RESURRECTION AND ASCENSION
The doctrines of the Resurrection and Ascension of Christ also form part
of the Lesser Mysteries, being integral portions of "The Solar Myth,"
and of the life-story of the Christ in man.
As regards Christ Himself they have their historical basis in the facts
of His continuing to teach His apostles after His physical death, and of
His appearance in the Greater Mysteries as Hierophant after His direct
instructions had ceased, until Jesus took His place. In the mythic tales
the resurrection of the hero and his glorification invariably formed the
conclusion of his death-story; and in the Mysteries, the body of the
candidate was always thrown into a death-like trance, during which he,
as a liberated soul, travelled through the invisible world, returning
and reviving the body after three days. And in the life-story of the
individual, who is becoming a Christ, we shall find, as we study it,
that the dramas of the Resurrection and Ascension are repeated.
But before we can intelligently follow that story, we must master the
outlines of the human constitution, and understand the natural and
spiritual bodies of man. "There is a natural body, and there is a
spiritual body."[239]
There are still some uninstructed people who regard man as a mere
duality, made up of "soul" and "body." Such people use the words "soul"
and "spirit" as synonyms, and speak indifferently of "soul and body" or
"spirit and body," meaning that man is composed of two constituents, one
of which perishes at death, while the other survives. For the very
simple and ignorant this rough division is sufficient, but it will not
enable us to understand the mysteries of the Resurrection and
Ascension.
Every Christian who has made even a superficial study of the human
constitution recognises in it three distinct constituents--Spirit, Soul,
and Body. This division is sound, though needing further subdivision for
more profound study, and it has been used by S. Paul in his prayer that
"your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless."[240] That
threefold division is accepted in Christian Theology.
The Spirit itself is really a Trinity, the reflexion and image of the
Supreme Trinity, and this we shall study in the following chapter.[241]
The true man, the immortal, who is the Spirit, is the Trinity in man.
This is life, consciousness, and to this the spiritual body belongs,
each aspect of the Trinity having its own Body. The Soul is dual, and
comprises the mind and the emotional nature, with its appropriate
garments. And the Body is the material instrument of Spirit and Soul. In
one Christian view of man he is a twelve-fold being, six modifications
forming the spiritual man, and six the natural man; according to
another, he is divisible into fourteen, seven modifications of
consciousness and seven corresponding types of form. This latter view is
practically identical with that studied by Mystics, and it is usually
spoken of as seven-fold, because there are really seven divisions, each
being two-fold, having a life-side and a form-side.
These divisions and sub-divisions are somewhat confusing and perplexing
to the dull, and hence Origen and Clement, as we have seen,[242] laid
great stress on the need for intelligence on the part of all who desired
to become Gnostics. After all, those who find them troublesome can leave
them on one side, without grudging them to the earnest student, who
finds them not only illuminative, but absolutely necessary to any clear
understanding of the Mysteries of Life and Man.
The word Body means a vehicle of consciousness, or an instrument of
consciousness; that in which consciousness is carried about, as in a
vehicle, or which consciousness uses to contact the external world, as a
mechanic uses an instrument. Or, we may liken it to a vessel, in which
consciousness is held, as a jar holds liquid. It is a form used by a
life, and we know nothing of consciousness save as connected with such
forms. The form may be of rarest, subtlest, materials, may be so
diaphanous that we are only conscious of the indwelling life; still it
is there, and it is composed of Matter. It may be so dense, that it
hides the indwelling life, and we are conscious only of the form; still
the life is there, and it is composed of the opposite of Matter--Spirit.
The student must study and re-study this fundamental fact--the duality
of all manifested existence, the inseparable co-existence of Spirit and
Matter in a grain of dust, in the Logos, the God manifested. The idea
must become part of him; else must he give up the study of the Lesser
Mysteries. The Christ, as God and Man, only shows out on the kosmic
scale the same fact of duality that is repeated everywhere in nature. On
that original duality everything in the universe is formed.
Man has a "natural body," and this is made up of four different and
separable portions, and is subject to death. Two of these are composed
of physical matter, and are never completely separated from each other
until death, though a partial separation may be caused by anaesthetics,
or by disease. These two may be classed together as the Physical Body.
In this the man carries on his conscious activities while he is awake;
speaking technically, it is his vehicle of consciousness in the physical
world.
