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| Simplified Scientific Christianity |
"Suffer the little children to come unto me and forbid them not, for such is the kingdom of God. Verily I say unto you, Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child shall in no wise enter therein.”
This writer had a friend who traveled the world over to see how children played. He wrote and published his findings, but scholarship was not his intent. He did what he did for the simple reason that he was fascinated by children’s play. One thing he learned was that children’s games were similar everywhere, even when there were no cultural connections. There were unique games in every society, but they were not the majority. Something similar might be said about children’s stories. It even applies to the stories of the childhood of humanity, myths. Max Heindel tells us that myths were given to early humanity to inculcate things of great spiritual importance into our awakening consciousness.
Comparative mythologists find striking similarities in many myths of different societies, even when the story lines are quite odd. Seeking the reason for the similarities has kept scholars occupied for several centuries. There is not general agreement about the reason for the similarities. There are even heated debates about the matter. This phenomenon is no problem for mystics. Mystics know we are of one common Universal Spirit. The spiritual truth is the same for all. The differences are cultural differences, not spiritual differences. Differing cultures are vehicles of unfoldment for individuals with varying evolutionary needs. The spirit is the same; the vehicles to bring out its infinite potential facets are not.
As Rosicrucian aspirants, we have been given the retrospection exercise as a tool to attain spiritual objectivity. In performing this exercise, we are told to judge ourselves accurately, impartially, and objectively. To do that, we try to step outside of our personal, subjective perspective, because it is likely to bias, excuses, and self-justification, instead of plain truth. On this subject Max Heindel was fond of quoting Bobby Burns: “O wad some Pow’r the giftie gie us, to see ourselves as others see us.” This practice of externalization and objectification can be successfully applied to larger things, such as Christianity. We can often see and understand things about Christianity from perspectives outside of Christian literature. Mythology often serves that purpose quite well.
Resurrection is important to Christians. It is something we want to better understand. In mythology there are many myths of resurrection, and often, many variants. Greek mythology alone has three major resurrection stories: the myth of Uranus, the myth of Dionysus, and the myth of Zagreus. The myth of Zagreus is the shortest and simplest, so we will use it for an economy of words. We will further abbreviate the story to suit our need.
Zagreus was the son of Zeus, the chief of the Greek deities, by Persephone, Zeus’ daughter by Demeter, his sister. Immediately we find ourselves in a world of complex spiritual relationships, replete with meaning. Hera, the wife and sister of Zeus, hears of this union, and its fruit. In jealousy she commands some Titans to destroy the child. The Titans disguise themselves by powdering their entire bodies with gypsum. They sneak up on the child and distract him with playthings: a pine cone, a tuft of wool, a mirror, golden apples and others (all representing things about initiation to this day). They have to be careful, because even as a child he could destroy them because he is a god. In his distraction, they pounce on him. He resists by transforming himself into a series of fierce animals. When they finally pin him down in his natural state, they tear his body into pieces which they commence to eat as divine food. During the feast, the goddess Athena swoops in and takes the heart. She encases the heart in a gypsum statue into which she breathes the breath of life. When the statue comes to life, it gains its immortality and, in resurrection, ascends to his father Zeus.
This story, even in brief, is rich in spiritual meaning. It is worth reading in full, and pondering. This simplified statement is sufficient to our ends, so we can move on to our next resurrection story from ancient Egypt. Ancient Egypt was already an old society in classical times. Due to its age, there are many, many variants of its main resurrection myth, the myth of Isis and Osiris. We will use the Greek version by Plutarch who, in his time, held the chair in Plato’s academy. We do this because Plutarch was an initiate and his version is loaded with hints about the mysteries. We will again prune the story to suit our needs.
