Loehr-Daniels Study Course

Postscript to Easter

 By Franklin Loehr

 Manhunt for Judas -Part One

Manhunt!

            Few events in life carry quite the excitement of a hunt. Perhaps this is why a chase is such a frequent feature of movies – we enjoy, even vicariously, pitting our skills and powers against the quarry. We feel the exhilaration of energies gathered and senses sharpened by the challenge.

            And of all the hunts man knows, a manhunt – where the hunted one is another human being – is for the highest stakes.

            Can there be more? Yes.

            Take the intensity of a search. Take the intoxication of a chase. Take the high stakes of human life itself. Add this: that the manhunt be not to destroy but to save – to find and then rescue a person. Then it is we have mountaineers scaling dangerous heights to bring back an injured climber, hundreds of people combing a forest for one small lost child, soldiers and civilians alike braving the killing heat of South Israeli wastelands looking for Bishop Pike.

            At or near the top of the most exciting manhunts of human history is the manhunt for Judas. Judas is a soul beloved of God (as is your soul and mine), greatly endangered by powers of evil. It is a manhunt (we could call it a “soulhunt,” but it takes place mainly on Earth) in which many have taken part, though its major responsibility lies with the other members of his cosmic family. This redeeming pursuit has been on for 12,000 years already. The goal, we are told, is within sight – not more than another thousand Earth years, another several or half dozen Earthlives, if all goes well.

            There are two starting points to the story of Judas. One is his cosmic family. The other is Atlantis.

(1) Judas, as is true also of Lazarus and Mary Magdalene (the first article in our Postscript to Easter series), is of the same cosmic family as is Jesus. This means, of course that to win Judas – or any other member of the Master’s cosmic family – is an extra prize for evil. Evil’s grip on Judas has been if anything more tenacious, more vicious, more difficult to dislodge simply because of who Judas is. Likewise, the reclamation of Judas is even more than usual a victory for good over evil. As is customary with all souls, the ones most involved in the search-and-save process are the members, particularly the older members, of the cosmic family to which that soul belongs. This is one of the major reasons why God set souls as well as persons in families. The family is closer. The family tries harder. The family cares more.

(2) Atlantis is the other starting point of the story of Judas. In the latter days of Atlantis Judas was one standing for good who was overwhelmed and personally destroyed by those ruled by evil. This deep emotional trauma of fear, of betrayal, of loss of faith, of an evaluation of evil as being stronger than good on Earth, and a reaction of frenzied panic, locked evil’s hold onto Judas.

This was not the first of the Judas soul’s lives on Earth. It had incarnated three times previously, each time, of course, in Atlantis. The first two times were uneventful, just the usual matter of getting a new soul started on its Earth program of lives. The third life was very important for it was an incarnation in the ruling class, as a younger brother of the then incarnation of the Jesus soul. The Judas soul and person in that incarnation was very proud, indeed, of its older brother. For that Jesus soul and person represented wisdom, power, experience, ability to deal with any sort of situation, and the wise and kind exercise of the authority which was His as a King among the ruling group.

It was the fourth Atlantean incarnation of the Judas soul, in about 10,000 B.C., that brought catastrophe. He came back expecting the same kind of life he had had when his older brother, the Jesus soul, was a ruler, and the rulers were good. Instead, he found himself at a later time when the ruling groups, the respectable people, the arbiters of good and evil and of life and death, were themselves evil. The Judas soul, as a young man, stood up for his convictions. He was sustained by the soul memories, quite close to the consciousness of that personality, of the times of goodness and of progress which he had known in his previous life there as brother of Jesus.

But as it gradually became apparent that this attractive young man was so naïve (in the eyes of the rulers) as to believe in and want to practice the old fashioned virtues rather than to go along with the newer methods which so enriched the ruling group, judgment was passed against him by the inner council and his destruction decreed. Once his elimination was decreed he became an unsuspecting target upon which the top members of the ruling class could practice and sharpen their dark mental and occult skills. They sported with him as target.

Strange imaginations assailed him – sent by the visualization powers of those who were gradually destroying him. Psychic entities, thought forms, emotional qualities of very low orders, again directed by the ruling classes through their mental and occult powers, assailed him ever more frequently, wearing his defenses thinner and thinner.

His own guides and teachers from the higher realms helped him fight to hold off these attacks, but he was too inept in his own soul beingness to be completely guarded against his own vulnerabilities. Even when he realized he was under heavy attack he refused to quit, to withdraw from that Earthlife. It was his soul decision to stay and fight much longer than he should have.

