Paper 94 Overview: The Melchizedek Teachings in the Orient

The Salem missionaries, dedicated teachers of Melchizedek's monotheistic revelations, systematically disseminated the gospel of faith in one universal God throughout the Eastern Hemisphere. These diverse emissaries established strategic training centers where they educated indigenous converts, who subsequently functioned as cultural translators propagating Salem truths among their own peoples. Despite facing entrenched polytheistic traditions and encountering the interpretive distortions that inevitably accompanied cultural transmission, these missionaries managed to implant foundational concepts that would significantly influence the evolutionary development of the Orient's major religious systems, including Hinduism, Taoism, Buddhism, and Shinto, while also establishing spiritual precedents that would later facilitate syncretism with Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

Throughout Asia, the Melchizedek teachings underwent profound transformations as they interfaced with indigenous belief systems and encountered varying degrees of reception and resistance. In India, the monotheistic revelations contended with elaborate Brahmanical ritualism and caste rigidity; in China, they were incorporated into ancestral philosophy and imperial ethics; in Japan, they merged with nature worship and emperor veneration; and in Tibet, they contributed to a complex theological amalgamation. The sixth century BCE proved particularly significant, as spiritual luminaries including Lao-tse, Confucius, and Gautama Siddhartha arose nearly simultaneously to recapture, reformulate, and revitalize aspects of Melchizedek's fading revelations. These exceptional individuals, though unable to fully restore the original Salem gospel, nonetheless preserved crucial elements of spiritual truth during a critical period of religious renaissance, establishing philosophical and theological frameworks that would shape Eastern religious consciousness for millennia.

The early teachers of the Salem religion penetrated to the remotest tribes of Africa and Eurasia, consistently promulgating Machiventa's gospel of man's faith and trust in the one universal God as the sole price of obtaining divine favor. Melchizedek's covenant with Abraham served as the archetypal pattern for all early propagation of monotheistic concepts that radiated from Salem and other centers throughout the Eastern Hemisphere. In their missionary zeal and organizational diligence, these teachers displayed an unparalleled enthusiasm and methodical approach that significantly outpaced any subsequent religious mission on Urantia, establishing a remarkable precedent for spiritual outreach across cultural and geographical boundaries.

These missionaries represented diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds, establishing an early model of multicultural cooperation in the service of monotheistic revelation. Their methodology was characterized by strategic cultural adaptation, as they primarily disseminated their teachings through native converts whom they carefully trained in centralized educational institutions. These indigenous students were systematically instructed in the essential tenets of the Salem religion before being commissioned as teachers among their own peoples, thereby facilitating more culturally resonant transmission of unfamiliar theological concepts. This network of training centers established throughout the Eastern world enabled the Salem missionaries to extend their influence far beyond their immediate presence, creating a sophisticated infrastructure for the propagation of Melchizedek's fundamental revelations concerning the Universal Father.

In Melchizedek's era, India represented a cosmopolitan confluence of cultures that had recently fallen under the political and religious dominance of Aryan-Andite invaders from the north and west. Only the northern and western regions of the peninsula had been extensively permeated by these Vedic newcomers, who imported their tribal pantheons and ceremonial practices derived from their Andite ancestors. Religious observances centered around the patriarchal priest and matriarchal priestess roles, with the family hearth serving as the sacred altar for devotional activities. Under the guidance of the emerging Brahman caste of teacher-priests, who were gradually consolidating their religious authority, the Vedic cult was undergoing significant evolution and metamorphosis, particularly in its systematic amalgamation of the thirty-three Aryan deities into a more coherent pantheon.

The Salem missionaries who penetrated northern India taught the concept of the one God of Melchizedek, the Most High of heaven. Their monotheistic portrayal, while somewhat concordant with the emerging concept of Father-Brahma as the ultimate source of all gods, fundamentally challenged the non-ritualistic character of Salem doctrine, directly contradicting the dogmas, traditions, and ceremonial practices of the entrenched Brahman priesthood. The rejection of the Melchizedek gospel of trust in God and salvation through faith marked a pivotal turning point in India's religious development.

