In This I Believe

An Invitation to En Esto Creo

"The PBMA is patterned in the history and footsteps of Jesus Christ." So the Divine Master said. The claim is bold, and it invites a closer look. If it holds, then the Bible is far more than a distant point of reference. It becomes the key to the teachings of Ruben Ecleo Sr., to the foundation of the PBMA, and to the spiritual path of the Rubenians, his faithful followers.

Many people today know the Ecleo name through politics, as a name bound up with the government of Dinagat. That is a sliver of who the Founder was. What tends to be overlooked is his power in what he called the science of Divine Healing. The Divine Master preached and taught, and he was also, in a very real sense, a spiritual adept.

The healing he practised was direct and concrete, and by the accounts of those who saw it, miraculous. Like Jesus, whose example he followed, the Divine Master is said to have healed the paralysed, given sight to the blind, cast out afflicting spirits and even raised the dead, all through the divine word. I do not know what every reader will make of these stories. Some will dismiss them outright. For those who were there, or who have felt even a glimmer of that power, they were moments of transformation, and the healing in the Divine Master's hands reached past the body into the soul.

That is part of what sets his legacy apart. He drew no attention to himself. He channelled something higher and sacred to bring change where the need was greatest. To my mind this marks his spiritual role: he taught about the Divine, and he embodied it.

Another layer is seldom discussed, the use of Kabbalah, and of gematria in particular, to understand the spiritual identity of Ruben Ecleo Sr. My book En Esto Creo (In This I Believe) explores it in detail. In it I hold that the Divine Master was more than a teacher or a prophet. He was the Comforter whom Jesus promised:

Nevertheless I tell you the truth; It is expedient for you that I go away: for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you; but if I depart, I will send him unto you. (John 16:7)

I know how staggering that reading sounds. The book reaches it through the old Jewish art of reading Scripture by number, and readers can test each step for themselves.

By gematria the book finds that the known names of God resolve again and again to the number 7, a sacred number in many traditions. Applied to certain verses, above all those long wrapped in mystery, the method brings something startling to light. The title "Son of Man," which scholars have debated for centuries, becomes a cipher. The Man is Reuben, the tribe whose banner in the camp of Israel bore the figure of a man, and the Son of Man is the son of Reuben. The book asks whether Jesus, at his second coming, will arise from that tribe.

I do not claim certainty about all of it. Parts of it seem too exact to be coincidence, and other parts stretch the limits of what I can grasp. Madame Blavatsky warned that ideas of this kind would meet with incredulity, and some readers may be right to doubt. This book is not for everyone.

I write, and read, for those who are open enough to wonder, and who believe that beneath the surface of Scripture, history and doctrine something deeper waits to be revealed. If you are willing, follow this thread with me, with curiosity in place of certainty, and see where it leads.

Madame Blavatsky closed the introduction to The Secret Doctrine with words she built on a line of Montaigne, and they serve here as well:

Gentlemen, I have here made only a nosegay of culled flowers, and have brought nothing of my own but the string that ties them. Pull the "string" to pieces and cut it up in shreds, if you will. As for the nosegay of FACTS—you will never be able to make away with these. You can only ignore them, and no more.

H. P. Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine, vol. I, Introductory, after Montaigne, Essays III.12

En Esto Creo (In This I Believe) is a personal exploration of faith, spirituality and Qabalistic gematria, and of the teachings of the PBMA and Rubenian International. It brings together biblical reflection, religious philosophy and the author's own spiritual journey.

inthisibelieve@gmail.com