Chapter VIII

EESUREECTION AND ASCENSION

The doctrines of the Resurrection and
Ascension of Christ also form part of the
Lesser Mysteries, being integral portions of
"The Solar Myth," and of the life-story of
the Christ in man.

As regards Christ Himself they have their
historical basis in the facts of His continu-
ing to teach His apostles after His physical
death, and of His appearance in the Greater
Mysteries as Hierophant after His direct in-
structions had ceased, until Jesus took His
place. In the mythic tales the resurrection
of the hero and his glorification invariably
formed the conclusion of his death-story;
and in the Mysteries, the body of the candi-
date was always thrown into a death-like
trance, during which he, as a liberated soul,
travelled through the invisible world, re-
turning and reviving the body after three

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days. And in the life-story of the individ-
ual, who is becoming a Christ, we shall
find, as we study it, that the dramas of the
Resurrection and Ascension are repeated.

But before we can intelligently follow
that story, we must master the outlines
of the human constitution, and understand
the natural and spiritual bodies of man.
" There is a natural body, and there is a
spiritual body." 1

There are still some uninstructed people
who regard man as a mere duality, made
up of "soul" and "body." Such people use
the words "soul" and "spirit" as syno-
nyms, and speak indifferently of "soul and
body," or "spirit and body," meaning that
man is composed of two constituents, one of
which perishes at death, while the other sur-
vives. For the very simple and ignorant
this rough division is sufficient, but it will
not enable us to understand the mysteries of
the Eesurrection and Ascension.

Every Christian who has made even a
superficial study of the human constitution
recognises in it three distinct constituents

1 1 Cor. xv. 44.
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— Spirit, Soul, and Body. This division is
sound, though needing further subdivision
for more profound study, and it has been
used by S. Paul in his prayer that "your
whole spirit and soul and body be preserved
blameless."1 That threefold division is ac-
cepted in Christian Theology.

The Spirit itself is really a Trinity, the
reflexion and image of the Supreme Trinity,
and this we shall study in the following
chapter.2 The true man, the immortal,
who is the Spirit, is the Trinity in man.
This is life, consciousness, and to this the
spiritual body belongs, each aspect of the
Trinity having its own Body. The Soul is
dual, and comprises the mind and the
emotional nature, with its appropriate
garments. And the Body is the material
instrument of Spirit and Soul. In one
Christian view of man he is a twelve-fold
being, six modifications forming the spirit-
ual man, and six the natural man ; accord-
ing to another, he is divisible into fourteen,
seven modifications of consciousness and

- 1 Thess. v. 23.

2 See Chapter IX., "The Trinity.
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Resurrection and Ascension

seven corresponding types of form. This
latter view is practically identical with that
studied by Mystics, and it is usually spoken
of as seven -fold, because there are really
seven divisions, each being two-fold, having
a life-side and a form-side.

These divisions and subdivisions are some-
what confusing and perplexing to the dull,
and hence Origen and Clement, as we have
seen,1 laid great stress on the need for in-
telligence on the part of all who desired to
become Gnostics. After all, those who find
them troublesome can leave them on one
side, without grudging them to the earnest
student, who finds them not only illuminat-
ive, but absolutely necessary to any clear
understanding of the Mysteries of Life and
Man.

The word Body means a vehicle of con-
sciousness, or an instrument of conscious-
ness; that in which consciousness is carried
about, as in a vehicle, or which conscious-
ness uses to contact the external world, as a
mechanic uses an instrument. Or, we may

1 See Ante, pp. 83, 98, 99.
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liken it to a vessel, in which consciousness
is held, as a jar holds liquid. It is a form
used by a life, and we know nothing of con-
sciousness save as connected with such
forms. The form may be of rarest, sub-
tlest, materials, may be so diaphanous that
we are only conscious of the indwelling life ;
still it is there, and it is composed of Matter.
It may be so dense, that it hides the indwell-
ing life, and we are conscious only of the
form; still the life is there, and it is com-
posed of the opposite of Matter— Spirit.
The student must study and re-study this
fundamental fact — the duality of all mani-
fested existence, the inseparable co-existence
of Spirit and Matter in a grain of dust, in
the Logos, the God manifested. The idea
must become part of him ; else must he give
up the study of the Lesser Mj^steries. The
Christ, as God and Man, only shows out on
the kosmic scale the same fact of duality
that is repeated everywhere in nature. On
that original duality everything in the uni-
verse is formed.

