(Bible Mt 8:18-22)
The master Jesus used to teach the crowd in the public square. On the day he taught this, he was teaching in the street. As he was leaving, one of his disciples came and said to him:
« Master, I will follow you wherever you go! », to which Jesus replied, «Foxes and owls have their dens, but the Son of Man has no place to land.» Then another disciple who was following him came and called out to him: « Lord, my father has just died, let me go and bury him and wait for me so that I can follow you. »
Then Jesus spoke this extraordinary word that explains all his teaching:
Parables of
Jesus
« Let the dead bury the dead.
And you, follow me.»
Jesus implies here that human beings are not alive, that they are not life, that they do not know it, that they are dead.
What did the master Jesus mean by these surprising words?
Jesus was initiated in the school of the mysteries, so his vision was totally different from that of ordinary men. Through this word, he revealed a hidden teaching. It is an esoteric teaching that can only be understood in a subtle, immaterial, spiritual way. Indeed, there are, on earth, two great ways of apprehending the world, of looking at it:
- with the vision of the man who looks only at what is material,
- with the vision of the soul and the spirit that sees what is subtle and hidden, with the eye of God.
The ordinary man, looks and sees only the physical body and the material reality. At the sight of his animated body, he will naturally say to himself, "I am alive, I exist."
An initiate, on the other hand, will see not only the physical body, but also that which animates the body, that is, thoughts, feelings, desires. Looking at the ordinary man, he will see that all his thoughts, feelings and desires are only to satisfy the needs of the body and of mortal life. The teacher Jesus sees all this, but also that man has a soul and a divine spirit but no longer lives with it.
So when he says: "let the dead bury the dead", he means that these men have died to a spiritual life, to a greater life, they have died to their soul, to their authentic being. They live as bodies, they live as mortal beings, as mortal personalities, but they don't live as souls and as deities, as divine beings, as beings in the light. For a master like Jesus, it is a reality, men are dead. They do not know life, true life, eternal life. Their "life" is limited to the birth of the body and its death, beyond that, there is nothing for them.
Death and life according to Jesus
Death is to stop at the form, to live only for the material side, the physical side; it is to live with the sole purpose of satisfying one's earthly needs, the needs of the body.
Life is to awaken that which is greater than the body and greater than death.
An example of death is a man who is in beliefs not based on truth, in an abstract philosophy. For life is immortal, eternal. To awaken to life is to awaken in oneself thoughts greater than death, that is to say thoughts of light, of wisdom (which pass through time, which are true from all eternity); it is to reweave a link with one's soul, with the spirit, the true immortal being.
Where the master's words are powerful in their truth is that the disciple who wants to bury his father is not awakened to the higher life, to the divine life, he is dead. Death is to devote one's whole life to the material world.
If we look at the world today, most men devote their life, their energy to the material side. In return, they hope for a comfort, a life that appears only in the material.
People have not grasped the essence of life on earth, which is a school for self-transformation, they do not seek to work on themselves, to transform themselves. They have not understood that the purpose of life on earth is to bring forth a life greater than death within themselves. Now, when Jesus addresses his disciple saying: "You, follow me" and "let the dead bury the dead", he means that his father will be buried no matter what by beings who are not awake to their soul, who are dead.
Jesus carried the words of life
Jesus carried the words of life, so when he said: "You follow me", in reality he said: "Follow life", because Jesus was animated by a superior intelligence, he was a guide, a man capable of leading others to the superior worlds.
If we look at people today, most of them have a life oriented towards their material needs, even in spirituality: what interests the spiritual masters is to obtain benefits for their body and/or their material life. The thought, the feelings, the creative power of man are oriented towards earthly benefits and not to bring out the divinity and to re-connect with the soul, with what is divine inside man.
What Jesus wanted to teach through these words is that we are not really born.
Another teaching of Jesus completes this word. When Jesus was in Jerusalem, a Jew named Nicodemus came to visit him at night and asked him questions (John 3:1-10). Jesus replies, "Whoever is not born from above cannot see the kingdom of God." Here the teacher is talking about being born to one's soul, to one's true being. Then, "He who is not born of water and spirit cannot know eternal life." Hearing this word, Nicodemus is confused, he does not understand. He even asks the following question: "But then, how do we do it? Should we go back to our mother's womb?" Then Jesus is direct and lectures him, "You are a teacher in Israel, you are a teacher in your tradition and you don't even know these mysteries?!"
Why is he so hard on Nicodemus? Because in reality, the mysteries of the second birth are the basic mysteries of the tradition, known to the Egyptians, to India and therefore to Moses, it is a knowledge which was present in all the initiatory traditions. But this knowledge was lost at that time. Nowadays, this knowledge is almost extinct.
The master Jesus is not content to say, "let the dead bury the dead", he goes further, he speaks of inner awakening to be reborn to a greater life, to an immortal life. He thus reveals the secrets of life with the Light, of the divine, sacred life. The man who wants to know this life must be initiated into the mysteries and must die to his mortal personality and be reborn to what is divine, immortal.
Jesus did not reveal all the secrets of this second birth, he did not teach the science of bodies. In order to be reborn to this greater life, one must build a body, work on oneself, be initiated and carry out an integral transformation in order to make a body of immortality appear in one's life. This sacred teaching was transmitted in the temples, that is why he did not reveal it openly to avoid that unconscious, ignorant people have access to it. He addressed this teaching to the initiated, those who were ready to receive it, who had "ears to hear", so that they could put it into practice in their lives.