 He was “plucky,” brave, even defiant – but it was the cockiness of youth rather than the prudence of maturity. He was “a boy scout against James Bond” as the minds of the rulers, who smiled at him in public and went through the motions of fairness and friendship, were eating into his own mind. Finally, in a burst of linked mental powers they “exploded” young Judas.

Let me explain that in more detail. The masses did not count much in that stage and area of Atlantis. They had relatively no minds of their own – quite literally. The masses were under hypnotic and other, subtler, influences which reduced them to mental non-individuality. Thus they were easily used and manipulated, exploited and experimented upon - controlled by those who knew the powers and how to make them work.

In the lifetime he had known previously with his older brother, the good King Jesus, the lower human beings were being gradually brought up in the scale of consciousness. Now all this was reversed. Life itself was losing, as its brightest hope, the human species, was ruthlessly downgraded.

So first of all the Judas soul in that fourth Atlantean lifetime discovered the duplicity of leaders (not all leaders in history, but all the leaders then – for those who did not go along were eliminated, one way or another.) The Judas soul, standing for the good it knew, discovered that it was the respectable people – the elite, the priests, the teachers, the scientists, the doctors, the rulers of his time - who were within the growing hold of evil and regressing the rest of mankind to more of an animal status. It was a sore blow to his idealism, his soul purpose of helping to bring about a better world.

Then along with deceit and despair came intense and utter personal agony. As his strength was drained, through ways he did not even know – as his defenses in every category were weakened and his vulnerability opened ever wider – he came to a final six-week period when his conquerors “played” with him in sadistic tortures.

Teachers in the ancient Wisdom Schools taught their initiates how to go safely through the dangers on the threshold of the astral realm – dangers long since reduced by the work of Jesus and His followers, in preparation for the final assault upon evil on Earth. But here in Judas’ fourth and final Atlantean life the process was reversed.

 A veritable “chamber of horrors” – some real things on the lower astral planes, some deliberately conjured up by the wicked minds “teaching this young upstart a lesson” – descended upon him. All that evil can bring of fear, hurt, pain, loss, betrayal, sickness, dismay, encroachment upon and degrading of his very beingness, complete vulnerability and helplessness, physical and mental and emotional torture and spiritual isolation, was brought upon defeated Judas through the sadistic tortures of those whom he had trusted - the “respectable” people - simply because he had not gone along with them.

Finally in a burst of combined mental power the like of which is fortunately not known today, they “exploded” the brain and person of that fine young Atlantean.

The brain functions, as our doctors show us in electroencephalograms, by a series of various electrical waves. Nerve impulses from all the sense organs and all the body, to and through the brain and back to the body, are electrical. Thoughts have an electrical nature and – as telepathy, prayer for plants, and other researches show – an electro-magnetic wave that proceeds from them.

Just so, there are ways by which stronger thoughts can be gathered and directed to produce disastrous short-circuits and “burn-outs” of a brain. Black magic and the fabled Kahunas of Hawaii are but two remnants of this power, which fortunately is held in check and will not again be released for unregulated Earth knowledge and use.

The result of such an “explosion” and “burnout” of a brain and personality (the brain being, as it were, the physical seat and instrument of the personality until it return to its own soul) – the result was destruction greater than that of mere physical death. This was astral death also. The personal consciousness was destroyed, so there was no after-death excarnate life in which the events of the incarnate period could be reviewed from a higher vantage point, and constructively integrated or eliminated.

When this is done evilly, as with the Judas soul in its final Atlantean incarnation, the result is a double victory for evil: the infliction of maximum suffering and torment, and the eradication of the entity - thus eliminating the chance of an after-life comeback from the effects of evil. That person, that entity, was gone forever.

In the case of the young Judas soul - and he was not the only one thus martyred - there was a deep carryover into the soul itself from this personality disaster. The result was an emotional fear, beyond the reach of reason, caused by the torture, the disaster that can be inflicted by those in power upon the nonconformist in their midst. This emotion - that it was terribly unsafe to be with the “different” people, even when he knew them to be the creative minority ahead of and working for the majority - sank deep into the soul consciousness of this fine, idealistic young soul. It was far safer to stay with the “respectable” people in control.

Thus did evil wound and incapacitate a soul from the Realm of the Lightbearers, a cosmic family member with Jesus Himself. Thus did evil delay for thousands of years the cosmic usefulness of this Judas soul, intended and destined to bring more light and truth to planet earth.

