True Life of Jesus of Nazareth

Who REALLY Was Mary Magdalene?
And What Was Her Relationship to Jesus?

By Lianne Downey

Note: The following article about Jesus' betrothed was originally released by the Unarius Educational Foundation in 1988, when controversy over Martin Scorsese's film The Last Temptation of Christ brought the issue to the public forefront. The article has been updated by the author for contemporary reference.

"It is time for Mary 'Magdalene' herself to step forward, and clear up this controversy!" proclaimed Ruth Norman (Uriel) in 1988 when Martin Scorsese's film The Last Temptation of Christ first stirred raucous public debate over this enigmatic figure's historical role.

Mrs. Norman was director and cofounderof the Unarius Academy of Science in El Cajon, California, from its inception in 1954 to her passing in 1993. Among the dozens of books she authored, she penned several about her past life as Mary of Bethany. She maintained that the real Mary was the betrothed of Jesus of Nazareth, and was wrongly accused and called by the name of the prostitute, Magdalene, by jealous disciples after Jesus' death. Now with Dan Brown's compelling thriller, The Da Vinci Code, leaping off shelves, her assertions have taken on a new resonance.

The controversy Mrs. Norman was referring to in 1988 was the hullabaloo surrounding Scorsese's film, which had religionists in an uproar even before its opening. But the success of Brown's remarkable storytelling has raised new questions, and reveals strong evidence supporting Mrs. Norman's memory of past-life events!

She always maintained that it was her mission to serve as Jesus' equal and polarity, and in his absence, to assume a leadership role just as she did in the 20th century.

If the truth be known, Mrs. Norman pointed out in 1988, neither version of the story was correct—neither that portrayed in the film, nor that claimed by various religious doctrines!

Mrs. Norman, or Uriel as most knew her, first became aware of her past lifetime two thousand years ago in 1954, when she met Dr. Ernest L. Norman. The two immediately recognized one another as "old friends," and within a short time they married and began the work that resulted in the complete curriculum of spiritual, scientific teachings known as the Unarius Library, a self-help science of Past Life Therapy.

Although they began this work late in life (both were in their early fifties), they soon realized that it had been planned by them long, long ago. They would complete the mission that had been cut short two thousand years before, when Jesus' teaching mission was interrupted by the Crucifixion, which was NOT a part of his plan to bring an enlightened new understanding to humankind on Earth!

Soon after they met, Dr. and Mrs. Norman began to experience a variety of "tune-backs" to their past association in Jerusalem. Several well-known psychics confirmed Dr. Norman's previous identity, as have many of his students in the years since, through their own reattunementto their involvement in the life and death of Jesus.

For Uriel, some of these early flashbacks were quite dramatic, as she explained in her autobiographies, The Bridge to Heaven and My 2000-Year Psychic Memory as Mary of Bethany—13th Disciple to Jesus of Nazareth. She describes vividly how she relived the trauma of that day in the garden of Gethsemane when her beloved one was taken from her side, arrested by soldiers.

"We took a little ride and came across an area (outside San Diego) that looked to him much like Jerusalem and he stopped the car," she wrote in My 2000-Year Psychic Memory. "We went into the area, which was rough and hilly, and found a green spot where we could sit comfortably. I was lying back relaxing with my eyes closed, and when I sat up to speak to him, he was nowhere around!

"He had taken a walk a little distance out of my view. My immediate feeling and awareness was, 'Oh, the soldiers have captured Jesus!' for I was so definitely attuned to that past Jerusalem-Gethsemane era and time. With that realization and awareness, my entire body began shaking and vibrating severely. Suddenly, I was in a psychic reliving and severe shock! I felt a strong purging coming on. Ernest then moved into the scene and saw my drastic, negative condition. We both ran to the car and quickly drove to a nearby gas station restroom. If there had not been one there, I don't know what I would have done, for I experienced the most severe purging of black liquid! On the way returning home, I found I was completely suspended out of my body, and thusly I remained for ten full days and nights.

"This was the most severe reliving and past-life attunement or flashback anyone could ever experience, and for those next full ten days, I was more in bed than out, which necessitated Ernest to shop and prepare his own food. I cared not to eat during those two weeks' time. At times I was even unable to focus my eyes. They would roll back in my head, and at times I couldn't even lift my arms, my energy was so low. It was a most severe reliving!

"All during this ten-day time, severe psychic cleansing was being done on the astral, resulting from this nearly two thousand years ago Jerusalem life and all of the negative debris I had collected during the intermitting time . . ."

