part in the communication, he, according to his

nature, will dominate the "guide" for truth, or for falsehood.
For this reason and others, mediumship in the past was not countenanced by the great and wise ones in the lofty regions of the spiritual world. Were it not for that Scientific Materialism of the last century which these lofty beings deem one of the greatest dangers that ever threatened the human race, spirit return would not now be favored, or even excused, by those who have seen too many disciples of Materialism born actually blind into the realms beyond the grave.
It is most difficult for any "guide" to clothe his astral brain satisfactorily with the subtle matter from the medium's brain. Unless this clothing is well done, lapse of memory, confusion of names and messages, and other errors, may appear in the midst of correct statements, or else mere telepathy may take the place of communications. These results tend to bewilder the impartial investigator, and disgust the skeptical, while furnishing material
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for the ridicule or the mirth of the thoughtless and the ignorant.
Among aboriginal tribes, both the witch doctor and the medicine man are held in high honor. These are always mediumistic, and naturally in affinity with a low order of earth-bound spirits. Passing to the Happy Hunting-ground, the Indian Medicine Man becomes a guide, and a person of consequence among his fellows, but, knowing the superiority of the white race, he is drawn through vanity to the white medium. As an aid to his peculiar work, he often instructs others in the mystery of "control."
As a boy, the ordinary male Indian begins the severe training necessary to make him a "brave," an honor to his tribe, but the girl is destined to the drudgery of work which among civilized peoples belongs to the male. Because of his enlarging views, the Indian "guide" would lift those females of his tribe who now are with him, into duties worthier than they knew on earth; so, because, from his viewpoint, the office of guide is a most honorable one, he instructs the brightest among the young women around him, in the secrets of his profession, with the result that quite a band of Indian girl "guides" have attached themselves to mediums who are sitting for development.
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PSYCHIC VISION
AND the graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints which slept, arose,
"And came out of the graves after his resur- rection, and went into the holy city, and appeared unto many." Matt. 27: 52-53.
Taken literally, these verses seem at first thought to uphold the doctrine of the sleep of the dead until the Resurrection morning ; but second thought prompts the query: "If the dead so sleep, why this interruption? Is not the doctrine contradicted by it?" Evidently the statement in Matthew is exoteric, as is Paul's doctrine of the sleep of the dead, and, like that doctrine, the statement was suited to a time when little or nothing in respect to post-mortem conditions was known save to the initiated few.
However much one may condemn certain results of spiritual mediumship, the impartial investigator must eventually admit that modern Spiritualism confirms the ancient secret teaching that the physical and the super-physical worlds are in conjunction.
Many sensitive organisms require no great dis- turbance to throw them out of poise, and even into rapport with the sub-planes of the psychic world. We contend that, in the event which we are con- sidering, this happened because of certain phenom- ena attendant upon the crucifixion of the Master.
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The dead from the "Graves," whose God "is not the God of the dead, but of the living," were the active inhabitants of those planes of being which ordinarily are hidden from human sight.
One effect of the victory of Right, in the World War now behind us, is a steady and rapid rise in the rate of vibration peculiar to each plane of our composite world. This rise originates in man as a composite being, and by him is communicated to the spirit of the Earth. As result, the veils separating the seen from the unseen are growing thinner, so that, within the next decade or two, many of the living "Dead" will be seen of thou- sands who never claimed clairvoyance. This truth in distorted form appears in Pastor Russell's teaching, for which he claims Scriptural warrant, that soon after 1914 the dead will begin to rise from their graves to people the purified earth for a thousand years.
In the interest of common sense we must modify still more Pastor Russell's doctrine of the Resur- rection of the Dead. It is but reasonable to argue that the gradually-rising vibration of the Earth, and of the human organism, will cause the super- sensible world to emerge gradually from its veil.
Hence, only the few, perhaps the very few, are to have perfect vision; whereas the average indi- vidual will see as through a glass darkly, and the materialist and the carnally minded may not see at all. Again, it is probable that, as in most
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ancient times, the other world is to appear and disappear in accord with the varying bodily or mental states of the observer.
After a certain rate of vibration is attained, no closer conjunction of the two worlds can occur for a long period of time. This because of certain imperfections that persist obstinately both in the physical globe, and in the physical body of man. Evidently the New Jerusalem to be established upon the Earth, is yet of the remote future.
THE POSTHUMOUS VIEWPOINT
I ^HE observer on any posthumous plane of our
-■- seven-fold world, sees that plane merging into the one above, or the one below, provided that he be located on the upper, or else the lower boundary of his plane.
This fact makes understandable and valid the report from the other side of life that, immediately after discarding the physical body, one often sees that body, and all surrounding persons and things, as clearly as when he was in the flesh; in fact so clearly that he wonders why he can no longer communicate with his friends either by word or action. If such an one be not wholly earth- bound, his view of persons and things terrestrial undergoes a change corresponding with his rise to higher planes.
Because such a being would at no time realize
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his altered perception of all behind, he would argue that still he sees the world as when he left it ; whereas, he sees only the more and more interior and ideal ; in other words, the more and more real and abiding.
The viewpoint of the discarnate should be familiar to those who receive communications from the life beyond. They should know understanding^ that their loved ones have outgrown our circumscribed ideas of the sorrows and miseries of the world, and now, from the vantage point of higher planes, behold Divine Justice appointing the experiences which are essential to the upbuilding of the com- munity, the nation, and the world.
That the ordinary discarnate being seldom can predict the exact time or nature of any future earthly happening is evident for at least two reasons: Every plane of the seven has its standard of time which is determined chiefly by the rate of vibration peculiar to that plane. Therefore, the almost inconceivably rapid vibrations of the higher planes there cause the centuries to pass almost as do the years with us. Of all the discarnate multitudes, only those who has learned to adjust time differences, can determine the date of an earthly event. Furthermore, into all earthly events, save those pre-determined by the Over- ruling Powers, there enters an inscrutable element of human free-will, and that free-will usually
modifies or accentuates the outcome. ,,
M.
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THE EIGHTH SPHERE
/^F Avitchi, the Eighth Sphere, commonly ^^^ known as Hell, many things must remain hidden in the secret arcanum of the Initiates; but, during the years of a general Judgment like that which the World is now in the midst of, some few particulars may be given out as a warning, if nothing more.
Avitchi is both a locality and a condition. During terrestrial life, one may be in the condition through conjunction with Avitchi, but only the discarnate few gravitate to the locality. To locate the Eighth Sphere, one should first know that our seven-fold world, or globe chain, is a septenary of concentric spheres; the highest and purest being of largest girth, and so ethereal that it penetrates every lower sphere.
Down to the physical, these spheres are of increasing densities. Evidently the sixth sphere penetrates all below, as so in their order do the others, the physical excepted. While the physical earth is the smallest and densest of the seven, a shrunken astral sphere, much smaller than the physical, is hidden far beneath the crust of the world.
In the descent from the apex of the Atmic globe, the lowest arc of man's true orbit never reaches the Eighth Sphere, the outward shapes of whose
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r'
denizen have so far conformed to their evil minds that no human mother could give them birth. Were our evolution an eight-fold one, that sphere would participate in the scheme of progression. Being outside the scheme, it necessarily is the fit and only abode of actual failures.
Because the heart-center of the highest sphere of the septenary is located at the point which marks the center of Avitchi, it is evident that Divine Love reaches down to the most deplorable conditions. This two-fold condition of heart- centers is duplicated by the heart of man, and that of the universe.
Imprisoned beneath the Earth's crust, the souls in Avitchi (that place of dense and impure astral matter) are not conscious of those material fires which often seek outlet at the surface; but the sulphurous fumes from that vast burning pene- trate the Eighth Sphere, thus making it a place of bad odors. In many ways, Swedenborg's con- ception of the hells does not differ from ours, but, concerning their duration, we take issue with his teachings. If the hells are eternal, why, according to Peter, did Christ preach to the spirits there imprisoned?
In a former teaching we spoke of the non-elect of the Pauline doctrine. Evidently these event- ually would gravitate to the Eighth Planet where a more fundamental manifestation of the Christos would reach down and redeem them. When, after
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his crucifixion, Christ descended to the Eighth Sphere, it was because there alone he could accom- plish— though but for a brief period — that more fundamental manifestation. Whom then he aided, and to what degree, is a mystery revealed only to high Initiates.
In respect to the non-elect, let us add a teaching never before made public. After a very large per cent of the above-mentioned failures have gravitated to the Eighth Planet, certain incor- rigibles will remain with our planet even when, like the moon, it swings a mere corpse in the sky. This because no manifestation of the Christos possible at this stage of cosmic evolution can reach them.
The dead moon has an Avitchi, and a cer- tain evil luna magnetism is centered therein. Sufferers from acute mania, and the victims of alcohol and drugs, often are in the baleful currents from the Avitchis of both the moon and the earth.
Now what is the fate of the few, fortunately the very few, doomed to remain in the Avitchi of our globe chain? With total loss of self-consciousness, they will pass to a solar system more material in its scheme, or else they must await the death and rebirth of our own ten-fold system of sun and planets. This would mean to them the loss of what, in the Secret Science, is termed seven eterni- ties. But, as compensation, they would, because of certain experiences, be among the foremost in
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the evolution of an immeasurably remote world period.
