The Rosicrucian
Christianity Lectures
by Max Heindel
(Online Edition)
(Part 5)
Lecture Twelve
Parsifal: Wagner's Famous
Mystic Music Drama
As we look about us in the material universe we see a myriad of forms
and all these forms have a certain color; and many of them emit a definite
tone; in fact, all do, for there is sound even in so-called inanimate Nature.
The wind in the tree-tops, the babbling brook, the swell of the ocean, are
all definite contributions to the harmony of Nature.
Of those three attributes of nature: Form, Color, and Tone, form is
the most stable, tending to remain in statu quo for a considerable time,
and changing very slowly. Color, on the other hand, changes more readily;
it fades, and there are some colors that change their hue when held at
different angles to the light; but tone is the most elusive of all three; it
comes and goes like a will-o'-the-wisp, which none may catch or hold.
We also have three arts which seek to express the Good, the True, and
the Beautiful in these three attributes of the World-Soul, namely,
sculpture, painting, and music.
The sculptor who deals with form seeks to imprison beauty in a
marble statue that will withstand the ravages of time during millenniums;
but a marble statue is cold and speaks to but a few of the most evolved who
are able to infuse the statue with their own life.
The painter's art deals pre-eminently with color; it gives no
tangible form to its creations; the form on a painting is an illusion from
the material point of view, yet it is so much more real to most people than
the real tangible statue, for the forms of the painter are alive there is
living beauty in the painting of a great artist, a beauty that many can
appreciate and enjoy.
But in the case of a painting we are again affected by the
changeableness of color; time soon blots out its freshness, and at the best,
of course, no painting can outlast a statue.
Yet in those arts which deal with form and color there is a creation
once and for all time; they have that in common, and in that they
differ radically from the tone-art, for music is so elusive that it must be
recreated each time we wish to enjoy it, but in return it has a power to speak
to all human beings in a manner that is entirely beyond the other two arts.
It will add to our greatest joy and soothe our deepest sorrows; it can calm
the passion of the savage breast and stir to bravery the greatest coward; it
is the most potent influence in swaying humanity that is known to man, and
yet, viewed solely from the material standpoint, it is superfluous, as shown
by Darwin and Spencer.
It is only when we go behind the scenes of the visible and realize
that man is a composite being: Spirit, soul and body, that we are enabled
to understand why we are thus differently affected by the products of the
three arts.
While man lives an outward life in the Form-world, where he lives a
form life among other forms, he lives also an inner life, which is of far
greater importance to him; a life where his feelings, thoughts, and emotions
create before his "inner vision" pictures and scenes that are everchanging,
and the fuller this inner life is, the less will the man need to seek company
outside himself, for he is his own best company, independent of outside
amusement, so eagerly sought by those whose inner life is barren, who know
hosts of other people, but are strangers to themselves, afraid of their own
company.
If we analyze this inner life we shall find that it is twofold: (1)
The Soul-life, which deals with the feelings and emotions; and (2) the activity of the Ego, which directs all actions by thought.
Just as the material world is the base of supply whence the materials for
our dense body have been drawn, and is pre-eminently the world of form,
there is a world of the soul, called the Desire World among the
Rosicrucians, which is the base from whence the subtle garment of the Ego,
which we call the soul, has been drawn, and this world is particularly the
world of color. But the still more subtle World of Thought is the home of
the human Spirit, the Ego, and also the realm of tone. Therefore, of the
three arts music has the greatest power over man; for while we are in this
terrestrial life we are exiled from our heavenly home and have often forgotten
it in our material pursuits, but then comes music like a fragrant odor laden
with unspeakable memories. As an echo from home it reminds us of that
forgotten land where all is joy and peace, and even though we may scout such
ideas in our material mind, the Ego knows each blessed note as a message
from homeland and rejoices in it.
This realization of the nature of music is necessary to the proper
appreciation of such a great masterpiece as Richard Wagner's Parsifal, where
the music and the characters are bound together as in no other modern musical
production.
Wagner's drama is founded upon the legend of Parsifal, a legend that
has its origin enshrouded in the mystery which overshadows the infancy of
the human race. It is an erroneous idea when we think that a myth is a
figment of human fancy, having no foundation in fact. On the contrary, a
myth is a casket containing at times the deepest and most precious jewels of
spiritual truth, pearls of beauty so rare and ethereal that they cannot stand
exposure to the material intellect. In order to shield them and at the same
time allow them to work upon humanity for its spiritual upliftment, the
Great Teachers who guide our evolution, unseen but potent, gave these
spiritual truths to nascent man encased in the picturesque symbolism of myths,
so that they might work upon his feelings until such time as his dawning
intellect shall have become sufficiently evolved and spiritualized so that he
may both feel and know.
This on the same principle that we give our children moral teachings
by means of picture books and fairy tales, reserving the more direct
teaching for later years.
Wagner did more than merely copy the legend. Legends, like all else,
become encrusted by transmission and lost their beauty and it is a further
evidence of Wagner's greatness that he was never bound in his expression by
fashion or creed. he always asserted the prerogative of art in dealing with
allegories, untrammeled and free.
As he says in Religion and Art: "One might say that where Religion
becomes artificial, it is reserved for art to save the spirit of Religion by
recognizing the figurative value of the mythic symbols, which Religion would
have us believe in a literal sense, and revealing their deep and hidden
truth through an ideal presentation. . . .Whilst the priest stakes
everything on religious allegories being accepted as matters of fact, the
artist has no concern at all with such a thing, since he freely and openly
gives out his work as his own invention. But Religion has sunk into an
artificial life when she finds herself compelled to keep on adding to the
edifice of her dogmatic symbols, and thus conceals the one divinely true. .
. beneath an ever growing heap on incredibilities recommended to belief.
Feeling this, she has always sought the aid of art, who on her side has
remained incapable of a higher evolution so long as she must present that
alleged reality to the worshiper in the form of fetishes and idols, whereas
she could only fulfill her true vocation when, by an ideal presentment
of the allegoric figure, she led to an apprehension of its inner kernel — the
truth ineffably divine."
Turning to a consideration of the drama Parsifal we find that the
opening scene is laid in the grounds of the castle of "Montsalvat." This is a
place of peace, where all life is sacred; the animals and birds are tame, for
like all really holy men, the knights are harmless, killing neither to eat
nor for sport. They apply the maxim, "Live and let live," to all living
creatures.
It is dawn, and we see Gurnemanz, the oldest of the Grail-knights,
with two young squires under a tree. They have just wakened from their
night's rest, and in the distance they spy Kundry coming galloping on a wild
steed. In Kundry we see a creature of two existences, one as a servitor of
the Grail, willing and anxious to further the interests of the Grail-knights
by all means within her power; this seems to be her real nature. In the
other existence she is the unwilling slave of the magician Klingsor and is
forced by him to tempt and harass the Grail-knights, whom she longs to serve.
The gate from one existence to the other is "sleep," and she is bound to
serve who finds and wakes her. When Gurnemanz finds her she is the
willing servitor of the Grail, but when Klingsor evokes her by his evil spells
he is entitled to her services whether she will or not.
In the first act she is clothed in a robe of snake skins, symbolical
of the doctrine of rebirth, for as the snake sheds its skin, coat after
coat, which it exudes from itself, so the Ego in its evolutionary
pilgrimage emanates from itself one body after another, shedding each
vehicle as the snake sheds its skin, when it has become hard, set, and
crystallized so that it has lost its efficiency. This idea is also coupled
with the teachings of the Law of Consequence, which brings us as reapings
whatever we sow, as in Gurnemanz' answer to the young squire's avowal of
distrust in Kundry:
Under a curse she well may be
From some past life we do not see,
Seeking from sin to loose the fetter,
By deeds for which we fare the better.
Surely 'tis good she follows thus,
Helping herself while serving us.
When Kundry comes on the scene she pulls from her bosom a phial which
she says she has brought from Araby and which she hopes will be a balm for
the wound in the side of Amfortas, the king of the Grail, which causes him
unspeakable suffering and which cannot heal. The suffering king is then
carried on the stage reclining on a couch. He is on his way to his daily
bath in the nearby lake, where two swans swim and make the waters into a
healing lotion which assuages his dreadful sufferings. Amfortas thanks
Kundry, but expresses the opinion that there is no relief for him till the
deliverer has come, of whom the Grail has prophesied, "a virgin
fool, by pity enlightened." But Amfortas thinks death will come before
deliverance.
Amfortas is carried out, and four of the young squires crowd
around Gurnemanz and ask him to tell them the story of the Grail and of
Amfortas' wound. They all recline beneath the tree, and Gurnemanz begins:
"On the night when our Lord and Savior Christ-Jesus ate the last
supper with His disciples He drank the wine from a certain chalice and that
was later used by Joseph of Arimathea to catch the life-blood which flowed
from the wound in the Redeemer's side. He also kept the bloody lance
wherewith the wound was inflicted, and carried these relics with him through
many perils and persecutions. At last they were taken in charge by
Angels, who guarded them until one night a mystic messenger sent from God
appeared and bade Titurel, Amfortas' father, build a Castle for the
reception and safe-keeping of these relics. Thus the Castle of Montsalvat
was built on a high mountain, and the relics lodged there under the
guardianship of Titurel with a band of holy and chaste knights whom he had
drawn around him, and it became a center whence might spiritual influences
went forth to the outside world.
"But there lived in yonder heathen vale a black knight who was
not chaste, yet he desired to become a knight of the Grail, and to that end
he mutilated himself. He deprived himself of the ability to gratify his
passion, but the passion remained. King Titurel saw his heart filled
with black desire, and refused him admittance. Klingsor then swore that if
he could not serve the Grail, the Grail should serve him. He built a
castle with a magic garden and populated it with maidens of ravishing beauty,
who emitted an odor like flowers, and these waylaid the knights of the
Grail (who must pass the castle when leaving or returning to Montsalvat),
ensnared them to betray their trust and violate their vow of chastity, thus
they became the prisoners of Klingsor and but few remained as defenders of
the Grail.
