Knowledge of Life One
3. GNOSTIC SYMBOLS
3. GNOSTIC SYMBOLS
1If the uninitiated found writings belonging to esoteric knowledge orders and if they were intelligent enough, they would soon discover that the expressions used in these writings were symbolic.
2However, this was not the case with the esoteric gnostic order. Its locutions were such that only initiates would understand that everything must be interpreted symbolicly. The uninitiated would take everything literally, which was all but unavoidable. Therefore they were totally unable to understand the true sense or even the fact that this speech was symbolic.
3The entire New Testament is a compilation of these gnostic sayings. The gnostic authors of the gospels tried to popularize and in the form of novels to dramatize the gnostic symbols without betraying their true import. It must be admitted that they fashioned the symbols in a manner that evidences supreme literary talent. If these symbols are literalized, as has always been the case hitherto, then even at best their meaning is somewhat distorted.
4Not even the saying “faith without works is dead” has been exactly comprehended. By “works” the gnosticians understood “obedience to the Law”, in which knowledge of the Law, understanding of the importance of frictionless application, and ability of application were prerequisites.
5Only esotericians can interpret these symbols. The least reflection should have clarified that the gospels were no descriptions of historical events and that they do not contain the gnosis, or the knowledge of reality. It is expressly said of the disciples, “Unto you it is given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven” (where in the gospels are these mysteries to be found?), and of the people, “without a parable he spake not unto them”. That is what remains of the words of Jeshu. For the people of today are the same as the people of his time. What more Jeshu said is not recorded in the gospels. It is to be found in the gnostic, as yet unpublished, reports of his words. The gospels were written for the people and do not contain the “mysteries of the kingdom of heaven”, or the esoteric knowledge.
6Ever since Atlantis went down, the much abused knowledge of reality has been reserved for those who have acquired the right to study it. It was with very great hesitation that it was allowed for publication after the year 1875. At the conclave of the planetary hierarchy in 1775 only two 45-selves voted for the proposal, all the other members were against it. The planetary ruler decreed, however, “as these two brothers of ours have expressed their willingness themselves to bear the consequences, they should be allowed to make the attempt”. Only initiates know what it has cost them hitherto. It would not surprise if they had many times been tempted to give it up, so seemingly hopeless is the battle against hardened physicalists, emotionalists, and mentalists, so idiotized by all manner of fictions has mankind become.
7The esoterician, reading the gospels of the New Testament, understands what the authors wanted to say, the symbolic meaning of the gnostic locutions, and the impossibility that uninitiated interpret their import right. The same holds good about Buddha’s sayings. They are interpreted differently by different people according to their stages of development. What Buddha and Christos really meant is still not understood. This shows how risky it is to give out esoteric symbols to people before they have become causal selves and entered into the world of Platonic ideas. The ideas are idiotized.
8This gnostic terminology has been so idiotized that it would be easier to change to quite another terminology than to try and convince the public of the gnostic interpretation. “New wine should be put in new bottles.” (Thus you do not put together the Old and New Testaments, contradicting one another.) This would also liberate part of mankind from a paper pope that has millions of victims in its record of misdeeds. To some extent it has counteracted general lawlessness but at an unnecessarily high cost. The knowledge of the Law (the sum total of all laws of nature and of life) can be inculcated in a simpler manner and, above all, without idiotization of reason.
9It should not be difficult to make people see that life is unity, that brotherhood is the manifestation of this unity, that the prerequisite of entering into the next higher natural kingdom is that the individual has realized the idea of brotherhood in his own life. The fifth kingdom is a kingdom of unity, and to the individuals in this kingdom all life consists of monads that are partners in unity, whether they know it or not. Anyone who excludes someone from this unity thereby has excluded himself and blocked the path to the kingdom of unity. Brotherhood is another word for that misnomer, “divine love”. No god can demand of man that he love as a god can love. But common sense has been conspicuously absent in the reasonings of theologians.
10Human ignorance, conceit, self-sufficiency, presumption, all this and much more is gradually cured through sufficiently painful experiences in the long series of incarnations. “The mills of god grind slowly, but they grind until they have crushed everything there is in the individual of hatred, pride, and egoism.” As a 45-self writes: “If you are still an isolated soul, you will have to pass through the horrors of a more complete isolation and loneliness, treading alone the dark way, until you have realized that even the dark night was your own self-made illusion. Some are lost in the illusion and know not what is reality and truth. Others walk free in the world of illusion for the purpose of helping their brothers. If your cannot do this, you will some time learn how to do it.”
1The four gnostic gospels of the New Testament are altogether symbolic. Their purpose was to account for the five stages in the development of man’s consciousness from his first aspiration to discipleship to his acquisition of superessential consciousness.
2The gnostic author of the primitive gospel showed great ingenuity in putting certain facts of the life of Jeshu into this symbolic tale of the return of the son to his father’s house, the selfrealization of man, the ascent of the monad to that higher world where it has a true home by right of its potential godhood.
1The birth in the manger symbolizes the first stage. It signifies the awakening of the poor, naked soul. “More joy shall be in heaven” over this one, who has decided on one-pointed selfrealization (the self = Christos) than over the ninety and nine just persons, who blame this one for everything he does, because he does not do it otherwise. The birth denotes the entry into the fifth natural kingdom, the acquisition of consciousness in the lowest molecular kind (46:7) of the essential world (the world of unity, the gnostic world of Christos, the buddhi of the Hindus). For the individual this means first of all an experience of something hitherto inaccessible in his own superconscious.
