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(p. 201)
Adam and Eve.
– In their mystical sense, and as applied to the individual, Adam and Eve are
respectively the exterior selfhood, or sense and reason, and the interior
selfhood, or soul and intuition, which together constitute the human being. And
they are as man and woman to each other, in that they represent respectively the
centrifugal or force element, which is the masculine, and the centripetal or
love element, which is the feminine element of existence. For a full treatment
of this subject, see The Perfect Way, Lectures VI and VII.
Arche.
– A Greek term, signifying beginning, first cause, origin, and said to have been
first used by Anaximander (580 B.C.) in the sense of
principle (principium) to denote the eternal and infinite basis or
substance (sub-stans) of things, and which is
therefore not itself a
thing, but that from which all things proceed, and of
which they all consist, and to which they all return. It is thus the containing,
and therefore the feminine, element or mode of Deity, as distinguished from the
energising and masculine element or mode; or God the Mother as
distinguished from God the Father. It is termed also the fourth dimension, or
the within of space, from which the other
dimensions proceed; and the noumenon, reality,
being, or “thing in itself,” which underlies or
sub-stands
the phenomenon, appearance, existence, or thing perceived. As original, divine,
and self-subsistent, and therein distinguished from matter, which is secondary,
derived, and created, Arche denotes the substance
alike of divinity and of the soul, the nucleus of the nucleolus in both God and
man. The word
[Note: In Arche,
Aphrodite, Persephone, Psyche, Herpe, and all Greek
terms ending in e, the final letter is sounded. The ch
is usually pronounced as k.]
Astral Fluid.
– The universal ether of space and immediate substance of the manifested
universe, which becomes the various elements by means of
differentiality
of polarisation. It is not the substance of the soul,
whether unindividuate or individuate, for that is
divine and uncreate; but it is the first projection of
soul-substance into the material of creation, and is as the veil of the soul. It
subsists under many degrees of purity or tenuity, and
is the abode of all spirits below the celestial. In man it constitutes the third
element of his system, counting from within outwards, and coming next to the
body, acts as the intervening medium between it and the soul. As thought
substance, it is the seat of the mundane mind or lower reason; and a disorderly
condition of it is a frequent cause of such mental derangements as are not due
to lesions of the organism.
Astral Spirits.
– While the astral sphere is the abode of all spirits below the celestial, and
their exterior covering or ethereal body is constituted of it, there are
spirits, or rather entities so-called, which are constituted entirely of it,
having neither a spiritual nor a material nature. These have no existence apart
from man, and are emanations from man, being to him as reflects of himself but
devoid of substantiality as the images in a mirror. As with morbid growths in
the physical system, such as tumours, they become new
centres of activity in the system, deriving their sustenance from the
system generally, to the depletion and emaciation of the individual; and only by
a healthy regime in mind and body, of which earnest and frequent prayer is an
important element, can they be subdued and
the vitality absorbed by them returned into its
proper channels. The function of prayer in such cases consists in its being a
means of directing the mind inwards and upwards with such energy as to convert its otherwise lambent and diffused substance into a flame, so
to speak, thereby rendering it incapable of division or diversion – a condition
incompatible with astral obsession. The astral fluid constitutes the perispirit, double, or astral body of man in life, and his
phantom ghost, or Ruach after death. The astral body
is called also the magnetic and odic body, according
as the reference is to the substance, the force, or some other attribute. The
term odic is claimed to be of Oriental derivation. The
Hindûs apply the term Akasa
to the astral ether in its primordial or pre-cosmic state. The astral emanations
or “reflects” of persons are visible to the lucid, who – unless duly instructed – is unable to discriminate
between them and genuine extraneous spirits, so life-like are their
impersonations. The merely mechanical “medium” is readily responsive to their
influence. And many besides mediums are liable to receive from them mental
suggestions – often of the most mischievous character – and to mistake them for
suggestions arising from a divine or some other source entitled to be heeded.
The astral phantom may serve as a medium of communication with an actual
departed spirit; but the message depends for its value upon its independence of
the transmitting vehicle. The mere phantom, uncontrolled by the soul, is no
trustworthy instructor or guide, and inasmuch as the astral is rather an
emanation from the body than a distinct element, it is essential to clear
spiritual vision that the body also be subjected to the rule of purity,
especially in respect of diet.