While the Salem missionaries had effectively undermined faith in the ancient Vedic gods, the Brahmanical leaders refused to accept their replacement theology of monotheism and salvation through simple faith. In response, the Brahmans meticulously compiled sacred texts to counter Salem teachings, giving rise to the Rig-Veda and subsequent Vedas as they attempted to crystallize, formalize, and codify their rituals. The resulting corpus, representing both sublime concepts and debased superstitions, would form the scriptural foundation for India's religious development for millennia to come.

As the Salem missionaries penetrated southward into the Dravidian Deccan, they encountered an increasingly stratified caste system, a societal mechanism developed by the Aryans to preserve their racial identity amidst the rising tide of secondary Sangik peoples. The Brahman priest caste constituted the essential foundation of this system, presenting a formidable institutional barrier to the egalitarian teachings of the Salem messengers. While this elaborate social stratification ultimately failed in its primary objective of preserving Aryan racial purity, it succeeded remarkably in perpetuating the Brahman priestly lineage, which has maintained its religious hegemony in India continuously into the modern era, representing one of the most enduring religious hierarchies in human history.

With Vedism compromised by the rejection of higher spiritual truth, the Aryan religious system became increasingly vulnerable to encroachment from the indigenous beliefs of the Deccan. In a desperate attempt to maintain religious control amid this perceived existential threat, the Brahman caste embarked on a campaign of systematic self-exaltation. They promulgated the doctrine that sacrifices to deity possessed inherent omnipotent efficacy and articulated a revolutionary theological premise that positioned two essential divine principles at the foundation of the universe: Brahman the deity, and the Brahman priesthood itself.

This unprecedented clerical elevation, which positioned priests above the very gods they served, led to the system's collapse under the weight of its pretentious claims, leaving it vulnerable to the "black flood of inertia and pessimism" that engulfed Indian religious consciousness. The introduction of transmigration, the doctrine of endless reincarnation through human, animal, and plant forms, further undermined spiritual progress by eliminating the hope for advancement in death that had characterized earlier Vedic belief. This debilitating doctrine, coupled with concepts of escape through submergence in the universal Brahman, effectively neutralized human ambition and spiritual striving, initiating two millennia of philosophical stagnation that "shackled the souls of many Hindu peoples in the chains of spiritual hopelessness."

The highest expression of Brahmanism, while scarcely qualifying as a religion in the traditional sense, represents one of humanity's most profound intellectual explorations into the domains of philosophy and metaphysics. The Indian philosophical mind embarked on an extraordinary journey to discover ultimate reality, generating sophisticated speculation across virtually every theological domain except the essential dual concept fundamental to authentic religion: recognition of the Universal Father of all universe creatures and acknowledgment of the ascending experiential path of these creatures seeking to attain the eternal Father, who commands perfection pursuit. Despite this critical omission, Indian thinkers constructed impressively coherent philosophical systems that approached cosmic truth along multiple dimensions.

In their conceptualization of Brahman, Indian philosophers genuinely grasped the profound concept of an all-pervading Absolute, brilliantly identifying this postulate simultaneously as creative energy and cosmic reaction. They envisioned Brahman-Narayana as the Absolute, the infinite IT IS, the primordial creative potency of the potential cosmos, the Universal Self existing in static potential throughout eternity. Had these philosophical pioneers advanced one crucial step further in deity conceptualization—conceiving Brahman as associative and creative, as a personality approachable by created and evolving beings—their system might have achieved the most advanced portrayal of Deity on Urantia, potentially encompassing the first five levels of total deity function.

Their concept of the One Universal Oversoul as the summation of all creature existence brought them remarkably close to comprehending the Supreme Being; their karma principle nearly grasped the repercussional synthesis of time-space actions in the Deity presence of the Supreme; and their teaching that the soul is the indwelling of Brahman approached the truth of Thought Adjuster indwelling. However, these insights were fundamentally compromised by their failure to differentiate between absolute, transcendental, and finite levels of reality, and by their neglect of the essential personality of the Universal Father, who is personally contactable on all levels from the evolutionary creature's limited experience up to the limitless experience of the Eternal Son.