2The baptism and the temptation in the desert symbolize the second stage, the emancipation from emotional illusions and mental fictions with the simultaneous acquisition of consciousness in the second essential molecular kind from below (46:6). It is a great temptation when the individual thereby knows for certain and also in other ways has confirmation that his view of existence is sovereign to those of other people, and this can result in spiritual pride and conceit. By his immense acquisition of knowledge the individual becomes clearly aware of his incomparably superior insight and ability. He is greatly tempted to use this capacity, to demonstrate his power in order to prove his authority, to give weight to his message, to force people to heed his teaching. There is always a great temptation of achieving results in other ways than by the usual, all too wellknown, fruitless methods of information. However, it is rightly forbidden. Every individual must wake himself, begin to seek by himself, find the truth himself. Truths from others, which the individual cannot assimilate or perhaps cannot even comprehend or understand, are but little better than superstition, serve just to offend and to hinder. This desire to force anyone to do what is good is a proof of egoism and ignorance still remaining.
3The transfiguration symbolizes the third stage, the monad’s full acquisition of causal consciousness as a causal self. It is the confirmation that the individual has himself acquired objective intuition in the causal world (or the world of Platonic ideas) and subjective consciousness in the three lower molecular kinds of the essential world (46:5-7).
4When the individual passes the final test, which makes him a causal self, then the three envelopes (physical-etheric, emotional, and mental) also reach their perfection. The “three apostles” on the mount of transfiguration are symbols of these three envelopes.
5The crucifixion on Golgotha and the resurrection symbolize the fourth stage, the transition of the monad from the first to the second triad, implying the acquisition of full essential consciousness and the definitive, final reaping of all remnant bad sowing in the human kingdom.
6When the gnosticians spoke of “resurrection”, they did not intend a certain person but all. We are all immortal and are reborn to physical life until we have learnt everything there is to learn in the fourth natural kingdom. The gnosticians used the word “resurrection” also in other meanings. The “path of resurrection” was an expression they used to denote the triad chain.
7The ascension symbolizes the fifth stage, implying the essential self’s acquisition (in a subsequent incarnation) of a superessential envelope and his gain of full consciousness in the superessential world (nirvana, atma). The “ascension into heaven” as a symbol intimates the fact that the individual does not need to incarnate any more. It is the symbolic farewell to the fourth kingdom.
8As yet no theologian has suspected, let alone comprehended, the meaning of these symbols. What have the theologians made of this symbolism? The symbol of “purification”, which intended to show how the disciple was gradually emancipated from the lower interests in favour of the higher ones in one world after another, at best was turned into celibacy and vegetarianism, thus limiting it to the physical world, instead of showing how to acquire emotional attraction, mental insight, causal intuition.
1Only the esotericians know that the four gospels were written by initiates of the gnostic order of knowledge. What is said in them is entirely symbolic.
2The gnostic authors of the gospel novels meant by Bethlehem the physical world. It is in the physical world that the individual acquires all qualities and abilities and finally both subjective and objective causal consciousness. In former times he thereby entered the fifth natural kingdom. Nowadays the planetary hierarchy has left the causal world and moved on to the essential world, and so consciousness of unity (46) must be acquired in order to enter the hierarchy.
3The names of the twelve apostles were the gnostic terms for the twelve zodiacal signs. The constellation of Pisces was called Judas. They quite anticipated that Christos would be “betrayed” in the Piscean epoch, which the Christian church certainly has done.
4The symbol of the three crosses on Golgotha meant: “the saviour” = the planetary government, “the repentant thief” = the planetary hierarchy, “the unrepentant” = mankind; also the self in its envelopes of incarnation. The three crosses on Golgotha also stand for the three worlds 45, 47, 49, and many other things.
5The expression, “the veil of the temple was rent in twain”, is typical of the free manner in which the authors of the gospel novels used gnostic symbols. The symbol has many meanings. It stands for that veil of Isis which the individual must lift in order to become a causal self. It stands for the entry into the planetary hierarchy or government. It stands for the passage of the monad from the first to the second or later to the third triad, from one kingdom to another.
6“The woman at the sepulchre”: Christos remaining in mankind.
7“The disciples’ walk to Emmaus”: Christos in the planetary hierarchy.
8“The twelve disciples in the upper room where Judas was present”: Christos has access to the planetary government.
9Of course this explanation is indignantly rejected by the letter slaves who call the Bible the word of god and believe in so called verbal inspiration.
10The life of Jeshu is described in the esoteric gospel, and there it looks quite different from the New Testament version. The historical truth will not be allowed for publication as long as Christianity exists as a religion. And only when esoterics has been generally recognized as the only sensible working hypothesis (it can never be anything else), will the esoteric history of mankind during 18 million years be allowed for publication. Until then mankind must believe in lies.
1One example of how reality was distorted in the gospels of the New Testament is the gnostic legend of the “young man who had great possessions” and who asked Christos about the conditions of “eternal life” and who “went away sorrowful” when he had learned this; that you give away everything you have.
2This is a symbolic tale of a causal self who could not decide to become an essential self, since he would not “offer up his possessions”. That meant too great a sacrifice. The transition from the first to the second triad entails the dissolution of everything that the causal self possesses; his old causal envelope with all its qualities and abilities which he has acquired in the human kingdom, its omniscience of the worlds of man and of all past events, its “omnipotence” in these worlds, all this which is the sum total of evolution through the four lower natural kingdoms. He must sacrifice all this in order to acquire a serviceable essential envelope (the embryo existed before) and be able to definitively centre his monad in the second triad essential atom. The sacrifice entails an annihilation of that which was reality and life to the self and thereby an apparent obliteration of self-consciousness. The essential self enters into something that appears to be empty nothingness, and everything that is left of his old consciousness is just self-identity (I am I). This is said to be the ghastliest experience during the entire evolution.