The third portion is the Desire Body, so called because man's feeling
and passional nature finds in this its special vehicle. In sleep, the
man leaves the physical body, and carries on his conscious activities in
this, which functions in the invisible world closest to our visible
earth. It is therefore his vehicle of consciousness in the lowest of the
super-physical worlds, which is also the first world into which men pass
at death.
The fourth portion is the Mental Body, so called because man's
intellectual nature, so far as it deals with the concrete, functions in
this. It is his vehicle of consciousness in the second of the
super-physical worlds, which is also the second, or lower heavenly
world, into which men pass after death, when freed from the world
alluded to in the preceding paragraph.
These four portions of his encircling form, made up of the dual physical
body, the desire body, and the mental body, form the natural body of
which S. Paul speaks.
This scientific analysis has fallen out of the ordinary Christian
teaching, which is vague and confused on this matter. It is not that the
churches have never possessed it; on the contrary, this knowledge of the
constitution of man formed part of the teachings in the Lesser
Mysteries; the simple division into Spirit, Soul, and Body was exoteric,
the first rough and ready division given as a foundation. The
subdivision as regards the "Body" was made in the course of later
instruction, as a preliminary to the training by which the instructor
enabled his pupil to separate one vehicle from another, and to use each
as a vehicle of consciousness in its appropriate region.
This conception should be readily enough grasped. If a man wants to
travel on the solid earth, he uses as his vehicle a carriage or a train.
If he wants to travel on the liquid seas, he changes his vehicle, and
takes a ship. If he wants to travel in the air, he changes his vehicle
again and uses a balloon. He is the same man throughout, but he is using
three different vehicles, according to the kind of matter he wants to
travel in. The analogy is rough and inadequate, but it is not
misleading. When a man is busy in the physical world, his vehicle is the
physical body, and his consciousness works in and through that body.
When he passes into the world beyond the physical, in sleep and at
death, his vehicle is the desire body, and he may learn to use this
consciously, as he uses the physical consciously. He already uses it
unconsciously every day of his life when he is feeling and desiring, as
well as every night of his life. When he goes on into the heavenly world
after death, his vehicle is the mental body, and this also he is daily
using, when he is thinking, and there would be no thought in the brain
were there none in the mental body.
Man has further "a spiritual body." This is made up of three separable
portions, each portion belonging to one of, and separating off, the
three Persons in the Trinity of the human Spirit. S. Paul speaks of
being "caught up to the third heaven," and of there hearing "unspeakable
words which it is not lawful for a man to utter."[243] These different
regions of the invisible supernal worlds are known to Initiates, and
they are well aware that those who pass beyond the first heaven need the
truly spiritual body as their vehicle, and that according to the
development of its three divisions is the heaven into which they can
penetrate.
The lowest of these three divisions is usually called the Causal Body,
for a reason that will be only fully assimilable by those who have
studied the teaching of Reincarnation--taught in the Early Church--and
who understand that human evolution needs very many successive lives on
earth, ere the germinal soul of the savage can become the perfected
soul of the Christ, and then, becoming perfect as the Father in
Heaven,[244] can realise the union of the Son with the Father.[245] It
is a body that lasts from life to life, and in it all memory of the past
is stored. From it come forth the causes that build up the lower bodies.
It is the receptacle of human experience, the treasure-house in which
all we gather in our lives is stored up, the seat of Conscience, the
wielder of the Will.
The second of the three divisions of the spiritual body is spoken of by
S. Paul in the significant words: "We have a building of God, an house
not made with hands, eternal in the heavens."[246] That is the Bliss
Body, the glorified body of the Christ, "the Resurrection Body." It is
not a body which is "made with hands," by the working of consciousness
in the the lower vehicles; it is not formed by experience, not builded
out of the materials gathered by man in his long pilgrimage. It is a
body which belongs to the Christ-life, the life of Initiation; to the
divine unfoldment in man; it is builded of God, by the activity of the
Spirit, and grows during the whole life or lives of the Initiate, only
reaching its perfection at "the Resurrection."
The third division of the spiritual body is the fine film of subtle
matter that separates off the individual Spirit as a Being, and yet
permits the interpenetration of all by all, and is thus the expression
of the fundamental unity. In the day when the Son Himself shall "be
subject unto Him that put all things under Him, that God may be all in
all,"[247] this film will be transcended, but for us it remains the
highest division of the spiritual body, in which we ascend to the
Father, and are united with Him.
