Filename: RC1045.TXT
Source: "The Rosicrucian Christianity Lectures" by Max Heindel

[PAGE 1641]

                               LECTURE FOURTEEN: 

                   LUCIFER, TEMPTER OR BENEFACTOR OR BOTH?

                    ORIGIN AND MISSION OF SORROW AND PAIN

   As we look about us in the world there is no fact more potent than  that,
as the Hebrew poet expressed it,  "Man is of few days and full of  trouble,"
and naturally we ask why this is so.

   The  theologian tells us that it is God's decree that we must suffer  be-
cause our first parents sinned, being tempted by the devil,  and then he at-
tempts  to justify God by such doggerel as "In Adam's fall we  sinned  all."
But  why  the eating of an apple as a cause should merit the  punishment  of
painful parturition as an effect has always been a sore puzzle to Bible com-
mentators,  and how a wise, loving, and just God could decree so much misery
to the whole human Race for the apparently slight fault of one pair is  suf-
ficiently  hard to understand to excuse Robert Ingersoll in a   measure  for
exclaiming:  "An honest God is the noblest work of man."

   The  seeming anomaly arises of course from lack of occult  knowledge  and
consequent materialistic interpretations of that mine of occult information,
the Bible.

[PAGE 1642]

   To  get at the true explanation concerning pain and sorrow we will  first
take the purely occult information, and then see what light the Bible gives.
We  remember that four great Epochs or ages have preceded our present  Aryan
Epoch:  the Polarian, Hyperborean, Lemurian, and Atlantean Epochs.

   In  the Polarian Epoch man had only a poorly organized dense body,  hence
he was as unconscious and immobile as the minerals,  who are now so  consti-
tuted.   In the Hyperborean Epoch his dense body was clothed upon with a vi-
tal body,  and the Spirit hovered outside.  What the effect of such a nature
is we may see by examining the plant, which is similarly constituted now.

   There we see constant REPETITION,  a building upwards of stem and leaf in
alternating succession, that would go on ad infinitum if there were no other
influence.  But as the plant has no separate desire body, the desire body of
the Earth,  the Desire World,  hardens the plant and checks this intense up-
wards growth in a measure.  The creative force that cannot finds its expres-
sion by making one particular plant grow taller, seeks another channel:   it
builds the flower and imbeds itself in the seed, so that it may grow upwards
anew in another plant.

    In the Hyperborean Epoch,  where man was similarly situated,  his  vital
body  caused  him to grow to an enormous size.   Acted upon  by  the  Desire
World,  he threw off sport-like seed which were either appropriated  by  an-
other  human  Ego  or used by the Nature Spirits to  build  bodies  for  the
animals  who  were  then  beginning to  emerge  from  Chaos.   (The  highest
life-wave starts first at the opening of a period and returns last to Chaos;

[PAGE 1643]

the  succeeding life-waves,  animal,  plant,  and mineral--emerge later  and
leave earlier.)

   Thus,  in the Hyperborean Epoch,  when man was similar to the  plants  in
constitution,  his vital body built vertebrae upon vertebrae, and would have
gone on if the individual desire body had not been given him in the Lemurian
Epoch.   That commenced to harden the structure and checked the tendency  to
grow taller,  and as a result the cranium,  the flower upon the stem of  the
spinal column, was incipiently formed.

   Thwarted in its effort to build the one form taller,  it became necessary
for  the creative force in the vital body to seek a new channel  whereby  it
might continue its upward growth in another human being.   Then man became a
hermaphrodite capable of generating a new body from himself.

   In the plant there is no separate desire body, hence it feels no passion.
It stretches its creative organ,  the flower,  chastely and unashamed toward
the Sun, a thing of beauty and a delight.

    In man the INDIVIDUAL desire body must necessarily cause passion and de-
sire unless subjugated by some ulterior means.   Therefore man is the inver-
sion of the chaste plant,  both figuratively and literally,  for he is  pas-
sionate and turns his creative organ towards the Earth and is ashamed of it.
The  plant takes its food by way of the root;  man's nourishment enters  his
body  by  way  of  the head.  Man inhales  life-giving  oxygen  and  exhales
death-dealing carbon dioxide.   This is taken by the plant,  which  extracts
the poison and returns the vitalizing principle to man.

   In  order  to check passion and prevent abuse of the  creative  function,
several measures were adopted by the leaders in charge of evolution.

[PAGE 1644]

   This animal-like creature of mid-Lemurian times,  though dreadful to look
upon,  was nevertheless a diamond in the rough,  destined to become in  time
the perfect tool and beautiful temple of an indwelling Spirit.   To that end
if needed a controlling mechanism,  a brain, and a second nervous system ca-
pable  of being controlled by "Will"  which is the force of the  prospective
tenant, the Ego.

   The whole creative force might have been used to that purpose, but as the
use of any tool causes it to wear out, a way must also be devised to replace
a worn-out instrument when discarded by a Spirit at death,  and so the  cre-
ative force in each being was divided.  One-half was allowed to flow upwards
as before,  to build a brain and a larynx whereby the Spirit may control its
instrument  and  express itself in thought and word.   The  other  half  was
turned downwards through the creative organs, for reproduction.

   This  arrangement has the further merit as a means of  preventing  abuse,
that  it  made it harder to accomplish generation.   Before the  sexes  were
separated each one could create without help;  under the present arrangement
each must first seek the co-operation of another person who has the opposite
half of the sex-force available for reproduction.

   That the boy changes his voice at puberty shows a connection between  the
creative organ and the larynx.  Because half the sex-force builds the brain,
one  who  overdraws  for sexual excesses becomes an idiot,  while  the  deep
thinker,  particularly along spiritual lines, feels little or no inclination
for coition, as he uses most of his creative force in the brain.

   The  Angels worked along with man in the Hyperborean Epoch,  when he  had
only a dense and vital body, but in the Lemurian Epoch, when the desire body

[PAGE 1645]

was added,  the Archangels also took a hand, to help the infant human Spirit
to control its future vehicles.  They neutralized the desire body so that it
was only sexually active at certain times of the year.   In the latter  part
of  the  Lemurian Epoch and the beginning of the Atlantean,  the  brain  and
cerebrospinal  system  were sufficiently evolved so that the  link  of  Mind
could be given, and the Ego began slowly to draw into its bodies, and became
an INDWELLING SPIRIT in the middle of the Atlantean Epoch,  fully  conscious
of its outside environment.  Before the indrawing was fully completed,  par-
ticularly in the latter part of the Lemurian Epoch,  man's consciousness was
turned  inwards,  and he was mostly conscious in the spiritual world.   Thus
birth  and death were nonexistent to him,  as the sprouting out  and  drying
away of a leaf is to the plant.  His consciousness went on unbrokenly in the
inner  World  whether he had a body or not,  for he was unconscious  of  it,
though he used it equally well for all that, as we use our stomach and lungs
unconsciously.

   At  stated times of the year the Archangels,  withdrew their  restraining
influence  on  the desire body and the Angels marshaled  humanity  to  great
temples  where the generative act was performed at the times when  the  con-
stellations were propitious.   Our present-day honeymoon trips are atavistic
reminders  of  those  migrations  for  propagative  purposes,   and  show  a
connection with the heavenly bodies in the name honey-MOON.

   When  propagation had been accomplished,  the desire body was again  neu-
tralized,  and  in  consequence  there  was  no  more  pain  connected  with

[PAGE 1646]

parturition than is the case with the animals at present, where similar con-
ditions obtain now.

   This  was a carefree state,  but man was extremely limited in  conscious-
ness, led and controlled by outside agencies willy-nilly.  If that condition
had continued, man would have remained a God-guided automaton.  He can never
become a self-conscious Creative Intelligence,  as he is destined to become,
until he throws off all yokes and works out his own salvation.

   Therefore great Leaders from a more advanced evolution were sent to train
man and awaken him to knowledge of the material world without, and of course
strong measures continued for ages were necessary.  The boys were trained to
develop  "WILL,"  which is the spiritual counterpart of their positive  cre-
ative force.  They were taught to carry immense burdens and steel the arm by
will.   They  engaged  in brutal fights and their  bodies  were  burned  and
maimed, impaled upon spits, etc., in efforts to awaken the Ego to conscious-
ness of the dense body and outside world.

   The  girls  were  driven out into the  immense  fern-forests  which  grew
luxuriantly in the moist,  hot soil.   They were exposed to the fury of  the
tempests  of storm-swept Lemuria and set to watch volcanic  outbursts  which
produced  pictures  before their inner vision.   They likewise  watched  the
fights of the boys, in order to develop their "IMAGINATION."

   Imagination is the spiritual pole of the negative force,  and it mirrored
the  scenes of the outside world in dream-like pictures before  their  inner
consciousness,  and in that way the women were the first to become aware  of
the existence of the Physical World and the dense body,  and they started to
preach the gospel of the body to men, whom they told of this dimly perceived

[PAGE 1647]

physical  existence.   Some among us are now sensing the soul and trying  to
preach  the gospel of the spiritual world where the Spirit lives,  and  meet
unbelief and ridicule such as the Lemurian women encountered when trying  to
convince their compatriots that they had a dense body.

   Among the observations made by these seeresses was the fact that at times
a man lost his body,  and it disintegrated.   She saw him just as before  in
the  spiritual  world,  but  he was gone from  material  existence,  and  it
troubled her.

   From  the Angels she could get no information;  they work with the  dense
body,  but not directly; they use the vital body as transmitter,  and cannot
make  themselves  understood  to a reasoning brain-being.   They  get  their
knowledge  without reasoning,  for they send out their whole love  in  their
world and cosmic wisdom flows in in return.   Man also creates by love,  but
his  love  is selfish;  he loves because he  desires:--cooperation  in  gen-
eration, for he only sends out half of his creative force in generation, the
other half he selfishly keeps to build his own organ of thought,  the brain,
and he also uses that half selfishly to think,  because he  desires:--knowl-
edge.  Hence he must work and reason to gain wisdom, but in time he will ar-
rive  at a much higher stage than either Angel or Archangel.   He will  then
have passed beyond the need of the lower creative organs,  he will create by
means of the larynx, and be able to "make the WORD flesh."

