The Gnostic CrucifixionMead, G. R. S. (George Robert Stow)
Religion
The Gnostic Crucifixion
Mead, G. R. S. (George Robert Stow)
Gnosticism; Jesus Christ -- Crucifixion
That such a master-idea is difficult to grasp goes without saying; it was
confessedly the supreme mystery. From it the mind, the formal mind of man,
"falls back unable to grasp it"; for it is precisely this personal mind
that creates duality, and insinuates itself between cause and effect. The
spiritual Mind alone can embrace the opposites.
But to return to our text. "When He was hung on the _batos_ of the
Cross"--when He had reached the state of balance, was in the mystic
centre--then at the sixth hour, that is mid-day, when there was greatest
light, there was also greatest darkness.
And then when the Lord, the Higher Self of the man, was balanced and
justified, the man, the disciple, became conscious, in the cave of his
heart--that is to say, in his inmost substantial nature--of the Presence
of Light.
4. Thereon follow the illumination and the explanation of the familiar
drama of appearance taught to those "without the mystery."
"The multitude below in Jerusalem" is the lower nature of the man, his
unillumined mind. "Jerusalem Below" is set over against "Jerusalem Above,"
the City of God. Jerusalem Below is that nature in him that is still
unordered and unpurified; while Jerusalem Above is that ordered and
purified portion of his substance that can respond to the immediate
shining of the Light, which further orders it according to the Ordering of
Heaven.
And yet the drama below is real enough; there are ever crucifixion and
piercing and the drinking of vinegar and gall, before the triumphant
Christ is born. It is by such means that His Body is conformed; it is the
mystery of the transformation of what we call evil into good. The Body of
the Christ is perfected by the absorption of the impersonal evil of the
world, which He transmutes into blessing.
"'Twas I who put it in thy heart to ascend this Mount." I am thy Self, thy
true God; 'twas I energizing in thee who enabled thee to rise to the
height of contemplation, where thou canst "hear what disciple should learn
from Master and man from God." The man has now reached the stage of Hearer
in the Spiritual Mysteries.
5. There then follows the vision of the great Cross of Light, fixed firm,
and stretching from earth to heaven. Round its foot on earth is a vast
multitude of all the nations of the world; they resemble one another in
that they are configured according to the Darkness, their "Spark burns
low." On the Cross, or in it, for doubtless the seer saw within as well as
without, was another multitude of various grades of light, being formed
into some marvellous Image like unto the Divine, but not yet completed--as
it might be the Rose on the Cross, in the famous symbol of the
Rosicrucians.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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