3Please note that this must be done before you have made sure of what you receive instead. There is no more difficult choice in the entire evolution, and many there are who hesitate during several incarnations before that step, to go through the “needle’s eye”, until they have been convinced through essential selves that the gain of shared knowledge is incomparably greater than the loss. In that knowledge they retrieve even their own individual one, which seemed to have been lost. Only then they see that the “sacrifice” was just apparent, that nothing that has been can be lost, that everything which had a value in life remains the property of the individual and of all in common. In the globe memory you retrieve, not just everything you have been (the self retrieves also in its second triad mental atom everything which its old causal envelope contained), but you become a larger self including all of your own kingdom and the lower ones. The expression, “eternal life”, was the symbolic term the gnosticians used (and which of course was incomprehensible to the uninitiated) for life in the planetary hierarchy, the liberation from the compulsion of incarnation.
4No sensible man gives away everything which a good reaping has brought to him and which he is supposed to learn to manage in the right way. That is also an ability that must be acquired. The theologians used the parable to secure financial advantages (“give to the church”). Better than to donate to an institution is to give one’s fortune to an esoteric finance expert, who knows how to rightly manage and rightly use the money. To donate to an institution, which sooner or later degenerates into an end in itself, evidences helplessness.
1The Christian festivals are connected with the course of events in the Gospels and thus they, too, are symbols of the five stages on the disciple’s path from the fourth to the fifth natural kingdom.
2This fact has never dawned on the Christians, because they base their ideas on their belief that the gospels describe historical events. They do not know that the life of Christos in Palestine during the years 105–72 B.C. (according to our chronology, which is based on what is mistaken for the birth-year of Christos) was not as it is described in the New Testament, although he was a historical personage.
3Advent and Christmas were symbols of the first stage in discipleship. “Advent” in gnostic symbolism meant “the return of the strayed son to his father’s house”, the awakening of the monad in its causal envelope. Christmas symbolized the birth of the Christos child in the individual.
4Christmas does not signify the birth of any particular man. In actual fact, Jeshu was born in the month of March (the sun in the constellation of Pisces) in the year 105 B.C.
5“There is born to us a saviour.” Every human being, in whom the Christos child has been born, is a saviour for himself and will also be one for others at lower stages of development. We teach others in two ways. It is true that we cannot convey understanding of such things as are above other people’s level of development. However, we can give facts previously unknown to them. And in those who have the knowledge latently we can rouse it to a new life by putting them into contact with what they have known before. If this means latent esoteric knowledge, then the expression is used: to open the closed door into reality.
1Christmas is that Christian festival which is appreciated by all, because it is a feast of joy, originally signifying the joy over the return of light.
2Christmas reminds us of the light that is always shining but which cannot be seen by those who are wandering in the darkness of ignorance. That light is the knowledge that life is divine. It is the salvation from the superstition that life is in the power of evil, is sin and crime and punishment, that superstition which makes people concentrate on what is imperfect in themselves and in others, thereby hampering their own and other people’s development, instead of helping one another to see just what is good. For this is the condition of the birth of Christos in the hearts of all.
3Christmas is a serious appeal to us to consider the responsibility that we all have for one another.
4Christmas is a feast of joy at which all are favourably disposed to each other. This teaches us that only those who are happy are truly good, that only they can love with the charity that comes from the world of unity. Christmas reminds us that it is our duty to our fellow human beings to be happy and help them be happy.
5Peace on earth can only be brought about if people work positively themselves to acquire, and to make it easier for their fellow men to acquire, what the angels in their song of praise above the manger in Bethlehem called good will: “and peace on earth to people of good will”.
6In the esoteric societies they celebrated Christmas in order to express gratitude for the knowledge of reality and life which they had received, for the spiritual awakening with all that it had entailed. The members were reminded that salvation was collective, that it depended on everyone of them when mankind in its entirety would be able to realize the kingdom of god on earth. This is the task of men and not of higher beings. They gathered to receive that blessing which through Maitreya’s enormous resources of power is poured out over the earth to a greater extent than usual just on that occasion, when the minds of men are easy of approach by the essential influence. Also that host of billions of devas who have their work located among mankind, watch over us and help us, long to have this additional stimulation by stupendous forces that passes most people by almost without notice.
7To better understand what is meant by the “outpouring of the spirit” on the physical, emotional, and mental worlds, one should perhaps also know something about the material aspect of this phenomenon.
8Everything is life. And all life is an indivisible unity of matter, power, and consciousness. None of these three aspects of life can exist without the other two. Power, vibrations thus are matter: emotional matter, mental matter, essential matter, etc.
9That faith (like a grain of mustard seed) which Maitreya said could move mountains is an essential atom with the immense power and consciousness of the essential world. Incorporated with the individual’s envelope, it could very well make such a manifestation of power possible. There is no exaggeration in Maitreya’s message, which mostly passed the comprehension of the majority of his hearers and will do so the next time too.
10Thus the outpouring of the spirit consists in a veritable rain of essential atoms, which pour through the bodies of all people. However, just those in whom the essential consciousness can be aroused at least momentarily are able to perceive something of its bliss.
1Easter was intended to symbolize the passing of the causal self from the causal world to the essential world, his joining in the lowest collective of the planetary hierarchy, his entry into the fifth natural kingdom. The incarnation in which this transition is made has been regarded as the hardest of them all and for that reason (although wrongly) has been called the “incarnation of suffering”. The newborn essential self (who has acquired an envelope of the matter of the essential world) can very rightly say like Lohengrin: “I do not come from pain and darkness. From light and bliss I here arrived.” Nobody believes him, however, and scorn, mocking and rejection is all he will receive.