Geb and Nut, father earth and mother sky, unite. They have five children in one batch: Osiris, Isis, Nepthys, Set and Horus the Elder. Osiris and Isis are husband and wife, as well as brother and sister. In fact, they coalesce and conceive while still in the womb. As they are born, Isis gives birth to their son Horus the Younger. Osiris, the first born, becomes king of Egypt. Set, the god of disorder, marries his sister Nepthys. He becomes enraged when Osiris sires a child by her. He wants revenge. He proclaims that he has built a magical coffin that will give power to whomever it fits. Everyone in the kingdom tries it, but no one fits. When Osiris tries, it fits perfectly. At the moment Osiris gets into the coffin, 72 confederates of Set slam the lead-lined coffin shut and seal it. The coffin is then launched into the Nile. It floats off and eventually makes its way to Byblos where a tamarisk tree grows around it to become his tomb. Eventually, the king of Byblos hews the tree down to serve as a pillar for his new palace. Isis learns of the location of her husband’s coffin. She arrives to take the ark for herself and leaves the tree-trunk for the king. She endeavors to revive Osiris by magic. Just as she is about to succeed, she is distracted, and Set steals the coffin. He cuts the body of Osiris into fourteen parts. These he distributes around Egypt, except for the penis which he throws into the river Nile. Isis journeys throughout Egypt to find and collect the pieces in twelve days. She cannot find the penis because the fish have eaten it. She assembles the pieces, magically generates a penis, and restores him to life. His earthly resurrected life is short. He dies and enters the underworld where, resurrected, he becomes king and judge of the dead.
The mythology of the Jews is peculiar in that it is not given out as myth, but as history. The Jews were strictly monotheistic. They were forbidden to worship many or false gods. This did not prevent them from assimilating foreign culture in their captivities in Babylon and Egypt. Hebrew numerology can be traced to the Chaldean Book of Numbers, and some astro-mythology was taken from Egypt. The ancient Jews write of interactions with divine hierarchies, like angels and archangels, but they do not seem to have a lineage of gods. Instead, they had a history of patriarchal succession, which did take on foreign influence, especially from Egypt. For example, the Atum, of Atum-Ra, became Adam and Set became Seth, which gives a very different view of the mythical first family, which view comes from the Egyptian children of fire, rather than from the Bible, written by the darlings of Jehovah, the children of water. The stories absorbed from other cultures, which are written in the Bible as history, receive different treatment in the Bible, but that is a matter of religious politics better suited to a different essay than this. Even astrology is built into the succession of patriarchs. In the Old Testament we read, “Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel … I will multiply your seed as the stars of heaven ….” Most readers mistakenly think “as the stars of heaven” means quantity. It really means quality, quality in character. This is made clear in the prophecies of Israel. The character of Israel’s children, given in his prophecies, clearly corresponds to the signs of the zodiac. The ancient Jews were an astrological people. Flavius Josephus (a Jew, a Roman citizen, and a historian) lived around the time of Jesus. He wrote that when the twelve tribes encamped, they did so in a formation, under astrological banners. The patriarch was not ripped or cut into pieces, but was divided into tribes of progeny.
Astrology, itself, has its own divisions of the night sky into parts. Even those with a superficial knowledge of astrology are aware of the grand, astrological human of the heavens. It is a figure of a human arched into a circle with the toes touching the head, superimposed on the zodiac, though some mystics might claim that the zodiac is superimposed on the heavenly human. In any case, the head is in Aries, the area of the neck is in Taurus and so on. Even in its most crude and simple form, this representation is helpful to learning the inner cause of illness. For example, one can follow the course of the symptoms of the common cold as they pass from the head to the throat and then to the lungs successively while the astrological significator of the illness, ofen the Moon, is passing through Aries, Taurus and Gemini, or their opposites, Libra, Scorpio, and Sagittarius.
