THE PERFECTING OF MAN/PART 4

 

THE CHRIST LIFE

 

 

 

 

 

WE have seen our man of the world taking his first steps deliberately towards the higher life; we have followed him as he sought for a Teacher; we have seen him succeed in the search, when the Teacher was found. Today we have to follow him through the first of the great Initiations, onward along the Path until he reaches the entrance to the fifth. It is that life spoken of by S. Paul, of which the beginning is marked by the Birth of the Christ within the man. You remember how he wished for his converts that they should have the sublime experience that the Christ should be born in them. And then you may remember how he spoke of another stage: “Until,” he said, “we all come unto a perfect man, the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ”. Thus did the great apostle of the Christian Church measure out the two limits of the study that we are to follow this morning - one the Birth of the Christ, the other the attainment of His full stature, the reaching of the Perfection of Manhood.

 

Such was S. Paul’s idea of the meaning, the greatness, of the Path shown by Christianity. In modern days, I know, Christian ambition has not risen so high, and to be saved by another, to be clothed in the imputed righteous­ness of another, has been regarded as the Christian life. But the great Apostle saw otherwise what he called “your calling and election”. Not to be saved by another, but to become a Saviour; that was the old and great ideal in the Christian Church; to be oneself a Christ; to lead the Christ-life; to pass through the great stages of experience marked out in the Gospel story, which, rightly read, is less the history of a Person, than a mighty drama of the Initiation of the Spirit. Looked at in that light, this high Path lies open, as that which should be trodden by all who would fulfil in their own persons the great hope of the Apostle for his spiritual children. That, and nothing less than that, is the possibility of all who will. It is this part of human life which is sometimes called quite simply “the Path”; sometimes, as among the Buddhists, “the Path of Holiness”; sometimes, as among the Roman Catholics, “the Path of Illumination”, the Path on which the light of the Spirit is shining more and more unto the perfect day, that life which was led by the Christ as “the First-born among many brethren”, and not as a unique proof of that to which divine humanity might attain. I grant to the full that this path is one which demands from the one who would tread it a total renunciation of all that in past lives he has held to be valuable and desirable. Hence it has been truly said: “Strait is the Gate and narrow is the Way, and few there be that find it”. In ages to come many shall tread it; in ages far off all human beings shall know it; but humanity has scarce passed the middle point of its evolution, and hence few are they who at present are willing to tread the Path.

 

I used the word Initiation. I must pause on that for a moment, that it may convey to you some clear meaning; and I will ask you to recall what you all know from your own studies in the history of the past; that in all ancient nations there were certain great institutions known as Mysteries, with many other names to describe them, but all with that one word in common. Eleusinian, Orphic, Bacchic, what­ever they might be, they were Mysteries, into which certain people were initiated. We are told that in the early days all those who were purest and noblest participated in these Mysteries; that they destroyed all fear of death, and gave to man the certainty of Immortality; that those who entered into them gained wisdom which others did not possess, and were marked out not only by the development of their intelligences, but even more by the nobility and the purity of their lives. They are recognised not only as existing in Greece, in Egypt, but also in Persia, in India, in China. And the two greatest of the Indian Teachers of religion were known as special expounders of the Mysteries, of the Path which led through them to the goal to which that Path conducted those who trod it. We have the great Teacher, the Lord Buddha on the one side, and the Buddhists still retain the details of the path that He expounded. We have Shri Shankara­charya, the great Hindu Teacher, on the other, who also expounded the Path and marked out its stages in identical fashion. Then, turning aside for the moment from those great pre­-Christian faiths, we find that in the early days of the Christian Church these Mysteries also existed. You may read about them in the writings of Origen and of S. Clement of Alexandria. You may learn from S. Clement how he cannot speak publicly of that which he learned in the Mysteries, but that some of his readers will understand his allusions. You may read of that famous declaration which used to be heard in the Christian Church, when those who were worthy were summoned for admission to the Mysteries: “He who has for a long time been conscious of no transgression, let him draw near and learn the teachings which Jesus delivered in secret to His own disciples”. And you may learn from other patristic writings how, in those Mysteries, Angels were some­times the Teachers, and how they revealed the invisible world to those who were held worthy to become Initiates therein.

 

Although it be true that in our modern world the re-proclamation of the continued existence of Masters, of Initiates, of the Mysteries that have never disappeared, has been made specifi­cally by the Theosophical Society (that being part of the work for which it was sent into the world), it does not pretend that in that re­-proclamation it is bringing anything that is new to any great faith, but is only recalling to each great religion its own earlier knowledge and possibilities. If we say that the Mysteries still exist; if we declare that the Gateway of Initiation is still open; if we proclaim in the old words that those who seek shall find, that to those who knock the door shall be opened, it is not as making a new proclamation, but only as repeating a forgotten message-giving to a world that had been sunk in materialism the knowledge it had forgotten, on which it had turned its back.