2Regrettably, Easter has in the Christian church become a time of sorrow and depression, casting its shadow even on the day of resurrection, which ought to be a day of joy, reminding of everybody’s rebirth to a new and better life. The week of suffering with Gethsemane and Golgotha, being a symbolic description of that incarnation in which the individual reaps his last bad sowing in the human kingdom, should make people see that they daily crucify man. And especially he is so treated whose life is that of perfect sacrifice. And this is so because that individual points out the emotional illusions and mental fictions of mankind and by his life acts like an accusation on the unrepentant. To be a teacher is seldom a rewarding task. But if anyone tries to save men from their enormous ignorance, then he deserves death. Against that individual all the poisoning methods of calumny are used, and never without effect.
3Before man makes the decision to “take the kingdom by force”, he must have seen that earth cannot give satisfaction, cannot calm the heart’s unrest, cannot give the peace of mind. He must have understood that the attainment of higher levels calls for strenuous work, that life is an uninterrupted, lifelong struggle against all hampering powers. These include the ineradicable complexes that ignorance engrafts in us ever since childhood, those paralysing superstitions of convention and misleading superstitions of spiteful moralism, being daily strengthened by the bad suggestions of our fellow men with their perverted views of life, all that which a great teacher calls “the leprosy of habit”. He inculcates that “we have not been given the esoteric knowledge as an appetizer to be served with the soup or the dessert but to be used in the service of life”. “Many people,” he says, “love this book of knowledge so deeply that they put it under their pillows in order to sleep better.”
1In the following are presented some of those gnostic “winged words”, catchwords, locutions, which are found in the gospel tales of the New Testament and are attributed to Jeshu.
2The gnostic monks in Alexandria who authored the gnostic novels about Christos made a diligent use of these words as being first enounced by the world teacher. Many of just these do not derive from Christos. That is perhaps irrelevant. What is relevant, however, is that interpretation of these symbols which was made by people ignorant of reality and life and which has resulted in the Christian dogmas and superstitions.
3In order to clarify part of this fictionalism, some of these sayings are presented here together with their original meaning.
1It is worthless to testify to oneself. Nor did any avatar do so. No avatar would say of himself: “I and the Father are one”, or “I am the light of the world”, or “No one cometh unto the Father, but by me”, or “I am the way, the truth, and the life”. What in such cases is meant by “I” is the knowledge of reality and life or the Law.
2Everybody is to have his own experiences and is to find his own path to higher worlds. No mediator between god and men is necessary, for the gods work in order that the individuals in all kingdoms reach ever higher. But these must walk the path themselves, every bit of the path. What the individual can do, that he must do. God does his part and we have to do our part. Only parasites in life ask for what they can do already themselves.
3All will reach the goal (the causal world), however many incarnations it will take. He who seeks will find. For the knowledge is there. Everyone who has found it knows that. And the number of esotericians in the physical world runs to about one million. The fact that they must be silent about what they know, see, and understand in order not to be considered “nutty”, is the best proof of mankind’s general stage of development. Those take a heavy responsibility on their shoulders who try to make others believe that their fictions accord with reality. The words of Paul, “Be ye not many teachers”, is a warning to those who believe they are called but have not been “chosen”.
1“He who believes in me shall not die.” Anyone who has become a second self (has his monad centred in the second triad) can no more lose his continuity of consciousness.
2“Be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.” Anyone who has entered into unity, into essentiality, into Christos, is one who has overcome. By his life he shows to others how they too will be able to overcome.
3“And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto myself.” Anyone who has entered into the second triad, lives in order to help others to do the same.
4“I am the way, the truth, and the life.” According to the law of self-realization, everybody is his own path to the goal. The path to the truth is that path of life which everybody is wandering. On that path we reach the goal sooner or later, the sooner the more trust in life and trust in ourselves we have acquired.
5Jeshu’s saying, often quoted and mostly in wrong contexts: “He that is not with me is against me”, did not refer to his person, not even to his position as a representative of the planetary hierarchy, but to the Law. He that is not for the Law is against the Law. No god in anyone of the seven divine kingdoms regards himself as a god nor allows anyone to regard him as a god. They are aware of their cosmic capacity, but all regard themselves as servers of life, brothers of all, unerring appliers of the Law.
1The saying attributed to Christos, “resist not evil”, is an obvious distortion of the original meaning, which was that we should not fight “evil” in ourselves. Using that psychological method, which is as common as perverse, we just strengthen evil. Instead, we do not attend to it at all. We think of something else, perhaps of the opposite quality or of our own Augoeides. Evil has power just as long as it is attended to. It dies for lack of fuel, if it is not attended to. Anyone who has acquired the power of thought control, decides himself what is to exist in his consciousness. The exhortation “resist not evil” was addressed to one-pointed self-realizers who were conscious of their purpose. Those who have decided to sacrifice everything in order just to serve life, first of all try to intensify the attractive tendency and learn to love people. For love is the motive power of man’s altruistic actions. Those who have entered into unity do not fight evil but with the weapons of love. Evil manifests itself in many forms and has the satanists as its most powerful representatives; those who with every imaginable diabolical means counteract evolution, act negatively in all respects, make a system of lying, preach the right of violence, the obvious justification of egoism, the self-glory of self-assertion. The exhortation was addressed to those who had reached the stage of ideality and with one-pointed purpose were bent on acquiring essential consciousness. Many people, Tolstoy and Gandhi for instance, have misunderstood that saying. Not to resist evil would amount to handing power over to the satanists and to outlawing good. Thus for instance the entry of the United States into both world wars was in full agreement with the desire of the planetary government.
1“Thy will be done” means the realization of the purpose of life. How shall mankind be able to realize that purpose without any knowledge of what it implies? The will of the planetary government is done in all that falls within its direct jurisdiction. But the will of the planetary government lies outside the domain of the law of freedom. “Thy will” has a special import in esoterics. It means the energies which pour through worlds 43—49 from worlds 36—42, “cosmic atoms charged with purpose”. To the esoterician “thy will be done” means a life in agreement with the laws of life.
