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through them in all of their actions. The heavenly ones, are those lives above the earth plane. They preserve the order allotted to them from the Father, in that they are all the time responsive to the urge of that power which has descended from the Father and which operates through them, causing them to act in accordance w^ith that order. Owning to the Cyclic Law^, all such heavenly bodies are from time to time restored to their original status, and hence this order w^hich governs them is perpetually preserved and can never be dis- solved. This will be true of any body that at all times responds to the Cyclic Law^ This Law causes all these bodies to return to their original condition and thus to become renewed, and hence there is no reason why the form of the body should ever become changed. This is due to the fact that all such renew^als take place within the body and hence no cause is there for the discarding of body in order that a change may take place by the ex- changing of one body for another. This is true of the heavenly bodies because of their subtle nature, and of their receptivity to all the move- ments of the heavenly order operating through them. It would be the same in the case of earthly bodies were they equally responsive to the move- ments of the heavenly order.
The '"Restoration" then of bodies on the earth is [thus their] composition, whereas their dissolution restores them to those bodies which can never be dissolved, that is to say, which know no death. Privation, thus, of sense is brought about, not loss of bodies.
He here most distinctly teaches the doctrine of the ^^restoration" or reincarnation, of all earthly
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bodies. The composition of a body is the restora- tion to earthly embodiment, of a body which previ- ously existed on the earth in the form of a cor- poreal earthly body. This leads us to the conclu- sion that the corporeal earthly body is not the only body which earthly things possess. The dissolution of the earthly body is the process which restores the earthly embodied thing to a body which can never be dissolved. This means that when the earthly body is dissolved, the life which was em- bodied in it enters and manifests through a body that is subject to the heavenly order, the same as are the heavenly bodies, hence, to a heavenly body. Of course this indicates that all earth life is in possession of heavenly bodies as well as of earthly bodies. The latter is lost from time to time through dissolution, to be again restored through ''restora- tion" or reincarnation, but the heavenly body can never be dissolved. Death is then confined to the periodical deprivation of the earthly body, but does not afifect the heavenly body. The earthly body is of importance in that it is the vehicle through which an earthly life is sensible of things on the earth. When the life is deprived of this earthly body, it is deprived of all sense of the earthly realm for the reason that the heavenly body is not sensible of earthly things. As it has no ve- hicle of consciousness for the earthly environment, it knows nothing through the medium of sense, of the earth, hence the earthly sense is lost, but it is not deprived of a body, seeing that the heavenly body continues. Thus we see that nothing in this universe can exist apart from a body, and the body will be the kind fitted to serve in the mode of life which any thing is manifesting at the time. But nothing exists at all at any time, without existing in a body of some order.
LESSON V
The Life of Man
Now the third life — Man, after the image of the Cosmos made, [and] having mind, after the Father's will, beyond all earthly lives — not only doth have feeling with the second God, but also hath conception of the first; for of the one 'tis sensible as of a body, while of the other it conceives as bodiless and the Good Mind.
Tat. Doth then this life not perish?
Her, Hush, son! and understand what God, what Cosmos [is], what is a life that cannot die, and what a life subject to dissolu- tion.
Yea, understand the Cosmos is by God and in God; but Man by Cosmos and in Cosmos.
The source and limit and constitution of all things is God.
Now the third life — Man, after the image of the Cosmos made, [and] having mind, after the Father's will, beyond all earthly lives — not only doth have feeling with the second God, but also hath conception of the first ; for of the one 'tis sensible as of a body, while of the other it conceives as bodiless and the Good Mind.
The three Hves spoken of here are the Hfe of God, including the Kosmos viewed from a certain
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aspect, but more properly it relates to God alone; the second life is the Kosmos and the things pro- ceeding from it; the third life is Man. That is, used in the sense of generic man, man as a species, but also relating to the individual man. We are informed that he is after the image of the Kosmos made — that is to say the third life, man, is made after the image of the Kosmos. We must always guard against the error of assuming that man is made after the image of God. This is not true. The Man made after the image of God is the Kosmos, and to a certain extent the Anthropos, but the man that we know of through experience, the human being, is made after the image of the Kos- mos and not after the image of God. One special characteristic of man is that he has mind after the Father's will, beyond all earthly lives. That is to say the human mind has been produced by the Father's will. That is the Mind of the Father expressing itself dynamically as will, that is as the will of the Father is mind becoming active and dynamic Will force which enters the Kosmos and acts upon man through its kosmic manifestation evolves mind in man. Man's mind, therefore, is not of the earth earthly, not evolved from matter, but is rather descended from the Father through the Kosmos into man. While to a certain extent ■ mind, using intellect here as a department of mind, is common to all earthly lives, yet man possesses mind beyond all earthly lives; not only does he possess a superior quantity of mind, but also a superior and higher quality, a more spiritual quality of mind, than what any of the animals possess. This superior quality of mind is easily distinguished from the quality of mind present in the animal creation.