Man has a " natural body," and this is
made up of four different and separable por-

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tions, and is subject to death. Two of
these are composed of physical matter, and
are never complete^ separated from each
other until death, though a partial separa-
tion may be caused by anaesthetics, or by
disease. These two may be classed together
as the Physical Body. In this the man
carries on his conscious activities while
he is awake ; speaking technically, it is his
vehicle of consciousness in the physical world.

The third portion is the Desire Body, so
called because man's feeling and passional
nature finds in this its special vehicle. In
sleep the man leaves the physical body, and
carries on his conscious activities in this,
which functions in the invisible world clos-
est to our visible earth. It is therefore his
vehicle of consciousness in the lowest of the
super-physical worlds, which is also the first
world into which men pass at death.

The fourth portion is the Mental Body, so
called because man's intellectual nature, so
far as it deals with the concrete, functions
in this. It is his vehicle of consciousness in
the second of the super-physical worlds,
which is also the second, or lower heavenly
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world, into which men pass after death,
when freed from the world alluded to in the
preceding paragraph.

These four portions of his encircling form,
made up of the dual physical body, the de-
sire body, and the mental body, form the
natural body of which S. Paul speaks.

This scientific analysis has fallen out of
the ordinary Christian teaching, which is
vague and confused on this matter. It is not
that the churches have never possessed it ;
on the contrary, this knowledge of the con-
stitution of man formed part of the teach-
ings in the Lesser Mysteries; the simple
division into Spirit, Soul, and Body was
exoteric, the first rough and ready division
given as a foundation. The subdivision as
regards the "Body " was made in the course
of later instruction, as a preliminary to the
training by which the instructor enabled his
pupil to separate one vehicle from another,
and to use each as a vehicle of consciousness
in its appropriate region.

This conception should be readily enough
grasped. If a man wants to travel on the
solid earthy he uses as his vehicle a carriage

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Resurrection and Ascension

or a train. If he wants to travel on the
liquid seas, he changes his vehicle, and
takes a ship. If he wants to travel in the
air, he changes his vehicle again and uses a
balloon. He is the same man throughout,
but he is using three different vehicles, ac-
cording to the kind of matter he wants to
travel in. The analogy is rough and inade-
quate, but it is not misleading. When a
man is busy in the physical world, his vehi-
cle is the physical body, and his conscious-
ness works in and through that body.
When he passes into the world beyond the
physical, in sleep and at death, his vehicle
is the desire body, and he may learn to use
this consciously, as he uses the physical con-
sciously. He already uses it unconsciously
every day of his life when he is feeling and
desiring, as wTell as every night of his life.
When he goes on into the heavenly world
after death, his vehicle is the mental body,
and this also he is daily using, when he is
thinking, and there would be no thought in
the brain were there none in the mental
body.

Man has farther " a spiritual body. " This
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is made up of three separable portions, each
portion belonging to one of, and separating
off, the three Persons in the Trinity of the
human Spirit. S. Paul speaks of being
"caught up to the third heaven," and of
there hearing " unspeakable words which it
is not lawful for a man to utter."1 These
different regions of the invisible supernal
worlds are known to Initiates, and they are
well aware that those who pass beyond the
first heaven need the truly spiritual body as
their vehicle, and that according to the de-
velopment of its three divisions is the heaven
into which they can penetrate.

