Ecstatic Symptoms
When the son of God, Jesus, saw all these different grades of friends and relatives full of animosity, he became overwhelmed with compassion and spoke in a faltering voice:
“My dear Father, my whole body is trembling, and my hair is standing on end. My renunciant’s staff is slipping from my hand, and my skin is burning.”
The ecstatic phenomena, such as trembling of the body, standing of the hair on end, horripilation (goose bumps), loss of external consciousness, faltering of the voice and so on occur either in great spiritual ecstasy or out of great fear in material consciousness. Jesus’ symptoms in this situation are apparently out of material fear—namely, imminent loss of life. Excessive attachment for material things puts a man in a bewildered mental condition, especially at the time of death. Such fearfulness and loss of mental equilibrium in the face of hardship, suffering and death take place in persons who are too affected by material conditions. But there is no fear in transcendental realization and Jesus is the pure devotee on the transcendental platform of consciousness. Therefore Jesus is actually in transcendental ecstasy due to the presence of the Supreme Lord, and only pretending to be fearful in order to provoke the Lord to benefit his disciples by speaking the Esoteric Teaching.
The sweating of blood from the pores of the skin mentioned earlier in the Biblical text of this story is a very uncommon symptom of great spiritual ecstasy (mah-bhva). It is documented in certain esoteric literatures that describe the advanced symptoms of intense love of Godhead. These books declare that such rare symptoms exist only in the bodies of the greatest devotees or in the transcendental body of the Supreme Lord Himself. However, since Jesus is having a conversation with the Lord, we must conclude that he is not God, but an incarnation of a great devotee especially empowered by God to perform the mission of spreading the Esoteric Teaching among the people of the Western countries. This conclusion is essential to understanding the transcendental personality of Lord Jesus Christ and his relationship to his Father, the Supreme Personality of Godhead.
Jesus continued, “I am now unable to stand here any longer. I am forgetting myself, and my mind is reeling. I foresee only evil, O Destroyer of Doubt. I do not see how any good can come from being killed by my kinsmen, or Your killing them in retribution. Nor can I, my dear Father, desire any subsequent success, opulent congregation or happiness.”
Jesus, in humbly accepting the role of an ordinary foolish man before his Divine Father, envisioned only painful reverses in the immediate future—he felt that he would not be happy even by gaining victory over his foes. When a man perceives only frustration in his expectations, he feels like he would rather be anyone or anywhere else. Everyone is interested in himself and his own welfare. But one’s real eternal welfare lies in worshiping and serving the Lord. The conditioned soul forgets this, and therefore suffers material reactions to his unfortunate activities. Jesus was apparently showing ignorance of his real self-interest by trying to forestall his destiny according to the Lord’s will. Jesus ostensibly thought that whatever the outcome of the coming struggle, it would only be a cause of lamentation for him. He could not, for the moment, see how any good could come from being killed by his own kinsmen. Nor, because of his sense of righteousness, could he desire victory over them, nor any subsequent success or happiness.
Jesus therefore argued, “O Father, of what avail to us are followers, happiness or even life itself when all those for whom we may desire them are now arrayed against us? O killer of evil-doers, when teachers, fathers, sons, grandfathers and all other relatives are ready to give up their lives and properties by offending Your son, then why should I wish You to kill them, though I may survive? O maintainer of all creatures, I am not prepared to see You destroy them even in exchange for the three worlds, let alone this earth.”
Without knowing that one’s real self-interest is in devotional service to the Lord, conditioned souls are attracted by bodily relationships, hoping to be happy in such temporary, imperfect situations. In such a blind conception of life, they forget that the Lord is the original cause, even of material happiness. In his anxiety, Jesus appears to have forgotten the moral codes for a renunciant. The ancient esoteric Scriptures teach that a person in the renounced order of life who is completely devoted to spiritual culture is eligible to enter into the spiritual world or Kingdom of God at the time of death. Therefore Jesus should have been glad to accept suffering and even martyrdom in the service of the Lord, for that would have guaranteed his eternal liberation from the suffering of material existence.
But the real cause of Jesus’ agitation is that out of profound compassion, he is reluctant to allow his relatives to commit offenses to his divinely ordained mission, thereby ruining their chances of spiritual advancement. For the same reason, he thinks that there would also be no happiness in being victorious over his kinsmen. Any victory could only come by the defeat and humiliation of many senior rabbis, who Jesus humbly regarded as his teachers. Therefore he was temporarily unwilling to go on, just as a person who does not feel hunger is not inclined to cook. Perhaps he imagined escaping into the desert to live a secluded life of frustration. But as a renounced preacher, he required a congregation for his subsistence, because according to the Eastern religious social tradition, renunciants cannot engage themselves in any occupation other than preaching and begging from their congregation. Jesus’ sole opportunity for gaining happiness lay in going through with the Lord’s plan, which for the moment he apparently did not want to do.