The Easter Mystery
04 April 1985 Good evening, everyone. We have a lecture called ‘The Easter Mystery’ tonight. The lecture will be a little bit different from my usual lectures in that I will read quite a lot aloud from written notes because this lecture is so full of symbolism that it is impossible to learn by heart. Also I will use certain chapters or pages from a book written on this topic, which I recommend all who are interested in mysteries of Christ to read, especially the ones starting on the Course of Divinity in September.[i] It is a very special night. It is the night of the Last Supper. It is a holy night starting tonight, ending Monday. It is a very important night because the energies given out tonight will be the energies of the wine and bread given to His disciples by the Christ. ‘ “If thou wilt go up with Christ to celebrate the Passover, He will give to thee that bread of benediction, His own Body, and will vouchsafe to thee His own Blood,” writes Origen, the early Christian mystic. The Last Supper or Rite of the Eucharist has formed a part of every initiatory teaching that has ever been given to man. In Egypt the mystic bread and wine signified the blessings of the Sun God, Ra. In Persia the Eucharist was a part of the Mithraic Mysteries.’[ii] Now, when we look upon the Lord Christ – Who was the Christ? He was an enormous Sun Archangelic being Who is now – or became at His death on the cross 2000 years ago – the Regent of the Earth, the inner Earth. Not the Lord of the World, but a kind of regent of the Earth, bringing down the Sun Mysteries, now called the Mysteries of the Christ, to Earth. ‘The Rite is also referred to in an ancient fragment [of the Vedas]. “We have drunk soma,” reads a passage, “we have become immortal; we have entered into the light; we have known the Gods.” ’[iii] The Christ energy gives you a contact to your Christ souls, and you can also say as a Christian as well as any religious being belonging to any religion that we have entered the light, we have known the Gods, we are the Gods. ‘Every age, people and religion have received this sacred ritual of the bread and wine and always it is observed as a ceremonial carrying the loftiest spiritual teachings that can be given at the time’[iv], namely Holy Thursday. The Last Supper was celebrated in the upper room by Christ and His disciples and He, Himself – that is, when the Christ Himself performed this act, it took on a deeper meaning.[v] Before the Christ, it had been World Teachers of lesser degrees who had performed this rite. Now, for the first time in Earth’s history, the Christ Himself – incarnating through the man Jesus – broke the bread, talked of the bread as His flesh and of the wine as His blood, pouring into the bread and wine such magnificent radiations of energies that every one of the disciples could see that He was the Christ and they partook of the energies of the Christ. It was a proof because later on, namely on the Monday – Easter Monday – when the risen Christ again appeared to His disciples to break the bread and offer the wine, He poured again the energies into the bread and they could see that He was the Christ, even if they couldn’t recognise Him. I have found out why people couldn’t recognise the Christ. It was the Lord Maitreya they saw. They didn’t see the man Jesus any longer. We will come back to that. ‘Wine symbolises the cleansed and transformed desire body of the disciple. Bread represents the pure and luminous etheric body.’[vi] Now, at that time where Jesus Christ, or Christ Jesus, broke the bread and the wine in the upper room, all His disciples had gained a certain degree of purification. Corinne Heline, a very magnificent initiate who has written this wonderful book, talks about four great initiations. The first is the rite or initiation of purification; the second is the rite or initiation of illumination; the third is the rite of Mastership, or initiation of Mastership; and the fourth, the initiation of resurrection. These different initiations have something to do with the four elements of fire, earth, air and water, the last being the earth initiation. White Eagle also talks about these four initiations but still I prefer, myself, the initiations given by the Great White Brotherhood through Theosophy where we deal with five initiations to become an Adept. As a matter of fact, the initiation of purification is the first – between the first and second; the initiation of illumination – between the second and third; the mastership initiation is the little master initiation between the third and fourth; and the earth initiation is between the fourth and the fifth. ‘It is through the blending of spiritual forces within these two prepared vehicles of the spirit that the powers of Mastership may be demonstrated. Each of the holy men and women who participated in the Last Supper with the Christ had so purified their desire body and etheric bodies that they were able to receive and transmit the Christed powers for the healing and spiritual enlightenment of all whom it was given them to serve.’