The lowest of these three divisions is
usually called the Causal Body, for a reason
that will be only fully assimilable by those
who have studied the teaching of Ke-
incarnation — taught in the Early Church —
and who understand that human evolution
needs very many successive lives on earth,
ere the germinal soul of the savage can be-
come the perfected soul of the Christ, and
then, becoming perfect as the Father in

1 2 Cor. xii. 2, 4.
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Resurrection and Ascension

Heaven,1 can realise the union of the Son
with the Father.2 It is a body that lasts
from life to life, and in it all memory of the
past is stored. From it come forth the
causes that build up the lower bodies. It
is the receptacle of human experience, the
treasure-house in which all we gather in our
lives is stored up, the seat of Conscience, the
wielder of the Will.

The second of the three divisions of the
spiritual body is spoken of by S. Paul in the
significant words: " We have a building of
God, an house not made with hands, eternal
in the heavens. " 3 That is the Bliss Body, the
glorified body of the Christ, "the Kesurrec-
tion Body." It is not a body which is
"made with hands," by the working of con-
sciousness in the lower vehicles; it is not
formed by experience, not builded out of
the materials gathered by man in his long
pilgrimage. It is a body which belongs to
the Christ-life, the life of Initiation ; to the
divine unfoldment in man ; it is builded of
God, by the activity of the Spirit, and grows

1 S. Matt. v. 48. 2 S. John xvii. 22, 28.

3 2 Cor. v. 1.
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Esoteric Christianity

during the whole life or lives of the Initiate,
only reaching its perfection at "the Resur-
rection."

The third division of the spiritual body is
the fine film of subtle matter that separates
off the individual Spirit as a Being, and yet
permits the interpenetration of all by all,
and is thus the expression of the funda-
mental unity. In the day when the Son
Himself shall "be subject unto Him that
put all things under Him. that God may be
all in all,"1 this film will be transcended,
but for us it remains the highest division of
the spiritual body, in which we ascend to
the Father, and are united with Him.

Christianity has always recognised the ex-
istence of three worlds, or regions, through
which a man passes; first, the physical
world ; secondly, an intermediate state into
which he passes at death; thirdly, the
heavenly world. These three worlds are
universally believed in by educated Christ-
ians; only the uninstructed imagine that a
man passes from his deathbed into the final

1 1 Cor. xv. 28.
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Resurrection and Ascension

state of beatitude. But there is some dif-
ference of opinion as to the nature of the
intermediate world. The Roman Catholic
names it Purgatory, and believes that every
soul passes into it, save that of the Saint,
the man who has reached perfection, or that
of a man who has died in "mortal sin.'5
The great mass of humanity pass into a
purifying region, wherein a man remains
for a period varying in length according to
the sins he has committed, only passing out
of it into the heavenly world when he has
become pure. The various communities
that are called Protestant vary in their
teachings as to details, and mostly repudiate
the idea of post mortem purification ; but
they agree broadly that there is an inter-
mediate state, sometimes spoken of as
"Paradise " or as a "waiting period." The
heavenly world is almost universally, in
modern Christendom, regarded as a final
state, with no very definite or general idea
as to its nature, or as to the progress or
stationary condition of those attaining to
it. In early Christianity this heaven was
considered to be, as it really is, a stage in
10 241

Esoteric Christianity

the progress of the soul, re-incarnation in
one form or another, the pre-existence of
the soul, being then very generally taught.
The result was, of course, that the heavenly
state was a temporary condition, though
often a very prolonged one, lasting for "an
age " — as stated in the Greek of the New
Testament, the age being ended by the
return of the man for the next stage of
his continuing life and progress — and not
"everlasting," as in the mistranslation of
the English authorised version.1

In order to complete the outline necessary
for the understanding of the Resurrection
and Ascension, we must see how these vari-
ous bodies are developed in the higher evo-
lution.

The physical body is in a constant state of
flux, its minute particles being continually
renewed, so that it is ever building; and as

1 This mistranslation was a very natural one, as the
translation was made in the seventeenth century, and all
idea of the pre-existence of the soul and of its evolution
had long faded out of Christendom, save in the teachings
of a few sects regarded as heretical and persecuted by the
Roman Catholic Church.

