The 13th century ecstatic poet, Rumi, told a now-famous story about an elephant. Some Sufis needed to raise money. To do that they brought an elephant to a place where an elephant had never been seen. They brought it in
during the dark of night and kept it in a darkened tent. Then they sold tickets
for brief visits to experience the elephant in the tent. One man went in and
came out and said the elephant is like a temple with great pillars; another
said it was like the large fans used to cool the queen. Yet another said the
elephant is like a giant hose. At this point in the story Rumi remarks, “What
a difference a little light would make.”
In the Rosicrucian philosophy we have been given more than a little light; we
have received what is like the summer sun at noon on the Sahara. It sometimes seems like everything is revealed and made clear. The reality is different for the world. The sun does not brighten things everywhere at the same
time; there are dark quarters. There are also theological pillars and fans. “To
whom much is given, of him much will be required.” It is our duty to bring
light where there is darkness. “Let your light so shine before men that they
may see your good works and glorify your Father which is in heaven.” It is
ours to expose the pillars and fans for what they are in the whole of things.
One of the theological pillars that needs clarification is the “doctrine of vicarious atonement.” There are many variants of this doctrine whose names
reveal their meanings. They include the ransom theory, Christ the victor theory, the recapitulation theory, the satisfaction theory, the penal substitution
theory, the moral influence theory, and others. They all have one thing in
common – the idea that Christ died for our sins and in that death redeemed
us.
According to the findings of Christian mystical seers Christ did have to die,
but it wasn’t the death of Christ that gives us the blessing of the path to redemption and salvation, it is the life of Christ that does that. Mystical reasons
for the necessity of death will come farther on. For now, it is more ripe to
speak of the historical basis of this doctrine.
The Rosicrucian philosophy teaches that religion evolves as we evolve. In the
time depicted in the Garden of Eden story, our consciousness was predom
inantly inner. We did not need a religion. We beheld divinity, a fact echoed
by St. Paul. We were then becoming aware of the without, and were only
mildly aware of the taking on, and leaving off, of physical bodies. We were
coming into the chemical Earth as it was forming. While we were becoming
more outwardly conscious, we were losing our inward awareness. To become
outward was one of the goals for us in the divine plan. To become preoccupied with the without so extensively that we lost touch with the within, and
its laws, was not. We were distracted. The gradual losing of inwardness led
to some insecurity in us. We were vulnerable, as we often are in periods of
change. We responded by becoming more focused on the loss of our physical
bodies, and the outer world. In this state we were tempted to seek immortality through reproduction of physical bodies at will. We took the temptation
and rebelled against divine injunction about the sacred creative force. We
did this before consciously knowing the inner laws about the creative force
and its purpose. Consequently, we became out of harmony with the cosmos
and its divine plan. The result was that we “fell” more deeply into matter
than was intended.
In taking the sacred creative force into our volition, we were effectively declaring spiritual sovereignty from the spiritual hierarchies which previously
controlled our progress. Procreative license did not satisfy our insecurity.
We still needed the Divine and its guidance, so we sought spiritual connection through religion. When we declared spiritual sovereignty, the divine hierarchies had to respect that, as all divine beings do. They could no longer
control us willy-nilly. They had to use other, indirect means to bring us to
what we needed. One of the means to humble our burgeoning selfishness was
sacrifice, in return for spiritual connection, which is exactly what the word
religion means. We were asked to sacrifice our most precious possessions,
animals, for divine blessing. For many thousands of years animal sacrifice
was a part of religious experience. Ritual sacrifice became an integral, almost
constant, component of religion.
“Blood is a peculiar essence.” Mystics and occultists know there is a power to
be gained in the taking of the blood of an animal or another human. This is
true whether it is done by an individual or a group. It is a power that binds
those who are complicit, and, in that, freedom is sacrificed. Psychopathic
murderers feel this power, and the taking of blood is a tool in the rituals of
criminal and sorcerous societies. There have been cultures in which priestly
leaders held power by perverting this principle in human sacrifice.
