1 KEYS OF THE MASTER Aramaic Key Words and Divine Concepts In the Authentic Historical Teaching Of the MASTER JESUS

Lewis Keizer, M.Div., Ph.D. C. 1984 Lewis Keizer Reprinted Home Temple Press 1999 Donated to Home Temple Priesthood Training Program 2001 Reprinted Wisdom Seminars E-Book 2004

2 PREFACE

This little volume is intended as a guide for one who is undertaking a serious or renewed study of the Teachings of the Master Jesus.

It is as appropriate for one who has completed traditional biblical studies as it is for a lay person, since neither usually has any background in the language and idioms used by the Master. Oddly enough, traditional Christian seminary education builds a keyword knowledge of New Testament Greek that is excellent for grasping the stepped-down, distorted, and hellenized doctrines of the early churches, but useless for gaining an understanding of the historical Teachings of the Master Jesus.

I have alphabetized and cross-referenced key Aramaic words used by Jesus that are basic to an understanding of his Teaching. These are interspersed with certain key Greek mystery terms used by the Initiate Paul, and with common English words useful in comprehending dominical Teachings or in need of clarification due to the inadequacies of medieval and fundamentalist Christian theology.

This is not a theological word study in the modern sense of “theology.” Theologia was originally the Divine Science or Gnosis. It was carried on by Greek scholars like the Stoics Epictetus and Cornutus, and the Neoplatonists Plotinus, Porphyry, and Proclus, as the synthetical and comparative study of world religions known to Roman-Hellenistic culture. In other words, it was• a search to recover what Blavatsky called the ancient Secret Doctrine through comparative mythology and metaphorical, allegorical interpretation of world scriptures.

The same task lies before us today, but with far better tools. Scientific archaeology, anthropology, higher and lower literary criticism, various branches of historical and linguistic studies, and a variety of developing technologies in the history, phenomenology, and comparison of religions--all are at the service of the serious student. True, many stumblingblocks have been left by sincere but biased researchers of religion and history determined to establish their distorted views through unbalanced evaluations and presentations of evidence. But in the long run it will be the careful, unbiased, truth-seeking scholar with both high mental and active intuitive development who will make the lasting contributions to the Divine Science--not the separative, cultic, secret-society occultist who accepts all “secret knowledge” uncritically, and accepts as equally valid all psychic and subjective sources of occult information.

I offer here a mere preliminary groping at that true theologia, rooted in the eternal Word of the Master Jesus. May it serve to inspire those who come after me.

Lewis Keizer CHRISTMAS SEASON, 1984

Note to the E-Book edition: This was scanned from a typed manuscript that could not produce Italics. Thus all non-English words will be shown underlined. 3 KEYS OF THE MASTER For a fictional biography of Jesus with all concepts embedded in the narrative and detailed Glossary at end, read Keizer’s Yeshua: The Unknown Jesus

Adonai (Hebrew)

The LORD God of Israel and One God of mankind. “Lord; Master of the World.” Cf. LORD, SHEM, YAHWEH.

Aion (Greek), Aeon (English)

An hypostasis or stage of divine externalization, devolution, or creation. The gnostic pleroma or full array of aeons is the universe of universes. These exist in the Ennead or Ninth Heaven of hermetic mysticism, or at the Merkabah or Divine Throne of the Most High God in Jewish mysticism. The aeons were associated with the constellations of ~the zodiac, which were placed above the starry firmament of the Ogdoas or Eighth Heaven--dwelling place of ascended heroes (asketes, “striving athletes, ascetics”), the perfect human souls of saints (hagioi, “holy ones”). Therefore the twelvefold division of aeons (24 at fifteen degree divisions, 36 as decans, 360 as the “intelligences” of each degree) ruled times, seasons, and spiritual energies enlivening human unfoldment. Thus an “aeon” was also a term for an astrological period of time or a kairos (“season, period”). The Master Jesus brought humanity from the aeon of Aries into that of Pisces. Finally, there is a complex aeonology in the Teachings of the Master specifying the current corrupt age on earth (“this aeon”), the invisible Malkuth or Rulership of God extending throughout all universes (“that Aeon, the Aeon”) which is a Sabbath of Shalom (“Inner Peace, Wholeness, Harmony”), and the pleroma of aeons (“an Aeon of aeons, the Aeon of aeons”). Al! these are translated wholesale as “forever” or “forever and ever” in English Bibles, which is not only incorrect, but provides a false scriptural basis for fundamentalist ideas like “eternal damnation, eternal hell, eternal salvation.” Cf. ETERNITY, FOREVER, HELL, OLAM, SALVATION.

Amen (Hebrew)

Pronounced “ah-main,” this triliteral root is a vital key to understanding much of the Master’s Teaching. It is the root for Greek pistis and English “faith.” Church theology distorted the what Jesus taught about amen or “faith” to fit credal and dogmatic “belief.” Amen means “faithfulness, fidelity, perseverence” in discipleship. It is the amen or vitality and perseverance of the mustard seed that makes it grow into the greatest of all bushes in Palestine. When the Master says “keep on seeking, keep on praying, keep on knocking at the door,” which is the proper translation of both Greek and underlying Aramaic verbal forms, he is speaking of perseverant amen in action. When Jesus emphasizes the ever-striving interior struggle for right motivation (cf. YETZER) and the kenotic total outer commitment to works of love and human service required by true discipleship (cf. DISCIPLE), he speaks of the same faithfulness of amen that the Epistle of James remembers when it tells us, “Amen without works is dead.” When the Baptist speaks of submission to God (cf. NACHAM), this is the beginning of amen as disciplic “obedience,” and when Jesus speaks of seeking before all things the Malkuth (“Rulership, Guidance”) of Heaven or of God (cf. MALKUTH, KINGDOM OF GOD), he speaks of the amen 4 of obedience to the sacred Inner Guidance of Heaven. The only context for “faith” as “belief in” theological or dogmatic precepts in the New Testament is that of later apostles like Paul and John speaking of the necessity for “belief” that Jesus is the Messiah, or “belief in” the sacred authenticity of the Master’s life, works, and Teachings. Unfortunately, this is the context for the canonical New Testament presentation of the Master’s Teaching. For no longer do we have apostles transmitting the Gospel of Jesus, but churches evangelizing the Gospel about Jesus the Christ. Already the focus on authentic dominical Teaching has been lost, and there is now a focus upon the Evangel of the Church. Emphasis shifts from the Eternal Word of God delivered by the Divine Messianic Avatar to the doctrine about the persona of the Avatar Himself. Yes, the Message of the Master was Christological in essence, but it was a Christology that took as its first premise the Imitatio Christi, the Halakah or Way of the Master that must be trod by every disciple, and that leads to Christhood and the Perfected Human Soul. Instead of this, however, the Church was forced into alternating environments of mild toleration by Roman officials as a religio illicitum and cruel official persecution and public martyrdom. Faith became synonymous with fidelity to Christian belief under trial and torture. After Constantine legalized Christianity under state patronage and insisted upon theological and scriptural uniformity, faith became credal. It was at this point that true discipleship began to be realized outside the Church in the deserts of Syria and Egypt. Church hierarchy degenerated into an arm of the ruling classes as the state became the Church, and holy monasticism took roots as the Christian Mystic Way, replacing the Platonistic ecstasies of the Greek Fathers and Divines with the gnostical and ascetic striving of those who would purify their hearts from the kosmos. Now faith became an ascetic practice done outside the context of human service and contact. Later Protestantism would substitute scriptural for papal authority, making its many creeds and confessions into the content of faith, that is, “belief.” The Catholic Counter-Reformation followed suit, so that non- intellectual, non-theological expressions of faith could appear only outside the context of ecclesiastical Christianity, either in the secular-humanistic manifestations of theology called arts, medicine, and sciences, in the quietist mystic communities of devotional Protestantism and catholicism, or in the occult secret fraternities and hermetical, Platonistic, kabbalistic schools of medieval Europe. In all this, the fullness of sacred amen was never practiced or realized in the Church. Amen is the “lost Word of the Masons, the sacred AUM of India, and the Great Key of the Master. When ever you see “faith, faith in, belief” in the New Testament, see if it can be better translated, “faithfulness, perserverence, fidelity, obedience to Heaven.” If not, the context is probably not historical, and probably derives from the interpretation of the early gentile churches--although the basic logion (cf. LOGIA) may be authentic in another setting. The New Testament Greek pisteuein eis, translated “to believe in,” probably remembers an Aramaic idiom “to keep faith with” in authentic dominical Teaching. The Pauline pistis followed by genitive in respect to Jesus is probably subjective, “the faithfulness of Jesus,” and Pauline pistis followed by dative in respect to Jesus usually means, “fidelity to, faithfulness with, keeping faith with” the Master Jesus. The Master often made the solemn preface, “Amen, amen, I say unto you,” meaning, “Faithfully,” translated in the King James, “Verily, verily.” The root AMN refers to something that stands in strength and integrity. An amana is a covenant or legal agreement, and an emunah is an agreement dependent upon the honor and integrity of those who agreed. True Christian FAITH, then, as Swedenborg observed many times in his inspired writings, is not “belief” in creed or dogma, but DISCIPLIC FIDELITY, FAITHFULNESS, KEEPING FAITH or INTERIOR OBEDIENCE WITH, and PERSEVERENCE IN FOLLOWING the DIVINE WAY of God. Cf. GATE, HALAKAH, INNER GUIDANCE, MALKUTH, SHALEM, TAMMIM, WAY, YOKE.

Angel

Hebrew malach, “one who is sent,” as in the prophet Malachi, “My Messenger.” The 5 Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament give detailed angelologies and demonologies (Greek daimon, “little deity”), listing lower or “fallen” angels. St. Paul speaks of innumerable classes of spiritual archons, authorities, and energies. The Master tells us that each child has a malach that dwells continually in the Presence of God, just as the Logos of the Fourth Gospel was pros ton Theon, “in the Presence of God.” A Psalm tells us that mankind was created “a little lower than the angels,” while another tells us, “Ye are all gods,” and St. Paul says that perfected human souls will rule and oversee angels. Swedenborg saw planets as “nurseries” for perfecting human souls that would populate the “celestial spheres” with men become angels after physical death. The Sufis have classes of divine emmanations or hypostaseis that do not have power to externalize fully into flesh as human beings, and these they call “angels.” Theosophy describes three categories of angel, not unlike Swedenborg. Popular Christian thought sees “just men made perfect” as saints who can assist those in flesh, and Catholic cults of the saints are separated very distinctly from angels, but in fact an angel is a malach, “one who is sent forth” by God. We entertain angels unaware, just as we sit at table with those closest to us unaware that they are divine beings. Put simply, “angel” is a very general term for that invisible and infinite spectrum of divine beings that subsist in higher, more subtle and interior dimensions of the pleroma or universal universes of God Most High. Human beings are infant angels overseen by elder angels, and though we are each as ancient as the Eternal Word, we each also come forth in a stream through the aeons of time in a brotherhood of older and younger souls seeded by timeless monads radiating from the One. Cf. SAINT, SATAN.

Apostle

Greek apostolos, “one who has been sent,” translating Hebrew mebasor, “messenger of blessed news (especially in reference to a royal birth).” The mebasrim or apostles of the Master Jesus were Accepted Disciples (Sanskrit chelas) who were authorized to teach the Basor or Divine Message (“Gospel”) taught by Jesus. In its totality, the Teaching concerns the Way of Divine Birth whereby the sons of earth might conceive and bring forth the New Adam, the Child of God, the Inner Christ. The historical apostles were chosen disciples of Jesus (“You have not chosen me; I have chosen you”), although the Initiate Paul claimed the rights of apostolic authority as an advanced disciple of the Master Jesus, who taught him by Higher Triad impression just as the Master himself was taught of God through the Divine Spirit. The original Accepted Disciples and Apostles of Jesus Christ themselves chose their disciplic successors and anointed them with their berakah and disciplic authority by the laying on of hands, and this Apostolic Succession has continued to this very day under many lines and through many different catholic and orthodox churches. In the old Church this priestly Succession lost its disciplic power through corruption, but the lines of succession have been legally and canonically gathered from all over the world in every surviving apostolic line and reunited for the disciplic teaching priesthood of the New Church Universal. In the early churches the apostolic successors were called episkopoi, “bishops,” and known also as “shepherds” and “angels.” The SHEPHERD OF HERMAS refers to a guiding angel as “shepherd,” and the APOCALPSE OF ST. JOHN refers to church bishops as “angels.” Angels are malachim, “those who have been sent with a message from God,” whose influence is felt in dreams, impressed in contemplation, or revealed in visions and ecstasies. But, “It is the Message, and not the Messenger, that is of first importance,” and the Message is always interior, since it is impressed from within the heart of reality. Thus Mohammad saw the Angel Gabriel always before his eyes, no matter which way he turned his head, when he was receiving the Divine Message, and the angels that appear to people in the New Testament stories always disappear from sight or ascend upward out of 6 sight, which is to say they have returned to the interior depths or heights, the invisible spiritual dimensions out of which we are externalized into flesh at conception, and into which we disappear at the death of the body. in this sense, then, the true Apostle of God does not bring a Message to mankind, but evokes the Message from within each human soul. Cf. ANGEL, BASOR, WORD.

Basor (Hebrew)

The word translated by Greek euangelion is clearly from Hebrew basor, “a blessed message (usually concerning the birth of a royal child.” It is clearly a mystic term going far beyond the “good news” of Greek euangelion, and is used in the Old Testament in reference to the Basor of Peace (Shalom), whereby a messenger brings news of the end of war and the coming of resolution and reconciliation. The triliteral root has the basic sense of BEAUTY, and we even see a play on this meaning in the phrase, “How beautiful are the feet of those who bring the basor...” Thus the Gospel (“God-Spell,” Word of God) of the Christian churches is but an impoverished caricature of the profound, mystic, and universal Teaching of the Master Jesus. In the GOSPEL OF JESUS CHRIST the Basor is summarized in the new Shema (cf. SHEMA) given by the Spirit of Christ to close the final chapter and summarize the Teaching. He says, HEAR, 0’ MANKIND: GOD AND HUMANITY ARE ONE. Truly this is the essence of the historical Gospel, Basor, or Teaching of the Master.

Berakah (Hebrew); Baraka (Sufic Arabic transliteration)

The English word is “blessing,” which comes from an Anglo-Saxon term meaning to sprinkle an altar with blood and has no relation to the Hebrew-Aramaic meaning. The New Testament Greek eulogia, “speaking beautiful or flattering things,” also has no connection to the correct meaning. A berakah is a divine energy that heals, prospers, unfolds, and enlightens. The triliteral root refers to the “knees,” and blessing is invoked by supplication to God, then evoked through the elder or priest by means of the throat center and mandate in spoken words of power. Accepted Disciples may transmit special potent evolutionary and healing berakoth known in Sanskrit as siddhis and Pali as iddhis of the Higher Triad. The inner amen of aspirants and disciples attracts berakoth from an Accepted Disciple (Sufic murshid) such that he or she can experience miraculous events and healings in the presence of the one who transmits berakoth. This can happen by contact with the Accepted Disciple’s clothing (the woman who touched the hem of the Master’s garment) or other article he or she might impregnate (cf. Acts 19.12, Paul heals and exorcises by sending handkerchiefs), and most especially by the Disciple’s spoken and written word, which is a far more vigorous “life” than ordinary speech produces. Through Divine Berakoth or Blessing a whole spectrum of higher vital energies can be channeled and directed for the strengthening, healing, growth, uplifting, cleansing, exorcising, and illumination of humanity. Negative use is made of berakoth by adepts on the left- hand path, and only initiates of the White Lodge can protect lesser disciples from their evil power. Cf. DEIKNUMENA, DIVINE LOVE, EXORCISM, HEALING.

Bride

The re1ation~hip of humanity to deity is compared in ancient scriptures to that of slave and master, disciple and teacher, and in its most mystic sense, bride and groom. Humanity is feminine in respect to deity in the ancient Pythagorean sense of femininity as subordinate, 7 mortal, incomplete, and subject. Divine Marriage is another allegory for Divine Birth or Adoption, all of which are used by Jesus, John, Paul, and masters of the early churches. The Holy Communion Meal is a participation in the Marriage Banquet of Heaven, which unites mortal and immortal. The Church Universal, or Grand Evocation of all Striving Human Souls, is the Bride of Christ in Pauline mysticism, and mankind is predestined to become the Bride and Companion of God in eternity (cf. HOLY SPIRIT). When Paul speaks of wives being subject to husbands as the Church is to Christ, the Head of the Church, he is not advocating the eternal validity of antifeminism and female subordination in marriage. Rather, he is merely using the existing cultural form of marriage to illustrate the proper relationship between humanity and deity, both of which are ultimately a unity. Neither is Paul advocating slavery as a social institution when he calls himself a doulos or slave of Christ. When he advises the runaway slave to return to his master, or wives to be subject to their husbands, he is giving practical advice within the context of current social institutions. It is ironic that Christian teaching, which is rooted in liberation (the name of Jesus in Aramaic is Liberation), in freedom, and in unfoldment, was used during the medieval period to sanction social institutions of slavery, monarchy (versus democracy), and women as chattels (versus women’s education, voting rights, and equality in marriage and all other areas). In mystic Judaism the one scripture that was forbidden to rabbis until they were mature was the SONG OF SONGS or SONG OF SOLOMON. Externally it is a collection of wedding songs with explicit and detailed sexual references in allegory that were used in the ceremonies of bride and groom. Mystically, however, it contains the highest mysteries of ancient Judaism and constituted a serious danger for those advanced students of Merkabah and the Greater and Lesser Hekaloth mysticism not yet able to discern the subtle distinction between the left-hahd and right-hand yetzerim or motivational impulses (cf. YETZER). Such mystics would ascend to the Throne-Chariot of God and go mad, or become lost among the “hallways” or hekaloth of the Divine Palace in ecstatic vision (cf. MEDITATION, SHAQAD, VIGIL). These same mysteries of Bride and Groom are to be found in the tradition of the GOSPEL OF PHILIP, in which the seven initiations are represented by seven sacraments, with that of the Bridechamber (intimate lovemaking or honeymoon) being the highest. In Sufism the allegory was extended to Lover and the Beloved, with Deity the male Lover, and humanity the female Beloved, and their union. The Master Jesus referred to himself as the Bridegroom in his famous rabbinic defense of the fact that he did not make his disciples fast and undergo other ascetic dietary practices (cf. FASTING). He said that. the “children of the Bride-chamber,” meaning the male attendants of the groom, do not mourn (i.e., fast) while they are in attendance of the groom. But afterwards they will fast. Here the Accepted or Chosen Disciple is portrayed no longer as feminine, but as a malle friend of deity who assists in Divine Marriage. For this reason Jesus said that no disciple is above his master, but every disciple who makes him/herself perfect (cf. SHALEM) will be as the master. In the Thomas tradition Jesus says that every woman who makes herself “male” is initiated into the higher Malkuth of Heaven. This, of course, does not mean “masculine,” but “divine,” in the hellenistic and Pythagorean context of mystical language. Cf. CHRIST, CHURCH, FASTING, GATE, HOLY SPIRIT, etc.

Chalice

The wine-cup (Greek poterion, Hebrew kos) is a special deep goblet used only for fermented grape juice, and nearly always with ceremonial and sacred connotation. The kos (best translated “chalice”) is from a semitic root meaning “pouch-like container,” and in apocalyptic scripture is always the instrument through which divine blessing or wrath is mediated to mankind (cf. COMMUNION). In the Hebrew wedding ceremony the bride and groom publically seal their marriage amana or covenant of faith by drinking from the same chalice, which in later tradition was then ceremonially crushed under the feet. in all this is the great Mystery of the 8 Chalice, which is too complex a subject for complete discussion in this book of keys. Suffice it to say that at a certain stage of unfoldment and initiation that is called esoterically the Gate of the Master, or Illumination, the human soul unfolds what in Eastern terminology is called the Twelve-Petalled Lotus with the monadic heart (ci, HEART). As these energy structures unfold they form a field of vortex resembling in shape and function a wine-cup. This inner Chalice or HOLY GRAIL can be compared to a Sun with twelve flames. Through the medium of the Chalice, Heaven transmits berakah of all kinds to mankind by higher impression, direct inspiration, and many other means. These higher, evolutionary energies and gnoseis enter into the human world through illuminated saints, usually anonymous, who serve as channels between Heaven and earth, where they are realized as new ideas, discovery, and inspiration by sensitive ones active in the human sphere. After the full unfoldment of the Chalice, it is burnt away or “crushed” like the wine-goblet of the marriage ceremony, and the saint no longer returns in a physical body. There are many kinds of chalice in the spiritual universes, not only of human souls but of groups and of mankind as a whole. The Holy Communion is a physical point of contact between Hierarchy and disciples of all ranks through which divine energies are transmitted. Cf. COMMUNION, DIVINE LOVE, GIVE, MARRIAGE, PNEUMATIKOS, NOETIKOS, RECEIVE, RESURRECTION.