Thus far concerning
the astral on its occult side. In its mystical aspect it denotes (as explained
in Note K) the region of spiritual weakness, doubt, temptation, difficulty, and
distress, upon which the aspirant enters on his emergence from the “Egypt” of
things material merely and intellectual, when he sets his face towards the
“Promised Land” of spiritual perfection. For the wilderness that lies between,
and must be painfully traversed, is no other than the astral belt within his own
system, already in these pages so exquisitely presented in the hymn to the
planet-god [Part II, XIII (6)] as to need no further explanation here.
Concerning the distinction between the terms mystical and occult, see the
explanation given under Occultism.
The Elect is a term the
misunderstanding of which has been a stumbling-block and a curse to Christendom.
And the evil has arisen through the suppression of the doctrine of a
multiplicity of earth-lives, otherwise called the doctrine of re-incarnation or
transmigration, and the consequent assumption that all who are not actually of
the elect are hopelessly reprobate and lost; – a belief which, by its ascription
to God of a capricious, arbitrary, and pitiless character, has served greatly to
obscure from view the perfection of the Divine Nature.
The truth is that by the elect are
denoted only those in whom the redemptive process has, already proceeded so far
as to ensure their
ultimate salvation, all others being still in
too rudimentary a stage of their evolution to have attained to this desirable
state, and therefore, still without assurance of salvation, and consequently
liable to failure.
Seeing how small a proportion of
persons in any one period or generation are entitled to be regarded as elect,
and how complex and prolonged the process requisite for the elaboration of the
individual from his beginning in the lowest forms of organic life to the summit
of human evolution, where humanity unites with Deity – the denial of a
multiplicity of earth-lives to afford the requisite opportunities of experience
would be a sentence of perdition upon the entire race. Whereas, as it is –
according to the ancient and universal doctrine now newly recovered – so far
from souls having their beginning at some arbitrary stage upon the ladder of
evolution, with their destiny for eternal bliss or woe, not merely dependent
upon the use made by them of a single brief existence amid conditions wholly new
and strange to them, but arbitrarily fixed independently of aught that they can
do or desire – they begin at the lowest round, and returning again and again to
the body, have ample time and opportunity to determine their final lot for
themselves, according to the tendencies voluntarily encouraged by them.
Hades. (Heb. Sheol
= hell; lit. in darkness) Denotes the lower spheres of the
consciousness, the material and astral, to be in which is to the soul, which
belongs by its nature to the higher and celestial, to be “in prison,” or
“beneath the altar.” See p. 149.
Iacchos, Jacob, and Joachim.
– The last of these three names is that which Christian tradition assigns to the
father of the Virgin Mary, in obvious recognition of her derivation as the soul,
from him as the planetary Spirit. The names themselves are not only related to
each other in form and meaning, but they have a common reference to the special
functions and characteristics of the god of the fourth sphere – the earth,
matter, or body. For in implying force, effort, success, and triumph, they
indicate all the stages through which spirit passes, from its first projection
into matter to its redemption and final exaltation in soul. It is true that the
successes of Jacob over his brother Esau, wherein he supplanted him in his
birthright and blessing, are ascribed to craft, and only his success when he
“wrestled with God, and prevailed,” to force. But inasmuch as the brothers are
types respectively of the exterior and the interior selfhood, of which the
former is the elder, in virtue of its being the first to be manifested in man,
the craft by which Jacob obtained his advantage denotes precisely that superior
subtlety of nature whereby the soul surpasses the body, and demonstrates itself
as the true and only possible inheritor of eternal life.
The Egyptian origin of Joachim (as
also of Jehovah) is indicated in 2 Kings xxiii, 34, where Pharaoh is
said to have changed the name of Eliakim to Jehoiakim (of which Joachim is an equivalent); while the
identity of this name with Iacchos is implied in the
fact of its being thus imposed by the conquering upon the conquered
king, since only the names of the gods of the former
were thus imposed.
Karma.
– By the recent appropriation of this Eastern term into the English language, a
most valuable addition has been made to our vocabulary of mystical science. It
is not yet sufficiently familiar, however, to render a definition of it
superfluous. The idea implied by it, namely, the persistence after death of the
effects of the tendencies encouraged and the characteristics acquired in life,
and the necessity, where these have been bad, of expiation and amendment by the
subject of them, is involved in the doctrine of purgatory and retribution. But
inasmuch as by Karma is meant a repeated return into the earth-life, there to
work out in new bodies the evil consequences of past lives, and by means of
multiplied experiences to rectify defects of character; and by purgatory is
meant only a post-mortem expiation by suffering,
and no experiential development, the latter term is in no sense an equivalent
for the former.
