CAN IT BE THAT CHRISTIANITY HAS NEVER UNDERSTOOD ITS SCRIPTURES? #2

Answer for yourself: What lies behind the "literalized" stories of a supposed "historical Jesus Christ" in our New Testament? Is this really a "historical personage" to be "believed in" for one's Salvation and Eternal Life or is it possible that behind this "Jesus Story" lies Spiritual Allegories of the Descent of the Soul and the whole of the "Jesus Story" is but an Ancient "picture" and "pattern" for mankind to emulate and follow for the proper maturation of the Soul told through the medium of Divine Allegory and Myth which has tragically been misinterpreted as if "literal history" in our day? Have the necessary "keys" to the proper interpretation of this Divine Ancient teaching been lost to us and Christianity for the last 1,800 years? Is this possible?

Answer for yourself: Did Rome tie all of mankind's personal salvation to a required belief in a supposed "historical Jesus" and his physical "death" and "resurrection" when in fact the whole of the "Jesus Story" was never about the physical death and physical resurrection of a Palestinian Messiah in the first century but rather nothing more than Ancient Spiritual allegories, myths, legends, and metaphors of the Soul's incarnation into mankind and its intended spiritual growth and release at the body's demise; spiritual allegories that had existed since 10,000 B.C.E. describing the Descent of the Soul and its intended "pattern" for its birth, life, maturation, and release and return to God at the body's demise?

If you grasp the extent, scope, and importance to these questions then your exodus into true Spiritual Enlightenments is not far from actual realization in your life.

Unknown to most Christians in today's world is the fact that the Astrotheology behind the metaphysical "Descent of the Soul" into matter as taught by the Ancients as far back as Ancient Egypt some 10,000 years ago was handed down throughout history in the religious myths of the nation's Sungods and "Christs". It was through the personification of this Metaphysical reality, that mankind, from nation to nation, was given their stories of dying and resurrecting "Sungods"; not literal physical "deaths and resurrections" mind you but mythical and symbolic representations of man's necessary second birth in this life.

A brief passage from Plutarch will serve us well to introduce the two articles that follow which will reveal the truth about "Jesus Christ"'; a Divine Concept that the Ancients knew and understood as far back as Ancient Egypt:

"But in his (Plato's) Book of Laws, when he was now grown old, he affirmed, not in riddles and emblems, but in plain and proper words, that the world is not moved by one Soul, but perhaps by a great many, but not by fewer than two; the one of which is beneficent, and the other contrary to it, and the author of things contrary. He also leaves a certain third nature ("the Christ...my emphasis) in the midst between, which is neither without Soul nor without reason, nor void of a self-moving power, but rests upon both of the preceding principles, but yet so as to affect, desire and pursue the better of them.

Plutarch first confirms our assertions as to the mystifying character of ancient religious and philosophical writings. He testifies to the fact of Plato's having used, until late in life, the methodology of writing "in riddles and emblems." Then he proceeds to lay down in the simplest of words the basic formula of the nature and constitution of man.

Answer for yourself: How much do you know of Platonic Philosophy? If you are like the vast majority of Christians in the world today we know very little if anything about it at all. Sadly, this robs us of the ability to read the Christian Bible without blinders to the hidden Spiritual realities that lay behind what we assume to be "literal history".

In the 3rd article I will go into detail about the Ancient Egyptian Wisdom and Platonic Philosophy that lies behind the "Jesus Story" but for now a short introductory summary is in order. Plato, in his writings, teaches us that that mankind's nature is comprised of two opposing principles which is mediated by a "third". Plato distinctly teaches us that mankind is a compound of two basic elements;spirit and matter. Man consists of both Spirit and body, Spiritual Consciousness and a physical vehicle. Between the two natures in mankind stand the Conscious Mind sharing, as Plutarch intimates, the capabilities of both the super-conscious Soul and the sub-conscious Soul of the body. This mind, this Soul, is the mediator between the god, or higher self in man, and the lower sensorial life in man. This is "the KRST/Karest/Christ".

Plato believed that all things in this world, whether it be a tree, a chair, an animal, or even a person, were merely copies of the ultimate objective ideal. The real world (ours is just a shadow world) was the world of the IDEAL, which existed somewhere unseen by the eyes of mere men. In the real world there existed the ideal chair, tree, etc., of which all other humanly visible and observable chairs, trees, etc. are merely imperfect copies or shadows. Some see a parallel between this and the passages in the Hebrew Scriptures which speak of Moses and "the pattern in the Mount".

Heb 8:5 5 Who serve unto the example and shadow of heavenly things, as Moses was admonished of God when he was about to make the tabernacle: for, See, saith he, that thou make all things according to the pattern shewed to thee in the mount. (KJV)

Plato reasoned that God (the ultimate IDEAL) chose to reveal the ideal man (the Christ), of whom all men are mere imperfect copies. Thus, in "the Christ" the ideal man is revealed to a world of imperfect, shadow men. The goal of man was to renounce the imperfection of this world of copies (this shadow world and its unrighteousness and sin), and through a life of reflection, meditation and self-denial, strive to merge with the IDEAL (God revealed through "His Christ" which is this 3rd nature in mankind). The goal would ultimately be realized when we discard this fleshly prison (the body), in which our "immortal souls" are trapped, and return to the world of the IDEAL (Heaven).

Plato analyzes human nature as a compound of the High Spirit, and sense, as the upper and lower constituents in mankind. Now we have read that in the New Testament that Paul classes the two as the carnal mind of the creature and the spiritual mind of the indwelling deity. Between the two natures a battle is going on and will continue until in the end of time we find the final consolidation of the two into what Paul calls the "one new man".

