The Psychic Life of Jesus

Taken from the book The Psychic Life of Jesus by the Rev G Maurice Elliott

At the age of twelve the boy Jesus said to his parents, ‘Wist ye not that I must be in my Father’s house?”. There was a superlatively important psychic background to that surprising utterance and we had better take a good look at it.

The boy attended the school which was attached to the synagogue; it was called “The House of the Book”. His parents could not afford to send him to college and we can well imagine that the old rabbi at the country school was often completely baffled by the questions asked by this extraordinarily religious boy.

The boy would just live for the day when he could go to Jerusalem and put his questions to the great teachers there – Rabbi Hillel and Shammai and Gamaliel, who afterwards aught the apostle Paul.

Up to the age of ten, the Hebrew Bible formed his only school book and during his later boyhood it is probable that the only books he had access to were the books of the Old Testament. His mind thus became saturated with Scripture and religion was, to him, the most vital thing in life.

When he was twelve years of age he went to the temple at Jerusalem and listened to the great teachers and asked them questions. These rabbis were astonished at this intelligence and ‘wondered at his understanding and answers to their questions’.

A Jewish boy of twelve had a certain status. He assumed some measure of responsibility and was, to a certain extent, released from entire dependence on his parents.

And it is only natural to assume that then, if not before, his parents would have told him why they had given him the name Jesus and about the angel that came to his mother at the time of his birth telling her of his high calling and of the angel that appeared to Joseph.

The boy would thus know that his father and mother possessed psychic gifts and had been in closest touch with the spirit world.

I suggest, therefore, that when, at the age of twelve, the boy went to Jerusalem, he was more conscious of a higher calling than any of his boy companions. This consciousness had been psychologically mediated by what his parents had told him of the revelations they received at the time of his birth.

The thoughts of a boy are often long and deep and the thoughts of such a boy would be longer and deeper. We may be quite sure that the questions he asked the rabbis which so astonished them had nothing to do with the foolish subtleties and ridiculous trivialities in which the scribes delighted.

What kind of questions would this boy have asked? Surely such as these : “Why are there no prophets today? Why have miracles ceased? Why are angels so seldom seen and heard and spoken to today? And why, when there has been no prophet for five hundred years, are we all on tiptoe of expectation of the Messiah?”

These questions were so vital to the boy, so absorbing and compelling, that he could think of nothing else. For the time being he lost all sense of time, the natural anxiety of his parents was forgotten and the authority which they claimed was forgotten, too.

Meanwhile, his parents ‘sought him sorrowing’ and strange to say, they sought him everywhere except in the temple. There at last they found him; and they were very vexed with him for causing them so much anxiety.

‘How is it that ye sought me? Wist ye not that I must be in my Father’s house?”

It was as if the boy had said “I cannot understand why you sought me anywhere except in the temple. Where else did you expect to find me? Think of all that you have told me about yourselves and myself, about the two angels which appeared at the time of my birth and why you gave me the name Jesus. And, mother told me of her visit to her cousin Elizabeth, to who husband an angel appeared just as he did to mother.”

“And you told me of the angel who came to the shepherds and of the wonderful way in which those Wise Men from the East had been guided to the manger. You told me how Herod had tried to kill me and that an angel had counselled you to take me to Egypt and later instructed you to return with me to Nazareth.”

“Then you told me about Simeon who had been promised by the spirit world that he should not see death until he had seen me and how he received me into his arms in the temple, and blessed God and sang a beautiful little hymn about me.”

“And you told me of Anna, the angel prophetess, who gave thanks to God when she saw me and told the people of the work God would call me to do. Can you not realise the effect that all this has had on me?”

“You see, I took seriously what you said, and though it all seemed very extraordinary to me, I believed you. And in the light of what you had told me I re-studied the Scriptures and was thrilled to find that those great spirit-filled men – Elijah and Elisha – came from the part of Palestine where we now live.

‘So you see, I simply had to come here to the temple, to listen to what the great rabbis were teaching and to ask them some very important questions.’

It is of course, more than probable that the rabbis failed to satisfy the inquiring mind of this inspired boy and that their failure, as well as the failure of his parents to understand his action, drove him to lonely musings on his high calling, duty and destiny.

Let no one under-estimate the capacity for deep thought in the mind of a boy of twelve and especially of such a boy. The psychic experiences of his parents must have made real to him the innumerable psychic experiences recorded in the Old Testament.

The religion of this boy of twelve was an utterly vital and practical thing, far more so to him than to his parents.

How he would have loved to have stayed with those great rabbis at Jerusalem and astonished them still further with his questions, and to have gone about his Father’s business in his Father’s house.

But he was only twelve and he had to learn that, for the present, obedience to his parents and engaging in the common tasks of daily life and musing in loneliness, constituted for his “Father’s business’. So he returned with his parents to Nazareth and grew to manhood unnoticed and unknown.

When he was thirty years of age an event happened which drew Jesus from Nazareth and launched him upon his life-work.

His second cousin, John, had become a great medium. The spirit world had told him that he was to be the fore-runner of the Christ for whose coming he was to prepare the people. So John preached the baptism of repentance and multitudes were baptized by him.

His spirit guide had told him that Jesus would present himself for baptism and that a sign from heaven would cause John to recognize him. While John was standing in the water baptizing the people, he ‘beheld the Spirit descending as a dove out of heaven’ and resting upon one of them.

That one was Jesus. And from that moment the Spirit of God possessed Jesus and he was endowed with extra-ordinary psychic power.

The ‘satanic’ agencies immediately tried to deflect him from the straight course. During forty days they tempted him to use his psychic gifts for his own pleasure and self-aggrandisement but without success.

A week later Jesus went to a village wedding and at the feast which followed the wine ran short. It was here that Jesus performed his first ‘wonder’ or sign by turning water into wine.

He had refused to turn stones into bread to relieve his own hunger. But when it was a matter of relieving the anxiety of poor peasant folk whose marriage supper was being spoilt, he delighted in turning water into wine. He was the most human being that ever lived.

Now, if the question he asked, “Can any reasoning man accept as historic fact such a story?” I answer, “Not unless he is acquainted with the facts of psychic science.’

A Spiritualist has no difficulty in believing the ‘signs and wonders’ of Jesus, for he knows that equally amazing phenomena are occurring today throughout the world.

He does not believe these ‘signs and wonders’ because they are reported in an ‘infallible’ book. He certainly does not assert dogmatically that they are historic fact.

He merely says that he is disposed to believe them because equally amazing phenomena occur today in the presence of men and women whose psychic faculties are developed.

The works that he did we do also. He told us that we should, and we do.