The initiate Rudolf Steiner calls the Gospel of St. John "the
most important Christian document." Apparently the Rosicrucian
community has thought so too. Since the 14th century it has endeavored
to bring to light the deepest truths of Christianity and has called
its members Johannine Christians. They were so called for two
reasons. First, in the Gospel of St. John, two parallel and related
truths are revealed. A mystical-spiritual event, the birth of
a higher Ego in the individual, corresponds to what occurred in
history for all mankind in the event of Palestine through Christ
Jesus. Second, Johannine Christians, the Rosicrucian Brothers,
whose symbol was the Rose Cross, representing the mystery of the
reborn God, knew that the writer of John's Gospel was the first
human to be initiated by Christ Jesus, to be raised from the death
of mortal-ego consciousness. They knew that Lazarus was Christed
and renamed John, and that John was subsequently embodied in the
14th century as the Founder of the Brotherhood of the Rose Cross,
Christian Rosenkreuz.
St. John's Gospel, the New Testament's most esoteric account of
the life of Christ Jesus, alone elaborates and meditates on the
three Persons of God: the Spirit of Truth or Comforter, the I
AM or Christ Logos, and the Father. Only in John is the I AM nature
of Christ explored. I denominates God's essence, pure Being. AM
reflects God's unrestricted potency as Presence in holy Self-cognition.
God is the Ground of any and all being.
To emphasize the spiritual sublimity of the Christ I AM, John's
Gospel begins, immediately after the seventeen-verse introduction,
to introduce another John, the Baptist, representing the purged
desire nature, who makes clear that he is not the cosmic I incarnate.
Asked who he is, John confessed, "I am not the Christ."
Nor did he recognize him ("I knew him [the heavenly Ego]
not") but by the descent (like a dove) of the Holy Spirit,
who abode upon him. The Baptist, as Christ's precursor, instructs
his disciples to prepare the way in themselves by changing their
minds. The Greek word metanoia does not, as normally piously translated,
mean to repent (punish oneself), but to change (meta) the mind
(nous), or the way one thinks, to transform selfish or egotistic
thinking. The personal ego must decrease and the objective Christ
Ego must increase. What is this Christ Ego? It is, the I AM is,
the water of eternal life (4:10-14), the life spirit. While the
Jews, with genealogical pride, called Abraham their father, Christ
called God His Father (5:17-18), to the Jews a blasphemy. But
this pure Ego does nothing of Itself; the Father, He doeth the
works. The personal ego does everything of itself; that is, it
thinks it does. It is this erroneous thinking that needs changing,
metanoia. The personal self bears witness of itself. Such is the
role of this self-appointed god. But "If I bear witness of
myself, my witness is not true" (5:31). But the Father, the
divine spirit, bears witness to the Christ Ego as the only begotten,
Whose will is the Father's. Paraphrasing Christ's words: He that
speaks of himself seeks his own glory, but when the chastened
and humbled personal self seeks the glory of the divine Self that
sent him, then is he true-a messenger, a gospel bearer. The personal
ego speaks of the earth and is earthly. The Christ(ed) Ego cometh
from heaven and is above all.
While His disciples foundered at night on the Sea of Galilee,
as the boat of their soul bodies was tossed by the waves of emotion
in the desire world, Christ walked on the water toward them, in
command of the forces of that realm, and they were doubly afraid.
But He comforted their souls, "It is I; be not afraid"
(6:20): The impersonal I can and does quiet the emotional tempest
that constantly threatens to capsize and inundate the unseaworthy
personal ego.
The Christ Self is available to each. It is the bread of life
(6:35), the living bread, the spiritual substance which comes
down from heaven and truly and literally gives life to the material
world, which alone is but an aggregate of inert, unordered atoms.
It is the Spirit that quickeneth, the flesh profiteth nothing.
The Christ Self is the light of the world (8:12), the light of
truth, the light that lights each soul that takes on a physical
body. The I AM is eternal. Before Abraham, before Adam was, was
the cosmic I AM, was Christ, the root and spiritual substance
of all individual I AMs. Before the foundation of the world, before
ego was, was the Christ I, resplendent in glory with the Father
(17:5, 24).
The I AM is the door (10:9) to the deathless world of the eternal
present. The personal ego ever is repelled by the embodiment of
its own vicious thoughts and consuming passions. The Christed
I is able to withstand the hideous aspect of the self-created
devil which, like Cerberus, stands guard as a forbidding porter
at the threshold to the higher worlds. Like Dante's Virgil, the
divine I will conduct the lost soul back to its heavenly fold.
