CHAPTER VI.

THE FALL AND THE REDEMPTION, OR THE FUNDAMENTAL EVIL IN HUMAN NATURE, AND THE REMEDY.
The fall of man was not the result of any single act of disobedience to the divine will, as the eating of some for- bidden fruit, but was rather the gradual descent of man in the scale of life and thought, from a spiritual altitude or plane of existence, into a condition of bondage to the exter- nal senses, and to the limitations of time and space. How great was this subsidence of the life of man few can com- prehend, because the height from which human nature has descended to its present sensuous level is beyond the concep-
Itiou of the psychical man. The fall is a total inversion of the divine order of life. That which is divine and immortal in man, the spirit, which is the seat of all the deific powers I . of man, is brought into subjection to the body, and is | fettered in its action by the limitations of matter. The original condition of man is symbolically represented by his being placed in the garden of Eden, which the Lord planted in the East, which signifies the realm of pure spirit, which is the true Orient, the arising, the origin of all things ; and the garden into which the "Lord God" put man, signifies the clear intuitions of celestial love, a perception of truth derived from the Lord in man. By the Eloheim is meant the God who creates and governs the world, the macrocosmic universe. B3- the Adonai, or Lord, is signified our God, or deific centre, the divine spirit in man. To eat of the tree of life is to perceive and recognize the truth that all life and all intelligence are from the Lord, and are the Lord in man.
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To eat of the tree of knowledge (external, carnal knowl- edge) represents symbolically the life of sense, which is accompanied with the feeling that our intelligence and life
are self-derived.
To understand more clearly the nature of the fall and the redemption, we remark that there is in us an internal and an external man. The latter is composed of what is usually denominated the body, the gross material organism, and the astral soul, the nephesh of the Jewish psychology, the lowest animal nature. ""These two are but the shadow of man. The external is the mortal man, for at death the corporeal oroanism and the anima bruta are thrown off. These are not of necessity evil, only as they come to dominate over theliiglier nature. The internal man, in its highest degree, is divtne, immortal, and celestial. In the fall of man the due relations between the internal and external man are sub- verted. The governing will is transferred from the spirit, which is the highest in man, to the body, which is the lowest. From this inversion of the true order of our existence, sin, disease, and all our misery have entered into the world. The redemption of man is the reversion of this order. The sceptre is wrested from the body and the animal soul, and the divine spirit of man is reinstated in its rightful gover- nance of the whole human kingdom. When the inner man, the spirit, regains its rightful control of the body, man has attained "the crown of life," and is exempt from disease, and even death. By redemption, then, we mean a deliver- ance from the controlling influence of the body and the astral soul, and it is only because man has fallen under the domin- ion of the body and the animal senses, that he needs redemption.
But how is this consummation, so devoutly to be wished, to be attained ? Can any light be thrown upon the path that unerringly conducts to it? Is there no way out of our mis-
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ery? Is there no remedy for the ills to which our life ou earth is constantly liable ? Is the key that opens the prison lost?
It is said of Gautama, who did for the East what Jesus, six hundred j-ears later, did more f ully for the West, that he sought long and earnestly, and with extreme ascetic mortifi- cations, which proved of no avail, for the cause of all human misery. At last the light from the supreme heavens broke in upon him, and his mind became eutirely opened, "like the full-blown lotus-flower," and he saw by an intuitive flash of the supreme knowledge, that the secret of all the miseries of mankind was ignorance; and the sovereign remed}' for it was to dispel ignorance and to become wise. If this is not the key that unlocks our dungeon, it shows where the lock is to be found.
The teaching of the Buddha is here identical with the principles of esoteric Christianity. In the religious philoso- phy of Jesus the cause of disease and all misery is sin, an aberration or deflection from the truth, as the original word is defined in the Greek lexicons. The word is used in the New Testament in the sense given to it by Plato, as an error of the understanding, which may lead to wickedness in the life." Paul teaches the same doctrine as both Jesus and Hato and Gautama had taught in regard to the root of human misery. He enjoins upon the Christians of Ephesus, that they no longer walk, that is, live, as the Nations walk, in the vanity (or illusion) of their mind, being darkened in their understanding, and alienated from the life of God be- cause of the ignorance that is in them. (Eph. iv:17, 18.) The remedy for this is faith, a spiritual enlightenment which gives the perception of real truth. The ignorance, which is the underlying cause of all our misery, is not merely a want of knowledge, nor is it a lack of what is called science, for that is only a sensuous knowledge, the superficial observa-
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tion of facts, but it is a total inversion of the real truth. Through this sin, or inversion of the truth, we are led to consider that as real which is only a false seeming ; and that which is the real and the enduring we deem an illusion and a phantom ; and we are influenced to desire and laboriously seek as our highest good, and object of supreme quest, that which is of no worth, and even hurtful. In this dense igno- rance the body is viewed as the man. The shadow is taken for substance. The existence of the higher soul is doubted or denied, and the being of the spirit is wholly unknown. Our sense-perceptions, which are always illusory and a decep- tive appearance, are accepted without question, and their fal- lacious testimony is received as the highest and most certain form of knowledge. Matter, or what we call matter, which is not substance, but is the most unreal thing in the uni- verse, is exalted into the place of God in our thoughts, and made the all in all of existence. This is the essence of idolatry.
