About The Unknown Lives of Jesus and Mary

“There are also many other things which Jesus did, the which, if they should be written every one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written.” (Gospel of Saint John, final verse)

You can discover much of those “many other things which Jesus did” in this unique compilation of ancient records and mystical revelations, which includes historical records of the lives of Jesus Christ and his Mother Mary that have been accepted and used by the Church since apostolic times.

This treasury of little-known stories of Jesus’ infancy, his sojourn in the Orient as recorded in the famous Ladakh Manuscript, and his passion, crucifixion, and resurrection, will broaden the reader’s understanding of what Christianity really was in its original form: a far more vibrant and conscious movement than what we see today in its place.

But this book is more than just a collection of ancient texts. Abbot George Burke’s illuminating and scholarly commentary adds a further dimension and relevance, and will guide you to a deeper understanding of how, as he puts it, “to manifest the inner Christ that abides within us all.”

• Read the book online here

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• study with your own paperback or ebook.

Excerpts from The Unknown Lives of Jesus and Mary

And the child grew strong day by day; and when she was six months old, her mother set her on the ground to try whether she could stand, and she walked seven steps and came into her bosom; and she snatched her up, saying: As the Lord my God liveth, thou shalt not walk on this earth until I bring thee into the Temple of the Lord.

This incident shows that Mary was born with perfect consciousness and mastery, that she did not need to mature as do those who are forced into embodiment by their karma. She had come to birth by her divine will, and therefore at no time was bound by the limitations common to those under the bondage of birth and death and karma.

When Gautama Buddha was born, he also walked seven steps for the same purpose. In one record we will be studying, it is related that Jesus spoke as soon as he was born. The meaning is the same. The seven steps are also emblematic of their perfect mastery of the seven planes of existence and consciousness.

In case these incidents might seem impossible, we should remember that some years ago in South America a new-born child spoke to the staff in the delivery room of a hospital, telling them who she had been in a previous life (actually, she spoke of it as her present life because she did not realize she had been reborn), and asked for their help. She spoke clearly in a high thin voice for nearly twenty minutes, then her speaking began to alternate with the normal crying of an infant, and before the hour had passed she had lapsed completely into the limited state of a new-born human being.

Saint Anna’s vow: “thou shalt not walk on this earth until I bring thee into the Temple of the Lord,” was not uncommon at the time, and is observed by some “primitive” people even now. At the time of Christ many royal or aristocratic families brought their children to adulthood without ever letting their feet touch the earth. Saint Barbara was raised in a tower and was never allowed to go out. 

And Issa [Jesus] said unto them: “The human race perishes because of its lack of faith, for the darkness and the tempest have scattered the flocks of humanity and they have lost their shepherds.”

When the members of our monastery met with his Holiness Patriarch Elias IV, the Byzantine Orthodox Patriarch of Antioch, I was impressed by his insistence to a Protestant minister that the “social gospel” was antithetical to the gospel of Christ. This declaration was true, not because Christians should not engage in overt acts of charity, but because the focus of the social gospel is wrong. That is, the social gospel says that what is wrong with the world is a matter of economics, politics, social inequalities, lack of education, etc.

But this is not so. People have lived spiritually productive lives under conditions of extreme poverty, tyranny, social inequality, and total illiteracy. Frankly, more saints have been produced under those circumstances than otherwise. This was implied by Solzhenitsyn’s question in his Harvard address when he asked: “Where are your saints?”

Jesus reveals the heart of all earthly problems: lack of faith. Faith in its deeper meaning is that which arises from direct spiritual experience. So what Jesus is saying is that we must possess that Gnosis which comes from our own encounter with spiritual realities. This alone is the key to ending the sufferings of humanity.

But since in every generation there are few who are saved (Luke 13:23-24)–that is, who obtain the key through interior life and attain full enlightenment–the elimination of suffering is done exclusively on an individual basis, and by the individuals themselves.

Never can it be accomplished through social movements, worthy and needful though they be. Such movements should be the result of spiritual insight, otherwise they, too, are destined to eventual ruin, not being founded on the rock of inner knowledge.

And I Joseph [of Arimathea] begged the body of Jesus, and put it in a new tomb, where no one had been put. And of the robber on the right the body was not found; but of him on the left, as the form of a dragon, so was his body.

The physical body is an extension–indeed a reflection–of the mind, just as the material world around us is rooted in the astral world and is an indication of its nature. Because his devotion and faith had been so intense, the body of the wise thief was dematerialized upon the going forth of his subtle bodies and his ascent to paradise.

This dissolving of the physical body frequently happens when the inhabitant is never going to return to earthly rebirth–as was the case with the wise thief who, despite the horrible agonies of being tortured to death on the cross, yet defended the Lord Jesus and appealed to him for the welfare of his spirit rather than his body.

We can never know what may be the past karmas and evolution of another. Some who appear to be the worst off are really only crouching to make the great leap upward into the realm of freedom from the cycle of birth and death. And many who appear to be so virtuous are teetering on the brink of a great fall into the outer darkness of ignorance.

Read the first article in The Unknown Lives of Jesus and Mary: Unknown Histories