Child

In Aramaic the phrase “child/children of” is rendered literally “son/sons of,” then taken over into Greek as the masculine “son” for child. Thus “children of God” becomes the masculine “sons of God.” The same problems of gender occur with Abba for God, which in Greek is Pater, the masculine pater familias “Father” rather than “Revered Elder,” and with Aramaic feminine Ruah Ha-Qodesh, the feminine aspect of Deity, made into neuter Greek Pneuma Hagion, “Holy Spirit,” Whom Jesus calls his Mother in early Jewish Christian logia. (Cf. DIVINE SPIRIT, FATHER, LOGIA). Mystically the Son of Man is the Divine Child of Humanity, that is, the perfection of humanity that is to come in the Mysteries of Heaven (cf. CLOUDS, MYSTERIES, SON OF MANKIND). When the distorted hellenistic patriarchal religious categories are reinterpreted according the authentic Teaching of the Master who accepted female disciples and declared women were equal souls with men in the Resurrection, it is much easier to see the true sexual form of the Holy Trinity: God is the Ancient of Days or Revered Elder (Abba) mani- festing as Father in His role as Creator and Progenitor (it was thought the male sperm was alive and contained the whole child, and the female was merely a wombhouse for the seed, like a field), and as such was the Transcendent Deity. God as Divine Mother was Hokmah (Wisdom-- Greek Sophia), Ruah (Spirit), Shekinah (indwelling Splendor), and thus was the active, creative Immanence of Deity. The Divine Child (“Son”) is both masculine and feminine in a complete and sacred marriage (Greek Hieros Gamos), and represented the Community of Saints, the Anointed Head of the Human Spiritual Hierarchy (“Sacred Malkuth or Rule”), of which human disciples form the Body (ci. CHRIST, HIERARCHY, MALKUTH, etc.). In every case, when the Master Jesus speaks of a “child” or “children,” his words apply to “little ones” or Aspirants and other probationers on the Path of the Lesser Human Initiations. Each “child” has an “angel.” The raising of “children” is a sacred service that more closely approximates the nurture of Hierarchy and Deity for humanity than any other form of sacrificial work. Another meaning refers to the Divine Child, or the New Adam, that is “conceived” and “formed” within each aspiring human soul, and concerning which Christmas and the Nativity of Christ are emblematic, with the birth among domesticated animals in the humility of a manger or stable. The “children” must not be forbidden to hear the Teaching of the Master (they were excluded from divine study when young 9 because children were regarded as too susceptible of demonic influence until they could be taught to read). In this age mankind will be spiritually led (and already is being subjectively led) by great saints now “externalizing” or coming into incarnation in sacred families whose vibration is high enough to provide them nurture. This is the first stage of the so-called Second Coming, or Reappearance of the Christ in the flesh of mankind. Eventually the Master Jesus himself will be able to externalize, to be seen by those in flesh, to walk among mankind and teach, as the human vibration is raised from the depths of degradation. The days are coming when, as the Master prophecied, “The man old in his days will not hesitate to ask a child of seven days concerning the maqom of Life [THOMAS, Logion 4].” Here the “seven days” refer to the completion of the Seventh Church Initiation (ASCENSION), and the Hebrew-Aramaic magom (Greek-Coptic topos) from a triliteral root meaning “to stand, exist” is the Secret Doctrine, the Teaching concerning the inner and causal realities of Life, Initiation, and Hierarchy. In the Eleusinian Mysteries the choric dances in the temple precincts after all preparation and the walking of the Path and participation in the orges or sufferings of the Goddess (cf. Christian Via Dolorosa)--these sacred dances perfecting those to be initiated were led by a little child, who was chosen from among the families of the area, and represented Demophoon, the child of the priestly Eumolpidee whom Demeter loved as her own daughter and held in the transforming flame of apotheosis, thus opening the door of immortality to all human souls. Thus the occult phrase, “A little child shall lead them.”

Christ

Greek Christos is a direct translation from Hebrew Mashiah or Messiah, meaning “God’s Anointed or Initiated.” Kings, priests, prophets, rabbis, wisdom teachers, and all who were accepted into divine office as part of the Human Hierarchy or Sacred Rule received the transmission of divine authority by means of laying on of hands using olive oil (a potent medium for transmission of divine energies, healing, etc.). Christhood is conceived and formed in those who aspire through a sacred germination process, for the divine Seed exists in every monad or “heart.” The Seed is cast into the heart’s garden by the Spirit of Christ, the Sower of the Word (Seed), where It germinates, experiences the “death” of the little self, and learns to draw spiritual sustenance from the wide universe rather than from its static, crystallized nature (i.e., begins to become “unioversal” and undertake the work of “synthesis”). The Seed becomes a Christ Child and is born within the heart’s garden in humility, where it is nourished for good or for ill, It comes into a humble manger among lower (but domesticated) animals over which it has no control. It must be guarded and raised up like a human child by what has been called the Guardian or Solar Angel, the Higher Self, the Augoeides, that one day the Child will be seated triumphant upon the ass of the lower nature or Triad and ride into the Holy City of Jerusalem. This initiation is called the TRIUMPHAL ENTRY. From thence are the other of the seven-fold initiations that lead to Christhood and Mastery. See THE MYSTERIES OF JESUS CHRIST: A COMMENTARY ON THE NEW GOSPEL OF JESUS CHRIST, Lewis Keizer. The seven-fold process of divine birth and initiation is described by Paul in his epistles. He refers to the “Old Adam” and the “New Adam,” the first a humanity of law and sin, the second a humanity of spirit and sanctification. The old nature struggles against the new nature. The struggle is compared to a race (agon) for an athletic (asketikos, ascetic) crown (stephanos, name of the first Christian martyr). Cf. GATE, JERUSALEM, MONAD, PNEUMATIKOS, PSYCHIKOS, SANCTIFICATION, SARKIKOS, SHALEM, TAMMIM, WAY.

10 Church

Greek Ekklesia (“Assembly of those called out [of the world of human evil]”) and Hebrew- Aramaic Qahal (“Assembly of those brought together into one body”). The Greek sense lent a sense of Noah’s Ark to the Church--a place where people are salvaged from the evil world. But the semitic meaning has greater esoteric meaning for modern mankind, because it refers to a synthesis of human souls into a common and higher body, the Body of Christ. Subjectively the Church is the universal Body of all striving human souls, all those good-willed (Anglo-Saxon Gud-willed, “God-Willed”) sacrificial workers and servers who transmit and radiate the blessings of Heaven to mankind, serving as the eyes, ears, hands, fingers, feet, and all other aspects of co-creative divine activity channeled through and for mankind. This is the Church Universal, the Assembly of all saints worldwide, whether Aspirants or Accepted Disciples. They participate in the unseen but never-ceasing worship (Anglo-Saxon weorthship, “worth-ship, ascribing of glory and and highest worth or value”) that is celebrated, conjoined, transmitted, and participated in through the Holy Communion or Universal Cosmic Mass given to mankind in the Eucharist, Zeker, and other high liturgical channels. The New Church Universal* is the Christian externalization of the coming World Religion or Universal Human Spiritual Assembly. The externalization is guided by the Masters of the New Church, Who are Accepted Disciples of the Master Jesus, and are in fact the historical Apostles of the early Church. These same monads are already externalizing or externalized at this cusp of the New Age. The New Church Universal is a gateway into the Fifth Round of the Fifth Root Race, which is a new human race with developed Higher Triad psychism and charisms (siddhis), the leading cultures of which will come from the brown and third-world peoples.

* “New Church,” a term used by Swedenborg, appears here as “New Church Universal” used by Keizer. It designates present and future radical reforms of Christian religion illuminated by the common esoteric teaching of world religions (theosophia) and brought into conformity with the historical teachings of the Master Jesus.

Cloud

The Reappearance of the Christ is described in DANIEL as the coming of the so-called Son of Man (actually “Child of Humanity” or Son of Mankind) upon the “clouds of Heaven.” Here the Aramaic word is razim, which means literally “occult secrets” (as in the Roman-Hellenistic book of Jewish magic reconstructed from the Cairo Genizah entitled, SEPHER-HA-RAZIM, Book of the Mysteries, cf. SEPHER-HA-RAZIM AND ITS TRADITION: AN INQUIRY INTO THE INTERRELATION OF JEWISH, GRECO-EGYPTIAN, AND CHALDAEAN MAGICO-MYSTIC PRACTICES IN THE ROMAN-HELLENISTIC PERIOD, Lewis Keizer). The word razim (plural) referred to “clouds” only by abstract extension to mystic clouds such as that surrounding Moses on the mountain (representing Divine Presence). The meaning of razim was lost in translation to the Greek of the early churches, who expected an immanent and very “physical” miraculous return of Jesus and the heavenly Host.

Communion

The Master celebrated a pilgrim’s pascha or Passover meal on the night before Passover, during which he instituted what is now called the Lord’s Supper, Eucharist, Mass, or Holy Communion. Why did he celebrate the Passover one night early? Because like the multitude of other pilgrims visiting Jerusalem for the High Holy Days (that year the Passover fell on Friday night, sunset being the beginning of both Passover and the Sabbath), Jesus was unable to rent 11 or get the donation of an upper room for the Friday night ceremony, since those who lived in Jerusalem would be using the upper room for their own meal. However, the local people rented (or in the Master’s case donated and furnished) an upper room for the traditional pilgrim’s Passover the night before--during that year a Thursday. That is why the Master was crucified on Friday while the paschal lambs were being ritually slaughtered and bled by Jewish priests, as both Pauline and Johannine tradition indicate, descended into Sheol on the Sabbath, and was transformed and raised from death by God on Sunday, the first day of the week. What did and does the pilgrim’s pascha meal mean? Originally the Chalice of Blessing was raised before and after the meal, and the chaburah leader of the gild or spiritual brotherhood (Jesus) offered traditional praises and thanksgivings to God. This Thanksgiving (Greek Eucharistia) was prolonged and offered spontaneously by prophets or “bubbling springs (cf. NEBI) of the early church, who gave thanks “as long as they were able,” according the the DIDACHE. Psalms were sung and Scripture read on the theme of liberation from captivity, for the Passover became a Jewish religious feast during the Babylonian Captivity when the educated and priestly families of Israel “remembered” the Moses and the Exodus from Egypt as a way of invoking God for--and later thanking God for--liberation from Babylon. The theme of Passover is liberation, yeshua (“Jesus”). The Master Jesus started with this pilgrim’s meal and took it to a higher and more universal octave by spiritualizing the meaning of liberation, renewing the Divine Covenant or henosis between God and humanity, and instituting the Sacrament of Discipleship as an imitatio Christi such that the disciples eat and drink the mystic Body and Blood of Christ. In Aramaic Jesus said, “This is my Body; which is your Body,” the idiom being preserved in Greek of Luke’s longer and more semitic version to huper humon, and in the oldest Syriac, reflecting an Aramaic “which is to/for you.” This is the semitic genitival form (“a Body to you” means “your Body”). Thus the bread represented discipleship and the imitation of Christ, and wine represented the covenantal vows and blessings, for the dividing of one cup among them all signified the same amana as in the Jewish wedding, when bride and groom drank from the same cup. Thus the historical Lord’s Supper contained the element of eucharist that developed into the Latin Sursum Corda, a joining with the saints of Heaven in universal worship represented by the Sanctus, the element of divine remembrance of past mighty acts of liberation or Exodus in the ministry of Jesus that developed into the Greek Anamnesis, the element of invocation for the berakoth of Heaven and present mystical “real- ization” of divine henosis in covenantal unity of humanity and deity that developed in the Greek Epiklesis, other dromena of the mystery rite representing the life, example, and initiations of the Master (such as the Fracture, etc.), and the final silent adoration and contemplation before the Ita; missa est or Dismissal. To this was added the Confession and readings of Scripture, thje so- called Synaxis of the Mass that devloped into prayer offices. Such was the meaning of the ancient Sacrament.

In the New Church the Holy Communion has been reinvested with spiritual power and again elevated to a higher octave of meaning, for the New Church is empowered with the Higher Triad charisms that the Old Church cannot manifest. In the New Church all the spiritual powers of universal priesthood lie in potency. The Masters of the New Church will dwell among mankind transmitting and demonstrating divine healing, exorcism, wisdom and innovation in all fields of science and knowledge, brilliant inspiration in all fields of art and music. They will show the reality of the so-called “miraculous,” of spirit, of the inner life, of so-called “white magic” and “physical mediumship.”

The term HOLY COMMUNION SERVICE will be used because the Sacrament is like an oasis where the Chalice is filled and the Blessings of Heaven are transmitted at a sacred time and place. Thus the ancient Jewish Cup of Blessing becomes the Chalice of Divine Transformation 12 through the illumination of Higher Triad energies now to pour into the world of mankind. The adoration and “vigil” or contemplation of the ancient disciples becomes the Higher Triad Meditation of New Age Aspirants and Disciples. The Sursum Corda and Sanctus becomes a universal worship intercommuning with striving souls of all times, places, stages, nations, and estates--visible and invisible. The Anamnesis and Epiklesis become a divine process of Invocation and Evocation wherein brothers and sisters of the Chalice not only receive, but send forth and transmit to the world in service. The Presence of the Christ is real-ized and made manifest, and the reality of the Inner Christ brought forth and evoked. Disciples participate in the unseen work and service of Heaven as co-creators, learning to “manifest” spiritual reality into the lower world of matter through causal means. They contact their Solar Angel and Higher Selves, bringing forth by Higher Impression spiritual teaching, guidance, and prophecy. They cleanse the astral pollution of the human world and send forth potent evolutionary energies to elevate all mankind and raise the planetary vibration in preparation for the externalization of the Master Jesus himself. They raise great souls in sacred families, becoming truly a priesthood of all the faithful. They synthesize and upbuild the unity of the one universal Body of humanity, the one planet, and the great Way of God as manifest in all spiritual traditions, helping to bring into reality the universal Spiritual Assembly of All Humanity.

The HOLY COMMUNION SERVICE of the New Church incorporates the dromena, legomena, and deiknumena of the Mysteries of Jesus Christ, who is the Avatar of Divine or Sacrificial Love. It is the energy of Divine Love that rules the human initiations and the growth of the human soul. Through the HOLY COMMUNION, Divine Love and Wisdom will be channeled forth into the human world for the vital transformation that must come as we enter the Fifth Round of the Fifth Root Race, and the Golden Age that makes war and criminality obsolete, for the human movement will project itself into inner and outer space as it learns to become first planetary, then solar, and finally cosmic over the aeons.

Death

There is no death--only transformation and change of form, incarnation and withdrawal. Jesus Christ conquered death by following the Way of God, or rather by demonstrating the Malkuth or Inner Guidance that whispered to him from within his heart. In his life converged the “just man made perfect” over aeons of incarnation and the Eternal Christ Spirit sacrificially inseminating the human world in kenotic Divine Love. The death that Jesus overcame was Heimarmene, Ruler of the Seven Degrees and reincarnation, which is from the perspective of spirit a form of death. Although there is no death as cessation of life, there can be destruction of higher psychic life and disintegration into many lower forms of psychic life as a result of disharmony or “evil” within a psychic structure. Thus it is possible to “gain the whole world and lose your soul.” This is called spiritual death (cf. GOSPEL OF JESUS CHRIST, XV.41f.). At death comes mishpat or “judgment,” when the wheat of each human soul is separated from its chaff and the opportunity for transformation through life in flesh is temporarily unavailable. Then the soul must remain isolated and introspective on various levels of consciousness--the Heavens and Hells of Swedenborg--until it has come to know itself as it is, as far as possible. That is why in Jewish Merkabah mysticism the “trance of death” and the ecstasy (Greek ek-~-stasis, “soul outside of body”) of contemplation and meditation were identified with each other. Death is withdrawal. It is not to be feared. Loss of loved ones, inability to complete duties, separation from family--all these are illusions, for in death there is no separation, and the love of the heart draws all families of souls together in their natural groups according to the loves of each heart. We must be prepared for death at any time, for it comes “as a thief in the night.” We must “work” while it 13 is daylight, for “when the night comes, no man can work.” The unfolding of the First Knowledge Petal of the Lotus or Chalice conquers fear of death and brings the realization that life is not the flesh, the Self is not the body. The connection between flesh-body and soul is not completely severed until all vital signs (heartbeat, respiration) have ceased for seventy-two hours. Then the body should be cremated. Ashes may be kept as a link of love and relic of sainthood. Children should not be expected to meditate or recapitulate the unfoldment complete unfoldment of the First Knowledge Petal until after their notochords have disintegrated at physical maturation (twenty-one years, completion of the third hebdomad).

Disciple

A disciple is “one under spiritual discipline [Latin],” or a “learner, student [Greek],” but in Hebrew is a “spiritual child” of the master, who is called Ab, “Father.” It is critical to understand that the Master Jesus was himself a disciple (“child”) of God (Abba), as he declares in John’s Gospel. Is it too much to say that the gods of mankind are disciples of greater and higher ones? The greatness of Jewish theism was not in the realization that Elohim (Hebrew “God,” but plural form of ~, “a god”) is/are one God, but that all deity leads back to the original Cod Most High (Hebrew El Elyon) of all universes. It was this Abba or Master of the Universes of Whom Jesus was a disciple. The disciples of Jesus were his “little ones” or children, and he was a rab, “great one,” rabbi, “my great one,” and to Mary of Magdala he was rabboni, “my dear great one.” In Hebrew a disciple was a ben or “son,” and in Aramaic bar. In Greek a “student” was a mathetes. But the Master Jesus took female disciples, for whom there was not language precedent. Thus in the Greek GOSPEL OF PETER we find Mary Magdelene described as a mathetria or “female disciple” of the Master. In Aramaic she would be a ~ “daughter” of the Master. In the Mysteries of Hermes Trismegistus a disciple was a “son” and the Hermes or master a “father,” with a strong emphasis upon the interior or spiritual “begetting” of the son by the father. In the initiation tractate of Nag Hammadi (cf. THE EIGHTH REVEALS THE NINTH: A NEW HERMEIC INITATION DISCOURSE [Tractate 6, Nag Hammadi Codex VI], Lewis Keizer), the father or master says, “When I conceived from the well-spring [pege] which flowed to me, I gave birth,” 52.19-20. Here there is clearly a spiritually generative relationship between master and disciple, and we find in reading the discourse that charis (grace), dynamis (power), and other initiatory spiritual energies are transmitted to the disciple through what might be called the baraka of the master. The same was undoubtedly true with the inner disciples of Jesus, and well may be the best way to understand his exorcisms and healings. For many of those to whom the Master transmitted baraka became disciples, such as the lunatic of Gadara, the centurion whose son was healed, Lazarus who was raised from the tomb, and Mary of Magdala who was freed from the Inner Enemy. Even Paul was healed from blindness through an advanced Christian disciple of Damascus in linkage with the baraka of the Master, and the original apostles all exorcised and healed in the pneumatic authority given them by Jesus. It is this “authority” that is carried, now latently, in Christian apostolic priesthood, and through which the respiritualization and psychic chrismation of the New Church will flow.