H.
HEART CENTERS
IN respect to Heart Centers, what little can be grasped is understandable only when certain facts are acknowledged. To begin with; no purely spiritual philosophy can endure the test of logic, for such a monism fails to account for the seeming presence of the impure and the imperfect in man, the world, and the universe.
From our view point the universe is a duad, a positive half, and a negative half. The positive half is the unknown Spiritual Supreme, while the negative half is the total of manifest creation, to wit: solar systems and their progeny from highest to lowest. This negative half is naturally lethargic and unprogressive, whereas the positive half is inconceivably active. For the full and final per- fection of the whole, each requires the other, because of itself the positive would be increasingly one-sided, or top-heavy, so to speak, while of itself the negative would tend back to that primal chaos from which it was lifted by the positive.
That mutual benefit may result, the Supreme Spiritual establishes itself at the very heart center of worlds and creatures; in fact, at the infinitesimal center of every atom in manifest creation. It is
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taught that the Supreme Spiritual is devoid of attributes, but a clearer teaching is that the utmost enlargement of human conception of will, wisdom, and love, conveys only a dim idea of their correspondence with the Supreme Spiritual. Even then we are confronted with the possibility of many unknown attributes proper to the Supreme Spiritual.
Whether few or many, these attributes are summarized by the word Life, a word whose super- ficial meaning is understood by all human beings. Concerning this Life, or Energy, pulsating in every material and immaterial atom, its manifestation would seem to be governed by the law of periodicy, of ebb and flow.
From this we are not to suppose the negative half of the universe to have no life of its own. The synthesis of what is named will, wisdom, and love, constitutes an inherent negative life; one also conforming to the law of ebb and flow. The " dead ** human body, and the " corpse " of the moon, each has lost only that which utilized its ebbing negative life. As for positive Life, it will inform the atoms of both — whether assembled or dispersed — until the universal night.
Positive Life is known as the Great Breath. This life blood of Cosmos flows from the hidden Heart Center of Being to every organ and part of what Swedenborg called "The Grand Man." This flow is continuous during the great Day of Mani-
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festation; then, at the very outskirts of creation, the life blood turns toward its source and, one by one, the outlying Suns and Systems lose their basic Life. Among the last to succumb are the Zodiacal Hierarchies, and for them there is an order of passing. The last to sink into prelaya will be the first to waken at the dawn of the New Era, whereas the first to sink will be the last to waken.
What then shall we conclude? Is the darkened universe to be deprived of all life? By no means! When the physical body of man succumbs, the nega- tive life therein falls into recuperative sleep, and so in turn the negative lives of those inner vestures which posthumous man discards. But in the Maha Prelaya, though not till then, the permanent in man, and its negative life, lapse into unconscious- ness, and his lower vestures are dissipated. So with the worlds ! The impermanent disintegrates ; but the permanent merely sleeps. Hence the mid- night hour of every Maha Prelaya witnesses a higher correspondent of the primal chaos into which Positive Life, the Word, at midnight once breathed Its quickening Breath.
Lethargy is an inherent characteristic of nega- tive life, therefore, the negative aspect of the universe has in itself no incentive toward organi- zation. From this fact the office of the Supreme Spiritual is obvious. Now why is Positive Life outbreathed and then withdrawn? Evidently for one of two reasons, and possibly for both. Posi-
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tive Life may obey some imperative limitation, or else negative life cannot endure the strain of unremitting activity.
To one holding that the Supreme Spiritual accommodates itself to the limitations of its other half, and so to the law of influx and efilux, the query is suggested: Will this condition obtain eternally? Our answer is, that when the other can endure the strain of incessant activity, then the union of positive and negative will be com- plete, the great cycle of Necessity accomplished, the Heart Center and the Circumference of the universe equalized, and God will be All in All.
M.
THE GREAT BREATH
THE Great Breath, that basic Life whose com- plete cycle constitutes a day and a night of Parabrahman— a period of 622,080,000,000,000 of our years — by its out-breathing and in-breathing measures the eons from the birth of one universe to that of another. The words out-breathing and in-breathing symbolize a process which may be superficially described thus:
Imagine a point of all-surpassing brilliancy amidst seemingly empty space, and appearing not far from the center of what now are the zodiacal constellations. Imagine that point expanding to an orb larger than the sun seems to be, and after- ward filling the entire circle of the Zodiac. Ever
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enlarging its circumference, through ages and ages, that Life Globe eventually attains to a limit which fixes the dimensions of the Universe for one great evolutionary epoch. To human sense the Absolute Light of that transcendent globe would be absolute darkness, and even to the loftiest zodiacal intelligences, for instance, those of Taurus with its Pleiadic suns, that Light would be seen as through a veil.
Everywhere outside the circumference of the universal Life Globe, lethargic world stuff — more and more dormant according to its distance from that Globe — would fill an abysm limited or unlim- ited; but who can determine? The rim of the Cosmic Globe will indicate the advance into the domain of darkness which Positive Light, associated with negative light, has made in that day of Parabrahman, which, like all preceding days, began at midnight and will end at the next mid- day. At that time the circumference of the universal globe will begin to contract, and so con- tinue during 311,040,000,000,000 years. Then only the infinitesimal point will remain. Even this will diminish, and so disappear for a moment of universal time. There is warrant for the belief that the present universe has reached its maximum, and is now in process of contraction, but ages upon ages must elapse ere the circumscribing process reaches the outskirts of our solar system, then in its culminating rebirth.
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In the chapter " Heart Centers," it was suggested that Positive Light might obey some demand sourced within itself. Our opinion is that, Hke negative light, Positive Light periodically requires a subjective condition into which it retires during each Cosmic Night, there to receive unknown and probably unknowable benefits, while at the same time relieving negative life of the stress and strain of the Great Day.
The astrologers of most ancient times knew that, in a far off Maha Manvantara, the Universal Life Globe at its utmost had expanded only to the circumference of the zodiacal circle, whose inlaying constellations since then have but little changed their configurations despite many rebirths. Then, as now, the zodiacal intelligences were governed from the Heart Center of the Universal Globe. However, as the universe grew, the rulership of the newer star-clusters and single suns — our own among them — was delegated to those hierarchies; hence for the star-clusters and suns indicated they are the Lords of Karma. Therefore originated the hoary saying that all wisdom and knowledge is sourced in the Zodiac.
By some of the ancient Wise, it was held that a secondary and even a tertiary rulership of worlds and systems of worlds had been delegated to certain constellated intelligences beyond the Zodiac. Hence the astrological systems of these enlightened star-readers considered many influences
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originating in certairr outlying regions. We regret that much knowledge necessary to correct astro- logical castings, disappeared from the outer world at about the beginning of the Christian Era.
M.
THE MASTER HILARION
OF the Masters of Wisdom, the great world knew nothing until the beginning of the last quarter of the nineteenth century. For the next twenty-five years, information was meagre indeed; but the beginning of the present century, that which ushered in the new age, brought con- ditions favorable to increasing publicity so that, concerning those lofty beings, we -have to-day much information which, earlier, would have been premature. What we shall present in regard to the Master Hilarion, contains nothing not already known to his direct disciples, and little not pre- viously given to the larger company of his less intimate following.
Master H., who is a specialist in the laws of vibration, and in the mysteries of sex, is numbered among the primary seven, whereas, certain other Masters are among the secondary seven, and still others among the tertiary seven. H. is known as the Master — for this world — of the Red Ray occultly connected with the planet Mars; for which reason he is in conjunction with certain
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Martian conditions. H. does not leave the earth chain, but, because the outer circle of our seven- fold globe impinges on the outer circle of the Martian globe at the nearest arc of its orbit, he can at stated intervals avail himself of that fact, and so in a way become a Martian. He then can identify himself with a people originally very impetuous and belligerent who, in the long ago, put war behind them, and are now living in great communities where law and order need no authority for their enforcement.
The color peculiar to Master H. is the purified red; in other words, the rose, or, rather, the lilac pink. The red places H. among the three who are negative to the positive three in the primary group of Masters. His polar opposite is the Master of the Yellow Ray. As the original red indicated, H. has evolved from a rather low position; but this fact gives him greater grasp of ordinary human conditions than is possible to the almost wholly spiritual Master of the Yellow.
H. might be called the Egyptian Master, for in ancient times he was the head of an order known as the "Star of the Pyramid." However, before the days of Columbus, his interest was centered, as still it is, chiefly in North America, and, to speak definitely, with that portion thereof which now is known as the United States. In the Red Indian, Hilarion discovered certain characteristics which in very remote times were his own; so, to help as
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far as possible the primitive peoples of this land, he took the humble body and the limited brain peculiar to his lesser brethren by whom he was known and afterwards remembered as Hiawatha, whose great work among the warring tribes was the welding of the Six Nations to which he taught the simpler industries of Peace.
It was for a purpose which Longfellow did not understand, nor need to understand, that he treated the legend of Hiawatha in a poem wherein he broke from the influence of European culture, and became a real American poet, the producer of a wholly original work embodying elements insuring its longevity, and even immortality.