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Resurrection and Ascension

it is composed of the food we eat, the liquids
we drink, the air we breathe, and particles
drawn from our physical surroundings, both
people and things, we can steadily purify it,
by choosing its materials well, and thus
make it an ever purer vehicle through which
to act, receptive of subtler vibrations, re-
sponsive to purer desires, to nobler and
more elevated thoughts. For this reason
all who aspired to attain to the Mysteries
were subjected to rules of diet, ablution,
&c, and were desired to be very careful as
to the people with whom they associated,
and the places to which they went.

The desire body also changes, in similar
fashion, but the materials for it are expelled
and drawn in by the play of the desires,
arising from the feelings, passions, and emo-
tions. If these are coarse, the materials
built into the desire body are also coarse,
while as these are purified, the desire body
grows subtle and becomes very sensitive to
the higher influences. In proportion as a
man dominates his lower nature, and be-
comes unselfish in his wishes, feelings, and
emotions, as he makes his love for those
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around him less selfish and grasping, he is
purifying this higher vehicle of conscious-
ness; the result is that when out of the
body in sleep he has higher, purer, and
more instructive experiences, and when he
leaves the physical body at death, he passes
swiftly through the intermediate state, the
desire body disintegrating with great rapid-
ity, and not delaying him in his onward
journey.

The mental body is similarly being built
now, in this case by thoughts. It will be
the vehicle of consciousness in the heavenly
world, but is being built now by aspirations,
by imagination, reason, judgment, artistic
faculties, by the use of all the mental pow-
ers. Such as the man makes it, so must he
wear it, and the length and richness of his
heavenly state depend on the kind of mental
body he has built during his life on earth.

As a man enters the higher evolution, this
body comes into independent activity on this
side of death, and he gradually becomes con-
scious of his heavenly life, even amid the
whirl of mundane existence. Then he be-
comes "the Son of man which is in

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heaven,551 who can speak with the authority
of knowledge on heavenly things. When
the man begins to live the life of the Son,
having passed on to the Path of Holiness,
he lives in heaven while remaining on
earth, coming into conscious possession and
use of this heavenly body. And inasmuch
as heaven is not far away from us, but sur-
rounds us on every side, and we are only
shut out from it by our incapacity to feel its
vibrations, not by their absence; inasmuch
as those vibrations are playing upon us
at every moment of our lives; all that is
needed to be in Heaven is to become con-
scious of those vibrations. We become con-
scious of them with the vitalising, the or-
ganising, the evolution of this heavenly
body, which, being builded out of the
heavenly materials, answers to the vibra-
tions of the matter of the heavenly world.
Hence the "Son of man55 is ever in heaven.
But we know that the "Son of man 55 is a
term applied to the Initiate, not to the
Christ risen and glorified but to the Son
while he is yet " being made perfect.552

1 S. John iii. 13. 2 Heb. v. 9.

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Esoteric Christianity

During the stages of evolution that lead
up to and include the Probationary Path,
the first division of the spiritual body — the
Causal Body — develops rapidly, and ena-
bles the man, after death, to rise into the
second heaven. After the Second Birth,
the birth of the Christ in man, begins the
building of the Bliss Body "in the heav-
ens." This is the body of the Christ,
developing during the days of His service
on earth, and, as it develops, the conscious-
ness of the "Son of God" becomes more
and more marked, and the coming union
with the Father illuminates the unfolding
Spirit.

