in the light of ‘Christos’ because we all can release our own divinity and take on the God-like powers of our co-creation.

This, for me, has become the message of the empty cross. God did not call me at the age of eight to preach the conventional message of ‘Christ crucified.’ I remember as a student at Cambridge, writing a paper on Christology for my New Testament supervisor. I put down all the right arguments, but at the end of the paper my supervisor wrote: This is not radical enough. We were taught to think, to turn every stone. Perhaps that is vocation. Perhaps, my then perception of God, called me to preach on the empty cross or ultimate resurrection—the resurrection of our own spirituality in acknowledging the hidden message of Jesus that we are all sons of God.

Not literally sons of God, but all equally part of God, as we were before we were conceived and as we are after our passing. Our energy is ever present, part of the pool of all that is and ever has been. So…do we experience this in a place called heaven? That is beyond our knowledge, unless we believe in the promises of a telescopic view of God, as almost certainly Jesus did. But if those delightful young ladies of Jehovah’s witness were to ask me, I would have to again say, “I’m not so sure.” If the elusive God-particle is the soul, then, maybe there is a progression of soul back to some heavenly place outside the experience of universe and time. But I am inclined to believe that every God-particle that science discovers in the mystical world of vibrating energy, only reveals one smaller, one yet to be attained, making each and every God-particle one with all that is. It is impossible for a human to express the unknowable, but we do experience glimpses of it—those moments of bliss or that beam of light, those incredible moments when our senses feel one with the divine.

I tried to express this through my dog, a Great Pyrenees Mountain Dog we named Orbit. I will never know if I succeeded because to ‘know’ is only a brain perception, but with that limitation, in faith I believe. For Bettine and me, Orbit was the love of our lives, a dog with an extraordinary empathy and remarkable canine wisdom. His was a life that touched many, but he was more than his life—he was one with all that is. Not a passing soul, but like all creation he was the God-particle of eternity. In the epilogue of his autobiography he wrote from eternity thus:

‘Peter’s eye became a myriad of tiny dots…ever smaller, ever more numerous, until it was an eye no more. All I could see was red…millions of red dots. Gradually, the red became orange, then yellow, and then green. I could see these colours far more clearly than I ever had before. The green became blue, then indigo, and finally, violet. It pulsed, and it lightened to pure white.

‘Humans speak of us dogs “crossing the Rainbow Bridge.” Perhaps we do. But they want to relate this Rainbow Bridge to something they always call, “Heaven”. Call it “Heaven” if you like, but it is not a place. I know now. It is all that is.

‘Oh, I know the human interpretation:

“Just this side of heaven is a place called Rainbow Bridge.

“When an animal dies that has been especially close to someone here, that pet goes to Rainbow Bridge. There are meadows and hills for all of our special friends so they can run and play together. There is plenty of food, water and sunshine, and our friends are warm and comfortable.

“All the animals, who have been ill and old, are restored to health and vigour. Those who were hurt or maimed are made whole and strong again, just as we remember them in our dreams of days and times gone by. The animals are happy and content, except for one small thing; they each miss someone very special to them, who had to be left behind.

“They all run and play together, but the day comes when one of them suddenly stops and looks into the distance. That dog’s bright eyes are intent. The dog’s eager body quivers. Suddenly, he or she begins to run from the group, flying over the green grass, those doggie legs moving faster and faster.

“You have been spotted, and when you and your special friend finally meet, you cling together in joyous reunion, never to be parted again. The happy kisses rain upon your face; your hands again caress the beloved head, and you look once more into the trusting eyes of your pet, so long gone from your life but never absent from your heart.

“Then, you cross the Rainbow Bridge together.”

‘But when we see the colours of the rainbow eventually pulse into that light that is eternal, we know that heaven is so much more than a place. It is everything that has ever been and ever will be. Once you have crossed the Rainbow Bridge, you know these things on every plane of being.

‘I am aware of every dog that my people and their families have ever known, and they are all a part of me, for now I am aware of all dogs that will be part of their continuing lives, too, and their future families’ lives. I know this now. But I know it without having to reason. It just is. I’m aware of my presence in Penny and Angel. I know you love them, Bettine—two beautiful Retrievers. They share time with you in the meadows and mountains of a faraway land. Their love for you, now that I am no longer experiencing life with you, is the same as my love—it is eternal. What’s more, it’s not just about dogs. I am aware that everything is connected and that everything lives. I sense only the light, and that must be God. This God is in everything that we encountered on our earthly journey, but now there is no division as to who and what we are. The dog, the human, the cat, the horse—the rocks, the grass, the trees, the river, the clouds—they’re all the same. They are pulsating dots of ethereal light, and it is as if they all sing one song in a sound that I can only know, but not hear—the sound of eternal beingness.

‘I’m aware that there is a marble bench that tells those still living in the illusion of the world that I once lived on Earth. I am aware that it stands in the Springfield Botanical Gardens opposite Peter’s English Garden. I am aware that Peter and Bettine buried the dust of my earthly life beside that bench, and scattered some in the garden. I know that Peter still talks to me there. I see you, Peter, every time that you are working in the garden, and I have seen you there, Bettine. Many strangers have also sat there, inspired by the beauty of the garden—strangers whom I never knew, but I know them now. They have read the inscription you had so lovingly inscribed there, “Orbit, In gratitude, Beloved Forever, Bettine and Peter and Nicole” and I am in gratitude that you were, my people. Am I there? Of course I am or I would not be aware of all this, but I am equally aware of gaseous swirls that form what you humans call your universe. I am aware that the planet, on which we lived together, is a tiny speck on the outer rim of one of these great gaseous swirls. But, I am also aware that it is not there. I am aware that all those angels in the sky that I once believed to be above our home, Alpha Meadows, what you call stars, were never there, and yet I know they’re all there, with many, many more. In the pulsing whiteness, everything is there, and yet nothing is there—nothing that we perceived when we lived the pattern that you call, life. As you wrote, Bettine, in that last letter to me:  It’s all love. All else is illusion.

‘There is no good, no bad, no rich, no poor, no ugly, no beautiful—only the love of all that is. You strive for it and call it God, but when you, too, cross the Rainbow Bridge, you will be aware of it in the pulsations of white light—you will be one with God, knowing every detail of your universe, past, present, and future. Every small particle of beingness that ever was, or ever will be, is one. I am in you, and you are in me. Over the rainbow there is no separation. Separation is the great illusion.’            

Peter Longley is the author of:

Two Thousand Years Later

The Flavian Trilogy—Star of Destiny, Fishers of Men, Along the Eagle’s Way

Orbit, Life with My People

And other works.