2The expression, “Not my will, but thine be done”, has several different meanings. In his ignorance and conceit man thinks that his desires are rational, which they seldom are. When he has acquired a knowledge of existence, then he sees that what happens to him is to everybody’s best. He acquires trust in life, which is trust in a perfect cosmic organization, functioning perfectly according to the Law. It is this insight that lies back of the symbol, which was of course misinterpreted. Thus it did not signify resignation or surrender of one’s “own will” (trust in self), cowardly capitulation to overwhelming circumstances of life.
3“Not my will, but thine be done” means that the individual has reached an insight as to the purpose of his own incarnation and wants to realize it. The saying also intimates the individual’s entry into higher kingdoms, into the widened collective consciousness of higher worlds after acquiring the pertaining insights, qualities, and abilities. “Will” refers to the highest in both the second self (45) and third self (43). “Not my will, but thine be done” means that the individual, when as a 45-self he has learnt to see what will is, strives after that kind of consciousness in ever higher worlds. “Father, not my will, but thine be done” indicates that the individual has become a 43-self and thereby has free access to the planetary ruler.
4Quietism, calling man’s “own will” sin, is an abortive view of life. Without self-initiated consciousness activity evolution would be impossible. Passivity is paralysis of life. God does not do everything. Everybody must do his part. Cosmic evolution means everybody’s cooperation for the common goal. Anyone who does not want to participate, to do his part, is to remain in his natural kingdom until, some time in a future aeon, he changes his attitude.
1“Be done to you according to your faith.” Our orientation of mind, our attitude to life, our thoughts and feelings shape our destiny, our future circumstances of life. Anyone who believes he is an incurable “sinner” will remain one.
2“Thy faith has saved thee.” That “faith” is the will to liberation, the striving to unity. Trust in life is the proof of contact with unity. Without trust there will not be the intensity, the energy necessary to realization.
1“The kingdom of god” is the fifth natural kingdom. “The promised land” is the essential world. “Seek ye first his kingdom, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.” That promise is of course only given to those who have entered into unity, live in order to serve, and apply the laws of life rightly. Special promises are always given on special conditions. There are no other general promises than the eternally immutable laws of life.
2“The kingdom of god is within you” means that it shall not be sought outside us. For this has been the great mistake of Christianity and the cause of its errors and impotence. We are “gods in exile” until we use the causal and essential energies that pour through our centres in our endeavour to realize the kingdom of god on earth, in doing which the “god within us” is roused to life.
3When Christos declared, “My kingdom is not of this world”, then the esotericians understood this. His kingdom is the divine kingdom of our planet. The father of the church, the quasignostician Augustine and the Roman Catholic Church after him desired, contrary to the declaration of Christos, to make the physical, the lowest world the kingdom of god. And the result was a struggle for power, a constant, albeit temporarily masked, religious war. Also the Jews insist on making their Messiah a physical supreme king. Both are victims of the same error.
4People dream of peace and those who await the “return of the Lord” believe that he will proclaim a “kingdom of peace”. In actual fact there will be no peace until all mankind has attained beyond the emotional stage. The symbolic term “peace” means the domination of emotional consciousness by the mental. The legendary “my peace I give unto you” was a statement to the effect that a higher mental level (47:5) had been attained.
1“Unto him that gives shall be given.” This is a law of life. And the more lavishingly we show kindness and concern, the richer is our life. In what manner we get back what we have given is of minor importance. The only thing that Life promises is that Life pays back all its debts to us, to use a gross analogy.
2“Unto everyone that hath shall be given.” Anyone who has acquired knowledge desires more, is seeking and will find it.
3“From him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath.” Anyone who lacks the knowledge and is content with illusions and fictions, will in due time see their worthlessness. This is the immutable law of justice, a law of life. But it cannot be rightly interpreted by idiots. He “that hath not” is a parasite who is living on others. And he who has not acquired any idea of his own, remains an idiot also in subsequent worlds and in future lives. We are here in order to learn from our own experiences, not to live on those of other people. If scholars were not made professors by plagiarizing other people’s works and stealing their ideas, then research would progress more rapidly. To restate what others have thought should not be called research. It is compilation.
4He who has nothing is the man who has refused to receive the offers of life. Knowledge is the most precious pearl of life! So many people throw away their opportunities to learn during all their lives. They fritter away their heritage and then they accuse life. That man will be rich who takes what life gives, uses his opportunities and pays back his debt to life. But people are blind and deaf. They are unaware of what they have. What they do not have is of value. What they have is without value.
1“Love god above all” means that the man becomes so filled with the sense of being one with Life that he applies all his powers to self-realization. In so doing, the essential thing is not that he reaches the goal himself but lives in order to serve evolution, mankind, and all life being on the path to the same final goal.
2“Love thy neighbour as thyself” means that all are one in unity, even though they are at different stages. Without unity there is no goal and no true achievement, for unity is the source of light and power. These two commandments are the first ones, since they result in the salvation of mankind.
3The parable of our neighbour explains that our neighbour is first and foremost anybody who by the circumstances of life has been brought to us for our particular help. Besides, directions are unnecessary for anyone who loves people and wants to serve.
4“There is none good but one, that is, god.” Nothing is good if separated from unity. Only in unity can we rightly understand the significance of that which we in our ignorance call good and evil and its function for our development.
5It is in and through essentiality that the father’s love (the divinity of the manifestal world) is revealed in the son (the unity of the essential world) in order to save men (show the first self how to reach the second self).
