Part IJ].—THe Creep AND INITIATION

Study: Esoteric Christianity, Chapters VIII, and LX
Ovr further study of the Creed will be in relation to (3) The Perfecting of Man. ‘The drama of Initiation, as presented in the Mysteries, was the prefigurement of soul process experienced on the inner planes. ‘The ceremonial, while assisting or accelerating an expansion of consciousness through certain ritual practices, could but mark the stages which the aspirant had himself attained, recalling these or bringing them through to consciousness by means of the symbolism employed. ‘Therefore each stage in the true initiation was, and still is, marked by a new realisation of being, by new powers and new knowledge.
The first of these stages is that called the New Birth, for it is demanded of every aspirant for the Christ-ed state that he enter upon a new order of life, or, in other words, that he awaken to the realisation of his own spiritual nature. Novalis declared : “‘ God cast Adam into a deep sleep, and
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there is no evidence yet that he has awakened,” for Adam represents humanity in its unregenerate state, caught in the maya or enchantment of external nature, and thus subject to the dominion of the sense- life. “The Adam state, in which “all die,” * is the condition of complete immersion in matter, during which the higher consciousness is in abeyance, the spiritual activities inhibited. ‘The body is then the tomb of the spirit, and only with a certain subjection of the lower nature may the release of the spirit be accomplished. ‘The experience of awakening, always one of interior illumination, marks that moment in the soul-life which is the mystical Conception by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary, and there is brought to birth in time the Inner Christ of the heart, experienced as a new awareness, a life recharged with spiritual energy and repolarised in will. It is the ‘“‘second man from heaven” + of St. Paul’s doctrine, in whom a total transmutation has taken place and through whom the life forces may henceforth flow at an altogether higher level. With this “ birth from within ” the path of Initia- tion is entered upon. LEach stage brings greater measure of illumination, but also sterner test, until at length the supreme sacrifice is demanded, and the
mx ‘Cor, xv. 22. T 1 Cor. xv 49.
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disciple is required to yield up all that the lower personality had held dear. He must “ suffer under Pontius Pilate,” subjecting to condemnation and death all that pertains to the separated selfhood. That lower self must be crucified that self-will may be utterly surrendered, while from that death result the Resurrection to life in the spiritual kingdom and an Ascension therewith to a higher order of being.
This transmutation is not accomplished in any one incarnation, but is a process which continues from life to life, from stage to stage of renunciation, until the Christ-ed life is completely established.
In the exalted state of God-consciousness then attained the Perfected Man, clothed in the bliss- body or body of the resurrection, will “sit at the right hand of God” (will become a consciously integrated factor in the body of the Logos, a co- ruler with the Divine powers). In this glorified state he will pass in review his entire cycle of incarnation.* This is the mystical “ Last Judg- ment,” in which the liberated soul, now completely identified with its highest principles and at-one-ed with Indwelling Spirit, judges “the quick and the dead,” meaning that all the good and evil elements
* See “ The Apocalypse and Initiation,” Chapter VI. 14
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of the completed cycle of human experience are at this stage recognised as dissevered one from the other. The ‘‘ quick” or living are the spiritual qualities which alone survive in the greater life now entered upon; the “dead” are those elements of evil which, pertaining solely to the lower realms of sense, feeling and thought, are now completely ejected, returning into the stream of elemental life from which they were drawn, there to suffer disintegration and final destruction. But the spiritual realm into which the perfected soul enters is the “ kingdom ” which has “ no end,” being that of eternal bliss in unification or reabsorption into the Divine life.
With the study of the Creed we may include the