When one is healed of a serious condition, one is said to have been made whole. This correctly implies that in illness, one has deviated from wholeness. It is the need to be whole that is behind an illness, though the symptoms and the specific, separative, causal sin, or deviation from wholeness, may be manifest in one part of the body represented by one part of the zodiac. It is a healthy wholeness that must be restored or resurrected. This is true in the macrocosm and microcosm, simultaneously. The whole of humanity must be united and resurrected as one. If even one, a god in the making, is left out, the feeling of incompleteness would be analogous, on a small scale, to the feeling one has in assembling a jigsaw puzzle only to find one piece missing. Each individual is essential to the perfected whole. “What man of you, having an hundred sheep, if he loses one of them, doth not leave the ninety and nine in the wilderness, and go after the one which is lost, until he find it?” Thoughts of personal salvation are often selfish and are, thereby, counter to salvation. The attitude which indicates fitness to continue on, might be a willingness to stand back that someone else might continue on. “Greater love hath no man than he lay down his life for his friends” has meaning beyond personal martyrdom. The grand, zodiacal human stands for all of humanity as well as the individual. One might even think that all of humanity, as a whole, is ill. Emerson said, “A sick man is a sinner found out.” We are all sinners, individually and collectively. We need to see ourselves, individually and collectively, as a healthy whole to fulfill the resurrection.
One would think seeing something in whole is a simple and easy matter. It is, and it isn’t. In our fall into materialism, it almost always isn’t. In our bodies we cannot perceive a 360° panorama. Botanists don’t always agree on how to differentiate one plant species from another. Some think the essential difference is in the leaves, others think in the flower. Is it the seed from which it springs? the sprout?, the stem?, the leaves?, the flower?, the fruit?, or the new seed? It is the whole cycle and perhaps more, because the plant species, itself, evolves. Similarly, conventional Christians have argued about the resurrection of the physical body, which is what they think will happen, even though scripture says otherwise. Is one resurrected as one was at death? If so, heaven would be occupied by mostly sick, old people. Some think it is as one was in the prime of life (at least those who reach the prime of life), even though one is wiser later in life. Children are beautifully open-minded but too immature to appreciate the splendor of the higher worlds. Science has complicated the matter of physical resurrection. There is the problem of the atoms. All of us have atoms that have been in the physical bodies of others. Who gets the shared atoms at the resurrection? In Revelation, the biblical literalists believe 144,000 will be saved. That might be the limit of people who can claim their atoms without dispute. Clearly, our physical bodies are not resurrected and, hopefully, all can participate in the resurrection as a whole.
We, who believe in successive rebirths, are not free from this type of dilemma either. What is an individual? It could be said that one is the entire life cycle from third heaven to third heaven, just as a plant is a cycle from seed to seed. The question then becomes “which rebirth?” or “all rebirths?” In the larger picture, we are more than our manifestations, just as God is more than God’s manifestations.
Astrologers face similar problems. In assembling and synthesizing the parts of a horoscope, there is the hope of understanding the individual as a whole. It doesn’t work because surprises arise from the unseen, spiritual individuality, the spiritual whole behind the horoscope. Studying all previous horoscopes might help, but it doesn’t solve the fundamental problem.
Eclecticism and assembling disparate parts to simulate a whole, can help by stimulating intuition but, by itself, is insufficient and can be misleading. Understanding wholes is impossible for consciousness focused in parts, because wholes are in spirit. We need something spiritual to understand wholes. Intuition is a good start. An intuition is from a spiritual whole that doesn’t require something outside of itself to be true.
Some parts of the Bible are good for stimulating intuition, as well as providing insight into wholes and resurrection. First Corinthians 13:12 (pluralized) reads “…now we know in part, but then we shall know even also as we are known.” Clearly, when we are known in spirit, we are known in whole. In the transcendent spiritual worlds there are no parts, only wholes. First Corinthians 15:22 tells us, “For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ all shall be made alive.” Verses 42 - 45 elucidate and provide further insight: “So also is the resurrection of the dead. It is sown into corruption; it is raised in incorruption: it is sown in dishonor; it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness; it is raised in power: it is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body…. And so it is written, the first Adam was made a living soul; the last man Adam was made a quickening spirit.” These verses make it clear that there are two Adams, the first Adam and the last Adam. What is not so clear, and what needs further elucidation, is that there are two first Adams. Cabalistically, there is the heavenly, first Adam called Adam-Kadmus, and sometimes Adam Primus. Then there is the earthly, first Adam, usually referred to as Adam-Adami, the human patriarch. Correspondingly, we shall see there are two last Adams.