In this fallen and inverted condition, which is a hot-bed of disease and all evil, influx from the lower region of the world of spirits, as it is called by Swedenborg, the astral plane of life, the region of undeveloped elemental and ele- mentary souls, has a preponderating influence in the life of man. These are the "demons" of the Platonic philosophy and of the New Testament, which Jesus "cast out" from those he healed. Influx from this disorderly realm intensi- fies the tendency to an}' morbid condition of the mind and body, and like a dark cloud between us and the sun, shuts out the inflowing of light and life from the world of pure spirit, the region of the supreme and saving knowledge. The deliverance of man from this condition, and the read- justment of his relations to the spiritual world, is an impor- tant preliminary act in our redemption ; for man can be saved only in perfect freedom. The dispersion of the ele-
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mentary or astral influences, and the placing of man in a position where he can receive influx from the realm of spirit, or the Universal Christ, is called a da}* of judgment or sep- aration, and this has been effected for the world. This region or sphere of astral souls, the highest of whom are symbolized by the four-faced Cherubim, comes between us and the sun of a higher sky, as a dense fog obscures the light of day, and veils the heavens from our view. How can we be saved from their overmastering influence? Often- times prayer, the tranquil aspiration of the soul towards the Highest and the Best, and a resolve " to know nothing but the Christ," is our most effectual remedy. The soul is " like an infaut crying for the light, and with no language but a cry." Every night is followed by its morning. Jesus cast out the spirits by "ijjej^grd" — a condensed expression of the Supreme and Eternal Truth, which formulates itself in tM universal Living Principle.
Our redemption or liberation from corporeal bondage, is not effected by the passion of the cross, nor by anything external, but always comes from within. It is a develop- ment of our inmost and real Self. The spirit in us, which is the inward Christ, and which is always in accord with the Universal Spirit, who is the Father, being reinstated in his rightful dominion over all below it in man, even the body, is the redeemer. "VVe do not mean by this that man is or ever can be redeemed without God. The divine spirit in man is never separated from the manifested God, who is called the Christ. It acts in and from the Father. And it is the Christ principle alone that can deliver us from the power of darkness (or the life of sense), and translate us into the kingdom of God's dear Son (or into the reign of the immor- tal spirit in us) . Through the blood of the Christ (the living truths of the spirit) we have redemption, even the remission of our sins (or the putting away of the illusions of the sen-
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suous animal soul). (Eph. i : 7. Col. i: 12-14.) If it is this alone which can dispel the darkness of the psychical man, and give us freedom from our bondage, how may we obtain the perception of this supreme, saving truth? That is the great question which thousands will ask me to solve. For- tunately, the answer is not difficult.
Truth corresponds to light, and is represented by it, be- cause light in the world of nature is truth in the realm of mind. The bondage to the senses, which is the general state of mankind, with its errors and fallacious appeai-ances, each of which is a fetter of the soul, is called darkness, and in this condition man is represented as in chains of darkness. The lower soul of man is the basement story of our exist- ence. If the basement story of our dwelling is dark and dank, we open a window from within, and the light, by a law of its nature, comes in and illumes the darkness, — or it appears to come in, — but in reality is developed from within. So if we throw open the windows of the soul, removing the bars and bolts from within, the celestial light of truth will flow in and enlighten the darkness of error into which we are plunged, and which is the spring of all our disease and misery. The world is under the powerful dominion of phan- tasy or illusion. It is only the living truths of the spirit, the region in us of intuition, and the ineffable light of the supreme knowledge, which is mystically called the blood of the Christ, that can disenchant us. Our inmost Spirit and undying Self represents to us the Universal Christ, who, like the Buddha, is the' All-Knowing One, and the principle and source of enlightenment in us. The sole condition of receiv- ing this saving truth and living light of the heavens is the desire for it. Truth, grounded in thejaffections, will grow into an intuitional enlightenment, a permanent state of in- sight. God is Light, and the centre whence emanates the supreme effulgence of truth. If wc adore him as such,
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we shall behold hirn. Truth in us is never separated from God.