Christianity has always recognised the existence of three worlds, or
regions, through which a man passes; first, the physical world;
secondly, an intermediate state into which he passes at death; thirdly,
the heavenly world. These three worlds are universally believed in by
educated Christians; only the uninstructed imagine that a man passes
from his death-bed into the final state of beatitude. But there is some
difference of opinion as to the nature of the intermediate world. The
Roman Catholic names it Purgatory, and believes that every soul passes
into it, save that of the Saint, the man who has reached perfection, or
that of a man who has died in "mortal sin." The great mass of humanity
pass into a purifying region, wherein a man remains for a period varying
in length according to the sins he has committed, only passing out of it
into the heavenly world when he has become pure. The various communities
that are called Protestant vary in their teachings as to details, and
mostly repudiate the idea of _post mortem_ purification; but they agree
broadly that there is an intermediate state, sometimes spoken of as
"Paradise," or as a "waiting period." The heavenly world is almost
universally, in modern Christendom, regarded as a final state, with no
very definite or general idea as to its nature, or as to the progress or
stationary condition of those attaining to it. In early Christianity
this heaven was considered to be, as it really is, a stage in the
progress of the soul, re-incarnation in one form or another, the
pre-existence of the soul, being then very generally taught. The result
was, of course, that the heavenly state was a temporary condition,
though often a very prolonged one, lasting for "an age"--as stated in
the Greek of the New Testament, the age being ended by the return of the
man for the next stage of his continuing life and progress--and not
"everlasting," as in the mistranslation of the English authorised
version.[248]
In order to complete the outline necessary for the understanding of the
Resurrection and Ascension, we must see how these various bodies are
developed in the higher evolution.
The physical body is in a constant state of flux, its minute particles
being continually renewed, so that it is ever building; and as it is
composed of the food we eat, the liquids we drink, the air we breathe,
and particles drawn from our physical surroundings, both people and
things, we can steadily purify it, by choosing its materials well, and
thus make it an ever purer vehicle through which to act, receptive of
subtler vibrations, responsive to purer desires, to nobler and more
elevated thoughts. For this reason all who aspired to attain to the
Mysteries were subjected to rules of diet, ablution, &c., and were
desired to be very careful as to the people with whom they associated,
and the places to which they went.
The desire body also changes, in similar fashion, but the materials for
it are expelled and drawn in by the play of the desires, arising from
the feelings, passions, and emotions. If these are coarse, the materials
built into the desire body are also coarse, while as these are purified,
the desire body grows subtle and becomes very sensitive to the higher
influences. In proportion as a man dominates his lower nature, and
becomes unselfish in his wishes, feelings, and emotions, as he makes his
love for those around him less selfish and grasping, he is purifying
this higher vehicle of consciousness; the result is that when out of the
body in sleep he has higher, purer, and more instructive experiences,
and when he leaves the physical body at death, he passes swiftly through
the intermediate state, the desire body disintegrating with great
rapidity, and not delaying him in his onward journey.
The mental body is similarly being built now, in this case by thoughts.
It will be the vehicle of consciousness in the heavenly world, but is
being built now by aspirations, by imagination, reason, judgment,
artistic faculties, by the use of all the mental powers. Such as the man
makes it, so must he wear it, and the length and richness of his
heavenly state depend on the kind of mental body he has built during his
life on earth.
As a man enters the higher evolution, this body comes into independent
activity on this side of death, and he gradually becomes conscious of
his heavenly life, even amid the whirl of mundane existence. Then he
becomes "the Son of man which is in heaven,"[249] who can speak with the
authority of knowledge on heavenly things. When the man begins to live
the life of the Son, having passed on to the Path of Holiness, he lives
in heaven while remaining on earth, coming into conscious possession and
use of this heavenly body. And inasmuch as heaven is not far away from
us, but surrounds us on every side, and we are only shut out from it by
our incapacity to feel its vibrations, not by their absence; inasmuch as
those vibrations are playing upon us at every moment of our lives; all
that is needed to be in Heaven is to become conscious of those
vibrations. We become conscious of them with the vitalising, the
organising, the evolution of this heavenly body, which, being builded
out of the heavenly materials, answers to the vibrations of the matter
of the heavenly world. Hence the "Son of man" is ever in heaven. But we
know that the "Son of man" is a term applied to the Initiate, not to
the Christ risen and glorified but to the Son while he is yet "being
made perfect."[250]
During the stages of evolution that lead up to and include the
Probationary Path, the first division of the spiritual body--the Causal
Body--develops rapidly, and enables the man, after death, to rise into
the second heaven. After the Second Birth, the birth of the Christ in
man, begins the building of the Bliss Body "in the heavens." This is the
body of the Christ, developing during the days of His service on earth,
and, as it develops, the consciousness of the "Son of God" becomes more
and more marked, and the coming union with the Father illuminates the
unfolding Spirit.
