Lately I've been thinking about the teachings of Jesus and how they relate to the stages of personal development studied by transpersonal psychologists. I think that approaching the subject in this way can yield some worthwhile insights. In what follows, I've drawn exclusively from the Gospel of Matthew in order to explore this interpretation of Jesus' ministry.
Before continuing, it's worth pointing out one troubling fact about Matthew's Gospel: it shows a distinct fascination with hell and damnation. People may legitimately wonder if a person of genuinely elevated consciousness would be so eager to consign his fellow human beings to eternal suffering. Was Jesus really obsessed with hellfire?
Of course there's no way to be sure, but bear in mind that the other gospels have significantly fewer references to perdition. Maybe this particular theme reflects Matthew's mindset more than Jesus'.
Moreover, the term typically used for hell in the gospels is Gehenna, which was an actual location outside Jerusalem — a refuse pit where trash was set on fire. It is at least possible that Gehenna was intended only as a metaphor. Back when the USSR collapsed, it was not uncommon for people to say that Soviet communism had been "tossed on the ash heap of history." Naturally they did not mean that Soviet communism had literally been thrown onto an ash heap. They meant that Soviet communism had failed the test of history and had been discarded. Arguably, Jesus was saying something similar — that people who failed to live up to their highest potential would fail the test and be tossed on a (metaphorical) ash heap. The use of colorful metaphor was, after all, a distinctive feature of Hebrew prophets, and sometimes what started out as metaphor would be interpreted all too literally by later generations.
If there's any truth to this suggestion, then Jesus may not have been concerned with damning large portions of humanity to the flames, even if some of his followers (like Matthew) had a less elevated outlook.
In any event, what seems inarguable is that Jesus was deeply concerned with raising the level of consciousness of his closest followers. It may be assumed that, like most people and now, the apostles started off with a fairly conventional mindset, probably corresponding to the stage identified by Jenny Wade (in her book Changes of Mind) as achievement/affiliative consciousness. Achievement consciousness is the outlook of the workaholic who defines himself in terms of his job, his earnings, his accomplishments. Affiliative consciousness is the outlook of the "family man" (or woman) whose life has meaning primarily in terms of relations with other people. Wade sees authentic consciousness as the next step in development, followed by transcendent consciousness, and culminating in unity consciousness — the realization of mystical oneness.
To simplify things, we might distinguish simply between conventional consciousness, represented by the achievement/affiliative stage, and cosmic consciousness, a term most closely associated with the 19th century theorist Richard Maurice Bucke. Some of what follows is drawn from or inspired by Bucke's treatment of Jesus in his landmark book Cosmic Consciousness.
Basically, much of Jesus' teaching can be seen as an attempt to raise his closest followers at least to the level of authentic consciousness, if not beyond.. To do so it is first necessary for his followers to transcend either achievement consciousness or affiliative consciousness. Some of the more cryptic sayings of Jesus may make sense when interpreted in this light.
To break down the assumptions behind affiliative consciousness Jesus demands that his inner circle reject the obligations of family. He tells a man to leave his father unburied (Matthew 8:22), he says his mission will divide families (10:34ff), he even denies his own mother and brothers (12:48).
To break down the assumptions behind achievement consciousness Jesus advises his followers not to worry about worldly success or even bare physical survival (6:25ff). He tells them to lay up treasure in heaven rather than on earth (6:19), and that spiritual advancement is the pearl of great price for which all material goods may be sacrificed (13:45). He advises a potential follower to sell all he owns (19:21) and says that a rich man cannot enter the kingdom of heaven (19:23, 24) – i.e., cannot achieve a higher level of consciousness. He says that worldly preeminence means nothing, and that the first shall be last and the last first (19:30), and he tells the parable of the vineyard laborers who were rewarded equally for unequal work (20:1ff) – implying that worldly accomplishment is not the standard by which spiritual progress shall be measured.
Equally important, he must break down the more basic assumptions underlying conventional consciousness, namely, that one's personal worth is determined by one's social roles and social standing. Famously, Jesus carries out this part of his agenda by openly consorting with "tax collectors and sinners" (9:11), including prostitutes and other social outcasts. In the Beatitudes (5:3ff) he reverses the normal order of things by saying that the humble shall be exalted, the hungry shall be fed, and the poor shall be enriched. He suggests emulating the innocent child (18:4), who has not yet been socialized into viewing people according to their status and rank.
The point in all this, of course, is not merely to undercut the apostles' conventional assumptions, but to uplift them to a new, higher consciousness – cosmic consciousness, the state of mind that Jesus himself knew and embodied. Jesus points the way to this higher consciousness throughout his teachings. He requires his followers to love their enemies as well as their friends, emulating God who sends down sunshine equally on the evil and the good (5:44). His followers must "be perfect" even as God is perfect (5:48), i.e., they must aspire to the transcendent, nonjudgmental consciousness that is the highest stage of personal development. His followers are to be the salt of the earth and the light of the world (5:13,14), because only the spiritual pioneers — those who have ascended to the higher reaches of consciousness — can enhance and illuminate the lives of their fellows. Even the least of his followers will be greater than John the Baptist (11:11), because John, for all his insights, did not attain to cosmic consciousness, as Jesus' apostles are expected to do. Thus his apostles are blessed (13:16ff) above all others, and having attained more, they will be given more (13:12). They are required to make maximum use of the gift of higher consciousness (25:14ff), which can achieve great things from small beginnings (13:31). This cosmic consciousness can be characterized as "the kingdom of heaven" or the Holy Spirit (12:32); it spreads invisibly and inexorably throughout the world (13:33); it may be hidden, but once found, it is worth any sacrifice (12:44); not all will attain it, but those who do will be richly prized (13:47); the wise will earnestly await its coming, while the foolish will dither their lives away (25:1ff).
I'm not saying that this interpretation exhausts the meaning of Jesus' ministry – far from it. But I do think it can be helpful in making sense of moral prescriptions that may otherwise seem incomprehensible or simply unworkable. A key point, often overlooked, is that Jesus made these demands of his chosen disciples, his inner circle, not of everybody who happened to show up for one of his sermons. He didn't expect everybody to abandon their families, their property, etc
.; society could hardly function if we all walked away from our social roles. But there was never any danger of that, anyway. Most people have no interest in scaling the peaks of spiritual development. At best, they might have picked up a few helpful ethical precepts from Jesus' teaching. They were never expected to understand fully (13:13).
But for the chosen few, the ones called to ascend to the next stage of personal evolution, the abandonment of their conventional lives was a necessary step – painful, no doubt, and challenging and dangerous, but essential if they were to follow their master where he led.