The Story of Anna Kingsford and Edward Maitland and of the new Gospel of Interpretation Part 13

The more we pondered these communications, the higher was our appreciation of them. We felt that the "veil of Moses" was at length "taken away" as promised, and we had been enabled to tap a reservoir of boundless wisdom and knowledge. For we found in them the longed-for solution of the purpose and nature of the Bible and Christianity, and the key to man's spiritual history. The method of the Bible-writers, the meaning of idolatry, the secret of the Cain and Abel feud between priest and prophet, as the ministers respectively of the sense-nature and of the intuition, and the process whereby the religion of Jesus had become distorted into the orthodoxy which has usurped His name;--all these things were now clear to us as the demonstration of a proposition in geometry, the witness of which was in our own minds. And we, too, we rejoiced to think, were of the school of the prophets, in that with all the force of our minds we had "exalted the Woman," Intuition, and refused to make the word of G.o.d of none effect by priestly traditions.

Not the least marvellous element in the case was the faculty whereby the seeress had been able to reproduce, after waking, with such evident faithfulness the things seen and heard at so great length in sleep. In reply to my questionings she said that the words seemed to show themselves to her again as she wrote[67].

Discoursing with her Genius on this subject of memory, she received the following, which is valuable also for its recognition of the mystical import of the Bible narratives, and confirmation of St Paul when he says in reference to certain narratives in Genesis, "These things are an allegory."

"Concerning memory; why should there any more be a difficulty in respect of it? Reflect on this saying,--'Man sees as he knows.' To thee the deeps are more visible than the surfaces of things; but to men generally the surfaces only are visible. The material can perceive only the material, the astral the astral, and the spiritual the spiritual. It all resolves itself, therefore, into a question of condition and of quality. Thy hold on matter is but slight, and thine organic memory is feeble and treacherous. It is hard for thee to perceive the surfaces of things and to remember their aspect. But thy spiritual perception is the stronger for this weakness, and the profound is that which thou seest the most readily. It is hard for thee to understand and to retain the memory of material facts; but their meaning thou knowest instantly and by intuition, which is the memory of the soul. For the soul takes no pains to remember; she knows divinely. Is it not said that the immaculate woman brings forth without a pang? The sorrow and travail of conception belong to her whose desire is unto 'Adam'"[68].

The following sentences sum up the conclusions to which, by degrees, we were led. The first two paragraphs are from an exposition concerning the dogma of the Immaculate Conception which we considered as one of the most sublime and momentous of all her illuminations[69].

"All that is true is spiritual.... No dogma is real that is not spiritual. If it be true, and yet seem to you to have a material signification, know that you have not solved it. It is a mystery; seek its interpretation. That which is true is for Spirit alone.

"For matter shall cease and all that is of it, but the Word of the Lord shall remain for ever. And how shall it remain except it be purely spiritual; since, when matter ceases, it would then be no longer comprehensible?"

"For, though matter is eternally the mode whereby spirit manifests itself, matter is not itself eternal."

"The church has all the truth, but the priests have materialised it, making religion idolatry, and themselves and their people idolaters."

"In their real and divinely intended sense, its doctrines are eternal verities, founded in the nature of Being. As ecclesiastically propounded, they are blasphemous absurdities."

"All the mistakes made about the Bible arise out of the mystic books being referred to times, places, and persons material, instead of being regarded as containing only eternal verities about things spiritual."

"The Bible was written by intuitionalists, for intuitionalists, and from the intuitionalist standpoint. It has been interpreted by externalists, for externalists, and from the externalist standpoint. The most occult and mystical of books, it has been expounded by persons without occult knowledge or mystical insight"[70].

Thus gradually but surely we learnt that Ecclesiastical education has rigidly excluded from its curriculum all those branches of study which could throw light on the real nature of existence, and consists in learning what other men have said who, themselves, did not know, but were mere hearsay scholars lacking the witness in themselves.

We marvelled much as to how the priesthoods will comport themselves when compelled to recognise the fact that a New Gospel of Interpretation has actually been vouchsafed from the world celestial in correction of their perversion and mutilation of the former Gospel of Manifestation, and suppression of the true doctrine of salvation. Will Cain and Caiaphas still have the dominion, and ecclesiasticism be as ready to crucify the Christ on His second coming as it was on His first? And if not, how will it find courage to face the world with the humiliating confession that all through the long ages of its history, while arrogantly claiming to be the faithful and infallible minister of the Gospel of Christ, it has persistently withheld that gospel, and, losing the key to its meaning, has subst.i.tuted for the wholesome "bread" of divine truth, the "stones"

of innutritious because unintelligible dogmas; and for the "fish" of the living waters, the "serpents" of the letter which kills? and that when men have rightly suspected that Christianity has failed, not because it is false, but because it has been falsified, and have sought to their own inner light for the truth of which ecclesiasticism had defrauded them, it dealt out to them pitiless anathema and persecution, making the earth a scene of torture and slaughter in a.s.sertion of the right of the priesthoods to teach wrong?