With these things in our long history, and still present in the psychic background, one can understand how many might be inclined to see the sacrifice
and crucifixion of Christ as a propitiation, a cosmic ransom, a substitution,
or a ritual sacrifice, after so many millennia of conditioning. However, understanding these origins of the theological theories, and the environment
from which they sprang, does not make them true. Any Christian aspirant,
of any ilk, ought to be ashamed to think their religion is founded in ritual,
blood sacrifice. One of the worst forms of materialism is literalism, of the
kind that leads to the belief that one is literally, not symbolically or analogously, consuming flesh and blood in communion. The religion of Christ,
the new religion, the religion of the Son, is a religion founded in love, not in
death and blood. The old religions, the religions of Jehovah, were religions
of separation unto individualism, and they were preoccupied with death. The
theories of vicarious atonement seem to be reversion to bargaining with God
in the fear of death, the fear that took us into the “fall” in the first place.
Perhaps a perusal of the purpose of the life of Christ can help to understand
the necessity for the death if it was not literally a blood sacrifice, the binding
power notwithstanding.
A light perusal of the Gospels, without even going into any esoteric interpretation, is a good way to begin to understand of the incarnation of Christ.
Doing that reveals that St. Johns Gospel does that much more than any of the
synoptic Gospels. In St. John’s Gospel Christ frequently tells us why he came.
He came to bring things to those who were in need, and who were willing to
receive what he offered. The list of offerings is not very long but it is repetitious. It includes light, vision, love, peace, joy, truth and, above all, life. The
gift of life, expressed in several forms, is clearly at the front of the purpose
of Christ. The life is not offered in contradistinction to death, for which preoccupation it is an antidote. It is Life, per se, “abundant” life, “eternal” life,
life not of this world. A simple scan of the scriptural source material for all
forms of Christianity, should lay to rest notions of ransom, substitution or
any other reasons for a sacrificial death. It doesn’t. One sees more crucifixes
than celebrations of the life and love of Christ, as though death instead of
life purges transgressions. Our continuance in spiritual blindness, instead
of “light” and “vision” offered by Christ, seems to be self-perpetuating. It
seems to be a stubborn persistence in materialism. We exiled ourselves from
the Garden of Eden (inner vision), and we have become accustomed to our
exile — we are sensible people, literally. Like little children, we think we can
get away with something if we aren’t seen, and if we are caught our sins are
atoned for. In that frame of mind, someone dying to remove our sins seems
pleasant, and has even proven plausible to many. It doesn’t work that way.
We cannot escape the consequences of our deeds anymore than we can escape ourselves. To understand the remission or forgiveness of sins, even a little, it is beneficial to appeal to esoteric Christianity, to Christian Mysticism.
It must be stated ab initio that this subject is well beyond the bounds of a
short essay. Many books have been written on the remission and forgiveness
of sins, and many more will be written. It must also be stated that a deep and
living understanding of the subject is also currently beyond the author of this
essay. At best, this will be a little sip from the deep well that issues the water
of life.
There is a pagan creation story which roughly states that darkness (invisibility) was first. The first thing created in darkness was love and the first thing
love created was the law, under which all else was created. Besides roughly
paralleling one of the creation stories of Genesis, this story is the inverse of St.
Paul saying, “the end of the law is love.” Love is the beginning and end of the
law. It subtends it. Love is also an attribute of Life Spirit, the home of Christ,
the Son, who represents it. All of the “I am” statements of Christ in St. John’s
Gospel are attributes of Life Spirit. For example, when Christ says, “I am the
truth,” Christ is speaking of pure truth which transcends the principles that
contain it in the abstract subdivision of the world of thought, and through
which principles, we currently experience truth. Central to these principles is
the principle of cause and consequence, the law. The love of Life Spirit gives
forth as manifest creation through the law. Creation is a manifestation of
something new. Newness is another attribute of Life Spirit—”behold, I make
all things new.”