"In the meantime Titurel had turned the wardenship of the Grail over
to his son Amfortas and the latter, seeing the serious havoc wrought
by Klingsor, determined to go out to meet him and do battle with him. To
that end he took with him the holy spear.
"The wily Klingsor did not meet Amfortas in person, but evoked Kundry
and transformed her from the hideous creature who appears as the servitor of
the Grail to a woman of transcendent beauty, and under Klingsor's spell
she meets and tempts Amfortas, who yields and sinks into her arms, letting
go his hold upon the sacred spear. Klingsor then appears, grasps the
spear, inflicts a wound on the defenseless Amfortas, and (but for the heroic
efforts of Gurnemanz) he would have carried Amfortas a prisoner to his magic
castle. He has the holy spear, however, and the king is crippled and
suffering, for the wound will not heal."
The young squires spring up, fired with ardor, vowing that they will
conquer Klingsor and restore the spear. Gurnemanz sadly shakes his head,
saying that the task is beyond them, but reiterates the prophesy that
the redemption shall be accomplished by a "pure fool, by pity enlightened."
Now cries are heard: "The swan! Oh, the swan!" and a swan
flutters across the stage and falls dead at the feet of Gurnemanz and the
squires, who are much agitated at the sight. Other squires bring in a
stalwart youth with bow and arrows, and to Gurnemanz' sad inquiry, "Why did
you shoot the harmless creature?" he answers innocently, "Was it wrong?"
Gurnemanz then tells him of the suffering king, of the swan's part in making
the healing bath. Parsifal is deeply moved at the recital and breaks his
bow.
In all religions the quickening spirit has been symbolically
represented as a bird. At the baptism, when Jesus' body was in the water the
Spirit of Christ descended into it as a dove. "The Spirit moves upon the
water," a fluidic medium, as the swans move upon the lake beneath the
Yggdrasil, the tree of life of Norse mythology, or upon the waters of the
lake in the legend of the Grail. The bird is therefore a direct
representation of highest spiritual influence and well may the knights sorrow
at the loss. Truth is many sided. There are at least seven valid
interpretations to each myth, one for each World, and looked at from the
material literal side, the compassion engendered in Parsifal and the
breaking of his bow mark a definite step in the higher life. No one can be
truly compassionate and a helper in evolution while he kills to eat, either in
person or by proxy. The harmless life is an absolute essential prerequisite to the helpful life.
Gurnemanz then commences to question him about himself; who he is,
and how he came to Montsalvat. Parsifal displays the most surprising
ignorance. To all questions he answers, "I do not know." At last Kundry
speaks up and says: "I can tell you who he is. His father was the noble
Gamuret, a prince among men, who died fighting in Arabia while this child
was yet in the womb of his mother, Lady Herzleide. With his last dying
breath his father named him Parsifal, the pure fool. Fearing that he would
grow up to learn the art of war and be taken from her, his mother brought
him up in a dense forest in ignorance of weapons and warfare."
Here Parsifal chimes in: "Yes, and one day I saw some men on
shapely beasts; I wanted to be like them, so I followed them for many days
till at last I came here and I had to fight many man-like monsters."
In this story we have an excellent picture of the Spirit's search for
the realities of life. Gamuret and Parsifal are different phases of the life
of the Spirit. Gamuret is the man of the world, but in time he became
wedded to Herzleide, heart — affliction, in other words. He meets sorrow and
dies to the world, as all of us do who have come into the higher life. While
the bark of life floats on summer seas and our existence seems one grand,
sweet song there is no incentive to turn to the higher; every fiber in our
bodies cries, "This is good enough for me," but when the billows of adversity
roar around us and each succeeding wave threatens to engulf us, then we have
wedded heart-affliction and become men of sorrows, and are ready to be born
as Parsifal, the pure fool, or the soul who has forgotten the wisdom of
the world and is seeking for the higher life. So long as a man is seeking
to accumulate money or to have a good time, so miscalled, he is wise with
the wisdom of the world; but when he sets his face toward the things of
the spirit, he becomes a fool in the eyes of the world. He forgets all
about his past life and leaves his sorrows behind him, as Parsifal left
Herzleide, and we are told that she died when Parsifal did not return to her.
So sorrow dies when it has given birth to the aspiring soul that flees from
the world, who may be in the world to perform his duty but is not of the
world.
Gurnemanz has now become imbued with the idea that Parsifal is to be
the deliverer of Amfortas and takes him along to the Grail-castle. And
to Parsifal's question, "Who is the Grail?" he answers:
That tell we not; but if thou hast of Him been bidden,
From thee the truth will not stay hidden,
Methinks thy face I rightly knew,
The land to Him no path leads through,
And search but severs from Him wider,
When He Himself is not its guider.
Here we find Wagner bringing us back into pre-Christian times, for
before the advent of Christ, Initiation was not free to "whosoever will"
seek in the proper manner, but was reserved for certain chosen ones who were
given special privileges in return for being dedicated to the temple-service,
such as the Brahmins and the Levites. The coming of Christ, however,
wrought certain definite changes in the constitution of man so that now all
are capable of entering the pathway of initiation. Indeed, it had to be so
when international marriages took away caste.
At the castle of the Grail Amfortas is being importuned on all sides
to perform the sacred rite of the Grail service, to uncover the holy
chalice that the sight of it may renew the ardor of the knights and spur them
on to deeds of spiritual service; but he shrinks from fear of the pain the
sight will cause him to feel. The wound in his side always starts to bleed
afresh at the sight of the Grail, as the wound of remorse pains us all when we
have sinned against our ideal. At last, however, he yields to the combined
entreaties of his father and the knights. He performs the holy rite, though
the while he suffers the most excruciating agony, and Parsifal, who stands
in a corner, feels sympathetically the same pain, without realizing why, and
when Gurnemanz eagerly asks him after the ceremony what he saw, remains dumb
and is thrust out of the castle by the angry, because disappointed, old
knight.
The feelings and emotions unchecked by knowledge are fruitful sources
of temptation. The very harmlessness and guilelessness of the aspiring
soul renders it often an easy prey to sin. It is necessary to soul growth
that these temptations come in order to bring out our weak points. If we
fall, we suffer as did Amfortas, but the pain evolves conscience and gives
abhorrence for sin. It makes us strong against temptation. Every child is
innocent because it has not been tempted, but only when we have been tempted
and have remained pure, or when we have fallen, repented, and reformed are
we virtuous. Therefore Parsifal must be tempted.
In the second act we see Klingsor in the act of evoking Kundry, for
he has spied Parsifal coming towards his castle, and he fears him more than
all who have come before, because he is a fool. A worldly-wise man is
easily entrapped by the snares of the flower-girls, but Parsifal's
guilelessness protects him, and when the flower-girls cluster around him he
innocently asks, "Are you flowers? You smell so sweetly." Against him the
superior wiles of Kundry are necessary, and though she pleads, protests, and
rebels, she is forced to tempt Parsifal and to that end she appears as a
woman of superb beauty, calling Parsifal by name. That name stirs in his
breast memories of his childhood, his mother's love, and Kundry beckons him
to her side and commences to subtly work upon his feelings by recalling to
his memory visions of his mother's love and the sorrow she felt at his
departure, which ended her life. Then she tells him of the other love, which
may compensate him; of the love of man for woman, and at last imprints upon
his lips a long, fervent, and passionate kiss.
Then there was silence deep and terrible, as if the destiny of the
whole world hung in the balance at that fervent kiss, and as she still holds
him in her arms his face undergoes a gradual change and becomes drawn with
pain. Suddenly he springs up as if that kiss had stung his being into a new
pain, the lines on his pallid face become more intense, and both hands are
clasped tightly against his throbbing heart as if to stifle some awful
agony — the Grail-cup appears before his vision, and then Amfortas in the same
dreadful agony, and at last he cries out: "Amfortas, O Amfortas! I know it
now — the spear-wound in thy side — it burns my heart, it sears my very
soul....O grief! O misery! Anguish beyond words! the wound is bleeding
here in my own side!"
Then again, in the same awful strain: "Nay, this is not the spear-wound in my side, for this is fire and flame within my heart that sways my
senses in delirium, the awful madness of tormenting love....Now do I know how
all the world is stirred, tossed, convulsed and often lost in shame by the
terrific passions of the heart."
Kundry again tempts him: "If this one kiss has brought you so much knowledge, how much more will be yours if you yield to my love, if only
for an hour?"
But there is no hesitation now; Parsifal has awakened; he knows right
and wrong, and he replies: "Eternity were lost to both of us if I yielded
to you even for one short hour; but I will also save you and deliver you
from the curse of passion, for the love that burns within you is only
sesnual, and between that and the true love of pure hearts there yawns an abyss like that between heaven and hell."
When Kundry at last must confess herself foiled she bursts out in great anger. She calls upon Klingsor to help, and he appears with the holy
spear, which he hurls against Parsifal. But he is pure and harmless, so
nothing can hurt him. The spear floats harmlessly above his head. He
grasps the spear, makes the sign of the cross with it and Klingsor's castle
and magic garden sink into ruins.
The third act opens on Good Friday many years after. A travel-
stained warrior, clad in black mail, enters the grounds of Montsalvat,
where Gurnemanz lives in a hut. He takes off his helmet and places a
spear against a nearby rock and kneels down in prayer. Gurnemanz coming in
with Kundry, whom he has just found asleep in a thicket, recognizes parsifal
with the holy spear and, overjoyed, welcomes him, asking him whence he comes?