The inability of the vast majority of
persons to remember their previous existences is due to the fact that the return
is that only of the permanent ego or soul, and not of the external personality;
and that they are very few in number who succeed during life in establishing
with their souls relations so intimate as to gain cognisance of their soul’s history. But the fact that the
outer personality is left thus uninformed on the subject, in no way invalidates
either the truth or the value of reincarnation, since the function of the body
is to serve as an instrument by and through which the soul obtains experiences,
and the end of those experiences is attained when the soul applies them to its
own advancement. Nor is the fact – if it be a fact – that but comparatively few
of the spirits with whom intercourse is held admit the doctrine, valid as an
argument against it, since the agent of such communication is rarely the soul
itself but only its astral envelope, and this is in no better position than the
material body to pronounce upon the question.
Miracle.
– In default of a prior definition of the terms natural and human, the terms
supernatural and superhuman must be rigidly excluded from any attempt to define
miracle. In defining miracle as the “natural effect of an exceptional cause” (p.
58), the term natural is used simply in the sense of orderly, regular, normal,
legitimate. Wherefore it remains only to show in what sense the cause is
exceptional. This term derives its force from the inequality of human
development in respect of human capacities. As a microcosm of the macrocosm, man
comprises in his system, either actually or potentially, all that is in the
universe; and in virtue of his having obtained the consciousness of and mastery
over any plane within himself, he is able to attain the consciousness of and
mastery over the corresponding plane without himself. The fully developed man –
he who, having realised
all the potentialities of his nature, is a typical Man – is able to exercise
mastery over planes of being, of the very existence of which the undeveloped man
is ignorant, finding no answering consciousness of them in
himself.
(p. 206)
To him, therefore, the manifest tokens of such
mastery constitute miracles. They represent for him a region and a power which,
by virtue of their transcending his own range of observation and ability, are
apt to be regarded by him as also transcending nature, and as being, therefore,
miraculous. But neither do they transcend nature, nor are they miraculous (using
these terms in the conventional sense) for the man who works them, because he
knows them to be the natural effects of causes which are exceptional only in
that they appertain to a sphere of nature known to but a comparative few. Nor
would they be regarded as transcending nature and as being miraculous even by
the undeveloped witness of them, save for the liability of the undeveloped man
to regard himself and his compeers as typical men, and as the measure of nature
and of humanity, and to consider all that transcends
their own limits as also transcending nature and man. Their mistake lies, of
course, in restricting their conception of nature and man to the material and
physical, and then either assuming that the psychical and spiritual are beyond
nature and man, or denying to them any real being.
Now, the undeveloped man subsists
under two modes. In one of these he is altogether rudimentary in respect of all
faculties which surpass the physical, namely, the intellectual, the moral, and
the spiritual. And in the other, he is developed – possibly to an extraordinary
degree – in respect of some one of the spheres of consciousness denoted by these
terms, and yet is altogether rudimentary as regards the others. The typical
scientist of the day, for instance, is one who is highly developed in respect of
the intellectual faculty so far as regards the consciousness of things material;
but as regards that of things moral and spiritual he is altogether rudimentary,
and his attitude towards experiences of the order commonly accounted miraculous
and supernatural, is one of such determined antagonism – through his inability
to recognise
the corresponding regions in himself – as to render him wholly inaccessible to
reason and evidence in their behalf. This is to say, he has a fixed idea which
no reason or evidence can overcome. Now, it is a significant fact that the
possession of a fixed idea, which no reason or evidence can overcome, is by
materialistic scientists themselves – those whose speciality is medicine – accounted a sufficient plea for
certifying its possessor as insane and unfit to be at large.
It is by persons similarly
rudimentary in respect of the spiritual consciousness that the important
function of literary criticism is for by far the most part exercised; the result
being that the confession of spiritual experiences is treated in a tone of
contempt and ribaldry such as largely to deter from the promulgation of this
class of experiences; their recipients shrinking alike from exposing their
“pearls” to profanation and themselves to contumely and affront. Hence it has
come that, between the physician and the literary critic, the confession of
experiences indicative of man’s higher potentialities – and, in such sense,
“miraculous” – has in our day been made perilous, and the world has in
consequence been deprived of testimony which would have gone far to save it from
the abyss
of unreason and negation into which it has fallen.
