Índice Geral das Seções Índice da Seção Atual Índice da Obra Atual Seguinte: 2 - O Credo
(p. 2)
1. PREFÁCIO
THE writings from which this manual is compiled have been recognised and accepted far and vide, with profound joy and thankfulness, by numerous advanced souls, and minds mature and competent for the discernment of spiritual things, as representing a new and inestimable restatement of the original Gnosis, or body of transcendental doctrine, which underlay and controlled the expression of the sacred mysteries and scriptures of antiquity, to find its latest formulation and illustration in Christianity. And the recognition thus accorded to them on the ground of their intrinsic character, has the fullest possible confirmation in the manner of their derivation, inasmuch as it was that which has ever been regarded by experts in spiritual science as the true modus of divine revelation; namely, intuitional perception and recollection, exercised under special illumination of the Spirit, independently of all ordinary processes of mental ratiocination, and
(p. 3)
immeasurably transcending in results the ability and knowledge of the recipient, or aught that could by any possibility have been obtained by other means. So that the very manner of the acquisition constitutes a demonstration of the essential truth of the doctrine.
The following abstract of the Esoteric doctrine as thus restored will both minister to the comprehension of it as a system of thought, and show that the long sought and sorely needed Eirenicon between Faith and Knowledge, Religion and Science, has indeed been at length vouchsafed, in that henceforth – while referred each to its own peculiar plane – the appeal on behalf of both is to one and the same criterion, the Understanding.
There is one Being, Self-subsistent, infinite, divine, originally and in itself unmanifest and unindividuate, but impersonal only in the sense of being devoid of limitations, for it is essential and absolute Consciousness. This is God, who is the only real Being. As Spirit, God is a Unity. As Energy and Substance – the necessary constituents of all and every being – God is a Duality: and God becomes manifest through the evolution of His Trinity. Now, Energy and Substance
(p. 5)
are, respectively, of masculine and feminine potency. Passing into creation, and becoming manifest, God subsists under two modes, the unmanifest and the manifest. But the manifest never exhausts the unmanifest.
Creation, which is the manifestation of God, occurs through the projection, by the divine Will, of the divine Substance into conditions and limitations, whereby it becomes exteriorly cognisable as Matter. Matter is not in itself evil; but being a limitation of Spirit, and therein of God and of consciousness, it is the cause of evil. Such limitation is essential to creation, since creation is manifestation, and manifestation implies gradations and contrasts.
Consisting of the divine Energy and Substance, all things are God as to constituent principles; but because of the limitations necessary to creation, all things are not God as to condition.
But being Spirit, Matter is capable of reverting to the condition of Spirit.
The tendency of Matter to revert to Spirit, or more precisely, of Substance to revert from its material and “created” or “fallen,” to its spiritual and original condition, is the cause of Evolution.
(p. 7)
Evolution is the manifestation of Inherency; and whereas the inherency in things divine, namely, the Energy and Substance of which all things consist, is itself divine, Evolution reaches its goal, and full manifestation is attained, only when divinity is reached.
That alone which withholds the individual from the realisation of his proper divine potentialities, is his own will.
Herein lies the mystery called the “Mystery of Godliness”; the mystery, this is, of the “Christ,” or the redemption of Spirit from Matter. That mystery is in this wise.
Spirit returns to its essential condition in Soul. Soul is begotten in matter by means of polarisation.
Life is the elaboration of Soul through the varied transformations of matter. Soul is the medium in which Spirit is individuated.
Spirit of itself is diffuse; but enclosed in an envelope of Soul-substance, it becomes an indiffusible personality.
Both Energy and Substance are Spirit; but in speaking of spirit as distinguished from soul, it must be remembered that spirit is always energy and soul is always substance.
(p. 9)
The soul is first engendered in the lowest forms of organic life, from which it works upwards, through plants and animals, to man. Once generated and made an individual, it is immortal – unless extinguished through its own perverse will – and passes from one form to another, developing the qualities inherent in its substance, until, in its highest stage, its polarises sufficiently to receive the divine Spirit.