He asked the same question on Parsifal's first visit and the answer was: "I do not know." But this time it is very different, for Parsifal
answers: "Through search and suffering I came." The first occasion depicts
one of the glimpses the soul gets of the realities of the higher life,
but the second, the conscious attainment to a higher level of spiritual
activity by the man who has developed by sorrow and suffering, and Parsifal
goes on to tell how he was often sorely beset by enemies, and might have
saved himself by using the spear, but refrained because it was an instrument
of healing and not for hurt. The spear is the spiritual power which comes
to the pure of heart and life, but is only to be used for unselfish purposes;
impurity and passion cause its loss, as was the case with Amfortas. Though
the man who possesses it may upon occasion use it to feed 5,000 hungry people
he may not turn a single stone to bread to appease his own hunger, and
though he may use it to stay the blood that flows from the severed ear of a
captor, he may not use it to stay the life-blood that flows from his own side.
It was ever said of such: "Others he saved; himself he could not (or would
not) save."
Parsifal and Gurnemanz go into the Grail-castle, where Amfortas is being importuned to perform the sacred rite, but refuses in order to save
himself the pain entailed in viewing the Holy Grail, and baring his breast,
implores his followers to kill him. At this moment Parsifal steps up to
him and touches the wound with the lance, causing it to heal. He
dethrones Amfortas, however, and takes to himself the wardenship of the Holy
Grail and Sacred Lance. Only those who have the most perfect unselfishness,
coupled with the nicest discrimination, are fit to have the spiritual power
symbolized by the spear. Amfortas would have used it to attack and hurt an
enemy. Parsifal would not even use it in self-defense. Therefore he is able to heal, while Amfortas fell into the pit he dug for Klingsor.
In the last act Kundry, who represents the lower nature, says but one word: service. She helps Parsifal, the Spirit, to attain by her
perfect service. In the first act she went to sleep when Parsifal
visited the Grail. At that stage the Spirit cannot soar heavenward except
when the body has been left asleep or dies. But in the last act Kundry, the
body, goes to the Grail-castle also, for it is dedicated to the Higher Self,
and when the Spirit as Parsifal has attained he has reached the stage of
liberation spoken of in Revelation: "Him that overcometh will I make a pillar in the temple of my God, and he shall go no more out." Such an one
will work for humanity from the inner Worlds; he needs no physical body
anymore; he is beyond the Law of Rebirth, and therefore Kundry dies.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, in his beautiful poem, "The Chambered Nautilus," has embodied in verse this idea of constant progression in
gradually improving vehicles, and final liberation. The nautilus builds its
spiral shell in chambered sections, constantly leaving the smaller ones,
which it has outgrown, for the last build.
Year after year beheld the silent toil
That spread his lustrous coil;
Still, as the spiral grew,
He left the past year's dwelling for the new.
Stole with soft step its shining archway through,
Built up its idle door,
Stretched in his last-found home, and knew the old no more.
Thanks for the heavenly message brought by thee,
Child of the wandering sea,
Cast from her lap forlorn!
From thy dead lips a clearer note is born
Than ever Triton blew from wreathed horn!
While on mine ear it rings,
Through the deep caves of thought I hear a voice that sings:
Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul,
As the swift seasons roll!
Leave thy low-vaulted past!
Let each new temple, nobler than the last,
Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast,
Till thou at length art free.
Leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unresting sea!
When we speak of evolution, the idea conveyed to the Western mind
is mainly a materialistic one. We have accustomed ourselves to look at
the matter from the purely scientific standpoint: that our solar system
has proceeded from what was once a nebulous fire-mist, in which currents
were generated in a spontaneous manner and started it into motion. It
assumed a spherical shape and threw off rings as it contracted. These rings
broke up and formed planets which cooled and solidified. At least one
planet, our Earth, spontaneously generated simple organisms, which later by
the process of evolution became more and more complex, ascending through the
Radiates (starfish, sea-urchins) to Mollusks (oysters, clam), thence to
Articulates (crab, lobster), into the Vertebrate species. After passing
through the four classes of vertebrates — Fishes, Reptiles, Birds, and
Mammals — this spontaneous evolutionary impulse reaches its highest present
stage in man, who is regarded as the flower of evolution: the highest
intelligence in the Cosmos.
The materialistic scientist will pooh-pooh all suggestions of a God,
or any other external agency, as entirely unnecessary to account for the
universe. In support of his position he may take a basin of water and
pour some oil upon its surface. The water is to represent space and the oil
the fire-mist. He will then commence to stir the oil, which will gather in
a ball, and bulging at the equator it will throw off a ring. That will form a
smaller sphere and revolve about the central mass as a planet about its sun.
Then the scientist may triumphantly turn and ask with a pitying smile: Now,
do you see how natural it is, and how superfluous your God?
Truly, it is wonderful how dull the brightest minds may be when
influenced by preconceived notions, and it is a marvel that one capable of
devising this splendid demonstration should at the same time fail to see that
he himself represents the author of our system, whom we call God, in this
experiment. For the experiment would never have been devised, the oil would
never have been poured out or formed into the semblance of sun and planet
but for his thought and action in the matter. So that instead of proving
God a superfluity his demonstration of the nebular theory proves to the
fullest extent the absolute necessity for a first cause — call it God or by
any other name — and Herbert Spencer, the master thinker of the nineteenth
century, saw this and rejected the nebular theory in consequence. He
failed, however, to produce an adequate explanation of the Genesis of a solar
system, free from that to him objectionable flaw, and so science, though
unwilling to acknowledge it, still retains a theory of the origin of the
world that requires the intelligent action of a being or beings extraneous
to the universe: a Creator or Creators.
When the scientific theory is properly understood, it is thus in
full harmony with the Bible, which tells us of a number of different Beings
who have been active in the evolution of the Earth and the creatures upon
it. We hear of Angels, Archangels, Cherubim, Seraphim, Thrones, Powers,
Principalities, Powers of Darkness, Powers of the Air, etc., and to the
inquiring mind the question naturally occurs: Who are they all? what part
have they played in the past? and what is their present work? For the
inquiring mind cannot believe that Angels are human beings transformed
by death to spiritual entities whose sole pleasure and only care is to toot
in a trumpet or play upon a harp when they did not know one note from
another in Earth-life. Such a supposition does violence to the reason and
is out of keeping with all the methods of nature, which require us to work
for our faculties.
The esoteric teaching, in harmony with the Bible and modern
scientific theories as explained in the chapter on the "Esoteric Analysis of
Genesis" in The Rosicrucian Cosmo-Conception, is, that that which is now
the Earth has not always been as dense and solid as it is now, but that
it has gone through three periods of development previous to the one we are
now in, and after the present "Earth period is over, there will be three
more periods before our evolution has been completed."
During the three periods preceding our present state, that which is
now the Earth, and man upon it, have both gradually consolidated from a
filmy ethereal state to a condition that was much denser than is now the case.
While "Involution," the process of consolidation, was going on,
the Spirit, which is now the Ego in man, was building a body or vehicle for
each degree of density. It was unconscious, but helped by different
spiritual hierarchies: the Thrones, Cherubim, and Seraphim.
When the acme of density was reached the Spirit came to consciousness
as a separate Ego in the material world. That was the turning-point: when
conscious he cannot be dragged farther down and as his spiritual
consciousness gradually dawns upon him he will spiritualize his bodies,
extracting from each the soul, which is the power of the body from which it
is extracted.
In that way he will gradually lift himself out of the dense material
regions, and lift the Earth with him during the remainder of the Earth Period
and the three succeeding periods.
At the beginning of evolution the threefold "Virgin Spirit" was naked
and inexperienced. Its Involution involved the building of bodies, which it
accomplishes unconsciously with the help of higher powers.
When its bodies have been built and it becomes conscious,
Evolution begins. That involves soul-growth and must be accomplished by
the individual efforts of the spirit in man, the Ego. At the end of
evolution it will possess soul-power as the fruitage of its pilgrimage
through matter. It will be a creative intelligence.
Among the Rosicrucians these seven periods of development have been
given the names of the planets which rule the days of the week, because they
are the seven days of Creation, when that term is used in its widest sense.
But they are metamorphoses of the Earth and have absolutely nothing to do
with the planets in the sky except that the conditions they represent are
about such as we find upon the planets of the same names. These names are as
follows: (1) Saturn Period, (2) the Sun Period, (3) the Moon Period, (4)
the Earth Period (of which, for reasons explained in The Rosicrucian Cosmo-Conception, the first half is called "Mars" and the
second half "Mercury"), (5) the Jupiter Period, (6) the Venus Period, and (7)
the Vulcan Period.
Our evolution started upon the Earth, as it was in the Saturn
Period, dark, hot, and of a gaseous substance, taken from the materials of
the Region of Concrete Thought. There "the Divine Spirit" (which is the
highest aspect of the triune "Virgin Spirit," made in the likeness of
God) was awakened by the "Lords of the Flame" (called "Thrones" in
Christian esotericism), who also radiated from themselves a germinal "thought-
form" as a material counterpart of the Divine Spirit. This thought-form has
later developed and consolidated into man's dense body, and thus the
highest spirit and lowest body of man are the fruitage of the Saturn Period.
In the Sun Period the Earth reached the density of the Desire World,
and became a brilliantly luminous fire-mist. There the "Cherubim" awakened
the second aspect of the threefold Virgin Spirit: "The Life Spirit," and
its counterpart, the vital body, was started as a thought-form and made to
interpenetrate the germinal dense vehicle which had consolidated and reached
the same density as the Earth; it was then built of "desire stuff."
Thus man had a twofold Spirit and a twofold body when the condition we call the Sun Period was over.
In the Moon Period the density of the Earth increased so that it
reached the etheric condition of matter known as the Etheric Region. It had a
fiery core, then an envelope of moisture, and outside an atmosphere of fire-fog or hot, steamy gas. When the water was heated by the fiery core it
ascended outwards, and when cooled by outside space the steam descended again
towards the heated center.