With the passing of centuries, India's populace gradually returned to the ancient rituals of the Vedas, albeit as modified by the Melchizedek missionaries and systematically codified by the Brahman priesthood. This evolutionary synthesis, representing the oldest and most cosmopolitan of the world's religions, continued its development through successive responses to Buddhism, Jainism, and the later influences of Mohammedanism and Christianity. By the time Jesus' teachings reached Indian shores, they had been so thoroughly Occidentalized as to appear fundamentally alien to the Hindu mind, perceived as a "white man's religion" and thus culturally incompatible with indigenous religious sensibilities, despite containing universal spiritual truths that transcended cultural particularities.

Contemporary Hindu theology presents a sophisticated cosmology depicting four descending levels of deity and divinity: the Brahman (the Absolute, Infinite One, the IT IS); the Trimurti (the supreme trinity comprising Brahma, often conceived as self-created from the Brahman, along with Siva and Vishnu, who gained prominence in the first millennium CE); the Vedic and post-Vedic deities (including ancient Aryan gods like Agni, Indra, and Soma); and a complex hierarchy of demigods (supermen, semigods, heroes, demons, ghosts, and spirits). Hinduism's remarkable persistence stems from its unparalleled adaptability and extraordinary capacity for assimilation, functioning as an integral component of India's social fabric rather than a distinct institutional hierarchy.

Its exceptional flexibility has enabled it to accommodate changing conditions through varied historical periods, while its remarkable tolerance has facilitated the incorporation of diverse religious elements, even claiming Buddha and Christ as incarnations of Vishnu. What contemporary India requires is not new religious structures but a revitalization of existing frameworks through the Jesusonian gospel, the Fatherhood of God and consequent brotherhood of all men realized through loving ministry and social service, which would provide the "vitalizing spark of the dynamic love" that could animate Hinduism's existing philosophical and institutional structures.

As the Salem missionaries traversed Asia, disseminating the doctrine of the Most High God and salvation through faith, they inevitably absorbed philosophical and religious concepts from the diverse territories they encountered. These dedicated teachers, commissioned by Melchizedek and his successors, maintained their fidelity to their primary mission while adapting their presentation to local cultures. They successfully penetrated all regions of the Eurasian continent during the second millennium before Christ, establishing their headquarters at See Fuch for over a century, where they systematically trained Chinese educators who would carry their message throughout the domains of the yellow race, ensuring cultural resonance and linguistic accessibility for their monotheistic teachings.

The immediate consequence of this missionary activity was the emergence of proto-Taoism, a religious system fundamentally distinct from its modern namesake. This early Taoist tradition represented a sophisticated synthesis of three complementary elements: the lingering teachings of Singlangton regarding Shang-ti (the God of Heaven), which had established a nearly monotheistic foundation among the Chinese people; the Salem religion's concept of a Most High Creator who bestowed favor through faith; and the Brahman-Absolute concept imported from Indian philosophical traditions, coupled with the desire to transcend evil.

This composite belief system was disseminated throughout the territories of the yellow and brown races, reaching as far as Japan, where it evolved into Shinto. Remarkably, even in this distant region, the populace preserved knowledge of Machiventa Melchizedek's incarnation on earth for the purpose of preserving the name of God in human consciousness. The subsequent confusion and compounding of these beliefs with the expanding cult of ancestor worship significantly altered their theological character, though the Chinese never descended into the "helpless slavery to priestcraft" that characterized many other cultural regions, maintaining a relative degree of spiritual independence that would later facilitate philosophical innovation.

Approximately six hundred years before Michael's incarnation on Urantia, Melchizedek, long since departed from material existence, perceived that the purity of his earthly teachings was being jeopardized through progressive incorporation into older Urantian belief systems. Through an extraordinary coordination of spiritual agencies not fully comprehensible even to planetary supervisors, Urantia witnessed an unprecedented simultaneous manifestation of religious truth through multiple human teachers in the sixth century BCE. In China, this remarkable spiritual renaissance was embodied primarily by two outstanding teachers: Lao-tse and Confucius, who would profoundly reshape Chinese religious and philosophical thought for millennia to come.