In the Christian Mysteries — as in the
ancient Egyptian, Chaldsean, and others —
there was an outer symbolism which ex-
pressed the stages through which the man
was passing. He was brought into the
chamber of Initiation, and was stretched on
the ground with his arms extended, some-
times on a cross of wood, sometimes merely
on the stone floor, in the posture of a cru-
cified man. He was then touched with
the thyrsus on the heart — the "spear" of

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Resurrection and Ascension

the crucifixion — and, leaving the body, he
passed into the worlds beyond, the body fall-
ing into a deep trance, the death of the cru-
cified. The body was placed in a sarcopha-
gus of stone, and there left, carefully
guarded. Meanwhile the man himself was
treading first the strange obscure regions
called "the heart of the earth," and there-
after the heavenly mount, where he put on
the perfected bliss body, now fully organised
as a vehicle of consciousness. In that he
returned to the body of flesh, to re-animate
it. The cross bearing that body, or the en-
tranced amd rigid bod3r, if no cross had been
used, was lifted out of the sarcophagus and
placed on a sloping surface, facing the east,
ready for the rising of the sun on the third
day. At the moment that the rays of the
sun touched the face, the Christ, the per-
fected Initiate or Master, re-entered the
body, glorifying it by the bliss body He was
wearing, changing the body of flesh by con-
tact with the body of bliss, giving it new
properties, new powers, new capacities,
transmuting it into His own likeness. That
was the Resurrection of the Christ, and
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Esoteric Christianity

thereafter the body of flesh itself was
changed, and took on a new nature.

This is why the sun has ever been taken
as the symbol of the rising Christ, and why,
in Easter hymns, there is constant reference
to the rising of the Sun of Righteousness.
So also is it written of the triumphant
Christ : " I am He that liveth and was dead ;
and behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen ;
and have the keys of hell and of death.'51
All the powers of the lower worlds have
been taken under the dominion of the Son,
who has triumphed gloriously; over Him
death no more has power, "He holdeth life
and death in His strong hand."2 He is the
risen Christ, the Christ triumphant.

The Ascension of the Christ was the Mys-
tery of the third part of the spiritual body,
the putting on of the Vesture of Glory, pre-
paratory to the union of the Son with the
Father, of man with God, when the Spirit
re-entered the glory it had "before the
world was."3 Then the triple Spirit be-

1 Rev. i. 18.

2 H. P. Blavatsky. The Voice of the Silence, p. 90, 5th
Edition. 3 S. John xvii. 5.

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Resurrection and Ascension

comes one; knows itself eternal, and the
Hidden God is found. That is imaged in
the doctrine of the Ascension, so far as the
individual is concerned.

The Ascension for humanity is when the
whole race has attained the Christ condition,
the state of the Son, and that Son becomes
one with the Father, and God is all in all.
That is the goal, prefigured in the triumph
of the Initiate, but reached only when the
human race is perfected, and when "the
great orphan Humanity " is no longer an
orphan, but consciously recognises itself as
the Son of God.

Thus studying the doctrines of the Atone-
ment, the Eesurrection, and the Ascension,
we reach the truths unfolded concerning
them in the Lesser Mysteries, and we begin
to understand the full truth of the apostolic
teaching that Christ was not a unique per-
sonality, but "the first fruits of them that
slept,"1 and that every man was to become
a Christ. Not then was the Christ regarded
as an external Saviour, by whose imputed
righteousness men were to be saved from

1 1 Cor. xv. 20.
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Esoteric Christianity

divine wrath. There was current in the
Church the glorious and inspiring teaching
that He was but the first fruits of human-
ity, the model that every man should repro-
duce in himself, the life that all should
share. The Initiates have ever been re-
garded as these first fruits, the promise of a
race made perfect. To the early Christian,
Christ was the living symbol of his own di-
vinity, the glorious fruit of the seed he bore
in his own heart. Not to be saved by an
external Christ, but to be glorified into an
inner Christ, was the teaching of esoteric
Christianity, of the Lesser Mysteries. The
stage of discipleship was to pass into that
of Sonship. The life of the Son was to be
lived among men till it was closed by the
Resurrection, and the glorified Christ be-
came one of the perfected Saviours of the
world.

How far greater a Gospel than the one of
modern days ! Placed beside that grandiose
ideal of esoteric Christianity, the exoteric
teaching of the churches seems narrow and
poor indeed.

250