Discipleship begins with aspiration to discipleship, leading through unfoldment of the first two Knowledge Petals~and Grade One Initiations. As he or she begins to unfold the mental energies of the Third Knowledge Petal, the Aspirant becomes an Accepting Disciple. As the Love Petals begin to unfold and he or she grows strong in the work of the Third Grade One Degree, which is in service to humanity, the disciple becomes a Pledged Disciple. It is only from this firm basis that the disciple can begin Higher Triad Meditation and seek the Gate of Jerusalem, which is entry into the buddhic or intuitional world. For this he/she must be firmly 14 seated in control of the lower vehicles with inner purity and single-minded, single-hearted purpose. Those who had not achieved this status were called dipsychikos or “double-souled” in the sub-apostolic period of the Old Church. The three Sacrifice Petals unfold during the work of the Fourth Grade One Degree, which comprehends the first four Grade Two or Disciplic Initiations. Upon entering the Grade One Fourth Degree and the Grade Two First Degree, he or she becomes an Accepted Disciple, a true Chela, for good or for ill. At any point in the agon the Disciple may choose the left-hand path, abuse his/her power in selfish seeking for control over the divine free will of other souls, and eventually reap the harvest of spiritual death. But he/she may also tread the Path of Christhood and Inner Mastery, rather than that of power and adeptship. Development from this point is relatively fast, for it is the final unfolding and synthesis of what lies at the monadic “heart” of the Disciple, even as the growth from seed of a rose is long and arduous, so the final putting forth and unfolding of the bud to reveal its hallowed sanctity and permeat the region with the sacred perfume comes in relatively quick succession before the petals drop away and the seeds of a new and higher cycle fall to the earth. All this is summarized in this poem of my teacher, Mother Jennie: FROM THE HEART OF A ROSE

Breathe out, sweet Rose, The fragrance of a Soul serene, Within Whose beauty lurks a thread Of Life and Love Divine, Radiating from each petal red A Light--like unto a Holy Shrine.

Well hast Thou been named The Queen of Flowers, For who beneath Thy cool and shady bowers, Sheltered, refreshed from sojourn there, Hath not looked out, and seemed to see more fair All things in life, freed from toil and care?

Thou Iiftest up Thy proud and haughty head In power and majesty, above Thy lowly bed Where thou, in darkness, take within Thy stem From mold of earth and refuse And, in stillness, transmute them Into beauty which attracts the eyes of men.

Then as the day declineth, And Thy mission is fulfilled, Thou droopest ‘gain Thy stately head, And as Thy Life is stilled, Thy Petals flutter downward and to the earth return, Giving life new to all that is born, Unmindful of the leaf and thorn, Still breathing forth the fragrance sweet As Thou doth to dust return Each Petal of the Queen of Flowers, The sweetest of them all. 15

And so from you a lesson’s learned, A duty great and grand: To lift again the fallen, and transmute into men The sinner and the outcast, The lame, the halt and blind, The fettered and the lonely ones-- All Heaven on earth shall find Thru’ Christ, Eternal Spirit, Eternal Life and Love, And sons of men shall see the Light, And be ‘gain Sons of God.

Divine Law

Divine Law is the infrastructure of Reality that is overseen by the spiritual guides of humanity who have evolved through all religious traditions (theosophical term is “Hierarchy”). It includes all the causal aspect of Reality, and is the proper subject of scientific study in physical, astral, and mental worlds open to human investigation. Ultimately the universal Law that governs all worlds from the realms of nature through those of the human psyche are “spiritual,” that is, interior. The Master Jesus revealed Divine Law is his Teaching. His statements about cause and effect, growth, giving and receiving, reward and punishment, and divine justice, for example, have their counterparts in natural laws of the physical sciences--laws of thermodynamics, entropy, conservation of matter and energy, laws of motion, etc. His Teachings on inner purity, thoughts of the heart, Golden Rule., hypocrisy, forgiveness, and other things have counterparts in child-raising, interpersonal psychology, sociology, and other psychological-social sciences. Other Teachings of the Master have counterparts in sacred sciences of yoga and initiation--the psychic laws. Another name for Divine Law is the Secret Doctrine.

Divine Love

Love is the ultimate power and energy in the universe. The Master says, “Know that I am Divine Love, and kindle me within your hearts...Know that I am Divine Love within you, and seek me within your own heart,” GOSPEL XX.46,49. The entire HOLY COMMUNION is a Sacrament of Divine Love, for, “This is the Marriage Banquet of Heaven I leave with you and with all who hear my Word; for from henceforth I shall be known unto you in the breaking of the Bread of Divine Love...Which every disciple offers daily unto mankind and unto God,” GOSPEL XVIII.27-28,30. He says, “Therefore do on earth as I have done, that all mankind might remember me and learn of my Love,” GOSPEL XVIII.45. The Body of Christ, allegorized in the Communion Bread, is Love’s Body. The Great Work of Discipleship is the receiving and transmitting of Divine Love for, “If you keep my Word, I shall dwell in you, and you in me; and we shall become one Body and one Heart,” GOSPEL XVIII.44. The key to discipleship is “works of love done for love’s sake,” rather than for the approval of men or gods. That is, service must be genuinely loved and enjoyed for its own sake, and “the reward of service is more and higher service.” The Greeks spoke of eros or erotic love, philia or friendship, and agape or Divine Love. However, the truth is that there are many more kinds of love-asthetic love, noetic love, love of justice--and they are all forms of Divine Love. The negative aspect of Love might be called addiction to the outer husks 16 of Reality, lust or ruling desire for that which is shallow, external, cosmetic, and but a shadow of Reality. This addiction magnetizes a human soul to the outer phenomenal world and makes him/her insensitive to Divine Love. In truth, the entire spectrum of Love is sacred, from eros to agape, and they each inhere in the others. Divine Love is not mere astral gush or sentimental emotionalism. These are weak and external effects of Love. Love-Wisdom is the Primordial Ray, the Universal Power, that rules our universe. For humanity, Divine Law can be approached only through Divine Love. Love is what the New Church receives and radiates as its all-powerful baraka. Love is Healing, Wisdom, Beauty, Science, Justice, Truth, Evolution, and Universal Synthesis. There is a small spiritualist church called the Church of the New Birth whose main emphasis is upon prayer for the outpouring of Divine Love into the Chalice of each disciple. If that activity were truly followed, and each disciple had the Chalice to contain this Divine Energy, how wonderful that would be~ Love is fiery, and the Yoga of Divine Love is called Agni or Fire Yoga. Priesthood mediates Divine Love, and this is the function of the High Priesthood of Jesus Christ. Cf. BERAKAH, COMMUNION, GIVE, SAINT, SHALOM, WAY, YOKE, ZEDEK.

Divine Message [Cf. BASOR]

Divine Spirit Divine Mother [Cf. RUAH HA-QODESH]

Dromena, To (Greek)

The “things done” of the Mysteries that provide a basis for sacred drama and the taxis (order) of the paradosis (disciplic tradition) concerning Initiation. Cf. THE MYSTERIES OF JESUS CHRIST, pp. 17ff., Lewis Keizer.

Dabar (Hebrew)

The “Word” of God is also the “Thing, Vision, Miracle, Voice, Music, Discourse, Scripture, Promise, Covenant, Business, Cause, Reason, Something, Anything” of God! Some Hebrew prophets speak of the Dabar of God that they saw, heard, or interpreted. Semitic prophetic and revealed religion is based on the Dabar of God, which we usually translate as “Word.” However the Dabar is identified as Messiah, Scripture, Teaching, miracle, vision, the Greek Sophia or Wisdom, the Basor, and all other media of revelation. Basically, when the WORD (Dabar) is mentioned in sacred literature it means the non-verbal, causal, spiritual, noetic, archetypal origin of Basor or Secret Doctrine. The power of the WORD as expressed through the THROAT CENTER is the primordial power of AUM or AMEN. The knowledge of its power is granted to Advanced Disciples and Masters for work in the lower worlds from standing in the higher worlds. This is what has been called “manifesting” in popular New Age language, falsely associated with personal prosperity and the wealth of adepts. It is interesting to note that Arab tribes, under the influence of “heretical” Gnostic Jewish-Christian communities of the desert (through whom biblical traditions were transmitted to Mohammad), used to send out their poets instead of their warriors to solve disputes. The poet, like the nebi or prophet, was a “bubbling spring” of inspiration. The two poets would take turns eloquently insulting the opposing tribal leaders, and 17 if there was a clear victory of eloquence, and inspiration, the losing tribe would concede. Otherwise (one supposes) the two would go into battle thoroughly primed for vengeance. The point is that if one of the poets could demonstrate a clearly superior “channel” to the heavenly Muse of Insults, then it would be granted that Heaven supported his tribe’s cause. Cf. BASOR, NEBI.

Debt

New Testament Greek hamartia, an archery term with the sense of “missing the mark,” is often translated “sin” in English Bibles, but the Aramaic term used by Jesus was that of the rabbis-- hub, “debt.” There were two kinds of “sin” in rabbinic disputation. One was “transgression” of Torah (which was of little interest to the Master), and the other was “moral debt” or hub, which was critical in the Christ Teaching. Debts were of two kinds--those between persons, and those between man and God. The first sort is like Sanskrit karma. It requires working out, restitution, and justice. The second kind, between God and man, is so gargantuan and really infinite that no soul can “work off” what he “owes” God, Who may call for a full judgment at any time (i.e., death). The question arises, How can a child repay a parent? The answer is that he cannot, except through heartfelt gratitude, growth into responsible adulthood, and manifesting a way of life that reflects honor and glory on the parent. So it is betweeh mankind and God. As Mother Jennie used to say, “Be subject to God, but positive to mankind and the world,” meaning bow the heart to Heaven’s Rule, but transmit Heaven’s love, grace, and justice to mankind and the world in freedom and nobility. The free person is one who can release others from indebtedness to him or her. The noble person is one who has no need of holding power over others. Thus the disciple is given this sound advice: “Cover the nakedness of thy brother and sister, and the Father will cover thy nakedness. Forgive all who ask, hold nothing against all others who sin against you, and make amends for your own offenses as far as you are able; then ask in prayer for liberation from the bondage of sin,” GOSPEL VI.32-T33. For we are all caught in a web of moral cause and effect--individual karma, family karma, national karma, racial karma. We have no way of knowing to and from whom most of the tangled lines of “moral debt” lead. But if we treat all persons with both justice and mercy, not demanding vengeance but leaving all in the hands of the Lords of Karma, not desiring the suffering of another soul, ready always to reconcile and forgive, then we are grasping at the beginnings of the sacred and occult science of akarma. Divine Justice does not blot out our just debts when we practice forgiveness, but Divine Justice does release us from the bondage or consequences of past sin. In the Parable of the Unforgiving Debtor, he owes billions to a wealthy ruler who calls him in to collect. This is also called “judgment, condemnation, being sifted by Satan.” If the sapling is pulled out of the garden and demanded to repay the farmer with fruit in proportion to the time, nourishment, and care given it, the sapling is unable to repay the debt. If yanked from its bed it will fail and die, but if allowed to increase the debt and grow, it may eventually yield a far greater value than was invested. Premature “judging” or “bringing one unto the test” or “condemning” of another soul is against Divine Law. The wealthy man has mercy and decides not to throw the debtor into prison, but as soon as the man is released he finds someone who owes him a small amount of money and grabs him by the throat demanding immediate repayment. Servants of the wealthy man see this, tell him, and he again brings the debtor before him. This time, however, he requires full payment, which cannot be met, so he has no mercy and throws the debtor into prison. Aside from the obvious moral of the parable, there is another meaning that has been overlooked. The wealthy man represents God, unto Whom every soul owes an infinite debt that cannot be repaid. Even though the wealthy man releases the debtor the first time, it does not mean the debt is blotted out. The debt remains, and can be called in again at any time. Rather, 18 the debtor is merely released from the consequences of his debt or “sin.” Thus an injustice committed in a past life remains in causal reality with all its causal influences. The past cannot be changed, although it can be very much regretted. The results of evil cannot be changed by mankind. But God is the One Who can bring forth good out of evil, Who “works all things together for good” to those who love His Way. As disciples grow on the Path and their fields of service expand, their spheres of influence enlarge, and their responsibilities in hierarchical work are increased, they also find opportunities to repay “debt” from soul to soul in past lives. As they do this, they are disentangled line by line from that which holds them in bondage to reincarnate existence until finally they no longer “go out” clothed in the “skins of animals.” The “debt” owed to God in His/Her aspect as Divine Justice is human karma, but as the Father-Mother God the “debt” is that owed by children--the “debt” that can never be repaid, for it is one of sacrificial and divine service. Therefore it is ultimately assumed through the imitatio Dei in child-raising, in service to humanity, then in what is called the “cure” or care of human souls from within the interior worlds. Thus the service of the bodhisattva and the Christ as Avatar of Sacrificial Love.

Deiknumena (Greek)

The “things manifested and revealed” of the Mysteries that provide a basis for sacred drama and liturgy. Cf. THE MYSTERIES OF JESUS CHRIST, pp. 63ff., Lewis Keizer.

Eternity, Eternal

Literally “aeonic, olamic.” Eternity is not infinite, but consist of greater and lesser cycles. Time and motion are illusory in the final reckoning, andall Reality substands as the pleroma of the Divine Aeons. Spiritual punishment (“Hell”) is not “forever,” nor is “salvation,” except in relative terms. The Path is eternal, but not infinite. There are yugas and mahayugas in historical messianic mysticism, a complex aeonology, and “wheels within wheels,” as Ezekiel saw. Cf. AION, OLAM.

Exorcism

Greek ex+orkidzein, “to cause to come out by means of powerful oaths or words,” is not unlike Hebrew-Aramaic hishbi’, the Hiphil or Causative form of a triliteral root meaning “to swear.” As such the form means “to cause to be bound with words.” However the triliteral root for the Hebrew-Aramaic is shaba’, which means “seven” and is the root for the word Sabbath. This is significant because the entire infrastructure of Reality is septenary--sheaths, initiations, hierarchies, archonta, dynameis, and the entire Malkuth Ha-’Olam. In the days of the Master, Jewish adepts were more famous than any others for their skill in exorcism, and that is because they had made a science of the names and orders of sublunary entities, which came under the general term of elilim, or “little gods” (cf. Greek daimonia, “lesser deities”). Jewish priests and prophets often regarded the gods of the gentiles to be identical to these sublunary entities and called them shebim, literally “idols, gods of the nations.” However, only the ancient and pejorified (i.e., demonized) gods who no longer had cults and temples (Pan, Beelzebub, etc.) came under the demonic classification. Thus Ishtar or Astarte, Divine Mother of the Syrians and consort of the Ba’al, became the demon Ashtoreth during the intertestamental period. She was female (patriarchal Hebrew religion did not reverence the femininity of Deity until after the Second Temple, and then only in Merkabah mysticism and wisdom schools), she had the 19 negative female side like the Indian Shiva as well as the positive, and she was associated with the sacred prostitution of the Asherah. As her worship fell away in the face of Zoroastrian and Mithraic dynamic emergence with hellenistic syncretical synthesis, her entity submerged and survived in lower negative form as compulsive sexual lust in the Middle Eastern racial psyche. Thus exorcism was a science of occult names, for it is knowledge of the name of the deity that gives access to it in prayer and speech (cf. SHEM), and knowledge of its hierarchy that gives an exorcist (or psychologist) power to evoke and “remove” it. A kind of “psychic surgery.” The Master Jesus had need of no such system of names and hierarchies, and neither does the priesthood of the New Church Universal. While psychiatrists and psychologists can work on the lower emotional planes by using names, visualizations, and evocations, and thus correct certain kinds of emotional imbalance, a new Science of Obsession must be developed to carry on the kind of psychic healing demonstrated by the Master Jesus, for all emotional-psychological and physical disease not caused by direct environmental stress and pollution is rooted in obsession or its extreme case, possession. The one enters through a center near the nape of the neck, and the other more serious type through the solar plexus center. When it is properly understood that as souls we subsist in an ocean of psychic consciousness with as many different kinds of holonic entities swimming around, through, and in tandem parasitic upon us as could be seen in a microscopic examination of sea water around a kelp bed, and when it is understood that the vibratory, fiery, or “love” level of each holon (of which each human soul is one kind) either destroys by forcing a blend upon another that drags down into inertia or burns up by over- stimulation, or aids and helps by gentle blending into higher vibration (as do angels, masters, and disciples in or out of the body), or that reinforces beneficially by similar vibration but can also crystallize into locked-in inertia by “fixing” through exact vibratory reinforcement (static groups, religions, prejudice, groups led into evil activities in the name of good, closed mindedness, “stiff-neckedness” being the biblical idiom for crystallization through the nape of the neck that eventually opens the solar plexus to “stone-heartedness”)--when all these things are understood and taught by those who truly know, mankind and the planet will begin to cleanse themselves, to synthesize and evolve into the Fifth Round, war will become obsolete, and science will become a spiritualized organizing factor in human mental development, rather than a bloated and crass force for materialism, shallow externalism, and adherence to the outer husks of Reality. Mankind will become a planetery and then a solar being in consciousness. Because the Master Jesus plugged mankind in to the Eternal Source of all Berakoth, there is no longer any need for occult knowledge of names--for all names are of human origin. Adam gave names to everything, for by naming things we gain power over them--to use them, to organize them, to understand them. Language is the externalization of gnosis or knowledge. But the Name of God Most High, the Tetragrammaton, YHVH, Yehowah, Jehovah, Yahweh, lAO, is not a human word, just as the WORD is not a human thought, for “My ways are not your ways, and My thoughts not your thoughts.” The Name of God is ineffable, unsayable, because man cannot have power over God Most High. Mankindcen only invoke like a child, ask, beg, pester, perservere--but not control. The Neoplatonic Science of Theurgy (“Causing the Gods to Do One’s Will”) is not impious any more than the Science of Abramelin the Mage if it is done by one whose soul stands above the gods and rests supreme in the Eternal Will of God. The powers of Shamballa or Divine Will are to be manifested in the New Church as what some have called White Magic--not “white witchcraft,” which is ignorance. Priesthood will stand in the footsteps of the Master Jesus and truly do what he did, and greater things. But such priestly power belongs only to the Saints of Cod, Who work in the context of Divine Will and Authority. Such work is selfless, spiritual, for universal good, and only seems miraculous to those of lesser understanding. So it was with the Master’s exorcism, which was the Science of Obsession. He freed human souls from invading and possessing entities of all sorts without need of demonological lore because he had hierarchical authority over them. Thus he first commanded 20 them to divulge their names (i.e., their “meaning” or essence--”I am Legion, for we are many”), then commanded them by their true names as they were known to themselves. Some he caused to return to their natural abode, others he caused to detach and continue their process of “death” or decay from disharmonious (“evil”) psychic holons into lesser harmonious elementals that could start again on the Evolutionary Path. For entities that self-consciously obsess or possess are on the left-hand or Devolutionary Path, and it is merciful to break their parasitic connection’ to a living soul because it only prolongs their negative devolution as they destroy first their host, then themselves. But they are too ignorant, dark, and compulsive to understand this and, like a child that must be forced to take his medicine or otherwise suffer temporarily for a greater purpose of good, the invading entity must be “cast out” and sent intoi the “waters” or “ocean” of Reality to dissolve back into components that have integrity within themselves. For, “The human soul is a marriage of many lesser souls, and these of many lesser souls, down unto the foundations and roots of all manifestation,” GOSPEL XV.41. All Reality is psychic and alive, down unto the subatomic holons of primal manifestation and all organs and organisms exist in “spirit.” Thus instead of commanding those souls on the Evolutionary Path, we should ask their permission to use and integrate them for higher organicity. Certain African tribesmen ask the permission of the tree before they cut it down, but materialistic and grossly insensitive Americans carve their initials into the ancient redwoods without a flicker of recognition while that hallowed life weeps All this kind of knowledge belongs to the priesthood of the New Church, and is subsumed under the category of PNEUMATICS, which is taught bishop to student for several years. A higher branch of priestly knowledge is called NOETICS, and focuses totally on Higher Triad work. Cf. PNEUMATIKOS, PRAYER, SHEM.