That the work committed to us implied nothing less than the fulfilment of the prophecies of which the promise of the Second Coming of Christ was the culmination, while intimated to us from the outset, was gradually unfolded into full a.s.surance, and we were enabled to see that the very terms in which it was couched implied a spiritual advent, and one which should disclose the perfect system at once of science, philosophy, morality, and religion, of which Christ is both the foundation and the consummation. For the "clouds of heaven" in which it was to take place, were no other than the heaven of the kingdom within man of his restored spiritual consciousness. "That wicked one," "the son of perdition," and "mystery of iniquity" then to be revealed and destroyed, was no other than the inspiring evil spirit of an ecclesiasticism which had received indeed its doctrines from above, but their interpretation and application from below. And the "Spirit of His mouth," and the "Brightness of His Coming" were no other than a new Word of G.o.d, in the form of a New Gospel of Interpretation, so potent in its logic and so luminous in its exposition as to indicate the Logos Himself as its source, and the "Woman" Intuition, "clothed with the Sun" of full illumination, as its revealer.

We saw, too, that with this "Woman" thus rehabilitated, G.o.d's "Two Witnesses,"--who have so long lain dead in the streets of "that great city" wherein the Lord, the divinity in man, is ever systematically crucified; the city of the world's system as fas.h.i.+oned and controlled by an ecclesiasticism shrouded in the threefold veil of Blood, Idolatry, and the Curse of Eve,--will rise and stand on their feet, and ascend to the heaven of their proper supremacy, _vice_ Lucifer deposed and fallen.

And in them Lucifer himself will regain his lost estate, vindicating his t.i.tle to be called the Light-bearer, the bright and morning star, the herald and bringer-in of the perfect day of the Lord G.o.d. For, as the Intellect, he is the heir of all things, if only he be begotten of the Spirit, and be no b.a.s.t.a.r.d engendered of the Sense-Nature.

For--as we had come to learn--G.o.d's Two Witnesses in man are ever the Intellect and the Intuition, when duly unfolded and united in a pure spirit. Under such conditions the s.h.i.+loh comes, and mounted on them man rides triumphant as king into the holy city of his own regenerate nature. But divorced from her, the Intuition, and--leagued with the Sense-Nature--knowing matter only and the body, the Intellect becomes "prince of devils" in man, the maker of men into fiends, and of the earth into a h.e.l.l. Wherefore his fall from the heaven of his power, on the advent of that whole Humanity, of whom it is said, "the Man is not without the Woman, nor the Woman without the Man, in the Lord," the humanity of intellect and intuition combined, has ever been exultingly hailed in antic.i.p.ation by all true seers and prophets.

The chief points of the doctrine, the prospect of the restoration of which has thus been the sustaining hope of the percipient faithful in all ages, may be summarised as follows:--

The doctrine which, first and foremost, it is the purpose of the Bible to affirm, and of the Christ to demonstrate, and in which reason entirely concurs, is no other than that of the divine potentialities of man, belonging to him in virtue of the nature of his const.i.tuent principles, the force and the substance of existence. These are the duality of the "heavens" which G.o.d is said to "create," meaning to put forth from Himself, "in the beginning," and of the mutual interaction of which all things are the product, varying according to the plane of operation, alike for creation and redemption, generation and regeneration. And that which Jesus really affirmed in the memorable but little understood words, "Ye _must_ be born again, or from above, of Water and the Spirit," was both the possibility and the necessity to all men of realising the potential divinity belonging to them in virtue of the divinity of their const.i.tuent principles. And in affirming this He affirmed both the necessity and the possibility to every man of being born exactly as He Himself, as typical man regenerate, is said to have been born, of Virgin Mary and Holy Ghost, and also His own ident.i.ty in kind with all other men. And He affirmed, moreover, the utter falsity of that priest-constructed system, which, ignoring Regeneration, insists on Subst.i.tution, as the means of salvation. For "Virgin Mary," and "Holy Ghost," are but the mystical synonyms with "Water and the Spirit," the substance and force, or soul and spirit, of which, man is const.i.tuted, in their divine because pure condition, the product of which in man is the new regenerate selfhood called, as by St Paul, the "Christ within."

