THE GREAT GOSPEL OF JOHN
VOLUME 5
Jesus' Precepts and Deeds through His Three Years of Teaching
Jesus in the region of Caesarea Philippi. (cont.) Gospel of Matthew, Chapter 16
- Chapter 28 -
The state of affairs of the Indian priests.
1
(Roklus), "This answer irked me, a Roman citizen, and I said to him, "Friend, would you have answered the same way if I had asked this question with a stern face at the head of ten times hundred thousand warriors and commanded you to release from their penance all these poor penitent fauns?' The pious man boggled a little, gave me a very inquiring look and seemed to ponder a lot, what he should answer to this question.
2
I, however, said to him with a very grave face, 'Yes, yes, look at me so that you can later on recognize me sooner and more easily at the head of a most mighty army, when I will attack and destroy the evil and strong castle of your most gruesome god and his high priest!' The previously friendly shepherd of souls braced himself, made a grim face, and said to me, 'You crazy mortal, you would sooner destroy the moon than the Lama's strongest castle! But where is your army?'
3
I said, 'I will not tell you! Only one cue is needed from me, and you evil man will find out soon enough where my army has positioned itself! I am telling you: If you do not tell me something entirely true about the Lama and about his high priest and about your association with him and the reason for this most shameful mistreatment of people, I will have you seized and tortured for twenty years with everything my imagination will give me, so that you may taste how these poor penitents must feel under such unheard-of agonies and tortures!'
4
The pious man saw that at best I am not to be joked with and began to come out with the truth, although visibly grudgingly and with the preliminary remark and plea that he could then leave with me because he would no longer be sure about his life; I consented to that, whereupon he started revealing everything:
5
'We have a script that supposedly originates from the patriarchs of this earth. Its makers are supposedly a certain Kienan, Jared and Henoch at the behest of the highest God, whose name only the high priest knows. There are long accounts from Nohai and Mihihal as well in the great book of books; but we do not know its content and can never take a look inside because it is forbidden under penalty of most excruciating death.
6
None of us lower priests has ever seen the Lama! One can count himself lucky and blessed if one gets to see the Lama's high priest once in one's lifetime. The Lama himself does not even come into question! The high priest knows about the living conditions of all his subjects and all his subordinate lords, whom he commands like a master commands his servants. They must obey him in everything he wants, otherwise it only takes a word to his people, who believe in him blindly and most firmly and expect all prosperity and adversity from him alone, and they will most gladly rise and kill all the lords because they would thereby gain the Lama's highest favor. The lords know this for a fact and in their own interest give the high priest all imaginable honors and yearly donate to him great sums of gold and silver; on top of that they enrich him with the nicest herds.
7
If he dictates a corporal penance to one or the other - penance from which not even a lord is excluded - the lords can resolve it either with gold and precious gems and pearls, or they can pleadingly come to ask for permission that someone else, if he is a very pious man and never had to do penance and if he wants to, may take on a penance for a lord, which will be valid for the lord; this, as well as the determination of the surrogacy tax, which is never too small on such occasions, is left to the pious man's free will. Such pious substitutes ask the penance heralds for advice in advance and can transform the most painful corporal penance dictated to a lord into any desired easier one, which the Lama's high priest will accept as valid for the lord, as long as the lord pays the penance substitute a high enough sum from which the respective substitute has to give two thirds to us priests.
8
An undisclosed norm to be honored with the imposition of penances is that penances should be imposed upon poor people very seldom and if they are imposed, then they are always of the easiest kind. Great and hard penances are usually imposed upon the rich and affluent who can redeem doing the penance either partially or completely as they desire. Rarely does someone redeem completely, with the exception of a lord, because such complete redemption would rob them of their entire fortune. The miser does the penance himself and rather suffers the greatest torture than give away his gold and silver. If the one to whom a penance was dictated has a very beautiful daughter or a very handsome and educated son, he can offer them as sacrifice to the high priest instead of the gold and silver, of course with a small dowry and well adorned and most richly dressed. The high priest and his countless servants can use the like to all sorts of duties because he owns, mostly in the mountains and high lands, an enormously large territory of such dimensions that a man would have to walk around for years in order to see all the lands that belong to the high priest as a gift from the Lama."