From this moist substance the densest body of these "Water-men"
was built. The thought-form for the dense body had consolidated to a moist
gas, the thought-form for our present vital body had descended into the
Desire World. It was formed of desire matter. To this twofold body
the thought-form for our present desire body was added in the Moon Period
and the "Seraphim" awakened the third aspect of the Virgin Spirit: "the
Human Spirit," and the Virgin Spirit became an "Ego," so that at the close of
the Moon Period man-in-the-making possessed a threefold spirit and a
threefold body.
(1) The Divine Spirit — its counterpart is the dense body.
(2) The Life Spirit — its counterpart is the vital body.
(3) The Human Spirit — its counterpart is the desire body.
The threefold body is the "shadow" of the threefold Spirit, thrown
into the Region of Concrete Thought in the three periods preceding our
present Earth Period. Since then these thought-forms have all condensed; the
desire body, one degree; the vital body, two degrees, and the dense body,
three degrees before their present density was reached.
The Lords of the Flame (Thrones), the Cherubim and the Seraphim
had worked with man of their own free wills out of pure Love. They could
learn nothing from an evolution such as ours. They have withdrawn now, and in
the Earth Period the "Powers" (exusiai) of esoteric Christianity, called
"Lords of Form" by the Rosicrucians, have particular charge. For this is
pre-eminently the period of "Form" and this spiritual hierarchy has given
to —
— all things the present definite, sharply defined concrete form,
whereas these forms were inchoate and cloudy in the former periods.
Besides the spiritual hierarchies mentioned there were others who
helped, but we will mention only the beings who attained to the human stage
of development in the three preceding periods. These beings have advanced,
of course, so the men of the Saturn Period are now three steps in advance
of the human, and are called "Lords of Mind." The humanity of the Sun
Period are two steps ahead of us and are now "Archangels," and the humanity
of the Moon Period are one step in advance of us. They are the Angels.
The periods are days of Creation, and between each two periods there
is always an interim of rest or subjective activity, a Cosmic Night
analogous to the night of restorative sleep we enjoy between day and day
of our Earth-life, and when the evolving life emerges from "Chaos" at the
dawn of a new period there is first a recapitulation on an advanced scale of
the work done in former periods before the work of the new period is begun;
thus the acme of possible perfection is achieved.
Therefore man's evolution upon the Earth as now constituted is
divided into "epochs," in which he first recapitulates his past, and then
goes onward to conditions that foreshadow development which will only reach
their full expression in future periods.
In the first or Polarian Epoch, "Adam," or humanity, was formed
of "earth." He was in that purely mineral stage corresponding to the
Saturn Period, where he possessed only a dense body fashioned by himself
under the guidance of the Lords of Form. He was embedded in the dark gaseous
planet that was just emerging from chaos, inchoate and void, as the Bible
says; in the same way that the raspberry is made up of numerous little
berries, so was our "Mother-Earth" made up of the dense mineral-like bodies
of all the kingdoms, and the life-streams expressing themselves as plant,
animal, and man were working to liberate them.
In the second or Hyperborean Epoch, God said: "Let there be light,"
the hot gas became a luminous fire-mist as it was in the Sun Period, and
man's dense body was clothed with a vital body and it floated hither and
thither above the fiery Earth as a large, baggy thing. Man was then plant-
like because of having the same vehicles as the plant has now, and the Angels
were his helpers in organizing his vital body, and remain so to the present
day.
This may seem an anomaly, as the Angels are the humanity of the Moon
Period, where man got his desire body. But it is not, for only in the Moon
Period did the evolving Earth condense into Ether, such as now forms the
substance of our vital body, and there the humanity (the present Angels),
learned to build their densest bodies from etheric materials, as we are
learning to build ours from the solids, liquids, and gases of the Chemical
Region. They became experts at it, as we will be at building a dense body
by the time the Earth Period is ended.
Thus they are specially fitted to be the helpers of other
later life-waves in the functions which are the important expressions of that
vehicle. They help in the building and maintenance of plant, animal, and man,
and are thus concerned in assimilation, growth, and propagation. Angels
announced the birth of Isaac to faithful Abraham, but destroyed Sodom for
abusing the creative function. The angel Gabriel (not Archangel,
according to the Bible) foretold the birth of Jesus and John. Other Angels
announced the birth of Samuel and Samson.
The Angels are particularly active in the vital bodies of the plants,
for the stream of life ensouling that kingdom started its evolution in the
Moon Period, when the Angels were human, and they worked with the plants as
we are now working with our minerals. There is therefore a particular
affinity between Angel and plant Group Spirit. Thus we can account for the
enormous assimilation, growth, and fecundity of the plants. Man also grew
to an enormous size in the second or Hyperborean Epoch, where the Angels had
principal charge. So does the child in its second septenary epoch of life,
because then the Angels have full sway, and at the end of that epoch, at
fourteen, the child has reached puberty and is able to reproduce its kind;
also due to the work of the Angels.
The third, or Lemurian Epoch, presents conditions analogous to the
Moon Period, but denser, the fiery core of the Earth is in the center, the
boiling, seething water next, and the steamy atmosphere or "fire-fog"
outside, for thus "god had divided the land from the waters," as Genesis
says; the dense moisture from the steam, and there man lived on islands of
the forming solid crust scattered in the sea of fire or boiling water. His
form was then quite firm and solid, it had a trunk, limbs, and the head was
beginning to form. The desire body was added, and man brought under the
dominion of the Archangels.
Again we have a seeming anomaly, for the Archangels were the humanity
of the Sun Period when the vital body was started, at a time when man had
as yet no desire body, but the difficulty vanishes when we remember that
each of our bodies is the shadow of one of the aspects of the Spirit, as
previously outlined, and that the vehicles are not given by these
hierarchies. They are merely helpers of man in training a particular vehicle,
because of a special fitness. Thus the Archangels are trainers of our desire
bodies, because they became experts at building and using such a vehicle when
they were human in the Sun Period, for then they built their densest bodies
of "desire stuff," as we are now building ours from chemical mineral matter.
The Archangels are also the main support of the animal Group Spirit,
because the present animals started as minerals in the Sun Period. In the
Lemurian Epoch man was situated as they are now: the Spirit was outside the
body it had to guide, but all man's bodies had been impregnated with the
germ of separate personality presently to be explained, so they were not so
easily guided as the animal of today, where the separate spirit in each
animal is yet unconscious. Desire was rampant and needed a strong curb.
That was supplied to a few of the most tractable among the nascent humanity
in the Lemurian Epoch, and they in time became teachers of the others, but
the majority did not become ensouled.
In the fourth, or Atlantean Epoch, the real work of the Earth Period
began. The threefold Spirit was destined to enter the threefold body and
become an indwelling Spirit, so as to obtain full control of its vehicles, but
the link of mind was lacking, and that we owe to the Lords of Mind, who had
previously impregnated the bodies with the feeling of separate personality
which has overborne the earlier feeling of solidarity with all and made it
possible for each to draw individual experience from like conditions.
The Lords of Mind reached the human stage in the Saturn Period.
They were not "gods" come here from an earlier evolution like the Cherubim
and Seraphim, hence the eastern tradition calls them "Asuras," ("Not-gods,"
and the Bible calls them "Powers of Darkness"; partially because they came
from the dark Saturn Period, and partly because it regards them as evil.
Paul speaks of our duty of wrestling with them.
Paul is right, but it is well to understand that there is nothing
absolutely evil, and that in times past they have been man's benefactors.
Evil is but good misplaced or undeveloped. For instance, suppose an
expert organ-builder making a splendid organ, his masterpiece. Then he is
the embodiment of good. But if he follows the organ into church and insists
upon taking the place of the organist when he is no musician, he is evil.
When the Lords of Mind were human in the Saturn Period and the Earth
was of the substance of the Region of Concrete Thought, we started our
evolution as minerals, and the Lords of Mind learned to build their densest
body of these minerals, as we are now building our bodies from the present
minerals. Thus they became experts in the use of this "mind stuff," and also
set up an exceedingly intimate connection with us.
Then, when the time came that the threefold body was ready for the
Spirit to enter, man needed a mind to link spirit and body. But that the
Gods could not give. It would have been too great. The Archangels and
Angels could not yet create, but the Lords of Mind just reached the third
period beyond the one where they were human, here on Earth, and became
Creative Intelligences, so naturally they stepped into the breach and
radiated from their bodies the substance from which our mind is formed.
Coming from that source, our mind is naturally separative and prone
to resent authority. It should be the tool of the infant Spirit in
governing the threefold body; a curb upon rampant desire. But it is
masterful added cunning to desire, then passion and wickedness and in itself
harder to tame than wild horses; it loves more to rule the lower than to
obey the higher. It ran high in Atlantis. The race degenerated and it
became necessary to start a new race under new conditions.
In the meantime the hot, steamy atmosphere of Lemuria had cooled and
condensed to a thick fog during Atlantean times. There the "Niebelungen"
or "children of the mist" of the old folk-story lived. They were
Atlanteans. Then "God" commanded that "the waters gather in one place and the
dry land appear." The mist gradually condensed to a flood, which filled
the valley of Atlantis and caused the wicked race to perish, except a few
who were a "chosen people," ... to inherit a promised land: The Earth as now constituted. These few were saved as variously related in the story of Noah and of Moses leading
God's people out of Egypt (Atlantis) through the Red Sea (the Atlantean
floods), where Pharoah (the wicked Atlantean king) perished with all his
followers.