Lao-tse built directly upon Salem traditions in his declaration of Tao as the One First Cause of all creation, demonstrating exceptional spiritual perception and cosmological insight. His comprehension of ultimate causation was remarkably sophisticated, articulating that "Unity arises out of the Absolute Tao, and from Unity there appears cosmic Duality, and from such Duality, Trinity springs forth into existence, and Trinity is the primal source of all reality." He taught that goodness generates goodness, but paradoxically, that true goodness transforms even evil into goodness. His conceptualization of faith resembled "the attitude of a little child," and he articulated the eternal purpose of God with remarkable clarity: "The Absolute Deity does not strive but is always victorious; he does not coerce mankind but always stands ready to respond to their true desires; the will of God is eternal in patience and eternal in the inevitability of its expression." Confucius, a younger contemporary, approached spirituality from a more explicitly ethical foundation, compiling and systematizing the moral wisdom of Chinese antiquity while incorporating subtle influences from Salem traditions.

Though initially rejected during his lifetime, his ethical system gradually displaced the shamanic practices of early Chinese religion, substituting moral principles for magical formulations. However, in his attempt to establish ethical order, he inadvertently created a new form of ritualistic veneration centered on ancestral conduct, which persists into modern times. The contrasting approaches of these two figures—Lao-tse's spiritual mysticism and Confucius's ethical pragmatism—established complementary philosophical traditions that would shape Chinese civilization for thousands of years, though the more spiritually profound teachings of Lao-tse would be largely overshadowed by Confucian ethical formalism in subsequent centuries.

Contemporaneous with the flourishing of Lao-tse and Confucius in China, another extraordinary teacher of truth emerged in northern India. Gautama Siddhartha was born in the sixth century before Christ in Nepal, the heir apparent to a modest chieftaincy governing a small mountain valley in the southern Himalayas, rather than the son of "a fabulously wealthy ruler" as later mythologized by his followers. After six years of fruitless engagement with Yogic practices, Gautama formulated the theories that would eventually evolve into Buddhism. His sincere efforts to combat the entrenched caste system and his exceptional unselfishness made him particularly appealing to his contemporaries, as he redirected religious focus away from physical affliction and personal pain toward a more universally accessible path of spiritual development, encouraging his disciples to disseminate his teachings globally.

Amid the chaotic profusion of cult practices in India, Gautama's more moderate and rational teachings offered a refreshing alternative to prevailing religious extremes. He boldly denounced gods, priests, and sacrificial rituals, though his inability to perceive the personality of the One Universal significantly limited his theological vision. Without acknowledging individual human souls, he could not effectively counter the pernicious doctrine of transmigration, nor could he articulate a coherent path toward Paradise and eternal existence. Had Gautama heeded the instruction of the hermit Godad, a descendant of the Melchizedek missionaries who preserved essential elements of the Salem gospel, he might have catalyzed a spiritual renaissance throughout India based on salvation through faith. At Benares, where he established his school, his student Bautan shared the traditions of the Salem missionaries concerning Melchizedek's covenant with Abraham.

Though Gautama lacked a clear concept of the Universal Father, he took a progressive stance on salvation through faith and dispatched his students in groups of sixty to proclaim "the glad tidings of free salvation; that all men, high and low, can attain bliss by faith in righteousness and justice." His wife embraced his teachings and established an order of nuns, while his son initially expanded the movement before eventually compromising on the Salem gospel of divine favor through faith alone. At its inception, Gautama's gospel of universal salvation, free from sacrifice, torture, ritual, and priestly intermediaries, represented a revolutionary departure from prevailing religious practices, bringing consolation to millions despite its subsequent distortion in later centuries.

Initiation into Buddhism required only a simple public profession of faith through the recitation of the Refuge: "I take my refuge in the Buddha; I take my refuge in the Doctrine; I take my refuge in the Brotherhood." Gautama's followers addressed him as Sasta, meaning master or teacher, and while he himself made no superhuman claims, his disciples progressively elevated him to the status of "the enlightened one," the Buddha, and later Sakyamuni Buddha. The original Buddhist gospel was structured around four noble truths concerning suffering: its existence, origins, potential destruction, and the path to its elimination. This theoretical framework was complemented by the practical Eightfold Path of right views, aspirations, speech, conduct, livelihood, effort, mindfulness, and contemplation—a comprehensive ethical system designed not to eliminate desire and affection entirely, but to redirect human aspirations from temporal goals to eternal realities.