The Rosicrucian philosophy helps us to understand this. In its Christian mysticism, we learn that each of us is a spiritual entity, a spiritual being. In the time of Max Heindel, the word used for that spiritual being was the Ego. That word, using the capital E, is still applicable, but with the rise of psychology, the word ego has taken on other, not so spiritual, meanings. In our times, Self is probably a better and more accurate word. In Christian Mysticism, we learn that the Self, or Ego, is a threefold spiritual being. This means that three states of spirit unite to form an individual being, a spiritual entity. The combining is not an assemblage; it is a “linking” of awakening, and individualizing states of spirit. The Divine Spirit is the ever invisible will to be. It is. Being in this usage is both active and passive, but not overt. Out of the will to be, comes overt, lively manifest being. This state of being is called Life Spirit. Since it came into manifest being from Divine Spirit without any external agency, it is sometimes called the “alone begotten” or the “begotten alone” — which is often misunderstood as the “only begotten”. It is singular, but to refer to it only in that way, is to miss an essential element of its character, its birth from and within Divine Spirit. It is also known as the Logos, the Word, and the Son. Christ is the personification of Life Spirit. As we are looking at it, it is the original Adam, the heavenly first Adam. It is the first Adam because all of the individual Selves are born in, and from, it. In this sequence of transcendental, creative logic, the Theogony, the will to be gives birth to manifest being which gives birth a being, actually many beings. That individual being is called a Human Spirit. It is not alone or singular. Once one individual being is conceived, there is no limit to possible conceptions— we are all spiritual children of the heavenly first Adam. This Human Spirit is the Self, the Ego, the Individuality. It is this Individuality, which is a spiritual whole, which manifests repeatedly in many forms and environments to bring out many of the infinite, possible facets of the Universal Spirit in the divine creation.
These many manifestations occur in an orderly, evolutionary creation based on the principle of analogy. This evolutionary creation is reflectively projective. This means spiritual, creative forms and activities are projected reflectively into material forms and activities. These reflective activities are roughly coetaneous, but not simultaneous because material experience precedes spiritual awakening and linking. The spiritual creative work is not ours alone to begin with, because we are still mostly unconscious. We are assisted by great, divine beings. The will of Divine Spirit is awakened through experiencing and sustaining material forms in a mineral-like condition during the first, great creative period. The lively, bright, overt Life Spirit, which is born of the Divine Spirit, is awakened through experiencing its reflection in a form vitalizing the material forms of the first period, in a plant-like condition during the second great creative period. The individual Selves, or Human Spirits, are formed within and linked to Life Spirit through experiencing their reflections in a form of motivation of the previously plant-like forms of the second period, in animal-like forms during the third great, creative period. In each period the becoming spiritual beings draw more closely to their material creations, and the combined material forms reach toward their creative source. With each period the Universal Spirit, in which all of this is happening, immerses Itself more deeply into matter, and then withdraws. This is done in seven periods, each containing seven steps repeated seven times. The periods, and the steps within them, are symmetric: three descending into matter; three rising out of matter; and one pivoting in the center. The first and seventh period, or step, are in the same spiritual world, as are the second and sixth, and so on. All of this is accomplished through simple principles reflected repeatedly on themselves, in cycles within cycles within cycles…. All of this occurs in duration almost beyond human comprehension. We are now in the middle of fourth period, the deepest, and the turn-around period. In this fashion, each of us came to have an individual threefold spirit reflected in interpenetrating, threefold bodies (or vehicles of consciousness) in matter. The crowning achievement to bring us to where we are now, came relatively recently in terms of evolutionary time. It was to manifest a concrete mind out of concrete thought stuff. The aim was for the threefold spirit to enter its threefold bodies through the concrete mind. Coming into its bodies was to awaken self-consciousness through experience. Another goal was to spiritualize matter by alchemizing it in the bodies. This entering and awakening was occurring as we, and the earth, were concretizing within the solar system. This concretization produced a necessity heretofore unknown in our creation. In hard, chemical matter, we could not spontaneously generate new physical bodies to make improvements, as we could previously, when we were in higher, more subtle and malleable states of being. In earlier epochs, we auto-generated new bodies and were bisexual. Now we had to cooperate, which opened a new kind of consciousness — cooperation, voluntarily working with another to accomplish what cannot be accomplished alone. We had to produce two different types of physical forms, one male and one female, to work together to generate new physical bodies for others. This is all about others, others objectified outside of our personal being. This meant that part of our creative power was to be used in procreation, and part was to be used to evolve physically, so as to creatively experience and change the outer, physical world. The first of us to further the creative evolution in this way is biblically called Adam. Thus, we have the first heavenly Adam, the source of the individual Selves, and the first earthly Adam, the pro-generator and patriarch of human, physical lineage.