The spiritual hierarchies had been seriously hampered in their efforts
to help man from the time he received the light of mind, and his
understanding was opened. Then he took matters of which he had no real
knowledge into his own hands. Propagation, for instance, and as a result of
his ignorance of the Cosmic laws in connection, parturition became painful
and death a more frequent and disagreeable experience. Therefore it became
necessary to take stern measures to check the lower nature. This was done
by Jehovah, the highest Initiate of the Moon Period and ruler of the Angels, supported in his efforts by the Archangels, who are Race Spirits. (Daniel 12:1).
Jehovah helped man to get control over the mind and desire body by
giving Law and decreeing punishment for its transgression. The fear of God
was pitted against the desires of the flesh. Thus sin became manifest in
the world.
The Archangels, as Race Spirits, fight for or against a nation, as required to punish one group which has sinned, by means of another. (Daniel
10:20.)
The Angels cause man's corn and grapes to grow or wither, his cattle to increase or not, his family to multiply or die out, as required to bless
him for obedience to the law of the chief Race Spirit Jehovah, or to punish
him for transgression against the law. Under his sway all the Race-
Religions: Confucianism, Taoism, Buddhism, Judaism, etc., have flourished and
worked in the desire body as religions of the Holy Spirit. Jehovah helps man
to curb the desire body because that was started in the Moon Period.
But Law makes for sin; it is separative, and besides, man must learn to do right apart from fear. Therefore Christ, the Highest Initiate of the
Sun Period, came to teach the religion of the Son, which works upon the
vital body, which was started in the Sun Period. He taught that love is
superior to law. Perfect love casteth out fear and emancipates humanity from
race, caste, or nation to Universal Brotherhood, which will become a fact
when Christianity is lived.
When Christianity shall have fully spiritualized the vital body, a still higher step will be the religion of the Father, who as the Highest
Initiate of the Saturn Period will help man to spiritualize the dense body
which was started in the Saturn Period. Then even brotherhood will be
transcended; there will be neither me nor thee, for all will be consciously
one in God, and Man will have been emancipated by the help of Angels, Archangels, and higher Powers.
Lecture Fourteen
Lucifer, Tempter or
Benefactor or Both?
Origin and Mission
of Sorrow and Pain
As we look about us in the world there is no fact more potent than that, as the Hebrew poet expressed it, "Man is of few days and full of
trouble," and naturally we ask why this is so.
The theologian tells us that it is God's decree that we must suffer because our first parents sinned, being tempted by the devil, and then he
attempts to justify God by such doggerel as "In Adam's fall we sinned all."
But why the eating of an apple as a cause should merit the punishment of
painful parturition as an effect has always been a sore puzzle to Bible
commentators, and how a wise, loving, and just God could decree so much
misery to the whole human Race for the apparently slight fault of one pair is
sufficiently hard to understand to excuse Robert Ingersoll in a measure
for exclaiming: "An honest God is the noblest work of man."
The seeming anomaly arises of course from lack of esoteric knowledge and consequent materialistic interpretations of that mine of esoteric
information, the Bible.
To get at the true explanation concerning pain and sorrow we will first take the purely esoteric information, and then see what light the Bible
gives. We remember that four great Epochs or ages have preceded our present
Fifth Epoch: the Polarian, Hyperborean, Lemurian, and Atlantean Epochs.
In the Polarian Epoch man had only a poorly organized dense body, hence he was as unconscious and immobile as the minerals, who are now so
constituted. In the Hyperborean Epoch his dense body was clothed upon with a
vital body, and the Spirit hovered outside. What the effect of such a nature
is we may see by examining the plant, which is similarly constituted now.
There we see constant repetition, a building upwards of stem and leaf in alternating succession, that would go on ad infinitum if there were no
other influence. But as the plant has no separate desire body, the desire
body of the Earth, the Desire World, hardens the plant and checks this
intense upwards growth in a measure. The creative force that cannot finds its
expression by making one particular plant grow taller, seeks another channel:
it builds the flower and imbeds itself in the seed, so that it may grow
upwards anew in another plant.
In the Hyperborean Epoch, where man was similarly situated, his vital body caused him to grow to an enormous size. Acted upon by the
Desire World, he threw off spore-like seeds which were either appropriated
by another human Ego or used by the Nature Spirits to build bodies for
the animals who were then beginning to emerge from Chaos. (The
highest life-wave starts first at the opening of a period and returns last to
Chaos; the succeeding life-waves, animal, plant, and mineral — emerge later
and leave earlier.)
Thus, in the Hyperborean Epoch, when man was similar to the plants in constitution, his vital body built vertebrae upon vertebrae, and would
have gone on if the individual desire body had not been given him in the
Lemurian Epoch. That commenced to harden the structure and checked the
tendency to grow taller, and as a result the cranium, the flower upon the
stem of the spinal column, was incipiently formed.
Thwarted in its effort to build the one form taller, it became necessary for the creative force in the vital body to seek a new channel
whereby it might continue its upward growth in another human being. Then
man became a hermaphrodite capable of generating a new body from himself.
In the plant there is no separate desire body, hence it feels no passion. It stretches its creative organ, the flower, chastely and unashamed
toward the Sun, a thing of beauty and a delight.
In man the individual desire body must necessarily cause passion and desire unless subjugated by some ulterior means. Therefore man is the
inversion of the chaste plant, both figuratively and literally, for he is
passionate and turns his creative organ towards the Earth and is ashamed of
it. The plant takes its food by way of the root; man's nourishment enters
his body by way of the head. Man inhales life-giving oxygen and
exhales death-dealing carbon dioxide. This is taken by the plant, which
extracts the poison and returns the vitalizing principle to man.
In order to check passion and prevent abuse of the creative function, several measures were adopted by the leaders in charge of evolution.
This animal-like creature of mid-Lemurian times, though dreadful to look upon, was nevertheless a diamond in the rough, destined to become in
time the perfect tool and beautiful temple of an indwelling Spirit. To that
end if needed a controlling mechanism, a brain, and a second nervous system
capable of being controlled by "Will" which is the force of the prospective
tenant, the Ego.
The whole creative force might have been used to that purpose, but as the use of any tool causes it to wear out, a way must also be devised to
replace a worn-out instrument when discarded by a Spirit at death, and so the
creative force in each being was divided. One-half was allowed to flow
upwards as before, to build a brain and a larynx whereby the Spirit may
control its instrument and express itself in thought and word. The other
half was turned downwards through the creative organs, for reproduction.
This arrangement has the further merit as a means of preventing abuse, that it made it harder to accomplish generation. Before the sexes
were separated each one could create without help; under the present
arrangement each must first seek the cooperation of another person who has the
opposite half of the sex-force available for reproduction.
That the boy changes his voice at puberty shows a connection between the creative organ and the larynx. Because half the sex-force builds the
brain, one who overdraws for sexual excesses becomes an idiot, while the
deep thinker, particularly along spiritual lines, feels little or no
inclination for coition, as he uses most of his creative force in the brain.
The Angels worked along with man in the Hyperborean Epoch, when he
had only a dense and vital body, but in the Lemurian Epoch, when the desire
body was added, the Archangels also took a hand, to help the infant human
Spirit to control its future vehicles. They neutralized the desire body so
that it was only sexually active at certain times of the year. In the latter
part of the Lemurian Epoch and the beginning of the Atlantean, the brain
and cerebrospinal system were sufficiently evolved so that the link of
Mind could be given, and the Ego began slowly to draw into its bodies, and
became an indwelling spirit in the middle of the Atlantean Epoch, fully
conscious of its outside environment. Before the indrawing was fully
completed, particularly in the latter part of the Lemurian Epoch, man's
consciousness was turned inwards, and he was mostly conscious in the
spiritual world. Thus birth and death were nonexistent to him, as the
sprouting out and drying away of a leaf is to the plant. His consciousness
went on unbrokenly in the inner World whether he had a body or not, for he
was unconscious of it, though he used it equally well for all that, as we
use our stomach and lungs unconsciously.
At stated times of the year the Archangels, withdrew their
restraining influence on the desire body and the Angels marshaled humanity
to great temples where the generative act was performed at the times when
the constellations were propitious. Our present-day honeymoon trips are
atavistic reminders of those migrations for propagative purposes, and
show a connection with the heavenly bodies in the name honey-moon.
When propagation had been accomplished, the desire body was again
neutralized, and in consequence there was no more pain connected
with parturition than is the case with the animals at present, where similar
conditions obtain now.
This was a carefree state, but man was extremely limited in
consciousness, led and controlled by outside agencies willy-nilly. If that
condition had continued, man would have remained a God-guided automaton. He
can never become a self-conscious Creative Intelligence, as he is destined to
become, until he throws off all yokes and works out his own salvation.
Therefore great Leaders from a more advanced evolution were sent to
train man and awaken him to knowledge of the material world without, and of
course strong measures continued for ages were necessary. The boys were
trained to develop "will," which is the spiritual counterpart of their
positive creative force. They were taught to carry immense burdens and steel
the arm by will. They engaged in brutal fights and their bodies were
burned and maimed, impaled upon spits, etc., in efforts to awaken the Ego to
consciousness of the dense body and outside world.
The girls were driven out into the immense fern-forests which
grew luxuriantly in the moist, hot soil. They were exposed to the fury of
the tempests of storm-swept Lemuria and set to watch volcanic outbursts
which produced pictures before their inner vision. They likewise watched
the fights of the boys, in order to develop their "imagination."
Imagination is the spiritual pole of the negative force, and it
mirrored the scenes of the outside world in dream-like pictures before their
inner consciousness, and in that way the women were the first to become aware
of the existence of the Physical World and the dense body, and they started
to preach the gospel of the body to men, whom they told of this dimly
perceived physical existence. Some among us are now sensing the soul and
trying to preach the gospel of the spiritual world where the Spirit lives,
and meet unbelief and ridicule such as the Lemurian women encountered when
trying to convince their compatriots that they had a dense body.
Among the observations made by these seeresses was the fact that at
times a man lost his body, and it disintegrated. She saw him just as before
in the spiritual world, but he was gone from material existence, and
it troubled her.
