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Preface
5 Planes of Existence
Introduction
Five Planes of Manifestation
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CROSS
A
symbol of the manifested life of the Logos-the higher and lower
natures, and the Divine Ray passing through the quaternary.
"The cross was composed of four pieces of wood; the upright beam,
the cross beam, the tablet above the Saviour's head, on which was
the superscription and the socket in which the cross was fastened,
or as some say, the fourth piece was the wooden shelf upon which the
Saviour's feet rested. And these four pieces were of as many kinds
of wood, that is, of palm, cypress, olive, and cedar. The Jews had
formed the upright beam of a piece of timber which they found
floating in the pool of Bethesda. Now this beam had grown from the
branch of the Tree of Life which the angel Michael gave to Seth, son
of Adam, in paradise." - The Golden Legend.
The number four expresses the quaternary the four planes of nature
on which the incarnate God is crucified. In the "Tet-pillar" the
four planes are symbolised by the four cross beams of the pillar. In
the Latin cross there is only one cross beam which therefore
signifies the division between the higher and lower natures. The
upright beam is a symbol of the Divine Ray or "Tree of Life," which,
as atomic vibration, passes from the Supreme directly downwards
across all the planes. This, from the lower aspect, is a symbol of
aspiration. The "four kinds of wood" represent the four different
planes. The water of the "pool of Bethesda " signifies the
perception of Truth in which aspiration, as it were, floats. The
Divine Life imparted immortality to the quality Hope (Seth), or
sense of the Real within.
"I stretched out my hands and sanctified the Lord for the extension
of my hands is His sign, and my expansion is His upright tree." - J.
R. HARRIS, Psalm of Solomon, 27.
The soul aspires to increase its higher activities (hands); for the
extension of the higher activities is the expression of the
indwelling Self, and the soul's growth is through the upward tending
Divine Life (tree) which has been involved in archetypal humanity.
"Man himself is in the form of the cross. Origen, the great Church
Father, taught that the true posture of prayer is to stand with
outstretched arms, which is the form of a cross; and the man
standing in space with outstretched arms was with the ancients the
symbol of the Beneficent Deity. . . . The cross meant the great
world Passion, the Sacrifice of God in Creation, Deity laying down
His life in the universe of matter and form." - K. C. ANDERSON, Serm.,
Cradle of the Christ.
"The great open secret of Christianity is the Cross of Christ. In
the cross is summed up, for all who care to learn, the whole meaning
of the world's travail and agony; in the cross, too, is our hope of
ultimate triumph in alliance with the will of God. All the
theologies that have ever been framed have just been so many efforts
to express, in terms of the mind, what the humblest servant of
Christ already knows quite well with the heart-namely, that it is
right and inevitable that by the cross should the Saviour enter into
his glory. And we are still at it. On we go with our theologising,
and we cannot help it; we must keep on trying to express this august
truth of the soul in terms of our ever-changing earthly experience.
. . . And this, at least, there is no gainsaying, that those who
have entered most deeply into the fellowship of the cross have just
been those who have been most sure that it contains the clue to the
mystery of earthly existence as a whole." - R. J. CAMPBELL, Serm.,
The Divine Mystery.
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