And this repression and rejection of experience in deference to a hypothesis –
it is curious to note – has occurred in an age which vaunts itself superior to
all other ages, especially on the ground that it takes nothing for granted, but
makes experience the sole basis of knowledge.
Such denial of man’s higher
potentialities is, moreover, utterly inconsistent with the belief in evolution
as the method of creation, combined as that belief is with the confession of
absolute ignorance respecting the nature of the substance in which evolution
occurs.
Mysticism (in religion) has for its antithesis
materialism (in religion), in that it deals with those realities and verities
which are spiritual, eternal, and of the soul – that is, with principles,
processes, and states appertaining to the interior consciousness – instead of
with persons, places, and events which are physical, historical, and of the
senses; and regards the sacred writings when expressed in terms derived from the
latter as really referring to the former, and valuable only in so far as they do
refer to the former. For which reason the religious mystic cares for the letter
of Scripture only in so far as it is a vehicle for the spirit, and makes it his
study to discern the spirit through the letter, and by all means to avoid
limiting the spirit by the letter; considering that to the substitution of the
literal for the spiritual sense of Scripture has been due the perversion of
Christianity into a fetish at once monstrous, idolatrous, and
dishonouring both to God and to man. Wherefore in the condition hitherto
prevailing in Christendom, the mystic sees the fulfilment
as of a prophecy, of the saying that “the letter kills,” so completely has the
worship of it killed the faculty of the perception of divine things. And he
insists accordingly that only through the revival of Mysticism can the true
Christianity – that, namely, of Christ – be restored.
Mysticism and Occultism. – These terms are so far identical in that they
are respectively the Greek and the Latin for that which, by its nature, is
hidden or secret as concerns the outer perceptions. But they differ essentially
in respect of the particular region or department of the hidden and secret to
which they respectively refer. Occultism deals with the region and its phenomena
which, being interior to the body and exterior to the soul, constitutes the astral or magnetic
circulus
which separates one from the other, and is the immediate environment of the
soul. And Mysticism deals with principles, processes, and states which, being
interior to the soul and comprising the spirit, determine
the soul’s progress and condition. This is to say, that Occultism implies
transcendental physics, and belongs to the kingdom of science and the intellect,
and is “human.” And Mysticism implies transcendental metaphysics, and belongs to
the kingdom of religion and the intuition, and is divine. Of these two kingdoms
the typical representatives are, respectively, the Adept and the Christ. By
which explanation is illustrated this utterance made to Anna Kingsford by her
divine illuminator: “If Occultism were all, and held the key of heaven, there
would be no need of Christ. (...) If the adepts in Occultism or in physical
science could suffice to man, I would have
committed no message to you” (pp. 63, 64).
Noumenon.
– See under Arche.
Polarisation.
– Every particle of matter, however minute or tenuous, whether fixed or fluidic,
has two magnetic poles, a positive and a negative.
Polarisation, as the term is applied in this book and in The Perfect Way, consists in the
arrangement of the particles constituting any entity, in such order as to bring
each pole of every particle into immediate conjunction with the opposite pole of
another particle – the positive in one joining on to the negative in another –
so as to admit of the passage of a continuous current of energy throughout the
whole series.
Regeneration.
– This term implies much more than is ascribed to it by the theological
dictionaries, and the failure to understand it has been the cause of all the
perversions of Christianity. For, had the doctrine of salvation through
regeneration, so emphatically asserted by Jesus to Nicodemus, been duly
comprehended, no place had been found for the orthodox
presentation either of the Incarnation or of the atonement.
For it means simply and purely the re-formation or reconstitution of the
individual out of the spiritual substance of his soul, instead of the created
material of his body. Such a man is interior, mystic, spiritual, and the
elaboration of him occurs in the body as in a matrix constituted of coarser
elements, the efficient cause being the operation of the Divine Spirit in the
soul, he himself co-operating with it; and when fully elaborated he can dispense
altogether with the body as well as with all other elements exterior to the
soul; or, if the process be accomplished while in the body, he can indraw and transmute his body into spirit. The individual
thus produced is said to be son at once of God and of man. He is son of man,
because a product of humanity; and He is Son of God because generated
immediately by the Divine energy. And he is said to be also son of a woman, and
this a virgin, because he is produced of the soul and constituted of the
substance of the soul, and the soul is mystically called the woman, as being the
feminine element in man’s nature, and “mother” of the man, and when pure from
materiality is called virgin, being named Maria after the boundless sea of
space, the substance at once of herself and of Deity.