Under the law we get back what we gave. There is something new in the interval between cause and consequence, or there would be no change, and we know from experience that, in the actualization of events, we and the world
are forever changed. One cannot go back to the ignorance antecedent to the
change. In the net of causes and consequences, we occupy ourselves with the
activity of the causes and consequences. Like the law, our Self is also an idea,
a divinely conceived idea, in the abstract subdivision of the world of thought.
This is the same Self that was beguiled and misdirected in its infancy and
innocence, at the “fall of humanity;” there was no lower nature to be culpable at that time. Thus, we were introduced to Self, selfishness, cause and
consequence, and sin simultaneously. We have become preoccupied with all
these things, especially in our focus deep in matter and materialism. We were
meant to experience and create in matter but not so blindly, obsessively and
selfishly. Something had to be done because we were on the verge of making
our continuance on the Earth impossible. Our misuse of our creative power
was severe.
What was done was that Christ came to live among us as one of us to offer us
a way to redemption, if we accept it. Everything in Christ and Life Spirit
is free and voluntary, including this act of Christ. Our acceptance of Christ
and the way to redemption also had to be free and voluntary. Christ brought
a new religion, not just a new sect, but a new order of religion. Previous religions were religions of Jehovah, of the Holy Ghost. Those religions were for
individuation. The religion of Christ is the religion of the Life Spirit, of the
Son. Some of what this means can be found in another essay about grace and
the forgiveness of sins.
The self-proclaimed mission of Christ was not to do away with the law but
to fulfill it. Without law there would be no order in the concrete cosmos.
There would be no creative feedback for the Divine. The forgiveness of sins
does not mean that causes will have no consequences. It means, in part, that
the weight of personal heaviness is lifted. “My yoke is easy, and my burden
is light.” We are freed when we live in Christ and Christ lives in us. In living
the religion of Christ an internal, abundant love is perpetually injected into
the causal stream. The love of Christ is supremely creative love. “They will
know that you are mine in that you love one another” or “Love thine enemy.”
Bringing Life Spirit into things makes everything new. It is like forgiveness
between friends. The deed that necessitated forgiveness is still what it was,
and it will still have consequences, but those consequences will take place
in the state of clarity that is like starting with a clean state. One is no longer
living under a pall of guilt. Again, the experience is like things are when one
has made up with someone, and can start fresh, but, because of the love,
everything is made better. The only difference in general reality from these
examples is that in Christ, this attitude can be sustained, if we will it,
everything is new.
Whether it is by intuition or by invitation (“ask and it shall be given unto
you”), with Christ everything is new. “Behold, I make all things new.” The
newness of being in a state of grace means our lives become more creative.
There is nothing humdrum about the Christian life. Our lives are neither prescribed nor proscribed, they are as spontaneous as we ask them to be. Lest
we forget, it is easier to say these things in word, then it is to live them. In
the face of onerous consequences, the asking is not always so easy. There is
no promise that for Christians life, will be easy (it never has been for Christians), but with Christ it will be easier, “my yoke ….” Nonetheless, the vitality
of trying to live the Christian life is well worth all of the duress.
Bringing the Life Spirit into our lives, brings in love. Love needs an object,
something to love. The pure love of Life Spirit, the love of Christ, loves anything and everything simultaneously according to the need for love. It is universal love. With regard to humans, this means altruism. In Christ, when we
act, when we initiate new causes, we do so for the sake of the other and for
the sake of love, i.e., for the Christ’s sake. Living this way gets around another problem with sin, the problem of selfishness, the selfishness we have
nurtured in, and since, the “fall.” Again, this is not easy, though it is certainly
worthwhile, and it becomes easier as we learn to love impersonally. In trying
to live this way we become vulnerable to those who are not trying to live this
way, but, if we are not vulnerable to suffering, we are not vulnerable to grace.
