The Way...

Jesus was a teacher of the ancient organisation called The Way. The Way goes back many thousands of years; some believe it goes back to Mithra (the earlier date of c. 2000BC). We have archaeological evidence of The Way from Mohenjo-daro and Harappa and in some of the older Great Flood legends. Remnants of The Way’s understanding of Mother Nature and God the Mother linger in some ancient religious ideas. We have parallel symbols in the birth of Jesus, Gautama Buddha, Zoroaster and Mithra. To name a few…

We don’t know much about the history of The Way (which is a remarkable thing because every tradition in The Way over thousands of years share this) but here are a few samples of information we have from Scripture. Melchizedek, the king of Salem was a teacher in this tradition and at one time he engaged in some serious spiritual counselling with Abraham (Gen.14:18), a disciple of The Way. Jesus was ordained in the Order of Melchizedek (Heb.7:1). Lao Tzu was a teacher in the tradition and the teaching he recorded is called The Way (Tao Teh Ching) (600BCE). Gautama Buddha was recognised as a teacher in this tradition (600 BCE), and so was Mani of Persia (2ndcent), many early Gnostic movements and most Essene movements aligned with The Way. The Bhagavad Gita and Wisdom traditions of the 1st century and Yoga traditions of antiquity aligned with The Way. The ‘golden thread’ of Truth that runs through all these cultures and movements was so strong that Jesus and Thomas’ ministry in Asia was mostly absorbed in the prevailing Buddhist society of the time. We see much of this in the particulars of the art of 1st and 2nd century Gandahara.

To learn a little more about the time when Paul and Barnabas applied to The Way to form a popular religious movement they would call Christianity, see Acts of the Apostles in the Christian Bible: 9:2, 19:9, 19:23, and 24:22.

The Yoga of Jesus is a particular school in The Way but it is by all means The Way, and it comes from Jesus The Saviour and the early disciples and apostles of The Way. Church of the East forwards the teaching and Tradition of the Yoga of Jesus.............from churchoftheeast.ca