Gautama articulated five fundamental moral commandments: prohibitions against killing, stealing, unchastity, lying, and consuming intoxicating liquors, supplemented by optional secondary commandments for committed adherents. His philosophy never clearly delineated the concept of Nirvana, though it theoretically represented a state of supreme enlightenment and supernal bliss wherein all fetters binding humanity to material existence were broken, providing freedom from the desires of mortal life and the cycle of reincarnation.

Siddhartha's greatest philosophical contribution was his proclamation of a universe governed by absolute justice—arguably the most sophisticated godless philosophy ever developed by mortal intellect, effectively eliminating the grounds for superstition, magical rituals, and fear of supernatural entities. However, original Buddhism exhibited a significant structural weakness in its failure to generate a religion of unselfish social service; the Buddhist brotherhood functioned primarily as a community of student teachers rather than as an active service fraternity. Gautama himself prohibited his followers from receiving money, seeking to prevent hierarchical tendencies, yet his personal life demonstrated a deeply social orientation that transcended the limitations of his formal teachings, exemplifying how "his life was much greater than his preachment."

Buddhism achieved widespread popularity by offering salvation through belief in the Buddha, the enlightened one, representing Melchizedek truths more effectively than any other religious system throughout eastern Asia. However, its transformation from a philosophical movement into a dominant religion occurred primarily through the patronage of the low-caste monarch Asoka, who ranks alongside Ikhnaton of Egypt as one of the most extraordinary civil rulers between Melchizedek and Michael. During his twenty-five-year campaign of religious propagation, Asoka systematically trained and deployed more than seventeen thousand missionaries to the furthest frontiers of the known world. Through this unprecedented evangelistic effort, Buddhism became the predominant religion across half the world within a single generation, establishing itself throughout Tibet, Kashmir, Ceylon, Burma, Java, Siam, Korea, China, and Japan, generally representing a significant spiritual advancement over the religious systems it displaced or modified.

As Buddhism expanded beyond its Indian homeland throughout Asia, it underwent substantial transformation, increasingly diverging from Gautama's original teachings. This "miraculized gospel" progressively deified its founder and assimilated elements from the various religious traditions it encountered: Taoism in China, Shinto in Japan, and Christianity in Tibet. After a millennium of cultural prominence in India, Buddhism gradually declined, becoming increasingly Brahmanized before ultimately succumbing to Islamic influence, while throughout much of Asia, it degenerated into ritualistic practices that Gautama himself would have found unrecognizable.

The faith bifurcated into two major traditions: the Hinayana division in the south (Ceylon, Burma, and Indo-China), which maintained the early asocial doctrine in a more fundamentalist form, and the Mahayana or "Great Road" in northern regions (China and Japan), which liberalized the original teachings and developed more socially engaged practices. Despite these historical vicissitudes, Buddhism has persisted as a living, growing religion into the modern era, effectively promoting psychological virtues such as calmness, self-control, serenity, and happiness while providing philosophical resources for preventing sorrow and mourning, significantly enhancing the quality of life for its adherents even when they do not fully embrace all its metaphysical propositions.

Tibet presents an extraordinary religious syncretism where Melchizedek teachings have combined with elements of Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, and Christianity to form a unique theological synthesis. When Buddhist missionaries first entered this region, they encountered primitive conditions closely analogous to those confronted by early Christian missionaries among the northern European tribes, necessitating significant accommodations to indigenous spiritual sensibilities. The native Tibetans, unwilling to abandon their traditional magical practices and talismanic objects, gradually incorporated these elements into an increasingly elaborate religious system that preserved aspects of their shamanistic heritage within a more sophisticated theological framework.

Contemporary Tibetan religious practice presents a remarkably complex ceremonial structure characterized by an extensive priesthood with shaven heads who conduct elaborate rituals featuring bells, chants, incense, processionals, rosaries, images, charms, holy water, ornate vestments, and formal choirs. The system is governed by rigid dogmas and crystallized creeds, incorporating mystic rites and specialized fasts within a hierarchical structure encompassing monks, nuns, abbots, and the Grand Lama. Their devotional practices include prayers to angels and saints, veneration of a Holy Mother figure, confession, and belief in purgatory, supported by extensive monastic institutions and impressive cathedral architecture.

