The Essenes
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The Essenes
The Essenes were a group of people who lived in Palestine between the 2nd Century BC and 1st Century AD. Historically they have been understood to be an offshoot or a sect of the Jewish religion. This has some degree of truth; these people certainly had a religious expression that could be loosely construed and denominated ‘Jewish’. There was however a quality about them in their early years, a quality exemplified by Yeshua, that revealed their true impulsing Divine source. There was a far deeper purpose to their gathering and formation into community than to practise a variant form of the broader religion from which they split.
The Community of the Essenes was in truth set up as a living study to assist humanity’s evolution, initiated by the members of The Hierarchy – those great Masters who hold humanity in the most unfathomable love and whose entire purpose is the evolution of their human Brothers and their return to the Livingness of the light of the Soul on earth. This group was brought together as a science, or study that formed a critical and initiating step in the development of the Lineage of the Ageless Wisdom, lived as part of the wider community of all people on earth.
Until this moment in The Lineage, the gatherings of people aligned to the teachings of the great Living Masters were very small indeed. But a handful of students dedicated themselves to the great teachers Patanjali, Hermes and Zoroaster. These teachers had what we would now describe as lives of great temporal hardship. They were forced to move from place to place, always made unwelcome by the authoritarian potentates who believed they had most to lose by the simplicity and grace of their teachings. The ancient people of the land we now call Egypt, the great healers, scientists and philosophers of our very long ago past, formed communities, but they lived separate to general society. Always they were open to receiving those who sought wisdom or healing, but never did they come together with the wider body of humanity in their everyday social interactivity. Pythagoras had a small and dedicated group of students, but again they lived in their own community setting and were frequently driven out of regions by hostile forces. It is important to realise how difficult it was to live with the delicate grace of Soul-realised impulses in these eras. Although it can and has been misconstrued that these groups were isolationist, or eschewed the company of those people they deemed of lesser quality, nothing could be further from the truth. To develop The Livingness in these eras required stringent conditions that supported the development of great discipline and the greatest possible depth of stillness, as unencumbered as was possible in those intense times from the ever-present threat of upheaval, denigration and violence. It was for this reason that they lived as independently as possible from others, to allow themselves the grace of a settlement that was not possible in the cloying, rowdy and aggressive milieu of regular human existence.
In accordance with the great cycles of the Constellations, and as the era of Pisces approached, a new way was called forth. The Hierarchy, always reading and in absolute responsiveness to the next step in the evolution of all humanity, released the impress for the next transmission of the Teachings. This impress became the movement of people known as the Essenes. As has been stated, under the science of constellations, this movement was an experiment, a trial run and a preparation for the future of humanity. It was this group that founded the principles of living esoterically in far greater connection to and communion with general society. It could be said the movement failed, because it did not last more than three hundred years but this is not the truth. As study of the Lineage reveals, God, the Lord Maitreya and the light of the Soul have no fixed allegiance to any place or group of people. They pour all of the magnificence of Heaven through those who are so aligned and gracefully move on to the next place and group in accordance with the Great Plan.[1] As such, the Essenes grounded something entirely new – it was a community that exemplified the Livingness of love, grace, stillness and Brotherhood within the broader setting of general humanity.
The time in which the Essenes lived their simple lives was, in unapologetic terms, brutal. Abuse was rife. Human life had little to no value and Sacredness had been degraded and devalued to such an extent that its existence seemed to have been wiped from the surface of the earth. Slavery was rife and women were kept as second or third class citizens, valued less than stock. The era of Aries was drawing to its close – the era in which the attributes of adaptability in life, initiating and the enrichment of all had been on offer for all to make their way. Instead, and in direct conflict with the surrender to Heaven’s abundant offering, it was a time that was torn apart with violence and inhuman brutality. Roman occupation held the region in an inescapable and oppressive grip; the degree of indecency of their rule was fickle and entirely dependent on the qualities of the governors who dictated the way in which Roman law was applied. The Jews themselves were highly factional and always at odds with each other, erupting into their own violent conflicts. This was made worse by the fact that their Kings were Roman appointees – some of them deemed not even properly Jewish – which was as great an offence as possible to a group of people focussed so intently on religious purity. These kings, obsessed with jealously guarding their power, were a threat to their own people, as exemplified by the neurotic Herod who ordered the execution of his own wife and two of his sons. Many Jews lamented the corruption of the synagogue and the gross decline of religious quality offered by their priests – the hypocrisies and flagrant abuses that come to blight all man-made religions were evident at this time and a source of further alienation and discontentment in the mass of people. The presence of other religious and racial groups’ fuel added to the perpetual foment of contradictory beliefs, discontent and violence.