Mr. W. T. Stead occasionally was in touch with Master H. whom he and his associates knew as "a highly evolved intelligence on whom we did not often intrude our mundane affairs." True, the Master did not warn Mr. Stead against passage on the Titanic. Rather, he spoke in a riddle, because what is ordained must be, and obstruc- tion only make more difficult the accomplishment of those high and just purposes which are known to the hierarchies of advanced beings that guide the destinies of the world.
As early as 1901, Hilarion warned his disciples in these words, "Children of the new dispensation, be ye ready; the war of the ages is upon us!" The great original Armageddon even then was being fought in the skies, and its battle front was not
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merely one thousand and six hundred furlongs in length as was the front of the earthly Armageddon spoken of in Rev. xiv: 20. Rather, the conflict between the hosts of Light and those of Darkness which ended in the discomforture of the latter, and the bringing down of the battle to the material plane, was over a line far longer than one thousand and six hundred times one thousand and six hun- dred furlongs.
From the beginning of the new century until now. Master H. has been chief among many who are preparing conditions suited to a verification of the accessibility of the spiritual realms, a verification that should convince all but the obstinate material- ist of whom it can be said that having eyes he shall not see, and having ears he shall not hear.
Furthermore, Master H. — whom certain ones know to be the John the Baptist of the new Dis- pensation— is prepariiT^ the world, and this country specially, for an appearance of one of the Great Teachers; a spiritual being clothed upon, as was Jesus when in the midst of the faithful disciples after the Resurrection : a being whom no one will dare lay hands upon, and against whom no evil mouths will venture to cry out "Crucify him! Crucify him!" If one understand that, in a materialized body, or rather one having the ele- ments of permanency, the atoms will be in a state of flux, he sees that not until the rage and hate engendered by the world war has subsided, can
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any great number of human organisms be depended upon to furnish the Avatar with wholly pure atoms whenever needed.
Hence the day of consummation may be delayed beyond the eight years which yet remain until the time indicated by Master H.
ARMAGEDDON {A Prophecy)
"And I saw heaven open, and behold a white horse; and he that set upon him was called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he doth judge and make war." Rev. 19: 11,
O Judge and Warrior! Faithful! True!
O many-crowned, thine eyes aflame! Thou of the name that no man knew.
Though in all human years the same!
Thou of the vesture deeply dyed Amidst the wrathful wine-press red !
Upon thy spotless war-horse ride
The King and Lord of thousands led.
From out thy mouth a sharpened sword.
The sceptred iron in thy hand. Thy look is lightning flashed abroad
To blast them who against thee stand.
The beast, and one his image base. Condemned of God, disowned of man, , Cain-like shall nowhere find a place
Safe from the Law's relentless bann.
And those that bear the fateful brand. And think to share a tyrant's rule.
In cunning net themselves had planned. Shall perish even as the fool.
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Whereat an angel in the sun
Shall sound a summons loud and far: "The vengeance of our God is done;
Feed every foul upon his war.
" Captains and Kings shall be your meat, And mighty men of lofty place.
And of the remnant ye shall eat
Whose lives were menace to their race.
ELECTRICAL ENERGY
SEARCHING for the ultimate particle of matter, the physicist penetrates the atom, and finds a nucleus, and the electrons revolving around it. Since both nucleus and electrons are electrical, it appears that matter is really a manifestation of electrical energy. The nucleus itself is the mys- tery whose solution seems beyond the grasp of Material Science.
In nucleus and electrons the occultist finds marvelous verification of the Hermitic maxim "As above, so below." When the Logos ruling our solar system had condensed the original nebula to a sun, and that sun had hurled from its plastic bulk the planets which revolve in their appointed orbits, the Logos in countless degrees duplicated the process down even to the infinitesimal; the nucleus and the electrons.
Evidently the nucleus in humble way is a sun, a magnetic center holding to an orbit every electron that so accomplishes an evolution which, in the
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aggregate of nuclai [and electrons, will raise the vibration of the earth mass to the limit attainable by a physical planet such as ours. In respect to the force which both sun and electrons thus mani- fest, the fact is that that which on the material ' plane appears as this energy, is counterparted on each higher plane, and everywhere and always is a trinity of forces. That form of electrical energy which has become the many-handed servant of man, an energy familiar yet intangible, is only a cruder manifestation of power.
This electron energy contains a negative power of destruction which, if wholly operative, could almost hurl the earth from its orbit into the spacial deeps. Times have been when that nega- tive, coupled with its more subtle correspondent in man, has deluged continents, or else has destroyed them through outbursts of subterranean fire. Moreover, what has happened may recur, if terrestrial conditions arouse the negative of a world-enveloping and permeating force.
Turning from this form of electrical energy, we discover another, proper to certain higher spheres of our seven-fold world : the sphere of crude desire ; and that of pure love. This energy binds the higher to the lower sphere that through their union Compassion may be evolved. This energy also exists in man, and there unites Buddhi to Kama that the Christ likeness may eventuate.
Another form of electrical energy is proper to
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certain other spheres of our seven-fold world: the sphere of material mind ; and that of spiritual mind. In man this energy not only unites the higher manas to the lower manas that the two may be equalized, but it is the antaskarana, the middle principle, binding the triad to the quarternary.
Another form of electrical energy is proper to certain other spheres of our earth septenary: the sphere of personal will; and that of spiritual will. This energy binds the two for the purpose of unification. In man this energy unites Atma to the astral principle that the godlike being may result.
Concerning the seven world spheres, and the seven human principles, they are evolved mani- festations of that electrical energy which, inherent in the formless world stuff, required the positive vibration of the Creative Word to awaken them from the lethargy of seeming death. As for the intermediates that weld and equalize the above- mentioned pairs of opposites, both in the world and in man, they were bequeathed by the Solar Hierarchies who thus gave of themselves that, through these, the world might be unified with the Spiritual Sun, and man with those sublime beings who rule the Solar System.
Gravitation is the highest manifestation of elec- trical energy yet known. It emanates from the Kosmic Logos; that of the invisible Central Sphere. Like all electrical energy of lesser vibra-
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tion, it has a positive influence; one discovered by Newton, and a negative influence operative in certain regions of the Universe. The Galaxy, that great storehouse of material, is the appropriate birthplace of suns. There, upon certain of these, the negative influence is active, for the remote regions of space must be peopled with living light. But when the clock of Time strikes the mid-day hour of evolving Creation, involution begins with the positive energy of Gravitation become univer- sally operative; and when, at twilight, the Father- Mother Sphere shall have drawn to itself every wandering star-child, they there shall rest and renew themselves through the Maha-pralaya, the seven eternities, the Kosmic Night, even until the new morning appears larger and more radiant with promise than any of old.
In these brief statements concerning electrical energy, we have not defined it, and now, in con- clusion, the explanation will be but a surface one. Electrical energy is a manifestation — adapted to each plane of our seven-fold world, and to each principle of septenary man — of Will, Wisdom, and Love, the Trinity in Unity, the Word of Power. If at times the negative aspect of the Word of Power is operative in the world, this is so only for the purpose of karmic adjustment. Wrath is a word of earthly origin ; one that grew out of human shortcomings, therefore, it in no way indicates any
attribute of God. „
11.
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THE DAYS OF THE LORD
ONE day is with the Lord as a thousand years. II Peter 3:8. In the Hght of the Arcane Wisdom, we perceive many interpreta- tions of these quoted words of Peter. For instance, a Day of the Lord is the period of the sun's passage from one sign to the next in the equinoctial proces- sion. Our Earth has experienced an immense number of these days. Each of them may be called a new age, at the beginning of which the progressing Earth Spirit takes on a higher condi- tion; one that should result in the betterment of the human race, provided it be in a receptive con- dition which, however, is not always the case.
Whoever has mastered the intricate law of cycles, can determine very nearly the life period of our Earth. A man's death may be a lingering one, but, at the last, life ceases suddenly; and so it is to be with the Earth after the end of its final round which terminates with the close of the seventh Great I)ay of the Lord. In "The Revela- tion of John," a Day of the Lord, is fixed at 2160 ordinary years, and not at 1260 days or years, for this period is only a blind.
While 2160 years — ^whose condensed number is nine — are not precisely one-twelfth of the great equinoctial cycle, John chose these years because divisible without a remainder by nearly every number appearing in Revelation. These numbers
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are 2, 3, 3>^, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 12, 24, 144, 360, and 1600. The exceptions are 3}4, 7, and 1600. Now while 1260 can be divided by 3>^ and 7, 1260 years are only seven-twelfths of the approxi- mate years of the great cycle.
To one who delves deep into the symbolism of Revelation, it is evident that the thousand millenial years mentioned in Chapter xx:4, are contained in that Day of the Lord the cycle from Aquarius to Capricornus; but much special knowledge is necessary to determine the period of travail ere the birth of the thousand years which, after all, are not necessarily what are commonly understood to be a thousand years.