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The animal mind is characterized by the abil- ity to learn by experience; all that the animal knows he has acquired through experience and observation. His reason is a posteriori in every sense of the word. Man's mind transcends that of the animal in that he is not dependent upon the testimony of his physical senses and upon his physical experiences for knowledge. Man's mind becomes almost divine in that he is able to dis- pense with sensation entirely, to dispense with the concrete and enter the realm of pure abstraction. The power of abstract thinking is truly what char- acterizes the human mentality as human. The ability to think in abstractions is a clear dem- onstration of the divinity of the mind of man. That is the divinity of the minds of such men as are able to think in abstractions. Those who can- not rise to abstraction of course still have the men- talities of the animals. And as it is this human mind that differentiates man from the animal creation, it will logically follow that all men who are capable of thinking in the concrete only are animals, brute beasts and not yet human. It is for this reason that the ancient philosophers became so enthusiastic over mind, over the power of thought, because they clearly realized that this power of abstract thinking was something that was not possessed by the animal, hence it was something definitely characteristic of man as man. For this reason they very strongly emphasized the importance of the intellect.
Not only doth this man have feeling with the second God, that is the Kosmos, but he also has conception of the first. Notice this distinction therefore. Man has feeling with the second God, — that is to say the developed man has the same sense that the Kosmos has, that is to say it is well within the range of man's evolution to evolve kosmic sense, not only the physical sense but the kosmic sense, which will therefore give him the same feeling that the Kosmos has. Also he is able to have a mental conception of the first God, the
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Absolute. Man is able to conceive of God, the One and only One, through his mind, but he can- not be sensible of this first God, he has no sense by which he can approach the first God, but approaches Him only through the conception of the mind. However, he can through sense feel the second God, or the Kosmos. The second God, or the Kosmos, is sensible as of a body, while the other is conceivable as bodiless, as the Good Mind. Therefore man is not required to merely think and theorize of the Kosmos but through the evolution of kosmic sense he is able to sense the Kosmos, to make it sensible to him as though it was a body, to feel its presence. By reason of this kosmic sense it becomes, as it were, objective, so that the devel- opment of this kosmic sense enables one to become sensible, conscious of the Kosmos. This, however, is not the case when we come to God. God is con- ceived only as bodiless and the Good Mind. God, therefore, can be conceived of only in our thought ; we can think of God but we cannot sense Him. We think of God first as being bodiless, as having no form, no corporeality, as being a condition of infinite and universal diffusion. Until one has con- ceived of God in this sense, as energy, universally present and more than universally present, he has not conceived of God at all. Second, we must con- ceive of God as the Good Mind, as Mind and Ku, as that mind which engenders all things by its thought, as Absolute Mind. And only can we think of God under these two aspects, universally diffused energy, formless, and as the Good Mind, the Absolute Intelligence. And this is purely a mental concept; therefore God can subsist to no one other than as a concept of the mind.
Let this point be clearly borne in mind and we will see the fallacy of most of the religions, for most religions are predicated upon the theory that man can approach God through sense; that he can
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sense or feel God ; that it is possible for us to feel through the cultivation of our love nature, through the development of our aflfectional nature, through a yearning, a longing, a reaching out of the heart, that one can find God. Such a view is utterly fallacious, for God is not subject to sense; he can- not be found through sensation ; the heart can never find God. Man alone is capable of grasping God, and it grasps Him through thought and in no other way. It follow^s, therefore, that those people who profess to have found God in some other way, know absolutely nothing of the God beyond-all- name. What they are really worshiping is the second God, the Kosmos, which they have found through sense. Their religion being sensible and not intelligible, it follows that they are w^orshiping the second God, the Kosmos, and that there is no trace of a devotion to the first God, the Good Mind, in all the conceptions which they hold. This will show the reason why there are so many difficulties in the way of inculcating the religion of the mind. The religion of the senses has taken such possession of the people that they have no thought for the religion of the mind. The real trouble is very few people know how to think independent of sense. The all important thing, therefore, is for man to develop this capacity for supersensuous thinking. And that is the reason why the Gnostic has always insisted upon the de- velopment of this mind power; the subjection ©f all religious questions to philosophical analysis.