Wherefore the saying of Jesus, “Ye
must be born again of Water and of the Spirit,” is a declaration, first, that it
is necessary to every one who would be saved, sooner or later to be born in the
manner in which He Himself, as a typical Man Regenerate, is said to have been
born; and, next, that the gospel narrative of His birth is, really, a
presentation, symbolical and dramatic, of the process of regeneration, having no
physical significance whatever, the Christ Jesus in and through whom salvation
occurs, being no other than the regenerated spiritual selfhood in each person
(see The Perfect Way, v, 45).
Failing to comprehend the true
doctrine of atonement, and to recognise its identity
with that of regeneration, the church visible has altogether set aside
regeneration, and in the place both of
regeneration and the true at-one-ment with God thereby, has rested everything on the false
doctrine of the atonement.
Resurrection.
– This term is used in Scripture in various senses, none of which is that
commonly supposed, since there is no resurrection of the dead and disintegrated
body. The current belief has arisen through the preference of the letter to the
spirit, exercised in complete disregard both of the ideas intended to be
conveyed by the writers of the mystical Scriptures, and of the facts of
existence. Thus, the “graves” of John v, 28, imply only the lowermost
strata, or modes, of consciousness, the material and astral, in which during its
earth-life the soul is regarded as buried, and the resurrection of verse 29 is
the soul’s awakening to the recognition of the destiny it has incurred through
its behaviour during such period. There is a
resurrection that occurs while in the body – the resurrection from the “death in
trespasses and sins,” to the consciousness of things spiritual and to a
consequent life of holiness. The “First Resurrection” (Apoc. xx, 5, 6) consists in
the redemption of the body, while yet alive, from liability to death, by means
of its transmutation or indrawal into its original
spiritual substance (see Part I, No. XXI, and II, No. V). They
who attain to this resurrection are called first-fruits – first, that is, in
rank (Apoc. xiv, 4). They are the
fully manifested Christs who are glorified in the hymn
to Phoibos. Paul craved this distinction, but failed
through his inability to obtain the requisite mastery over the elements of his
body.
The other, or second, resurrection, consists in the investment of the soul with a
spiritual body which shall serve it as an indestructible environment after the
termination of its association with the material and astral. Being evolved
immediately from the soul itself it constitutes, not a body raised, but a raised
body.
Second Coming of Christ. – A careful reading of verses 54 and 58 of Part
II, No. V, shows that they do not necessarily imply a
return of the actual Jesus of the Gospels, but that their sense will be
satisfied by such a manifestation anew of the Christ-principle as shall comprise
an exhibition of power such as that which constituted the “Ascension.” This is
the “Resurrection” – in the sense of the transmutation – of the body through its
indrawal
by the Spirit. For they in and by whom this process is enacted, are of the
order, and bear the title, of Christ Jesus.
Such an event would not itself
constitute the “Second Coming,” but only the crowning demonstration of that
coming. The coming will consist in the revelation anew of the Christ-idea in
such wise that it shall be so fully understood as shall render possible the
demonstration above described. In this sense the Second Coming may be affirmed
to be already actually in progress, seeing that the Christ-idea is now, for the
first time in the Church’s history, being understood and made known in its true
sense. This is the sense in which it constitutes the “eternal gospel” of the
passage chosen for motto to this book, inasmuch as that only is eternal which,
in virtue of its being purely spiritual, and inherent in the nature of Being,
and therefore perfectly logical, subsists independently of time, person, and
place, and even of matter itself (as see Part I, No. III).
This passage has been widely accepted
as referring to the promulgation of the Scriptures under the Reformation. But
seeing that only their letter was then promulgated, while their spirit was
altogether reserved, its proper reference must be to a promulgation which for
its disclosure of the latter, can alone be accounted a real promulgation. In
this view it is the intelligent appreciation of the Christ-idea, now first made
known, that is implied in the declaration that “the Son of Man shall be seen
coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory”; – “heaven” and the
“clouds of heaven” being mystical terms denoting man’s higher reason, the
microcosmic heaven within the individual.
Sons of God.
– See under Regeneration.
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