Faith [Cf. AMEN]

Fasting

In the ancient world invocation of Heaven was not unlike a small child trying to cajole, flatter, pout, scream, or otherwise get parental attention and force the parent to do the will of the child. If the gods did not answer prayer, their images were whipped and beaten. The images of gods were dressed, paraded, propitiated, and worshipped as well, and the basic paradigm for Godhead was human monarchy. Thus praise, flattery, ar’etalogy, and the rest. One way of petitioning a human monarch was to afflict oneself to gain his pity (ci. PRAYER, which in semitic languages comes from a root meaning “to cut oneself, to open wounds on the body”). This humbling of oneself to gain divine favor evolved into ascetic practices of self-denial (Greek asketes, “athlete, one who rigorously trains for competition”). The Master Jesus did not have his disciples fast or use a special diet because Heaven’s grace was dwelling with them and need not be invoked. Also, the prophetic understanding of a true “fast” was not to afflict oneself des- tructively, but as the disciples of the prophet-priest Isaiah said, Ye shall not fast as ye do on this day, to make your voice heard on high. Is it such a fast that I have chosen? A day for a man to afflict his soul? Is it to bow down his head as a bulrush, and to spread sackcloth and ashes under him? Wilt thou call this a fast, and an acceptable day unto the LORD?

But is not this, rather, the fast that I have chosen: to loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free, and that ye break away from every yoke? Is it not to deal thy bread 21 to the hungry, and that thou bring the poor that are cast out to thy house? When thou seest the naked, that thou cover him; and that thou hide not thyself from thine own flesh?

Then shall thy light break forth as the morning...Then shalt thou call, and the LORD shall answer...Then shall thy light rise from obscurity, and thy darkness be as the noonday: and the LORD shall guide thee continually. Isaiah 58.5b-11

The name JESUS (Yeshua’) means “freedom from bondage, liberation.” The “fast” that Jesus chose was summarized in the Scripture he reads in the Lucan story of the opening of his ministry in the synagogue at Nazai’eth: The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because He hath anointed [“Christed”] me to preach the BASOR to the poor; He hath sent me to heal the broken hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord, Isaiah 61.lf. In other words, the ancient concept of fasting, along with that of prayer, is raised to a higher octave and spiritualized--just as the concept of animal sacrifice had been transformed to that of the logike thusia, the “rational sacrifice” of pneumatic or ecstatic prayer and eucharist (not “flattery”). The teachings of the Master concerning fasting and sacrifice are transmitted in the GOSPEL OF JESUS CHRIST, XVII.28ff., where he drives out the sellers of sacrificial animals from the temple and frees the beasts. “And he taught them to no longer offer any life but their own, which is to say the life that each soul lives.” Yes, there is ascetic striving in true discipleship, but it is interior and without outer show. Yes, there are times when Hierarchy will prescribe special diet for those who are transforming the subtle sheaths of their very body cells-- but not for the purpose of affliction! The purpose of fasting and diet is the health of the physical and subtle bodies and their centers, not to “force” Heaven to actl And the greatest fast is the fast of loving, sacrificial service in the Plan of Hierarchy and Will of God. Cf. PRAYER.

Father

[Cf. ABBA]

Forever

Incorrect translation of Hebrew-Aramaic ‘olam (Greek aion) or aeonic teachings of the Master Jesus. Cf. AION, ETERNAL.

Forgiveness

Hebrew-Aramaic selicha (“forgiveness”) from the triliteral selach (“to pardon, forgive”) has the sense of “making a heavy thing light, lifting up something fallen, putting something to rest or silence.” It is related to the liturgical selah of the Psalms, which means a musical pause or rest. The Greek aphesis (“to release”) is also a consistent meaning for the concept, and is built on the same root that is used in the exorcistic command for a demon to release a person’s soul, and the magical command that sends subject demons safely away when theurgical work is done and the adpet wishes to step out of the circle. The Master’s teachings concerning forgiveness, which are found in Chapter VI of the GOSPEL OF JESUS CHRIST, are part of the science of akarma (cf. DEBT). No one has power to blot out the past or undo sin, for Divine Law 22 and Justice require the same of every monadic expression. But God has power to bring forth good out of evil, light out of darkness, and great things out of little things. By refusing to “call in,” collect, or “require” immediate balancing of all the books with respect to moral and other “debts” owed us by others—that is, by minimizing, uplifting, and putting to rest all the wrongs against us—we become free from the consequences of the wrongs we have done others for aeons past. The wrongs are still there, but they lose their power over us and we are freed from the bondage of our own past errors. We earn release from the consequences of karma by releasing others in our debt. The karma is still there, but the lines of ‘cause and effect no longer subtley bind and limit us or those whom we release. We maximize and share that most sacred and divine gift--freedom. We participate in the great work of Yeshua’, the Liberator. We increase the vibrations of freedom, joy, and nobility, for we are ennobled by true forgiveness from the heart. The practice of forgiveness is difficult for those whose physical, emotional, and mental Knowledge Petals have not yet opened, for he/she is not able to truly feel, know, and understand the feelings and mental perspectives of others. Thus the inner grudge is held and becomes a hidden, poisonous influence de-stabilizing and dis-harmonizing his/her soul--no matter how much he or she tries outwardly to forgive. That is why spiritual work is inward and interior, for it is with our real, eternal, and undying Self that we little selves or mortal personalities are interacting. The work of the Higher Self is to transmute the lower self, and the duty of lower personality is instant obedience to the highest and most noble he/she is able to sense within. There is always a right-hand and left-hand path to choose, a right and wrong way to go--the Way of Life, or the Way of Death. We don’t have the wisdom and eternal perspective in our lower selves to know what is good and what is evil, but we always have Inner Guidance concerning what is right and what is wrong, and it is always right to forgive. True forgiveness requires mastery over the lower emotional and mental worlds, or complete unfoldment of the first three Knowledge Petals. One then, having recognized the offense, simply puts it to sleep-- deactivates the lines of karma that require redress. Sometimes in order to do this he/she must take some kind of balancing action, perhaps even a formal negative action whose intent is to restore balance, not avenge. Emotionally, this constitutes sublimation, which is the science of emotional transmutation--not repression, which occurs in those lacking inner emotional mastery who are ignorant of their own interiors. Repression is not forgiveness. Rather, it turns the offense into an invisible wild beast that further harms both him and the one who offends. Indeed, repression makes the victim an accomplice in the offence Forgiveness strives for understanding the offender as an “I,” rather than a “him” or “her,” and a “we” rather than a “they.” Thus it is a spiritual “fast” or exercise facilitating the unfolding of the first three Knowledge Petals during the first two Church or Grade One Initiations on the Path of Illumination. After this point of unfoldment forgiveness becomes a duty and a science. It is an occult fact that once a thing is known, it becomes a part of one’s field of responsibility. Cf. CHALICE, DEBT.

Gate

The disciplic teaching or doctrine of a rab in Israel at the time of Jesus was called his Gate to the City of God, wherein was the Palace of God with its great and lesser Halls (Hekaloth) or interior mystic ways, and finally the Merkabah or Chariot-Throne whereupon God sat in Malkuth or Rulership of all. The Gate was the public teaching of a master of Israel, the Halls greater and lesser mystic teachings given to Accepted Disciples in private, and the Throne the mystic goal of both student and teacher, both of whom could become delayed or even lost in the splendors of mysticism and its inherent dangers--inflation, glamor, and the insanity of one whose soul, like Icarus, has soared too high and burnt its wings. Cf. HALAKAH, WAY. 23

Gehonam, Gehenna (Hebrew); Geena (Greek)

Mystic designation for the “Valley of Remorse, Sorrow, Inner Torment,” an interior state of consciousness of one who is made suddenly aware of his/her own sin, debt, or imperfection--as can occur after physical death, but also during incarnate life. The Master’s teachings on Gehonam were distorted by the early churches and by medieval fundamentalists to produce a doctrine of eternal punishment after one incarnation (Anglo-Saxon “Hell,” Greek Orphic Hades). The teaching about Gehonam or Hell is found in verses 49-50, Chapter V, of the GOSPEL OF JESUS CHRIST, where they are properly translated. If a soul allows itself to become spiritually “sick” or infected with evil motives and other interior disharmony by burdening itself with karma or “debt” (i.e., sinning consciously against other souls), then Divine Law mandates that the soul falls into “the Valley of Spiritual Torment with the whole body sick unto death.” The “whole body” refers to all vital sheaths. This spiritual sickness may manifest as insanity, addiction, compulsive perversion, strong obsession, or criminality. “There the infection [i.e., obsession of astral and mental bodies] and fever [i.e., lust, anger, hatred, self-pity and other forms of “burning” or devolutionary consciousness] of human evil must run their course,” using the medical metaphor of Jesus advising disciples to “cut off” opportunities for sin to enter and infect the soul. The hyperbole of amputating or cutting out organs (hand for theft, eye for envy, etc.) is easily misinterpreted if the entire medical analogy is not grasped. Gehonam is the final stage of spiritual death, in which the soul disintegrates and decomposes into lesser psychic elements free of the faulty synthesis of the whole and able to once again begin the evolutionary Anodos or Upward Path toward greater synthesis that eventually produces the human soul. Cf. GOSPEL XV.39ff. Spiritual death produces unassimilated psychic entities that try to prolong their disintegrating synthesis by obsessing and possessing human souls who unconsciously or even consciously provide opportunity or what St. Paul calls an opening for sin to enter. These psychic vampires suck the higher vibratory energies from their victims, lowering the victim’s spiritual state and drawing him/her into their consciousness and way of life until the mutual vibrations blend, sustain, and reinforce vampire and victim. The victim’s life is nearly always destroyed over a period of time and the vampire loses his/her source, having replicated him/herself in flesh. Upon death, however, the victim slowly regains his or her natural vibratory character once the obsessing fiend has departed. But to the extent that his soul participated in whatever sin was generated in the encounter, he or she must live with that karmic debt, and the total vibration will reflect this. The vampire-type of entity does not normally invade older people who have lost their vitality, but younger people and children. Also, mischeivous and disobedient elementals of lower kingdoms are often attracted to children and play with and among them, causing disobedience and sometimes physical harm. The unconscious openings and vulnerabilities they create, when combined with improper diet, morbidity or premature sensuality, or even immature meditation, spiritualism, or other “channeling,” clear the way for major invaders of the vampire type. “Hell” is spiritual torment that can originate from within the soul, or enter into the soul from without. It is psychic pollution, and it is intimately connected with environmental pollution of all kinds--chemical, video, emotional, ecological, criminal activity. The cure is prevention, and the answers are spiritual, not moral, as the religious fundamentalists would claim. Spirituality cannot be legislated. Nobility cannot be imposed upon others. Purity is of the interiors, not the exteriors. Outer show and giving of self-conscious moral examples only contributes to the world’s spiritual and psychic-emotional pollution. As Swedenborg long ago taught, we must first conquer the hells within ourselves, if we are to overcome evil in the external world. The Master Jesus made this clear in his Seven Mysteries of the Malkuth of Heaven (GOSPEL, Chapter X). These Seven Mysteries correspond to the Seven Church Initiations, and end with the following statement: “We must first struggle successfully with the 24 inner evil before we can overcome the evil of the world; thus we shadow-box and build our inner strength by faithfully overcoming each test. Then when we have become strong, the Father leads us forth to slay the outer evil of man’s world...” We cannot “save the world” single- handedly, and all our illusions of work and service for fellow humanity will burst as inflated bubbles if we enter the battle spiritually and interiorly unprepared. Our “good works” will not prosper; they will be transformed into neutral or evil consequences if we are unaligned with Divine Will and Hierarchy. The evil of man’s world is far greater than any human soul can realize. The suffering of this world is far more severe than any soul can bear to know. Only Deity and Hierarchy can extricate us from the hells we have created on earth, in the astral and mental worlds, and within our own souls. Indeed, the Master’s solemn warnings of hell and spiritual death demand careful scrutiny and attention--not of the morbid sort accorded them by medieval and fundamentalist proponents of eternal damnation, but of an enlightened sort that recognizes the infernal nature of the devolutionary, left-hand path. Mankind’s world is a battleground between Hierarchy and the Black Lodge. Hierarchy has a better chance of winning the war than mankind has of surviving as a species without a setback of perhaps two million years, but Hierarchy does lose “battles.” When it does, it is because of the disobedience and insensitivity of incarnate humanity to the urgings and promptings of Spirit. Hell is not eternal, but the conse- quences of human sin are far more serious than most people imagine.

Giving

The Master said it is better to give than to receive. Why? Because it is better to be free than in bondage, to be an independent and responsible adult than a dependent child, to be a master rather than a slave, to be empowered rather than impotent, to grow mature and Christ-like rather than remain a Peter-Pan adolescent. Who is able to give? The one who has. “To him who has, more will be given; but to him who lacks, even what little he has will be taken away,” said the Master. What a person “has” does not refer to material possessions, but interior spiritual wealth--the treasure of Heaven. Cf. GOSPEL IX.34-39 and VI.5-10. Cf. SHALEM.

Gospel [Cf. BASOR]

Halakah (Hebrew)

A rab or master of Israel delivered Torah or Divine Instruction to his disciples. Galilean masters were charismatic and mystical, but Judean masters were legalistic and concerned with school disputations based in Scriptural interpretation. There were liberal and conservative views. Hillel, who originated the “do not unto others what you would not have them do unto you” that Jesus consciously converted to the positive statement of the Golden Rule, was more liberal in his interpretations than Shammai, for example. Cf. the PIRKE ABOTH or SAYINGS OF THE FATHERS from the pre-Mishnaic period. They were called “Father” and their disciples “Sons,” but Jesus said, “Call no man Ab [Father], but only your Abba in Heaven,” warning against the “doctrines of men” which had evolved in place of the “doctrines of Cod” in the rabbinic and wisdom schools. Masters taught their halakah or “walk,” which was their way of life. When Jesus chose Peter and the otherè he said, Halkeni, “Follow me, walk my walk.” They also taught haggadah or the stories of the Jewish saints, which were something like the Pirke Aboth and very similar to the teaching stories told by a Sufi murshid. They used the mashal or illustrative 25 story (allegory, parable) so familiar in the Teaching of Jesus, and many of the parables of Jesus are similar in plot and character to those of his contemporaries but changed in order to make his point. The Master taught very much in the context of his contemporary religious world, but from the standpoint of a reformer who must spiritualize and remove distortion from existing religious thought. He delivered midrashim or interpretations of Scripture that were much at odds with Judaean rabbinical tradition, and was exceedingly allegorical. He infused interpretation with the gnosis kardia using hesed, Divine or Covenantal Love, as his canon for interpretation. When he was asked which were the “weightiest” of the mitzvoth or direct commandments of God, he chose the love of God and of the “neighbor,” or those real human beings who come into one’s sphere of service (as opposed to abstract humanitarianism). A rab could transmit berakoth to his disciples, including healing and shalom, “inner peace, joy, perfection, wholeness.” When the Master granted authority or lines of berakoth to his Accepted Disciples, they were able to transmit healing, exorcism, and “blessing” or shalom (“peace”). The Peace Blessing transmitted an energy called in semitic idiom the “son of Peace,” meaning the consequences that the Peace Blessing brings. He also transmitted the power of the prophetic curse. This was done symbolically by “wiping the dust” of a place or property from one’s feet, or by direct command, “Let no man ever eat of thy fruit again,” as with the useless fig tree. This negative usage of a positive power can be properly used only by Masters and by Accepted Disciples under the guidance of Hierarchy. The master-disciple relationship became the model for the bishop-priest relationship. Bishops or apostles received the authority and berakoth transmitted by the Master Jesus, and they could apportion out powers for special berakoth to their disciples or priests, such as the Apostolic Blessing, baptism, liturgy, etc. But the full spectrum of berakoth belongs only to the bishop, who has received the apostolate whole as a Master of the Church. Unlike all other rabbis of his day, Jesus accepted female’ disciples. The New Church has female Masters or Bishops. [The feminist teachings of Jesus concerning women as equal souls to men in every sense was too radical for the ancient world to accept and perpetuate, like many of his other unrealized teachings. For that reason the Apostolic Succession of Mary Magdalene was kept secret until this New Age. One story is told in ancient times of a rabbi who taught his daughter (bat, “female disciple?”) to read, but until Rabbi Theon of Syria in the late nineteenth century, who accepted Madame Blavatsky and The Mother of the Sri Aurobino Ashram as disciples-- both female and neither legally Jewish (!)--, I know of no other who took upon himself the full halakah of Rabbi Yeshua’. Cf. APOSTLE, BERAKAH, DISCIPLE, EXORCISM, GATE, MAR, MASTER, NEBI, SAINT, SHALOM, WAY, YOKE.

See also THE AUTHENTIC JESUS: A GUIDE TO ARAMAIC IDIOMS, RECENT RESEARCH, AND THE ORIGINAL MESSAGE OF JESUS CHRIST, Lewis Keizer.

Healing

The concept of “healing” in the language of the Master come from the same tri-literal root as his name, yasha’. It means “liberation from bondage.” What he really said to the woman who touched the hem of his garment and evoked healing of her hemorrhage was, “Your amen (“faithfulness, perseverence”) has set you free,” not, “Your faith (i.e., naive belief) has made you whole!” Healing is indeed “wholing,” as the English word root implies, but in the context of Dominical Teaching it is first of all “liberation, being set free from the bonds of Satan or Inner Evil.” This is exemplified in the story of the paralitic lowered through the roof to the Master. He said, “You are set free from your sins,” which certain Pharisees present took as blasphemy, since only God can forgive sin. Psychically perceiving the thought of their heart, Jesus turned to them and demonstrated that liberation from the consequences of sin and healing of mind and 26 body are the same thing, and that Heaven’s saints mediate forgiveness and healing to mankind. He knew that the Pharisees believed the man was paralyzed on account of his own sinfulness as a divine punishment, and that if the man were miraculously healed it would demonstrate to them that God and mankind are one, that perfected humanity is given the authority of God, and that the infinite gulf between humanity and divinity is bridged by an antahkarana that exists unrealized within every human heart. So the Master said, “I tell you, take up your pallet and walk.” And the man was freed immediately. The Master made it clear that disease is under the rule of Satan when he referred to the sick one “whom Satan has bound these many years.” Modern medicine tries to cure external and material symptoms, but true healing removes the cause of illness, which is obsession, astral parasitism, and a host of other interior and causal conditions directly ruled by sin, evil, “debt,” and disharmony of the soul. Bishop Saraydarian will soon publish the most exhaustive treatise on esoteric healing ever produced. Read it. Cf. BERAKAH, EXORCISM.

Heart

The Hebrew-Aramaic “heart” is the center of a person’s being, as was the Egyptian heart. In esoteric language it is called the Monad, the “Jewel at the center of the Lotus,” Sanskrit mani padme as in the mantra OM MANI PADME HUM, “OM The Jewel at the Center of the Lotus Petals HUM, where HUM is another form of OM. Since it is the Divine Ray or Spark, out of which all potency manifests, it is compared to the fructifying soil of a garden, able to support thistles or exotic fruits according to which yetzerim, “urges,” or energies are used--those from Above, or those from Below, the Platonic motions to right or left, the Hebrew prophetic Way of Life or Way of Death. In esoteric doctrine, the “heart” or monad is above and prior to the nephesh, psyche, or “soul.” The Secret Doctrine of Blavatsky’s Masters speaks of long aeons of spiritual work by angelic or non-incarnate archons to devolve, externalize, and evolute incarnate mankind, and of the many races and rounds leading to our current manifestation, which is fully externalized in matter. The role of the monad or “heart” has been to create the human soul, which is an offspring of the monad that eventually produces the Lotus or Chalice. When this energy system “unfolds” or becomes fully activated, the “soul” or Hebrew nephesh transmutes into the vortex of the Petals to drink deeply of Heaven’s nectar. Finally the soul as Petal-vortex burns away in the consciousness of the Third or Spiritual Eye and the entity lives as a monadic (rather than lower psychic) being, no longer in need of incarnation and now advancing on a higher Path. From this spiritual condition the monad or Ascended Saint is able to help humanity as an interfacing part of Hierarchy. He becomes a Solar Angel and takes its (not his or her) place in the Plan of Hierarchy working in the “cure” or care of human souls. It is as the hermetic Father answered the initiant Son in THE EIGHT REVEALS THE NINTH, when he asked concerning the Ascended Brothers: “0’ my Son, they are Pneumatics [Spiritual Beings], for they are the energies which cause other souls to evolve (-auxein). For this reason I say that They are Immortals,” 52.17-21. The “heart” also means the sacred inner consciousness from which Godhead is invoked in prayer, and the “thoughts of the heart” are the motivational attitudes or energies being used. This planet, its star system, our family of star systems, and all greater organisms of Reality have a Heart Center. The Divine Mother is enthroned at the Heart of Reality. The Energy of Divine Love radiates from every heart center, down unto the foundational ‘atoms of Reality (not the physical atoms, but the causal potencies). The Heart of the Master Jesus, we are told in the GOSPEL, is One with the Heart of the Universe. That is to say, “The Father and I are One. If you have seen me, you have seen the Father.” In other words, “I am That.” The Christ promised that the Father was in Him, and He and the Father would indwell every disciple who kept the WORD or Teaching of the Master Jesus. The Place of the Presence 27 or the Indwelling is the Heart or Monad. It is here that the Inner Christ is born and abides, and from here that the Inner Christ is evoked in Divine Love, service, and the Holy Communion. Cf. MEDITATION, SHALEM.