   At that stage the woman could not reason either,  for the mind was  given
by the Powers of Darkness,  and it was dark,  and before it could be of  any
use in correlating facts it must be illuminated.  Only after  that  has been

[PAGE 1648]

done can man throw "the LIGHT of Reason" upon his problems.

   It  is  here that we first hear of "Lucifer,"  "the  Light-bringer,"  who
speaks  to the woman and helps her to solve the riddle by showing  her  how,
with  the help of the man,  she may exercise the creative function  indepen-
dently  of the Angels,  and in that way provide bodies when they  have  been
lost, and in that way evade death.

   He  inquires if God has forbidden them to eat of the tree,  and  is  told
that  they have been forbidden to eat of the tree of knowledge of  good  and
evil, under penalty of death.

   That the tree of KNOW-LEDGE is a symbolical expression for the generative
function is readily apparent when we remember how limited the  consciousness
of man was at that time.   He KNEW or was aware of nothing OUTSIDE  himself,
his eyes had not yet been opened,  his consciousness was internal,  like the
picture-consciousness of our dreams, except that it was not confused, but he
was  as  unaware  of  the exterior world and beings as we  are  now  of  the
spiritual world,  save at the times when he was conducted to the temples and
brought into intimate sexual contact with another; then, for the moment, the
Spirit  pierced  the veil of flesh.   Then man and wife KNEW each  other  in
body,  and to the initiated the Bible records these facts in  a  wonderfully
illuminating  way and continues to use the same expression in  many  places,
such as:   "Adam KNEW his wife," and in Mary's question:   "How shall I con-
ceive,  seeing that I KNOW not a man."   The pain of childbirth is also more
logically  meted  out as a penalty for violation of  an  injunction  against
sexual intercourse than as a punishment for eating an apple.

   The serpent said:  "Ye shall not surely die,  for  the God doth know that

[PAGE 1649]

in the day ye eat thereof YOUR EYES SHALL BE OPENED,  and ye shall be as the
gods, knowing good AND EVIL."  The latter was then unknown to man.

   Acting upon this advice,  the woman secured the cooperation of man and by
the  power of will they freed their desire bodies.   That faculty  was  then
much  greater  than now,  for it is a law that each new  faculty  is  always
bought at the cost of weakening some previous power,  as when the faculty of
thought was bought at the price of half the creative force.   Then the man's
will-power  was such that the anxiety of the God "lest man eat also of  'the
tree of life' and become immortal" was well founded, for had he secured pos-
session of the secret of renewing the vital body as well as the dense  body,
he  would  have been able to create a body and vitalize  it  forever.   Then
there would truly have been no death, but neither would there have been  any
evolution;  as man did not then, and does not yet,  know how to build a per-
fect body,  that would have been the greatest possible calamity.   Death  is
not a curse,  but a friend when it comes naturally,  for it releases us from
an environment we have outgrown, and from a body that ties us, in order that
we may get a new chance in a new and better body to learn new lessons.

   The untrammeled use of the sex-function had the result of making man more
and more conscious of his body;  "their eyes were opened,"  and their atten-
tion focused more and more on the Physical World, until by degrees they have
forgotten the higher worlds altogether, and many have ceased to even believe
that  there is an immortal spirit in man.  To them the death of the body  is
of course a terrible thing, a dire calamity despite all assertions,  because
they think it annihilation.  So, although the word of  Lucifer was true, and

[PAGE 1650]

a new body is provided, the word of the Angel was truer still, for there was
no sting in death until man lost consciousness of the higher worlds.

   As to the curse:  "In sorrow shalt thou bring forth thy children," it was
no curse at all,  but a simple statement of the effects that must inevitably
result from the abuse or ignorant use of the creative function.

   While that was exercised under the wise guidance of the Angels,  at  cer-
tain times of the year,  when the cosmic lines of force running from  planet
to planet were propitious,  parturition could be accomplished without  pain,
but man was and is ignorant of these factors, hence he transgressed and pain
resulted.

   Thus  the brain and vocal organ have been bought at the cost of half  the
creative  force;  freedom from the rule of the Angels and the power to  ini-
tiate  action,  to choose good or evil,  and consciousness of  the  material
world are ours at the cost of sorrow, pain, and death.

   But  all  things work for good in God's kingdom,  the world.   Even  that
which  is  evil  is  transmuted  by  the  subtlest  spiritual  alchemy  into
steppingstones to a higher good than could have been achieved without it.

   Having been exiled from the garden of Eden, the Etheric Region, by learn-
ing  to  KNOW the material world, in consequence of  repeated  sexual  abuse
which  has  focused  his attention here, this increased use  of  the  desire
bodyhardened the dense body and it began to require food and shelter.   Thus
man's  ingenuity was taxed to provide for the body.   Hunger and  cold  were
whips  of evil that called forth man's ingenuity;  they forced him to  think
and act to provide for his necessities.   Thus he is gradually learning wis-
dom; he provides for these contingencies before they come, because the pangs

[PAGE 1651]

of  hunger  and cold have taught him to guard himself,  and thus  WISDOM  IS
CRYSTALLIZED PAIN.   Our sorrows, when they are past, and we can calmly view
them and extract the lessons they contained,  are mines of wisdom,  and  are
the wombs of future joys, for by them we learn to order our lives aright, we
learn to cease from sin, for IGNORANCE is sin and the only sin,  and APPLIED
KNOWLEDGE IS SALVATION,  and the only salvation.   That seems a broad state-
ment,  but if we try it out in thought it will be found to be as  absolutely
true and capable of demonstration as that twice two are four.

   As to the question:   Who are these Lucifers?   (for,  although the Bible
seems  to speak of only one person,  that is as wrong as where it  uses  the
singular  for God in the first chapter of Genesis)--They are a class of  Be-
ings who attained to a stage of evolution far beyond that of our humanity in
the Moon Period, but fell short of the development of the Angels.   They are
demi-gods,  and could not take a dense body like man. But neither could they
gather experience as the Angels are doing.   They needed a brain and  spinal
cord,  and so, when man had built such an instrument, it was to their advan-
tage to prompt him in the use of it.

   At that time the opening consciousness of man was turned INWARDS,  and he
saw  his inner organs and built them with the same force that he  now  turns
OUTWARDS  to build houses and ships,  etc.,  and the outside muscles of  his
body;  so the woman, who was most advanced in that direction because of hav-
ing her Imagination trained, saw the intelligence embodied in her serpentine
spinal cord,  and at a later stage, when man came to record this experience,
the serpent appealed to him as the nearest likeness to  that which he wanted

[PAGE 1652]

to tell about.

   This  idea is carried out right through the Bible.   In Isaiah 14  he  is
called Lucifer (day-star),  king of Babel-On (gate of the sun),  a city  lo-
cated upon seven hills,  and having dominion over the World.   There mankind
ceased  to act in unison and became separated into warring nations.   It  is
the seed-ground of all the ills imaginable, and is called a "harlot" in Rev-
elation, where her fall is described.

   In supreme antithesis we hear of another "Light of the World,"  a "bright
morning-star,"  a  true light (Christ),  who shall rise after  the  fall  of
Babylon and reign forever in a city of peace:   Jer-u-salem,  that is called
the "bride."   It comes down from heaven, and has twelve gates, but they are
never closed, although the precious tree of life is within. There is no out-
side illumination.  The light is within and there is no night.

   Truly  a wonderful city,  and the greatest imaginable antithesis  to  the
other.   What does it mean?   for literal interpretation is out of the ques-
tion in both cases.  Allowing that a city of Babylon has existed, it was not
LITERALLY as described,  and the future "New Jerusalem"  is contrary to  all
laws of nature as we know them.  These two cities must therefore be symbols.

   In  order to unravel the meaning,  let us consider that these cities  are
located  upon seven hills or mountains,  a position offering special  advan-
tages  for  observation.   Moses  went "into the  mountain"  and  "saw"  and
"heard,"  so  did those on "the mount"  of transfiguration.   Daniel  likens
Babylon to the HEAD of the image Nebuchadnezzar saw in a dream,  and on  the
human head there are seven places of observation:  two eyes,  two ears,  two
nostrils, and a mouth.  Upon these sits the brain, where  the "Light'giver,"

[PAGE 1653]

REASON,  rules the little world,  the microcosm,  as the Great  Light-giver,
God, rules the macrocosm.

   Reason is the product of selfishness.   It is generated by the mind given
by the "Powers of Darkness,"  in a brain built by selfishly keeping half the
sex-force,  and prompted by the selfish Lucifers,  hence it is "the seed  of
the serpent," and although transmuted to WISDOM through pain and sorrow,  it
must give way to something higher--to INTUITION, which means:  teaching from
within.   That  is  a spiritual faculty,  equally present  in  all  Spirits,
whether functioning for the time being as man or woman, but it expresses it-
self  most prominently in those incarnated in a female organism,  for  there
the counterpart of the life spirit--the vital body--is male,  positive;  and
INTUITION,  the faculty of the life spirit, may therefore properly be called
"the woman's seed," whence all altruistic tendencies spring, and whereby all
nations  are being slowly but surely drawn together in a Universal  Brother-
hood of LOVE, regardless of Race, sex, or color.

   This  brain of ours is not a homogeneous whole,  however;  it is  divided
into  two halves,  and it is a fact well known to physiologists that we  use
principally but one of these cerebral hemispheres--THE LEFT.  The right half
of our brain is only partially active.   The heart also is ON THE LEFT  SIDE
of  our  body,  but is beginning to move towards  "the  right"  place.   The
"right"  brain will also become more and more active,  and in consequence of
these two physiological changes man's whole character will appear different.
The  LEFT SIDE is under the sway of the Lucifers and is given over to  self-
ishness, but the Ego will gain more and more control as  THE  RIGHT  SIDE of

[PAGE 1654]

the brain is invested with power to act upon the body as RIGHT judgment.

