Esoteric Christianity, or The Lesser MysteriesBesant, Annie
Religion
Esoteric Christianity, or The Lesser Mysteries
Besant, Annie
Christianity -- Miscellanea; Mysticism; Theosophy
Then come the early workings of the Logos in matter, aptly typified by
the infancy of the myth. To all the feebleness of infancy His majestic
powers bow themselves, letting but little play forth on the tender forms
they ensoul. Matter imprisons, seems as though threatening to slay, its
infant King, whose glory is veiled by the limitations He has assumed.
Slowly He shapes it towards high ends, and lifts it into manhood, and
then stretches Himself on the cross of matter that He may pour forth
from that cross all the powers of His surrendered life. This is the
Logos of whom Plato said that He was in the figure of a cross on the
universe; this is the Heavenly Man, standing in space, with arms
outstretched in blessing; this is the Christ crucified, whose death on
the cross of matter fills all matter with His life. Dead He seems and
buried out of sight, but He rises again clothed in the very matter in
which He seemed to perish, and carries up His body of now radiant
matter into heaven, where it receives the downpouring life of the
Father, and becomes the vehicle of man's immortal life. For it is the
life of the Logos which forms the garment of the Soul in man, and He
gives it that men may live through the ages and grow to the measure of
His own stature. Truly are we clothed in Him, first materially and then
spiritually. He sacrificed Himself to bring many sons into glory, and He
is with us always, even to the end of the age.
The crucifixion of Christ, then, is part of the great kosmic sacrifice,
and the allegorical representation of this in the physical Mysteries,
and the sacred symbol of the crucified man in space, became materialised
into an actual death by crucifixion, and a crucifix bearing a dying
human form; then this story, now the story of a man, was attached to the
Divine Teacher, Jesus, and became the story of His physical death, while
the birth from a Virgin, the danger-encircled infancy, the resurrection
and ascension, became also incidents in His human life. The Mysteries
disappeared, but their grandiose and graphic representations of the
kosmic work of the Logos encircled and uplifted the beloved figure of
the Teacher of Judæa, and the kosmic Christ of the Mysteries, with the
lineaments of the Jesus of history, thus became the central Figure of
the Christian Church.
But even this was not all; the last touch of fascination is added to the
Christ-story by the fact that there is another Christ of the Mysteries,
close and dear to the human heart--the Christ of the human Spirit, the
Christ who is in every one of us, is born and lives, is crucified, rises
from the dead, and ascends into heaven, in every suffering and
triumphant "Son of Man."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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