From the Angels she could get no information; they work with the
dense body, but not directly; they use the vital body as transmitter, and
cannot make themselves understood to a reasoning brain-being. They get
their knowledge without reasoning, for they send out their whole love in
their world and cosmic wisdom flows in in return. Man also creates by love,
but his love is selfish; he loves because he desires: — cooperation in
generation, for he only sends out half of his creative force in generation,
the other half he selfishly keeps to build his own organ of thought, the
brain, and he also uses that half selfishly to think, because he desires: —
knowledge. Hence he must work and reason to gain wisdom, but in time he will
arrive at a much higher stage than either Angel or Archangel. He will then
have passed beyond the need of the lower creative organs, he will create by
means of the larynx, and be able to "make the word flesh."
At that stage the woman could not reason either, for the mind was
given by the Powers of Darkness, and it was dark, and before it could be of
any use in correlating facts it must be illuminated. Only after that has
been done can man throw "the light of Reason" upon his problems.
It is here that we first hear of "Lucifer," "the Light-bringer,"
who speaks to the woman and helps her to solve the riddle by showing her
how, with the help of the man, she may exercise the creative function
independently of the Angels, and in that way provide bodies when they have
been lost, and in that way evade death.
He inquires if God has forbidden them to eat of the tree, and is
told that they have been forbidden to eat of the tree of knowledge of good
and evil, under penalty of death.
That the tree of knowledge is a symbolical expression for the generative
function is readily apparent when we remember how limited the consciousness
of man was at that time. He knew or was aware of nothing outside himself,
his eyes had not yet been opened, his consciousness was internal, like the
picture-consciousness of our dreams, except that it was not confused, but he
was as unaware of the exterior world and beings as we are now of the
spiritual world, save at the times when he was conducted to the temples and
brought into intimate sexual contact with another; then, for the moment, the
Spirit pierced the veil of flesh. Then man and wife knew each other in
body, and to the initiated the Bible records these facts in a wonderfully
illuminating way and continues to use the same expression in many places,
such as: "Adam knew his wife," and in Mary's question: "How shall I
conceive, seeing that I know not a man." The pain of childbirth is also
more logically meted out as a penalty for violation of an injunction
against sexual intercourse than as a punishment for eating an apple.
The serpent said: "Ye shall not surely die, for the God doth know
that in the day ye eat thereof your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as
the gods, knowing good and evil." The latter was then unknown to man.
Acting upon this advice, the woman secured the cooperation of man and
by the power of will they freed their desire bodies. That faculty was
then much greater than now, for it is a law that each new faculty is
always bought at the cost of weakening some previous power, as when the
faculty of thought was bought at the price of half the creative force. Then
the man's will-power was such that the anxiety of the God "lest man eat also
of 'the tree of life' and become immortal" was well founded, for had he
secured possession of the secret of renewing the vital body as well as the
dense body, he would have been able to create a body and vitalize it
forever. Then there would truly have been no death, but neither would there
have been any evolution; as man did not then, and does not yet, know how to
build a perfect body, that would have been the greatest possible calamity.
Death is not a curse, but a friend when it comes naturally, for it releases
us from an environment we have outgrown, and from a body that ties us, in
order that we may get a new chance in a new and better body to learn new
lessons.
The untrammeled use of the sex-function had the result of making man
more and more conscious of his body; "their eyes were opened," and their
attention focused more and more on the Physical World, until by degrees they
have forgotten the higher worlds altogether, and many have ceased to even
believe that there is an immortal spirit in man. To them the death of the
body is of course a terrible thing, a dire calamity despite all assertions,
because they think it annihilation. So, although the word of Lucifer was
true, and a new body is provided, the word of the Angel was truer still, for
there was no sting in death until man lost consciousness of the higher worlds.
As to the curse: "In sorrow shalt thou bring forth thy children," it was no curse at all, but a simple statement of the effects that must inevitably result from the abuse or ignorant use of the creative function.
While that was exercised under the wise guidance of the Angels, at certain times of the year, when the cosmic lines of force running from planet to planet were propitious, parturition could be accomplished without pain, but man was and is ignorant of these factors, hence he transgressed and
pain resulted.
Thus the brain and vocal organ have been bought at the cost of half the creative force; freedom from the rule of the Angels and the power to initiate action, to choose good or evil, and consciousness of the
material world are ours at the cost of sorrow, pain, and death.
But all things work for good in God's kingdom, the world. Even
that which is evil is transmuted by the subtlest spiritual alchemy
into steppingstones to a higher good than could have been achieved without it.
Having been exiled from the garden of Eden, the Etheric Region, by
learning to know the material world, in consequence of repeated sexual
abuse which has focused his attention here, this increased use of the
desire body hardened the dense body and it began to require food and shelter.
Thus man's ingenuity was taxed to provide for the body. Hunger and cold
were whips of evil that called forth man's ingenuity; they forced him to
think and act to provide for his necessities. Thus he is gradually learning
wisdom; he provides for these contingencies before they come, because the
pangs of hunger and cold have taught him to guard himself, and thus wisdom is crystallized pain. Our sorrows, when they are past, and we can calmly
view them and extract the lessons they contained, are mines of wisdom, and
are the wombs of future joys, for by them we learn to order our lives aright,
we learn to cease from sin, for ignorance is sin and the only sin, and
applied knowledge is salvation, and the only salvation. That seems a broad
statement, but if we try it out in thought it will be found to be as
absolutely true and capable of demonstration as that twice two are four.
As to the question: Who are these Lucifers? (for, although the
Bible seems to speak of only one person, that is as wrong as where it uses
the singular for God in the first chapter of Genesis) — They are a class of
Beings who attained to a stage of evolution far beyond that of our humanity in
the Moon Period, but fell short of the development of the Angels. They are
demi-gods, and could not take a dense body like man. But neither could they
gather experience as the Angels are doing. They needed a brain and spinal
cord, and so, when man had built such an instrument, it was to their
advantage to prompt him in the use of it.
At that time the opening consciousness of man was turned inwards, and
he saw his inner organs and built them with the same force that he now
turns outwards to build houses and ships, etc., and the outside muscles of
his body; so the woman, who was most advanced in that direction because of
having her Imagination trained, saw the intelligence embodied in her
serpentine spinal cord, and at a later stage, when man came to record this
experience, the serpent appealed to him as the nearest likeness to that which
he wanted to tell about.
This idea is carried out right through the Bible. In Isaiah 14 he
is called Lucifer (day-star), king of Babel-On (gate of the sun), a city
located upon seven hills, and having dominion over the World. There mankind
ceased to act in unison and became separated into warring nations. It is
the seed-ground of all the ills imaginable, and is called a "harlot" in
Revelation, where her fall is described.
In supreme antithesis we hear of another "Light of the World," a
"bright morning-star," a true light (Christ), who shall rise after the
fall of Babylon and reign forever in a city of peace: Jer-u-salem, that is
called the "bride." It comes down from heaven, and has twelve gates, but
they are never closed, although the precious tree of life is within. There is
no outside illumination. The light is within and there is no night.
Truly a wonderful city, and the greatest imaginable antithesis to
the other. What does it mean? for literal interpretation is out of the
question in both cases. Allowing that a city of Babylon has existed, it was
not literally as described, and the future "New Jerusalem" is contrary to
all laws of nature as we know them. These two cities must therefore be
symbols.
In order to unravel the meaning, let us consider that these cities
are located upon seven hills or mountains, a position offering special
advantages for observation. Moses went "into the mountain" and "saw"
and "heard," so did those on "the mount" of transfiguration. Daniel
likens Babylon to the head of the image Nebuchadnezzar saw in a dream, and on
the human head there are seven places of observation: two eyes, two ears,
two nostrils, and a mouth. Upon these sits the brain, where the
"Light'giver," reason, rules the little world, the microcosm, as the Great
Light-giver, God, rules the macrocosm.
Reason is the product of selfishness. It is generated by the mind
given by the "Powers of Darkness," in a brain built by selfishly keeping half
the sex-force, and prompted by the selfish Lucifers, hence it is "the seed
of the serpent," and although transmuted to wisdom through pain and sorrow,
it must give way to something higher — to intuition, which means: teaching
from within. That is a spiritual faculty, equally present in all
Spirits, whether functioning for the time being as man or woman, but it
expresses itself most prominently in those incarnated in a female organism,
for there the counterpart of the life spirit — the vital body — is male,
positive; and intuition, the faculty of the life spirit, may therefore
properly be called "the woman's seed," whence all altruistic tendencies
spring, and whereby all nations are being slowly but surely drawn together in
a Universal Brotherhood of love, regardless of race, sex, or color.
This brain of ours is not a homogeneous whole, however; it is
divided into two halves, and it is a fact well known to physiologists that
we use principally but one of these cerebral hemispheres — the left. The
right half of our brain is only partially active. The heart also is on the left side of our body, but is beginning to move towards "the right"
place. The "right" brain will also become more and more active, and in
consequence of these two physiological changes man's whole character will
appear different. The left side is under the sway of the Lucifers and is
given over to selfishness, but the Ego will gain more and more control as
the right side of the brain is invested with power to act upon the body as
right judgment.
That there is a a change going on in the heart which makes it an
anomaly, a puzzle, is not news to physiologists. We have two sets of
muscles, one set is under the control of the will, as, for instance, the
muscles of arm and hand. They are striped both lengthwise and crosswise.
The involuntary muscles, which take care of functions not under control of
the will, which cannot be moved by desire, are striped lengthwise only.
The heart is the only exception. It is not under the control of desire, and
yet it is beginning to show cross-stripes like a voluntary muscle.
In time those cross-stripes will develop fully and the heart will be
under our control. When that time comes we will be able to direct the blood
where we will to send it. Then we may refuse to send it to the left brain,
and Babylon, the City of Lucifer, will fall.