Receiving this Spirit into his soul, the man has, and is, Christ, and is both God and man, Christ being the point of union between the human and the divine.
For, as God is pure Spirit, so is pure Spirit God, and is not the less God because individuated in a human soul, or because, when thus individuated, such soul is invested with a human body. This is the mystery of divine Incarnation. And the secret and method of the Christ is inward purification.
And because the process thereof is interior, it cannot be accomplished by another from without, or by proxy.
The two terms of man’s evolution are Creation and Redemption. The first occurs by generation and is of the physical; the second occurs by regeneration
(p. 11)
and is of the spiritual. The issue of the first is “Adam”, the bodily nature or exterior self-hood, “in whom all die”. The issue of the second is “Christ”, the spiritual nature or interior self-hood, “in whom all have eternal life”.
Similarly with the Soul, which, as Substance, is feminine. In the initial human stage of her evolution, she is “Eve” who, succumbing to the sense-nature and lapsing into materiality, becomes “mother” of man degenerate, or “fallen”. In the perfected stage, purified from materiality and regaining her proper spiritual condition, she is “Virgin Mary” and “mother” of man regenerate, or “unfallen”; – the spiritual, not the physical, self-hood, this is, of the individual concerned, whose soul she is.
Scripture, in such portions of it as, being mystical, represent divine knowledges, sets forth the passage of man and his soul – the latter always under the guise of a woman – from the first to the last stage of their spiritual history, applying to them at each stage a fresh name in accordance with their condition. The entire process has to be undergone by every individual who finally attains to perfection by realising man’s highest
(p. 13)
potentialities. But though all men, even he who is a Christ, are saved by Christ, only he is a Christ who by accomplishing the process while in the body, manifests the Christ to others, and thereby demonstrates to them their own divine potentialities.
And whereas the process of such regeneration is always in course of accomplishment, and is interior to the individual concerned, Scripture in describing it represents an eternal verity, and the keys to the interpretation of Scripture are the words Now and Within, and the creeds founded on Scripture are intelligible and true only when translated into the present tense and referred to the soul.
Now, inasmuch as Regeneration is a long and arduous process, and requires, at least to a certain advanced stage, to be accomplished while in the body, no single earth-life, how prolonged soever, can suffice for it. Wherefore it is necessary that the soul return again and again into the body, as a child to school, to obtain the education, correction, trials and other experiences requisite for edification to the full stature of humanity; and only when it has learnt the lessons the body has to teach, and through conflict with the body
(p. 15)
has acquired knowledge and strength to overcome the body, and is purged of the tendencies towards materiality which have brought it into and made it subject to the body, is it fitted to dispense with the body and ascend to higher conditions. Hence the doctrine of a multiplicity of earth-lives – which is implicit in Scripture though lost sight of by the churches – is now, in the New Statement, made explicit, being emphatically declared and insisted on as an indispensable and integral article in the faith of the future.
The body of doctrine of which the foregoing is an abstract, is that which in all ages has been known to the initiates of the Sacred Mysteries as the Hermetic Gnosis, and was referred to by Jesus when he charged upon the doctors of the law that they had taken away the key of knowledge – gnosis, had not entered in themselves, and had hindered those who would have entered.
It is, therefore, in no sense claimed for the New Statement that it is a new Gospel, but only that it is a new Gospel of Interpretation, and this new only in the sense that it represents the recovery of that which is so old as to have become forgotten. Which said, all has been said
(p. 17)
that is necessary by way of preface to this book, excepting that this recovery has been made precisely at the period and in the manner long ago predicted in numerous prophecies, both Biblical and extra-Biblical; the coincidence being exact both as regards actual time, and the spiritual condition of church and world.
E. M.
Índice Geral das Seções Índice da Seção Atual Índice da Obra Atual Seguinte: 2 - O Credo