1“Go ye therefore and make disciples of all nations” – make them the children of love – preach god’s love to all and everything.
2To “prepare the way for the coming of the Lord” means to work for the raising of the cultural level, not to proclaim any dogmas and creeds, but to develop common sense. All dogmas are explanations that may satisfy ignorance at a certain stage for a certain time.
3If Jeshu (according to the gnostic legend) actually said that “the kingdom of God is nigh at hand”, then he cannot possibly have meant (as is commonly interpreted) that “judgement day is imminent”. He was a representative of the planetary hierarchy and wanted to explain to men that it depended on them whether and when the hierarchy would return. Its return has often been very close to the possible.
4“I make all things new.” “New” means perfect. “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father, which is in heaven, is perfect.” This is the final goal of the monads within the solar system. The “father” is the 43-self. However, he too has stages of development above him and is so far relatively imperfect. Likewise, all are relatively imperfect, everybody on his level with his limited experiences, his qualities and abilities not yet acquired. Strive for the highest! That is perfection on each particular level. The symbolic use of the word “imperfection” meant superconscious molecular kinds which remain to be activated. This view of perfection was the definitive refutation of the doctrine of sin and the belief in the demony of life.
5“Many are called but few are chosen.” Many long for the world of ideals, for unity, but for many different reasons cannot as yet realize these ideals.
6“Let the dead bury their dead.” Negative, destructive criticism of things unfit for life is for those who cannot work in a positive spirit.
7“Thou hadst no power if it were not given to thee from above.” Those who abuse power sow much bad sowing, which they must reap some time. The guardians of the Law utilize them, however, to serve as agents of destiny, letting those who have sown a bad sowing experience their bad reaping. Those who abuse power thus are, as Goethe’s Mephisto puts it, “part of that power which ever strives for evil and ever serves good” (in this case the law of reaping). They are, in other words, the scavengers of existence.
1The word Christos existed in the Egyptian word krst, the mummy that was laid in the tomb. In Greek it was turned into Christos, the initiate, symbolizing that “resurrection to a new life” which the acquisition of essential consciousness entailed.
2In gnostics, the term “Christos” was a symbol of three quite different realities: the “personal Christos”, the “planetary Christos”, and the “cosmic Christos”. The “personal Christos” referred to that 43-self who is the head of the second department (department of education) of the planetary hierarchy. The “planetary Christos” referred to the second self, or the essential consciousness (the 46-consciousness) in its intermediate position between 45- and 47- consciousness. The “cosmic Christos” had reference to “involution” but was also a symbol used in esoteric astrology meaning the “fixed cross” (the constellations of Taurus, Leo, Scorpio, Aquarius).
3The gnosticians called Christos (the second triad) the mediator between god (third triad) and man (first triad).
4“Christos” means the fifth natural kingdom. The entry into this kingdom was called the “resurrection from the dead”, freedom from reincarnation. The “dead” was the term for mankind. “Christos in you”, “perfect in Christos”, “become Christos”, “put on Christos”, “spiritual birth”, “crucified with Christos”, “Christos lives in me”.
5“Salvation through Christos” is the entry into the essential world (the Christos world), the world of unity.
6“If any man be in Christos, then he is a new creature” means esoterically: anyone who has acquired an essential envelope (46) has entered into a higher kingdom.
7Many passages are corrupt but the key to the interpretation of these gnostic expressions is the “fifth kingdom”.
8In quite general terms it can be said that “Christos” denotes the connecting link between the highest and the lowest in cosmic, systemic, and planetary evolution. How would the uninitiated quasi-gnosticians (the fathers of the church) be able to elucidate these ideas? A bitter conflict about fictions ensued and continued until they could agree on those which theology had laid down as dogmas, not knowing the reality behind them.
9It is part of all-round development that the individuals in departments 4-7 enter department 3 and then move on to department 1 or 2. Those who enter department 2 need not pass to department 1 in our solar system of the second degree. That experience is necessary only for those who belong to solar systems of the third degree. Solar systems as well as planets fall under the cosmic departmental division, in which our planet belongs to the second department. The second department is the most important in our planet. Therefore, the head of the second department of the planetary hierarchy (43-self C.–M.) is also the supreme head of the entire hierarchy. Because of its misinterpretation of this fact Christian theology put Christos into such a central position as the “son of god”. The esoteric symbol, the “son of god”, denoted all members of the fifth kingdom. Those belonging to the sixth kingdom were called the “father”. This was of course just in the esoteric gnostic order, the symbols of which were distorted into theological dogmas that ever since mislead and idiotize people and are hostile to life.
10Also the planetary ruler belongs to the second department in the third divine kingdom (worlds 29–35). He has reached world 29 and is in process of passing to the fourth divine kingdom (22–28), thus into world 28.
11Westerners demand exact data and not such as leave room for speculation and thus misinterpretation: exact information or none at all. What Blavatsky called “blinds” are a nuisance.
1The legend makes Christos say, “I and the Father are one,” as well as “He that hath seen me has seen the Father”, because he was a father, that is: a third self (his monad was centred in the third triad). These sayings are typical gnostic symbols, which must always be misunderstood by the uninitiated.
2In gnostics, the third triad is called the “father”, the second triad the “son”, and the first triad the “mother” or the “holy ghost”. Anyone who has become a 43-self has his monad centred in the third triad and is sovereign in that triad. He can therefore say, if he wants to express himself symbolicly, that he is “one with the father”. This also means that he has free access to the planetary government. But he is not on a par with the planetary ruler, who nowadays belongs to the fourth divine kingdom (22—28).
3Only 43-selves can “with impunity” stand the planetary ruler’s vibrations, which otherwise must be stepped down, which involves an unnecessary expenditure of force. It is meaningless to speak of unity in this connection, since all higher beings have long ago “entered into unity”, have become conscious of the unity of everything in the cosmic total consciousness.