Hell [Cf. Gehonam, Eternity]

Hierarchy

Taken from the Greek roots hier- and arch-, the term has meant the “priestly order of rule” in the Roman Catholic Church under the High Priesthood of Jesus Christ. In the esoteric understanding of the New Church Universal (Katholike, “Catholic, Universal”), however, Hierarchy is a general term for the “Sacred Rule” or Divine Malkuth of all Reality in all kingdoms and orders of manifestation from the Authentia, the Autogenes, the Self-Born, the Original One-- the Most High God, El Elyon, the Father-Mother God. Before manifestation, or out-breathing, or the beginning of a new Divine Thought, or the Time-Motion Illusion that has been called “Play,” Godhead is All-in-All, a Unity. We would say there is no thing, there is nothing (cf. extant writings of the Initiate Balilides, Master of Pantaenus, Master of Clemens Alexandrinus and the Alexandrian Divines, of Whom St. Origen was the greatest; Basilides was custodian of the Secret Doctrine of the Apostle Peter). In the first act of Divine Love or manifestation, Godhead becomes the Father, Creator, or First Ray, and the Divine Mother, Co-Creator, or Second Ray. The Divine Motion of the two, which is a widening circle or spiral, produces the Third Motion, the Divine Child, the Monogenes, or Third Ray, which results in Space and the Motion of the Sacred Gyre, which is symbolically represented by the Cadduceus (Latin), the Kerykeion or priestly and powerful wand sacred to Hermes (Latin Mercury), and used by the Keryx during the initiations of the Mysteries of Hermes Trismegistus. [Moses made a healing wand under direction from the Father God consisting of a serpent wound around a pole, Numbers 21.9, to which the Initiate John referred when he quoted, “As Moses lifted up the Serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up; that whosoever keepeth faith with him should not perish, but have Eternal Life (“The Life of the ‘Olam or Heaven”),” John 3.14-15. Mosaic religion was patriarchal and later crystallized and antifeministic. It did not begin an approach to the Divine Mother until after the Second Temple. Therefore Moses had only the power of the First Ray, represent by one snake and half of the Sacred Gyre. The ancient pre-Aryan Agaean people were matriarchal and used the other half of the Sacred Gyre in their priestly “Bull-roarer” motion. The two were synthesized in Crucifixion, and that is why hermetic and alchemical allegory depict a crucified serpent. For the New Church, the Wand of Initiation, Healing, and other manifestational power will afix two representational “serpents” to a cruciform rod—the ancient Greek Orthodox Bishop’s crozier. Each spirals upward in opposite directions. This is the pattern of psychic mani- festation that is found in mega-galaxies and miniscule DNA-RNA molecules. From the Primal Three emerges Space-Time and our universes of Reality, each plane and subplane connected in an antahkarana of conscious, organic coordination, like a nervous system extending from brain through spinal centers to every part of the Body. God is not anthropomorphic; rather, mankind and the cosmos are Theomorphic--made in the yetzer, eikon, or “impulse-image” of Deity, Whose Malkuth or Sacred Rulership extends down to the lowest, tiniest, and most foundational kingdoms of manifestation through the highest, greatest, and most synthetical. Ultimately, as Mara has said, the two extremes meet at the One Source, for the poles of manifestation are Heaven and earth (i.e., the physical universe), the Within and the without, the Interior and the exterior, the Above (Johannine to Ano, from which Divine Birth comes) and the 28 below, Spirit and flesh. Mankind of this aeon subsists at the outermost exterior, the depths and frontiers, of manifestation. He nibbles at the outer husks of Reality like the Prodigal Son, who fed himself on the husks left uneaten by the hogs, and is now ready to make his return to the Father’s House. Mankind stands midway between the lower and higher kingdoms, ever facing the choices and decisions that elevate or denigrate his soul, blending with uplifting vibrations, or being intertialized and brought spiritually low with devolutionary vibrations. But at every level of vibratory life there is the Sacred Rule of God through Divine Rays, Monads, or Hypostaseis. In the lower kingdoms consciousness, synthesis, and understanding are of a low order, Divine Law ruling through so-called elementals and other “nature sprites” that may be the “tricksters and deceivers” of misguided seances, Ouija board sessions, and the like. In the high kingdoms are the angelic hosts in there various orders--divine monads that are pure servants of Malkuth, yet do not externalize in flesh, for they haven’t the power and authority to become “gods.” Under them and then above them are the Sainst of the Most High, those perfected human souls who have been initiated into Hierarchy and no longer externalize in human birth, as well as those who have advanced beyond the human kingdom and are beyond human psychic perfection, having become synthesized into greater solar and cosmic Bodies, of which the Body of Christ is one organ. It is this grand and (from the human standpoint) perfected communio sanctorum linking the consciousness of humanity to that of Deity--this Host of Heaven--that the New Church specifically names as Hierarchy, and especially the disciplic and priestly succession from the Christ extending into authentic and anointed incarnate expression through true prophets, apostles, masters, bodhisattvas, rishis, and murshids. It is this highest level of incarnate human expression through which the New Church transmits its lines of succession, its sacred messianic priesthood, its collegial lines of bishops. Thus the bishops or masters of the New Church externalize Hierarchy and a pioneering part of the Plan for mankind and the One Humanity. At this top level of spiritual expression in flesh there is universal religious brother- and sisterhood.. The separate religious traditions all merge in their most authentic forms, which are the mystic and inner traditions (Sufism for Islam, Kabbalism for Judaism, New Church for Christianity, etc.), and those who stand in flesh at the apex of religious-spiritual achievement externalize a causal, subjective Lodge of Advanced Disciples whose work is to ground the Plan into “earth” or physical manifestation through pneumatic and noetic channels of activity. Thus the true work of a bishop, said St. Peter in the Acts, is not “serving tables,” but Prayer (cf. PRAYER) and the Word (Cf. DABAR), which is work that begins with the inner planes and manifests outward into form and physical existence. That is why in esoteric language the work of such saints is compared to the spiritually generative activity of father and mother, or to the service of a midwife. What the New Church calls Hierarchy is a higher and greater sphere of service than flesh-life allows, and it is a free service dependent upon the self-mastery of hierarchical masters (who are mere disciples to their greater Masters). They make mistakes, respond too slowly to the Inner Guidance that they meditate to receive, and even “fall” from grace on extremely rare occasions. Their food is the “spiritual sustenance” of Higher Triad Meditation, through which they receive the Inner Guidance that they translate into their understanding of the Plan and their parts in It. They are much freer than human souls, with a far greater ambienece and elasticity in their greatly expanded spheres or fields of activity and service. For them, the Inner Enemy subsists among the workers of the Black Lodge, great adepts who have chosen the devolutionary rather than Evolutionary Path or Anodos (Greek “Upward Path”). The field of service for the Saints of the Body of Christ is the “cure” or care of the souls of mankind. They are Teachers, Helpers, Protectors, Energizers, Inspirers, Muses. They are “rulers” (cf. Pharisaic teachings and Jesus’ parables concerning the “reward” of dead saints--”Well done, good and faithful servant! Take thou authority over ten cities/kingdoms...He who is greatest in the Kingdom is he who serves all... They will sit upon thrones and rule with the Son of Man in His Kingdom.”). So members of Hierarchy are not bureaucratic office-holders, 29 as they have been portrayed in theosophical thought, or functionaries like angels who have specific tasks and are ruled directly. No, indeed! Members of Hierarchy increase in freedom, individual expression, creativity, spirituality, mastery, and field of “rule” or service as they ascend in initiation. They strive against the Black Lodge for control of the human expression, and in this tension, trial, and sacrificial striving for the sake of mankind and human souls they each meet their higher tests and make their progress, just as we do. We should always pray for Hierarchy, for They are in need of our conscious invocation just as we are in need of Theirs. We should consciously express gratitude to Hierarchy, for this is a divine energy that has great power. We should meditate in the consciousness of Hierarchical Presence, for They are with us always. Imagine yourself a cell in one great Body, and use that understanding when you relate yourself to Hierarchy. Respect and venerate masters in flesh who serve all mankind and provide the interface between Hierarchy and incarnate humanity, even if you can’t see their works--for they are far greater than your own. Cf. ANGEL, APOSTLE, CHALICE, COMMUNION, FATHER, MALKUTH, MASTER, MEDITATION, SAINT, SON OF MAN, WAY, YOKE.

Holy Spirit [Cf. RUAH HA-QODESH]

Humility

Read the entry under NACHAM. Basically, humility and the humbling of the heart so primary in the Teaching is from Hebrew-Aramaic roots meaning to “bring low; be lowly like a servant or peasant.” The key concept of nacham, “submission,” which is one meaning of the word Islam, is basic. Those who are great (meaning free, liberated, powerful, enlightened as part of God’s Rule) in the “Kingdom” or Rulership (Malkuth, Hierarchy) of Heaven are not those who elevate themselves to take power over other souls and other free wills, but those who humble them- selves as a servant to assist, guide, and carry on selfless sacrificial service for the sake of others. Jesus took a term that had a pejorative sense, that of “servant” (it was positive only in Hebrew prophetic mystic schools, where the prophet was the Servant of God), and spiritualized its meaning to include the following things: NOBILITY, SPIRITUAL POWER, ANGELIC SERVICE. To “humble the heart” is to understand the Self as “We” and not the little “I.” It is to see oneself as neither above nor below other human souls in value (although one may be in illumination or initiation), since the differences between human souls in illumination and initiation are miniscule in the grand Reality, and to recognize from the heart the brotherhood and sisterhood of all humanity, all races, all ages, in familial love, interdependence, and unity. Humility avoids “respect of persons,” or bowing down to so-called self-important V.I.P.’s as well as the consciousness of condescension and “lowering oneself” to interact with others of socially, intellectually, or other lower estate. False humility or half-humility is better than no attempt at all, and as the first three Knowledge Petals open, one is blessed with the inner realization of equality with all others and one’s position and responsibility as elder or younger brother of others on the Path. That, again, is why the Master told his disciples to call no human being a “spiritual Father,” for in Reality we are all elder and younger siblings--not masters and little ones! Cf. NACHAM

30 Hypocrisy

New Testament Greek hypokrite or “hypocrite” means “actor, pretender,” but Aramaic had no such equivalent term because Israel did not have a tradition of drama or theater. The Aramaic phrase used by Jesus was nasa beaph, to “turn up the nose” at someone or something, i.e., to feel morally and spiritually superior. It was for this more than anything else the Master criticized the Pharisees of his day. There were about 7,000 strict Pharisees in Palestine at the time the Master taught. Although they preserved the popular and more “democratic” religion of the synagogue, they saw themselves as the initiates and moral leaders of society. Judaean pharisaic religion was extremely legalistic and literalistic in its interpretation of Scripture and Torah, “binding” people to ever more strict and almost magical religious practices in the name of rabbinic tradition. This bred a fundamentalistic, crystallized (i.e., mutually reinforcing vibration), and one-dimensional mentality that supported inflation, self-righteousness, self-aggrandizement, sense of moral and spiritual superiority, and a fanatic zeal such that “the day will come when they kill you, thinking to serve God.” This moralistic self-righteousness the Master deflated by demonstrating that they cared only for the outer show and externals of religion, leaving the interior unclean and full of guile. In every one of the Master’s statements on hypocrisy in the Greek gospels, the student will find that he is speaking of inflated self-righteousness rather than “saying one thing but doing another,” i.e. “hypocrisy.” Cf. THE AUTHENTIC JESUS, Chapter Four, Lewis Keizer.

Inner Christ [Cf. CHRIST, MONAD]

Inner Enemy [Cf. SATAN]

Inner Guidance [Cf. HIERARCHY, MALKUTH]

Jehovah, Jehowah [Cf. YHWH, YHVH]

Jerusalem

Ancient Palestinian cities were built one upon the ruins of another, always in the same place and upon the rubble of a ruined city, because the location was both advantageous and sacred. Either it was on top of a hill, overlooking a great distance so that warning of invasion could be given far in advanced, or near water--a spring, seacoast, or river. The most ancient “sacred place” names in Palestine often begin with ,y~,, from roots meaning “to lay a foundation, to sprinkle and water, to be green and verdant.” Thus we have Jericho, the most ancient Palestin- ian city yet excavated (to at least eight or ten thousand B.C.E.), near the Jordan River, North of Jerusalem. Archaeologists sometimes find the stratified rubble of ancient cities in a geological formation called a tell, which is a hillock or hill on a plain created by human occupation over many centuries. The City of David or Jerusalem of the Southern Kingdom (Judah) vied for 31 supremacy with the royal capital of the Northern Kingdom, Israel, which was Beth El, the City of Samaria and later, after the destruction of Israel by the Assyrians and the Captivity of Judah by the Babylonians, became the sacred city of the Samaritans, who still survive in a small, incestuously intermarried community and transmit an ancient and extremely valuable independent biblical manuscript tradition. It was to the high priesthood of Beth El (“House of God”) that Amos and his successors prophesied, and from within the priesthood of Jerusalem that Hilkiah, his son Jeremiah, and Isaiah prophesied. It was to that sacred location King David carried the Ark of the Covenant of Moses, and there that Solomon built the First Temple using cruel taxation and slave labor that resulted in the breaking of Israel into Northern and Southern Kingdoms after his death. Israel means “One Who Strives or Struggles Spiritually with God”— perhaps the aitiological basis for the story of Jacob’s wrestling with an angel and having seen the “face” of God, unlike Moses, who saw only the “hinder parts.” Jacob was a great religious founder who saw Angelic Hierarchy, had many visions, and established many sacred places in commemoration of these revelations. Jacob was called Israel after his vision of the Face of God, and is probably the true founder of Hebrew prophecy and mysticism. Israel is the mystic name of all seekers, and it is significant that it means “striving against God!” That’s a real lesson in humility!] The name Jerusalem is equated with the City of Salem (Shalom, “Peace”) ruled by the gentile Canaanite Melchizedek, who taught Abraham God’s Name El Elyon, God Most High, and brought him a sacred meal of Bread and Wine. The location of Canaanite Salem was not far from Sodom and Gomorrha, which legend says lie beneath the Dead Sea, near Jerusalem. Thus Jerusalem, the City (“Foundation Place”) of Peace (Shalom) is linked in Hebrew legend to the permanent encampment of the Sheik Melchizedek, “King of Righteousness,” was a gentile Priest of God Most High. Thus Jerusalem is actually a holy place of all nations and religions, and in modern times is claimed by Jews, Christians, and Moslems. In esoteric language Jerusalem represents not a location on the planet, but rather a stage of initiation within seeker, which is entry into the Fourth Grade One or First Disciplic (Planetary) Initiation, that is, into the Higher Triad. That is why the Teaching of the Master Jesus is called the “Gate of the Master” in reference to advanced discipleship. Cf. MELCHIZEDEK.

Jesus, YeSHUA’ (Hebrew)

The Sacred Name of Jesus means “Liberation.” The triliteral Hebrew root yasha’, which carries the meaning of coming from a narrow, constricted place into a wide plain or sapce, of being delivered from a state of poverty and danger to one of ample supplies and safety. The Latin Jesus from the Greek lesous was associated with the New Testament word Soter, “Liberator,” which became Latin Salvator, “Savior.” This introduced the sense of “salvage” of souls from their human wreckage and “salvation,” which the connation that the Church was a kind of Noah’s Ark floating high above a doomed world, out of which souls were taken and “saved.” This, of course, is wrong. The Church is the subjective, liberated, non-institutional Body of illuminated souls who do works of love for love’s sake in the world of mankind, but are no longer in bondage to the world of human evil. They are “in” the world but not “of” it. [The Johannine “world” (kosmos), as in “the world, the flesh, and the Devil,” refers to this Aeon of lower human consciousness--its materialism, delusion, injustice. The Prince of This Aeon is Satan, a collective human astral-mental projection representing human domination by injust government and institutions, fear, bondage to sin, imprisonment in crystallized emotional and mental vibrations. The Johannine “earth, planet” (~), on the other hand, is the wholesome and good natural creation--which includes mankind and the human physical, etheric, and other bodies. It is this “creation” that groans and strains, as St. Paul said, awaiting the manifestation 32 of the Children of Light, the coming Child of Humanity or “Son of Mankind” of this New Age. If you were a polluted stream or an acid-rain ruined forest, you’d groan, too! Next time you pick a flower, as its permission. The next time you eat animal, vegetable, and mineral life in order to incorporate it into your own greater life, give it thanks. That’s what “table grace” should be--a sacred eucharist to and for the “little lives” who are sacrificed for the greater life in us.] The same root in the name Jesus (which also appears translated as Joshua, the successor of Moses) underlies the word for “healing,” which is also a process of liberation from bondage, either through cleansing from obsessive consciousness or harmonizing of knotted, convoluted, and involuted fissures within subtle bodies. Cf. EXORCISM, FORGIVENESS, HEALING, SHALEM.

Justification

This has been used since the King James English translation of the Bible to represent Paul’s technical term dikaiosune, “justification.” In older English it meant “rectification, being made right,” but “right” became “righteous,” and “justification” became “being justified, reinforced,” so that now the Lutheran doctrine of Justification by Faith has lost its meaning. Originally, Professor Luther found by reading Paul that it is not the “works” of a person that put a person into harmony with God (“justify”), but “faith.” What Paul meant was this: The ancient custom of “getting right” with God by sacrificing a dove or doing some other liturgy or “work” of Levitical Jewish Torah is a sham. God does not desire the blood of animals, but the “sacrifice” of a pure and loving heart. It is the interior reality that God looks upon, not the outer show--the thoughts of the heart, not the words of the mouth. It is inner service, not “lip service,” that God desires. Professor Luther saw this in the context of spiritual degeneration within the Roman Catholic Church, according to which a wealthy person could donate funds for a monastery and thereby earn papal “indulgences,” or shortening of one’s time in Purgatory and other prizes of Divine Grace. During Luther’s time the Catholic Church had also developed a good and healthy emphasis upon service as the Yoga of Christ (which it is)--this through the monastic movement, hospitals, etc.--and this was repugnant to many as too “humanistic” or “secular,” which of course it is, and that is good, for “inasmuch as ye have done it to the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.” So Luther and others in search of reform and higher spirituality were opposed to “works” of all kinds as means of gaining Grace (partially correctly, and partially incorrectly), and they came up with the doctrine that what Paul called dikaiosune or “being put right with God” was done only by “faith.” Unfortunately, their definition of “faith” was essentially “belief in correct doctrine and creed.” Thus the Protestants came to the ridiculous view that “getting right with God” was a matter of believing the right things, and Protestant creeds and confessions blossomed all over Europe, each differing with the other on some point of theological interpretation,, with each self-righteously claiming to be the “true” Christian religion! Unfortunately also, Professor Luther became so convinced that he had the essence of Paul’s doctrine that he declared the Epistle of James to be “an epistle of straw” that should be excluded from the canon of the New Testament because it said, “Faith without works is dead!” In the tradition of James, who was the successor of the Master Jesus and head of the first church in Jerusalem until he was murdered by the Pharisees--a man so pious and saintly that he had huge husks on his knees from constant prayer--, faith and works went hand in hand. Why? Because “faith” (amen) in the Teachings means “faithfulness, perseverence, fidelity.” Faith is a “work” in and of itself! If Luther had read more carefully he would have found the place where Paul says that we all “work out” (ergadzomai) our “salvation” (dikaiosune), and that sanctification is a never-ending “race” (agon) for a crown (stephanos, the Crown Center or Monad), and that at any time he, Paul, might “slide back” and lose the crown. In other words, 33 there is no “eternal security” in what the churches have called “salvation.” Anyone can take a wrong turn at any time. There is no such condition as being “saved,” only being “liberated.” What, then, is “justification,” dikaiosune? It is a state of being in harmony with Divine Will, of being in touch with the Inner Guidance of Heaven, of being in “grace.” It is the condition that all discipleship seeks to attain and maintain, like a child learning to maintain balance on a bicycle so that he can ride it and get somewhere. The simplest and least educated person can live in that state by kindling love in the heart and reverence for Heaven. All that is required is amen, “faith.” Cf. AMEN. See also THE MYSTERIES OF JESUS CHRIST, Excursus: The Pauline Mysteries, pp. 54-61.