Even as the Earth, man has his Days of the Lord. Each of these may be said to begin at his conception, and to continue until the conception preceding his next birth. Now, whereas, the physical body of man disintegrates during his day, the body of the earth endures seemingly unaffected throughout its day. This to ordinary observa- tion; but to the great planetary rulers, our earth, and all other earths, each seems to lose something of vitality toward the end of its day — which for this world approximates 2160 years — and to renew its energy almost suddenly at the opening of its New Day, which for us began early in 192(|.
As for man; that he may gain rounded perfec- tion during his Days of the Lord, he often must traverse the twelve Zodiacal signs beginning with
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Aries and, again and again in twenty-four normal births, averaging 1080 years apart, complete the cycle which should be a spiral. Having circled the Zodiac six times, he may then — if always pro- gressive—become one of the 144,000 mentioned by the Revelator; those whose great Day of the Lord is indicated approximately by the figures 155,520. By renouncing its Devachan, an advanced soul may much shorten this period. Often an unprogressive life, or a premature death, is followed by birth into the same sign, because the experience of a sign must to a certain extent be assimilated before it can be abandoned for the next.
Despite his births under all signs, every man is by nature affiliated with a certain sign, wherefore, the outcome for mankind will be twelve classes of super-men embodying twelve kinds of excellences, or, to be exact, if Virgo, Libra, and Scorpio are deemed to be one sign, then this culminating world shall have produced ten classes of beings expressing ten perfections.
Finally, to be in full harmony with the quoted words of Peter, we should say that all the Days of Man upon the Earth, and indeed all the Days of the Earth itself, are but a Day of the Lord, "The Lofty One that inhabiteth Eternity."
H.
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JUDAS
IN the preceding teaching, we said that despite his birth under all signs, every man is affiliated with a certain sign which in all conditions has ever been his 'own. When one is born in the month ruled by his original sign, his life during that incarnation exhibits in a pronounced degree the excellences and defects, the virtues and vices, acquired during many past lives. In other words, his hidden traits are then brought to the surface. Especially is this true of him if a unit in a group of twelve persons representing the twelve signs.
Calling his disciples, Jesus, as a Master of Wis- dom, chose them with regard to the twelve signs, all of which should be represented in that complete company. Judas was a Capricornian born in the month ruled by his original sign, and in an age when the processional sign Pisces was casting its earliest influence over the world. For these rea- sons a two-fold urge was upon the true character of Judas whom Jesus chose to represent the nation in its degenerate days. Inasmuch as the eleven were not yet perfected through trial and suffering, it followed that their every moment of weakness and doubt re-acted upon the most negative of the twelve, and so a three-fold urge hurried Judas on to his infamous deed.
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Jesus the Christ corresponded with the sun, and, like Judas, his antithesis, he was born into the month sign of Capricorn, but not yet into its processional sign, concerning which event of some two thousand years hence, a certain teaching declares that when the great wheel in slow turning meets the sun in Capricorn, then, in the twelfth month of the appointed year, the sheep shall be separated from the goats.
The Israelitish people had experienced certain minor judgments or warnings under Aries their national sign, and, ere the Ram yielded to the on- coming Pisces, they were to be dispersed among the nations. The judgment of Judas was a type of the larger judgment about to occur; but that latter would not be an eternal one, for, with the waning of Pisces, and the near advent of Aquarius, their national guilt would be expiated, and they would return to their own. As for the judgment of Judas, that is another matter; enough that it is not eternal. True he succumbed to a three-fold urge, but one component thereof was extraneous, and, at the bar of rigid justice, that influence demands consideration. Again, the judgment upon both Judas and his nation, corresponds with the judgment upon individuals and nations in the latter years of Aquarius when Capricorn begins to supersede the elder sign.
Whenever the probationary members of the White Lodge are grouped in twelves to correspond
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with the higher aspects of the zodiacal signs, progress is much enhanced, but usually the weak- est among them is unable to bear the test resulting from the rapid rise in the group vibration; so he withdraws and, as reaction equals action, he naturally identifies himself with another group the polar opposite of his own. On the other hand, in a group of twelve members of the Black Lodge, which group must correspond with the lower aspects of the zodiacal signs, often there is one who, realizing the rapid descent of his companions into evils of every kind, takes warning and withdraws to seek through repentance and right living, a place in the polar opposite of the group abandoned. Such a one in a former life was Saul of Tarsus, afterward affiliated with the higher members of the White.
In respect to the Black Lodge, the story of Joseph and his brethren has an inner meaning not generally known. Stripped of exoteric embellish- ments, that story may be briefly interpreted thus: The twelve constituted a group of men, brothers of the shadow, each born under his own sign ; hence the group emphasized the negative forces of the entire Zodiac. Joseph, the youngest, separated from the others and entered the right hand path, and afterward through his efforts the eleven were reclaimed. So was it with Saul when as Paul he would reclaim the Gentiles, among whom many
of his old group were then re-born. „
rl.
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SWEDENBORG AND THE ANCIENT WISDOM
BREAKING from the conception of God held almost universally by the Christian church, a conception which makes Him a Trinity of Per- sons, Swedenborg says: "The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, are the three essentials of one God that make One, even as the soul, body, and opera- tion in man." Swedenborg thus formulates his idea of the Divine Oneness: "Jehovah, the Creator of the universe, descended and assumed the human that he might redeem and save men. He de- scended as the Divine Truth which is the Word, and yet He did not separate the Divine Good. The human by which He sent Himself into the world, is what is called the Son of God. ' '
In support of the statement that Jehovah thus became man, Swedenborg quotes extensively from the Prophets; thus: "Behold a virgin shall conceive and bear a Son, who shall be called God with us." "Unto us a child is born; unto us a Son is given; and the government shall be upon His shoulder, and His name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, the mighty God, the everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace."
According to Swedenborg: "There are two things which make God's essence, the Divine Love and the Divine Wisdom, or, what is the same, the Divine Good and the Divine Truth." Elsewhere, Swedenborg called the Divine Will the
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receptical and moy^r of the Divine Good. Sup- porting his view that Jehovah God descended as Divine Truth, or the Word, or the Christ, Swedenborg quotes from John: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us."
Swedenborg also identifies the Word with the New Church, and its body of doctrine. Passing through the heavens even into the world, the Word became accommodated both to angels and men, and so we have the earthly church of the New Jerusalem; in fact Divine Truth, the Com- forter, the Holy Spirit sent by the Lord as he had promised. The Word that is God "descended as Divine Truth that redemption might be accom- plished; in other words, that the hells might be subjugated, the heavens arranged in order, and the church established."
Swedenborg held that both interiorly and exteriorly, man was created in the image of God; also that the angelic heavens are in God's sight as one man, having the human form, and correspond- ing with every organ and part of physical man; moreover, in conformity with the Divine Order, established by God at creation, Jehovah neces- sarily assumed the human form upon this earth.
Swedenborg claimed that every earth of our solar system, and even the moon, holds a humanity in the human form. He believed he had been
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brought into rapport with the angelic societies belonging to each whereof he says: "All spirits and angels are from the human race, and they are near their respective earths."
Swedenborg assures his readers that from such angels, he had learned much concerning the peoples of the many worlds made known to him, some of which lay beyond the limits of our solar sys- tem, and others even in remote regions of the sky. In the farthest he still discovered the human form varying not greatly from the type suited to our planet.
Having as he believed discovered a physical humanity on every earth, near or far, Swedenborg makes the astonishing statement that many sciences cultivated on our globe, are unknown to men elsewhere; for instance: astronomy, geography, mechanics, physics, medicine, optics, and, what seems wholly incredible, the arts of writing and printing. In respect to these two, Swedenborg explains that only on our earth, where corporeal and terrestrial things are over-much loved, the divine things of heaven cannot flow in and be received; hence the necessity of writing and print- ing every kind of knowledge conducive to human welfare.
Assent to this statement prepares one for the following reasons why the Lord was born on our earth, and not on another; the chief reason is: "because of the Word, in that it might be written
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on our earth, and afterwards published broadcast, and then preserved to all posterity, and so make manifest to all in another life that God was- made man." The second reason is that "because of man's materiality, the Lord could not otherwise be manifest to him."
Though the Lord incarnated on our earth alone, Swedenborg makes plain that other worlds were by no means left in spiritual darkness. Concern- ing the worship common to the inhabitants of other earths, he says: "Those not idolators, all acknowledge the Lord to be the only God ; for they adore the Divine not as invisible but as visible, for the following reason, as well as others, because when the Divine appears to them, he appears in human form, even as when he appeared to Abra- ham. Hence all who adore the Divine under a human form, are accepted of the Lord."
Having drawn from a mass of verbiage some of the chief ideas distinguishing Swedenborg's con- ception of the Word, and what is directly related thereto, let us now discover first, those similarities which would connect his conception with that of the Ancient Wisdom Religion, and, second, those differences which after all separate the two views of certain matters common to both philoso- phies.
The Jehovah of the Jews exhibited the charac- teristics of a partial, jealous, and revengeful tribal god, but the Jehovah of Swedenborg is conceived
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of in a far nobler way. On the other hand, Jesus probably never used the name Jehovah; one not uncommon with his forerunners the prophets. His God was the Father invoked in the Lord's Prayer. The God of the Wisdom Religion is a Unity manifest as a trinity of attributes. So also the Jehovah of Swedenborg.