When the blood is sent into the right brain we shall be building the
New Jerusalem, and we are now preparing for that time by building
the cross-stripes on the heart by altruistic ideals or, in the case of the
pupil, by sending the sex current through the right-hand path of the heart.
We remember that the Cherubim awakened the life spirit, the seat of
divine love, whose shadow is the vital body, the medium of propagation, and
when man was exiled from the Etheric Region, the garden of Eden, with its
four streams of Ether, for the misuse of the sex force, the Cherubim were
placed before it with a flaming sword. The right use of the sex force
builds an organ which will give man the key to the inner Worlds and help him
to create by thought. Then sorrow and pain will cease and he will have
entered the path to the city of peace — Jer-u-salem.
Lemuria perished by fire and terrible volcanic cataclysms. In its
stead rose Atlantis. In time that was buried beneath the waves and gave way
to the Fifth Epoch, the Earth as we see it at present in the Fifth Epoch, but that
is soon past. The salamanders are beginning to stir the fires in the forge
to make "a new heaven and a new Earth," which the Western School of
Esotericism calls the "New Galilee."
In the first two Epochs man evolved a body and vitalized it; in
the Lemurian Epoch he developed desire; the Atlantean Epoch produced cunning; and the fruitage of the Fifth Epoch is reason.
In the New Galilee humanity will have a much finer and more ethereal
body than now, the Earth will be transparent also, and as a result those
bodies will be more easily responsive to the spiritual impacts of intuition.
Such a body will not get tired either, hence there is no night, and the
twelve cranial nerves, which are the gates to the seat of consciousness,
then as now are consequently never closed. Besides, New Galilee will be
formed of luminous ether and transmit sunlight. That land will be a land
of peace (Jer-u-salem), for Universal Brotherhood will bind all beings of
all the Earth together in Love. There can be no death, for the tree of
life, the faculty for generating vital force, is made possible by means of
the ethereal organ in the head already mentioned, which will be evolved in
those who are even now being taken out as forebears for the humanity of that
coming Epoch.
That Race is spoken of as "Christ's Race"; but, be it understood
that that is not because of an exterior Christ, but because they will evolve
the Christ-principle within, they will act as dictated by the spirit
through Intuition, and all they do will be done in Love. Only by such
individual upliftment can the salvation of the Race be accomplished, for as
Angelus Silesius put it,
Though Christ a thousand times in Bethlehem be born,
And not within thyself, thy soul will be forlorn,
The cross on Golgotha thou lookest to in vain
Unless within thyself it be set up again.
All through the past two thousand years in which we have had the
Christian religion among us, and since the doctrine of the vicarious
atonement and the cleansing blood has come into our Western World, there has
been a contention among many people, in the later centuries especially,
about whether there is really any efficacy in that cleansing blood, or
whether it is only a foolish story. We shall hope tonight to show that there
is something vastly grander than ever anyone has imagined, when we come to
turn the light of esotericism and reason upon this doctrine. Afterwards we may
let our hearts have full sway in belief of this grand and glorious idea
of the cleansing blood and of the atonement that was effected two
millenniums ago at the Place of the Skull, which is called Golgotha in the
Hebrew.
When we read our Christian creed, we find the sentence, "Jesus
Christ, the only begotten son of God," and it is assumed by most people
that the sentence refers to a single individual called Jesus Christ, who was
the only begotten son of God. However, we shall very quickly see that that
is not so — that there are three great and glorious individualities concerned
in the sentence. They are all worthy of our very greatest veneration, but
differ vastly in glory, and have a very, very different career back of them.
When we examine Jesus in the light of the esoteric records, in the light
of that which we have seen in the previous lectures is called "the memory
of nature," then we find that "that Spirit which was in Jesus" from the time
of birth, is an Ego which belongs to our human race, and which has
incarnated again and again. We can find him under different names and
varying circumstances, just as you and I have been and are going to be. So
we find that at the time that is stated in our records, at about the
beginning of our era, there was born in Palestine a child, and that child
was Jesus.
His mother was of an exceedingly pure type — a most
beautiful character — and his father was an initiate of high degree, one who,
for that one time in his life, forsook the path of celibacy. He had in
previous incarnations gone past the time when he should be a householder. In
this life he had devoted himself wholly to the esoteric path; and when the
time came that a great teacher was to incarnate among us, he was selected to
give the fertilizing seed for that teacher's body. In that way, there was
provided such a wonderful body as has never been before nor since. It was
of the purest and most passionless type, and the Ego Jesus who came into it,
came into it as a great Spirit, knowing that was his mission in that life
to bring up a body in as pure as possible a manner, because it was not to
be his for longer than the term of thirty years. At that time he was to
give it up to another, much higher than he.
Concerning the early days of Jesus, it might be well to say that he
was born there in Palestine; that he went through his early boyhood days in
full knowledge of that mission which was his. He was put into the schools of
the Essenes, on the shores of the Dead Sea. The Essenes were a community
there, who were of the most devout character. They were as opposite as
possible to the materialistic Sadducees, and far, far beyond the cynical
Pharisees. They were not people who went about in the synagogues and prided
themselves on their learning, piety, etc., but were people who stayed in their
own community and lived the holy life as they saw it. Among them the growing
Jesus found his early training, and he was so marvelously adapted to the life
that was led there that in a very short time he distanced them all. Then,
at a later period, he went to Persia. This school of the Essenes where he
was, was a great center of learning. It had a great library, and he absorbed
an immense amount of esoteric knowledge, regaining what he had learned in
previous lives.
At the end of thirty years he had cleansed and purified his body so
far that it could be taken by the Great Being whom we call the Christ. We
shall next see who that Great Being is.
We said of Jesus that he could be traced back in the Memory of
Nature from incarnation to incarnation under different names, and in
different environments. But of Christ we find only one incarnation, and that
is when he incarnated in the body of Jesus, at the end of the thirty years.
To trace Him, let us briefly recapitulate some earlier statements.
We went through the Saturn Period, the Sun Period, and the Moon
Period, and we finally came here. We saw also, in previous lectures, that
the humanity of the Saturn Period were the lords of Mind; the humanity of the
Sun Period were the Archangels; the humanity of the Moon Period were the
Angels. Those were the ordinary humanity of these different periods, beings
who are working with us invisibly, working upon our vital bodies and desire
bodies and minds, helping us to evolve. When we see that there are
initiates in this period, that someone like Jesus can progress far ahead of
ordinary humanity, we may understand that the same can have been done in
previous periods also, and it is these who have gone beyond ordinary
evolution that we speak of today as the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
God, as God, is not the creator of our Universe. In the highest world
of this Cosmic Plane which we inhabit, He is found as God, but below that He
is not God. He expresses himself in the different worlds as various
kingdoms of man, Angels, Archangels, etc., and therefore we do not see Him in
humanity until we get to that great world, the world we call in esotericism
the World of God. In that World of God, the Triune God IS. The highest
Initiate of the Saturn Period has attained to that point where He has
become one with the highest aspect of the Triune God, and so He is called
the Father — the Father of all those who evolved in our evolution.
The one who came next to Him in glory, the Highest Initiate of the
Sun Period, evolved up to the point where he became united with the second
aspect of the Triune God, and therefore, He is the Son. That is the Cosmic
Christ, and a Ray from Him entered Jesus' body.
The third Great Being, the Only Begotten, mentioned in that sentence
from the Christian Creed, is still greater than Jesus and Christ, but we have
not so much to do with that Being at this present time. It may be well to
know, —
— however, that the Holy Spirit, the Power of God working with all the
nations, is Jehovah, the Highest Initiate of the Moon Period.
By looking at Diagram 14 we shall see that this tallies with what we
have learned in previous lectures. Each Being has seven vehicles, and the
lowest of Jehovah's vehicles comes down to the Region of Abstract Thought,
where we have our Ego. There we are below the line that divides spirit from
matter. there is differentiation. We have seen in Lecture No. 3 that every
planet in our system has its three separate worlds, the Physical World, the
Desire World, and the World of Thought — that is, separate vehicles for
each planet — but the unifying principle in our solar system is the Life
Spirit, and therefore the Son, who is to be the unifying principle in the
world, or in the planet, must have that life spirit evolved. Christ, the
Highest Initiate of the Sun Period, at the present time ordinarily uses as
His lowest vehicle the life spirit.
In the Sun Period, the lowest of the Globes was in the Desire World,
and therefore the Archangels have the desire body as their lowest vehicles
yet; but Christ has gone beyond. He has raised himself higher, and so He has
the life spirit as His lowest vehicle today, and ordinarily uses no denser
vehicle. Only by the power of the life spirit can the national tendency be
overcome and a universal brotherhood of man become a fact. The vehicles
pertaining to the World of Thought, the Ego, and the mind, make for
separateness. They have that for their characteristic. But the life spirit
is the unifying principle in the universe, and therefore Christ is the only
one fitted to bring about brotherhood.
There is the reason why Christ had to come to help us. An now
about Christ-Jesus. It is a law in the universe that no being, however great,
can ever build a vehicle and function in a world that is higher or lower
than the world that he has learned to function in. So that when it became
necessary to work here in our Physical World, it was an absolute
impossibility for any being except our humanity to work here. They alone
have been able to build dense human vehicles. They have been helped by
others, but they have done the work, and therefore it was necessary that one
of them, in order to obtain this help from Christ for the race, must give up
his body, so that the higher being could enter it, and then help humanity.
We know that at death, or at any time when we have to leave this
Physical World, we give up our dense body and our vital body, because they
belong to the Physical World. And so Jesus, when he had come to the age of
thirty, when he had made his instrument fit for the use of the Great Being,
gladly, willingly gave it away. He left it at the baptism as he would have
stepped out at death, that the Christ might step in, and that was seen to
descend upon him as a dove.