The scar went deep. The soul itself was in a state of shock. It had invested much of its enthusiasm and confidence, much of its very beingness, in that fourth Atlantean life. As its personality’s position eroded, the soul, again unwisely, at first invested even more of itself – so the disaster left it without the usual soul reserve. Thus the “shock to the soul’s system,” as we might say, was very great. The cosmic family, and the forces of God, gathered up the sorely wounded young soul and gave it a long rest.

During this rest period the Judas soul was often in a low-power “selantiford” in the high realms of spirit. This is somewhat of a celestial hospital of a specialized nature. Here specific and general healing qualities, singly and in carefully calculated mixtures, were brought to bear upon the sleeping soul. Even as sunshine brings needed qualities of life to plants and animals upon earth, even as an unborn bee in its individual cell is fed and tended, so were the healing, rebuilding qualities fed into the Judas soul. 

Ed. – Dr. John coined the word “selantiford” for earth usage. It refers to a process used in the spirit world for healing or for adding or increasing qualities within a soul. Anyone who is concerned about having a similar experience can be assured that Judas’ experience was a unique incident that affected both his soul and his astral person. Psychic powers such as those of the evil leaders who destroyed Judas’ brain are no longer allowed in the hands of persons on Earth. This attack on Judas involved his spiritual person as well as his physical brain and is more complicated than an explosion or violent physical death. Therefore, there need be no concern about loved ones who have been killed in explosions or any violent death that destroys a brain. These destroy the body and are a shock to the person, but loving beings help the astral person through the experience. 

This helped. But it was seen that as a portion of the soul’s being had been lost of earth, so must the soul return to earth to regain that portion of itself. The wound inflicted upon earth had gone very deeply and only upon earth could the soul find complete healing. After some 2,000 years of Earth time had passed the soul of Judas was slightly awakened, as it were, just enough to send a very small part of it out into a very simple and safe earthlife.

Along with this aspect of healing the soul of Judas, there was also, of course, the matter of rehabilitating that attractive, courageous, important young light bearer for the accomplishment of its purposes on earth. The conviction that it was unwise, unsafe, even disastrous, to stand on earth with a minority, could be changed only by other experiences upon earth. Evil had triumphed; the soul, to remain a soul, would have to triumph.

Thus the Judas soul must be returned to Earth. Two processes would happen here, in sequence:

(1) First the Manhunt for Judas would have to take place – the human experiences which would bring rehabili-tation, self-confidence, even salvation. Many other souls would have some part in this, some knowingly and some unknowingly (and each one attaining some of his own growth thereby as well.)

(2) After this rehabilitation, after the deep subconscious emotional fears and agonies were drained and conquered – the purpose, the God-given destiny, of this soul could proceed. The Judas soul is to be a fine spiritual leader in generations yet ahead – later than had been expected, but God has time. And God will be needing fine spiritual leaders in every generation, so the Judas soul has not lost its chance.

I was personally much interested and wondering what the first return Earthlife would be for the Judas soul. What would you think? If you were God, or on the planning committee of that cosmic family, what would you contrive? … I could not decide just what would be good to do. This is one of the many, many decisions and developments I have been quite happy to leave up to God!

 The decision was for a low intelligence obscure life with no major happenings in it. A little group was chosen, ranging generally from about 90 to 115 persons – not a family group, but still small to be called a tribe – in what was then an obscure part of the world, the northwest coast of Europe. They lived upon the animals they could catch, the roots and berries they could find, and to an important degree upon fish. Thus they held close to the coast, heading a bit south into northern France as the winters came, ranging more northward by summer. The tribe was small, avoided conflict, and held strictly to itself.

The Judas soul was born as a third child to its parents, though essentially all the adults were parents to all the children. The general intelligence level of the entire group was low, and this particular boy was perhaps even more of a dullard than most. Thus in this first re-introduction into Earth life the Judas soul lived an unemotional, essentially uneventful life, in its native valence, with no decisions of any major nature required of him, in a society where standards and customs were fixed and unquestioned by all.

One night as he slept the small portion of soul invested in that personality (a “soul-breath” we might call it; purposefully, the major portion of the soul was held still asleep) was removed. He was then some fifteen or sixteen years of age. His tribe noted dully his death as they found his cold body when morning came, but no particular attention was paid a death. Each tribal member felt a certain loss, but the body was buried in a shallow grave and the tribe went on its accustomed way.

