< The Adeptship of Jesus Christ (continued from page 11-244) >
in manifesto, the Being is in the Divine Infinity, and who, that has not formed the Soul junction, can comprehend the sleepless, ever active Intelligence and Beneficence of God?
An incident in the early life of Jeans, illustrative of the extraordinary degree of his Soul Power, is given in 1 Infancy v. Joseph and Mary with Jeans leave Egypt, as wherever they went with the child the idols were broken and overthrown, and they (Joseph and Mary) lived in fear of the people. They went to a haunt of robbers, and as they approach, a mighty noise as of a great army, is conjured up, whereupon tie robbers taking fright flee away. Such performances are not unparalleled in the history of the Occult, but arc only recorded of Adepts of repute. Cornelius Agrippa is said to have conjured up a spirit-army, with more or less noise, to battle against an actual army, (whereon the Faust scene is historically based). Then this was Cornelius Agrippa, but hero we have an infant performing these great things in Magic unconsciously! This is an illustration of the difference between the White and the Red Magician, the human and the Divine Adept, and that “the end of the White Magician’s path is the beginning of the Red Magician’s.”
Some recorded miracles are evidently pure inventions. For instance, where it is said that at the crucifixion the graves were opened, and many bodies of the saints arose and appeared unto many. Bodies that were long rotten, and spirits who had passed away into the spirit-world, to be re-united to their corpses, to arise, in order that they may show themselves, and die again! It is unnatural and absurd; it never happened. That an earthquake and darkness, ax often occur simultaneously, may also have then taken place is possible, and is a simple natural event. Any spirit could have rent the veil in the temple in twain, when such an act of injustice was being perpetrated; and being then an extensive dark seance, materialized spirits could appear to many, and be recognised by some of those living.
Jesus Christ was an Adept of no mean power, but he was not the only man in whom the Divine Soul had become manifest. But this very Power, which Christ called “the Father,” is individually attainable, hut only to those who are worthy, and who earnestly and persistently strive for it. The doctrine that Jesus was “the only begotten Son of God,” is not true. The true esoteric doctrine is: that every man in whom the Divine Soul m manifested thereby becomes a true Son of God, and a disposer of Divine Power.
This is the doctrine which has been crushed, persecuted, and feared by the Official Church. For the pharisaic priestcraft knew, at least the better informed among them knew, that should this secret of Christ become generally known, the whole stupendous edifice of fraud, error, and imposture would crucible into the dust. For who would respect teachers who themselves absolutely knew nothing, when Divine knowledge and Power is without their interference more easily individually attainable? That the priests of the so-called Christian orthodoxies never had the Soul Power of Christ, and arc vastly inferior to Heathen Initiates in that respect, is palpable enough, for no false modesty would have made them hide such a light under a bushel.
Is it desirable that all human beings should become perfect? Can it be otherwise? Would it not be infinitely better that nil should be good and pure, and united to God, than that they should continue in their present degraded state? Why should we not all strive for the Highest? Did not Jesus say, “My yoke is easy, and my burthen light”—“come nil and be saved”—“I and my Father are one.” The man Jesus legally died, the God did not die. Is it rational to suppose that we want Jesus now as intermediary, while Jesus himself had no sacrifice to offer in his own stead. If man strives intensely to be one with the Father, will Jesus, think you, be opposed to him?
What account does honest Jesus himself give of his Adeptship? Does he describe it as unattainable? Does he proclaim himself as the greatest Adept that ever was, and ever will be? No, he said unto his disciples, “Even greater things than these can you do, if you. have, hut faith.” Faith is the true medium of all miracles. There were as many healed and consoled by Heathen priests who had and have a pure worship, as there were by the non-official, but truly Spiritual teachers, ascetics, or saints of the Christian Church, while the spirit of truth abided with them, just as there are at the present time, by the pure spiritual healers and teachers among us.
Names and opinions are mere meaningless cuckoocries, and utterly valueless, but Faith is the great necessity, without which nothing can be done. Mere lazy blind belief stands in the same relative value to faith, as a brass farthing to a sovereign. Not a fossil belief, but a living faith in (rod and in your own soul, can impart that knowledge which is the Divine inheritance of all true Adepts. “Shew me thy faith apart from thy works, and I by my works will shew you my faith.”
The mass of outer-world people are drunken dunces, and ideas must be made dunce-like before they can assimilate them. But would it not be better that they should cease from being drunken? At present, whoever wishes to sneak to the mob, must be one of them for the time, and welter with them in the mire, consequently, we have religions and philosophic systems, which pigs might intellectually grunt with satisfaction.
True religion and philosophy is too simple for die wrong headed to understand. As long as there are perverse minds, there will be delusions, but when we gradually dispel the delusions the perversities will expire of inanition.
Supposing a copy of Euclid’s Elements to have been delivered by a dying Mathematician to a dozen ploughmen, they, however they may believe to the contrary, understanding nothing of Mathematics, might continue to imitate the figures the book contained, but would not fathom the meaning. Generations upon generations have the words of Jesus been ignorantly perverted by stupid and not over honest ploughmen, and it is high time that a psychical Mathematician came to give to those truisms their real meaning.