The time of the separation of the sexual vehicles, the time of Adam, was a critical time. We were vulnerable for several reasons. We were entering into the period of the densest materialization, farthest from the spirit, so to speak. Bringing consciousness into this hardened condition is difficult, something we realize daily. Divided sexual vehicles and their limitations were new to us. Cooperative, co-procreation with someone outside of us, personally, was also new to us. We didn’t even know the existence of someone external except in extreme sensation such as coition—“And Adam knew Eve his wife; and she conceived”—our eyes were not open yet. We had only inner soul images. As we came more deeply into matter, and our consciousness was focused more outwardly into matter, our inner, spiritual consciousness dimmed. Losing divine awareness, we were becoming insecure at the same time we were becoming self-conscious. Increasingly, our physical existence became more important to us. Thus, when it was suggested to us that we could ensure immortality by exercising the procreative function at will, we followed the suggestion. Who placed the suggestion is not important to this essay, that we followed it, is. Following that suggestion was an act of using one of the most important gifts we have received, freedom. Freedom is attained by degrees. An early degree of freedom is freedom of choice. Citizens in the “free” world are free because they can choose or elect their government. Creation is a deeper degree of freedom than merely choosing between the already existing options. When we took the creative force into our hands, it was statement of freedom. Creation is a divine activity. Because there is unity in spirit, divinity does not fight itself—“God is one.” Divinity cooperates lovingly. Therefore, when we stated our creative freedom, other divine beings respected our choice. This meant that the divine, creative hierarchies, who directed all of our evolutionary experiences until this point, had to back off, and only influence indirectly as they do astrologically—“the stars impel, they do not compel,” for example. This was, and would seem, a divine benefice except for one thing. The price of freedom is responsibility. Once one introduces an act of creation, one is responsible for the consequences. Creative love is beyond the law—“the end of the law is love”—but its expressions are not. The one thing that made our act a tragedy, instead of a thorough benefice, is that it was done in ignorance. We were unaware that when an act is out of harmony with the rest of the creation, it would have calamitous consequences. We not only acted in ignorance, we acted selfishly out of insecurity. We wanted immortality because we were afraid of losing our bodies. Thus, we turned our spiritual gift of freedom into a curse of ourselves, and inharmony for the rest of the creation. The sin of the first, earthly, Adam led to the sin of Cain, and to all of the sins and suffering from selfish use of the creative force, the sex and violence, that pervade the world we know today.
In the grand creative scheme, the positions of the first and last Adams are analogous to the first and last creative periods or the first and last steps in those periods. The first and last heavenly Adams are on the cusp, so to speak, between Life Spirit and Human Spirit. The first and last earthly Adams are on the cusp between the ethers and the chemicals. Thus, we see that the pairs of Adams are separate in location, as well as time.
Important things occurred in the interval between the first Adams and the last Adams. One is that we were gaining experience, spiritually blind experience, because our spiritual eyes were closing as our material eyes were opening. There was soul growth but not enough to keep pace with the increasing magnitude and frequency of our sins and their consequences. One of the consequences of our fall was to harden ourselves and the earth so much that progress was slowing. Not all, but many were falling behind, enough to jeopardize any progress at all. Something had to be done.
