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{{Style P-HPB SB. Title continued |Christian Occultism or Esoteric Christianity|8-163}} | {{Style P-HPB SB. Title continued |Christian Occultism or Esoteric Christianity|8-163}} | ||
This, indeed, is much, and few there be who attain to it; but this is only the moral or exoteric side of Christ’s life. | |||
{{Style S-HPB SB. Continues on |8-165}} | When, in answer to the Master, the disciple replied, “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God,” Jesus replied, “Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-Jona, for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father, who is in heaven;” and He charged his disciples that they should reveal the secret to no man. | ||
Again, when Jesus was transfigured, when “His face shone as the sun and His raiment as light/’ and Moses and Elias were with Him, being on the same plane of spirit or heaven, He again charged His disciples that they should tell no man until He was risen from the dead. | |||
Thus secretly was revealed the ''secret ''or esoteric life of Christ, “the secret of the Logos and thus Jesus, while on earth, was at the same time the Christ in heaven, “even the Son of Man ''who is in ''heaven,” and thus one with the Father. To be Christ-like, therefore, is “to be one with Him [and with God], as He was one with the Father.” It is to be a divine and miraculous man on earth and in heaven at one and the same time while on this side the grave. | |||
But we live in a physical world, ruled by physical laws, and while here the command is given to “increase and multiply and replenish the earth, and subdue it.” | |||
It is not, then, orderly that the human race should be over spiritualised on this earth, for were it so, there being then neither “marrying nor giving in marriage,” the earth would become a desolation. | |||
There must be always hewers of wood and drawers of water, and the supreme men must be few and far between. | |||
Although, then, it has been given only in rare and exceptional cases, and as illustrations of the possibilities of man to be truly Christ-like, yet we may all, more or less, be like Christ in the second degree, and this is practically what we must all strive after. | |||
There is one grand law: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and soul and mind and strength; and thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.” “This do, and thou shalt live,” for this is the sum and substance of all religion and all morality. | |||
The love of one’s neighbour as one’s self renders all immorality impossible, for with this love we could not steal, nor bear false witness, nor envy or decry, or slander, nor hate nor kill, nor commit fornication or adultery, but love and honour all men and women. | |||
We could pardon our enemies, and “pray for those who despitefully use us and persecute us,” “returning blessing for cursing,” “enduring all things, hoping all things, believing all things.” | |||
As aids to this life, we must live simply, purely, lovingly, prayerfully, and contentedly, rejoicing always in the Lord. | |||
It is good at stated periods to partake of the bread and wine of the altar, but it is better always to “eat our food with gladness and singleness of heart, giving God thanks.” Hence that grace before food which has degenerated into a mere form, and of which most men seem ashamed, should be a sincere prayer to God, so to “give us our daily bread,” that this bread may be by the spirit transformed into the body and blood of Christ in us. Who shall place limits to the power of thankfulness, and love, and gratitude, thus to transform the food for soul and body? | |||
In food thus taken the water may become converted into wine, and the loaves and fishes into miraculous nourishment, and we may become nourished as the “angels who excel in strength.” The exhalations of the body may become as fragrance, and the “odour of sanctity” be a realised blessing. | |||
Further, “cleanliness is next to godliness,” and our sleep should be as that which the beloved receive, a time of stillness, and holiness, and nearness to God, when our old men shall see visions, and our young men shall dream dreams, and probably when, as it is with children, our “angels may behold the face of our Father in heaven, “and supping with these angels, return at morning tide to our renewed and invigorated selves. | |||
This body, being thus cleansed, should not be injured or maligned by foolish, grotesque, vulgar, unwholesome, or indelicate dress. How hideous that this soul and body, which are the Lord’s, should be by man sold for houses or lands, or the upper seats in the synagogues, or to be called Rabbi; and by women for the vulgarity and indecency of dress, in place of being clothed with humility and a meek and quiet spirit.” | |||
But “the flesh lusteth against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh,” and “the carnal mind is enmity against God;” therefore, our whole life must be a constant desire and prayer to be kept from all evil, and led into all truth; to be enabled to love God, to forgive our enemies, and to look for the kingdom of heaven. | |||
The essential centre of all true, internal, esoteric, and spiritual religion is one and the same. It is a seeking after God, “if haply we may find Him.” It is a cry after the hidden God within us. It is the nervana or God-ward rapture of ''repose ''and ''knowledge ''of the esoteric Brahman and Buddhist. It is the mystical participation of the body and blood, the life of Christ in the Eucharist; it is the longing desire for our inner Lord, the Lord of the temple, the Lord of heaven and earth. It is signified by the wisdom of the Book of Solomon, by the divine Sophia, with whom the soul of Jacob Boehme danced with divine delight, by the Logos of the Alexandrian Greeks, or the operative wisdom of God in the world, “the word” of St. John, “the mystery kept secret since the world began,” “God manifest in the flesh,” the Christ, the hidden “light of every man that cometh into the world,” “the light shining in darkness and the darkness comprehending it not,” “the bread of life which cometh down from heaven, and of which, if a man eat, he will hunger no more.” | |||
True religion thus interpreted renders all sectarianism an impossibility, for its one law is love—love to God and love to man—and its result must be ultimately to fill the earth with the glory of God, as the waters cover the channel of the sea. | |||
When the whole earth was given over to wickedness, and the love of God, which is an ''expanding ''force, had been entirely driven out of the world, the natural and scientific consequence was a collapse of the earth, and its consequent submergence. Out of this catastrophe the earth had so far recovered, until at the time of the coming of Christ wickedness had again become ascendent with its hideous cruelties, and inconceivable moral putrescency. Then the Saviour of the earth, and of man, body and soul, appeared, and by his law of self-sacrifice and love, which has grown ever since, and has in these days of seeking after truth grown rapidly, the earth and man have been saved from a second cataclysm. And the expanding force of the love of God is destined thus to change this globe into “a new heaven and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness,” when, “by faith mountains shall be removed, and rough places made plain,” and when “none shall say ‘Know the Lord, for all shall know Him from the least even to the greatest.’” | |||
But as “Christ crucified was to the Jews a stumbling-block, and to the Greeks foolishness,” so spiritual religion is to the Pharisee or formalist hateful, and to the materialist abhorrent; because the formalist, or carnal or material mind, are at enmity against the spiritual, as “such can only be spiritually discerned.” | |||
The man of mere words or forms, whether the words are the empty shibboleth of the sectarian, or the pedantic nomenclature of the scientist, cannot understand or know spiritual things. | |||
If we offer the Esquimaux the fragrant fruits of the earth, he rejects them with disgust; but if we offer him a lump of reeking blubber, he will devour it with gratitude. | |||
So, also, if we offer the dogmatic religionist the simple “beauty of holiness” as the essence of religion, he will spurn it, and if he had the power would, as of old, burn him who offers it, with his teachings, in the fire; but offer him an incomprehensible series of phrases as true religion, and he will embrace you as a brother. | |||
And so, again, if you can prove to the scientist any insignificant physiological fact extorted by a cruel vivisection, he will extol you and enrol your name in the annals of a royal society. But offer to demonstrate to him that man is a trinity of body, soul, and spirit, and that his visible body is a mere machine used by his soul, and that when in trance you may cut this body to pieces, with the owner’s entire indifference; and that the internal soul can see without {{Style S-HPB SB. Continues on |8-165}} | |||