4“No one cometh unto the Father, but by me.” No one reaches the sixth natural kingdom (the Father) but by the fifth natural kingdom (the son). No one reaches the divine stage but by the stage of unity, divine love. The monad in the first triad cannot reach the third triad but by the second triad.
1In gnostic symbolism the “father”, the “great carpenter” meant the third triad and worlds 43—45; the “son”, “christos” meant the second triad and worlds 45—47; and the “mother”, Maya, or the “holy ghost”, the first triad (enclosed in the causal envelope) and worlds 47—49. By the “father”, the “great carpenter” they also particularly meant world 43 with its pertaining world consciousness; and by the “son”, “Christos”, world 46, which was also called the “kingdom of god”, the “kingdom of heaven”, and the “community of the saints”. Man (the son) could become a second self after his experiences as a first self and subsequent assistance from the planetary hierarchy. This symbolism also referred to the three aspects of reality. The father was will, the son was consciousness, and the holy ghost was matter. Symbolicly, “matter” was the physical world. Also the gnostic “spirit, soul and body” referred to the three triads. Just that piece of information should suffice to clarify how impossible it was for the quasi-gnosticians who worked out the Christian system of dogmas to define these terms correctly. They made a perfect mess of them all.
2Some of the gnosticians who in Alexandria authored the legends that were selected to become the gospels of the New Testament, belonged to the Jewish race. When writing, they had a predilection for Old Testament sayings and used prophecies then extant in order to connect their expositions with ideas prevalent among the Jews, possibly with a view to gaining proselytes among the Jewish people. The planetary ruler was termed the “king of Jerusalem”. The expression “go up to Jerusalem” meant the monad’s use of the triad chain to reach the second triad and finally the third triad.
1In esoteric symbolism, the word “crucifixion” has a threefold meaning. Firstly: incarnation in general (“the four spokes of the eternally revolving wheel of existence” were the four envelopes of incarnation). Other terms for incarnation were “fallen into sin” and “driven out of Paradise”. Secondly: that incarnation during which the self becomes an essential self. Thirdly: the very process of the self’s transition from the first to the second triad, in which the causal envelope, hitherto enclosing the first triad, is dissolved.
2The last incarnation as a man involves the final reaping of old bad sowing remnant. That entails physical, emotional, and mental suffering, rejection by people and often execution as a criminal.
3The process of definitively centring the monad in the second triad essential atom makes the old causal envelope, which has been the self’s envelope throughout the human kingdom, superfluous. That envelope contains all the mental atoms which the self has acquired during all its incarnations, with all its human experiences, qualities, and abilities. All this is lost in the process, while the self has no experience of future compensation. The self feels “naked”, abandoned, bereft of everything. This is its hitherto ghastliest experience and many there are who recoil from that test and do not venture the transition. The “compensation” is that the self in its essential atom consciousness retrieves everything that ever was in the causal envelope and moreover has access to the collective consciousness of the essential world (omniscience in worlds 46–49).
1“Born again” meant the individual’s entry into the fifth natural kingdom. The same thing was meant by that symbol, the birth of the Christos child. The newcomer is regarded as a child, is counted among the little brethren or as one of the least.
2“To become as little children” is to acquire the direct simplicity and to live spontaneously without thinking of effects or false dignity.
3“God is love.” This is a very ancient truism, which the theologians have managed to corrupt by their dogmatism of atonement. We are all partners in the cosmic total consciousness, and anyone who has acquired conscious collective consciousness is thereby “one with all”, a self with all other selves (monads, primordial atoms).
4According to the planetary hierarchy, the original significance of the symbol of “salvation” has been totally distorted. The individual is saved in two stages. The first stage is that he has become a causal self and thereby is “sovereign” in the worlds of man. The second stage is covered in the dissolution of the causal envelope, the acquisition of an essential envelope and of the common consciousness of the essential world. He has then entered the fifth natural kingdom, the planetary hierarchy, the “kingdom of god”.
5Save us from our “sins”, from ignorance, blindness, inability, impotence, apathy, paralysis, etc.
6The “path through the needle’s eye” was a symbolic expression used in the esoteric orders for the transition of the monad from the first to the second triad, from there to the third triad, from it to enter into the 43-atom (highest in the solar system) of the monad chain (1–49), from the 43- atom into a cosmic 42-atom etc.
7“Needle’s eye” is perhaps too crudely put for such a fine atom as the monad but seemed narrow enough for simple ideas of the soul. It was primarily the degree of difficulty they wanted to intimate by the symbol. The transitions require the highest efficiency, and it is a very arduous path, so difficult that even in the cosmic worlds the monad will not reach higher without “power from above”.
8The transition from the fourth to the fifth natural kingdom was called the “apostolic succession” by the gnosticians. Of course that symbol has been misinterpreted like all the others.
1Sin, or evil, is everything lower, everything that is below the individual’s true level. Sins are no “crimes against an infinite being”, but mistakes as to unity and the laws of life. Our sins are forgiven, not by our revelling in contrition, meaninglessly making ourselves nervous wrecks unfit for life by all manner of self-accusations, but by our ceasing to do what we ourselves see is wrong.
2The idea of sin puts insurmountable obstacles in the way of the individual’s necessary work for self-realization and shuts off the connection to the divine.
3This simple state of affairs and the perverseness of the engrafted complex of sin are clarified in the parable of the strayed son, who when returning to his father’s house is made the guest of honour. As soon as the individual has taken his stand under the law of unity and lives in order to help and serve, his mistaken attitude to unity ceases.
