When I was a child we used to sing a little ditty in Sunday School:
Jesus gave her water that was not in the well;
Jesus gave her water that others she might tell.
She went away singing–and came back bringing
Others who wanted the water that was not in the well.
The Aquarian Gospel gives us a very different perspective on the encounter of Jesus with the Samaritan woman, whom Yogananda said had been a disciple of Jesus in a past life, so Jesus had come especially to awaken her spiritual consciousness which had been buried by the forgetfulness of rebirth
At the well
“The Christine gate into the kingdom of the Holy One was opened up, and Jesus and the six disciples and Lamaas left the Jordan ford and turned their faces toward Galilee. Their way lay through Samaria and as they journeyed on they came to Sychar, which was near the plot of ground that Jacob gave to Joseph when a youth. And Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus sat beside the well in silent thought, and his disciples went into the town to purchase bread” (Aquarian Gospel 81:1-3).
First of all, what is the Christine gate? We have been looking at quite a few passages in the Aquarian Gospel that employ this expression, but have not really defined it. It is necessary for us to understand that the gate is not any action or abstention from action. It is nothing external, but purely internal. It is the setting of the will to seek entry into the Kingdom of God-Consciousness. Unlike the superficial ways of exoteric religion, it is not a one-time, instant matter, but a continual “setting of the sails” each moment. We cannot make a “decision for Christhood” and drop it from our consciousness, only taking it up when we are in the mood. It is what is known in Sanskrit as a sankalpa: “A life-changing wish, desire, volition, resolution, will, determination, or intention–not a mere momentary aspiration, but an empowering act of will that persists until the intention is fully realized. It is an act of spiritual, divine creative will inherent in each person as a power of the Atma,” according to A Brief Sanskrit Glossary. It is a thoroughly serious matter of will-power and carries along with it a great many essential conditions, not the least of which is an understanding of what the Kingdom of God really is, and what is required in our life, both internal and external, to bring about an entry through the gate of the Kingdom and the ability to continue the journey into the depths of Spirit. “For which of you, intending to build a tower, sitteth not down first, and counteth the cost, whether he have sufficient to finish it? Lest haply, after he hath laid the foundation, and is not able to finish it, all that behold it begin to mock him, saying, This man began to build, and was not able to finish” (Luke 14:28-30).
The meeting
“A woman of the town came out to fill her pitcher from the well; and Jesus was athirst, and when he asked the woman for a drink she said, I am a woman of Samaria, and you a Jew; do you not know that there is enmity between Samaritans and Jews? They traffic not; then why ask me the favour of a drink?” (Aquarian Gospel 81:4, 5).
For some reason human beings love to build walls and make separations of all kinds. They especially like considering other people inferior to themselves, either mocking or detesting them for being different. They readily sneer at people’s clothes, manners, accent, place of residence, and suchlike. For example one of our friends, a Protestant minister, told us that when she moved to a small town the board of the church she was to pastor told her: “You must not live anywhere south of the town square because that is ‘Catholic town,’ and we don’t go there.”
Things were much worse between the Jews and the Samaritans, even though they both followed the Torah and considered it divine revelation. In the late nineteenth century a Bible scholar spent some time in Jerusalem rented a room from a Jewish woman. The first time he went to the market, as soon as he came in the door his landlady demanded that he take a bath immediately. When he asked why, she said: “It is possible that the shadow or even the body of a Samaritan touched you. We always bathe after going out.”
At the time of Jesus the mutual hatred of Jews and Samaritans was intense. The idea of a Jew drinking water handled by a Samaritan was unacceptable to either side, so the woman was amazed that Jesus would ask her for water. I have read several similar accounts from India regarding Hindus and Moslems.
All are one
“And Jesus said, Samaritans and Jews are all the children of one God, our Father-God, and they are kin. It is but prejudice born of the carnal mind that breeds this enmity and hate. While I was born a Jew, I recognize the brotherhood of life. Samaritans are just as dear to me as Jew or Greek” (Aquarian Gospel 81:6-8).
A true spiritual teacher never accommodates the ignorance and prejudice of people. Otherwise they will stay that way. So Jesus tells the woman the plain truth: all people are children of God, and therefore of the same family. Both the Jews and the Samaritans claimed to believe that all humanity is descended from Adam and Eve, but their minds and hearts showed otherwise. That is why Saint Paul wrote: “Take heed, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief” (Hebrews 3:12). It is easy to deceive ourselves as to what we really think and feel about anything, including religion.