On this subject, however, the world is tolerant to ignorance, be it expressed in blind belief, or blind unbelief, but will not yet tolerate absolute science. The greatest absurdities pass under the guise of religion, and the world is tolerant to them. When the Papist asserts his belief that the Almighty God become» actually embodied in a water, upon the priest saying his original hocus pocus—“Hoc est corpus”—the non-papistical world respects his religious belief. When the Protestant passes six days with the world, the flesh, and the devil, and one day with sanctimonious cant, even the non-protestant world considers him as a God-fearing man. When the Jew bridles himself diurnally, like an ass with leather ribbons, and gabbles for an hour-and-a-half a liturgy whereof he virtually understands nothing, even the non-Jewis.il world regards him for his religious persuasion. We could enumerate a multitude of insanities that psychologic the masses, were not the above sufficient illustrations. The world, however, prefers to be cheated, and is ignorant of the fuel of its blindness.
The assertion that we have certainty, whereon the world has none, no doubt will furiously enrage both believers and unbelievers, and although a few individuals may for a brief period cry “Hosannah to the new ‘Adept.’” the cry will soon be drowned in lunatic clamours of “Crucify him.” Be that as it may, here is the truth to shame the devils and their adherents.
Inlay
The Creative Power of the Imagination and will
...
The “Occult World,” by A.P. Sinnett*
Author of “The Rosicrucians,” 1st and 2nd Editions, 1870 to—1879;
“The Indian Religions; or Results of the Mysterious Buddhism,” first published in the year of the Great Indian Mutiny, 1857—1858;
“Curious Things of the Outside World,” Two Vols., I860.
“Live Lights or Dead Lights, Altar or Table?” 1873.
“One of The Thirty,” 1873;
“The Obelisk, Its Origin, History and Purpose,” etc. etc.,
This book will make the comfortable world uncomfortable. The now comfortable world has succeeded in a very difficult enterprise. It has got “miracle” out of the world- after all the wrigglings and twistings of miracle to keep here. The world has had a heavy combat of it—spread over an infinite number of centuries—but common-sense has got the better of delusion and superstition, and that uncomfortable thing miracle has now no place in any sensible man's mind. Miracle has exhaled into “thin air.” A robust sense of self-satisfied self-possession has succeeded it. The world and society—science and fact—truth and fixedness have all embraced, and are beginning to draw a new and relieved breath. And in the midst of all this comfort, our ideas arc to be again upset by the utterly incredible (from a certain stand-point) statements contained in this (we repeat) uncomfortable book! That Mr. A. P. Sinnett fa a very clever man, there is no question. That he is thoroughly sincere, thoroughly in earnests there is no question. We have a book which is a phenomenon. And the question now is—Is it true?
We will—for the present at least—agree that “Miracle” has been relegated into that void of vapour and of myth of which nothing can be made. The house has gone. That has gone in which we dwelt, because it had no mortal right —according to science—ever to have been. Rut the bricks of the house remain, and are of so much superficies. because we have measured them; and they are so many in number, because we have counted them. If there be any doubt, refer to the multiplication-table, which cannot lie. Every thing is real. Nothing is visionary. Everything that is visionary is voted by this real world to be false per se; and in the very fact that it is only visionary lies very conviction into the fact that it is not to be believed.
What is magic? Magic refers to fairy tales. In the myths that form the basis of the origin of most religions— indeed of all religions—magic mingles largely. But the supernatural origin of all religions is doubted in these days. We are so clever in these times that we cannot believe it. Religions came out of fear. Very naturally, since man is very little, and nature is very large. The very little must necessarily dread the very large. Therefore what we are told to recognise in this age as religion is not the supernatural interference with us, because all laws are settled, and there is no intermingling with the machinery ab extra. What we are to dread fa the risk to the consciousness which is the sum of our senses—and which make ourselves the “Ego,” or “I,” or “self”—from the jarring of the machinery. Blind accident from nature is consequently that which we have to fear, and not purposed trouble, or intelligently administered stroke, or meddling by a personality outside of us that can think, with us. Thus Miracle is safely got out of the world as a troublesome thing. It was necessary to instruct the early generations of the world, which were childish. It was requisite to impress, because it was a means of awe. And now that the nations have arrived at their majority, as they are told, and as—in their conceit—they feel persuaded, that other strange thing “Magic,” which crops up in every page of Mr. A. P. Sinnett’s wonderful book, is conjured indeed by a new magic, and is converted, (or corrected, according to the ideas of the scientific people), into a sort of “Old Bogey,” very interesting to stir one’s wonder, but as out of date—indeed as startlingly grotesque, and consequently at its first disclosure, as provocative of laughter—as the old costumes of our ancestors. All the exploring comment in the world can only bring the matter to this point.
Now all these conclusions are so unjust, and the criticisms which have already appeared of Mr. A. P. Sinnott’s book are so erroneous—so altogether faulty, wrong, and false—that we feel constrained to speak severe truth in <... continues on page 11-246 >
* London Trubner & Co. Ludgate Hill, 1881, 172 pp, Cloth 6s.
Editor's notes
Sources
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Medium and Daybreak, v. 12, No. 599, September 23, 1881, pp. 601-03