Into this mix, the Essenes entered, ostensibly a faction of the Judaic religion, but their practices were so vastly different as to make the connection very slender, particularly at the inception of their movement. Although they applied some of the texts of the Jewish faith, most of the elements of the worship harked to previous eras and schools of The Lineage. They were not entrenched with beliefs, nor did they worship God in an empty and highly codified manner. As is always the case with movements under Soulful impress, they lived in accordance with their bodies and the cycles of life. This was their worship. Their life was their religion, seeking always to make the purity of Divine Order the source of all. Simplicity was intrinsic to their way, and as was the case for the Pythagoreans, austerity and discipline were used to release themselves of the tyranny of the distractions, plights, agonies and meandering delays inherent in the human spirit. The Essenes had priests and they had lawmakers, but these people lived in community as equal members of the whole. This was inconceivable to the mass of humanity who were inured to oppression by a ruling class and actually embraced the fact that they could hand responsibility for their lives over to their superiors. Utterly unique in the region, the Essenes not only recognised the sanctity, preciousness and sacredness of the woman, they accorded her equal standing in their communities. As such, they were for their era the impulse of an aspect of the magnificence of Sacredness which had been offered to humanity by the great Pythäis, mother of Pythagoras. They could not bring the fullness of this quality, for the world was in no way ready for that, however and to their great credit, never before had such honouring of the woman been evident in general society – always it had been exercised in small and secret communities. So alien had this concept become, that even this fledgling expression placed them under great possibility of extinction by a humanity threatened by the mere idea of woman holding herself by autonomous grace.
The purpose of their movement was very clear at the start – to bring to human life the attributes of the constellation of Pisces: to offer to a world that had starved itself of even the most basic quality of decency, the beauty of living in true Brotherhood. Equally they made real the gracious activity of completion of bringing your all to every activity until it was done, thus allowing ever-possible expansion into the next evolutionary movement under Heaven.
Forget not that the energy of the Christ, the Living Way of the plane of Souls on the human/temporal plane of existence, had not yet been earthed through Yeshua – he who was to come through this community of students. They had not the embodiment of love to draw upon, a love that we today may access with such ease as humanity had not known before Yeshua made it so real and so simple.
It cannot be surprising that this movement was extremely unpopular with the other Judaic sects. The Essenes simply were not interested in enjoining the aggressive elements of the local Jewish groups in the alienation of and occasional outbreaks of aggression towards their non-Jewish neighbours. Nor would they participate in the petty rivalries between the various Jewish factions. For a long time, the Essenes held true to the imprint that founded them – the expression of Brotherhood, lived with and for all, not just within the confines of their own community.
This was an entirely new way of living and moving in a humanity that until this time only placed value on those it deemed worthy – ‘me and mine’ ahead of all others. Although Brotherhood in truth had always been at the heart of every great movement, and every true teaching of the Lineage, it was under the great impulsing light of the constellation of Pisces that its expression in the world at large could be offered through this group.
The constellations have from the dawning of time offered us the potential to evolve by our own movements. We are always, inescapably, bathed in the light of their specific configurations, allowing us access to attributes that when aligned to, make simpler our return to Soul. Each great cycle of roughly 2500 years has its own specific constellation that brings with it an overarching energetic quality with a specific aspect of evolution on offer. It is crucial to understand that the energetic quality of a constellation is offered and never is it enforced upon us. We may continue in our errant ways for as long as we choose or we can align to the offered wisdom; these grand cycles, in their magnificent and majestic grace pour forth regardless. As stated, the Essenes were a crucial part of the embodiment of Pisces for this time and this place.
They were, for this era, the model for living human life impulsed by the Soul in the milieu of all humanity. For all of their flaws and vulnerabilities, they were a living, tangible demonstration of the potential for all mankind.
At the commencement of their movement, the Essenes beheld everyone as their equal regardless of race or religion – they traded with all, shared their dining tables with all. This open-hearted way marked them as dangerous and an unacceptable threat to factions deeply invested in separation and conflict. This was a remarkable way to be at a time and in a place steeped in conflict. The constant stirring of inter-religious and inter-group hatred by Jewish agitants, the retaliatory aggression of non-Jewish groups and the overweening oppression of the Roman rulers formed an inescapable barrage on this group. The world in which they lived was entirely the domain of the divisive spirit – it was not ever going to surrender itself to the Way of Soul without a fight.
As has been the inevitable case for any person or group of people who live from the Soul, the attacks were relentless… physically, socially and psychologically.
The group started to forget purpose as they became focussed on their own survival.
Their first step away from their impressing light was their withdrawal from society at large. Some of them removed themselves physically from the disparity of the different groups, taking up residence in the inhospitable desert refuge of Qumran. In seeking to escape the constant barrage of forces from with-out the community (and in seeking the comfort of an easier existence), they closed themselves down to the crucial element of their Soulful purpose – the embodied expression of Brotherhood. This intellectually derived solution alone was not immediately fatal to their movement, but – and this offers a significant study for current students of the Ageless Wisdom – in their movement away from other people they closed themselves off not only to those people who troubled and despised them, they closed down the ready access to the wisdom of their Souls. This is not because the Soul or the Hierarchy withdraw themselves from us – never do they cease to offer all that they are, all of the time. It is instead an aspect of the Science of the Soul that can be studied today: in withdrawal from even one person – one Soul – we use our body to withdraw from all Souls, and unavoidable in this effect, is the withdrawal from our own Soul. It cannot be otherwise. Our connection is Universal, or it is not. This is the horror of entering into protection; we build our own prison that denies us access to the only quality that can offer us the true freedom and depth of settlement we all yearn for.