 

Hence, to remind you that this is no specifi­cally eastern teaching, but a universal teaching, I have spoken of the life of the Initiate in its Christian form, as the Christ-life. That is the name by which it was known long before the great Founder of Christianity came out into the world, for it is the life of the Anointed, of those who have been consecrated by the chrism of the Spirit, and have begun to tread the Path that makes them Priests and Kings unto God.

 

That is the ancient pathway called from very long ago the Way of the Cross; for the Cross is the symbol of life, of life triumphant over death, of Spirit triumphant over matter. And there is no difference in this Path between East and West; there is only one occult teaching and one great White Lodge, the Guardians of the spiritual treasures of our race. They know no difference between East and West; They know no difference between white and coloured; They recognise only Qualifications fitting for Initiation; and They open the Gateway in the old, the ancient, fashion, which allows a man to tread the narrow ancient Path.

 

Now what does this Initiation in the Mysteries mean? Quite frankly, it means an expansion of consciousness. Initiation itself is a certain series of events through which the man passes; actual events and experiences taking a certain amount of time, not a vague indefinite series of feelings, but actual communications and thoughts and actions gone through by a man out of the physical body, in the presence of a great assembly of the Masters. The result is that the man becomes conscious of a new world, as though some great new sense had been given to him which opened to him a new world surrounding him. As a man born blind might know the world by hearing, taste, touch, but if his eyes were opened would see a new world he had not dreamed of stretching around him on every side, so is it with the man who, having passed through the great ceremony of Initiation, comes back into Iris body, into the mortal world of men. Another world is around him, a new phase of consciousness belongs to him. He sees, where before he was blind. He knows, where before he only hoped or guessed.

 

Of those great ceremonials on this Path there are five. The fifth is that of the Master, with which I do not deal today. Four are the Portals on the Path leading to that final divine Perfection of Manhood. It is to the study of those, then, that we turn. We can take four great events in the Christ-story related in the Gospels which, in the Christian symbolism, exactly represent that which has other names, but not other realities, in the Hindu and Buddhist descriptions of the Path. The first, as I have said, is the Birth of the Christ; the second, the Baptism; the third, the Trans­figuration; the fourth, the Passion. Let us take them one by one, showing what lies under the names, and seeing how they are expressed among our eastern brethren. He in whom the Christ is born, thy new Initiate, is ever spoken of, all the world over, as the “little child”. You remember the phrases you meet with in the Gospel: “Unless ye become as little children, ye shall in no wise enter into the kingdom of heaven”. The kingdom of heaven, or the kingdom of God, is the old name for the Path, and only the “little child” is able to enter there. The new Initiate, the Christ-­child, then, is born into this new life of the Spirit, and the expansion of consciousness he attains consists in his having opened to him, for the first time, that great spiritual world in which all truths are known by Intuition, not by reason­ing; in which the eyes of the Spirit are opened, and direct knowledge of spiritual truths is gained; knowledge becomes intuitive, instead of rational.

 

When the great ceremonial is over, then it is that, either by his own Teacher or by some high disciple to whom the work is delegated, the new Initiate finds open within him that new consciousness which is gradually to grow, so that he may master the knowledge which at first is only presented to him in a dazzling panorama. Because of that new world into which he is born, the first of the great Initiations is spoken of as “the second birth”, the “birth of the Spirit”. He has become now the twice­-born - born on earth indeed many times, but always born into the life of matter; horn now into the life of the Spirit, which becomes his for evermore. That is the key of knowledge which is said figuratively to be given to the new Initiate; it is a new faculty, a new power, a new sense, which has been gradually develop­ing within him through the time of his training, and now bursts open into usefulness and comes  under his control.

 

Then it is that that inner renunciation is made which you find typified in the three great vows that in the Roman Catholic Church, and in parts of the Anglican, are the vows which give admission to that which they call “the supernatural life”. You know the vows of poverty, of chastity, of obedience. They symbolise a great spiritual truth: the inner renunciation by the new Initiate of the whole of the possessions, physical, mental, which hitherto he may have regarded as his own. Not by spoken words, but by inner renunciation,  he gives up all sense of property, all sense of ownership in anything which he is supposed to  possess. He may have wealth; it is no longer his - it belongs to the Great Lodge into which he is entering. He may have mental ability; it is no longer his - he must use it only for the service of that to which he has now given him­self. And so from his heart departs all sense of ownership, all sense of property. And by a strange paradox, it is in that moment of utter renunciation that the Kings of the earth, the Wise Men, bring their treasures and pour them out at the feet of the helpless Babe; for where a man wants nothing, everything falls into his hands; and hands that are emptied in the service of the world are ever continually filled, although they never retain. So he not only renounces all possessions, and becomes thereby a steward able to administer in the work that lies before him, but he also renounces all pleasures of sense, the inner meaning of the vow of chastity. He surrenders also his own will, the personal will, the separate will, gives himself wholly to the one Will that is divine, and knows nothing save that Will hereafter, as the determinator of all he thinks, and hopes, and does. Such is the inner meaning of the great triple vow; renunciation of ownership, of all the pleasures of sense, of the separate will.

