Passion of Judas Back Cover [transcript below]

Judas was expressly deeignated and trained by Jesus to help in fulfilling the task of awakening man's consciousness, symbolised as introducing light into darkness. Judas did what be had to do, exactly as be had been trained to do it, with the courage, conviction and intgrity of the selflees. He knew that he had to play the part of the deliverer in the drama by which Jesus demonstrated what is meant by dying to oneself. But Peter and the rest of the disciples who were present at the Last Supper totally failed to realise what Judas had to do when Jesus ordered bim to carry out the task for which he had been prepared, and which was committed to him at the moment when took communion with him, giving the morsel dipped in wine to Him alone. Since then Peter and his Church for "Sheep" have accused Judas of betraying Jesus, because their minds are petrified by appearances and incapable of perceiving that a psychological truth was being taught by a physical symbol. Jesus said: "I am life and unless a person dies to himself he cannot be re-born" He did not say he would die to accomplish our salvation for us. He was not talking about a physical death and a physical resurrection. He was teaching man how to die to himself, to that imaginary self which keeps every one of us asleep. He was teaching the individual bow to accomplisb what only he can do and which no one can do for hin: to die to himself and let the essential self be born as we awake from the sleep of the senses. For almost two thousand years the "petrified" Church has been trying to make us worship a dead god and send us to a non-existent Heaven. The Church bas been incapable of admitting, and of wishing to admit, that Jeeus and Judas together united the opposites called God and Satan, light and darkness. It has denied that salvation is possible without its so-called intercession. It bas denied Jesus' teaching that only each one of us by ourselves alone can be born anew. It has asserted that it is the only authority and intermediary without whose office no man can become what essentially he is. The servant has to be greater than his master. Judas knows, and many people inside the Church are beginning to know, that this lie is about to be exposed. The Church, through a number of its officials, declares to-day that no longer will it lend itself to some of the greatest crimes in the history of man. Voices from the Church confess that too often has the Church betrayed the teaching of Jesus. Judas chastises this betrayal with all the vigour of Jesus casting out the money-cbangers from the Temple. Shambhala Publications, Inc. Berkeley And London 1973

Passion of Judas