| The word to "know" (in relation to the
initiate-consciousness of the Christ and of still lesser initiates) concerns the certainty
of the knowledge the initiate has gained through experiment, experience and expression.
The first faint tremor of reaction to monadic "destiny" and to the widespread
universal influence a Son of God can exert makes itself felt in the consciousness of the
Christ - as it will in the consciousness of all those who obey His injunction and arrive
at the perfection which He pointed out as possible. The highest divine quality or aspect
now makes itself felt in the life of the progressing Son of God; He knows the meaning of
intelligence; He realizes the significance of love and its attractive quality. Now -
because of these two recognitions - He becomes aware of the potency of will and of the
reality of the divine intention which that will must (at any cost) implement. This was the
major crisis of the Christ. There are in the Gospel story (as testimony
to this divinely progressing unfoldment) four recorded moments wherein this universal or
monadic realization showed itself. Let us look at each one of them for a moment:
- There is, first of all, His statement to His parents in the Temple, "Wist ye not
that I must be about my Father's business?" We should note here that He was twelve
years old at the time and, therefore, the work with which He had been occupied (as a soul)
was finished; twelve is the number of completed work, as witness the twelve labors of
Hercules, another Son of God. The symbolism of His twelve years is now replaced by that of
the twelve apostles, the symbol of service and sacrifice. He was also in the Temple of
Solomon, which is the symbol [28] of the perfect life of the soul, just as the Tabernacle
in the wilderness is the symbol of the imperfect ephemeral life of the transient
personality; Christ was, therefore, speaking on soul levels and not only as the spiritual
man on Earth. He was also serving, when He spoke these words, as a working Member of the
Spiritual Hierarchy, for He was found by His parents teaching the priests, the Pharisees
and the Sadducees. These points all indicate His recognition of His work as a World
Teacher, becoming conscious, for the first time in His physical brain, of divine intention
or of the divine will.
- Next comes His statement to His disciples: "I must go up to Jerusalem," after
which we read that He "steadfastly set His face to go" to that city. This was
the intimation to them that He now had a new objective. The only place of complete
"peace" (which is the meaning of the name "Jerusalem") is the
"center where the will of God is known." The spiritual Hierarchy of our planet
(the invisible Church of Christ) is not a center of peace but a very vortex of loving
activity, the meeting place of energies coming from the center of the divine will, and
from humanity, the center of divine intelligence. Christ had oriented Himself to that
divine center which has, in the ancient Scriptures, been called the "place of serene
determination and of poised, quiescent will." This statement marked a point of crisis
and of determination in the life of Christ, and proved His progress towards divine
fulfilment.
- Then in the Garden of Gethsemane He said, "Father, not My will but Thine be
done," thus indicating His realization of divine destiny. The meaning of these words
is not (as is so often stated by Christian [29] theologians) a statement of acceptance of
pain and of an unpleasant future and of death. It was an exclamation, evoked surely by His
realization of the universal implications of His mission and the intense focusing of His
life in a universal sense. The Gethsemane experience was an experience uniquely possible
only to those Sons of God Who have reached His rare point in evolution; it had no real
relation to the Crucifixion episode, as the orthodox commentators emphasize.
- The final words of the Christ to His apostles were, "Lo, I am with you all the
days, even unto the end of the age" or cycle. (Matt., XXVIII, 20.) The important word
is "end." The word used is the Greek "sun-teleia," which means the end
of the time period, with another immediately following after (what would be called the end
of a cycle). In Greek the final end is another word "telos." In Matt.,
XXIV, 6, "but the end is not yet," the other word telos is used for it
means "the end of the first period has not yet been reached." Here He was
speaking as the Head of the spiritual Hierarchy and expressing His divine will (at-one now
with the will of God) to inform and pervade continuously the world of men with His
over-shadowing consciousness. It was a tremendous affirmation, sent forth upon the energy
of His developed will, His all-inclusive love and His intelligent mind. This affirmation
has made all things possible.
It was also
to the magnetic power of the will that Christ referred when He said, "I, if I be
lifted up, will draw all men unto Me." This had no reference to the crucifixion but
to the magnetic will of the Christ to draw all men, through the life of the indwelling
Christ in every heart, out of the world of material values into the world of spiritual
recognitions. It did not relate to death [30] but to life; it had no reference to the
Cross but to the resurrection. In the past, the keynote of the Christian religion has been
death, symbolized for us in the death of Christ and much distorted by St. Paul in his
effort to blend the new religion which Christ brought with the old blood religion of the
Jews. In the cycle which Christ will inaugurate after His reappearance, the goal of all
the religious teaching in the world will be the resurrection of the spirit in mankind; the
emphasis will be upon the livingness of the Christ nature in every human being, and upon the
use of the will in bringing about this living transfiguration of the lower nature. The
proof of it will be the risen Christ. This "Way of Resurrection" is the radiant
Way, the lighted Way which leads from one great expression of divinity in man to another;
it is the way which expresses the light of the intelligence, the radiant substance of true
love, and the inflexible will which permits of no defeat or withdrawal. These are the
characteristics which will be declarative of the Kingdom of God. |