   That there is a a change going on in the heart which makes it an anomaly,
a  puzzle,  is not news to physiologists.  We have two sets of muscles,  one
set is under the control of the will, as,  for instance,  the muscles of arm
and hand.  They are striped both lengthwise and crosswise.   The involuntary
muscles,  which take care of functions not under control of the will,  which
cannot be moved by DESIRE,  are striped lengthwise only.   THE HEART IS  THE
ONLY EXCEPTION.  It is not under the control of desire, AND YET IT IS BEGIN-
NING TO SHOW CROSS-STRIPES LIKE A VOLUNTARY MUSCLE.

   In time those cross-stripes will develop fully and the heart will be  un-
der our control.   When that time comes we will be able to direct the  blood
where we will to send it.   Then we may refuse to send it to the left brain,
and BABYLON, THE CITY OF LUCIFER, WILL FALL.

   When the blood is sent into the right brain we shall be building the  New
Jerusalem,  and  we  are  now  preparing  for  that  time  by  building  the
cross-stripes on the heart by altruistic ideals or,  in the case of the  pu-
pil, by sending the sex current through the RIGHT-HAND PATH of the heart.

   We remember that the Cherubim awakened the life spirit,  the seat of  di-
vine love,  whose shadow is the vital body,  the medium of propagation,  and
when man was exiled from the Etheric Region,  the garden of Eden,  with  its
four streams of Ether,  for the misuse of the sex force,  the Cherubim  were
placed  before  it  with a flaming sword.  The right use of  the  sex  force
builds an organ which will give man the key to the inner Worlds and help him
to  create  by  thought.  Then  sorrow  and pain will cease and he will have

[PAGE 1655]

entered the path to the city of peace--Jer-u-salem.

   Lemuria perished by fire and terrible volcanic cataclysms.   In its stead
rose  Atlantis.   In time that was buried beneath the waves and gave way  to
Aryan,  the Earth as we see it at present in the Aryan Epoch,  but  that  is
soon past.   The salamanders are beginning to stir the fires in the forge to
make "a new heaven and a new Earth,"  which the Western School of  Occultism
calls the "New Galilee."

   In  the  first  two Epochs man evolved a body and vitalized  it;  in  the
Lemurian  Epoch he developed DESIRE; the Atlantean Epoch  produced  CUNNING;
and the fruitage of the Aryan Epoch is REASON.

   In the New Galilee humanity will have a much finer and more ethereal body
than now,  the Earth will be transparent also,  and as a result those bodies
will be more easily responsive to the spiritual impacts of INTUITION.   Such
a body will not get tired either,  hence THERE IS NO NIGHT,  and the  twelve
cranial nerves,  which are the gates to the seat of consciousness,  then  as
now are consequently never closed.   Besides, New Galilee will be formed  of
luminous  ether and transmit sunlight.   That land will be a land  of  peace
(Jer-u-salem),  for  Universal Brotherhood will bind all beings of  all  the
Earth together in Love.   There can be no death,  for the tree of life,  the
faculty for generating vital force,  is made possible by means of the  ethe-
real organ in the head already mentioned, which will be evolved in those who
are  even now being taken out as forebears for the humanity of  that  coming
Epoch.

   That  Race is spoken of as "Christ's Race";  but,  be it understood  that
that is not because of an exterior Christ,  but because they will evolve the
Christ-principle  WITHIN,  they  will  act as dictated by the spirit through

[PAGE 1656]

Intuition,  and all they do will be done in Love.   Only by such  INDIVIDUAL
UPLIFTMENT  can the salvation of the Race be accomplished,  for  as  Angelus
Silesius put it,

   Though Christ a thousand times in Bethlehem be born,
   And not within thyself, thy soul will be forlorn,
   The cross on Golgotha thou lookest to in vain
   Unless within thyself it be set up again.

                               LECTURE FIFTEEN:

               THE MYSTERY OF GOLGOTHA AND THE CLEANSING BLOOD

   All  through the past two thousand years in which we have had the  Chris-
tian  religion among us,  and since the doctrine of the vicarious  atonement
and  the cleansing blood has come into our Western World,  there has been  a
contention  among  many people,  in the later  centuries  especially,  about
whether there is really any efficacy in that cleansing blood,  or whether it
is only a foolish story.   We shall hope tonight to show that there is some-
thing vastly grander than ever anyone has imagined, when we come to turn the
light of occultism and reason upon this doctrine.  Afterwards we may let our
hearts  have  full  sway in belief of this grand and glorious  idea  of  the
cleansing  blood and of the atonement that was effected two millenniums  ago
at the Place of the Skull, which is called Golgotha in the Hebrew.

   When  we read our Christian creed, we find the sentence,  "Jesus  Christ,
the  only begotten son of God,"  and it is assumed by most people  that  the
sentence refers to a single individual called Jesus Christ, who was the only
begotten son of God.   However,  we shall very quickly see that that is  not
so--that there are three great and glorious individualities concerned in the

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sentence.   They are all worthy of our very greatest veneration,  but differ
vastly in glory, and have a very, very different career back of them.

   When we examine Jesus in the light of the occult records, in the light of
that  which we have seen in the previous lectures is called "the  memory  of
nature," then we find that "that Spirit which was in Jesus" from the time of
birth,  is an Ego which belongs to our human race,  and which has incarnated
again and again.   We can find him under different names and varying circum-
stances,  just as you and I have been and are going to be.   So we find that
at  the time that is stated in our records,  at about the beginning  of  our
era, there was born in Palestine a child, and that child was Jesus.

   His   mother   was  of  an  exceedingly  pure  type--a   most   beautiful
character--and his father was an initiate of high degree, one who,  for that
one time in his life, forsook the path of celibacy.   He had in previous in-
carnations gone past the time when he should be a householder.  In this life
he  had devoted himself wholly to the occult path;  and when the  time  came
that a great teacher was to incarnate among us,  he was selected to give the
fertilizing seed for that teacher's body.  In that way,  there was  provided
such  a wonderful body as has never been before nor since.   It was  of  the
purest and most passionless type,  and the Ego Jesus who came into it,  came
into  it  as a great Spirit,  knowing that was his mission in that  life  to
bring  up a body in as pure as possible a manner,  because it was not to  be
his for longer than the term of thirty years.   At that time he was to  give
it up to another, much higher than he.

   Concerning the early days of Jesus,  it might be well to say that he  was
born there in Palestine; that he went through his early boyhood days in full

[PAGE 1658]

knowledge of that mission which was his.  He was put into the schools of the
Essenes, on the shores of the Dead Sea.  The Essenes were a community there,
who were of the most devout character.  They were as opposite as possible to
the  materialistic  Sadducees,  and far, far beyond the  cynical  Pharisees.
They were not people who went about in the synagogues and prided  themselves
on their learning, piety, etc., but were people who stayed in their own com-
munity and lived the holy life as they saw it.  Among them the growing Jesus
found his early training, and he was so marvelously adapted to the life that
was led there that in a very short time he distanced them all.   Then,  at a
later period,  he went to Persia.   This school of the Essenes where he was,
was a great center of learning.  It had a great library,  and he absorbed an
immense amount of occult knowledge,  regaining what he had learned in previ-
ous lives.

   At  the end of thirty years he had cleansed and purified his body so  far
that it could be taken by the Great Being whom we call the Christ.  We shall
next see who that Great Being is.

   We  said  of Jesus that he could be traced back in the Memory  of  Nature
from incarnation to incarnation under different names,  and in different en-
vironments.  But of Christ we find only one incarnation, and that is when he
incarnated in the body of Jesus,  at the end of the thirty years.   To trace
Him, let us briefly recapitulate some earlier statements.

   We went through the Saturn Period,  the Sun Period,  and the Moon Period,
and we finally came here.   We saw also, in previous lectures,  that the hu-
manity of the Saturn Period were the lords of Mind;  the humanity of the Sun
Period were the Archangels; the humanity of the Moon Period were the Angels.

[PAGE 1659]

Those were the ordinary humanity of these different periods,  beings who are
working with us invisibly,  working upon our vital bodies and desire  bodies
and minds,  helping us to evolve.   When we see that there are initiates  in
this period,  that someone like Jesus can progress far ahead of ordinary hu-
manity, we may understand that the same can have been done in previous peri-
ods  also,  and it is these who have gone beyond ordinary evolution that  we
speak of today as the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

   God, as God, is not the creator of our Universe.  In the highest world of
this Cosmic Plane which we inhabit, He is found as GOD, but below that He is
not God.   He expresses himself in the different worlds as various  kingdoms
of man,  Angels, Archangels, etc., and therefore we do not see Him in human-
ity  until we get to that great world,  the world we call in  occultism  the
World of God.   In that World of God.  the Triune God IS.   The highest Ini-
tiate  of the Saturn Period has attained to that point where He  has  become
one  with  the highest aspect of the Triune God,  and so He  is  called  THE
FATHER--the Father of all those who evolved in our evolution.

   The  one who came next to Him in glory,  the Highest Initiate of the  Sun
Period,  evolved up to the point where he became united with the second  as-
pect of the Triune God,  and therefore,  He is the Son.   That is the Cosmic
Christ, and a Ray from Him entered Jesus' body.

   The third Great Being, the Only Begotten, mentioned in that sentence from
the Christian Creed, is still greater than Jesus and Christ, but we have not
so much to do with that Being at this present time.  It may be well to know,

[PAGE 1660]

however,  that the Holy Spirit,  the Power of God working with all  the  na-
tions, is Jehovah, the Highest Initiate of the Moon Period.