The Buddhi-Manas of the Wisdom Religion is equivalent to the Divine Love and the Divine Wisdom of Swedenborg' s system, while Atma, or Spiritual Will, the great Father principle of the older system, is the vehicle of Buddhi, as with Swedenborg the Divine Will is the vehicle of the Divine Good.
According to Swedenborg, when Jehovah, the creator of the universe, descended to assume the human, He came as the Divine Truth which is the Word. This human is called the Son of God, the Christ. The doctrine of the Christ is not peculiar to the Christian church. In the Wisdom Religion, the word Ishvara held a meaning in some ways similar to that afterwards attached to the word Christ.
In respect to the Word made flesh, let us con- sider the most esoteric teaching thus far imparted by the White Lodge. While not the Supreme, the Christos is yet the means by which Divine Will, Love, and Wisdom, those attributes of the Supreme, make themselves apprehensible to beings succes- sively lower in the scale of creation. The Christos
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may be compared t6 the sun's reflection in a calm lake. In respect to the manifestation of the Christos perceived by the most exalted beings, the comparison is very inadequate; but when the Divine Glory reaches our lowly earth, or, as Swedenborg says: "when passing through the heavens to this world, the Word is accommodated to angels and men," reflections of reflections have become dimmer and dimmer. This result is neces- sary to man's comprehension of the Divine, since whatsoever transcends his feeble powers is of non -effect.
Because of all men the most fit, Jesus received the Divine Likeness proper to this world; one nevertheless too glorious for men to perceive except through his eyes; that is, through his teach- ings. Because in its original manifestation, the Word is God to the most exalted beings, so to each lower rank the manifestation of the Word is also God. Were it otherwise, men could never know Him as he is; but because of the method adopted by Divine Wisdom, men through the Word may progress to higher and higher concepts of Him. Thus the idea of God proper to this day is in advance of that revealed through Moses.
Concerning the second coming of the Word, Jesus gave a definite promise which we contend has not yet been fulfilled. Swedenborg taught that the Church of the New Jerusalem is that second coming; an incorporeal descent of the Word.
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A result of his teaching, one of which the Swedish seer never dreamed, is that to no little extent, cer- tain later teachers were encouraged to make similar claims for their own doctrines. On the other hand, the orthodox Christian looks for a visible descent of the Lord as final Judge, and separator of the sheep from the goats.
Concerning the Word, which according to Swedenborg, signifies Divine Truth, or Divine Wisdom, he thought its incarnation in Judea an event unique in the world's history; whereas, the Wisdom Religion requires periodical descents of the Word in what have been, and what again shall be, minor and major Avatars. Those first men- tioned are comparable to the moon during its quarterings, while the major Avatars are like the moon at its full.
Swedenborg's belief that both, internally and externally, man was created in the image of God, is in accord with the esoteric statement of the Wisdom Religion ; but its unveiled teaching declares that as primeval man became more and more im- mersed in matter, his external form steadily changed from that of the Word, or Christos, which may be conceived of as a luminous sphere. To this sphere, man's higher bodies even now bear more or less resemblance. As for the Grand Man, of Swedenborg, or the Adam Kadmon of the Kaballa, if possibly he resemble the human physi- cal shape, it is because he has not yet evolved to
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the all-inclusive Kosmic Sphere; a form beyond human conception since its center is ever3rwhere. That our solar system is a sphere, or nearly that, is indicated by the orbit of Neptune, and that of at least one planet beyond. The Wisdom 9-eligion holds every creature, man, world, and sun, to be a manifestation of the Word; hence these all tend toward their ideal forms.
In its aspect as audible sound, the Word, as understood by the Wisdom Religion, is not a body of spoken doctrines, but rather that which can compress into a few syllables the idea of the creation, preservation, and final dissolution of worlds, even as, according to Swedenborg, the angels can give in a few words the contents of an entire book. The outer syllables of the Word are only its shell; but, as one rises in the scale of be- ing, he attains to more and more interior corre- spondences of the outer until, finally, the uttered or mentally expressed syllables make known to him the Archetypal Idea, and its unfolding as existant in the Divine Mind.
Swedenborg's statement that every earth of our solar system, and even the moon, holds a humanity in the human form, can be molded into har- mony with our very esoteric instructions touch- ing this matter. These reveal that this earth, as the basis of the seven-fold solar scheme, is the only abode of physical man, and that in planets suc- cessively higher, the true human form, because
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more and more removed from terrestrial matter, has been less and less deviated from. As for the moon, the visible orb is but the discarded shell of an invisible planet where abide certain highly- evolved beings.
The statement that "All spirits and angels are from the human race, and these are near their respective earths," quite agrees with our teachings; but disagreement begins when Swedenborg declares that from such angels he had learned much con- cerning the peoples of many worlds, some of which lay beyond the limits of the solar system. Because our philosophy shows that at the confines of the solar system is a "Ring pass not," we class the above statement with that of Mahomet who sup- posed himself to have been caught up to the seventh heaven, there to meet face to face with the Supreme Being.
Most decidedly do we dispute the statement that other worlds, though having physical humani- ties, are ignorant not only of the arts enumerated by Swedenborg, but even of writing and printing. According to him, the first of these is used in the celestial and the spiritual heavens, but in a spiritual style which consists of mere letters, each of which involves some meaning. We would not contend for such arts in other worlds, had Sweden- borg not found them to be missing on the physical planes of those worlds. On the super-physical planes of the higher planets where, as we teach,
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their humanities abfHe even as do men on our solid earth, the means of universal enlightenment differ from any obtaining here, and in a way almost unbelievable by terrestrial beings.
Evidently the finding on other physical earths, of spiritual conditions unknown upon this physical planet since the days of fable, was vital to Sweden- borg's theological system, because that finding furnished plausible reason why Jehovah God as the Word should incarnate here, and only here. As for the other reason: "because the Word might be written on this earth, and afterward published broadcast, and then preserved to all posterity, and so made manifest to all in another life," to us this reason seems far-fetched and even puerile.
That the Wisdom Religion agrees with Sweden- borg's belief that other worlds are by no means left in spiritual darkness, the doctrine of the Christos amply proves. Moreover, that, for special purposes, certain great beings, corresponding with our Avatars, should from time to time appear on those earths, and in the forms proper to their dwellers, is in conformity with the Hermitic maxim: "As above, so below."
The writings of Swedenborg contain no hint of reincarnation as taught by the exponents of the Ancient Wisdom. Of man's origin he says: "The soul, from the father, is the man, and the body, from the mother, is not the man, but is from him. The body is but the covering of the soul, and is
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composed of things of the natural world, while the soul is of things in the spiritual world. After death, every man puts off the natural, and retains the spiritual, together with a kind of border from the purest things of nature around him." This border or limbus is no doubt identified with the subtle matter which investigators have discovered exuding from the bodies of mediums when in a trance condition, and probably it is very like the "etheric double" mentioned in theosophical writings.
In lieu of reincarnation, advanced Sweden- borgians argue that the original amoeba, from which originated the amoeboid corpuscles in man's blood, had a tiny soul, or a spiritual essence, capable of infinite subdivision. We contend that this theory accounts wholly for only the repro- duction of physical resemblences.
The Ancient Wisdom declared that what exists has always existed, and its life is inherent. The world of to-day, and the manifold existences upon it, are the outcome of physical, mental, and spiritual evolution. Concerning creation Swedenborg says: "All things are created by the Lord, through the sun of the spiritual world, and not through the sun of the natural world, since the latter is far below the former, with the spiritual world above it, and the natural world below it. Moreover, the sun of the natural world has no life of its own, but only that which it draws from the spiritual sun;
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that first proceeding of Divine Love, and Divine Wisdom, from which two all things are."
To show how utterly Swedenborg rejects the idea of inherent life in the things of the natural world, we quote the following: "It is commonly believed that man is not merely the receptacle of life, but is also Life; whereas, he is not Life, but only a finite receptacle of life from God." In respect to space and time, the following from Swedenborg might almost have been taken from the Ancient Wisdom: "The creation of the universe was not wrought from space to space, nor from time to time, for to the Creator these are non-existant, but it was wrought from eternity and from infinity."
Again, in agreement with the Ancient Wisdom, Swedenborg says : "There is no difference between the maximum and the minimum of either time or space." His meaning is that what to man are great and small in size, and long and short in time, are seen by God to be equal. Much that Sweden- borg discovered concerning time and space in the angelic heavens, accords with the old teachings. In further agreement with them, Swedenborg holds Love to be a spiritual substance, and Wisdom to be its form, and that by these, as the Spiritual Sun, all things in both the spiritual and the natural world are created. He argues convincingly that if Love and Wisdom be not substance and form, they are only imaginary entities.