" God dwelleth in a light far out of human ken ; Become thyself that light, and thou shalt see him then."
Every successive advance of man, as a collective race or as an individual, is a progressive approach to the true vision or understanding of God. When that vision is attained, and man is revealed to himself, our development is complete and our salvation full ; for to know God, and to know our Self as included in him, is eternal life. We cannot know him as external to our inward Self ; for that which has not some- thing in me that answers to it, is unknowable. The Lord, the Adonai of the Old Testament, is my God, and my in- most divine self and life, and as such cannot be diseased or sinful.
The celestial heavens, the realm of saving truth, the light of life, are not far off from our inner being. Things may seem outwardly distant, but may nevertheless be inwardly neav. Everything exists for us in thought. That of which we do not think has for us no existence. That of which we think, exists in us, and if we desire and love it, we exist in it. It is as near to us as our thought of it, which is never outside of our own minds. Nothing seems further from the psychical man, and from the earth, than heaven. Yet to the spiritual man or mind nothing is nearer to him and to the earth than heaveu. The central point of our existence is in the kingdom of the heavens. The domain of the spirit in us is the kingdom of God in man of which Jesus speaks.
The law which governs the influx of saving, healiug truth, and its reception by us, is given by Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount, " Blessed are they who hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled." (Matt, v: 6.) The Kabalistic righteousness, or justice, symbolized by the per- fect square, which means perfection, is a state of spiritual
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enlightenment, the attainment of the gnosis, or true knowl- edge, which makes us free. It is a principle which seems to extend through the whole universe, that a demand, a con- scious need, creates a supply. Hence it is said, "The prayer (S^cn.?, desire, from a sense of want) of a righteous (or spiritually enlightened) man availeth much in its work- ing." (James v : 16.) The original term expresses the idea / ../ that such a prayer, or desire, is a positive spiritual energy. The dePre, the will, the wish to live the life of sense ana of earthly pleasure, becomes an attraction of the soul in that direction. The things we desire gravitate towards us and we towards them. An inordinate desire for life in the world, with all its selfish gratifications, draws the disembodied soul into the sphere of the earth even after death. In accordance with this law of our being, and of being in all worlds, a de- sire for the life of the spirit, as contra-distinguished from the fleshy life of sense, a desire for the celestial and immor- tal range of existence on earth, becomes in us an inward impulse in that direction. If we have not this, nothing can be done for us : we are impervious to the light of life. Jesus said of the sensuous Jews of his day : "Ye will not (that is, wish not, desire not) to come unto me, that ye might have life." (John v:40.) If we have this desire and inward attraction, it adjusts the soul and all her powers into a state of receptivity, — a peaceful vacuum which the ever-present heavens make haste to fill. A desire for the supreme, sav- ing truth constitutes an affinitive attraction between the soul and that truth, as real as that which exists between the lode- stone and iron.
Men instinctively desire deliverance from the unnatural domination of the body and the animal soul, for all feel this to be a condition of degradation ; in other words, a fall from the true position we were made to occupy. The bodily senses, by their phantasms, have so clouded the higher soul
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of man as to obscure his inner life, and obstruct the free development of our true being. But as long as there is a desire for deliverance there is a ground for hope. Hope is born of desire, and " faith is the substance of things hoped for." In the Epistle to the Romans, Paul declares that we who have the first fruits of the spirit (or the incipiency of the spiritual state of our powers) groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption (the recognition of our individual spirit as the immortal Son of God in us) , the redemption from the body. (Rom. viii : 23.) This does not refer to the in- credible dogma of a literal resurrection from the graveyard, but to a state of emancipation from material and corporeal thralldom attainable here and now. It is a deliverance of the inner man from the controlling influence of the body. The first ray of hope comes to us with the clear intuition of the truth that the body has no power of its own. It is in its nature entirely passive and inert, and its normal function is to express and obey the spirit. It is no part of man, any more than a brazen statue is a human being. It has no power, except as by a wrong way of thinking we attribute power to it ; and this is a delusion, a false belief. If it is true that the body has no power, then why are we so depen- dent upon it, and become the veriest slaves to it? It is a sort of idolatry into which we have fallen, like the invest- ing of a senseless block of wood or stone with divine attri- butes. To attribute to gross matter what only belongs to the divine spirit in us, is like crowning a lifeless image of a man as an emperor and paying homage to it. In that case, the phantastic image, the eidolon, has no authority except what we give to it. It can neither utter a command nor enforce it. So the material body has no life of its own. and no power over us, except what we in thought ascribe to it. When we cease to do this, our full redemption draws near. The normal relation of the body to the inner and real man
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was clearly seen by Swedenborg, and is well stated by him in one of the profoundest of his philosophical works. " It is well known that the will and the understanding govern the body at pleasure ; for the mouth speaks what the understand- ing thinks, and the body does what the will determines ; hence it is evident that the bod}- is a form corresponding to the understanding and the will ; and as form is also predicated of the understanding and the will, it is evident that the form of the body corresponds to the form (by which is also signi- fied state, quality) of the understanding and the will." {Divine Love and Divine Wisdom, 136.)