Whereas the I AM is the good shepherd (10:11), the lower ego is
a wolf in sheep's clothing and desires to devour the soul.
The I AM is the resurrection and the life (11:25). The Word was
with God, and one with God, from the beginning. In the Word is
life. Every human spirit, therefore, being of and from God, must
resurrect from the dense physical body in which it is buried,
and though dead to material eyes, it shall and must live to the
eyes of spirit (11:25), since it is spirit. Individual consciousness
is raised, like Lazarus, from the grave or cave of mundane consciousness.
All things become new.
The Life Spirit, whose embodiment is I AM, is the Way (14:6) to
the Father, the Divine Spirit. It is the truth that intuition
delivers to the Christ-attuned soul. It is that which is true
of each thing that is. And what is of life, is of and from this
Life Spirit. The Holy Spirit, which correlates with the individual
human spirit, is the Spirit of Truth (16:13), truth's awakener
and teacher, Whom God sends in Christ's name to evoke a remembering
of divinity, and thus instill peace of mind and comfort of soul.
As the I AM and the Father are one, so does the Spirit of Truth,
the Holy Spirit, proceed from the Father. So is the individuality
fruitful when it abides in the will of the Father, the love of
the Christ, and the truth of the Holy Spirit. The Christ Self,
the I AM, is the vine (15:5) by which individual humanity is made
spiritually fertile and productive. There can be no growth or
yield outside the vine because outside it there is no life. A
detached branch is a dead branch. An ego posing as its own source
is void, a hollowness, a whimper in the wind. Its fate is to wail
in a spiritual wasteland and gnash its teeth in a limbo of self-loathing.
While Lucifer strengthens the center of gravity in one's own personality,
necessary to an extent, Christ provides the basis for and strengthens
the I-core of one's individuality. Christ through Jehovah (Yahweh,
Jahve, JHVH) identifies Himself to Moses as ehjeh esher ehjeh,
I am the I AM.
Perhaps it would be unseemly of Christ to have said, I am the
love of the world; though to His disciples he may well have, for
He is the world's love. John the Beloved makes clear that Christ's
mission is generated in and issues out of God the Father's divine
love, established in His Son's eternally active deed of incommensurable
love, and regenerated in myriad gracings of love through inspiration
of the Holy Spirit. The mission of the Christ I was to entirely
empty Itself, actuated by boundless love to dismember or distribute
Itself unto dying individual humanity as an elixir to effect a
restoration, a replenishment of spiritual blood by which, through
a roused I-consciousness, each soul, having wasted its divine
resources, might return as a prodigal son to its heavenly Father.
Greater love has no man than this-to lay down his life for his
friends. There is no one who was not and is not Christ's friend.
For all, for love, did Christ lay down his life, that we might
take ours and ascend the path He in mighty suffering and mightier
love cleared for us. I is not of this world. In it for a while;
for a while here to know that no where here can it find real home.
Our I chooses us out of this world and on the wingthrust of love
we aspire to our heavenly home. We love to get there. We love
because Christ showed us how and why.
The disciples of Christ are known by the love they have for one
another (14:35). It is the Christ I that overcomes the world,
not being of it, in whom the prince of this world of allures and
illusions hath nothing — after, that is, John in the wilderness,
the solitary John of the straight and narrow way, has baptised
our souls in the purgative waters of regenerative thinking and
charitable living.
So do we, as bearers of the holy I, as exemplars of a nascent
Christ life, as blessed sons and daughters of our heavenly Father,
weave, by acts and thoughts of love and service, that seamless
coat, the garment of light that admits us to the wedding ceremony
where the virgin soul and the Christ Ego are married in love by
the Father's will.
As the Gospel of St. John moves from John the Baptist to the central
and pivotal account of the raising of Lazarus (Chapter 11 in the
21-chapter Gospel), to the high teachings of John the Evangelist,
so we individually evolve from John the Baptist to John the Beloved
through an inward raising by the strong grip of the Lion's paw;
each being "the one whom Christ loves," each being the
beloved of Christ, our divine Self, our world savior that has
sunk down into our mundane consciousness to be all but lost, all
but unrecognized among the crowd of rude and rowdy thoughts and
Christ-scourging passions that populate our earthly consciousness.
We are raised, in time, while yet drawing breath in our mortal
body; we are raised and can then testify to the higher truths
of our Christ-conferred I-dentity. With our hand on the words
of John the Evangelist, whose Gospel is the Bible's Logos of Love,
and our mind given wholly to it in devout contemplation, we renew
our commitment to a life of holy usefulness and inclusive fellowship.