Central to Tibetan practice is the prayer wheel, which practitioners believe activates petitions through rotational movement, transferring spiritual efficacy from mechanical action to metaphysical effect. This extraordinarily cumulative liturgical system incorporates elements from virtually every major world religion except "the simple teachings of the Jesusonian gospel: sonship with God, brotherhood with man, and ever-ascending citizenship in the eternal universe," creating a religious framework that is "inordinately cumbersome and intolerably burdensome" yet psychologically compelling for its adherents.

When Buddhism penetrated China during the first millennium CE, it readily assimilated with indigenous religious customs, particularly the ancestral veneration that characterized Chinese spiritual life. This synthetic religion, with its formalized temples and ritual observances, rapidly gained acceptance among the peoples of China, Korea, and Japan, evolving into their predominant religious system. The development of Buddhism beyond its origins proved somewhat unfortunate; Gautama's followers progressively distorted his historical persona, surrounding his biography with miraculous elements and elevating him to divine status, a mythologized narrative that particularly appealed to adherents of the Mahayana tradition prevalent in northern regions.

The philosophical sophistication of Buddhism reached its apex in its recognition of the relativity of all truth, a conceptual framework that enabled adherents to reconcile and correlate divergences within their own religious scriptures and between Buddhism and other faith traditions. This meta-perspective acknowledged that "small truth was for little minds, the large truth for great minds," providing a hermeneutical principle that facilitated both intellectual flexibility and doctrinal coherence. Advanced Buddhist philosophy posited that the Buddha (divine) nature resided within all men, attainable through disciplined personal endeavor—one of the clearest articulations of the truth concerning indwelling Adjusters within any Urantian religion.

Despite the ceremonial elaborations that accompanied Buddhism's geographical expansion, its philosophical dimension continued to develop among contemplative thinkers who progressively refined their conceptualization of absolute truth and the Absolute itself. This intellectual evolution passed through distinct stages: from veneration of the historical Gautama, to recognition of multiple Buddhas throughout time, to the concept of an Absolute Buddha—"some higher essence, some Eternal One of infinite and unqualified existence" transcending all particular manifestations. While this abstract Deity concept never achieved widespread popular acceptance, it provided intellectual resources for unifying philosophical perspectives and harmonizing cosmological frameworks, though it lacked the religious vitality inherent in more personalized conceptions of divinity that could engage the devotional dimensions of human experience.

Buddhism's cosmological framework suffered from two fundamental weaknesses: contamination by numerous superstitions indigenous to India and China, and the progressive elevation of Gautama from enlightened teacher to Eternal Buddha. For sophisticated practitioners, however, the Buddha concept transcends identification with Gautama's historical personality, just as the Jehovah concept for enlightened Christians transcends the primitive spirit deity of Horeb, a distinction often obscured by terminological conservatism and the sentimental retention of traditional nomenclature that masks the evolutionary refinement of religious concepts. The conceptual development of Buddhism followed a trajectory parallel to many religious traditions, gradually differentiating God from the Absolute through progressive theological clarification.

The concept of God distinct from the Absolute gradually emerged within Buddhism, particularly through the Mahayana tradition, culminating in Japanese theological formulations by Ryonin, Honen Shonin, and Shinran, who developed the concept of Amida Buddha. This theological innovation taught that the soul after death could experience Paradise prior to entering Nirvana, attained through faith in Amida's divine mercies and loving care, establishing a theological framework that balanced acknowledgment of an Infinite Reality beyond comprehension with a personal deity accessible through devotional practices. Buddhism's exceptional strength derives from its adherents' freedom to select truth from diverse religious sources, a characteristic particularly exemplified by Japan's Shin sect, which has revived the missionary spirit of Gautama's original followers.

Contemporary Buddhism is experiencing a significant renaissance, enhanced through interaction with Christianity and expanding educational opportunities, potentially positioning it to receive new insights concerning God and the Absolute for which it has long searched. Like all major world faiths, Buddhism awaits "the proclamation of the ennobling message of Michael, unencumbered by the accumulated doctrines and dogmas of nineteen centuries of contact with the religions of evolutionary origin." This is not merely information about Jesus, but the transformative spiritual reality embodied in his gospel.