Christ, as an Archangel, had learned to build down to the desire
body, but the vital body and the dense body he had never learned to build.
The Archangels had worked on humanity from without before, as Group Spirits
do: but that was not enough. The help had to come from within. That was
made possible by the combination of Christ and Jesus, and therefore, it is
true, in the very highest sense, in the most literal sense, when Paul says:
"There is but one mediator between God and man — Christ Jesus, the
righteous." No other entity in our system possesses the whole chain of
twelve vehicles that stretches from the dense body, and right up through
all the seven worlds, to the second aspect of the Triune God, the Son.
Therefore, he can come to the very throne of the Father; therefore, He can
go to the highest possible pitch, and can take the sorrows and sufferings of
humanity there, and can cleanse us in a way no other can, and help as no other
can.
Now then, we have seen who Jesus is, who Christ is, and who the
composite personality is that we speak of as Christ-Jesus. The Only Begotten
is yet a much higher being. We hear people speak of the Absolute, and they
think of the Absolute then as God, perhaps!. Their ideas are very, very hazy.
They could not be otherwise, of course. There has been no definite teaching
upon this subject. But God, the Grand Architect of our Universe, as called
by the Masons, is described as the Creator of our solar system, and has
nothing to do with anything outside our solar system. Beyond the seven worlds
where our solar system and all other solar systems are located there are still
six other great Cosmic Planes of life and being, and in them there are
higher hierarchies of different grades and glories beyond that Great Being we
speak of as God. Highest among them, there is what we may call the Supreme
Being, the one who includes all the solar systems and all the hierarchies in
the whole Universe; and the Word that came out from that great Being — the
first Sound or Creative Fiat — the first manifestation from the Supreme Being —
that is the alone begotten. Other Beings have been "Alone Begotten" in a
similar way, but not in the same way that first Sound was. There was
nothing but the Supreme Being before that started, and we can speak of
nothing beyond that One except the Absolute.
Although this may mean nothing to us at the present time, it is well to know that there is a distinction, so that our ideas are clear at last, as
to who God is, who the Son is, and who is the holy Spirit; also in regard
to Christ-Jesus.
The Father is the Highest Initiate of the Saturn Period.
The Son is the Highest Initiate of the Sun Period, having reached by
initiation the second aspect of God.
Jehovah, the Holy Spirit, is the Highest Initiate of the Moon
Period. And the ordinary humanity of the different periods are,
respectively, the Angels, the Archangels, and the Lords of Mind. Many of
these great hierarchies there are, many that are beyond the evolution of man,
and below the evolution of man, but there is none, none, "there is none
other name given among men" whereby men must be saved, than the name of
Christ-Jesus.
Now we have at last come to an understanding of our factors, the
factors that go to make this great sacrifice on Golgotha — we know who is who.
These lectures are at first analytical in the highest degree, but when we
combine their results, and consider the sacrifice in their light, then we
shall see something great, something spiritual in it. It is necessary to be
analytical for the sake of those who have been put off in the churches. They
have questioned, "What good in the world can it do me to believe?"
They are seeking for an answer to that question raised in their
minds, "What is the efficacy of the blood?" and therefore it is necessary
to be analytical before we come to the spiritual teaching. We have one more
factor we must analyze, and that is the Blood.
You have heard me say a number of times that the blood is the
particular vehicle of the Ego in the physical world. We find in the Bible
that that was well known among those who wrote Leviticus. They said, the
life is in the blood. We see blood as a number of little microscopic
globules or discs, but blood is not of that nature as seen by the trained
clairvoyant in the living human body. Blood is a gas, then, a hot spiritual
essence. The heat is caused by the Ego that is within that blood. If the
skin is punctured, and the blood exuded, it coagulates, as steam, which is
an invisible hot gas, condenses as soon as it comes out into the atmosphere.
The blood in our veins is the vehicle through which, by means of the
sympathetic nervous system, the subconscious mind carries on all the
activities of the body that we are not aware of in the conscious mind.
Blood is a most peculiar essence, as shown in the myth of Faust, where he
is signing a compact with the Evil One. He is going to sign it in ink.
But Mephistopheles says, "Sign it in blood." Faust questions, "Why? Is
that more efficacious?" "Yes," says Mephistopheles, "blood is a most peculiar
essence" — for he knows that the blood contains the Ego, therefore he wants
the blood of the man he is trying to get in his power.
The human Ego is more powerful than the Group Spirit of the animal, as
we see when we apply the test of science, known as haemolysis. Strange
blood of a higher animal will kill if inoculated into a lower species. If we
take human blood and inoculate it into a lower animal, the animal cannot
stand the high vibration that is in the blood of the human being; it dies. On
the other hand, inoculate the human being with the blood of the animal and
he will not suffer. We may go as far down in the scale of being as
the anthropoids. They can stand inoculations of human blood; all other
animals die.
In the days previous to Christ, we remember from Parsifal that there
was no initiation for "whosoever will." It was said as a prophecy, "Ho,
every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters," but that was only as a
prophecy. After Christ came, we have "whosoever will." Before that time
initiation was reserved for certain castes. They alone could be initiates, or
priests. To show that that was abrogated, the body of Jesus was taken — not one
from a Levite. It came from the strongest mixture in the Jewish nation,
the Galileans. In earlier times no one might marry except in his own tribe.
We read that Adam and Methuselah lived so and so many years. At that time
it was the practice to marry in the family, to marry as closely in the
family as possible; then the blood that coursed through the veins of the
people in that family contained the pictures of all that had happened to the
different ancestors stored in the mind which is now subconscious. Then it
was consciously and constantly before the inner vision of man, and each
family was united by the common blood wherein their ancestors lived. The
sons saw the life of their fathers. Thus Adam and the other patriarchs lived
on for centuries.
In those olden times no one would go outside the family to marry,
any more that we would go inside the family. It was a horror to marry into
a strange family. Even in the Norse mythology, we learn how those who wanted
to become part of a family would be obliged to mix blood. it had to be
first seen whether that blood would mix or not, so we see haemolysis was
known then in some of its phases at least. If the blood did not mix it —
— would bring about "confusion of caste" as the Hindu says. A strict
line must be kept, for otherwise those pictures of the inner vision would not
be the same, they would become confused.
When Christ came he abrogated that practice when he said, "Before
Abraham was, I Am." I do not care for Abraham, but I glory in the I Am,
the Ego that was long before he was. And he said, "Who does not leave
father and mother, cannot follow me." As long as you are keeping up the
family, the nation, the tribe, you are siding with the old blood, the old
ways, and you cannot amalgamate into a universal brotherhood. That can only
come when you marry internationally. Because when you have so many nations,
it is like so many houses of brick. As long as you have those houses
standing about you, you cannot make one grand building, but when you break
them up, you can mold them into one grand structure. Marriage in the family
must be done away with; let Abraham die that the "I am" may live; perish
Paternalism, Individualism to the fore.
What effect has that change had? The mixture of blood always kills
something. If it does not kill the animal, it kills something else., If
we mate a horse and a donkey, we have as the outcome a hybrid, the mule.
Is that mule the same as each of those who begot it? Is there not
something killed? Yes. The faculty of propagation is killed, and so it is
in all other hybrids. They cannot propagate their species. In the same way,
when we marry internationally, something else is killed. And that is — the
pictures in the inner vision. The different pictures of different
families clash, and so the clairvoyance, the touch with the spiritual world,
with the memory of nature, has waned since that time. The Highland Scots who
married in the clan, and the gypsies alone retain this second sight in a
measure.
If someone had stood for thousands of years upon a distant planet
and looked clairvoyantly at our little Earth, he would have seen a
gradual change from bad to worse in its Desire World and World of Thought.
It was getting more and more filled up with murky and bad vibrations,
because man, in the days of his earliest childhood, was not able to control
his impulses. He was controlled mostly by the mind and the desire body, and
therefore after death he had to stay in Purgatory almost all of the times
between incarnations; there was almost no progress. The Second Heaven life,
where he learns to do creative work, was almost barren.
The Desire World of the Earth must be cleansed to give man a new
start. That was Christ's mission.
As to the reason for the violent death, we have already heard that when
a person is taken violently out of his instrument there is something that
clings to it, and that something is the impurities of the lower nature. We
have the arterial blood, and the venous blood, and in that venous blood are
the impurities that belong to the lower nature; but in the arterial blood we
have the purity. The venous blood clings closely to the flesh, and
therefore at the time that any person is killed, if the blood flows, there
is a distinct cleansing. Whenever the spirit is taken out of the body by
accident, and the flood flows, man is cleaner, he is better as a spirit.
The body of Jesus was to be killed, and blood was to flow, in order
that by that violent death, the last impurity that might be still clinging to
the flesh should be left to decay; that the Christ Spirit, pure and
untainted, with none of the impurities of the body it had used, might be
diffused over the world.
When that Great Being flowed out through the wounds of Jesus' body,
that luminous Sun Spirit diffused itself all over the Earth. And that is why
we hear of that great darkness, because that spiritual light was what men
perceived as darkness. But gradually it was absorbed into the Earth, and
took its place, permitting everything within its influence to return to its
normal condition, so far as man could see; but the vibrations that had been
set up there cleansed, purified, and set in rhythmic order the vibrations in
the higher world, and gave a spiritual impulse that could not otherwise
have been given, and that was the way that it cleansed, and "took away the sin
of the world" by restoring the rhythmic vibrations in a measure and thus
enabling man to progress. That influence is still working and cleansing the
world; it is the source of altruism and benevolence which are gradually taking
the place of patriotism and selfishness, bringing Universal Brotherhood and
Fellowship to the World.
Reference: The Rosicrucian Christianity Lectures, by Max Heindel (1865-1919)
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