Begotten in man as matrix, of the pure Spirit and Substance which are G.o.d, this new selfhood is son at once of G.o.d and of man; and in him G.o.d and man are "reconciled" or "at-oned." And that man is said to be saved by his blood, is because the "blood of G.o.d" is pure spirit, and it is the pure spirit in the man that saves him; and that he is called the only-begotten Son of G.o.d, is not because G.o.d begets no other of his kind, but because G.o.d, as G.o.d, begets directly none of any other kind.

This, then, as we came to learn, and to recognise as having learned it in our own long-past lives, is the doctrine which Jesus came to teach and to demonstrate in His own person. Matter is spirit, being spiritual substance, projected by force of the divine Will into conditions and limitations, and made exteriorly cognisable. And being spirit it can revert to the condition of spirit. In virtue of the divinity of his const.i.tuent principles, man has within himself the seed of his own regeneration, and the power to effectuate it. He has in him, this is to say, the potentiality of divinity realisable at will. And the secret and method of the achievement, which is no other than the secret and method of Christ, is inward purification and unfoldment, the unfoldment of the capacities, mental, moral, and spiritual, of his nature, of which inward purification is the first and essential condition. Thus is the Finding of Christ the realisation of the Ideal, and Christ is for every man the summit of his own evolution.

Stated in terms of modern science, but correcting its aberrations, the doctrine of Christ is in this wise. Evolution is the manifestation of inherency. Owing to the divinity of the const.i.tuent principles of existence, its Force and its Substance, both of which are G.o.d, the inherency of existence is divine. Wherefore, as the manifestation of a divine inherency, evolution is accomplished only by the attainment of divinity; and the cause of evolution is the tendency of substance to revert from its secondary and "created" condition of matter, to its original and divine condition of pure spirit. Wherefore evolution is definable as the process of the individuation of Deity in and through Humanity.

Such is the genesis of the Christ in man. And he is called _a_ Christ who, having accomplished this process in himself, returns into the earth-life when he has no need to do so for his own sake, out of pure love to redeem, by showing to others their own equal divine potentialities and the method of the realisation thereof.

This method consists in love, love of perfection, which is G.o.d, for its own sake, and love for others. The process is entirely interior to the individual. It consists in the sacrifice of the lower nature to the higher in himself, and of himself for others in love. That which directly saves the man is not the love of another for the man, but the love which he has in himself. All that can be done by another is to kindle this love in him.

The philosophy of this doctrine of salvation by love was formulated for us as follows:--"It is love which is the centripetal power of the universe; it is by love that all creation returns into the bosom of G.o.d.

The force which projected all things is will, and will is the centrifugal power of the universe. Will alone could not overcome the evil which results from the limitations of matter; but it shall be overcome in the end by sympathy, which is the knowledge of G.o.d in others,--the recognition of the omnipresent Self. This is love. And it is with the children of the spirit, the servants of love, that the dragon of matter makes war"[71].

In making the means of salvation extraneous to the individual, Sacerdotalism has defrauded man of his Saviour, making the first and personal coming of Christ of none effect. Hence the necessity for the second and spiritual coming represented by the New Gospel of Interpretation as was foretold:--the coming which was to be in the clouds of the heaven of man's restored understanding; the Hermes within.

But the process of regeneration is a prolonged one, extending over many earth-lives; and so also is the prior process of evolution, whereby man reaches the stage at which he is amenable to regeneration. Wherefore regeneration has for its corollary reincarnation. To tell man that he "must be born again" spiritually, and deny him the requisite opportunities of experience, which must be acquired while in the body--seeing that regeneration is _from out of the body_--would be to mock him.

This doctrine of a multiplicity of earth-lives is implicit and sometimes explicit in the Bible. The notion that the Hebrews had no belief in a future state because of the failure of commentators to discover it in their Scriptures, is altogether futile. The permanence of the Ego was a matter of course with them, saving only the Sadducees. And the Bible contemplates the persistence of the individual soul through all the manifold stages of its evolution, from the "Adam" stage to the "Christ"

stage, saying, as by St Paul, "As in Adam all die, so in Christ shall all be made alive." But the Christ insisted on by him was not He Who is "after the flesh," not the man Jesus, who was but the vehicle of the Christ, but the Christ within both Jesus and all other regenerate men.

