With the twelve stanzas of the epic of the crucifixion the pupil ends his journey through the fields of dialectics, on the way to the house of the father. The morning of the resurrection has come and we will now devote our attention to what this glorieus victory in the Gnostic sense signifies for us. We must have a complete survey of what and who rises from the tomb and what the tomb is to grasp all that transpires during the course of the resurrection.
In geographical Jerusalem there is a building called the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. At the time that Jerusalem was destroyed by Titus and after it was rebuilt, there was an artificially erected hill in the centre of the town known as Golgotha. In the year 326 this hill was leveled and a chapel was constructed there.
In later times this chapel was destroyed and at present a large church stands on that same site. There is a sarcophagus, an embalming stone and also the tomb of Christ inside that church. Furthermore, there are wooden pieces of the cross, kept in glass-cases, assembled with gold on blue velvet. One finds there the sweat-cloth of the suffering Saviour!
You must see this deliberate, historical mistake in its true colours, because the real tomb of Christ is wherever a pupil truly walks the path of the Gnosis. You must not look for the holy tomb in sand hills or in rocky places, you can only find it in a living, pulsating microcosm! The tomb is the unholy part of the microcosm where the personality system, severed from the divine nature, is being braken up. The divine tomb is where a new, glorified personality arises on the new day, within the microcosm that has become reconciled with God.
As you know, the holy tomb is in the garden of Joseph of Arimathea, that is to say, in the micro cosm of the master builder who, by walking the gnostic path, has broken through to victory. If we are to grasp anything at all of the mystery of the resurrection, we must keep our attention focused on the reality of the present. Just as Christ, the all-glorious one, is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow, so also is the resurrection.
Participating in the resurrection of Christ means realizing this same mystery of salvation in one’s own life and being. If you ensure this insight within your own being, within your own consciousness, so that inherited blood proclivities can never again obscure it, then it is possible for you to reflect succesfully upon the glorious and seemingly prodigious change that takes place during the process of resurrection.
The epic of the crucifixion refers to the twelve fold grip of the Gnosis upon the twelvefold nervous system which, corresponding with the serpent-fire, is symbolized by the fig tree. As a consequence of the divine twelvefold grip of the master the personality of this nature is broken up. By the personality of this nature we mean the entire fourfold corporeality, that is the physical body, the etheric double, the desire body and the thinking faculty, as well as the threefold earthly consciousness.
This entire system is dissolved by the divine master’s grip, not as an incident, hut by way of a process. As you may know, the holy fig tree has twenty-four branches. They are the twelve pairs of cranial nerves which control the entire personality system. There are twelve positive and twelve negative poles and, consequently, twenty four different functions. Each one of these twenty-four functions can be scrupulously pursued and the pupil of the Spiritual School of the Universal Brotherhood is enabled to see these twenty-four functions as twenty-four commands, as twenty-four tasks in which he as a freemason is allowed to and must cooperate to the fullest extent. In fact, the candidate must respond to the twelvefold master’s grip.
Every branch of the holy fig tree corresponds to some of the forty-nine plexuses and certain internal secretion organs. Yau can imagine that every aspect is similar to a working place in which the work is diligently performed. In watching the work in one of the twelve working places, we clearly see that it is twofold, that is in gathering the raw materials and in using them. Via the negative ·pole, the gnostic raw materials are supplied and via the positive irradiating pole they are conveyed to the places of service, to the ganglia, the internal secretion organs and to the blood producing organs.
The aim of the great work must he fulfilled in these places of service in the personality. This fulftlment can be best described as the building of the simulacrum. The candidate has a personality which exists, who can be seen and which behaves in a perfectly natura! way, hut which in essence no langer belongs to this world. Now, do not make the terrible mistake of calling this simulacrum the heavenly figure, because in reality it is nothing. It is no longer of the material sphere; neither is it of the reflection sphere; nor is it of any other realm of nature. It belongs to nothing, it exists as a temporary vehicle and as soon as it is abandoned it is reduced to atoms. Furthermore, this simulacrum also has a delusive life and a sham consciousness.
The mystification proceeds until a certain psychological moment, which comes when the body of resurrection has been prepared. You will understand that the creation of the simulacrum, the slipping away of the dialectica! reality into the figure of nothingness is indicated philosophically by us as the endura, as the crucifiction-epic.
Now let us consider how the body of the resurrection is evoked. You should not compare in any respect the personality of the true divine man with that of the earthly man. The divine man is not a glorified earthly man; he is not a spiritual Venus or Apollo. The divine man can best be compared to a divine, shining, radiating focus, able to assume all kinds of farms and also able to appear completely formless.
As soon as the pupil neutralizes the unholy part of his microcosm to nothingness through the radiation of grace of the Gnosis then, at the same rate as the endura proceeds, the original microcosmic logos is afforded the opportunity to resume its place, its old throne within the microcosm. Nothing of the earthly is made into that which is original. All that is earthly is reduced to nothing. As soon as that point of nothing has been reached, the original glorious One is present again in the sanctuary.