The ego smothers the spirit, burying it beneath the rubble of “the carnal mind that breeds this enmity and hate.” And religion is a main source of this evil, as we see for ourselves every day. The bitterness of political rivalry is nothing compared to that of religion. Those who would live in the spirit must at the very beginning commit themselves to the brotherhood of all life and strive to honor the divine life that is in all sentient beings, for “inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me” (Matthew 25:40), should be our constant perspective.
Water of Life
“And then, had you but known the blessings that our Father-God has sent to men by me, you would have asked me for a drink. And I would gladly have given you a cup of water from the Fount of Life, and you would never thirst again” (Aquarian Gospel 81:9, 10).
“For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved” (John 3:17)–this is the mission of all holy souls here in this world. And there are many more than people suspect. Lesser teachers pass out of this world and on to higher planes to either work or progress further in their own development. Any teachings they leave behind will aid and inspire others, but they no longer have an active, effective presence in the world. Some like Buddha and Jesus are World Teachers whose influence lives on through the centuries–even millennia. They are living presences even though their bodies have disappeared from human view. Jesus told his disciples: “Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world [aion–the age or aeon]” (Matthew 28:20).
The world is a living organism, as is the entire cosmos. Therefore it constantly changes and continually needs tending. Therefore: “When goodness grows weak, when evil increases, I make myself a body. In every age I come back to deliver the holy, to destroy the sin of the sinner, to establish righteousness” (Bhagavad Gita 4:7, 8). Such great ones are virtually God walking the earth, for they are perfect vehicles of the Divine, their consciousness being absolutely one with the Divine. The only difference between them and God is one of degree: God is infinite and they are not–however they are perfect channels of Infinite Perfection, the Presence of God in the world. That is why Jesus told the woman that if she had known the blessings of God which he was conveying to humanity she would have realized he was a Fount of Life, able to grant her immortality.
The inner well
“The woman said, This well is deep, and you have naught with which to draw; how could you get the water that you speak about? And Jesus said, The water that I speak about comes not from Jacob’s well; it flows from the springs that never fail. Lo, everyone who drinks from Jacob’s well will thirst again; but they who drink the water that I give will never thirst again; for they themselves become a well, and from their inner parts the sparkling waters bubble up into eternal life” (Aquarian Gospel 81:11-14).
Throughout the Gospels we see that the disciples of Jesus consistently misunderstood his speaking of higher spiritual matters. When he spoke of the sword of wisdom they showed him swords of metal to assure him they were well equipped (Luke 22:36-38). When he warned them against the “leaven” of the Scribes and Pharisees they thought he was complaining that they did not have any bread (Mark 8:15, 16). Jesus was well acquainted with this mentality which caused the woman to think he was speaking of a physical well. This is one of the most important passages in the Aquarian Gospel, for it gives the only right perspective on spiritual life: its source and how it is maintained.
People are always “getting high” on religion only to crash later on into depression. The members of a small monastic foundation in the middle-west became acquainted with the wife of the local Methodist minister, herself also a minister, and she had attended their mass a couple of times. One Sunday their doorbell rang. It was the minister’s wife all aglow and bubbly because that morning instead of the usual church service there had been the kind of novelty “event” that Protestants occasionally stage to relieve the monotony of their religion. She went on and on about how she wanted to share her wonderful experience with them and how that had really brought about a change in her and so many of the other participants. After some time of exuberant emoting she floated out on her pink cloud, leaving them to wonder What Was That All About? They never really found out, because less than four hours later when their doorbell rang again, they opened the door to find the minister’s wife leaning against the door jamb in tears and abject misery. Without a word she shuffled in and went to their chapel where she spent half an hour or so in silent depression, then shuffled out without speaking a word–and never came again. Having a Catholic background my friends were completely flummoxed. When they asked my opinion I asked them if they had ever blown up a balloon only to find it collapsed after a few hours or overnight. They had. That, I explained, was the character of fundamentalist Protestantism. Up one moment and down the other with nothing in between but the blahs. Without self-delusion nothing would go on with them. The problem: it is all external; there is no interior life of the spirit.
Jesus tells the woman an essential truth: authentic religion makes us the source of our own spiritual life, artesian wells of spirit from which Spirit flows perpetually from our inmost being into all the levels of our existence. We become true Catholics: Kata Holos–containing the whole, God being our sufficiency (II Corinthians 3:5; 9:8).
Inconvenient truth
“The woman said, Sir, I would drink from that rich well of life. Give me to drink, that I may thirst no more. And Jesus said, Go call your husband from the town that he may share with you this living cup. The woman said, I have no husband, sir. And Jesus answered her and said, You scarcely know what husband means; you seem to be a gilded butterfly that flits from flower to flower. To you there is no sacredness in marriage ties, and you affintize with any man. And you have lived with five of them who were esteemed as husbands by your friends” (Aquarian Gospel 81:15-20).