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What is known to the students of the Ancient Wisdom as the "Great Breath," has its parallel in the atmospheres in three degrees which, according to Swedenborg, originate by perpetual influx from the spiritual sun. His statement that the scenery of the spiritual world proceeds from the affections of its inhabitants, and changes as their affections change, wholly coincides with ancient teachings. Swedenborg always conceives of God as an anthro- pomorphic being; moreover, he asserts that after death, man is in a spiritual body which duplicates every organ of the physical body, but, whereas in the natural world the reproductive organs perpetuate the species, in the heavenly world they beget angelic love and wisdom in their possessors, while in the hells they beget hate and insanity. The Ancient Wisdom teaches that the reproductive organs pertain only to the physical body, and in posthumous life their creative potency is trans- ferred to the mind and supplements it. This union of what is known as the upper and the lower triads, enables the discarnate man to create his environment from the plastic substance of the super-physical planes.
While yet in earth life, Jesus transferred the power of the lower triad to his brain centres. Hence, he became a creator who moulded material substance at will; as witness the miracle of the loaves and fishes.
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In a certain matter vital to his doctrine, Sweden- borg differs wholly from the ancient teaching, for he argues that should man embody a portion of the Divine, God's love for him would be self-love. The spermatozoon from the father, and the ovum in the womb of the mother, are the nucleus of the human child that, for a season, must draw nourish- ment from the body of the mother. Now who would say that the love of the parents for their offspring as a physical being, is in any way self- love? Why, then, if man embody a spark of the Divine Essence, should God's love for him be self- love? We grant that if spiritual man be in fact the thought of God, — as Mary Baker Eddy taught — then God's love for his child would be that self-love which Swedenborg deems contrary to the Divine Nature.
If, from Swedenborg's position, it be contended that man contains nothing of the Divine, since he is not eternal save through influx, and, further- more, that he is unable to create, the Ancient Wisdom rejoins that even his physical components are deathless. The fleshly form disintegrates, but its atoms persist, and are ever usable in other bodies. As for the act of creation, nothing can be added to a universe whose total is God. Creation results from the moulding of old materials into new shapes. Because a being from God, man is a potential creator on the way to full realization of his powers.
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Darwin published a theory of evolution, and Swedenborg, a doctrine of discreet degrees. Three of these are create and finite, and pertain to the natural world and its creatures, while, above these, three are uncreate and infinite, and are proper to the heavenly world and its angels. Man originated from the spiritual principle in these high degrees, and the animal and the vegetable kingdoms from that in the lowest of the three. After death, every human being eventually gravitates to the altitude of his discreet degree, there to remain fixed forever. The Ancient Wisdom enumerates and describes seven continuous degrees or principles; four proper to the lower planes, and three to the higher planes of our septenary world. The seventh degree or principle, intermingles with the sixth, the sixth intermingles with the fifth, and so on to the basic degree. In this procedure, these degrees resemble Swedenborg's discreet degrees.
Unlike the six discreet degrees, the seven con- tinuous degrees separate into almost innumerable subdivisions. Increasing possibilities of use reside in the lower and lower, and therefore more and more complex degrees, and in this they are like the six of Swedenborg. An ancient teaching is, that while every human being, and every evolving creature, eventually finds his permanent sub- division; within that section innumerable oppor- tunities await him. The total of wisdom to result from this procedure, will duplicate the contents of
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r" the Divine Mind. To the above, let us add the
following: Swedenborg asserts that before the
Lord's assumption of the Human, the natural or
basic degree of the heavenly world existed not like
the celestial and the spiritual degrees, but only
in possibility. On the other hand, the Ancient
teaching is, that the three highest degrees or, in
other words, Atma-Buddhi-Manas, ever existed
as a perfect trinity.
Swedenborg states, as a truth never before made known to the world, that angels and men have an inmost and supreme region of the soul into which the Divine Sphere of the Lord first flows, and which is His most immediate dwelling-place in them. A quite similar but more comprehensive idea is revealed in these words from the Bhagavad Gita: "There dwelleth in the heart of every creature, Ishwara the Master."
It is generally assumed that Swedenborg's writings contain no hint of that physical, mental, and spiritual evolution, which the Ancient Wisdom enlarges upon. We contend that such a hint is in the following: "In both the animal and the vegetable kingdoms there is an image of creation, and an image of man, also an image of Infinite and Eternal." No doubt such images would operate as urges towards realization of what they represent.
Swedenborg assures his readers that a dis- tinguishing sphere of affections and thoughts
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emanates from and •. surrounds every being, both in heaven and in hell, and the correspondent of that sphere envelops every world, creature, and thing. The divine original of these spheres is the Spiritual Sun, that emanation wherein the Lord Himself, dwells bodily. The Ancient Teaching much resembles the above, since it declares that a seven- fold aura, whose prototype is the Spiritual Sun, envelops with its graded ethers of seven colors, every world and every atom, and every form of life between these extremes.
According to Swedenborg, man has an individual book of life: to wit, his brain and his whole body. From the Ancient Teaching it is learned that upon the radiant aura which envelops a man, his every thought, word, and action are recorded, to be reproduced at the proper time.
Swedenborg claims that from the angels he learned that after death an evil man cannot be reformed by instruction, because his natural plane of knowledge and affections has been permanently closed, and so he remains forever in his ruling love; in fact it were easier to change a night bird into a dove, than to change a subject of hell into an angel of heaven. This dogma, as uncompromising as any ever formulated by the most rigid theologian of the Christian church, drew from Emerson the exclamation: "To what a perversion had Gothic theology arrived that Swedenborg admitted no conversion of evil spirits." On the other hand,
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through its doctrine of rebirth, the Ancient Teach- ing promises to such a man a new opportunity in the natural world, that instruction, reformation, and progress may ensue.
Swedenborg's theory that posthumous man's free will is unyielding, and his ruling love persistent, evidently makes the hells eternal; whereas, an ancient teaching can be paraphrased thus: The material worlds, those emanations from the physical sun, shall yet return to its bosom. Likewise, the souls of all men shall be gathered to their source in that heart of creation, the spiritual sun.
Swedenborg explains that one purpose of the Incarnation was the subjugation of the hells, a task accomplishable through the Lord's assump- tion of the Human, that antithesis of His spiritual Being. Because of this assumption and conquest, the hells eventually sank to their proper place, never more to infringe upon the lowest degree of the heavenly world. In respect to the hells, the Ancient Wisdom teaches that when incarnating as an Avatar, every great soul can and does ameliorate hellish conditions; hence, evil is being gradually transformed to good in a becoming, universal as that which Hegel sought to demon- strate.
A cardinal doctrine of Swedenborg's system is that of Conjugal Love. From the union of Love and Wisdom in God, proceed love in woman, and wisdom in man, and the marriage of love and
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wisdom on earth results in conjugal love. This marriage corresponds with that of Christ and his church. Conjugal love begun in the world, is continued with the angels, all of whom are from the human race. Emerson's criticism of this doctrine: "Heaven is not the pairing of two, but the communion of all souls," accords with the ancient teaching that the mutual love of husband and wife, and parent and child, are but the neces- sary beginnings of a love destined to include all beings.
Swedenborg tells of three judgments, the first in the time of Noah, the second when Christ was on earth, and the third which he himself witnessed in the spiritual world in 1757, and which he identi- fied with the Last Judgment foretold by John, the Revelator. Of this third he said: "There will be no more general judgments, because the way to the final state is now laid down forever, and the outward man can no longer differ from the inner when he passes to the spiritual world." The Ancient Wisdom describes certain prehistoric and historic judgments consummated through the cyclic operation of Karmic Law, but it foretells others yet to be brought about through that Law.
Swedenborg's saying that every society in heaven has its opposite in hell, and that every kind of good has its antithesis, is parallelled by the Ancient Teaching that for every positive in the universe, a negative somewhere exists. Finally,
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since further pursuit of the matter might weary the reader, as a scientist, Swedenborg conceived of an elementary vortical particle much like that known to the teachers of the Ancient Wisdom, and whose description almost applies to the structure of the Atom as now understood.
Examination of the entire body of Swedenborg's doctrine would discover constantly both those similarities which identify his system with that of the Wisdom Religion, and those differences which separate the two. Concerning similarities and differences, our explanation is as follows: Though not a minor avatar, Swedenborg had developed almost to the condition of one; so he had not rounded into the perfect seer who always interprets correctly whatever he sees and hears on the higher planes. In him, certain ideas concern- ing Jesus were too deeply ingrained; besides, his attitude toward the "Papists," both in this world and the next, reflected his unconscious participa- tion to some extent in the narrow sectarian preju- dices of his time. As for his estimate of his mission, it appears in the following: "The mani- festation of the Lord through me, and my intro- duction by the Lord into the spiritual world as to sight, hearing and speech, is superior to all miracles, for it is not stated in history that such intercourse has been granted to any other man."
Swedenborg's departure from the traditional was in many ways a radical one, as witness the
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following: "Adam was not the first of mankind, but by him and his wife is represented the first church, and by the Garden of Eden, its wisdom, and by the Tree of Life, its looking to the Lord who was to come, and by the Tree of Knowledge of good and evil, its looking to self alone."