This step was the first one towards their demise.
In denying themselves access to the innermost calling of their Souls, the path was laid for intellectualised versions of religion and law to gain hold. Adherence to texts and rituals devoid of the impulses of the heart and Godly wisdom (the Buddhic light) infiltrated the community.
These adaptions and adjustments, as reasonable as they could be made to appear, eroded the impress from within. The group became internally factional. Some of the law makers – men and women who knew and once applied Universal law to the evolutionary advancement of all – took on a controlling role, started to dictate to the community how they should live, what they should think and how they were allowed to relate to those outside the group. Social strata developed.
This evil, for evil it was, was not created by people with malicious intent. They were people who sought only good – the growth of their community, the safety of their numbers, and what they perceived would bring them peace and religious freedom. The magnificence of the original impress was buried beneath the justifiable ‘good’ of calculating for survival. The responsivity of divine access and its expression ankylosed into righteous idealism, formulaic, heartless practices of worship and politically expedient calculation – all an accommodation to negotiate with creation’s crushing forces, regardless of the price.
The internal division did more harm to the group and its purpose than any external force could muster.
They survived certainly. There were a sufficient number within the group who held true to the original impulse, such that the World Teacher of this Piscean era could be born in their midst and raised to fulfil his purpose. It is incredible that through the insidiously blinding effect of the adopted ideals and the righteous rigidity of beliefs, there were those who simply could not recognise him, even within his blood family.
Yeshua, supported by his deeply wise and sacred wife Magdaleena (written out of Biblical history) and the magnificence of his (non-blood) Brother Peter, embodied the energy of the Piscean era. Through him the energy of the Christ (the plane of all Souls) was earthed on this plane of existence – a place that had utterly forsaken God. The Essene community provided the space in which this being could be born and raised, infused with the discipline that was essential in this era to become an initiate. Although many of the community did not open their hearts to receive the light that came through him, those who held true to the originating Essene spark, that first impress, became students, not of him but the light in him.[2]
Yeshua modelled for all humanity a level of settlement in the face of desperate adversity such as had been rarely witnessed before and since that time. He was not protected from the full force of Astral fury by the people among whom he had been born, the leaders were too busy wrangling over minutia of when to pray and how to pray, who to strike deals with and who to engage in war. They had not the eyes to see, the ears to hear nor the hearts to feel that the Christ was lived on earth. Gaoled, and facing a horrifically protracted death as a result of the personal betrayal of Judas and the corrupted deals between the Essene, Jewish and Roman leaders (the facts of which he knew beyond doubt), Yeshua did not lose himself to the maelstrom of human reaction – as justifiable as such a thing might have been. He did not yield to hurt, self-pity, self-righteous indignation, grief, rage, yearnings for revenge or demands for justice.
He settled into his being, became so deeply at-one with his essence that the hand of God could move him, leaving a body of pure stillness, grace, deep love and dedication to Truth behind.
After his passing, very few, other than those who followed his way, mourned. The true students carried on the great fiery work he initiated for all mankind.
The Essene movement continued for a while, yet lost to purpose, merely marking time in the codification of their religious practices. Many departed the community. Among them were those who in dedication to the teachings of the Ageless Wisdom, as received through Yeshua, were impulsed to share them with people in other places.
Ostensibly, and by historical record, the community was completely and totally destroyed by the Romans, who with their usual manner of dealing with people they did not like, tore down their temple, and killed those who resisted.
In truth, the Romans destroyed but a mere shadow of that which the Hierarchy had made possible for all of humanity through this community. The Essene movement had reached its apotheosis through the life and service of Yeshua; the impress had served humanity and could not ever be touched, desecrated or de-sanctified by human hands.
The movement was a phenomenal success in the Master Plan of the Hierarchy.
The human imperfection of the group cannot be exclusively interpreted as a sign of personal failure of the members. Nor can they be misinterpreted as evidence of the inevitable failure of community. What they reveal clearly is the wretchedness to which humanity had allowed itself to fall such that truth becomes more difficult to live than the lies that annihilate us. The imperfections also reveal how precisely the forces of evil are directed at our vulnerabilities. Such is the relentless bombardment that we can give up on connection to the Divinity that is our essence.
Through the Essenes, Fire had been cast upon the earth.[3] The impulse, having been lived in the wider community, seeded forth other movements that were now an inextricable part of society. The Ageless Wisdom would never sit at the fringes of human life again. The School of Alexandria was one such Soul-impulsed movement that made access to the teachings of the Ageless Wisdom possible for all. The Essenes very directly seeded the great Cathar movement of Southern Europe.
The fiery grace of the Essene impress never died. It lives and breathes with us today in the global community of people who live by the light of their Soul and know themselves as Students of the Ageless Wisdom today.
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