The woman said, Sir, I would drink from that rich well of life. Give me to drink, that I may thirst no more. Those of material consciousness–including Jesus’ apostles at this time in their development–see things from their material perspective. The woman thought that Jesus could give her water that would quench her thirst forever–and that was true spiritually, so she both did and did not understand. I knew a very dedicated and virtuous minister who visited a sick woman and prayed for her recovery, which took place instantly. Before praying, he had anointed her on the forehead with oil as Saint James the apostle directed (James 5:14). The next day she telephoned and asked if she could have some of that oil to keep on hand in the medicine cabinet in case any of her family got sick. She did not realize that the virtue was in that righteous man’s prayers linked up with the love Jesus has for all humanity.
And Jesus said, Go call your husband from the town that he may share with you this living cup. Yogananda said that Jesus was testing the woman to see if she would be truthful with him. Sri Ramakrishna often said that a person could realize God if they absolutely spoke only the truth throughout their life.
The woman said, I have no husband, sir. So she passed the test. And in time became a saint of the Christian Church, known as Saint Photini.
And Jesus answered her and said, You scarcely know what husband means; you seem to be a gilded butterfly that flits from flower to flower. To you there is no sacredness in marriage ties, and you affintize with any man. And you have lived with five of them who were esteemed as husbands by your friends. Jesus spoke so plainly out of love to shake her awake, but it must have been a shock to her. There are vital lessons here for us, as well.
In the Aquarian Gospel we find two truths about marriage: people rarely comprehend the nature and purpose of marriage, and very few people are capable of true marriage. The casual easy-come-easy-go nature of marriage throughout the history of the human race has wrought more harm than just about anything else because of its universal prevalence. We will be considering the second point later on so I will let the bare mention suffice here.
Those who have no self-respect have no respect for their personal or social life–or for society in general, either. Consequently their marriages amount to virtually nothing, without substance or lasting long in many instances. One time I went to court with a yoga student who had no one else for moral support. The first item in that session was the granting of a divorce to a woman who was at least sixty-five. There was such sorrow on her face and discouragement in her manner. It was mentioned that she had been married over forty years–and now it had evaporated. “Till death do us part” had referred to the death of personal and moral sense. And now she stood alone.
Men and woman damage their subtle bodies terribly through promiscuity. They laugh at “old-fashioned” ideas of morality and conduct, but they reap a great deal of old-fashioned misery and confusion in their life. They go out seeking the death of their souls. Feeling the turmoil of the Samaritan woman’s heart, Jesus had come to offer healing and peace, though he had to point out that she had been false to her friends regarding the truth of her relationships. I remember well when a young woman showed up at her parents’ home in my little hometown back in the nineteen-forties with a “husband” named Jack. Her parents and townspeople were happy to see them, and they stayed there for over a month until Jack got drunk (not only were her parents teetotalers, the entire town was “dry”) and revealed that they were not married. The resulting whirlwind of social shock and disgust lasted several months. The girl’s parents loved her and never reprimanded her, but what a way to repay their love and patience. Eventually she became a chronic drunkard with a successions of “Jacks” until her death that certainly was a merciful release. Her family felt much pain at her suffering, though she pushed them all away. But the Aquarian Gospel tells us a happier ending to the situation.
Opened eyes and ears
“The woman said, Do I not speak unto a prophet and a seer? Will you not condescend to tell me who you are? And Jesus said, I need not tell you who I am, for you have read the Law, the Prophets and the Psalms that tell of me” (Aquarian Gospel 81:21, 22).
No matter how poor her background might have been, the woman’s inner eyes and ears are opened and she realizes that she speaks to a seer-prophet. Notice how respectfully she speaks to Jesus. This is evidence of her inner awakening–she really understands the supernatural character of Jesus, for her inner mind remembers her previous life contact with him and that former spiritual relationship lives anew.
A person’s valuation of another is really an index of their own value as a person. They cannot see that which is not in themselves. So her words to Jesus reveal her inner value that had been hidden–even to herself–until Jesus resurrected it. This is the work of the Masters: awakening others to their own divine potential. As Jesus told his disciples: “I call you not servants, but friends” (John 15:15).
Now Jesus tells her why he has come to her and all humanity.
The mission of Jesus
“I am one come to break away the wall that separates the sons of men. In Holy Breath there is no Greek, no Jew, and no Samaritan; no bond, nor free; for all are one” (Aquarian Gospel 81:23). That is why, great as her philosophical and esoteric knowledge was, Blavatsky said that the prime purpose of the Theosophical Society was the manifestation of Universal Brotherhood. All else was secondary. For Saint John had written: “How can a man love God whom he hath not seen, if he loveth not his brother whom he hath seen?” (I John 4:20). How can we presume to call God our Father if we refuse to acknowledge all humanity as our brothers?