We are taught to pray to our Father, Who is in heaven. Yet we
are told that no one comes to the Father but through Christ (14:6).
With Philip we may be inclined to say, "Show us the Father,
and it sufficeth us." But Jesus says, "He that hath
seen me [the Christ] hath seen the Father." The Gospel that
teaches us the deep truths of the Christ also teaches us of the
Father, because "I AM [is] in the Father and the Father is
in me [the Christ]" (14:10). John Mark's Gospel has but three
references to the Father, Luke has fifteen, and Matthew has thirty-eight.
Compare these with John's Gospel, in which one hundred and seventeen
references to the Father are made, including:
[T]he Word...[was the] only begotten of the Father (1:14); the
Father loveth the Son (3:35); one must worship the Father in spirit
and in truth (4:43); The Father has committed all judgment unto
the Son (5:22); I am [is] come in my Father's name (5:43); The
Father gives the true bread from heaven (6:32); It is the Father's
will that Christ should lose nothing (6:39); No man can come to
Christ but that the Father draw him (6:44); No man hath seen the
Father, save he which is of God (6:46); If one knows the Christ,
one knows the Father also (8:19); Christ does nothing of himself,
but speaks what the Father has taught him (8:28); I and the Father
are one (10:30); The Father is in me and I in him (10:38); The
Father has given all things into my hands (13:3); in my Father's
house are many mansions (14:2); The Father that dwelleth in me,
he doeth the works (14:10); The Father will send the Comforter
in my name (14:26); I am the true vine and my Father is the husbandman
(15:1); All things that the Father hath are mine (16:15); I came
forth from the Father (16:28); Thou, Father, art in me, and I
in thee (17:21); The cup which my Father hath given me, shall
I not drink it? (18:11); I ascend to my Father, and your Father
(20:17).
The foregoing recitation has been given that the transcendent
nature of Christ, the solar I AM, might be brought fully before
us, as it rests in the bosom of the Father; for we ourselves participate
in this nature when we keep God's commandment, which is to love
one another.
I AM, Christ is, the Way to the Father. The Gospel of St. John
illuminates many facets of the I AM in order that we more readily
may receive it, seize it, possess it, know it, live it, be it.
In so doing we partake of the Father. Chapter 17 is an extended
sublime prayer or intimate address by Christ Jesus to His Father,
remarkable for the holy familiarity with which Christ assumes
His Father's love, trust, and realized will. Moreover, this unity
in love and truth is extended to all who hear and heed the word
of God through Christ: "I in them, and thou in me, that they
may be made perfect in one; and that the world may know that thou
hast sent me, and hast loved them, as thou hast loved me"
(17:23).
The Gospel of St. John enables us to most deeply fathom the injunction
that has ever been directed to the candidate for initiation into
the spiritual worlds: Man know thyself. In Christian terms, as
the Evangelist makes clear, this means to enter into one's innermost
being and there submit the purified desire nature, the John Baptist
nature, to an overshadowing by the Holy Spirit, whereby the Christ
Child is conceived. The renewing or transmuting of one's mind
and attitudes through concentration, meditation, and service has
a baptismal effect on the desire body, enabling it to undergo
catharsis, whereupon it becomes the pure chaste virgin Sophia.
"Know thyself" means "fructify thyself with the
content of the spiritual world." In this context the soul
may be likened to the receptive female nature, and the objective
spiritual world likened to the male; that is, the Cosmic Ego of
the Holy Spirit illuminates the purified and ennobled desire body,
the wise virgin sophia. The personal ego is eclipsed and the universal
Christ, the sun Logos, speaks though the soul.
The Gospel of St. John has concealed powers which can assist in
developing the virgin sophia, the mother of God. The disciple
whom Christ loved was entrusted by Him with those powers at the
cross when the Savior said "Henceforth, this is thy mother,"
therewith designating him as the genuine interpreter of the Messiah.
Meditation on John's Gospel will develop this "mother"
in the reverent seeker and the Holy Spirit will fructify his soul.
For the sons of Cain, belief alone is insufficient. They crave
knowledge. And they shall have it if they subscribe to the practices
and principles of Rosicrucian initiation. Let us make this Gospel
a regenerative force active within our souls that we may individualize
the Bethlehem event to the glory of God the Father.
— C.W.
— Rays from the Rose Cross Magazine, March/April, 1996
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