Then the glorious, holy, divine moment comes when the ineffable glorious one stands before the simulacrum, thereby proving that the resurrection has become a reality. The simulacrum disappears, unless it is stil assigned a task in aiding the process of rebirth of others. Let us now see what the Holy Language testifies to with regard to these things.
Direct your attention to the well known story of Mary Magdalene. This story begins on the first day of a new period; let us read it together in the light of what we have just conveyed to you. Mary Magdalene, who is being described to us as a converted woman, meaning in the transfiguristic sense a human being who has gone the path of nothingness, finds ‘the tomb’ empty on that particular morning. The stone has been removed. This ’emptiness’ of the tomb and the ‘removed stone’ have a very deep meaning. In the course of the process as it has been described to you, there comes a moment which may be literally referred to as the abandoned tomb. As you know, the tomb is the unholy part of the microcosm, wherein the dialectica! personality existing in the unholy part lies down during the epic of the crucifixion.
After these events have come to an end,· when the dialectical personality has broken through to the absolute nothing and the simulacrum has come into existence, Mary Magdalene, the inhabitant of the rocks, steps outside and is placed as it were outside her own microcosm. The candidate pupil then experiences from within that the tomb is actually empty, that is, that the microcosm has completely disposed of all that is unholy. The stone which has kept the tomb closed for eons has been removed.
It may be imagined that the fust experience of this new transcendent life is a feeling of being out of one’s element and in the beginning this has a somewhat disconcerting effect upon the candidate. Because in the grave the simulacrum was connected with the Gnosis, there was an inter action between the Holy Spirit and the personality which was going through the endura. However, this connection is suddenly severed and we can well understand the lamentation spontaneously welling up from the soul, ‘They have taken away my Lord’.
This Lord, this tie with the Gnosis, will return to Mary in an entirely different way. She is now confronted with the Gnosis in the form of an original human being, standing outside herself and she recognizes him from within as the All-glorieus One. The warning sounds, ‘Do not take hold of me’. The binding may not, cannot be restored as it was previously. Everything is now directed at the absolute ascension of the entire microcosm. Mary goes away; the simulacrum lets go. The Lord of the microcosm, able again to rule over his realm, proceeds to his last work.
‘On the evening of the first day of the week the Lord stood before his disciples and greeted them with the words, “Peace be unto you.” He showed them his hands and his side. They greatly rejoiced’.
We very much hope that you will be able to fathom the following evangelical aspect. The simulacrum, seeing that its original binding with the Gnosis is severed after the resurrection, is not left to its fate. On the contrary, it can still be used for a long time to come in the service of the light. After the new relationship has been realized and the ‘touch me not’ has sounded, after this new loneliness has been experienced, the Gnosis returns to the pupil who is given a new task.
On the preceding day the candidate, through his complete sacrifice, has made it possible for the original one to arise. Now the risen one takes him into his service, in the life which is completely devoted to the service of God. The pupil now receives a real mandate. The Master wil1 use him in the harvest field of souls as a fi.sher of men. As a signature of this, the Gnosis shows him the two hands and the side. They are the elevated attributes of the Holy Spirit. While the Gnosis extends this sign, the mantram sounds anew, ‘Peace be unto you. As My Father has sent me, even so I send you’.
The candidate who has lost his I is taken up in a mighty stormwind which beats about him as a great whirl. Mighty voices sound, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven, if you retain the sins of any, they are retained. Amen, yes Amen!’ So we see the pupils, the disciples of this standing, spread everywhere over the earth, even into the darkest holes, reflect ing the Holy Spirit. And the rebom one journeys with them. They are not the light, hut they are sent by God to testify of the light. The simulacrum spreads a brilliant glow, the luminosity of the All glorious One who is, who was and who will come.
If only you are willing to read and understand, you will find the signature of the glorious resurrection and its consequences everywhere in the Holy Language. Everything you understand will be a beacon upon your path. Now, there is still a danger for all candidates who have been granted the celebration of the glorious feast of the resur rection within their own being. It is the danger of faintheartedness or irresolution. Attention is drawn to this danger in the appearance at the sea of Tiberius.
The mandated one is fishing and see, he catches nothing. To the question ‘Have you any fish?’, he must reply, ‘No’. In the new relationship by which the Gnosis now confronts him, a relation ship which will never be severed, the gnostic suggestion now sounds, ‘Cast the net on the right side of the ship, and you shall find some’. And the net, full of fish, is dragged ashore; there were one hundred fifty-three; a symbol of plenitude.
Therefore, he who can celebrate the glorious feast of the resurrection is also totally victorious as a fisher of men. Although a great multitude of fish will be caught, the net will not tear. Let all who might hope or expect that some working apparatus built on the rock of Christ will give way, learn from the Holy Language that the net will never tear. Through night and death the morning will surely come.