Again, while the discovery of things spiritual is affected through the conjunction of man and higher powers, certain heavenly conjunctions — outwardly astronomical — are necessary to the seer's understanding of such great matters as Swedenborg attempted. Although he taught of the consummation of the age, and the end of the Church then existing, and the establishing of the New Church which would succeed the Adamic, the Noahic, the Israelitish, and the Christian churches, and would endure for ages of ages, it was not the Swedish seer's privilege to appear in a cycle neces- sary to full comprehension of Truth; hence his half-truths which now almost reveal, and then quite conceal. Truth as it is.
As Emerson said : " Sweden bor g' s theological bias fatally narrowed his interpretation of nature; As one result of this, the correspondences constantly used by him were very much overworked in his efforts to connect, directly or indirectly with the dogmas of the New Church, what he believed to be the interior meaning or spiritual sense of the books of the Old and the New Testament. Never- theless, in reviving the ancient doctrine of cor-
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respondences, so long absent from the world, Swedenborg, to no little extent, prepared mankind for those deeper and wider ones which, during the last forty years, and especially since the beginning of the twentieth century, the Ancient Wisdom has brought to the outside world.
THE UNKNOWABLE SUPREME
SWEDENBORG'S idea of the Spiritual Sun suggests certain inquiries and surmises with which we shall well-nigh end this third and final volume of the series begun with "Special Teachings from the Arcane Science."
In a previous chapter it was said that the great day of creation opened with a surpassingly brilliant point of spiritual lightwhich, appearing at the centre, afterward widened to the circumference of the uni- verse. Those who know, do not positively affirm that this point manifested at the middle of what now is the Zodiacal circle, and that it was, in fact, the centre of the Spiritual Sun, if that which focuses itself in every atom can be said to have what generally is understood as a centre. Whether or not other universes lie beyond the range of telescopic vision, is a matter about which the Masters of Wisdom are reticent, for what was said in the chapter: "The Great Breath," concerning the universe and the Universal Life Globe, does
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not necessarily make these all-inclusive, nor does it, as a certainty, cover those remotest regions discoverable through modern astronomical methods ; so, as already said, we now shall confine ourselves to inquiry and surmise.
Should other universes exist, comparable with that of which the Milky Way is the framework, did each or any proceed from a Spiritual Sun of its own, and in a manner analogous to that of our universe? and will the evolution of each or any be succeeded by involution? by a drawing back comparable with what our universe is now in process of?
As for the "coal sacks," those abyssmal deeps of impenetrable blackness, bounded by the star- clusters of the Galaxy, may they not each hide an entire universe; one seemingly dead, but really in the midst of a profound pralaya destined to endure for untold ages? Again, what of those farthest faintest nebulae that well-nigh defy the most powerful lens? nebulae probably bulking large as our universe, or larger still, but apparently small as the most diminutive star-group, because sepa- rated from human eyes by what Herschel estimated at not less than two million light years.
Furthermore, what of other nebulae hiding where their discovery awaits the perfecting of every astronomical means? And what of the swift- journeying stars unquestionably there also; stars that will seem fixed through myriads of centuries?
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Does each of these incipient universes look to its own Supreme, and thus verify Whitman's dictum that there can be any number of Supremes? Assuming a satisfactory answer to these questions, we are led to a still deeper inquiry. Inasmuch as the ancient sages may not have known the kosmos entire, is the Parabrahman of the Vedantins all- inclusive? or can there be other all-inclusives, so to speak? and is each above, or at the very inmost of its division of the shoreless, etheric ocean to which, in the beginning of time — that compre- hensible aspect of eternity — the Creative Word set seeming bounds?
That numbers as such are the multiplications of units, is self-evident, but, in respect to things, numbers usually require investigation, and the thinker is therefore urged to trace them down to their very base. Even the ordinary mind shows an inherent desire to reduce multiplicity to unity. This desire manifests in various ways, for instance, with the Hindus, it narrows the human family back to the twins Yama and Yami, or to Manu the divine man whose mind-born children were the progenitors of the race that, with the Jewish chronologists, began with a pair originally one in Adam. Again, this desire makes every creature of the animal kingdom a descendant of the two that, as sole survivors of their species, came forth from the Ark to multiply upon the face of the earth.
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Constructing their pantheons, the ancient peoples of the north, as well as of the south, capped the living pyramid with one supreme ruler. Here He was the All-Father, towering above the fiery Woden and his kin, and there the Persian Ormozd, or else the Egyptian Ammon Ra, that dark and hidden being adored of lesser gods. Elsewhere in prehistoric times He was a never- Hellenized Zeus, who spurned the soil of an Olympus such as the Greeks had invented ; or else He was a Jupiter more spiritual than the Latins ever knew. So, for the wholly celestial pantheon here conjectured, we shall posit a Supreme of Supremes, the container of all Parabrahmins, in fact, a being more remote and indefinable than the God of Spinoza, or the "Unknowable" of the Spencerian philosophy.
AVITCHI
1\ /TANY learned theologians have been puzzled ^^ ^ by the attitude of Jesus toward demoniac possession, for, in casting out evil spirits, he always addressed them as real beings. This attitude of the Master is usually deemed a con- cession to the ignorance and superstition of those days; whereas, acquaintance with certain occult teachings would convince the inquirer that Jesus was wholly sincere in addressing the "devils" as such.
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The eighth spher^ the subject of a former chapter, was once ot larger girth than the solid material globe, but, for several reasons, it has experienced periodical shrinkings, and another is almost due. With the descent of a major Avatar, the distinction between the irreclaimables and the improvables becomes more pronounced than ever before, and so the sphere of the wholly depraved shrinks away from other spheres of the globe chain, some of which are actually expanded through the spiritual force generated by the Avatar.
The devils cast out by Jesus and his disciples, were certain hopeless creatures who, having lost their human shape, were debarred from entering material life through legitimate channels, but who, to gratify their debased desires for physical sen- sation, forced an entrance through the human aura whenever possible. This they did either singly or in groups, as witness the seven devils that obsessed Mary Magdalene.
When Jesus had cured the man possessed by a legion of devils, these creatures immediately realized their unfitness for the human form, and so asked entrance into the bodies of the swine. This the Master permitted, because the wise would understand that the forms of these devils had become wholly animal, and possibly swine-like.
A little known result of Jesus' life, ministry, and supreme sacrifice, was the curtailment of the power of such devils through the contraction of Avitchi
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to a diameter much less than that of the material globe. The words of the devils to Jesus as recorded in Matt. 8, 29, "Art thou come to tor- ment us before the time?" had reference to their future imprisonment beneath the crust of the earth. As the result of their confinement, the world for centuries has been free from a form of obsession which the New Testament writers evi- dently believed in.
The majority of those actually in Avitchi have lost much of human shape, and more of human reason. As for the Black Lodge, its members are all candidates for Avitchi, to whose border line multitudes of the fellowship have gravitated; but, like cunning animals, they avoid the trap. How- ever, they are gradually deteriorating, and even- tually will be drawn into the eighth sphere.
Swedenborg almost always proves a real seer, providing we find the right key to the teaching examined; but that key perhaps he in no way would acknowledge: for example, we acquiesce in his statement that one object of the Lord's assumption of the human was the reduction of the hells, but our explanation is wholly foreign to his philosophy.
H.
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LEVITATION
I ^HE following supplements the chapter on -■- Levitation found in "Special Teachings." When ready for re-embodiment, the human ego is drawn frofn the apex of the subjective arc of its cycle to successively lower conditions by desire for them. This desire eventually brings the ego to the material plane, and binds it to a physical body whose every atom is surcharged with desire for physical life. Moreover, that body is held to the solid globe by the desire, or, in other words, the attraction, of the earth's every physical atom.
During one's sleep, the grasp of the physical body upon its higher principles or bodies is more or less weakened; therefore, the buoyancy of these causes them to rise free until the renewed attraction of the awakened physical atoms draws these bodies back to their tenement.
Theoretically, it is possible to reverse the desire of the physical body atoms for their more ethereal associates. In those rare instances where this is accomplished, the energy employed is the wholly purified principle of spiritual desire peculiar to the buddhic body. The experiences of certain Catholic saints include seemingly verified instances of levitation during moments of religious ecstasy when earthly desire was nullified by its high, spiritual opposite.
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One of the guarded secrets of the Initiates con- cerns the fact that the ethereal components of the triad in all beings, from man upward, are endowed with the potential power of dominating the more and more ponderable components of the quarter- nary in every kingdom of nature. The utmost degree of this power is possessed by the Solar Hierarchies alone. A lesser degree can be employed by the planetary rulers, while full initiates of the White Lodge are capable in a more limited way. Initiates seldom use this power upon man, because it tends to inhibit his free will, and so to retard his progress as an independent and responsible being.
That the Jewish Initiate understood in large measure the possibilities of this spiritual power, is shown by his memorable saying: "If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain. Remove hence to yonder place, and it shall remove." In the word "faith," Jesus, after the custom of the Initiates, concealed the inner truth while seeming to reveal it. Since none of Jesus' disciples has yet penetrated his secret, none has achieved what the Master promised as the literal result of right procedure.