For, as a highly illuminated follower of the Gnosis, St Paul was one who "after the way which" his orthodox accusers "called heresy, wors.h.i.+pped the G.o.d of his fathers, believing all things which are according to the law, and are written in the prophets." Rejecting the doctrine of regeneration, and with it that of reincarnation, in favour of subst.i.tution, the orthodoxy which claims to be Christianity has practically rejected both the doctrine of St Paul and that of Jesus as declared to Nicodemus. And, as St Paul implies, the "mystery of iniquity" was working even already in his days to annul the gospel of Christ by subst.i.tuting Jesus as the object of wors.h.i.+p, and His physical blood-shedding as the means of salvation. And Christendom, yielding to sacerdotal dictation, has to this day accepted a doctrine which at once dishonours G.o.d and robs men of their equal divine potentialities with Jesus, thus preferring Barabbas. Professing to rest its faith on the Bible, it has accepted the presentation of religion which the Bible persistently condemns, that of the priests, and rejected that on which the Bible emphatically insists, that of the prophets. That St Paul employed sacerdotal modes of expression was in order to spiritualise them. He was a mystic of mystics.

Nevertheless the dogmas of the Church contain the truth, but this is not as the Church has propounded them. And--to cite two crucial instances--so far from the Church's supreme dogmas, the Immaculate Conception and the a.s.sumption of the Blessed Virgin, having any personal or physical reference, they are prophecies of the method of redemption for every individual soul. For, as the New Gospel of Interpretation explicitly declares, restoring the Gnosis persistently rejected by the builders of the orthodoxies,

The Immaculate Conception is none other than the prophecy of the means whereby the universe shall at last be redeemed. Maria--the sea of limitless s.p.a.ce--Maria the Virgin, born herself immaculate and without spot, of the womb of the ages, shall in the fulness of time bring forth the perfect man, who shall redeem the race. He is not one man, but ten thousand times ten thousand, the Son of Man, who shall overcome the limitations of matter, and the evil which is the result of the materialisation of spirit[72].

By the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary we are secretly enlightened concerning the generation of the soul, who is begotten in the womb of matter, and yet from the first instant of her being is pure and incorrupt.... As the Immaculate Conception is the foundation of the mysteries, so is the a.s.sumption their crown.

For the entire object and end of kosmic evolution is precisely this triumph and apotheosis of the soul. In the mystery presented by this dogma, we behold the consummation of the whole scheme of creation--the perpetuation and glorification of the individual human ego. The grave--the material and astral consciousness, cannot retain the immaculate Mother of G.o.d. She rises into the heavens; she a.s.sumes divinity.... From end to end the mystery of the soul's evolution--the history, that is, of humanity and of the kosmic drama--is contained and enacted in the cultus of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The acts and the glories of Mary are the one supreme subject of the holy mysteries[73].

"Allegory of stupendous significance!" exclaimed the seeress's illuminator when imparting to her the mystery of the Immaculate Conception. "Allegory of stupendous significance! with which the Church of G.o.d has so long been familiar, but which yet never penetrated its understanding, like the holy fire which enveloped the sacred Bush, but which nevertheless the Bush withstood and resisted[10].

That such failure has been the rule and not the exception is the plea for the New Gospel of Interpretation. For lack of comprehension of its own symbols the Church has fallen into the disastrous errors of mistaking the man Jesus for the Christ within every man, and Mary the mother of Jesus for Virgin Mary the mother of that Christ, committing in both instances idolatry by preferring the form to the substance, persons to principles, and blinding men to the essential truth implied.

FOOTNOTES:

[65] A.K. was preparing for her second Doctorat, and E.M. was elaborating out of his own consciousness "a key to the interpretation especially of the initial chapters of Genesis." (Life A.K. Vol. I. p.

264.)

[66] On the 4th June, 1878. (Life A.K. Vol. I. p. 265.)

[67] E.M. says:--"Her notes, of course, disappeared with her dream, and she had to reproduce it from memory. But this was abnormally enhanced, for she said that the words presented themselves again to her as she wrote, and stood out luminously to view." (Life A.K. Vol. I. p. 269.)

[68] That is the outer sense and lower reason.

[69] The illumination in question was received by A.K. in Paris on the night of the 25th July, 1877, and was written down under trance. Further portions are given on pp. 158, 159, 161. It is given in full in "The Life of A.K." Vol. I. pp. 202-203.

[70] See further on this most important subject "The Bible's Own Account of Itself," by E.M., the only complete edition of which is published by "The Ruskin Press," Ruskin House, Stafford Street, Birmingham. S.H.H.

[71] From the exposition concerning the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, referred to on p. 151.

[72] From the exposition concerning the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, referred to on p. 151.

[73] From the exposition concerning the Christian Mysteries given in full in "The Life of A.K." Vol. II. pp. 99-100.

CHAPTER VI.

THE EXEMPLIFICATION.