Tat. Doth then this life not perish?
We have here the question introduced as t© whether the life of man perishes or does not. This of course is a very important question as the immortality of everything is the burden of the ser- mon, as the teaching is that no one of existing things does perish. The question then is as to
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whether the life of man is an exception to this rule or whether this rule applies in the life of man the same as in everything else.
Her, Hush, son, and understand what God, what Cosmos [is], what is a life that cannot die, and what a life subject to dissolu- tion.
Hermes orders Tat to hush, for it is very evident that he has not grasped the meaning of the teach- ing given in the entire sermon otherwise he would not ask such a fool question. His remark shows that Tat has not thought deeply on what he had to say; that he has not paid the proper attention, has not discriminated properly; for he admonishes him to understand what God is, what the Kosmos is and what a life is that cannot die and also the nature of a life subject to dissolution. Had he carefully discriminated on these points and gotten a proper understanding of these four heads of the subject, he vv^ould have been in no quandary what- soever as to the rrieaning of his father. The first head of the discourse is of the nature of God, the second head is of the nature of the Kosmos, the third head is the nature of a deathless life and the fourth head is the nature of life subject to dissolu- tion. All these have been thoroughly explained in the preceding portions of the sermon, hence it is evident that Tat has not paid proper heed to the instructions of his father under those four heads, else he would have had no difficulty in knowing where to place man.
Yea, understand the Cosmos is by God and in God; but Man is by Cosmos and in Cosmos.
We are assured that Kosmos is by God and in God; that is to say the Kosmos is perpetually in
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process of coming into being by reason of the life of God. God's thought and will, all the motions of his life, manifest as Kosmos, therefore the source of Kosmos is the active life of God. The word Kosmos means a picture, and it means this because the thought and action of God takes form as Kosmos, so that Kosmos is in reality a photo- graph of God, a living photograph, but neverthe- less a photograph of God. Thus it ever comes into being by reason of the active life of God, and it subsists in God because it is but the expression in form of the divine thought and active life of God. Therefore it must be completely permeated and surrounded, enveloped as it were, by God's spirit, and takes form there. Now if it is true that the Kosmos is but the mirroring in form of the thought and life of God, it must partake of the nature of that divine thought and life and above all inasmuch as the thought and life of God can only manifest in terms of Kosmos and must mani- fest in that form, it will follow that as long as God thinks and makes he must make Kosmos. Further- more we are assured by Hermes in other sermons that God subsists solely and entirely in thinking things and in making them, that is the very energy of God, hence were God to cease to think and to make he would cease to be. Now Kosmos is what he makes, therefore were he to cease to make Kosmos he would cease to be. Hence Kosmos is as eternal as God. Therefore the nature of Kos- mos must be deathless and imperishable.
Man is by Kosmos and in Kosmos. That is to say, man exists w^ithin the Kosmos and as a result of the activity of the Kosmos. Now it follows that the Kosmos being the expression of God must duplicate on a lower plane the act of God. Hence it will follow that as God makes Kosmos as his nature is to make and as the nature of Kosmos is to duplicate the work of God, therefore it is in the
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nature of Kosmos to make. Man existing by Kosmos means that man exists because of the kosmic action, Kosmos being the reflection of the generative power of God it must follow that Kosmos likewise generates; if Kosmos generates man exists by reason of the generative action of Kosmos, hence man is the microcosm of the macrosmic Kosmos. Therefore the nature of man must be the exact duplicate of the nature of the Kosmos, hence man will have the same nature as has the Kosmos. As the Kosmos is eternal as God, because it is the reflection of God, so is man as eternal as the Kosmos because he is the work, the effect, the mirroring in individual form of the Kosmos itself. Hence life is imperishable, inde- structible, immortal, eternal. He therefore dem- onstrates the eternity of the life of man and hence that it cannot perish. And this is true simply because man is the expression of Kosmic life.