Kingdom of Heaven, Kingdom of God

[Cf. HIERARCHY, MALKUTH

Legomena (Greek)

The “things spoken” of the Mysteries. See THE MYSTERIES OF JESUS CHRIST, pp. 34ff. Cf. DEIKNUMENA, DROMENA, MYSTERY.

Liberation

Hebrew yeshua’ (“liberation”) came into New Testament Greek as soteria, and from thence into Latin theology and medieval English as “salvation.” The Name of Jesus (Yeshua’, “Joshua”) is the true key to the historical redemption theology of the Teaching, as well as to the subtle mechanism of healing and forgiveness. Cf. DEBT, FORGIVENESS, HEALING, JESUS.

Life

“Life” in the Teaching is psychic. The Greek word used by the Apostle John and his disciples is p!yche, rather than zoe (“animal life”) or bios (“biological life”). The mystic phrase found in the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs and other mystic Pharisaic literature of the centuries before Jesus, translated “eternal life,” but literally “aeonic life, the Life of the Aeon of God,” is a moral and spiritual concept. One “has” Aeonic or Eternal Life when he/she is in harmony and communion with God’s Way and Will. Such a soul or “life” is a member of the invisible communio sanctorum or Communion of Saints (whether in or out of flesh) that subsists in the shalom of God, the “wholeness or peace that surpasses all human understanding.” One can move from this heavenly root, base, and sonship in ‘the Life of the Aeon to a shallow, disharmonious, and infernal one in a split second, as when Jesus turned to Peter and said, “Get thee behind me, Satan!” [The semitic genitival “son-of” means “having the qualities and charac- teristics of.” A Son of God is a godlike person, and a son of Satan is a satanic person, in Aramaic idiom. A person becomes godlike by virtue of his/her thoughts, words, and deeds. Peter fell from sonship with God to kinship with Satan when he unconsciously spoke the words of the Inner Enemy to Jesus, begging him to turn away from his determination to go to Jerusalem and die.] The “life more abundant” that Christ bestows is not material prosperity (although this can be a secondary manifestation), but the true interior spiritual life--the Life of the Soul and the Monad, the Life of God’s Malkuth, the One Life of all Saints. When we pray for our 34 “daily bread” we misunderstand the Master’s Prayer (Cf. THE MASTER’S PRAYER, Lewis Keizer), which uses the mystic phrase, epiousion bread--”bread of the morrow.” The disciple always looks to the future, and the “bread of the future” is the hypersubstantial Bread of Heaven that I translate “spiritual sustenance.” The epiousion is the divine energy, power, charism, grace, and blessing--the transformational and evolutionary Berakah--that fills the Chalice of the Soul in meditation, prayer, sacrificial service, and most especially in the Holy Communion or MYSTERY LITURGY OF THE CHALICE. That is the true interior sustenance for the Eternal Life of the Soul. In the early mystic writings, Aeonic Life is always moral in character, because it results from choosing the Way of Life, which is the “good yetzer,” the “right-hand path.” See DIVINE FREEDOM AND HUMAN EVIL, Right and Wrong, Good and Evil, pp.3f. Cf.CHALICE, COMMUNION, MYSTERY, SAINT, YETZER.

Logion, Logia (Greek)

In biblical studies a “saying” or “word” of Jesus carried down in oral tradition, “remembered” through mnemonics or other characteristics of its internal meaning or structure, and written down out of context in lists like the “0” Source and Gospel of Thomas, or embedded somewhere in the massive production of literature brought forth among the early churches. The Logia of Jesus are preserved in places like the Sermon on the Mount of the new GOSPEL OF JESUS CHRIST, Chapters V-VI.

Lord; LORD

Jesus was called mar, “master, lord,” meaning a great teacher of disciples. The Most High God is called Adonai in the Old Testament, meaning “Master of the Universe, Lord of All.” When God is called by the Sacred Tetragrammaton YHWH, the ineffable Name is never pronounced, but the consonants are “pointed” or filled out with the vowels from Adonai so that a symbolic name is made-Y+a+H+o+W+a+H, “Yahowah, Jehovah.” When this occurs in the Old Testament, it is translated in English in full capitals, the LORD. When the word is Adonai, it is translated, the Lord. Now, in the change from Jewish discipleship to the Greek-speaking gentile church movement, Jesus was called Kurios lesous, the Lord Jesus--meaning “the Master Jesus,” translating Aramaic mar. But as first-generation knowledge was lost and the person of Jesus became the subject of Christological speculation, and as the Greek Kurios or Kyrios was used to translate both Aramaic mar and Old Testament Adonai, Jesus became the Lord (Adonai) Jesus--identified with the Most High God. Now, this is wrong. Jesus should be called the Master Jesus, for he is Master of Masters. But the title of Universal Ruler (Adonai) belongs literally to El Elyon, although distributively it can be applied to the Christ Spirit, which indwelt the Master and transformed him as firstborn of a New Humanity, the Head and Master of all Human Striving. But the Christ is all humanity in its perfection, which exist’s now in Spirit and works through the Master Jesus. Christhood lies within every human soul unrealized, and the Christ indwells those who make themselves disciples of the Master Jesus, who is the Perfected Soul of Humanity. The Christ indwells all true disciples of all Ascended Masters, who themselves sit at the feet of the Master Jesus. For Jesus Christ is Master of Masters, King of Kings, and Lord of Lords, and he serves as the World Teacher for all religions and disciplic orders, whether recognized or not. However, all great disciples recognize this truth. It does not mean that Christianity is a greater religion than any other--indeed, Christianity has made itself the least of the religions in many cases! For Jesus is not merely the Perfected Christian Soul, but the Perfected Soul of All Humanity. He belongs to all mankind, and all mankind is his field of service. In the New Church 35 he is called the Master Jesus. See introduction to THE MASTER’S PRAYER, Lewis Keizer. Cf. FATHER, MASTER, SAINT.

Love

The Hebrew concept of hesed, the covenantal, nurturing, trustworthy, faithful Love of God, is a favorite term of the prophets, but in truth all kinds and qualities of love are Divine Love. In the New Church Universal instruction will be given in mastering, sending forth, and co-creatively using the infinite power of love. The creative power of the Father and the Mother will be understood and used in sacred marriage between man and woman. These mysteries are so easily abused by those without Higher Triad development that they are kept secret. Cf. DIVINE LOVE.

Malkuth (Hebrew)

Misunderstood and mistranslated as “Kingdom” of God, “Kingdom” of Heaven, Malkuth is a key concept in the Teachings of the Master. It means literally the Divine “Rulership, Reign, Sovereignty” of God’s Will. It is invisible and inaudible to the eyes and ears of flesh, incomprehensible to the unenlightened mind, undesirable to the gross and insensitive heart that encases itself in the sepulchre of separativeness and self-will. But the Perfect Rule of Love and Wisdom, just and equal for every soul, is clear and evident to the spiritual and noetic faculties of those who have “ears to hear and eyes to see,” to those who are advancing on the Path of Love and Sacrificial Service. The Absolute Sovereignty of Good Divine vVill is manifest to those who are becoming universal in their humanity, whose Knowledge Petals are unfolding, who are deepening the Many-Tiered Chalice. Those who begin to understand that they are not this flesh, that Spirit reigns eternal, that death and suffering can be overcome, and whose hearts have swelled with love to understand, feel, and include the hearts of all others, and whose minds have expanded to attunement and sympathetic vibration with those of fellow humans and all self-conscious life--such illuminated ones not only see and hear the Malkuth of Heaven, but delight in it. To the disciple, Divine Malkuth is that which is sought and valued above all wisdom as the INNER GUIDANCE OF HEAVEN. It is mediated to him/her by saints and masters of Hierarchy through the channels of meditation, prayer, and the metaphorical allegory of daily life. To the disciple, Divine Malkuth is the epiousion bread or “spiritual sustenance” of which the Master Spoke when he quoted, “Mankind shall not live by bread alone, but by every Word that proceedeth from the Mouth of God.” To the disciple, Divine Malkuth is the invisible, inaudible, insensible Stream of Blessing that flows forth and is poured into the Inner Chalice, filling it with nectars, fragrances, and essences of higher-triad vibrations and evolutionary energies for spiritual unfoldment, in meditation, prayer, selfless service, and the Divine Sacraments-- especially the Holy Communion, or MYSTERY LITURGY OF THE CHALICE. From earliest times Church writers and theologians misunderstood Master’s Teaching on Malkuth. They believed that he spoke of an external “Kingdom” that would “come” into the human world of time and space. But he spoke not of material and temporal rule rooted in the outer husks of Reality and its manifest effects. Rather, he spoke of the Eternal Rule of the Most High God that is exercised from the interior, spiritual, and causal roots of Reality, visible only to the wise. For, “It is spread out upon the earth and throughout the universe, yet men do not see it.” In the new Gospel, Malkuth is translated as INNER GUIDANCE, for the Divine Way and Will can be apprehended only by interior resources, by what the Greeks called the gnosis kardias, and the Romans the scientia cordis--the “straight-knowledge of the heart.” For the Voice of Heaven 36 cannot be heard with ears of flesh, nor does it speak in the languages of men. Rather, it is apprehended as the “still, small voice” of the silence. It speaks to us in unremembered and imageless dreams, in moments of mental stillness, in modulations of light, in energies, vibrations, higher impression, in nectars, fragrances, and essences, in impulses and visions freely offered, but not compelled. In Kabbalistic allegory, Malkuth is portrayed as the lowest (i.e. most “externalized in physical matter”) of the Ten Sephiroth (Divine Attributes) on the Tree of Life, and is represented as a Chalice. The task of the disciple is to “redeem” Malkuth through the transmutation and elevation of sanctified gnosis such that it will assume a position at the top of the Tree just below Hokmah (Wisdom, represented by the Spiritual Eye) and Binah (cf. RESURRECTION), in the Sephirah of Da’at (Conscious Mastery). This is an occult summation of the Master’s Teaching. For it is by ever seeking the Malkuth or Inner Guidance of Heaven that one elevates consciousness of Spiritual Rule through all centers, from the lowest or outermost to the highest, at the same time both submitting or harmonizing them to Divine Will and gaining all the depths of inner mastery as one “born from above.” Thus the disciple ever seeks the Malkuth on deeper and more interior levels, and over more subtle bodies and planes, until in the scheme of human initiations he/she burns away the Tiers of the Chalice (Malkuth) and stands free in the Resurrection (Greek anastasis, “raising up”) as a Standing One in the state, aeon, or Sephirah of Da’at (Conscious Mastery). Malkuth, then, might best be understood as the Rulership of God through Hierarchy, and “redemption” as the sacred processes through which the begotten rays or monads of God go forth into the chaos of outer darkness to ensoul, enlighten, and bring its nethermost regions unto perfection. For all Reality is under God’s absolute Rule, and yet the Most High has generated countless seeds of unrealized, free-willed (actually self-willed) deity (cf. SOUL). It is this multiversity of self-will that must be ensouled, enlightened, and harmonized with the One Good Will. As each “spark” or monad attains finally to Divine Selfhood, it becomes one with the Malkuth of Cod. Yet each is infinitely free, fully individuated, totally independent. How can this be? It is as though there are countless student musicians practicing their instruments--violins, trumpets, oboes, clarinets, and a host of others. As each student achieves basic mastery, he/she enters by audition into the Universal Orchestra. Yet each is in his/her own section (string, woodwind, brass, percussion), able to fully express the upper limits of mastery in tone, timbre, and nuance, to join with others for trios, quartets, sextets, and to experience the ecstasy of composition and performance in co-creative partnership with or not a note is written, but comes from the heart of the musician.

Thus it is not said that those who overcome the kosmos, the sarx, and the Diabolos will become simple, uncreative automatons with no individuality acting like cogs in the gears of Divine Will! No, indeed It is said they will “reign or rule with Christ.” The reward of the faithful servant is this: “Take thou authority over ten kingdoms!” They gain not only in service, but in power, authority, wisdom, joy, gnosis, freedom, individuality--for the Master Jesus is the Liberator of Souls, not merely the high bureaucratic administrator of certain theosophical schools!

Magdalenic tradition and sources like the Secret Gospel of Mark have made it clear that Jesus did a noctural, one-to-one initiation of advanced disciples into the “Mysteries of the Malkuth of Heaven.” This was probably comparable to the Hermetic initiation transmitted by “Father” (teacher) to “Son” (disciple) preserved in Corpus Hermeticum Tractate 13 and Nag Hammadi Coptic Gnostic Codex VI, Tractate 6. For me information so Keizer’s doctoral dissertation published in simplified version entitled THE EIGHTH REVEALS THE NINTH.

Cf. ANGEL, CHALICE, DIVINE LAW, HIERARCHY, LIBERATION, MASTER, MONAD, RESURRECTION, SOUL, SHALEM, SHALOM, WAY.

37

Mar (Aramaic)

Title of Jesus and Middle Eastern bishops meaning “master, teacher.” Confused by early gentile churches with Hebrew Adonai, “Lord,” as applied to Godhead. In the New Church we refer to the Master Jesus, not the Lord Jesus. Cf. LORD.

Marriage

Under HIERARCHY the archetypal motions of “Father” and “Mother” are described as represented in the symbol of the Cadduceus or Wand of Hermes. This is the motion of creation and generation that leads from the interior or causal to the manifesting exterior world of effect. This can also be called the Kathodos or Downward Path. This is a synthetical motion, as opposed to the Devolutionary Arc, which is anti-synthetical or spiritually regressive. Now, the opposite of this motion is called the Anodos or Upward Path (which is congruent with the Evolutionary Arc returning to the Father-Mother). It is on the Upward Path that evolutionary synthesis or “marriage” occurs. We are told that the human soul (in whatever stage of Chalice- building) is a marriage of many lesser souls, and these of many even lesser, on down unto the roots and particles of manifestation. Everything that manifests in form is “psychic,” that is, has unseen causal structure. Thus we can speak of the soul of an atom, or of a subatomic particle. However the atom manifests in nature, its “soul” is as ancient as the universe. It is the unions of these psychic elements that create not merely larger, higher, and more self-conscious evolutionary forms in flesh, but the “souls” that substand these forms. The process or law ruling the evolution of lesser holons or organisms into those of higher spiritual consciousness or synthesis, from Mineral through Human hierarchies and beyond, is called Divine Marriage. From the standpoint of human consciousness, the spiritual union of two people in friendship of any kind is a point of harmonization for a greater union yet to come in which all humanity will live in eternal spiritual friendship. In its best and highest expression, human marriage of man and woman is eternal friendship, eternal heart relationship, eternal faith and trust, eternal nobility, eternal beauty. Some say that each monad divides into two subrays as it is sent forth, and that this is the source and cause of the “Fall,” for each part is incomplete and searches for its other half (so to speak) rather than for the Anodos back to the Father-Mother Cod. Thus the “little self” takes priority over the True Self. Divine Law ordains that these two, allegorized in the myths of Eros and Psyche, the Gnostic Sophia, and many other sacred stories, wander incessantly in the outer darkness of manifested Reality until they find each other. When the Lover and Beloved are reunited, they transcend darkness and begin the ascent homeward. Those who speak of these things often believe that each person has a “soul-mate” somewhere that may be found by a blessed few and joined in human marriage. But the truth is far greater and more inclusive, for each divine monad seeks for every other monad--first for those generated along with it who are the “neighbors” and “kinsmen” of mystic allegory, and ultimately for all others in an ever- widening spiral. That is why in ancient times one man had many wives, and one woman many husbands in certain cultures, and why each human entity marries many others over the course of the ages and incarnations. The Master said that when we attain unto the Aeon of the Resurrection we are like unto angels, no longer in need of carnal sexuality, and cannot marry (males) or be given in marriage (females). That is because “in Christ there is no male or female,” and there is no such thing as a “female” soul or a “male” soul. In truth, we are all Brothers and Sisters in flesh--not romantic Soul Mates. In Spirit we are all Souls. As we attain initiation into higher and more synthetical or spiritually evolutionary states of being, we expand as holonic psychic organisms. We attract and transmute more psychic and “magnetic” energies, 38 and we “join with” a greater brotherhood of monadic souls, until we are each realized as a Cosmos or Universe with the monad as the Father-Mother Cod. We do not co-opt or consume other monads in this growth--the attempt to enslave other monads is high wickedness and “de- volutionary.” Rather, we unite with them in sacred marriage, that is, eternal friendship and harmony. At the same time we experience Hieros Gamos, Sacred Marriage, within. For as Divine Love is expressed (radiated outward to link with other monads), it is also interiorly synthesized. Thus in the Gospel of Philip we are told of Seven Sacraments (the seven Church or Grade One Initiations) culminating in the Sacrament of the Bridechamber, which is inner union with Christ. This Marriage of the Lamb corresponds to the fulfilment of the Inner Petals of Synthesis of the Lotus and the formation of the Sacred Jewel in the Chalice that burns it away to stand free in Christhood and Mastery. It is the attainment of the Kabbalistic Da’at, or Conscious Mastery, when there is no longer need of a physical body or incarnation. It is Resurrection. The sacred science of the New Church Universal initiates advanced disciples into the priestly gnosis of Co-Creation and Synthesis using the True Wand of Hermes. Male and female priests who have been marriage partners for thirteen years may receive the Sacrament of Eternal Marriage and learn the sacred and sacrificial service possible through higher co-creative use of love energy.

Messiah (Hebrew)

Messiah meant “anointed spiritual leader of Israel,” and was translated by Greek Christos. Anointing or chrismation by fiery light-bearing olive oil (fuel for lamps and lanterns) was both a means of crowning a Jewish ruler and an esoteric aid in laying on of hands to transmit disciplic or tribal-familial authority, since olive oil is a conductor of higher psychic and fiery energy. Israel awaited the coming of a messianic saviour. In Southern Judea and Jerusalem the rabbis and scribes of the ruling Pharisees hoped for a warrior-king like David who would overthrow Roman occupation and re-establish the ancient Solomonic empire. This Messiah was called the “Son of David,” meaning (in semitic idiom) the One Who is Like David. Parts of the New Testament confuse Jesus with the Son of David and, indeed, go to great lengths to demonstrate lineage to David through both patrilinear and matrilinear succession (Matthew and Luke). But the Master Jesus himself overthrew the rabbinic image of Messiah as the Son of David when he challenged it by saying, “Why do the Pharisees say that Messiah is David’s son? If David calls him ‘Lord,’ how can he be David’s son?” By this we know that Jesus taught the Northern Calilean and Babylonian idea of the Messiah Bar-Joseph, or the Son of Joseph. (Indeed, the father of Jesus was named Joseph.) The Messiah Ben-Joseph (Hebrew ben = Aramaic bar) was a revelation of the Isaian and Babylonian mystic schools of Hebrew saints like the visionary Daniel, who saw “one like unto a son of humanity [cf. SON OF MAN]” receiving ultimate rulership over the earth in an aeonic “kingdom” [cf. AEON, MALKUTH]. The Messiah Ben-Joseph was not a warrior-king and was not to subdue humanity by force of arms. Instead, he was a christed prophet who would be rejected and killed, but whose spirit would conquer the world for the true Israel. After the destruction of the Sadducee Party and the turn of the first Christian century, Rabbi Akiba was forced by the Pharisaic School to anoint or “christen” Simeon Bar-Kokba who led the abortive guerilla warfare against Rome that finally ended with mass suicide at Massada and the end of messianic speculation and the Jewish homeland. The earliest form of a Christian creed was undoubtedly Yeshua ha-Mashiah or “Jesus is the Messiah.” This passed into non-Jewish, gentile, Greek-speaking Christianity as the title “Jesus Christ,” as used at an early date in the Pauline missionary epistles. The title affirmed the acceptance of the Master Jesus as Cod’s Anointed Messenger for all humanity.