   By looking at Diagram 14 we shall see that this tallies with what we have
learned in previous lectures.  Each Being has seven vehicles, and the lowest
of Jehovah's vehicles comes down to the Region of Abstract Thought, where we
have our Ego.   There we are below the line that divides spirit from matter.
there is DIFFERENTIATION.   We have seen in Lecture No.  3 that every planet
in our system has its three separate worlds, the Physical World,  the Desire
World,  and  the  World  of Thought--that is,  SEPARATE  vehicles  for  each
planet--but  the UNIFYING PRINCIPLE in our solar system is the Life  Spirit,
and therefore the Son, who is to be the unifying principle in the world,  or
in the planet, must have that life spirit evolved.  Christ, the Highest Ini-
tiate of the Sun Period,  at the present time ordinarily uses as His  lowest
vehicle the life spirit.

   In the Sun Period, the lowest of the Globes was in the Desire World,  and
therefore the Archangels have the desire body as their lowest vehicles  yet;
but Christ has gone beyond.  He has raised himself higher, and so He has the
life spirit as His lowest vehicle today,  and ordinarily uses no denser  ve-
hicle.   Only by the power of the life spirit can the national  tendency  be
overcome  and  a universal brotherhood of man become a fact.   The  vehicles
pertaining  to  the  World of Thought,  the Ego,  and  the  mind,  make  for
separateness.  They have that for their characteristic.  But the life spirit
is the unifying principle in the universe,  and therefore Christ is the only
one fitted to bring about brotherhood.

   There  is  the reason why Christ HAD to come to help us.   An  now  about
Christ-Jesus.  It is a law in the universe that no being, however great, can

[PAGE 1661]

ever  build a vehicle and function in a world that is higher or  lower  than
the world that he has learned to function in.  So that when it became neces-
sary  to work here in our Physical World,  it was an absolute  impossibility
for any being except our humanity to work here.   They alone have been  able
to build dense human vehicles.   They have been helped by others,  but  THEY
have done the work, and therefore it was necessary that one of them,  in or-
der to obtain this help from Christ for the race, must give up his body,  so
that the higher being could enter it, and then help humanity.

   We know that at death, or at any time when we have to leave this Physical
World,  we give up our dense body and our vital body, because they belong to
the Physical World.   And so Jesus,  when he had come to the age of  thirty,
when he had made his instrument fit for the use of the Great Being,  gladly,
willingly gave it away.   He left it at the baptism as he would have stepped
out at death,  that the Christ might step in,  and that was seen to  descend
upon him as a dove.

   Christ,  as an Archangel,  had learned to build down to the desire  body,
but  the vital body and the dense body he had never learned to  build.   The
Archangels had worked on humanity FROM WITHOUT before,  as Group Spirits do:
but that was not enough.   The help had to come FROM WITHIN.   That was made
possible by the combination of Christ and Jesus, and therefore,  it is true,
in the very highest sense, in the most literal sense, when Paul says:

   "There is but one mediator between God and man--Christ Jesus,  the  righ-
teous."   No other entity in our system possesses the whole chain of  twelve
vehicles  that  stretches  from the dense body, and right up through all the

[PAGE 1662]

seven worlds,  to the second aspect of the Triune God, the Son.   Therefore,
he can come to the very throne of the Father;  therefore,  He can go to  the
highest possible pitch,  and can take the sorrows and sufferings of humanity
there, and can cleanse us in a way no other can, and help as no other can.

   Now then, we have seen who Jesus is, who Christ is, and who the composite
personality is that we speak of as Christ-Jesus.  The Only Begotten is yet a
much higher being.   We hear people speak of the Absolute, and they think of
the Absolute then as God, perhaps!.  Their ideas are very, very hazy.   They
could not be otherwise, of course.  There has been no definite teaching upon
this subject.   But God,  the Grand Architect of our Universe,  as called by
the Masons, is described as the Creator of our solar system, and has nothing
to do with anything outside our solar system.  Beyond the seven worlds where
our solar system and all other solar systems are located there are still six
other  great Cosmic Planes of life and being,  and in them there are  higher
hierarchies of different grades and glories beyond that Great Being we speak
of as God.  Highest among them, there is what we may call the Supreme Being,
the  one who includes all the solar systems and all the hierarchies  in  the
whole Universe;  and the Word that came out from that great Being--the first
Sound or Creative Fiat--the first manifestation from the Supreme Being--that
is the ALONE BEGOTTEN.  Other Beings have been "Alone Begotten" in a similar
way,  but not in the same way that first Sound was.   There was nothing  but
the  Supreme Being before that started,  and we can speak of nothing  beyond
that One except the Absolute.

[PAGE 1663]

   Although this may mean nothing to us at the present time,  it is well  to
know that there is a distinction, so that our ideas are clear at last, as to
who God is,  who the Son is,  and who is the holy Spirit;  also in regard to
Christ-Jesus.

   The Father is the Highest Initiate of the Saturn Period.

   The Son is the Highest Initiate of the Sun Period, having reached by ini-
tiation the second aspect of God.

   Jehovah,  the Holy Spirit,  is the Highest Initiate of the  Moon  Period.
And  the ordinary humanity of the different periods are,  respectively,  the
Angels,  the Archangels, and the Lords of Mind.  Many of these great hierar-
chies there are,  many that are beyond the evolution of man,  and below  the
evolution of man,  but there is none, NONE,  "there is none other name given
among men" whereby men must be saved, than the name of Christ-Jesus.

   Now we have at last come to an understanding of our factors,  the factors
that go to make this great sacrifice on Golgotha--we know who is who.  These
lectures are at first analytical in the highest degree,  but when we combine
their results,  and consider the sacrifice in their light, then we shall see
something great,  something spiritual in it.  It is necessary to be analyti-
cal for the sake of those who have been put off in the churches.   They have
questioned, "What good in the world can it do me to believe?"

    They  are seeking for an answer to that question raised in their  minds,
"What  is  the efficacy of the blood?" and therefore it is necessary  to  be
analytical before we come to the spiritual teaching.   We have one more fac-
tor we must analyze, and that is the Blood.

[PAGE 1664]

   You have heard me say a number of times that the blood is the  particular
vehicle  of the Ego in the physical world.   We find in the Bible that  that
was well known among those who wrote Leviticus.   They said,  the life is in
the  blood.   We  see blood as a number of little  microscopic  globules  or
discs, but blood is not of that nature as seen by the trained clairvoyant in
the living human body.  Blood is a gas, then, a hot spiritual essence.   The
heat is caused by the Ego that is within that blood.   If the skin is  punc-
tured,  and the blood exuded, it coagulates, as steam, which is an invisible
hot gas,  condenses as soon as it comes out into the atmosphere.   The blood
in our veins is the vehicle through which,  by means of the sympathetic ner-
vous system, the subconscious mind carries on all the activities of the body
that  we are not aware of in the conscious mind.   Blood is a most  peculiar
essence,  as shown in the myth of Faust,  where he is signing a compact with
the  Evil One.   He is going to sign it in ink.   But  Mephistopheles  says,
"Sign  it in blood."   Faust questions,  "Why?   Is that more  efficacious?"
"Yes," says Mephistopheles, "blood is a most peculiar essence"--for he knows
that the blood contains the Ego,  therefore he wants the blood of the man he
is trying to get in his power.

   The human Ego is more powerful than the Group Spirit of the animal, as we
see when we apply the test of science,  known as haemolysis.   Strange blood
of a higher animal will kill if inoculated into a lower species.  If we take
human  blood and inoculate it into a lower animal,  the animal cannot  stand
the high vibration that is in the blood of the human being; it dies.  On the
other  hand,  inoculate the human being with the blood of the animal and  he
will  not  suffer.  We  may  go  as  far  down  in the scale of being as the

[PAGE 1665]

anthropoids.   They can stand inoculations of human blood; all other animals
die.

   In the days previous to Christ,  we remember from Parsifal that there was
no initiation for "whosoever will."  It was said as a prophecy,  "Ho,  every
one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters," but that was only as a prophecy.
After Christ came,  we have "whosoever will."   Before that time  initiation
was reserved for certain castes.  They alone could be initiates, or priests.
To show that that was abrogated, the body of Jesus was taken--NOT one from a
Levite.   It  came  from the strongest mixture in  the  Jewish  nation,  the
Galileans.  In earlier times no one might marry except in his own tribe.  We
read that Adam and Methuselah lived so and so many years.   At that time  it
was the practice to marry in the family,  to marry as closely in the  family
as possible;  then the blood that coursed through the veins of the people in
that family contained the pictures of all that had happened to the different
ancestors  stored in the mind which is now subconscious.   Then it was  con-
sciously and constantly before the inner vision of man,  and each family was
united by the common blood wherein their ancestors lived.   The sons saw the
life of their fathers.  Thus Adam and the other patriarchs lived on for cen-
turies.

   In  those  olden times no one would go outside the family to  marry,  any
more  that we would go inside the family.  It was a horror to marry  into  a
strange family.   Even in the Norse mythology, we learn how those who wanted
to  become  part of a family would be obliged to mix blood.   it had  to  be
first  seen whether that blood would mix or not,  so we see  haemolysis  was
known  then  in  some  of  its phases at least.  If the blood did not mix it

[PAGE 1666]

would  bring about "confusion of caste"  as the Hindu says.   A strict  line
must be kept,  for otherwise those pictures of the inner vision would not be
the same, they would become confused.

   When Christ came he abrogated that practice when he said, "Before Abraham
was,  I AM."   I do not care for Abraham, but I glory in the I AM,  the  Ego
that was long before he was.   And he said,  "Who does not leave father  and
mother,  cannot follow me."   As long as you are keeping up the family,  the
nation,  the tribe, you are siding with the old blood, the old ways, and you
cannot amalgamate into a universal brotherhood.  That can only come when you
marry internationally.  Because when you have so many nations, it is like so
many houses of brick.   As long as you have those houses standing about you,
you cannot make one grand building, but when you break them up, you can mold
them  into one grand structure.   Marriage in the family must be  done  away
with;  let Abraham die that the "I am" may live;  perish Paternalism,  Indi-
vidualism to the fore.

