6.
To
see the connection of all this with Christianity, we need to delve
briefly into metaphysics. What is a god? Do “gods” exist at all?
All
the ancient spiritual traditions speak of the possibility of
transcending our limited consciousness by what is often called
“enlightenment”, or more specifically, initiation. Those who attain
this and its successively higher stages become able to know and observe
other levels, planes, of existence, and with that, other beings besides
us humans—the so-called hierarchies, called angels, archangels, or
whatever. The more exalted they are, however, the more their
consciounesses merge and overlap as they approach closer to the One that
includes them all.
This
One, however is not a being. H.P.Blavatsky describes it as follows:
“An
Omnipresent, Eternal, Boundless, and Immutable PRINCIPLE on which all
speculation is impossible, since it transcends the power of human
conception and could only be dwarfed by any human expression or
similitude. It is beyond the range and reach of thought…’unthinkable
and unspeakable’.”[xx]
There is nothing outside or beyond this Principle—no thing,
no being, no space, no kind of environment for it to exist in. All
those exist as potentials within it. Thus although not itself a being,
it includes “being-ness”, as also the creative potential for matter,
time, consciousness, and universes with all their beings.
However, it “breathes”. It breathes universes into
existence, which in their infinite variety may—like ours-- go through a
very long development before being breathed back into the One.
The first stages of manifestation are so far beyond our
comprehension that most religions only hint at them in image form,
usually as the arising of a trinity of beings. In the Christian form of
it, the Father God emerging, emanates the Holy Spirit, and from these
two is born the Son. The Holy Spirit however is
male-female--consciousness and matter still as one, and only when they
separate can the Son, the Christ, the Third Logos manifest as the first
relatively distinct being, and galvanize a cosmos into manifestation.
Christianity makes Mary an earthly mother, fertilized by the
Holy Spirit, but some theologies show their archetype as one dual being,
or like Osiris and Isis, both husband/wife and brother/sister, and the
birth of Horus thus the result of a kind of divine incest.
Interestingly, there is a remnant of this in, for instance,
the Anglican Church liturgy, which speaks of, ”Christ, the only-begotten
Son of God”. Note that “only-begotten” has a hyphen. That is because
the original Latin “unigenitum” does not mean “the only son that God
had”, but “born of a single parent”—“alone-born”, one could say. This
is one of several quotations which have been --perhaps deliberately–mis-translated
or misinterpreted to justify a claim that Christianity is the only true
religion, thus causing endless misery.
Others are: “no one cometh to the Father but by me”, and:
“that at the name of Jesus, every knee shall bow, in heaven and on earth
and underneath the earth”[xxi]
The “me” however—and even “Jesus”,” here is the real “I” of every
person. The above passages are however just clumsy hints of a “Mystery”
in the original sense—i.e. something which, even if words could be found
to express it, cannot be fully understood by ordinary consciousness. To
be “spiritually realistic” is to recognize this, rather than to try to
reduce everything to a mundane level.
Through this Third Logos, the Demiurge or Creator, are
emanated the rest of the manifested worlds, in their whole range,
including the beings of the hierarchies, the spiritual cores of us
humans, and the beings that we later tend to call evil. It all emerges
however unimaginably slowly, stage by stage. We develop appropriate
vehicles or “bodies” to function differently on each plane.
At a certain stage, when we humans are individualized and
conscious enough, it becomes possible for us to awaken to the fact that
the inner core of each of us, while on the one hand irrevocably
individual, is on the other hand part and parcel of that One Source. We
are it, so to speak. And each of us is a miniature, a microcosm,
of that macrocosm.
Again, this is a Mystery, until one has risen to it oneself,
but it is the real meaning of the awakening of the Christ within, the
Saviour, the Son of God who rescues us from all the sorrows of life.
For most of us are unaware of the divine being within. When
we first become aware of it, it often seems at first like another being
above us, a god. We can pray to it, but this brings us into a
problematic area.
We can pray to, or revere, any being, but even if it has a
well-known name, like Jesus, Virgin Mary, Buddha, Krishna, Jehovah or
Allah, we need to recognize that all these are, relatively speaking,
illusions. There is only One manifesting in all, and it is only that
One which deserves our thanksgiving and worship. In fact, however, we
can pour out our devotion to one such figure, and if we are sincere and
open, eventually break through into a mystical union with the One.