[vii] The initiates and disciples of the Christ had been trained for many, many, many centuries before the incarnation as disciples of Christ. You cannot, in any way, go through an initiation like purification, illumination and mastership in one lifetime if you not before have had the same initiations in your souls. ‘… He poured [the] stream of energy into the bread and the wine, magnetizing them by the magic of spiritual alchemy until they shone with the splendour of countless jewels.’[viii] Isn’t it exactly the same as Count of St Germain does when the Count of St Germain is transmuting food into a magnificent etheric brilliant energy and giving that food or that drink to His disciples in order for them to purify the lower bodies? Everyone who knows the Count of St Germain, and knows of Him, knows that He usually does that when time is ready to help the disciple to purify his inner bodies quickly. ‘The Supper … was concluded with the Lord’s Prayer’[ix] and a song or wish of peace. Now, the Lord’s Prayer, which we know today is a magnificent prayer, will be substituted by other prayers of the New Age. We still use it because we are still in the middle of entering, or shall we say just at the end of entering from the Piscean Age into the Aquarian Age. But in the Aquarian Age, we will see that we shall have totally other prayers because every Age has its prayers and the Great Invocation in the Alice Bailey’s books is one of them. ‘The Chalice or Grail Cup represents the new etheric organ which is already beginning to form in the body of the pioneers of the New Age. This organ has its power … in the larynx which will become the instrument for speaking the divine Creative Word.’[x] Now, we will see within the etheric/astral bodies of the New Age Teachers a chalice sitting at the throat chakra and from that chalice will pour forth energy because of the Creative Words uttered by that person. Not many people have that chalice formed. It will be formed in many people within the next couple of hundred years. ‘This power will have been gained when the creative life force now centered at the base of the spine has been lifted to its summit in the head [Ananda says ‘heart’] and the physical creative process sublimated into its spiritual counterpart. The “flower cup,” or new spiritual organ which is now being built in the throat, will form a direct connecting link between head and heart with the result that man will be able to think with his heart and love with his head. This new organ will also make it possible to recover the memory of past lives.’[xi] And when this organ has been formed in every spiritual being, everyone will be able to recognise and memorise past lives without any hassles – just as remembering details in the present lifetime.[xii] ‘In the exalted state of consciousness into which the Disciples had been transported during the Supper ceremonial they were able to look upon nature’s Cosmic Scroll’ – which is the Akashic Record – ‘and to see therein the events awaiting fulfilment in the remaining years of their earth lives.’[xiii] They [The disciples] saw that evening at the Last Supper their own destinies and even if they saw that most of the disciples but one would be killed, different violent deaths – they did not stop or they did not, shall we say, become disinterested or leave the path. They could accept or reject the events and they accepted the events.[xiv] ‘They chose to follow the events therein outlined, hard as it would be to endure them.’[xv] It led often to being persecuted and often to martyrdom – the personal self was renounced.[xvi] If the disciples of the Christ had not been so trained as they had been throughout centuries of lives before this one, they wouldn’t have been able to carry on with the mission that the Christ had for them. The Agony Rite next morning in the Garden of Gethsemane is also called the Rite of Transmutation, of evil into good and darkness into light both in one’s life and in the world at large.[xvii] ‘In the case of Christ Jesus the agony suffered was the result of opening His pure and perfect body to the influx of the currents of evil of all kinds that swept in from the world without. These forces He received within Himself in order to work on them alchemically and then to radiate them back into the world as transmuted powers for righteousness.’[xviii] Now, the great test for the Lord Christ was not as many may think, to see whether He would go on with the mission and be crucified the day after. No – the great agony for the Lord Christ was that He had to open His aura and take – and let the negative forces around the Earth enter His aura to be transmuted. I have noticed how that works. That is when you take on world karma, you have to transmute the negative forces of thought forms and astral feelings/forms on Earth. He had to open His aura which had protected Him always like a bubble – a circle of light – and transmute the evil of the world. ‘Such is ever the work of the redeemers of man, be they of the stature of the World Saviour or those of a lesser degree who devote their lives’[xix] to a cause. It is something you have to know that you have to do. Also very, very slowly, by working at the Earth Healing Service, you are dealing with the negative forces. When you one day become a greater saviour or server of the Earth, you will then have to deal with world karma. It comes at the fourth initiation. The three most advanced disciples of Jesus, Peter, James and John, were expected to stay awake with Him but they fell asleep due to not enough spiritual training.