   What effect has that change had?  The mixture of blood always kills some-
thing.   If it does not kill the animal,  it kills something else.,   If  we
mate a horse and a donkey,  we have as the outcome a HYBRID,  the mule.   Is
that  mule the same as each of those who begot it?   Is there not  something
killed?   Yes.   The FACULTY OF PROPAGATION IS KILLED,  and so it is in  all
other hybrids.  They cannot propagate their species.  In the same way,  when
we marry internationally,  something else is killed.   And that is--the pic-
tures  in the inner vision.   The different pictures of  different  families
clash, and so the clairvoyance, the touch with the spiritual world, with the
memory of nature, has waned since that time.  The Highland Scots who married

[PAGE 1667]

in the clan, and the gypsies alone retain this second sight in a measure.

   If  someone  had stood for thousands of years upon a distant  planet  and
looked  clairvoyantly  at  our little Earth, he would have  seen  a  gradual
change from bad to worse in its Desire World and World of Thought.   It  was
getting more and more filled up with murky and bad vibrations,  because man,
in the days of his earliest childhood, was not able to control his impulses.
He was controlled mostly by the mind and the desire body,  and therefore af-
ter death he had to stay in Purgatory almost all of the times between incar-
nations;  there  was almost no progress.  The Second Heaven life,  where  he
learns to do creative work, was almost barren.

   The  Desire World of the Earth must be cleansed to give man a new  start.
That was Christ's mission.

   As to the reason for the violent death, we have already heard that when a
person  is  taken violently out of his instrument there  is  something  that
clings to it, and that something is the impurities of the lower nature.   We
have the arterial blood,  and the venous blood, and in that venous blood are
the impurities that belong to the lower nature; but in the arterial blood we
have the purity.   The venous blood clings closely to the flesh,  and there-
fore at the time that any person is killed,  if the blood flows,  there is a
distinct cleansing.   Whenever the spirit is taken out of the body by  acci-
dent, and the flood flows, man is cleaner, he is better as a spirit.

   The body of Jesus was to be killed, and blood was to flow,  in order that
by that violent death, the last impurity that might be still clinging to the
flesh  should  be left to decay; that the Christ Spirit, pure and untainted,

[PAGE 1668]

with none of the impurities of the body it had used,  might be diffused over
the world.

   When that Great Being flowed out through the wounds of Jesus' body,  that
luminous Sun Spirit diffused itself all over the Earth.   And that is why we
hear of that great darkness,  because that spiritual light was what men per-
ceived as darkness.  But gradually it was absorbed into the Earth,  and took
its place,  permitting everything within its influence to return to its nor-
mal condition, so far as man could see; but the vibrations that had been set
up there cleansed, purified, and set in rhythmic order the vibrations in the
higher  world,  and gave a spiritual impulse that could not  otherwise  have
been given, and THAT was the way that it cleansed, and "took away the sin of
the  world"  by restoring the rhythmic vibrations in a measure and thus  en-
abling man to progress.   That influence is still working and cleansing  the
world; it is the source of altruism and benevolence which are gradually tak-
ing the place of patriotism and selfishness,  bringing Universal Brotherhood
and Fellowship to the World.

[PAGE 1669]

                               LECTURE SIXTEEN:

                    THE STAR OF BETHLEHEM:  A MYSTIC FACT

   More than nineteen hundred years ago in Palestine there was born a little
child.  Children are born every day, every month, from one year's end to an-
other,  all over the face of the world,  but this birth was something  very,
very  different from any other.   It was a birth that took place  among  and
amid great spiritual manifestation.   Angel choirs heralded this peacemaker,
who  was  to give man the choicest of gifts--Peace on Earth  and  Good  Will
among men.  How much it is needed!

   The Wise Men came and worshiped, they brought gifts to the little child's
cradle,  and time passes on.  The child grows, becomes a man,  and says,  "I
came not to send peace,  but a sword."  A very different story that from the
way he was heralded as a peacemaker; a very different career he pointed  out
for  himself in the world than that which had been sung about by the  angels
on that Holy night.  And history goes on to show that this prophecy was ful-
filled.   That  Christian religion he came to found has been  the  bloodiest
scourge the world has ever known, without any exception.  The Mohammedan has
been somewhat akin to the Christian religion and has been akin in that also,
that it has been a religion of blood, of war, and of murder.

[PAGE 1670]

   The  gentle Nazarene spoke also of a time of love beyond,  but those  who
came after him have fought like the Indian,  they have outdistanced the  In-
dian in cunning,  in devising tortures for their victims,  and yet they call
themselves  by his name--Jesuits.   The Christian nations maintain and  have
maintained all along armies and navies.   They pay inventors enormous prices
for  inventing  machine guns and high explosives wherewith to destroy  their
fellow men.   All over the Western World has gone the battle cry and nothing
has equalled this religion in fierceness and destructiveness.   The religion
of  Buddha  has won its many hundred millions without the cost of  a  single
life,  but this religion of the Western World has cost rivers and rivers  of
blood;  has  brought untold sorrow and misery into this world.   We  see  it
gradually  spreading its bloody trail as these Western nations go  all  over
the world,  carrying the sword of Christ,  overcoming and subjecting the na-
tions of the world.

   Even when there is peace within the nations we have every day the war  of
competition.  Every man's hand is against every other man's; there is no co-
operation in this cruel struggle.  We see on every hand the evidence of this
in  the  growth  of trust systems.   All over there is a  great  strife  and
struggle.   One  must look this fact in the fact when he is a  Christian  at
heart;  he feels at heart that there is something wrong when he  sees  those
things and is forced to ask himself,  "Was it a lie that was sung by the an-
gels  on that Holy night?   Was the star of hope that guided the Wise Men  a
mockery?   Was  this all a delusion we have heard about,  and is it  only  a
cruel religion that we have here in this Western World?"

   I hope,  friends,  tonight  to be able to show you that there is a reason

[PAGE 1671]

for all of this; that there is a good, sound reason for every act of cruelty
Christianity has brought in its wake, and that this trouble is only a neces-
sary forerunner for something better,  a state of peace,  of joy,  of  love;
that  the star of hope was indeed a star of hope and is yet a star  of  hope
for all who will seek it,  and that the burden of the angel song is but  de-
ferred;  that the present unhappy condition is just on the same  order  than
when a person cleans house he puts a fairly orderly house in disorder,  pil-
ing chairs on top of one another, taking up carpets, raising dust, etc.  But
that is all done with the ultimate idea in view of making the house cleaner,
sweeter, better than before.  Those historical facts in that past history of
the Christian religion are of the same order;  a present chaos out of  which
shall come the brotherhood of love and good will.

   In order to understand we must go back in time.   We know from the  later
lectures that man has not always been as he is; that he has lived in differ-
ent state.   We look upon everything in the cosmos not as it is now,  but as
it has evolved up to the present stage.  Above all, we must cease to look at
things  in a materialistic manner.   We must cease to regard  ourselves  and
this  Earth as mere forms.   We must cease to regard the universe as a  vast
perpetual-motion  machine,  and realize that the stars are the organs  of  a
great Being whom we call by the Holy name of God;  that these stars are also
the  bodies  of great Spirits and that their motion in  the  universe  means
something.  When we see a man gesticulate we attach a meaning to it; when we
see him hold out his hands with the palms towards us, we attach a meaning to
it;  he is telling us to go away.  We know there is a different significance
to it when his palms are turned  towards himself; then he is beckoning to us

[PAGE 1672]

to come to him.  So with the stars.  As they go around the zodiac year after
year  every one has a different position with regard to every  other,  until
after countless ages they return to the first position.   Every one of  them
is a feeling, living, thinking organism.  The solstices have different mean-
ings.   The  summer solstice brings about one certain change in  the  Earth;
when the Sun goes to the winter solstice in December there is another influ-
ence upon the Earth.   So with the vernal and fall equinox.   They all  mean
something; they all have significance in the cosmos.

   The Earth itself is a feeling,  living organism.   When we go out in  the
summer time and see the harvesters mowing the grain,  let us not think there
is no feeling about it; the Earth feels it.  A cow that gives its life force
to  its offspring experiences joy and pleasure of having brought  forth;  it
feels relieved when the calf takes the milk.   It is so also with the  Earth
when the grain is taken off by the harvester.   It is the same when we pluck
flowers.   On the other hand, when we pluck plants up by the roots it causes
the Earth pain,  just as it does us when we have our hair pulled.   When  we
break  a stone we give the Earth pleasure, for this Earth is the body  of  a
Spirit,  which has incarnated here in our dense Earth in order that we might
have  the material wherewith to build the dense bodies we function  in  just
now.   The Earth Spirit is longing for the day of redemption, when man shall
have evolved so far that he shall cease to be under the necessity of  having
such a dense body and be able to function in a more ethereal vehicle.   Then
this  instrument  will  have  been spiritualized so that  we  may  take  the
spiritual essence of it and discard the dense body.  That is to be gained in

[PAGE 1673]

a certain way by the initiation we shall hear about later in the lecture.

   The  Mystery of Golgotha we spoke of the other night,  where we heard  of
this great Christ Spirit going into the Earth.   That is only the  beginning
of the sacrifice.  It was not just the death of the body of Jesus,  that was
over in a moment, but it was the continued incarceration of that Christ, who
emanated  from the cosmic Christ principle and is now the  indwelling  Earth
Spirit, confined here till He has accomplished the redemption of man.

   We remember that at one time we dwelt upon the sun; that is to say,  that
even in this Earth Period, when we came here to live the last time,  we were
in that central fire-mist, and we were there up to the time spoken of as the
Hyperborean Epoch.   There we crystallized until we could not respond to the
high vibrations the other solar beings responded to;  those who are now  the
archangels.   They could progress in solar vibrations, we could not;  there-
fore  we crystallized a part of that fire-mist to shield ourselves,  and  in
consequence we had to be thrown off.   Then when we had gone the proper dis-
tance away from the Sun we could crystallize again,  and later we threw  off
that part which is now known as the Moon.   Those beings who are now on  the
Moon  were too far crystallized;  they were behind us;  therefore we had  to
throw  them  off.   From  these two sources come  two  sets  of  vibrations;
spiritual vibrations from the Sun,  and hardening tendencies from the  Moon.
It  is the balance between these two sets of vibrations that enables  us  to
hold our bodies together.