What was done for our sake, was also a compound act of freedom. The greater part of the compound act was the voluntary offering of Christ, the heavenly Adam, (who represents the macrocosmic Life Spirit) to incarnate in order to bring the grace of the love of the Life Spirit to those who would receive it. The other part was for Jesus, the second earthly Adam, to offer his etheric and chemical bodies to Christ, who could not generate these bodies himself, due to lack of evolutionary experience in the physical world. “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends” applies to the voluntary sacrifices of both of the heavenly and earthly Adams.
The work of the second Adams is different from the work of the first Adams. The work of the first heavenly Adam was individuation of separate Human Spirits, which occurred long before the fall of humanity into earthly matter. The work of the first earthly Adam was pro-generation of physical forms for our sojourn through dense, chemical matter. The primary work of the second earthly Adam, Jesus, is to direct our attention to the development of the etheric, soul body. The etheric soul body is the “golden wedding garment” necessary for the divine, alchemical wedding of the individuality, the “bride from heaven” and the personality. The etheric, soul body is to be the vehicle of consciousness after the dissolution of the chemical earth and the corresponding chemical human body. Without the “wedding garment,” continuance in the evolutionary creation spoken of in Matthew 22:11—13 is impossible.
The works of the second, heavenly Adam, Christ, are enough to occupy many volumes, too much for a few paragraphs of a single, short essay. One work, relevant to this essay was the establishment of a new kind of religion, not merely a new religious sect, but a new kind of religion. It is called the religion of the Son. All previous religions, between the first and second Adams, were religions of Jehovah, the Holy Spirit.
Jehovah is the macrocosmic Self, in the Godhead, whose home is in the abstract subdivision of the world of thought, just as our Selves are. One of the goals of our evolutionary creation is waking, objective, creative self-consciousness. All self-consciousness, in microcosm and macrocosm, is born of The Holy Spirit, even the self-consciousness of the higher states of spirit by reflection. In humanity, self-consciousness is brought about as the spirit enters its vehicles and awakens, through experience in them. Entering into the dense physical body is most important, because in it, conscious soul—necessary for consciousness—is produced through interactions with the resistant, chemical world. Thus, one can see the importance of generation and improvement of bodies (including the generations and descendants of Adam) to spiritual evolution. Jehovah is the lord of generation. Part of the work of Jehovah, in the time between the first and last earthly Adams, was to tear apart a previously unified humanity into discrete personalities. This was accomplished through generation of progressively smaller groupings: nations, races, clans, families, individuals. Accompanying this differentiation was a change of the focus of consciousness. One was less able to identify with a nation, a family and so on. One had to become more self-reliant. One was turned inward onto one’s Self, which led to self-awakening. Self-awakening in its highest estate is called a baptism of the Holy Spirit, a waking, conscious, realization of one’s divinity. Realization of one’s divinity brings with it divine capacities and responsibilities. Among the responsibilities is the need to love, respect, and work together with others, just as other divine beings respected us when we unwittingly asserted our divinity in the time of the first, earthly Adam. Among the divine capacities that come with self-awakening to divinity is greater freedom. Together, enhanced freedom and responsibility are the basis of the new kind of religion, the religion of Christ, the Son.
The religion of Jehovah, through the first earthly Adam, was a religion of benign separation. The separation wasn’t always easy or pleasant. In the first, earthly Adam we were one, but not by choice. We didn’t know anything different. The divine Hierarchies led us around willy-nilly for our own good. In Christ, we are again one, but we are one in freedom. As self-knowing, free individuals, we chose to reunite in Christ. It is always easier to do things in freedom than it is to do things in coercion. “For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” Even the divine responsibility to love and respect, does not have the onus of responsibility, as it does now in our egocentricity. When one loves, one cannot help but to love and respect. “For I, Paul, prisoner of Christ…” might just as well be stated “For I, Paul, prisoner of love.”
Just as there were two first Adams and two falls into individuality and matter, there are two second Adams and two resurrections. One is the resurrection from chemical matter into the ethers, in microcosm and macrocosm, through loving, self-forgetting service. The other is passing from the separative individuality of the Human Spirit into the unifying love of Life Spirit.