[xx] They could not assist Him in His transmutation rite, which is why He felt very lonely and forsaken. ‘...They were not sufficiently purified and selfless, they “were asleep” or inwardly unaware of the work that was being undertaken in the Garden of Sorrows’[xxi], which Gethsemane is called. Gethsemane was situated on the Mount of Olives which is said to be the highest spiritual focus on this planet Earth.[xxii] After the crucifixion of Christ Jesus, many of the disciples and the Lady Mary and many of the female holy women have pilgrimaged to the Mount of Olives many, many times a year in order to there be able to transmute more negativity within the world and themselves.[xxiii] Where we have very great foci of light on Earth, we have a possibility of transmuting our own karma, which is why it is very important to visit such foci of light if there is a chance to do so in every present lifetime. Humanity at the same time ‘… received a new, powerful impulse that was destined to carry it forward on another step on its ever ascending way. Peter came to know the Rite of Agony after his triple denial of the Lord when he returned . . . to the Garden, there to face his own Gethsemane.’[xxiv] And this is what we have to understand, that even if many of the disciples did not follow Jesus Christ, or Christ Jesus, to His very last death, you could say, at the cross, still afterwards they had the possibility – it is never too late, and Peter, he went back to the Garden of Gethsemane there having a very dreadful time with himself, going through the agony of the Master. ‘The four Gospels are formulas of Initiation. Matthew, Mark, and Luke begin with the Nativity, [therefore these Gospels are called] the Lesser Mysteries.’ St John’s Gospel begins with the Mystic Marriage, therefore this is called the Greater Mystery.[xxv] It’s very interesting that esoteric schools on this planet are meditating nearly daily, on the St John’s Gospel – pieces of it[xxvi] – and it should be done at this time, at Easter time, because you will then get an understanding of the suffering and the joy, later on resurrection, of Christ and also what you have to go through your self/yourselves as disciples of the Christ, because sooner or later you all become disciples of the Christ and will have to go exactly the same way as He did. St John’s Gospel is called an enormous spiritual force in itself and one should meditate on it.[xxvii] When we read a book like The Mystery of the Christos, we find out that it is true that the New Testament and also the Old Testament have been written for people in three ways: total new beginners; for disciples; and initiates and Masters. There are key words in it, very interesting key words which one will find within the heart when the heart unfolds. We have to understand that the time of Good Friday and Easter – the time is called in the European world the Spring Equinox – and in the Spring Equinox, the beauty of nature is relevant [?evident] to everyone who cares to see. At the Spring Equinox we have a mystic blending of water and fire[xxviii] and that is what we had in the time of Lord Jesus. We had John the Baptist baptising with water and the Lord Christ with fire and these two forces are still in use on Earth by the church and by different religions in order to purify and help people transmute karma. For the mystic Christian, Good Friday is an experience of a rare spiritual exhilaration. ‘He sees the crucifixion as the means unto a greater end and the agony of the Path is lost sight of in contemplation of the supreme joy which lies just ahead. He understands that the crucifixion of the body must always precede the liberation of spirit.’[xxix] And that is what we have to understand that, for us who study to be Christian mystics or initiates and Masters, we do not so much care about the aspect of agony and sorrow as well as we care about the joyful aspect that the Lord Christ was liberated on the cross and He then became the Regent of Earth, which is more attached to Earth, so that we find His energies being sent out to humanity at certain periods every year. [i]The book referred to is The Mystery of the Christos by Corinne Helene. [ii] Ibid., p. 83. [iii] Ibid., p. 83. [iv] Ibid., p. 83. [v] Ibid., p. 83. [vi] Ibid., p. 84. [vii] Ibid., p. 84. [viii] Ibid., p. 84. [ix] Ibid., p. 84. [x]Ibid., p. 85. [xi]Ibid., p. 85. [xii]Ibid., p. 85. [xiii]Ibid., p. 86. [xiv]Ibid., p. 86. [xv]Ibid., p. 86. [xvi]Ibid., p. 86. [xvii]Ibid., p. 87. [xviii]Ibid., p. 87. [xix]Ibid., p. 87 [xx]Ibid., p. 87. [xxi]Ibid., p. 87. [xxii]Ibid., p. 87. [xxiii]Ibid., p. 88. [xxiv]Ibid., pp. 87-88. [xxv]Ibid., p. 89. [xxvi]Ibid., p. 89. [xxvii]Ibid., p. 89. [xxviii]Ibid., p. 89. [xxix]Ibid., p. 90. Reference Helene, Corinne, The Mystery of the Christos, Vol. VII of the series, New Age Bible Interpretations, New Age Press, Santa Monica, California, 1961 |