   At that time man was perfectly unconscious.  His eyes had not been opened

[PAGE 1674]

He  only used his force to build organs INSIDE.   Then gradually  the  Earth
crystallized more and more, until in the middle part of Atlantis the Ego had
at last drawn into humanity and man had become possessed of all the vehicles
that  he has now.   Then he became conscious of the world,  but he was in  a
far, far different state than now.  When consciousness is awakened it begins
to work as a leaven in matter.   Since we were in Atlantis and had our  eyes
fully opened,  since the atmosphere cleared and we first saw things about us
clearly--since then we have worked in the Earth in the materials of our bod-
ies as a leaven works in the loaf and raises it.   So we have lightened con-
ditions and are continually lightening them.

   In  Lemuria  man had the three lower bodies--the desire body,  the  vital
body,  and the dense body.   Outside hovered the Spirit.   At that time  the
Earth  was  in a condition of fire.  There were masses of crust  and  around
them seething,  boiling water,  and volcanic outbursts were very,  very fre-
quent.   Man had at that time lungs that were like tubes.   He had a bladder
like  the fishes have now,  wherewith he could lift himself and  leap  great
chasms.   As the Earth condensed more and more that fire fog  atmosphere  of
Lemuria  condensed  into  a very dense fog in the early  part  of  Atlantis.
There those tubes had changed to gill-clefts,  and he was breathing more  as
the fish do.   This can be seen now in embryological development,  where man
goes through the same stages he went through at that time.   the embryo lies
in  the  amniotic fluid and has these gill-clefts,  such as man had  in  the
early part of Atlantis.   He breathed in that manner in the dense watery at-
mosphere of Atlantis, but gradually that settled more and more,  and man be-
gan to breathe as we do now.

[PAGE 1675]

   In the early third of Atlantis there was a brotherhood;  separation  into
nations had not begun.   Mankind was a universal brotherhood,  and when per-
forming the rite of baptism,  which makes us a member of a holy brotherhood,
such  as the church should be,  a community that should be the  nucleus  for
great universal brotherhood, that rite of consecration by water is in remem-
brance of that time,  when man was truly innocent and truly lovable,  had no
evil in him--the time when he lived in the dense watery atmosphere of  early
Atlantis.

   In  the  middle  third of Atlantis all that is  changed.   He  begins  to
separate  into communities,  for the watery atmosphere is clearing  somewhat
and  he is beginning to breathe by the means of lungs.   The human  Ego  was
very weak,  and had to get help from someone else.   Therefore Jehovah,  the
highest Initiate of the Moon Period,  the ruler over the angels and  archan-
gels that work with men, breathes into man's nostrils, gives him lungs,  and
gives  him the Race Spirit in the air that is to curb the hardening  tenden-
cies  of the desire body and help him to get it under control.   The  desire
body has control of the voluntary muscles,  every movement we make is caused
by desire,  and every exertion breaks down tissue, and hardens more and more
every particle of our tissue.   Therefore Jehovah aimed to help mankind  out
of their dense condition, by means of law.

   The race religions are all based upon law.   "I am a jealous God,  and if
you  fulfill my commandments I will bless you abundantly and make your  seed
as multitudinous as the sands upon the seashore," says the Race God, "but if
you do not obey I will send your enemies  upon  you  and they shall gain the

[PAGE 1676]

victory over you."   Jehovah is the ruler of all the races and all the reli-
gions.  He gave to each of these races an archangel to be their ruler, to be
their  special Prince.   In Daniel 12:1,  it is said that Michael is  Prince
over the Jews, and in the tenth chapter another race spirit says:  "I am go-
ing  to  fight with the Prince of Persia,  and the Prince  of  Persia  shall
come."

   Thus  these Race Spirits work with man,  punishing him by means of  other
people,  and  giving him rewards or punishments for his good or  bad  deeds.
The  fear of God and the desire for material reward was pitted  against  the
desires  of the flesh and therefore these race religions under  Jehovah  are
such as to build up the national spirit.  They subjected, or rather they ne-
glected,  the individual for the sake of the nation.   The interests of  the
individual are always made subservient to the interests of the nation.   The
Jew never thought of himself as Solomon Levi;  first and foremost he thought
of himself as being of the seed of Abraham.   What he wanted most to  empha-
size  was that he was a Jew.   If he thought of his status any farther  than
that he would identify himself with his tribe, but last and least only would
he think of himself as an individual.

   The  Race Spirit took a special care of certain sets of people,  for  ex-
ample,  the Levites among the Jews, who were destined specially for  priest-
hood  and they were herded around the temples and were specially bred to  be
the forerunners and teachers of their brethren.   Their system of mating and
regulation  of  the sex life of these special proteges produced a  more  lax
connection between the vital body and the dense body which was necessary  in
order that initiation might take place and help man  to advance.  As long as

[PAGE 1677]

the Race Spirit works with us we are under the law,  we are only  overcoming
the influence of the desire body;  therefore Paul says well that the law was
until  Christ--not until Christ came 2,000 years ago,  but "UNTIL CHRIST  BE
FORMED IN YOU."  When we release ourselves from the toils of the desire body
and  live up to the vibrations of the vital body,  we become imbued  by  the
Christ  Spirit.   Then  and only then do we rise out of  the  national,  the
separating principle.  Then do we become capable of being brothers to men.

   Now we see why Christ said so emphatically,  "Before Abraham was,  I am."
The Ego was before the nation and must be exalted over the nation.   To that
end Christ came,  because as long as there were nations,  there could not be
brotherhood.  If we have a number of houses, and they built of bricks,  they
are  unavailable for building one building until torn down.   When  all  the
bricks  have been separated we may begin building.   When all  nations  have
been  chopped  into individuals we may begin to build  the  grand  Universal
Brotherhood of man.

   That is why the race religions failed,  they separate men into antagonis-
tic  groups.   So the race religions must be abrogated.   We cannot do  away
with nations except we separate the individual.   Therefore,  we have  wars,
therefore we have had revolutions, where men have rebelled against kings and
rulers, and have instituted republics.  But they are not enough.  We want to
be free individually.   We want to be every man a law unto himself--and this
is where a great,  great danger lies.   We cannot be laws unto ourselves--WE
CANNOT BE FREE, UNTIL WE HAVE LEARNED TO RESPECT EVERYBODY ELSE'S RIGHTS.

[PAGE 1678]

   So then, under the race religion, men grew by obedience to the law.   Un-
der the Christ regime that is to come in,  man is to rise above law,  and to
be a law unto himself.  As Goethe says--

         From every power that holds the world in chains,
         Man frees himself, when self-control he gains.

   That is the goal,  SELF-MASTERY, which every one must gain,  before he is
fit  to  be a law unto himself--to be above the law--for no one  except  the
very undisciplined man,  who calls himself an anarchist,  will think to  im-
prove  matters by having the power to shoot down people.   By that means  he
will make conditions far, far worse than they were.  The true anarchist, the
one who truly seeks to abolish law,  is the one who is living the true life,
and the clean life.  By obeying every law, he rises above all law.  We,  for
example, have risen above the law against theft.  It is not necessary for us
to have that law,  but some people have not risen so far as that,  and  they
must still have that law.  We do not wish to steal,  and hence,  do not need
the law that says,  "Thou shalt not steal."  By and by,  man will rise above
the need of all law.   Then and only then can he be a law unto himself.   In
the  Christ regime,  man will be impelled and guided by love,  and  "perfect
love casteth out fear."   The race religions compel man to do right by means
of FEAR,  but the Christ religion will impel man through LOVE.  Then he can-
not do otherwise than right.

   All race religions--every one of them, without exception, are looking for
someone to come.   The Egyptian religion looked forward to Osiris the bright
Sun-Spirit;  the Persian looked to Mithras;  and the Babylonian  to  Tammuz.
All looked for someone to come, to free the  Earth.  We find the same thing,

[PAGE 1679]

even in the Norse mythology.   We find that the old Norsemen looked for  the
"Twilight of the Gods," when the present regime must perish, and then out of
the  South  from Muspelheim,  the region of heat,  should come  that  bright
Sun-Spirit, Sutar, and he should set us A NEW HEAVEN AND A NEW EARTH.   Such
we hear of in all religions, and even in the Christian religion we find them
looking forward to a Sun-Spirit.  At one time, in the ritual of the Catholic
church, they used the phrase, "Our Lord of the Sun."  It is from the visible
Sun  that  every  particle of physical energy comes.   And it  is  from  the
spiritual invisible Sun that all of the spiritual energy comes.

   At the present time we cannot bear to look directly at the Sun.  It would
blind  us.   But we can look at the reflected sunlight that comes  from  the
Moon.   In the same way,  man cannot stand the direct spiritual impulse that
comes  from the Sun,  and therefore,  it had to be sent by way of the  Moon,
through the hands,  and through the mediumship of Jehovah, the Regent of the
Moon.   That is the origin of the race religions.   Later came the time when
man could take the spiritual impulse more directly, and Christ,  the present
Earth  Spirit,  came to prepare this.  The difference between the Christ  of
the Earth and the Cosmic Christ is best seen by an illustration.   Imagine a
lamp in the center of a hollow sphere of polished metal.  The lamp will send
out rays from itself to all points of the sphere,  and will reflect lamps in
all different places.  So the Cosmic Christ--the highest Initiate of the Sun
Period--sends out rays.   He is in the spiritual Sun.  The Sun is threefold.
We see the outside--the physical Sun.  Behind  that,  or  hiding in that, is

[PAGE 1680]

the  spiritual  Sun whence comes the impulse of the  Cosmic  Christ  spirit.
Outside the two others is something we call Vulcan--that can be seen only as
a half-globe.   In occultism, we say that is the body of the Father.   There
we have the Father,  then,  the spirit in Vulcan.   We have the Christ,  the
Spirit in the Sun;  and we have Jehovah, the Spirit in the Moon,  that sends
the reflected light both physical and spiritual.

