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Preface
5 Planes of Existence
Introduction
Five Planes of Manifestation
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HIGHER AND LOWER NATURES
Symbolic of the ideal and phenomenal phases of
existence, of which the first is the enduring and real, and the
second the changing and unreal. The first is archetypal and perfect;
the second proceeds from it but is always deficient as a copy of the
first, and is changeable, being in process of becoming perfect in
essentials. The higher nature comprehends the lower, but the lower
cannot understand the higher. The greater can contain the less, but
not the less the greater.
"Of course, it was recognised, even in antiquity, by thoughtful
persons that such expressions as above and beneath, heaven and
earth, were metaphors; just as Plato in the seventh book of the
Republic says: 'It makes no difference whether a person stares
stupidly at the sky, or down upon the ground. So long as his
attention is directed to objects of sense, his soul is looking
downwards. not upwards.' For a long time the local and spatial
symbols were regarded as literally true, concurrently with the
spiritual doctrine that God is everywhere, and heaven wherever He
is. St. Augus tine did much to legitimise the spiritual doctrine,
which is no after-thought, no explaining away of dogmatic truth.
God' he says, 'is present everywhere in His entirety, and yet is
nowhere. He dwells in the depths of my being, more inward than my
innermost self, and higher than my highest. He is above my soul, but
not in the same way in which the heaven is above the earth.' So the
scholastic mystics say that God has His centre everywhere, His
circumference nowhere." - W. R. INGE, Paddock Lectures, p. 123.
The fundamental thought of the Christian religion is that there are
two orders, commonly called nature and grace; the one discernible by
sense and understanding, the other by a spiritual sight. From the
first until now the mystic light of Tabor, before which the
phenomenal world fades away into nothingness, has ever burned at the
inner shrine of Christianity. Thence has come the illumination of
those who, age after age, have entered most fully into the secret of
Jesus; thence are the bright beams which stream from the pages of
St. John's Gospel, St. Augustine's Confessions, The Imitation of
Christ, The Divine Comedy, The Pilgrim's Progress. The supreme
blessedness of man, 88 all Christian teaching insists, is the
vision, in the great hereafter, of Him who is the substance of
substances, the life of life, who alone, in the highest sense, is-'I
am,' His incommunicable name,-and who, even in this world, is seen
by the pure in heart." - W. S. LILLY, The Great Enigma, p. 266.
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