It is an intellectual joy to see the underlying spiritual unity in comparative mythology. To see that unity in scripture and astrology, is even more gratifying. To see how all of this is tied together and explained by Rosicrucian philosophy derived from careful, clairvoyant investigation, should be soul satisfying. It isn’t. The reason it isn’t, is that it doesn’t fully live in us yet. We haven’t followed the life of Christ-Jesus, and we will not be satisfied until we do.
In the Rosicrucian philosophy it is clearly stated many times, in many ways, how we prepare ourselves for the earthly resurrection. We prepare ourselves by living lives of “loving, self-forgetting service.” When we forget ourselves, we can remember Christ—“this do in remembrance of me.” When we do things from the goodness of our hearts, for the Christ’s sake, we attract the soul material to build the “golden wedding garment,” and we add to the new etheric globe, our home when this chemical one dissolves. We even change our hearts physically. When we do our spiritual exercises, we assimilate the material into our soul bodies and we organize them. In doing this, when the Lord says “follow me,” we will be ready.
When we build and organize our soul bodies, it is easier for Christ to speak to us through intuition, and the way becomes easier. Understanding and living ourselves into the heavenly resurrection in Christ, the second, heavenly Adam, is not so easy. How are we born in Christ? When we apply the principle of analogy to a statement of the biblical Christ, it points us in the right direction. In John 14 Christ says, “Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father in me.” By analogy, we are in Christ and Christ is in us. Our Selves are born from Life Spirit. This is another way of stating how higher worlds subtend and interpenetrate lower worlds, as we learn from The Rosicrucian Cosmo-Conception. The Self, located in Human Spirit, or the abstract subdivision of the world of thought, is within and interpenetrated by Life Spirit, the realm of Christ. Thus, if we penetrate the innermost essence of our selfhood, we meet Life Spirit. It is inescapable. Perhaps different words can make understanding, this difficult to experience idea, easier. Human Spirits, Selves, are born from Life Spirit. In other words, our Selves are born out of selfness which is Life Spirit, which is the body of Christ. That selfness is the same for all of us. It is the love of the love-wisdom principle of the second attribute of the godhead. The Rosicrucian philosophy has a word for doing this. It is called contemplation. In contemplation one holds an object in one’s attention until it dissolves and one directly encounters the life, within and behind, that object. If the object of attention is one’s Self, one encounters the Life of Life Spirit. This is not something easy to accomplish but it is a “pearl of great price” worthy of any amount of effort. The attempt itself, can sustain our aspiration for as long as we wish.
There is another way to resurrection in Christ, which is easier, love. When we love someone, we realize there is something in them that is also in us. If this was not true, we could not share the mutual love that we do. The mutual love which we share, is called altruism. Altruism is the human experience of the love of Christ, the love of the Life Spirit, in any, or every, other human. The only definition of a Christian given by Christ in the Gospels is found in John 13:35: “By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.” In the times of the first, earthly Adam, when we came together, we first knew someone outside of us. In our times, the times of the second Adam, when we love someone, we realize that within that form outside of us, is a spirit within, with which we are connected by love. This could be called “spiritual knowledge,” replacing carnal knowledge. Ultimately, love is love, and all love is of the Life Spirit.
From the stories of Zagreus, Osiris and Adam we learn of a unity in innocence divided to some end by evil. We also learn of a promise of resurrection into a new, divine world. From the Rosicrucian Cosmo-Conception and the Bible, we learn how this resurrection is accomplished. These two books are complementary. Each brings out new meanings in the other. Matthew 5:6 elucidates more precisely the attitude necessary for resurrection: “Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled.” The Book of Revelation tells us we must not be “lukewarm.” Our hunger for love, and its righteousness, must be intense and ravenous, like that of the Titans. Thus, when we inwardly seek reunion by Holy Communion, the words, “Take eat: this is my body, which is broken for you: this do in remembrance of me,” have a deeper and more spiritually intimate meaning to us.
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