In the old Grecian story, the giants piled Pelon on Ossa in a vain attempt to scale the heavenly Olympus, and overcome the gods assembled there. Beneath this fable is concealed the occult truth that by the exercise of the polar opposite of "faith," mountains are removable. Were it not for the
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dedicated ones wjio Hraw their circle of protection around the human race, such catastrophes would occur to-day, even as they occurred in ancient Atlantis when the Brotherhood of the Shadow put forth a concerted effort to level the living stones of the "Guardian Wall." In Rev. 6, 14, we read: "And every mountain and island were removed out of their places." This occurrence at the opening of the sixth seal, was brought about through "faith," because, in the time of a general judgment, permission so to employ this force is granted by the solar Logos to the planetary Ruler.
Concerning the stories of the levitation of the physical bodies of entranced mediums, we would say first, that if these stories be true, then, during that entrancement, the atoms of those bodies were largely deprived of their desire for the earth's material atoms: secondly, that whoever caused the levitation were discarnate beings freed from desire for physical life: thirdly, that, under the most favorable conditions, the combined buddhic energy of the discarnate group might prove ade- quate to their purpose.
The moving of furniture, and the manipulation of various articles in the seance room, are not instances of the levitation here described; these phenomena are produced by more or less mechan- ical means; in fact by rods of semi-astral matter, caused to project from the medium's body, and
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then made rigid by the combined will and desire of the discarnate entities present.
The vast majority of the feats of levitation witnessed by travelers in the East, are mere con- jurer's tricks, and if the small minority be genuine, the operators are necessarily holy men who have renounced all worldly interests. Inventors have dreamed of a mechanical device capable of neutral- izing the gravitative pull of the earth; but, if our few hints concerning levitation be in any measure correct, such a mechanism, if efficient, will to some extent be a super-physical one, that is, it must act in conjunction with the human mind.
H. P. B.
ISHVARA
ISHVARA in man is that central mystery, the original atom, the magnetic nucleus, around which the atoms first of the triad, and afterward of the quarternary, were assembled through a process requiring ages for its completion. As revealed in an earlier teaching of this series, the process began upon the highest planet, and con- tinued on successive lower ones, and was finished in our humble world.
This pilgrimage of the evolving human was due to Ishvara that not only attracted to itself man's components, but urged him on from planet to
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planet, until his appropriate sphere was gained. Another reason why man chose this abode is the deeply occult one that the Ishvara of the earth entity vibrates in sympathy with his own.
To inner sight, man's Ishvara is a point of light, comparable to no material object save the diamond of somewhat blueish tint. Moreover, the "dia- mond soul" of man duplicates in a minute way that "Cosmic Seed" whose appearance announced the dawn of the present great Kalpa. Again, this Ishvara is a tone; in fact so minute a sub-division of a certain note, that, while every member of the race has his individual tone or key-note, these sub- divisions collectively constitute humanity's key- note; one identical with that of the earth entity, whose key-note is one of the seven forming the Pythagorean scale of the planetary spheres. The "Cosmic Seed" — ancient ere time began — is the archetypal Ishvara, the original nucleus and dia- mond point of a universe growing through succes- sive great Kalpas. Now, at the heart of the spirit- ual Sun, this Ishvara radiates in vastly intensified degree the glory of its human antitype.
Students should disabuse themselves of the notion that man, as at present constituted, has lived either on Mercury or Mars or Venus. Were he transferred to another planet, and could he adapt himself to its physical conditions, a deep- seated unrest would possess him, because the
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Ishvara of the planetary spirit there would not harmonize with his inmost being.
In ages to come, when man has finished his evolution here, he will find his Ishvara grown to octave vibration with that of the solar being; so, inevitably, he will exchange this world for the orb from which he issued as a merely potential creature.
Because necessary to each other, the Ishvara of the earth entity and that of the human race as a whole, have progressed together harmoniously for millions of years; but when entire nations incline their hearts to evil, the earth entity mani- fests uneasiness by seismic disturbances, and other convulsions of nature.
Andrew Jackson Davis located the Summer- land of departed spirits in the regions of the Galaxy, while the orthodox heaven is supposedly somewhere among the stars to which abode Enoch was translated, and Elijah was carried, and Jesus was lifted up. On the other hand, the deeper students of our philosophy understand that no human being can break from the magnetic circle of the Ishvara of the earth entity, until the day "BewithUs.y
As for that circle, it impinges on the circum- ference of the circle of Mars. At this boundary, the repulsion of the Martian Ishvara, together with the attraction of that of the earth entity, tends to force every imperfect posthumous soul back to the material plane. Because free from that attraction,
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. '^ evolved beings in the Nirvana of our planetary
chain can, at will, remain for ages upon the
buddhic plane.
H. P. B.
IN CONCLUSION
FINALLY, a few words concerning inter-etheric forces, and their employment by the coming Avatar.
The axil revolution begun by the nebula, and continued by our seven-fold sun, and its progeny the seven-fold planets, was communicated to the very atoms which, in construction, almost dupli- cate the solar system. The physical atomic energy confined in a cubic foot of matter sur- passes any material force thus far made available.
Were the scientist endowed with more than terrestrial vision, he would discover that the pro- cedure of the physical aspect of the electrons is repeated on higher and higher planes of the seven- fold atom. Keely, of Motor fame, found that to deflect to mechanical purposes the physical com- ponents of the atom, his delicate Vibrator should be re-enforced by that most delicate of instruments the physical brain; but he died without making his finding useful, or even complete.
However ingenious and sensitive, no strictly mechanical device can free the inter-etheric energy of the electrons; nevertheless, under certain con-
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ditions, the means of liberation is latent, or partially operative, in every man. One require- ment of his success is, that the atoms must be incorporated within his physical body, and there imbued with his qualities. The liberation and use of the super-physical of these atoms, make man a power either for good or evil in the world.
As a seven-fold being like unto others, but far more developed and capable, Jesus, in his healing, emanated from his body and brain, to be incorpo- rated in other organisms, the imbued buddhic energy of certain atoms. As great intellectual leaders, Plato and Aristotle, in similar manner, emanated a manasic energy whose moulding influence endures to-day.
The ancient teachings emanate both a buddhic and a manasic energy, but, because of the tenacious influence which the wholly exoteric dogmas of the Church Fathers were exercising upon the European peoples, it was deemed best to withhold the esoteric teachings from the West, until the way for their reception had, to some extent, been prepared by Jacob Boehme and Emanuel Swedenborg, and afterward continued by Coleridge and Carlyle in England, and, in America, by Channing, Emerson, and other representatives of the New England Transcendental School. On the other hand, the Brothers of the Shadow have always been active through such tools as Alexander, Caesar, Napoleon, and Wilhelm II, all of whom put forth an obsessing
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r:
kamic force inimical to that brotherhood of man which the Master inaugurated. As for the coming Avatar, it is said that from his electrical body, the fore-runner of others to be, the buddhic energy will radiate in a way before unknown among men ; therefore, more marvelous works than those of old will testify to his sovereign power and authority.
When, as an atom of spiritual will, each unit of the human family was separated from the body of some member of a certain Solar Hierarchy, that atom was imbued with a quality which would develop during its entire cycle to its sun-source. Moreover, that nucleus of composite man received in like manner, and one by one, the pregnant gifts of all other Solar Hierarchies. Nor did man's divine progenitors cease their benefactions with this primal giving. Even now they watch over him, and for his spiritual healing they radiate to his inner self the liberated energy of their incorpo- rated atoms.
The above teaching discovers the inner meaning of the Master's promise: "He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also, and greater than these shall he do, because I go unto my Father." As explained in an earlier chapter, the Father to whom Jesus as the planetary ruler would go, was a certain hierarchy of the Solar Logos. After this union of Father and Son, augmented means of material and spiritual healing from that source would benefit the human race.
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Any son of man who identifies himself with the Solar Logos, though as the least of its fellowship, is an appropriate channel through which the divine influence reaches and aids his human brothers, whether in the world, or the intermediate state. One object of the Avatars which appear at suitable astronomical periods, is the enlargement and multiplication of those channels which, in some respects, are more effective if formed from the earth upward, rather than from the Logos down- ward.
Evidently the earth cannot wholly assimilate the gifts of heaven, unless by mutual effort it be brought into harmony with its source. Equilib- rium once established between the two worlds, mankind enters into the fulness of that high correspondent of Edenic times, the better Golden Age of which the holy men of old have often dreamed, and whose beacon of promise the sages of many lands have discerned afar, and concerning whose glory every prophet of the larger truth has authoritatively spoken.
Peace to all beings!
H.
To the students who were promised the earlier appearance of this final book of the series begun with "Special Teachings," some explanation is due. "The Heart of Things" was published in
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1914, but since the chapters of Vol. Ill were received at intervals, and because of other delays, seven years separate the publication of Vol. II and Vol. III.
Now it appears that outward circumstances were not responsible for this delay, for the Master intended that seven years should separate the issuance of the two books. If another seven years bring about the enleaguing of nations, and so presage enduring peace through actual or else pro- spective disarmament of the world powers, the time will be ripe for the revealing of those deepest mysteries of the Kingdom which the coming uni- versal Teacher will communicate orally to certain individuals and groups of his followers, who, in turn, will dissemminate them among the prepared peoples of the earth.
E. C. F.
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