Again he says : "There are gestures and actions of the body which correspond to every affection of the mind, as falling down on the knees corresponds to humiliation, and prostration to the earth to deeper humiliation ; the spreading out of the hands towards heaven corresponds to supplication, and so forth ; those gestures or actions in the Word signify the affections themselves to which they correspond, because they represent them ; hence it may be seen what is meant by representations." (Arcana Celestia, 7596.)
The tendency of thought and feeling to express themselves outwardly in gesture or some visible motion or attitude of the body is only an exhibition of the operation of a universal law. Thought and feeling are not only spontaneously expressed or represented in visible gestures, but also in invisible vital and physiological movements and activities of the various internal organs. If we form in our minds the true idea of ourselves as already immortal and free from dis- ease and sin, it is the function of the body to express that idea, not in words, gestures, and attitudes merely, but in a condition corresponding to it, and which is a translation of it into a corporeal representation. Before things can exist in the sense-world, or as actualities, the ideas of them as sub- jective realities and typical forms must subsist. For a thing,

be it a tree, a stone, a statue, a house, or a physical malady, is the exterualization of au idea without which it cannot exist. In attaining to a state of redemption from the body we must determine in our minds what is the divine idea of man, and the body will conform to that idea and surrender to it. It is self-evident that an infinitely good and wise Creator could not form the plan of our life that should not be in harmony with himself. The divine idea of man is not one that includes in it the typical representation of man as diseased, sinful, and unhappy.
There is a principle in man, or a primordial substance, which lies in absolute subjection to the will of the spirit. It is the astral body, and is that on which the gross material phantom is dependent for its existence. It is that which is denominated b}1, Paul, the psycJtical body, — as being the body of the soul, — and which has been grossly mistranslated the " natural body." "There is a psychical body, and there is a spiritual body." (1 Cor. xv : 44.) The spirit of man does not act directly on the external body, the gross physical organism, but on this intermediate principle, and through that moves and affects the outward shell. Every particle of this psychical body and elemental substance is capable of respond- ing with instantaneous celerity to the dictates of the sover- eign will of the spirit. As a lake reposing in stillness among the hills, in a clear night and beneath a cloudless sky, mir- rors and reflects the stars and planets and all the objects above it in the heavens, so this passive substance reflects and responds to the ideas in our minds. As the stars with "mimic glory" shine in the water, and are mirrored in its placid surface, so the real knowledges of things, the true ideas of God and man, will become expressed in the body.
The man who can steadfastly think the truth in regard to his real being has the key that unlocks the handcuffs of his soul, and his immortal powers are set free. The spirit of man, the real self, is safe from sin and disease. Secure in
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its stronghold on the heights of Divinity, and immortal in every part, though assailed and besieged by a crowd of sen- suous illusions and phantoms more numerous than the army of Senacherib which approached Jerusalem and Zion, it may rest in peace, like the Southern Cross in the heavens. Until that can be plucked down from the firmament and laid in the dust, we as immortal spirits cannot be dislodged from our dwelling place in the life of God. The spirit of man is so intermin- gled and interblended with the existence of the Father, that by a supreme act of faith it may ever say, "Because he lives, I live ; because he is free from disease, so am I." Though the body may be put off and become a wreck, and be dissolved back into its original elements, yet the redeemed soul may view it, not as death, but as the wreck of the shell out of which an angel is born. For it is a law as universal as the presence of God in nature, that out of what the world falsely calls death there is always evolved a higher form and order of life. There is no death. All is boundless, end- less, omnipresent, and omniactive life. As death is an illusion or deceptive appearance, so is disease when viewed from the lofty altitude of an assured faith. To the touch of Christian faith, the empty bubble which appears to the mind on the plane of sense a solid reality, bursts and becomes a crystal drop of the water of life. A minister remarked at the funeral of a neighbor of ours a few days ago, that it was difficult for the natural man to feel that he was going to die. That ma}' be true, but it is more difficult for the psychical man or mind to realize the truth that he will never die, and that the diseases of men are only a struggle of the soul into immortality on earth and in the heavens. Disease is the dream that precedes and occasions our waking into life. It is the shock that comes to startle us from the slumber of a life of sense, an alarm-clock that is set to wake us at break of day.
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