But Jesus is not speaking of a social-political kind of union, but a spiritual unity. For in saying that in truth there are no Greeks, Jews, Samaritans, bond or free, he is affirming the eternal reality of the spirit, our only nature. As Shankara wrote in his Stanzas on Nirvana:
I am not the mind, intellect, thought, or ego;
Not hearing, not tasting, not smelling, not seeing;
I am not the elements–ether, earth, fire, air:
I am the form of Conscious Bliss: I am Spirit!
I am neither Prana, nor the five vital airs;
Nor the seven components of the gross body;
Nor the subtle bodies; nor organs of action:
I am the form of Conscious Bliss: I am Spirit!
I have no aversion, clinging, greed, delusion;
No envy or pride, and no duty or purpose;
I have no desire, and I have no freedom:
I am the form of Conscious Bliss: I am Spirit!
I have no merit or sin, nor pleasure or pain;
No mantra, pilgrimage, Veda or sacrifice;
Not enjoying, enjoyable, or enjoyer:
I am the form of Conscious Bliss: I am Spirit!
I have no death or fear, no distinction of caste;
Neither father, nor mother, nor do I have birth;
No friend or relation, guru or disciple:
I am the form of Conscious Bliss: I am Spirit!
I am without attributes; I am without form;
I am all-pervading, I am omnipresent;
By senses untouched, neither free, nor knowable:
I am the form of Conscious Bliss: I am Spirit!
Rare is the person that can understand this. Most resist it. In The Rosicrucian Cosmo-Conception Max Heindel wrote of his experience of teaching this.
“Yet, though the world is advancing and though, for instance, it has been comparatively easy for the writer to secure a hearing for his views in the different cities where he has lectured, the daily papers sometimes devoting to his utterances whole pages (and front pages at that) so long as he confined himself to speaking of the higher worlds and the post mortem states, it has been very noticeable that as soon as the theme was Universal Brotherhood his articles have always been consigned to the waste-basket.”
If we would follow Jesus we must see ourselves and everyone else with the eye of spirit, the eye of unity.
Drawing lines
“The woman asked, Why do you say that only in Jerusalem man ought to pray, and that they should not worship in our holy mount?” (Aquarian Gospel 81:24).
It is incredible how desperate human beings are to create differences and erect barriers. Why? Ego: demonic ego. I was brought up singing fervently: “Red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in his sight: Jesus loves the little children of the world.” But the adults in our church would have dropped dead if a red, yellow, or black person had ever come into our church. They were all shoved into ghettos and reservations and no one gave them a second thought. They were the Invisible People, and society was trying to make them the Nonexistent People. Every Fourth of July and Thanksgiving we were sermonized about how lucky we were to live in a country where everybody had opportunity and everybody was equal–if you were the right color and came from the right European country. But of course nobody said that second part. We walked on, blind in mind and sincere in heart, having no idea that were were violating the great law: “Love Thy Neighbor.” And they were our neighbors; we just didn’t go where they lived or let them live where we lived. They were happier with “their own kind”–at least our elders told us they were. But we rarely thought of them, so no problem.
Religion is perhaps the most virulent haven of prejudice and oppression, for it is done in the Name of God. The Jews hated the Samaritans and the Samaritans hated the Jews. The Jews loathed the Samaritan temple on Mount Gerazim and the Samaritans loathed the Jewish temple in Jerusalem. So the woman reasonably asked this question.
“And Jesus said, What you have said, I do not say. One place is just as sacred as another place. The hour has come when men must worship God within the temple of the heart; for God is not within Jerusalem, nor in your holy mount in any way that he is not in every heart. Our God is Spirit; they who worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth” (Aquarian Gospel 81:25-27).
True religion is all a matter of spirit-consciousness. The Bhagavad Gita, well-known to Jesus, says: “The devoted dwell with Him, they know Him always there in the heart. He is all their aim” (Bhagavad Gita 5:17). “The Lord lives in the heart of every creature” (Bhagavad Gita 18:61).
The revelation
“The woman said, We know that when Messiah comes that he will lead us in the ways of truth. And Jesus said, Behold the Christ has come; Messiah speaks to you” (Aquarian Gospel 81:28, 29).
How easily and simply the Lord Jesus makes himself known to her, for he knows that she is already awakened inwardly and can now understand outwardly the fact of his Messiahship. Every step in spiritual life is an advance in consciousness.
Read the next section in the Aquarian Gospel for Yogis: The Disciples and Samaritans at the Well