In the Christian Mysteries--as in the ancient Egyptian, Chaldean, and
others--there was an outer symbolism which expressed the stages through
which the man was passing. He was brought into the chamber of
Initiation, and was stretched on the ground with his arms extended,
sometimes on a cross of wood, sometimes merely on the stone floor, in
the posture of a crucified man. He was then touched with the thyrsus on
the heart--the "spear" of the crucifixion--and, leaving the body, he
passed into the worlds beyond, the body falling into a deep trance, the
death of the crucified. The body was placed in a sarcophagus of stone,
and there left, carefully guarded. Meanwhile the man himself was
treading first the strange obscure regions called "the heart of the
earth," and thereafter the heavenly mount, where he put on the perfected
bliss body, now fully organised as a vehicle of consciousness. In that
he returned to the body of flesh, to re-animate it. The cross bearing
that body, or the entranced and rigid body, if no cross had been used,
was lifted out of the sarcophagus and placed on a sloping surface,
facing the east, ready for the rising of the sun on the third day. At
the moment that the rays of the sun touched the face, the Christ, the
perfected Initiate or Master, re-entered the body, glorifying it by the
bliss body He was wearing, changing the body of flesh by contact with
the body of bliss, giving it new properties, new powers, new capacities,
transmuting it into His own likeness. That was the Resurrection of the
Christ, and thereafter the body of flesh itself was changed, and took on
a new nature.
This is why the sun has ever been taken as the symbol of the rising
Christ, and why, in Easter hymns, there is constant reference to the
rising of the Sun of Righteousness. So also is it written of the
triumphant Christ: "I am He that liveth and was dead; and behold, I am
alive for evermore, Amen; and have the keys of hell and of death."[251]
All the powers of the lower worlds have been taken under the dominion of
the Son, who has triumphed gloriously; over Him death no more has power,
"He holdeth life and death in His strong hand."[252] He is the risen
Christ, the Christ triumphant.
The Ascension of the Christ was the Mystery of the third part of the
spiritual body, the putting on of the Vesture of Glory, preparatory to
the union of the Son with the Father, of man with God, when the Spirit
re-entered the glory it had "before the world was."[253] Then the triple
Spirit becomes one, knows itself eternal, and the Hidden God is found.
That is imaged in the doctrine of the Ascension, so far as the
individual is concerned.
The Ascension for humanity is when the whole race has attained the
Christ condition, the state of the Son, and that Son becomes one with
the Father, and God is all in all. That is the goal, prefigured in the
triumph of the Initiate, but reached only when the human race is
perfected, and when "the great orphan Humanity" is no longer an orphan,
but consciously recognises itself as the Son of God.
Thus studying the doctrines of the Atonement, the Resurrection, and the
Ascension, we reach the truths unfolded concerning them in the Lesser
Mysteries, and we begin to understand the full truth of the apostolic
teaching that Christ was not a unique personality, but "the first
fruits of them that slept,"[254] and that every man was to become a
Christ. Not then was the Christ regarded as an external Saviour, by
whose imputed righteousness men were to be saved from divine wrath.
There was current in the Church the glorious and inspiring teaching that
He was but the first fruits of humanity, the model that every man should
reproduce in himself, the life that all should share. The Initiates have
ever been regarded as these first fruits, the promise of a race made
perfect. To the early Christian, Christ was the living symbol of his own
divinity, the glorious fruit of the seed he bore in his own heart. Not
to be saved by an external Christ, but to be glorified into an inner
Christ, was the teaching of esoteric Christianity, of the Lesser
Mysteries. The stage of discipleship was to pass into that of Sonship.
The life of the Son was to be lived among men till it was closed by the
Resurrection, and the glorified Christ became one of the perfected
Saviours of the world.
How far greater a Gospel than the one of modern days! Placed beside that
grandiose ideal of esoteric Christianity, the exoteric teaching of the
churches seems narrow and poor indeed.