4The parable of the prodigal son has been distorted by the ignorance of life, as is the case with all other esoteric parables. Wiseacreness believes itself able to interpret the gospels. The prodigal son is not “lost” but strayed. And the strayed is not least the religious person who condemns his fellow man as lost. Still they have not understood that the parable of the prodigal son refers to all mankind.
5The “forgiveness of sins” is the liberation from identification with the lower. But this forgiveness does not imply any abolition of the Law. That doctrine is satanic. Sin is mistakes as to the laws of life. We shall have opportunities to make up for those mistakes in future incarnations.
6The theologians have quite lost the understanding of what the gnosticians called the “forgiveness of sins”. If the black lodge fiction of sin as a crime against a divine being has been engrafted in an individual, then he must be psychologically liberated from that fearful burden. The gnostic “liberation from sin” had the result that the individual no more thought of and was no more tormented by his past with its many mistakes. The memory of what had been was blotted out, and the “saved” was taught “never to look back”. Everything that is attended to is revitalized in the old complexes. One of the first conditions of discipleship also is that the aspirant has learnt so much thought control that he never looks back.
7The theologians, who lack all the prerequisites of interpreting the Bible, of course have formed all imaginable conceptions of what “sin against the holy ghost” could mean. Only esotericians can interpret that symbol correctly.
8“Sin against the holy ghost” is the refusal to recognize the unity of life and the definitive refusal to enter into unity. It implies the individual’s conscious, deliberate resolution, systematically carried out, “to disclaim his humanity”, his share in unity, to sever the connection between the lesser causal envelope with the lowest triad and the greater causal envelope with the higher triads. After that there is no more any desire to re-establish the connection.
9The expression, “that sin shall not be forgiven, neither in this eon or that which is to come”, means that the individual, in case the greater causal envelope has been definitively dissolved, must in the course of evolution acquire a new envelope, after he has reaped to the last grain all the bad sowing he has sown as a “soulless” self.
10In the symbolic tale of Atlantean origin (which the Jews found in the Babylonian temple archives), “Solomon” meant the human monad and the “temple” meant the causal envelope. The gnostic locution of the “temple of the holy ghost” as the dwelling of man was connected with this legend.
1That symbol of the true gnosticians, the “dweller of the threshold”, is one of those ancient symbols which have occupied imagination and which of course speculation, idiotizing everything, has taken care of. Originally it quite simply meant man as a perfected personality after having acquired the consciousness possible for man (47:4—49:7) before he becomes a causal self. He then stands before the choice of either being his own master, omnipotent in the worlds of man, or of renouncing his sovereignty and becoming a server of life. Later the symbol also was given other meanings.
2Thus the “dweller” is the symbol of that which stands between the individual in a lower kingdom and his continued life in a higher one, that which has been discarded when it has been finally mastered. For man this means his first triad and his triad envelope, later his causal envelope, much later his second triad, etc. In the great process of emancipation, the symbol thus has reference to the next stage of development.
3The risk of all systems is that they bind thought to something definitive, when they are made anything else but temporary systems of orientation, above all if the theory is allowed to be anything else than theory, a substitute for life. In that sense also a system can become a “dweller”, a hindrance.
1“Judgement day”, of which so much balderdash has been written – the effort of ignorance to preach its wisdom – comes when the emotional forms in the emotional world are dissolved. Those who then are unable to live a mental life will be reborn on planets in the solar system where emotional life is still possible.
2“Deceits of the world, the flesh, and the devil.” “Deceits of the world” are the pressure of the masses, public opinion, ignorance of life within all domains. The “flesh” is the bad qualities which we have acquired in all previous incarnations, which all together express themselves as a perverted instinct of life. The “devil” is the black lodge.
3We in our turn should become “sacrifices of atonement” by “taking up our cross” and like Jeshu bear the “sins of the world”, endure calumny, persecution, etc. Only so can we be liberated from the identification with the lower. This is connected with destiny and reaping.
4The “sword” as a gnostic symbol had a twofold significance: The mental sword or the power to discriminate between true and false, right and wrong. The physical sword or the ability to liberate consciousness from everything that hinders its development, that wants to attach the self to the physical.
1A central esoteric symbol still haunting is “logos”, the “word”. It is high time it were elucidated. Doctrines to be taught should be comprehensible. Otherwise they should not be taught, for then the inevitable result is mental misconstructions and confusion of ideas. The word “logos” has eventually, like all symbols, been given many meanings: the motion aspect of existence, sound (with its correspondences in all the worlds) being the mightiest energy; higher divine kingdoms; collective beings, etc.
2“The word was made flesh”, Logos became man, Christos incarnated as a representative of the planetary government (the “father”) having become a 43-self and so having free access to the planetary government (having become a “son of god”).
3“The word was made flesh” also was the gnostic term for the perfected “personality” (the integration of the envelopes, the mental sovereignty over human consciousness) and the humility of the personality before the gradual acquisition of the causal knowledge. Here the “word” meant the knowledge of reality.
4Man can enter the fifth natural kingdom when all the “spokes” of his principal seven centres (chakras, “wheels”) are fully active. The total number of these runs to 144 000 (4, 6, 10, 12, 16, 96 x 1000). This is, according to the gnostic locution, the “number of the saved” (masked in the Book of Revelation and misinterpreted, as always).
5The number of the beast (666) in the Book of Revelation refers to man and to the six physical, six emotional, and six mental molecular kinds in his envelopes. The beast is man, which mankind should have learnt to see, if we can learn anything at all from history and in our time from Nazism, the perversion of a cultural nation.
The above text constitutes the essay Gnostic symbols by Henry T. Laurency. The essay is part of the book Knowledge of Life One by Henry T. Laurency. Copyright © 1999 by the Henry T. Laurency Publishing Foundation.