“My grace is sufficient to thee.” This statement of the matter is a bit simplistic
about what is a difficult moral issue involving self-respect, and other considerations. Though simplistic, it does point to the start of a new way of life of perpetual rebirth in the moment.
Many of our human acts are single-purposed. They are done to accomplish
one thing. It is not like that in spiritual things. Many things in many directions on many levels are involved in spiritual acts. The incarnation and life
of Christ is like that. Its objectives and ramifications are manifold. One of
those objectives relates to what is called vicarious atonement in a more macroscopic sphere of activity.
Sometimes we err in such a way that we cannot immediately atone for our
transgression. Circumstances do not always allow rectification of a chain of
causes in the moment. Some causes take longer to ripen, than we have time
for. Some consequences can only be harvested in certain seasons, like childhood illnesses for example. In large, this has been the case with our human
destiny on Earth. Our fall into materialism is aptly described as a “fall” for
its speed and precipitousness. We have many unredeemed sins, so many that
some describe it as us “bearing a burden of sin.” These unreaped commissions are not only actions. Behind actions there are thoughts and desires.
While actions might last for only a few moments, the thoughts and desires
behind them linger for a long time, more in terms of millennia than minutes. Acts do not completely discharge thoughts and desires. They continue
to have influence. They develop into an atmosphere of influence which some
call the psychic background. A psychic atmosphere has great influence. It is
likely that we have all experienced this. We may have participated in a group
that went bad, and dark feelings lingered and spoiled, a once pleasant atmosphere so badly that the group could not recover. This example, though apt,
is minuscule compared to the psychic atmosphere of the Earth after many
millennia. Before Christ came the psychic background of the Earth was dark
and heavy. Corruption was prevalent everywhere, even in the temples. It was
so bad, the Divine Hierarchies, which guide and direct our evolutionary destiny, feared our progress could not be sustained. Something had to be done
for the sake of all evolving beings on Earth. What was done is called a deed
of Christ.
The evolutionary creation in which we have been blessed to participate does
not happen all at once in one activity. It happens in waves. It is like the petals of a rose, some are falling off while others are beginning to form. Each
evolutionary wave has unique conditions for it to pass through the stages of
creation. In the world around us, we see the evolutionary waves in the mineral, vegetable and animal stages, that precede our human stage. Those who
have done the work to develop spiritual vision, report there are many other
waves of beings in more advanced stages. In those stages are Angels, Archangels, Lords of Mind and many others. Each wave has reached each stage
under differing cosmic conditions, as the whole of the creation unfolds. Consequently, each wave has developed a specialty according to the state of being in which it attained self-consciousness, in the human-like stage, the stage
of objectification. We humans have reached self-consciousness in the Chemical Subdivision of the Physical World. We are becoming masters of form
in chemical matter. The current Angels reached self-consciousness during
the period before this, in the Etheric Subdivision of the Physical World, the
Archangels attained self-consciousness in the period before the Angels did,
and they reached it in the Desire World, and so on. Not every being in any
wave puts the same amount of effort into the creative work. Some in each
wave supersede the normal input and they become the Initiate Class capable
of penetrating the mysteries of the creation. Among Initiates some excel so
much that they go as far as one can go into the mysteries and they are called
the Highest Initiate Class. One of the Highest Initiates becomes so perfect in
the creative work as to become the Highest Initiate. That singular Highest
Initiate becomes the epitome of its wave which it leads and represents. It also
represents the aspect of divinity in the Creator invested in its life wave, and
the substance specialized by it. Christ is the Highest Initiate of the Archangels and the being representing the second attribute of deity, the Son. Christ,
when invested in form, is the living epitome of the Desire World by having
created a desire body almost beyond human comprehension, especially in
the attractive desires of loving and giving. It was this desire body that was
brought into the psychic background of the Earth at the crucifixion. This gift
has already radically changed our evolutionary environment, and will wax in
influence as we learn to respond to it. This is a macrocosmic manifestation of
what is called “the cleansing blood.” This cleansing blood does not remit our
sins, but it does give us something new, and powerful, to creatively do that
ourselves. It gave us a brighter creative atmosphere or psychic background.