   Before the advent of Christ all spiritual impulses came to man by way  of
the Moon as race religions.   Only by initiation was it possible to get into
direct  touch  with the spiritual solar impulse.   A veil  hung  before  the
temple.

   When the time arrived that the Christ Spirit could be entertained on  the
Earth--when  we  had risen so far--then a ray from the  Cosmic  Christ  came
here, and incarnated here in the body of our Elder Brother Jesus.  After the
sacrifice on Golgotha had been completed,  after the death of that body that
he  had occupied,  he drew himself into the Earth.   Take his own words  for
this.   In no other way can we account for that saying,  "This is my  body."
He  showed the bread,  it is the Earth Spirit that brings forth that  bread.
"This is my blood."  The juices that are in the plant make the wine.  It was
not said, This symbolizes my body or blood; he said unequivocally,  "This IS
my blood."

   In John 13:18, in our New Testament, it says: "He that eats my bread hath
lifted up his heel against me."  Luther,  who translated it in Germany,  and
was not tied by any of the restrictions of the translators of the King James
Bible, put it, "He that eats my bread trampled upon me."   We do trample, at

[PAGE 1681]

every step we take,  upon the Earth Spirit, and that Spirit's body and blood
is  consumed among us,  and that Spirit waiting for the day  of  redemption,
when we shall be lifted so far from our material conditions that it shall be
possible  for the Earth Spirit to become liberated from its present  cramped
and dense existence.

   The Christ Spirit,  then, is the first incoming of a direct spiritual im-
pulse.   We spoke to you of the different motions of the planets,  and their
various influences at different times of the year.  We know that at the time
when the Sun's Spirit is in the northern regions--when we have the sun  away
up here at the summer solstice,  then we have all the physical impacts  upon
the  Earth.   We get all the good there is in the Sun along PHYSICAL  lines;
that is the time when the grain and the grape are ripening,  and when every-
thing is bringing forth in the Physical World.  The the spiritual impulse is
abrogated for the time being; but when, on the other hand, the Sun goes into
the winter solstice, in December, the spiritual impulse is strongest.  Also,
we  have  the spiritual impulse stronger in the night than in  the  daytime.
There  were times when the churches were open all night,  but closed in  the
middle of the day,  for that was known to be the time of greatest  darkness,
so far as spiritual influences were concerned.   However,  when we  remember
these things we can see that at the time when the days are the shortest  and
the nights are the longest,  on that Holy Night that we speak of,  when  the
Christ was born as a Sun who was to lighten our darkness--the spiritual  in-
fluence is then strongest,  and can be reached easiest.   It was this  great
truth that is at the bottom of the Star in the Holy night,  illuminating the
longest and darkest night in the year.

[PAGE 1682]

   When Parsifal started to go with Gurnemanz to the castle of the Grail, he
asked Gurnemanz: "Who is the Grail?"

         "That tell we not, but if thou hast of him been bidden,
         From thee the truth will not stay hidden.
         The search but severs from him wider
         When he himself is not its guider."

That means that in the olden times,  in the time before Christ came,  only a
chosen  few  could follow the path of initiation.   Nobody could  seek  that
path--nobody  could  get  beyond  the  point  where  the  rest  of  humanity
were--save  a  few chosen ones,  such as were the priests and  the  Levites.
These  were  brought to the temples, and there herded together.   They  were
married  to one another in a certain way;  certain people were mated with  a
definite end in view,  namely, that they might develop the proper laxity be-
tween the vital body and the dense body that is necessary to initiation.   A
separation  has to take place in order that we may lift the two ethers  out,
and leave the other two.  That could not be done with the ordinary humanity.
They  were yet much in bondage to the desire body.   They must wait until  a
later time.

   Even with those people who were around those temples, it was very danger-
ous  work to free them.   It could be done best at certain times,  and  this
longest night was one of those times.   When the greatest spiritual  impulse
is here, they had a better chance to get in touch with it, than at any other
time of the year.   So on the Holy Night,  which we call Christmas,  it  was
usual for the Wise Men--those who were beyond the ordinary humanity--to take
the ones who were also becoming wise, and  therefore entitled to initiation,


[PAGE 1683]

into the temples.  Certain ceremonies were performed and the candidates were
entranced.  They could not at that time be given an initiation in their full
waking state,  it had to be done in trance.   When the spiritual  perception
was awakened in them,  they could look through the Earth--not seeing any de-
tail, but the Earth became transparent, as it were--and they saw the Star at
midnight, the spiritual sun.

   Previous to the coming of Christ, the Earth was worked upon from without,
as  the  Group  Spirit works upon the animals.   Christ came  to  work  from
within.   Before that,  when neophytes were to be brought in touch with him,
they could see,  in that Holy Night, the Star of the Christ, just as the Im-
maculate Virgin was on the Eastern horizon,  and the little Sun-child of the
coming  year was starting towards the Northern hemisphere,  to save us  from
the  darkness,  hunger and want that would result without him.   Then  these
Wise Men could see the Star, in the Holy Night,  which is the spiritual hope
of man as the physical sun then born is his material savior.

   Do  not think it shone only at that time;  it is easier now than then  to
see it,  for when Christ came he altered the vibrations of the Earth and  is
changing  them all the time since.   He "rent the temple veil"--He made  the
Holy  of  Holies--the place of initiation--open to "whosoever  will!"   From
that time on,  there is no more trance needed--no more subjective states  in
order to go through initiation.   There is a conscious going forth into  the
Temple, by every one who wills to come.

   And  in time that religion that He brought to us will drive away all  the
sorrows; will dry the tears from all eyes.  Where there has been war,  there
will be peace, and sure, as sure as he came to  bring  that sword that shall

[PAGE 1684]

liberate man from the national spirit and make him an individual that is ca-
pable of being a brother to every man, so surely as He came to do this work,
so surely as the first part of His prophecy has been fulfilled--so will that
other  grand and glorious prophecy be fulfilled,  that men shall beat  their
swords into plow-shares, and their spears into pruning-hooks.

   We have one more thing to consider, and that is the gifts that these Wise
Men brought--the gifts that were to be laid at the feet of the Savior, as we
hear of in the old legend.  This legend tells us that one brought gold,  one
brought myrrh,  and the third brought frankincense.  The gold we always hear
spoken of in symbology as the emblem of the Spirit.   That Spirit is symbol-
ized  thus  in the Niebelungen Ring, for instance.   There  in  the  opening
scene,  we see the Rheingold.  The river Rhein is taken as the emblem of the
water,  and there the gold is seen shining on the rock, symbolizing the uni-
versal  spirit in its perfect purity.   Later it is stolen and MADE  INTO  A
RING by Alberich,  representing mankind in the middle of Atlantis,  when the
Spirit had drawn into them.  Then the gold became debased, was lost, and was
the cause of all sorrow in the earth.  Later still we hear of the alchemists
who  tried to transmute base metal into gold;  that is the spiritual way  of
saying that they wanted to purify this dense body,  to refine it and extract
the spiritual essence.

   Therefore,  the gift of one wise man is the Spirit.  The next one  brings
myrrh.   Myrrh is the extract of an aromatic plant that grows in  Arabia,  a
very rare plant,  very rare indeed.  Therefore, it symbolizes the thing that
man  extracts when he cleanses himself.   When he has cleansed his blood  of
passion he becomes plantlike, chaste and pure.  He became the inverted plant

[PAGE 1685]

before he became the pure plant, symbolized by the Rosy Cross, symbolized by
the Diamond Soul, and so forth, then his body is an aromatic essence.  It is
an  actual fact--we are not speaking in similes--when we say that there  are
Holy  men,  who are so Holy that they emit an aroma from them.   It is  thus
said of some Catholic saints, and it is true.   Therefore,  the myrrh stands
for  that soul essence that is drawn out of the experience of the body.   It
is the soul.

   The  third gift was incense.   Incense is a physical substance of a  very
light character,  that is often used in religious services;  it serves as an
embodiment  for the ministering unseen influences.   An illustration of  the
properties  of incense is also found in the story of the Servian  regicides.
The  Minister of the Interior has issued his Memoirs,  and he mentions as  a
curious circumstance that every time they used a certain kind of incense  to
get others into the conspiracy,  they succeeded: but at times when they used
no  incense,  they failed.   It shows--he had on certain  occasions,  uncon-
sciously,  of course, furnished an embodiment for certain spirits who wanted
to and did aid the conspirators.

   There  is  the key to the three gifts that were offered up  by  the  Wise
Men--the Spirit,  the soul,  and the body.  As Christ said,  "If you want to
follow  me,  you must sell all you have.   YOU ARE NOT TO KEEP ANYTHING  FOR
YOURSELF."   You are to give up body, soul, and Spirit, everything,  for the
higher life,  everything for the Christ.  Not to an exterior Christ,  but to
the Christ within.   The three Wise Men are said in the legend to be yellow,
black,  and white, representatives of the three races that we have on Earth,
the Mongolian,  the Black,  and the White man.  Therefore, we see that it is
very well shown in the legend that eventually  they  will all come into this

[PAGE 1686]

beneficient Christ religion.  "To him every knee shall bow."   Each one will
in  time be led by the star to the Christ.   But let us emphasize that  very
stongly--not  to an exterior Christ,  but to the Christ that is within.   As
Angelus Silesius says:

         Though Christ a thousand times in Bethlehem be born,
         And not within thyself, thy soul will be forlorn.
         The cross on Golgotha thou lookest to in vain,
         Unless within thyself it be set up again.

                              LECTURE SEVENTEEN:

                        THE MYSTERY OF THE HOLY GRAIL

   In  this lecture we are to consider one of the old-time  Mysteries  which
existed in many parts of the Western World during the Middle Ages, and which
has existed, in different forms, in different countries, ever since the dawn
of man's consciousness.