For many years, Uriel watched as the nail-hole scars on the palms of Dr. Norman's hands—which had simply appeared one day—would shrink and bleed each spring as Easter approached. He did not like to talk about this lifetime, she writes, and could never stand the sight of a cross.

But, strangely enough, once it had been confirmed to their satisfaction that they had, indeed, lived as Jesus and his betrothed (whose father, Lazarus, ran an inn in the small area called Bethany), the 20th-century couple did not think much more about it. Their psychic recall had been helpful to them in explaining how their present work (writing and publishing books and holding classes) was a continuity of the mission they had been unable to complete two thousand years ago. But it was not an "ego-boost," nor of any great consequence in light of what was needed for them to accomplish in the present.

Years later, Uriel recalled, a student arrived with an old book in hand. It had been published in 1899 by a man, Alexander Smyth, who had received its contents in a series of mental visions and had written down all that he was told by the "spirits" of Paul and Judas. This book, The Occult Life of Jesus of Nazareth, confirmed every detail that the Normans had previously relived and recalled! Including Jesus' betrothal to Mary, and his frequent visits to the home she shared with her father and sister! (The book was out of copyright and is now available from Unarius Publications with a new title, The True Life of Jesus of Nazareth – The Confessions of St. Paul).

It was then, Uriel said, that she began to really pay attention to this past lifetime. Somehow hearing it from another source gained her attention, and from then on she truly knew that she was once again walking by the side of the man who had taught from the hillsides of Galilee, before the plots against him resulted in his crucifixion and the subsequent distortion of his true teachings by his disciples, under the negative leadership of the one who changed his name from Saul of Tarsus to Paul.

It was after Jesus' death that the followers who had always been jealous of Mary's close relationship with their teacher turned their venom toward her, spreading the lies and false identity that have caused her true existence to vanish from the pages of history. They feared the loss of powerful positions Saul-Paul had promised them if the true story of Jesus' life and teachings became known!

However, Mary had spent many lifetimes developing this compatibility with the Master Jesus and did, in fact, possess a spiritual development of equal Mastership. It was not the first, nor the last time they would incarnate side by side to bring a new teaching to the truth-starved people of Earth. Women, of course, were not given any position in society two thousand years ago, other than as wife or mother. But Mary was able to work closely with one of the disciples (John) and actually wrote many of the lines that now appear in the Bible under other names. "Revelations" is largely the result of her own pen, and although grossly misinterpreted by most church dogmas, the true meaning of this inspired writing will one day become apparent, according to Mrs. Norman, as the future unfolds for the people of Earth.

Gloom and destruction of all physical life is not what is meant by this prediction, she explained. Rather, the work of her joint mission with Jesus, or Dr. Norman, or Raphiel as he is truly called, was successful, finally, in the 20th century! This time the full teachings, which form an interdimensional understanding of life's purpose and plan, have been safely encoded into 125 volumes of new, scientific information that will be invaluable to humanity's future development.

Dr. Norman left the physical dimension some years before his wife, in 1971, but throughout their years together the two kept to themselves, breaking ties with families and former friends in order to safely and expediently bring these books into existence. They were well aware of the dangers inherent in spreading truth among people who are resistant to it, and they took no chances.

After Dr. Norman's departure for higher realms his wife carried on, publishing and publicizing his work through the nonprofit Unarius Educational Foundation. The organization is still dedicated to the distribution of their teachings through books, audio and videotapes, public access television, the Internet, and educational seminars.

"Now the truth can be told," Uriel explained in 1988, "because all has been completed and is securely in place for the future development of the earth people! The new Spiritual Age of Man is dawning, and the old ways of the past will soon fall away from him as he embraces this new, more scientifically biased understanding of his purpose in living through a physical body on planets such as Earth."

She expressed her gratitude to have finally overcome the negative forces that attempted to halt and block the mission of Uriel and Raphiel, and many other Lighted Ones who have come to Earth as Teachers and Way-showers in the past!

"Never again will the negative forces gain the upper hand over the ignorant earthman!For Truth will out, and knowledge will set him free!" she proclaimed. "Knowledge of himself as an infinite, spiritual being that cannot be extinguished by the phenomenon you call 'death.' The continuity of life, from life to life, will soon be understood by one and all!

"This was the teaching that Jesus attempted to bring two thousand years ago, but his efforts were halted by those who wished to gain some material wealth or power for themselves. Not so this time! Now the choice is given for any soul who quests for answers. The true teachings of Jesus, updated into the language of the 21st century, are available through the science of Unarius. That stands for UNiversal, ARticulate, Interdimensional Understanding of Science!

"It is a bright and beautiful future that awaits the people of Earth!"