Sample text 1 of the book: THE LAST DAYS OF JESUS Anastasios-Milanos Stratigopoulos

Palm Sunday

The whole Palestine was at the streets of Jerusalem those days to celebrate Pascha: people from Judea, Judamea, Perea, Galilee – people who had many times seen and heard the great Preacher, and in whose consciousness his therapeutic vitality, kindness, courage and wisdom had spread its dominating force – this festive sea of men, hearing that the amazing prophet was coming, rushed into the streets, full of enthusiasm, love and faith to welcome him.

“Hosannah to the child of David! Blessed be the one who cometh!”

The slopes of the Holy Mountain echoed those cries, faithfully rendering the ovations of the colorful crowd. Among the people were old men, women and children. They would kneel down, reach out their hands, cover the ground with their clothes, step into the way of the triumphant Victor to take one blessing from him, to touch his clothes, to catch his eyesight from a close distance, his consoling, healing and saving eyesight. Most people were carrying palms, others were carrying flowers from the fields, others were cutting branches from the trees and the bushes, everybody would cover the ground with what they had, so that God would walk upon.

So Jesus proceeded; he would necessarily stop at times and then go on again. However, the more joy, worship, fanaticism and faith would reach the apex of their intensity, the more the cloud of sorrow, which since morning of that day covered his divine figure, would become stronger and denser.

Around him was enthusiasm, joy, glorifying worship. Inside him, however, was a wave of unquenchable pain. A paradoxical and shocking antithesis between the thoughts of men and God: The vision of the distant, triumphant future – the world rule of the religion of consciousness, the immortality of the Word – in strong contrast to the eloquent future of the human ingratitude, the martyrdom, the temporary but defeating, nevertheless, necessity of death. It is to admire someone’s strength to march to the glory of a self-created victory. However, it is to respect someone’s strength to march, with full consciousness, to a death for consolidating this victory. At that moment, divine and human consciousness engaged in a wild and fierce battle within Jesus’ soul. The heavens, with its shining light, and the abyss, with its darkness, were fighting in his innermost existence. A blessing and glorifying cheer around him, and over there, between the historical walls of the city, anywhere he looked and anywhere he went, the silent threat of hatred and death: the glory and the shame, the truth and the delusion, the triumph and Jerusalem. On that day, the holy City would choose the Easter lamb, the lamb of sacrifice; and he proceeded, offered itself to the city’s choice…

Sample text 2 of the book: THE LAST DAYS OF JESUS Anastasios-Milanos Stratigopoulos

Good Monday

The human end was coming close. The soul-eyes of Jesus saw this very clearly. However, the little time that remained until the end should not be wasted. He had to complete the gaps of his teaching, to uncover the last veil of the initiation, which still hided the supreme, divine truth from the eyes of his disciples and apostles. They were initiated by him to the truth of their earthly mission, a visual, more comprehensible truth. He now had to initiate them to the invisible truth, the truth which is inconceivable to the material eyes.

This truth, this invisible reality, only three of his disciples – the most chosen ones – Peter, John and Jacob, had realized, somehow like in a dream, on top of mountain Thavor one night – the night of the Transfiguration. Within the transparent shadow of that night, the three disciples had seen the Teacher’s figure shining, translucent, like a clear channel. His face was shining like the sun and his clothes were shining as the light. And at his side appeared at once two more figures, shining as well.

They had seen this truth but they still did not know its deeper meaning. It had not yet become faith in their minds and indisputable reality in their eyes, as it was. The women, – Martha, Mary of Lazarus and Mary Magdalene were initiated in this truth, as well. Lazarus was initiated, too. Nicodemus knew about this truth, as did the Essenes. Only his disciples were still ignorant of this truth. They believed in the resurrection of the dead and in the immortality of the soul but they still lacked the deeper, the true knowledge. And they had to obtain this knowledge, not only the humanistic, moral and social aspect of the preaching of the Lord, but also the metaphysical truth hiding inside this preaching. They had to know this truth so that they would become indomitable into their own preaching, when He would have returned to the heavenly Father.

_________________________________

“Up to this point, said the Teacher, I spoke to you with parables. It is now time to speak to you more clearly about my Father”. A solemn and sacred moment; a sacred awe was flooding the hearts of the apostles. The heavens were about to open and reveal their secrets! And, indeed, the heavens opened and shined, not symbolically now, not only eloquently, not only from a need to decorate a great, social and moral philosophy, but in reality.

Grandiose circles of the planetary and cosmic life shined in front of their amazed spiritual eyes. The psychic (soul) life of the individual, the group life of Israel, the human evolution in general. The divine star of Jesus was setting, and before it went to give light to other worlds, it was sending its last, intense rays… With the soul wrapped up in ecstasy and the eyes fixed at his divine face, the apostles listened, listened…

The first judgment, what does it mean? What is the fate of the soul after the body’s death? Its fate is according to the way it is synthesized and according to its deeds in the life on this earth. Man is composed of three bodies, the material, the psychic (soul) and the spiritual. The first body is mortal and perishable. The third, the spirit, is immortal and imperishable. The second, the soul, connects these two bodies and partakes in both their natures. The soul is a living organism. Its body is fluid and ethereal, it resembles the material body. However, the material body could not have the strength to live or move or have connectivity without the other two bodies.

If, therefore, man, during his earthly life, follows the urges of the material body and is subjected to its needs, the psychic body suffers the influence of the material body, becomes heavy and dense, loses its ethereal nature in such a degree, that after the death of the material body she (the ethereal nature) suffers a second death, in order to rid herself from the weight of the material elements attached to her by the way of her earthly life and hindering her evolution. On the contrary, if man has devoted himself to the needs of the spirit, his psychic body retains its ethereal nature, it evolves even during the earthly life and after the death of the material body and dashes effortlessly to environments corresponding to the refinement of its composition. “Whatever is born out of flesh is flesh; whatever is born out of spirit is spirit. Protect yourselves, then, from your own selves, and avoid burdening your hearts, because the son of man can come suddenly, when you don’t expect him”.