   As stated, in Europe in the Middle Ages there were a number of these Mys-
teries;  in  Northern  Russia  the Trottes taught a  certain  phase  of  the
World-Mystery;  in  Ireland the Druids flourished.   Where we are  told  our
forefathers worshiped under the oak tree, that implies the direction of  the
Druids,  for Druid means oak,  and when we are told that Boniface felled the
oak,  we may infer that Boniface put an end to the instructions of the  Dru-
ids.  In the northern part of Spain the Mystery of the Holy Grail existed.

   This mystery was administered by a band of holy knights, who dwelt in the
castle  Montsalvat,  and it was their purpose to proclaim to humanity  great
spiritual truths in a manner which it could understand,  to give in pictures
that which could not be given directly to the intellect.

   Man  has grown up to his present stage from a state where he had no  con-
sciousness  at all outwardly in the body;  he is to go higher yet and  these
myths  and  symbols  were  the  means  of preparing him for the intellectual

[PAGE 1687]

perception of the way he was to go; so those who came in contact with  these
Mysteries,  those who were taught, and those who listened,  are the ones who
today are inclined to take an interest in these things,  while the  majority
of people, who, of course, did not come under these instructions,  are those
who  cannot yet feel the inner craving to live the spiritual  life.   There-
fore,  if we feel at all the spiritual influence within us, it shows that at
some time,  in some of these Mysteries, we have been prepared for the recep-
tion of these truths in an intellectual manner,  and it is the repeated  im-
pact given by the early teachers which brings humanity to the higher  stage;
for repetition is not senseless.  On the contrary, it is of the very highest
importance that a spiritual truth should be given utterance again and again.

   It has been stated here that humanity, the largest part of them at least,
are working today upon their desire bodies, and trying to curb their desires
by means of law.  Where occult development is to take place, however,  where
a  man  is to become a pioneer,  it is the vital body that is to  be  worked
upon,  and the vital body is particularly and peculiarly acted upon by  rep-
etition.

   The vital body is the most important principle of the plant;  it is  that
which makes the plant grow stem and leaf in alternating succession,  so that
the plant grows taller and taller;  but there is no variety,  the plant goes
on repeating all the time.  Stem, leaf, and branch; ever the same.

   That  is the way everything acts that has only a vital body;  so when  we
wish to act upon the vital body we must do it by this method of  repetition.
We  have the four ethers present in our vital body and the two lower  ethers
take care of the physical functions, as  we  remember  particularly from the

[PAGE 1688]

lecture on SPIRITUAL SIGHT AND INSIGHT (No. 11),  we saw there that the  two
higher  ethers had to be taken out when we wanted to function in the  higher
worlds;  and this repeated impact is what makes the division between the two
lower  and the two higher ethers possible.   That is where the churches  are
still factors in spiritual development,  because they tell the devotee  that
he must pray without ceasing.   But we are not to pray selfishly,  we are to
pray unselfishly,  and in harmony with the Universal Good.  When we pray for
rain and our neighbor for dry weather chaos must prevail, if prayers were to
be  granted.   Neither let us imagine that God is to be bargained  with,  as
would seem to be the conception of some who are loudest at prayer  meetings.
There  is  a certain spiritual attitude attained which the mystic  knows  so
well when he enters into his closet.

   Prayer is like the turning on of an electric switch.   It does not create
the current, it simply provides a channel through which the electric current
may flow.   In like manner prayer creates a channel through which the divine
life and light may pour itself into us for our spiritual illumination.

   If the switch were made of wood or glass it would be of no use;  in fact,
it would be a barrier that the electric current could not possibly pass, be-
cause  that is contrary to its nature.  To be effective the switch  must  be
made of a conducting metal;  then it is in harmony with the laws of electri-
cal manifestation.

   If our prayers are selfish,  worldly,  and inconsiderate of our neighbor,
they are like the wooden switch,  they defeat the very purpose they wee  in-
tended to serve,  because contrary to God's purpose.   To be of avail prayer
must  be  in  harmony  with the nature of God, which is LOVE.  The following

[PAGE 1689]

lines appeared in LONDON LIGHT a number of years ago and have been treasured
by the writer as--

                               AN IDEAL PRAYER:

   Not more of light I ask, O God,
         But eyes to see what is.
   Not sweeter songs, but ears to hear
         The present melodies.
   Not more of strength, but how to use
         The power that I possess.
   Not more of love, but skill to turn
         A frown to a caress.
   Nor more of joy, but how to feel
         Its kindling presence near,
   To give to others all I have
         Of courage and of cheer.
   No other gifts, dear God, I ask,
         But only sense to see
   How best those precious gifts to use
         Thou hast bestowed on me.
   Give me all fears to dominate,
         All holy joys to know,
   To be the friend I wish to be,
         To speak the truth I know,
   To love the pure, to seek the good,
         To lift with all my might
   All souls to dwell in harmony,
         In freedom's perfect light.

   That  is the kind of a prayer that lifts,  that ennobles a man,  and  the
more a man or woman cultivates that attitude of mind,  and entertains  those
lofty  aspirations the more he is lifting the two higher ethers out  of  the
vital body,  and so the churches say, Pray,  pray,  pray;  and they are well
within the occult teaching,  for in that way the vital body is being  worked
upon by the constant repetition of lofty aspirations.  Before we can proceed
along the occult path we must of necessity have laxity between the upper and

[PAGE 1690]

the lower ethers so that we can function outside,  leaving the dense body to
be taken care of by the two lower ethers,  and herein lies the trouble  with
the medium,  and others who develop a certain phase of involuntary clairvoy-
ance  by breathing exercises.   When such a person goes out of the  body  he
does it involuntarily;  he takes three ethers along with him,  and the  body
therefore is not taken care of.   On this road lie mental and moral decline,
and ofttimes insanity.

   There  is only one safe way to develop our latent faculties.   No  matter
what any one may say to the contrary,  experience will prove that attainment
to spiritual powers depends upon purification and unselfish aspiration;  and
that is what the mysteries taught in those olden times.

   In order to understand the Mystery of the Holy Grail, it is necessary for
us  to go away back along the different epochs from the time when the  Earth
first came out of chaos.   Then the Earth was dark,  and man was embedded in
the  Earth.   Life was working in it to dig him out.--Adam was of the  earth
earthly, as the minerals are now.

   Then we come to the second, the Hyperborean Epoch,  where man has a dense
and a vital body; that was the plant stage.  His food was the plants, and we
hear of Cain as an agriculturist.   Next comes the Lemurian Epoch,  and  man
gets the desire body.  He has three vehicles, like the animals.

   Then  we have that stage where he is to have food of a nature  that  will
feed all three bodies.  This he gets from LIVING animals, as when Abel was a
shepherd.

   Next we come to the fourth epoch, the Atlantean,  where man evolved mind.
Thought always breaks down tissue, and causes decay, therefore man must have

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something  in the food line which is prone to decay in his body,  and so  he
begins to eat the decaying carcasses of animals,  so we hear that Nimrod was
a mighty hunter.

   Finally  he comes to that stage where he is to forget his  spiritual  na-
ture,  he is to think only of this life as the one life for him,  and there-
fore he must have something to help him to forget.  That stage is ushered in
by Noah and the few that were saved with him,  who were the pioneers in  the
present  Aryan Epoch;  and he is the one who cultivates the wine stock,  and
makes the wine that is to help man to forget.   Man is temporarily to forget
the spiritual part of his nature in order to fully develop the material  as-
pect, so Christ changes the water to wine, which is symbolically represented
in his FIRST miracle.

   In the earliest religions only water was used in the temple service.  The
God of wine, Bacchus, had come in Greece previous to Christ,  to prepare the
time  of material debauch necessary to make man forget.   And so man  became
more and more material.   The Christian religion is the only one that  sanc-
tioned the use of wine.  Man has consequently become more thoroughly immured
in this physical vehicle.  Now an impulse must be given to lift him out, and
we  are  able to note evidences of this impulse in many  directions  at  the
present moment.   We see it in the great temperance movement which has  been
sweeping  over this country,  this America, which has aptly been called  the
melting pot.

   Wine is being changed back to water.   We have accomplished the  conquest
of  the material world,  as evidenced in our wonderful progress here in  the
West.   Now we are to return to the use of water,  that we may regain  on  a
higher  level  that  spiritual vision which we have lost.  That is what this

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mystery of the Holy Grail aimed at;  to purify man so that he might be  able
to  regain that spiritual sight;  and as we give our children  picture-books
today,  we were given these myths in previous times,  that they  might  work
upon our FEELINGS and prepare us to understand.

   There  were  two  characteristics  which were  very  marked  about  these
knights:  purity and harmlessness, and these two qualities, purity and harm-
lessness, go together.

   We  saw  in the later lectures that when an entity,  it does  not  matter
whether a group spirit or an individual, is taken out of its body violently,
with a jerk as it were,  as by killing,  then there is always something left
behind.

   If we take a ripe peach and cut it the kernel falls out freely.   It  has
no more connection with the flesh of the fruit.

   On the other hand,  if we take a fruit which is unripe,  a little of  the
flesh will cling to the stone.   It will exhibit a tenacious tendency  which
is  entirely foreign to the way in which the flesh of the ripe  fruit  acts.
Consider this body the stone, it is the hard,  crystallized part,  while the
Spirit is the subtle part.  If we take this subtle part away suddenly,  with
a  jerk,  what  happens?--The physical body retains a  part  of  that  soul,
whether  it is of a human being or an animal,  and that part is  always  the
lowest part.   When Christ went out in that violent manner,  by death on the
cross,  something clung to the body of Jesus,  that was the lowest  part  of
Jesus'  higher principles, for even he, the most perfect man,  had something
that was imperfect, and it was necessary that it should be left behind, that
only the absolutely pure part should be extracted.

Continued with file "RC1046.TXT"

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