39

Meditation

Meditation was transmitted in the mysticism of the prophetic gilds, with the earliest reference being to Elijah’s meditation upon Mount Carmel. “And he bent himself down upon the earth, and put his face between his knees (I King 18.42).” When Elijah mocked the priests of Ba’al for the impotence of their god he said, “Perhaps he is meditating...” Indeed, it was through meditation that the Word of Cod came to many of the prophets. For while in Moses’ day he “saw” only the “hinderparts” of Cod, by the time of Isaiah the holy man is able to ascend unto the Throne- Chariot [Merkabah] of the Most High and Ancient of Days through the intermediary action of angels. This Merkabah or Throne-Chariot Mysticism became the meditative anodos or mode of ascent for priestly and prophetic or wisdom schools of Jewish saints after the time of Saint Daniel in Babylon, and much of their revelatory literature has been transmitted through the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament. The Enoch literature was quoted and used by the earliest Christians in direct tradition from the Master Jesus (cf. Epistle of Jude 1.14- 15). In the New Testament Jesus teaches his disciples to spend night vigils “watching,” and he repeatedly exhorts them to “watch.” It was this activity the disciples were engaged in when they saw Jesus transfigured on the mountain and saw him speaking with hierarchy. The process of meditation did not consist of “vain repetitions,” but was done in seclusion, at night when the world was still or at sunrise. In those days (as one can still see at the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem) prayer was done aloud with repetition of biblical and rabbinical formulae, but Jesus taught his disciples to pray silently. They were to enter into their “inner treasury” and pray “in secret (en crypto)” unto Cod. Meditation was an extension and higher ascent rooted in this revolutionary practice that had hitherto been known only to esoteric brotherhoods. The practice of Merkabah Mysticism developed in Jewish tradition into the more complex and formal Greater and Lesser Hekhaloth (hallways leading to the Throne) and in combination with other esoteric influences produced the kabbalistic traditions of the medieval period. Jewish-Christian meditation was refined in the many monastic streams flowing out of the early Christian desert practices. Unlike prolonged Eastern meditation practices, which were often hypnotic and led to long “theta”-type brain waves, Jewish-Christian meditation was ecstatic, conscious on both lower and higher levels of sense, and resulted in asthetical and visionary experience--at worst astral, but at best highly spiritual and aspirational. As in ancient Egyptian and Greek tradition, Jewish-Christian meditation (sometimes called “contemplation”) resulted in hierarchical contacts to bring great vision, beauty, and philosophy into human culture. The archetypal process is attributed in the ancient world to the figure of Thoth-Hermes, the winged Messenger of the Gods and the prophet of all gifts that Isis gave unto humanity through revelation and higher impression.

Meichizedek (Hebrew)

The ancient “King of Righteousness (Melchi-zedek)” who as priest offered the Eucharist of bread and wine to Abraham was King of Salem (shalem, “peaceful, harmonious perfection”). He was Priest of EL ELYON, God Most High, and conferred initiation unto Abraham as transmittor of Cod’s Berakoth (cf. Berakah). According to the lore of the Epistle to the Hebrews of the New Testament, which appears to have been written by one of the levitical priests who came into the Christian movement at the beginning, the Christ is High Priest of a more ancient priesthood than that of the Levirite. His is the Priesthood of Melchizedek, “concerning whom we have much to say, but it is difficult to explain because you are dull of comprehension. By now you should be Teachers because you have been a long time in training; but even now you need to be taught the primary writings of the Word of God; but you are still in need of milk, and not strong meat 40 (Heb. 2.11-12).” It is Psalm 110 that the Master Jesus quotes in refuting the rabbinic concept of a Messiah Ben-David (“The LORD said to my Lord...”), and it is in the same messianic Psalm we find these words: “Thou art a priest forever after the Order of Meichizedek (Psalm 110.4).” The great Teaching, the “strong meat” that could not be revealed in the Epistle because the audience were “babes,” concerns universal planetary Hierarchy. For all valid and authentic priesthood flows from the hierarchical Priesthood of Melchizedek and its Council, which rules hierarchical contact through human liturgy and religion. The Christian theology of a cosmic Christ owes much to the more ancient Jewish mystical ideas of Melchizedek and Daniel’s Son of Man than it does to the righteous Son of Cod figures of Jewish sainthood like Eleazar and Taxo. Christ, like Melchizedek, is not a personality but a universal divine office identical with the whole Body of perfected humanity.

Monad [Cf. HEART]

Mother [Cf. HOLY SPIRIT]

Motive [Cf. YETZER]

Mystery

The Greek term mysterion as used in the Pauline Epistles and Apocalypse refer to the mystery cults of initiation (Mysteries of Hermes Trismegistus, of Eleusis, of Samothrace, of Cybele, of Tammuz, of Osiris, of Mithra, etc.). St. Paul was a great initiate who understood Christianity as a Mystery, or a hierarchical order of spiritual initiation, “which has been hidden from aeons and generations, but now is made manifest to His saints (Col. 1.26).” The Mysteries of Christ are unfolded anew in higher octave for this coming Golden Age of humanity. The Upward Path or Ascent of Christian Initiation is called by Paul “sanctification,” literally the Path of Sainthood, and is compared to an agon or race that each must run for the Stephanos or Crown of Christhood. It is in this context that fiery trial, spiritual gifts, etc., must be understood in the teaching of Paul. St. Paul had successfully undertaken sophisticated rabbinical studies for many years with Gamaliel, a “Prince of Israel,” and after his conversion studied for seventeen years with highly initiated Christian teachers at Damascus as well as communing, praying, and meditating in the desert, before he ventured out to preach on his own. He received the authentic Teachings of the Master Jesus from advanced disciples other than Peter, James, and John, and it is wrong to attribute too much innovation and Christian founding to him. Paul, rather, was an interpreter who transmits the basic Christ Teachings through the mind of a trained rabbi. His mysterion terminology demonstrates that Christianity was from the very beginning a Jewish esoteric mystery school with higher and lower forms of teaching and initiation, much of which is not manifest in exoteric New Testament documents like the canonical gospels, but is transmitted in esoteric monuments like the Gospel of Thomas.

41 Nacham (Hebrew)

Wrongly translated as “repent,” meaning to “rethink” one’s beliefs, this crucial teaching of the Master is from a Hebrew-Aramaic root having the special meaning of “submission to Divine Will.” The mission of John the Baptist was to prepare the human heart for sacred initiation, which is done through a special awakening or opening to higher guidance that can come only through total submission. The heart is humbled when it casts its eyes heavenward and strains its ears to hear the still, small Voice of Divine Silence. If the heart is not supple and responsive, it will be burdened with suffering until the hard clods of the inner fields are ground into fine and fertile soil that can receive and nourish what is to be sown. The opposite of nacham is “hard- heartedness, stiff-neckedness, and self-righteousness,” the latter of which is often translated by the English from the Greek hypokrite with the incorrect meaning “hypocrisy” (cf. HYPOCRISY). The word Islam means “submission to Divine Will.” The only means of seeking the Malkuth of Heaven is nacham, for it focuses the attention inward and heavenward away from lower self and the will of personality. The discipline of submission is the monastic way, and it is the first step toward higher spiritual evolution. It develops inner discipline and the habit of trying to awaken and respond to higher guidance, but the monastic way is at first one of harshness and tears. Self-purification, if carefully done, is a better and more economical means of spiritual evolution than unconscious reliance upon divine process whereby all souls will eventually be brought unto perfection through fire and test.

Name

Humanity names things in various languages, and these names have a variety of value and distortion. Ultimately, however, “name” is function. The Name of God is the Sacred Tetragrammaton YHVH or YHWH, interpreted in the Old and New Testaments as I AM. The most potent idea that any soul can express is identity with God Most High, for because “Thou art we,” or, “Thou art I,” then it is true that, “We are Thou,” or, “I am Thou.” As the Master John used to say, Because God loved us first, Because Cod so loved creation, we are given power to be divine children as an inheritance. We are heirs because we are legitimate children. This is the meaning of New and Old testaments, for a testament is a covenantal a~reement between parent and child--an instrument of inheritance whereby the children come into adult life as peers and friends of the parent generation. The Name of Cod is the greatest lesson ever given unto humanity, for it teaches that all are divine. The Name of Cod that is hallowed in the Master’s Prayer is therefore the Way or Path of Cod that each of us must become. The Name of Jesus “to which every knee must bend” is another great mantra, for Yeshua means “Liberation” (cf. JESUS). It is the Door or Gate through which humanity must pass in its return unto the Most High, and is represented not only in all world religions, but in all human endeavor. The Name of God and the Name of Jesus belong not to Judaism or Christianity, but to all humanity.

Nebi (Hebrew) [Cf. PROPHET]

Nephesh (Hebrew) [Cf. SOUL]

42 Nous, Noetic (Creek)

The Master Paul exhorts us to have among us the “Mind (Nous) of Christ.” Nous refers to Higher or Spiritual Mind, not to lower, doctrinal, human mental ideas. The Mind of Christ is linked in perfect harmony with the Heart of Humanity and of Cosmos. All knowledge is gnosis or “straight knowledge of the heart.” All logic is universal logos, not experimental human reasoning that is always analyzing but never coming to “a gnosis of the (Spiritual) Truth.” Paul speaks of things that are sarkikos, of the sarx, “flesh,” or outer husks of Reality--what might be called physical-plane manifestation. Above these are the subtle worlds of the psychikos, pneumatikos, and noetikos. The psychikos includes astral and lower mental worlds. It is the maze of astral- mental emotionality in which most people dwell and express. In Christ, however, the Gateway to higher initiation is opened and humanity can begin to awaken on the pneumatikos or spiritual levels. These are described in esoteric teaching as the Higher or Spiritual Triad of the human seed, as Intuitional, Buddhic, and Atmic planes of inner Reality leading out of the human into higher kingdoms called (for practical purposes, since little is known beyond) the Divine Reality. Christhood is the Pathway to perfection of the human and entrance into the Divine where “the Father and I are One.” Here the term “Father” always refers to the higher kingdom. At the threshhold to the Higher or Spiritual Triad are the subplanes of Higher Mind or Nous. The antahkarana or subtle bridge from lower human mentality to higher intuitional or noetic Mind involves a complex synthesis of what in simplest language could be called “heart and mind.” The man must become woman, and the woman become man. There must be a hieros gamos of inner and outer so that the individual is awake on all levels. When this has been accomplished, then divine palingenesis or the “Birth that is from Above” occurs and the Christ-seed that lies dormant in every heart is awakened. The process of sanctification--the Path of Sainthood--is the upward progress through interior levels of expression in Reality (“initiation”) that nourishes the inner Christ child until finally this “New Adam” is in full, conscious, and mature command of all one’s vehicles. All stages of this mystery are symbolized in the Life of Christ lived by the Master Jesus (cf. THE MYSTERIES OF JESUS CHRIST: A COMMENTARY ON THE NEW GOSPEL OF JESUS CHRIST).

Olam (Hebrew) [Cf. AEON]

Pneuma (Creek) [Cf. SPIRIT]

Pneumatikos (Greek) [Cf. NOUS, NOETIC]

Prayer

The Master Jesus taught that always we should pray, that it be done in silent or secluded interior concentration, that it is the sacred link to the Divine, that it must always be done in brevity with perfect sincerity of heart, and that there is always a divine response to prayer. He taught not to pray for material goods or even for personal needs--we should trust that these are provided. Rather, we should pray for “us” and “our” needs and ask for spiritual and interior 43 treasures. We should ask for strength rather than relief during times of testing, for justice rather than revenge, for power to forgive, understand, and exercise compassion. To pray is to meditate and to be totally awake to Reality, such that he used the term “to watch” for prayer and meditation (cf. MEDITATION). Christian eschatology confused the “watch” terminology with a paranoid expectation for the world to end at any minute, and many of the Master’s Teachings were distorted into predictions of the “end times” by even such brilliant masters as Paul (if he authored the Epistle to the Philippians as most scholars think). As late as the time of St. Augustine of Hippo it was normal for people to read and pray aloud, and it was noted with surprise that Augustine sat silently as he read. Even in modern China children are taught to read aloud with voice and lips, as in the ancient world, and the tradition of oral prayer still remains in certain cultures. But the Master Jesus refined prayer to the subtle, interior, and silent dimensions of human expression such that one’s whole life can become a silent prayer. Prayer, then, is ultimately wordless, as the Master Paul said, “We know not for what we ought to pray, but the Spirit Herself intercedes for us with unutterable sounds, and the One Who searches the hearts knows the Mind (Nous) of the Spirit, for She speaks in place of the saints according to the Will of God (Rom. 8.26-27).” Prayer is the occult posture and attitude that we express in all our doings, awake and asleep. For we can bend the knee of the heart in service while including in our attention both the lower and higher worlds in conscious awakening and alignment to Divine Guidance.

Prophet(ess)

The semitic holy person or “shaman” who bridged external and subtle worlds was called a nebi, “bubbling spring, fountain,” translated “prophet” from Greek pro- (forth) phemai (to speak). A prophet is a fountain who is aligned with the Divine World and can bring forth straight and undistorted higher communication and guidance for humanity. Prophets were for tribes and ancient nations. Their messages were revelatory, moral, political, artistic, educational, wise, mystical. They lived both in anonymity and seclusion like Amos or Elijah, and in desert brotherhoods like the old prophetic gilds and separated communities. They took disciples as Elijah accepted Elisha and passed onto them their prophetic “mantle” when they left the body, or like the Temple priest Isaiah trained priestly schools who carried on their work and were able to write “in the Name of” their founding apostle. Thus we have First (the original) Isaiah, Deutero- Isaiah, and Trito-Isaiah or three generations of Isaian teaching in the Old Testament Book of Isaiah beginning with original oracles of the founder and ending with those of his second generation of priestly disciples, who received revelation and vision through their subtle connection with his spirit. The entire body of pseudepigraphical literature from the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament was written in the Name of great Hebrew saints like Solomon and Enoch not as scholars think merely to counterfeit spiritual respectability, but because the writers were living members of the schools of Solomon and Enoch, authorized to transmit their traditions. Prophets like Samuel crowned the kings of Israel, chrismating them with Holy Oil, to link their political rule with the Rulership of God, and all rulers of Israel were, like David, supposed to submit to higher spiritual Law as revealed by the prophets, of whom Moses was the Father. Moses himself predicted the coming of One he called The Prophet under whose hierarchical discipleship even he remained, however. This is the Messiah, the Christ. Prophecy was not a strictly male line in Israel. Indeed, one of the oldest was the prophetess Deborah, and the Witch of Endor, rather than being a “witch” or medium under dark astral influences, was a Higher Psychic like the later Sybils, wise old women of both Greeks and Hebrews whose Oracles were venerated and transmitted in Jewish, Greek, and Christian tradition so much that even today they still form a major portion of the Old Testament Pseudepigrapha considered to 44 be Holy Scripture in Roman and Anglican doctrine. Today most of the great “fountains” for the New Age are women--prophetesses like Blavatsky, Roerich, Bailey, Mother Jennie. They are the Mothers and Midwives of the Golden Age who teach humanity to turn within, the men to become like women in love and compassion of the heart, and the women to become like men in their focus, intellect, and fiery intensity. These are not the many distorted mediums and lower psychics who “channel” astral teachings, but those saints whose interior and exterior purity have brought them into true contact with the Divine World, and who can bring the Word to humanity through Overshadowing and Higher Impression.

Psyche (Greek) [Cf. SOUL]

Repentance [Cf. NACHAM]

Resurrection

Greek anastasis (“standing up out of death”) translates Hebrew binah from a triliteral root meaning to “build up,” and in this special case to “rebuild that which has been ruined.” In Johannine teaching the Master compared himself to a temple that would be “rebuilt” in three days. The Binah of Kabbala is the completing number three of the Supernal Triad, called Understanding. The Master said that those who achieve the Binah are no longer masculine or feminine but are “like unto the angels.” They no longer sleep in death and return to incarnation, but become members of the heavenly Host or Hierarchy as coworkers and co-creators with Divine Will. In Coptic esoteric Christianity Jesus is called “the Standing One,” meaning the One who has achieved Binah for humanity. Resurrection means continuity of consciousness on all planes of the human Reality. This is “mastery” or “overcoming,” as it was called in early Christian writings. One who has “overcome” may still walk among mankind in a specially precipitated body even as angels can appear--either in glory or in anonymity, but such great souls do so only by way of sacrifice for service.

Righteousness [Cf. DIVINE LAW, ZEDEK]

Sabbath (Hebrew)

The Teaching says that all Reality of our universe is divided by sevens, and the ancient Hebrews divided time into sevenths such that the Seventh Day of Creation was the Sabbath or “Seventh,” which is a plateau of anapausis (Greek “rest, death sleep, pralaya). Each round of initiation proceeds by seven, as do the planes and subplanes of subtle worlds. The phases of the moon are divided into sevenths such that the last four days is the Sabbath of the Moon during which negative or waning influences come to a kind of “slack tide” when “safe crossings” can be made in the subtle worlds. Sabbath means by extension an aeon of rest.

45 Saint

Sainthood has existed in all religions and cultures and is the path of discipleship under guidance of the Divine World. Shamans, prophets, yogins can all be described as “saints.” The Greek word used in the New Testament is hagios, “holy person,” and was used to describe all baptized Christians. The medieval word “hag,” once used of a wise old female Druid saint, was pejorified to mean “an old lady.” The same occured with the word “crone.” A saint is, very simply, one who has committed him/herself to the Way of Sanctification. One is never “saved.” There is no “eternal spiritual security,” for spiritual evolution is a conscious ascent that depends upon effort. That is why the Master James used to say, “Faith without works is dead,” and why the Master Paul said that we must “work out (ergadzomai)” our liberation (“salvation”). The pattern for Christian sainthood came through the martyrdom (“witnessing”) traditions of the earlier Jewish saints, and the cult of Christian saints was based on the worship of heros (ascended mahatmas) of the Greeks. In esoteric Christianity the ascended saints were understood in terms of the Hermetic Brotherhood of the Ogdoas, who “exist as energies building up other souls (Nag Ham. VI.6).” Sainthood is the interface of humanity and Hierarchy, for saints may exist in or out of flesh. They stand at the threshhold of resurrection and can bring through somewhat distorted but beautiful relevations when contacted by higher impression from higher astral planes. However they are not the guides of humanity and seekers should aspire to make higher contact, for they are limited in vision and often verge on fanatical ideals at various times in their evolution. Those who contact them mediumistic-ally find only their personality shells which play out like tape recordings, often with greatly distorted ideals that are the result of interior purification. As the saint ascends and externalizes his darkness, it remains for a time in his/her astral shell. Thus those who would commune with saints come into contact with what might be called the spiritual leavings or even excrement of sanctified striving, which by definition will mislead or burn with zealous fanaticism. Again, saints in the flesh are also personal beings with many hills and valleys. Devotion to the cult of such a personality, rather than to the vision the saint is trying to maintain, results in the opposite of liberation and spiritual maturation.

Salvation [Cf. LIBERATION, JESUS]

Satan, Shaitan (Hebrew)

The Devil (diabolos, “accuser”) is the divine office of testor, temptor, the one who tries each soul with spiritual fire. He is the Inner Enemy, the Dweller on the Threshhold, the little personal self that stands as an obstacle to the great Self on the path. Ultimately the wiles of Satan are those of ourselves testing ourselves, for as the Master James said, God does not test any soul, nor can God be tried by any soul. Rather, we test and try ourselves with the fires of our own desire and lust (James 1.13-21). It is only when we fail our own test that we give ourselves over to darkness, chaos, and “evil.” When we consign ourselves to “outer darkness,” which is the external, material husk of Reality, and throw away the protective shield of Hierarchy we become vulnerable to an innumerable host of “evils,” for now we dwell in chaos away from the healing creative One Life.