 

And so he comes out again into the world. The Wanderer, the Hindu calls him, for he has nothing left to own. He wanders about, in the words of the Lord Buddha, “free as air”, only vowed to the one service, and able to go anywhere where he is needed for the work.  And the Buddhist calls him: “He who has entered the stream”. He has stepped into the great stream of which the further side is Masterhood. He can never again step out of it, never again leave it; that stream rolls between the other world and this, and he who has once entered upon it must go to the other shore.

 

And three weaknesses he must get rid of now before the second Portal may be approached, get rid of them entirely, completely, utterly, for he can never again tread this Path. Ever onward lies his way. They are called three fetters, because they hold him back until they are broken. First, thy sense of Separateness. He must see all around him as part of himself, feel with their joys and with their sorrows, look at things from their standpoint, understand their feelings and be able to sympathise with them judge none, criticise none. They are all himself, part of his own life. The sense of separateness must utterly pass away, for a Saviour of the world must feel identity of nature with all. Hence, no feeling against any as lower than himself, no judgment of any as despicable or contemptible. He sees all as fragments of the One Life, and identifies him­self with each in order to help and save.

 

He must get rid of all sense of Doubt - not that rightful attitude of the mind to be doubtful of that which is doubtful, because at present unproved; that remains ever necessary, else were there danger of credulity and folly - but doubt as to certain great facts in nature. The fact of Reincarnation he cannot doubt - for now he knows his past; the fact of Karma, the great law of action and reaction, he cannot doubt - he can look back and see its working in the past and trace it in the present; the fact of the Existence of the Masters he cannot doubt - he has stood in that wondrous circle when he was initiated; the fact of the Path he cannot doubt - he is treading it. Those make up the doubt that for ever is left behind, the fetter, which might prevent his progress.

 

The third great fetter is Superstition; the belief that a particular rite or ceremony is necessary for the attainment of the result that by it is sought. He no longer needs the bridge which a ceremony is intended to be to those who cannot yet reach the higher worlds by their own power, by their own knowledge. He realises that the ceremonies of all the religions are equally useful for the adherents of each, but that none are necessary for him. He knows he can no longer depend upon any ceremony; he depends only on the God within. Useful,  beautiful, helpful, as they may be to those who have not passed the Portal, their value is over  for him, for he sees unveiled the realities of the worlds which they can only symbolise, and to  which they bridge the way.

 

When those three fetters are utterly cast aside, when they no longer have power to hold him back, then he has grown to young manhood, when he is ready to pass the second of the great Initiations. In the Christian drama it is called the Baptism. It is written that the Spirit of God came down upon Jesus, and abode with Him. That is the Christian form; the  Spirit comes down, the Spirit of Intuition, and before he can go further, to the third Initiation,  he must learn to bring it down, through his enlarged causal and mental bodies, to his physical consciousness, so that it may “abide  on him”, and guide him. Hence the Hindu calls him the Builder, the builder of the vehicles that he requires; the Buddhist: “He who shall receive birth, once more”, looking onwards to the goal towards which the aspirant is pressing.

 

After this Initiation, the man has not to get rid of weaknesses but to add powers, all those superphysical powers which belong to the per­fection of the superphysical bodies the man has now to create in himself, in order that he may more perfectly serve; for that great spiritual world, the intuitional world, is being conquered step by step, and he must be ready to serve in that, as in the mental and the emotional worlds. During the time that he stays in this stage of his progress, he is perfecting all the bodies, building them for the great work in front.

 

Short, as a rule, is that stage. And then he approaches the third great Portal, that which  in the Christian story is called that of Trans­figuration, among the Hindus the Swan, the bird of heaven, the symbol of the recognition of the ‘I’ as one with God. In that the manifest Deity shines out, illuminating for a moment the Path in front, which is to go down into the depths of suffering, which is to lead him through the valley of the shadow of death; for you may remember that in the Gospel drama the Transfiguration on the Mount of Olivet is  immediately followed by the steadfast turning of the face to Jerusalem, to the Garden of  Gethsemane, the Mount of Calvary, the divine light shining on the darkness, that the human  heart may be able to pass on, undaunted.