After this life had been concluded the soul was awakened, as it were, and presented with the story of what had happened. A beginning of confidence was thus established within the soul that it could, after all, handle Earth lives – if the earth lives were of a simple type. It had not really realized that earth living of this non-demanding nature existed.

Ed. - Even our readers who are aware of Dr. John’s teachings on the soul will puzzle on this last paragraph. We know that the soul divides into a masculine and feminine half for the purposes of each incarnation, but some may not realize that only a portion of that half actually incarnates. The remainder may be nearby but often is in other realms. Dr. John has often said that as long as we are persons we will never fully comprehend the complex soul that we actually are.

One way I look at it is by realizing that a very small portion of our brain is actually used. In addition, of that small portion of our brain some of its functions are autonomous and beyond our awareness. For example, we are not usually aware when our brain tells our cells to take in nourishment. That does not mean that that part of our brain is not functioning. In a similar way, a large portion of the Judas soul was unaware – except subconsciously, so to speak – of the portion that was incarnate.

The soul was quite willing to accept the suggestions that within a hundred or so years it come back into a somewhat similar environment, this time in Finland. Here more was demanded of the individual simply to survive, but the personality took pleasure in meeting the non-personal challenges of climate, and the soul responded with a certain little joy of its own in this earthlife. Again, it was not a full life. The soul portion was withdrawn when the boy was nineteen. But another step had been taken, another quantum of confidence achieved by the soul that it could handle earthlife.

So gradually, and with much dependence upon its guides and teachers, particularly its older Cosmic Family members, the Judas soul was brought into a series of Earthlives which, although outwardly uneventful, brought to the soul some healing of its badly shaken confidence that it could handle earthliving.

The time came then that greater qualities of confidence could be begun. And we see the Judas soul as a little boy, about five years old at the time, in a group that had been captured to be sold into slavery. During the evening an older brother of the little boy instructed him to drop on his hands and knees and wiggle through the crowd, then run away.

The older brother (a cosmic family member) then created a diversion, and the little fellow did get away. Running in the darkness, however, he experienced a bad fall – but was picked up by someone kind who cared for him. This experience allowed a beginning restimulation of the fear of groups and the fear of men in groups, which of course that soul would have to overcome in time.

 But it also brought two important experiences: (1) Escape from danger and from power, and (2) care even from a stranger. The man who picked up the injured tot took him into his own home, where the wife accepted him with the several little ones of her own and cared for him.

This was in an Arabian area on the south shore of the Mediterranean, the northern part of the continent now known as Africa. Again the soul was removed while the personality was yet young – this time, not quite seven years old. But there had been introduced into his Earthlife experience (1) the escape from evil Earth powers, and (2) the experience of kindness and of being care for, the beginning once again of a concept of brotherhood. It was a good life.

Soon after this – less than 50 years later – the Judas soul incarnated in an Arabian settlement much like that in which he had found kindness before. This time more of an Atlantean nature and the true stature of the soul – for the Judas soul is characterized by comeliness, attractiveness of body and mind and being – came forth in the personality.

He lived in a community that was well guided by the precepts of its religious leaders, and the young man responded with increasing confidence and joy to the teaching “All men are my brothers.” Along with this, of course was coming the experience of “Yes, I can trust” – simply because brotherhood was emphasized in that community.

The quality of trust, so badly shaken in that soul in the fourth Atlantean life, now began to be restimulated and strengthened in an experience where trust was not misplaced. Brotherhood was the guiding rule of all members of that community, and could be entered into with joy once again.

Following this rather quickly was another lifetime reinforcing by repetition the experiences of the immediately preceding life. This was in a small island community. Food was plentiful on the island, visitors were unknown, competition was a thing only of an afternoon’s canoe race, of who could gather the most coconuts within a given time. The Judas soul really opened up in this lifetime, entering into it quite completely. The guides and teachers took the opportunity to get that soul to know that it could be among mankind and yet be safe. Yes, and more than safe – it could express again its qualities of friendliness, its curiosity to learn.

The young man did not marry, although that made little difference in that community. He loved to spend time with various individuals and with small groups –to come to know what people were like inside their bodies. He was not much of a “doer.” He was much more interested in coming to know other people for what they truly were in themselves.

There was no need to align himself with the successful ones, because all in that tribe were considered successful. And though certain ones were naturally looked to for leadership and whatever qualities they possessed in superior measure, no one was considered inferior and no one individual or class ruled the others.

Our next article will continue with part two of the Judas soul’s history.

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