46 Shalom, Shalem (Hebrew)

The Hebrew-Aramaic word shalom is translated by Creek eirene, “peace,” but it does not refer to a state of rest or inactivity unless used in such a phrase as “a Sabbath of shalom.” The word shalom means “completion, wholeness, perfection, harmony.” When the Master said, “Be ye perfect,” he may have used the word shalem, from the same root, meaning “whole, complete, fully mature and harmonized.” [He may also have used the word tammim, meaning a completely righteous and scrupulous disciple.] Shalom is a major concept in the Teachings. We are to have shalom within and among us, shalom with God, and be co-creators of shalom in our lives of striving and service. When we qualify the spiritual energies coming through our vehicles in this way, we are shalem, “attuned, aligned, in harmony with the Divine.” Thus “peace” is not pacifism, lack of aggression, or inactivity. Rather, peace is creative and harmonious expression. It is part of the great energy of Love that expresses as a tolerance and synthetical understanding whose effect is like a fine oil lubricating all friction in life. Shalom is a magnetism that helps all the parts of the whole to fit together comfortably. It is the Divine Energy that is qualified into the world by great works of art, works of peacemaking, works of interracial and international understanding and synthesis. Thus the Master said, BLESSED ARE THE CREATORS OF SHALOM (“peacemakers”), FOR THEY SHALL BE CALLED CHILDREN OF THE MOST HIGH. Shalom can be created by those in the midst of battle not by surrender or spineless pacifism, but (as the Psalmist said) by alignment with Heaven: “Teach my fingers and hands to carry on the battle, 0’ Lord!” Defending the defenseless from evil and violence is creating shalom. It is not what, but how, we qualify energy, and motivation is the key, if motivation is both right and pure. The greatest prayer is this: 0’ Lord, make me an instrument of Thy Shalom. In this is the secret of eternal prayer in the midst of all creative service and activity.

Shem (Hebrew)

The shem or “name” is a directed qualifier of energy. Thus great mantrums like the OM have power to bring down the Energy of Shalom (shanti). Ultimately the disciple will find that all prayer and service is dedicated not in the “name of Jesus Christ,” but “in the Name of my own Heart,” for the two are one. (Cf. NAME)

Son of Man(kind), Future Spiritually Developed Humanity

The prophet Daniel or his school received visions of a time when the “beasts” or inhumane human governments of the earth would pass away and “one like unto a son of humanity” would receive eternal rule from Heaven. This Bar Enash or “Child of Humanity, Son of Man,” is the future Perfected Humanity living now spiritually in the ascended saints and masters of all times and cultures on our earth. A main emphasis in the Master’s Teaching was the coming of the Perfected Humanity (“Son of Man”), which we later called the CHRIST. The vision recorded by the school of Daniel says that the Bar-Enash will come “in the mysteries of Heaven,” wrongly translated as “on the clouds of Heaven.” Here the word for mystery, raz, can by metaphorical extension be called a “cloud,” but only as a metaphor for something that obscures an esoteric mystery not to be cast like pearls to the swine-mentality of those who would “turn again and rend you.” The medieval English translators had no concept of Jewish mysteries, so chose an incorrect translation confusing Heaven with “sky” and mysteries with “clouds!” But the confusion is ancient, for in his Philippian epistle even St. Paul speaks of the return of Jesus as Son of Man from the sky and the simultaneous raising of living and dead or “sleeping” disciples to meet him 47 “in the air.” Why did the great initiate Paul trivialize such a major part of the Teaching? I am convinced it was not because he was ignorant. He speaks of the Mysteries of Christ many times, and he had a great mind and heart. No, he provides his rationale for us in the text. He tells his “little babes” who are unready for “strong meat” in order that they may “comfort” each other in this way about the fact that first-generation Christians are “falling asleep” or dying before the coming of the Christ to earth. If the first disciples had been forced to understand how many lives and what great periods of time were required for their growth and that of humanity before the Christ could dwell in earth and in the flesh of humanity, most would have been deeply discouraged and fallen away under tribulation. So the early apostles simplified, telescoped time, and brought the Teaching down into something that the current mentality and capability could grasp and use. This is precisely why a return to “New Testament Christianity” is a dangerous regression for most modern people. It is a return to oversimplifications and the “babe’s milk” of a far less spiritually developed humanity. It is like the return of a college student to high school. In these days, those who can trust and respond only to “safe” and socially sanctioned authority like the fleshly fundamentalist understanding of Scripture will not progress. Only those who are ready to find Christ within, the authentic Christ, will discover the inner keys to understanding.

Soul

The Hebrew-Aramaic concept of “soul” was not Greek psyche, which meant many things but most especially the sentient and self-conscious part of our nature. Unfortunately this psyche can be many things at different stages of inner evolution and unfoldment. It can be merely the antahkarana that connects the three elements of the lower triad, or it can be the interior consciousnes of what has been called the Guardian or Solar Angel, or it can be the Chalice of the Heart that develops in those of greater unfoldment, or the Monad of Self, the Inner Christ, that comes into its own in the Fourth Initiation--all these can be called “soul” in the Human Kingdom. But the Master Jesus spoke of the nephesh, and Hebrew word meaning the “personality, individuality.” It is possible to gain the whole world and lose this nephesh, for the “soul” (in the Master’s Teaching) is the True Self as it exists in whatever stage of unfoldment. Spiritual death is even possible, where the Self is lost and all the structures, gross and subtle, that were trying to inhere and find internal harmony actually disintegrate and return to primal elements that must once again begin the upward striving for the aeons it may take to reach the Human Kingdom again--but this time as parts of different selves, so that the same unaiccessful “self” cannot appear again only to fail. For “soul,” then, use the concept of True Self, as opposed to lower triad personality, or Personhood--the Higher Triad individuality or Divine Personality. For though all “souls” merge into the great ocean of Deity as they ascend, they ,gg~, not lose, individuality. Just as each instrument of an orchestra has its own timbre and sound, so each realizing Self becomes more free, more individual. The Master quoted the Psalmist: “Ye are all Gods!” We are each rays of the multidimenional Reality. The impersonal Self is not a drab, homogeneous conformity, although Light looks all the same and undifferentiated to our eyes of flesh. No! The higher world sparkles with the wit, love, and personality of a treasure trove filled with an unimagined diversity of multifacted jewels~

Spirit, Holy Spirit Spirit of Truth

Hebrew-Aramaic ruah, like Greek pneuma, clusters the concept of spirit with “wind, breeze,” because spirit means a subtle reality that does not manifest to ears and eyes of flesh. But there 48 is a key difference. Greek pneuma is a neuter word, while Aramaic ruah is feminine. When the Master spoke of the Ruah Ha-Qodesh, the Spirit of Holiness, the Pure Spirit, the Holy Spirit, the Holy Ghost, he understood that Spirit as the feminine aspect of Deity. He refered in his language to “She” and “Her.” In a fragment of a lost gospel Jesus says, “My Mother, the Holy Spirit, took me by the hair and set me upon the great mountain Thabor,” for She is the Divine Revealer. She is identified variously in Hebrew mysticism as Hochmah (Greek Sophia, “Wisdom”), Shekinah (the indwelling Presence of Cod), the immanent, nurturing, and ever- present aspect of Godhead. In contrast, the Father (Abba, “Deeply Respected Elder”), does not have the masculine emphasis of Latin Pater or English Father. Always in the Teachings the “Father” is the Master or Source of Teaching from thge next higher kingdom that leads the student upward in evolution and initiation. Jesus said, “Call no one your “Father,” for there is one Father in Heaven,” by which he meant that disciples were not to reverence any other incarnate human teacher as the ultimate source of truth or, as in mystic terminology, the one who regenerates them by Palingenesis. Godhead alone is the Source. This does not mean that the highest aspect of Deity is masculine, although such ideas were formulated in the Pythagorean School and radically influenced the ancient patriarchal world (masculine meant “divine and whole,” while feminine meant “mortal and subject to decay”). The Master Jeses went directly against spiritual patriarchy as the only rabbi to accept female disciples. In his many statements about women he freed the feminine from its lower spiritual status (“In Christ there is no male or female,” said the great initiate Paul in his Calatian epistle). Most of all, Jesus preached the femininity of Godhead in his constant reverence for the Ruah Ha-Qodesh, the Holy Spirit. One antecedent that should be mentioned occurs in the mystic Pharisaic intertestamental literature (Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs), the “Spirit of Truth,” which is also named in the Fourth Gospel under the same function--as the Spirit of Prophecy that “convicts” and purifies its hearers. This, also, is a feminine Hebrew concept. The Holy Spirit as Wisdom was Schoolmistress to all disciples. “At first She tests and tries those who seek Her, leading them upon tortuous paths until She trusts them [variant: until they trust her--in both cases the issue is amen, trustworthiness, fidelity],” we are told in the intertestamental wisdom literature. She withdraws from them, but then, “She returns to them suddenly [i.e., in an ecstasy] and gladdens their hearts and reveals all Mysteries unto their souls.” Who taught the Master Jesus? Was he a monk in India, a student of Egyptian initiates, an Essene? Scholarly research says no. Jesus was taught in silence by the Great Ruah Ha-Qodesh. As he said, he learned all things from the “Father,” and he imitates the “Father.” It matters not whether we speak of Godhead in masculine or feminine terms, for they merely indicate function or relationship between human and Divine. In simplest terms, “fatherhood” refers to divine transcendental relationship and “motherhood” to divine immanent function. When we ascend out of the lower triad (physical-astral-mental) in our eternal return there is no longer sexuality, but androgeny. Divine Father and Mother is all one. Cf. FATHER, MOTHER.

NOTE: The Divine Spirit as “Comforter” is the Spirit of Truth or Prophecy, the One Who brings straight-knowledge and Divine Truth (not “comfort” except in the Latin sense of “spiritual strength”). The Parousia of Christ is Divine Spirit as Shekinah, or Immanent Guide.

Trial, Test

The Greek word pyrosis means “fiery condition,” related by root to the word pyr “fire,” as in “pure, pyre.” Another Creek word, peirasmos, translates the Hebrew massah, “divine test, trial,” from the trilteral root meaning “to melt, to flow down,” as the gold flows out of the heated ore. 49 The Master James emphasized Jesus’ teaching that God does not try, test, or NA.E. “tempt” humanity--rather we bring ourselves to the test by means of our impure lusts and desires (also words associated with burning and fire in Greek and Hebrew). Gehenna or “Hell” in the Teachings of Jesus is an aeonic state of fiery trial and massah. It is aeonic, meaning that it belongs to a certain state or plane of Reality, but it is not “eternal” as in the medieval concept of Eternal Damnation (cf. AEON). We each experience “Hell” many times in the flesh life as well as in the state called death, and we pray that God will not “abandon us unto the test, but deliver us from all evil.” Jesus prayed that Satan would not be given power to “sift” his disciples like wheat to separate the good part from the chaff, just as the farmer in the parable decided to “dung” the tree for one more year even if it was now unfruitful in the hope that it would begin to produce. This is called Mercy, and it is for this we pray. But tests and trial must come as we burn away the ancient webs of self-created karma, and ultimately they are purifying. It is not what happens to us that is of major importance, but how we react. Two men lose their legs in a war. One becomes a bitter recluse; the other a joyful, inspiring worker for humanity. What is the “test”--is it the misfortune? No. The “test” is what each man experiences in reaction to the misfortune, his interior reaction, the inner failure or victory of true courage (“hearthess”). Life is more than flesh, but flesh is the medium. Yet it is not the measure of loss or gain. When we “overcome” the world, the flesh, and the chaos of our imperfect nature, then we gain the Crown of Stephen (stephanos, “victor’s laurel”). It is a fact that we are not tested beyond our powers simply because we ourselves rule our own testing. When we feel it is more than we can bear, and we contemplate suicide, we are out of touch with the great inner strength we really do possess. Put a man into an isolation chamber and whisper terrible things into his ear. “Your wife is dead; your children are being tortured.” In reaction to what you suggest, he will experience an interior reaction in direct proportion to astral-emotional vulnerability. Most people live in their lower emotions, rather than their higher feelings and sensibilities. The lower response is deadly worry and hysteria. The higher response is, first, to check the power of suggestion through introspection. Do I feel my wife is dead? Next, to verify and determine actual facts before deciding upon a reaction, especially to find out how one can change or influence a misfortune. Finally, to accept only what is true and real, and begin to deal with it internally. It is against Divine Law for one person to bring another to the test,* and by breaking this Law we bring ourselves to the test. Forgiveness is the science of akarma, liberation from what is past, lower, and chaotic within us (cf. FORGIVE). The forgiving heart is an antodote to the hells of trial. Committing offense against others is the opposite of forgiveness and binds one with karmic chains.

*NOTE: A spiritual guide or teacher of Hierarchy may allow initiatory tasks and obstacles to be brought against an aspirant--tests which may be failed--but does not play the role of Satan (Who exists only in the astral-mental realms of the human kingdom). But Heaven may abandon recalcitrant personalities to the natural consequences of their own spiritual blindness until their hearts are rent open by suffering and their spiritual eyes and ears begin to open.

Vigil [Cf. MEDITATION]

Way

Jesus said, Halkeni, “Follow my Way (Halaka).” The Way or “Walk” of a semitic spiritual teacher (whether Jewish or Islamic) is the spiritual path he teaches and demonstrates. A Sufi murshid may teach by literally walking with his students, showing them how to breath and chant in 50 rhythm, what to notice on the way, telling Sufi tales while walking. The Master Jesus taught the crowds from one place, where he sat and they stood, as was customary. But his own disciples learned more from him while they walked and he explained the higher, more subtle mysteries, or while they sat at meal, or travelled in a boat. One’s walk through life is the Way, the Halaka. For a disciple, the walk is an imitation of the Master’s Walk, an imitatio Christi. Jesus and Paul both said, “Imitate me.” The way all great artists learn is by first imitating other great artists and musicians. But the more advanced disciple becomes the Way whereby others can achieve, and no longer slavishly imitates the Master. There is a wonderful painting of St. Francis. Christ is walking, followed by a host of disciples. Each is taking pains to put his/her feet precisely into the footprints of the Master Jesus. But at the rear comes Francis. Where all the others have their eyes rivetted to the earth so as not to miss-step, Francis is joyfully looking upward, gazing at birds, trees, flowers, and Heaven. He takes no pains to step precisely into the Master’s footprints, yet he is going exactly where all the others go! This illustrates advanced discipleship, when the seeker begins to become the Way. When John’s Gospel has the Christ declare, “I AM the Way, the Truth, and the Life,” with the mystic I AM (Greek Ego eimi, Hebrew YH or the Tetragrammaton), the emphasis is not upon the Christed Master Jesus as the “only” Way, but of the Christ, the Perfected Soul of Humanity, as the Way and Goal of all human spirituality. The Christ has appeared under many names in all world religions and cultures. For example, on their tribal totem poles the Haida Indians of British Columbia and Vancouver Island portray RAVEN, “who brought the Light to humanity.” The shaman wore the RAVEN mask for all redemptive, healing, and sacred work as mediator between the tribe and Heaven. This is the Haida CHRIST, and the RAVEN’S WAY is the One Way of all humanity spoken of in John’s Gospel. Fundamentalist Christians are too young for this “strong meat,” so they babble in astral tongues and drink the sour milk of an outdated spiritual childhood, putting their hand to the plow, but then turning back so as to show themselves unfit for the Malkuth of Heaven. Only when they abandon the doctrines of men and learn to hear the Heart’s Way within will they begin again to grow in spirit.

Word [Cf. DABAR]

YHWH, JHVH, YAHWEH, JEHOVAH [Cf. NAME]

Yoke

Jesus said, “Take my yoke upon you.” This was a mystic Hebrew term for the Halakah of a Mar or Master of Israel. It has some comparison with the sanskrit term yoga, “Way of Divine Union,” but implies the existence of Divine spiritual guidance and a master-disciple relationship. When the Master accepts a disciple, the two are yoked together like a pair of oxen for the work of spirit and service. The Master helps the disciple with his karma or hub (“debt”). The disciples comes under his “shield” of protection, receives the benefit of the Master’s strength, and the two are balanced--equally yoked in divine labor. To be accepted as a disciple is the greatest of all spiritual recognitions, but to betray discipleship is the greatest of all infamies and carries with it severe consequences. Cf. DISCIPLE, MASTER.

51

Yetzer (Hebrew)

In the Book of Genesis God creates humanity in the Divine Image and Likeness. How, then, is mankind not godlike? The ancient scribes and rabbis said that God created humanity with two “likenesses, impulses, yetzerim), a good yetzer and a bad yetzer. They even transcribed the Hebrew word with two yods or letter “y’s” in that one ~art of the text for hermeneutical purposes (yyetzer) to represent the two basic “impulses” that Cod placed in the heart of humanity at creation. This idea that humanity was created imperfect by God as an obstacle for self-testing, that humanity might strive for perfection and earn divine status as an acorn earns oak-tree status, is basic to all mystical semitic thought--Merkabah Mysticism, Wisdom, Greater and Lesser Hekhaloth, the Teachings of Jesus, Kabbala, Judaism, Islam, Sufism. Humanity did not “fall” from grace, but was predestined by the Most High God to become as God. The concept of the good and evil yetzerim is found in the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, in the Teachings of Jesus, Paul, John, and Thomas, and has its counterpart in the Pythagorean- Platonic-Hermetic doctrines of Plato’s TIMAEUS, the KORE KOSMOU, and many other mystic writings of the period. Plato refers to the two “motions” of the psyche, one a “motion to the left-- toward separatism, materialism, selfishness, physical manifestation,” which is his basic definition of evil (lack of Good or Reality, just as darkness is lack of Light), and a “motion to the right--toward unity, spiritual ascent, universal and synthetical consciousness, return to the One,” which is his basic understanding of good in his scale of Reality. The heart’s garden can host desirable and undesirable seed equally well. Thus we must be ever about the task of preparing the soil, selecting the seed we will nourish, weeding the garden, and tending the crop. The ,y~er is the interior motivation for any expression of the heart in word or deed. Jesus said that it is not what goes into a person through his mouth or senses that defiles or sanctifies him, but it is what comes out of a person from within the heart. That is why motivation is the subtle-world key to discipleship. All motivation is at root a binary function. It is either an upward, ascending impulse, or a downward, descending impulse--”good” or “evil” (better, “right” or “wrong”, cf. HUMAN EVIL AND DIVINE FREEDOM, Lewis Keizer).

Zedek (Hebrew)

“Righteousness” does not have the M.E. sense of “justification” ala Protestant theology, but comes from a triliteral root meaning “straightness, uprightness,” as an arrow, spear, balanced pillar, with a meaning of “fair judgment” that extends to be used synonymously with “liberation, bliss.” N4elchizedek the the King (melek) of zedek, which might be better translated not “righteousness,” but “spiritual liberation, bliss.” He was King of shalem, Salem. The Protestant misunderstanding of St. Paul based on the mentalities of Calvin and Luther produced a rigid, unforgiving, materialistic hermeneutic that represented dike (Greek “justice”) as the reconciling of evil humanity with Godhead. Dikaiosune by means of amen was “justification by faith belief,” and the stage was set for western religion to entangle itself in confessions and creeds that exercised the lower mental function, even as dogmatic fundamentalist bibliolaters of today do. It was a necessary stage in western spiritual development of lower mental function, but is well worn out and regressive today. What Paul said is this: Humanity is “made straight, upright, just, liberated, and blissful” by means of amen or fidelity to the Divine Way. Mankind is not “saved” or “damned” (and certainly not “forever!”) by his changing mental beliefs and theological creeds. It is not what we say with our mouths, but what we do in our hearts and life expression, that sanctifies or defiles usl So “righteousness,” which in common language implies no more than “self righteousness,” is not what zedek means. It means harmony, co-creative expression in the 52 Divine Work, liberation, bliss, progress, ascent, gnosis, and radiating the inner Light as a lamp set upon a lampstand. It is to burn with love divine.

MAY WE ALL BECOME ONE FLAME!

Lewis Keizer August Full Moon, 1985 Year of Comet Halley