 

During the time which intervenes between the third and the fourth Initiations, two more weaknesses have to be got rid of for ever, attraction and repulsion to all outer things. Attraction; you may see in the gospel allegory how the attraction was thrown aside of all that would hold the Christ back from the approach­ing Passion. And you may see how all repulsion had ended, when “the woman who was a sinner” was allowed to approach Him to bathe His feet with her tears, to wipe them with her hair; for attraction and repulsion for all external things must die before the last great trial comes, else would the road remain untrodden, else would the last ordeal be too great. And so the disciple learns in this stage to rise above attractions and repulsions, to cast them aside for ever; they no longer have power to touch him.

 

He prepares himself for the going to Jeru­salem, for the betrayal by one Apostle, the desertion by all, the loneliness in which the last great sufferings have to be faced; for between the third Initiation and the fourth there is that gulf of silence, where the disciple hangs alone in the void with nothing on earth to trust to, nothing in heaven to look to, no friend whose heart can be relied upon - nay, even the vision of the Supreme blurred and dimmed. It is symbolised by the Agony in the Garden, where the human heart cries out “If it be possible, let this cup pass away”, and still the human will arises, strong in renuncia­tion: “Nevertheless, not my will but Thine be done”.

 

Onward he passes through the stages of  the Passion; sees his beloved flee; sees himself betrayed, denied, rejected, until at last, upon the cross of agony, he is held up for all  men to mock at, for all men to despise; sees at last no friend, but only a ring of enemies  triumphant; hears the taunt: “He saved others; himself he cannot save” - the deepest truth of all; utters at last the cry of the break­ing heart: “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” and in that uttermost loneliness finds himself for evermore; losing the God without him, he finds the God within. For when the great darkness comes down, and nothing can be seen, then arises the light of the Spirit in the human heart, and then through the darkness are heard the final words of triumphant success: “It is finished”. Those are the words that ring out from the assembled hosts of Men made perfect and of Angels, when the great trial is over, and the agony of the cross is past.

 

Then the fourth great Initiation, that of the Arhat, the Paramahamsa - “He who is beyond the I am He,” - is accomplished; he it is who has become the Christ crucified, and therefore the helper of the world; he has trodden the wine-press alone, and found in himself the strength divine to do it; he then awakens to the exquisite truth that loneliness for him is over for ever, for he has found the One Life and knows it evermore. He has conquered; and the rest of the path is com­paratively smooth and easy.

 

After that fourth Initiation, the Passion, there remains only the Resurrection, the Ascen­sion, which is the Initiation of the Master. And in the hidden life which intervenes between the Crucifixion and the Resurrection, the last weaknesses of humanity have to be cast aside. No longer can he desire life in any world, for he is life, and all outer desire passes away; from him also disappears that sense of being in any way ‘I’; he is all, and all forms are  equally his own. No longer can he be shaken, for what can shake the life that knows itself?  All may go, but all had gone before, and he had not perished. He knows there is nothing that can touch him, nothing that can shake him; he has become invulnerable to every weapon that might wound. He has become as the diamond, which nought may cut nor break.

 

And so from his eyes fall away the last remnants of the veil of ignorance. From him pass the last remnants of weakness, and he lives for the rest of that life in which he has become the Arhat, free as the birds in the air, his path trackless, his motives not understood; but what matters that to him on whom the light eternal is ever brightly shining? He lives as part of a mighty Order, part of a mighty force; he knows his work, and does it, and knows that the end is sure.

 

And so he works in this world and in other worlds - for now all worlds are open to him - ­having died to earth he has passed into Eternity, and the light is ever upon him, and the way is open. He only labours that others may share what he has gained, having won that most splendid of all rights, the right to help, whether the help be seen, or recognised, or not. What is that to him? He has risen to that point where all men are open to him, and he can pour down strength, help, know­ledge into all of them from that higher stand­point that now he has reached. And that it is to have become a Christ: to know the identity of nature which makes yours the weakness of the weakest, as well as the strength of the strongest; which makes yours the sin of the guiltiest, as well as the purity of the highest; which makes you share the foul­ness of the criminal, as well as the spotlessness of the saint. That is the true glory of Christ­hood, that the lowest is as loved as the highest, as much part of himself as the loftiest and the purest. For only those know the One Life, who can feel themselves in the worst as well as in the best, to whom all are as himself, all that he possesses theirs to take.

NEXT CHAPTER 

THE CHRIST TRIUMPHANT, AND THE WORK OF

 THE HIERARCHY