Creative advancements since the crucifixion are proof of this.
This gift is, in its higher aspects, called grace. The love of the higher desire
world is a manifestation of the much higher love of Life Spirit. Life Spirit is
the home of Christ. Life Spirit transcends the Abstract Subdivision of the
World of Thought, so it transcends the law. It is free, except in the paradoxical way that love cannot help but love, in its very nature. We did not deserve
the love that brightened our psychic environment. There was nothing in our
stream of causes and consequences that indicated that we deserved grace
and all the wondrous things that it is, and that its love can give. Christ gave
us a break that we didn’t deserve. Can we do the same and receive grace by
passing it on? Think about this the next time someone cuts you off in traffic.
The curious thing about freedom is that everything about it is free. “Freely
have you received, now freely give.” One cannot store freedom, it must be
given, it must be live, that is the way of Life Spirit. Freedom must also be
accepted freely. We must accept grace to receive it. It can be denied but one
wonders who would want to. In cases of pride, it must be asked for. Before we
could receive the grace of Christ, we had to accept Christ as one of us.
We humans have strange ways of accepting strangers. Some of them involve
blood. The heart and blood are the seat of the Life Spirit in the human body.
Thus, for example, we find the altruistic love of Life Spirit manifest in the
mixing of blood. Mixing of blood is how much of the separative prejudice
of races and cultures are being dissolved. Blood is mixed in other ways beyond interracial marriage, though often it more symbolic than actual. Native
Americans and some Scandinavians required mixing of blood by cutting vessels and letting blood flow together to be accepted into their community. To
us earthlings, Christ, manifest through the body of Jesus, was an alien, not
one of us. We had to accept Christ to receive the divine gift of grace. Mortality
is the defining agency of our humanity. We say things like “man is mortal.”
It may seem strangely perverse to our seemingly finer sensibilities, but, by
our own definition, to receive Christ among us, we had to kill Christ by killing the body of Jesus as though killing Christ. We received the greatest gift
that humanity has ever been given, in our most ignominious behavior. Paradox. This should not be a surprise because paradoxical opposites unite in the truth beyond reason, in Life Spirit.
Again, many things are accomplished in one deed. Christ, the epitome of life,
had to face death as any human does in order to be able to bring grace to us in
our most frail need, the fear of death. Christ had never been in an etheric and
a chemical body. There was something new to Christ also in the incarnation.
Christ had never experienced exile in the outer world, alone and away from
direct knowledge of divinity, as we do. Christ did not know the fear of death.
To be able to bring grace to us in a way that we could accept and benefit from
it, Christ had to experience what we experience. “Come unto me, ye who labor and are heavy laden, and I shall give you rest.” Those are words that cannot be spoken by a being that had only experienced spiritual joy. The body of
Jesus had to experience human existence, and it had to die, and Christ had to
experience it for our sake. There was agony on the cross as well as exaltation.
The body of Jesus had to die by the letting of blood. There is an occult principle about blood death that has been known for centuries. In the orient it
is called samsara. It has been found that if the body of an individual dies
without the letting of blood, there is an attachment to the physical world. The
principle seems to have something to do with the engagement of the spirit in
the spiritualization of matter while working directly through the blood, but
that is a topic which is too much for now. With the letting of blood the spirit
and the higher vehicles can escape directly into the inner world’s atmosphere
without lingering attachment in engagement to a world unredeemed. Had
the body of Jesus with Christ engaged in it, died of natural causes or poisoning or some other death without blood flow, Christ would have been stuck
here, like us, until the end of the chemical Earth. This would have been a
tragedy of colossal proportion, perhaps something as monstrous as a second
“fall.” It had to be by blood, a different kind of “cleansing blood.”
Did Christ die for our sins? Yes, but it seems not for any of the reasons given in any of the versions of the doctrine of vicarious atonement.
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