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5 Planes of Existence
Introduction
Five Planes of Manifestation
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GOSPEL STORY OF JESUS CHRIST
A Divine Drama of the Soul's descent in
Involution, ascent in Evolution, and final return in glory to its
Source.
"To sum up all things in Christ, the things in the heavens, and the
things upon the earth; in him, I say, in whom also we were made a
heritage, having been foreordained according to the purpose of him
who worketh all things after the counsel of his will; to the end
that we should be unto the praise of his glory, we who had before
hoped in Christ: in whom ye also, having heard the word of the
truth, the gospel of your salvation,— in whom having also believed,
ye were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise." - EPH. i. 10-13.
The container of all qualities and forms of the higher and lower
natures is the involved Spirit, the Archetypal Man (Christ). In him
the disciplined qualities are made the means of accomplishing his
purpose according to the foreordained scheme of spiritual
development, to the end that the qualities should be perfected and
return with him into the Absolute. The less disciplined qualities
having received the "word of truth" from within, now possess the
means whereby they also may be perfected, for they have been allied
indissolubly with the Wisdom nature which is to transmute them.
"The Gospel narrative is to be studied ' in order that we may know':
it does not convey knowledge immediately. Getting to know is a
gradual process, a progressive inner experience. God reveals Himself
within us as we are able to receive Him." - W. R. INGE, Paddock
Lectures, p. 51.
The deep meanings which underlie the teaching of the Gospel drama
were crystallised, so to speak; and to get at them, the crude
external form of expression has to be broken up into fragments, and
then,-and then only, -can be perceived the infinite wisdom concealed
in the whole scriptural narration. The deep meanings have always
been recognised partially by a few, as will be found by consulting
the writings of the seers of all past ages. But these
interpretations of the seers are a question of interior
illumination, and so are seldom seen or heard of in the world. But
we may be assured that these inner meanings will in time become
universally recognised, as indeed they are at present on higher
planes of the soul,-which subjective. fact makes people cling with
such tenacity and unreasoning stubbornness to the Bible and the
other scriptures, all of which contain similar ideas of the soul and
God under their surface expression. All scriptures have been written
down and preserved to suit certain stages of human evolutionence.
"The life and death and rising again of Christ are to St. Paul a
kind of dramatisation of the normal psychological experience. We too
must die to sin and rise again to righteousness; nay, we must die
daily, crucifying the old man and putting on the new man-the true
likeness of Him who created us. And this is why the identification
of Christ with the world-principle was so essential for him. The
whole process of Christ' (as some of our English divines called it)
was thus proved to be the great spiritual law under which we all
live." - W. R. INGE, Ibid., p. 45.
"In the sixth chapter of the Fourth Gospel, when both 'Jews' and
'disciples show such a strange inability to grasp the symbolic
meaning of the 'bread which came down from heaven,' our Lord closes
the discussion by saying, 'It is the spirit that quickeneth, the
flesh profiteth nothing. The words that I have spoken they are
spirit and they are life. 'A purely historical faith appeals only to
the understanding, to the faculty which judges of scientific or
historical truth in other fields; that the conclusions it arrives at
are as liable to be upset as the conclusions of secular historians;
and that it is subject to the limitations which Bacon asserts of
intellectual investigations generally Studies teach not their own
use.' The words of Christ appeal not to the senses and understanding
but to the heart and higher reason." - Ibid., p. 49.
"These Christian mystics see in the historic life of Christ an
epitome or if you will, an exhibition-of the essentials of all
spiritual life. There they see dramatised not only the Cosmic
process of the Divine Wisdom, but also the inward experience of
every soul on her way to union with that Absolute to which the whole
creation moves.' This is why the expressions which they use to
describe the evolution of the mystical consciousness from the birth
of the divine in the spark of the soul, to its final unification
with the Absolute Life, are so constantly chosen from the Drama of
Faith. In this drama they see described under veils the supreme and
necessary adventures of the spirit. Its obscure and humble birth,
its education in poverty, its temptation, mortification, and
solitude, its illuminated life' of service and contemplation, the
desolation of that 'dark night of the soul' in which it seems
abandoned by the Divine: the painful death of the self, its
resurrection to the glorified existence of the Unitive Way, its
final reabsorption in its Source." - E. UNDERHILL, Mysticism, p.
144.
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