Eph 2:15 15 Having abolished in his flesh the enmity (hostility toward something..in this case the Laws and Commandments of God), even the law of commandments contained in ordinances; for to make in himself of twain one new man, so making peace; (KJV)

Christians never understand this passages mistakenly the Commandments were abolished. It says just the opposite. It is in the flesh of mankind that the nature of man, this carnal mind of the creature, is to grow spiritually to such a point whereby there will no longer exist a hostility toward the Laws and Commandments of God. This realized in man allows for man to arrive at the goal of his fleshly existence; namely, becoming that "new man" of which Paul speaks. But be not mistaken. There is enmity, animosity, and hostility according to Paul, between the Spirit and Matter that is to be reconciled by the descent and indwelling presence of the Divine Soul who comes to tabernacles within matter, flesh, as the mediator between the two opposing forces (Spirit and Matter). In the plan of God a final reconciliation between Spirit and Matter is finally brought about through the mediatorial offices of "the Christ", the High Priest of our fleshly temple who the Scriptures identify as the Priest after the order of Melchizedek (King of Righteousness).

We see is so clearly but seldom understand it correctly. Into mankind God sends "the Soul".

Gen 2:7 7 And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul. (KJV)

This is the Descent of the Soul which Egypt and Greek philosophy speaks so often about; this is the incarnation of God's Mind into mankind which is apart from His Spirit and Matter. The Soul, "the Christ" as the righteous King in our body, is to balance these two forces (neteru) and not allow the Spirit to be conquered by the animal nature in mankind. The Soul has come to conquer and tame the potential evil that lies in the animal nature of mankind.

Answer for yourself: Did we find this concept in the beginning of our Bibles in Genesis? Yes we do in the allegory of the woman, seed, and serpent.

In such a comparison we find the true meaning behind the Biblical allegory of the the mutual bruising of head and heel in the Genesis myth. The bruising would take place at the point of contact, where the lower {short description of image}portion of the upper "animal" nature in man would come into contact with the highest portion of the lower Spirit nature in man. Plato represents life as unfolding from within itself at the beginning of a new period of manifestation, and proceeding outward or downward from a summit of pure Spirit (Ein Sof) into ever-denser forms of creation (matter). The One Life pours forth its power and essence in streams, called "rivers of vivification", "from on high as far as to the last of things," bringing all forms of life into existence and ensouling all forms with more or less of its own mighty being. At each step of the way out, or down, this life takes embodiment in coarser forms of cosmic matter, thus giving birth to the greater and lesser gods (neteru, energies) of various ranks. For the gods (energies) are embodiments of the several grades and forms of nature's life, power and intelligence. The whole creation forms a chain of beings reaching from the lowest mineral crystals to the highest God. Somewhere in this chain stands man, and Plato tells us where it is. Humanity occupies a place of great strategic importance in the hierarchy, standing precisely at the point of junction between the highest animal and the truly human kingdom. Man is the creature that is fashioned to bridge the gap between the animal and the divine order. Hence his nature is compounded of the two elements, the animal and the godlike, in one organism, making it possible for the higher to "lift up" or humanize the lower. The warfare mediated by the Soul, awakened in mankind, between the animal nature in mankind and the Spirit nature in mankind would be fought on the border-line between these two natures or elements in man (Spirit and Matter). This is metaphysics at is most profound representation and we find this concept in Ancient Egyptian Religion as well as Greek Philosophy and amazingly in the Bible but we fail to recognize it because of the conditioned learned behavior of interpreting everything we read as if "literal history".

Answer for yourself: The Ancient Egyptians in their religion taught the Divine Concept of the Soul mediating in the battle of Spirit and matter. How did they immortalize it? It is said that this battle between Horus and Set, between good verses evil, between the Spirit and matter still rages but some day, Horus will be victorious and on that day, Osiris will return to rule the world. This sure sounds like the Jesus vs Satan struggle we find in the New Testament. The Ancient Egyptians had a name for this momentous battle; a name we have heard our whole Christian lives but to which we never had a clue as to is true origin.

Answer for yourself: Can you guess the name of the battle? Has Christianity stolen the name for this battle and again "literalized" it when in fact it is allegorical for the interaction and opposition in the Cosmos between Energy/Spirit and matter, or should I say "flesh and Spirit"? Yes they have and sadly again misinterpreted it as if "literal-historical" and in so doing we lose the Egyptian metaphysics behind such a truth. That being said Alvin Kuhn and Gerald Massey, in their writings, relate that Egypt taught that the great (spiritual) Battle of Armageddon is fought--on the "horizon," the line between Heaven and Earth, or the line dividing Spirit/Energy and Matter (between human nature and divine nature). On this intermediate line, sharing the dispositions of the lower and the capabilities of the upper, we find that the Egyptian Book of the Dead says: "He cultivates the two lands; he pacifies the two lands; he unites the two lands." Here at this junction between human nature (matter) and Spirit stands the conscious mind of the human. This is the Soul (the Christ Consciousness) in man. You can see from the Pauline passage above the intended end result of the battle between flesh and spirit; the unification of the two natures in man in the "one new man". Lest we get confused the reader would do good to understand that the Soul is not the same as the his highest Spirit which is God, but it is an Emanation from the Absolute Creator/God, a portion or "spark" of God's Mind which descended into this matter we call "flesh". Literally "the Christ" is but a "neteru" descended into matter; in this instance into flesh. It is that fragment of that Spirit as "the Christ-Soul" that is projected downwards (Emanation) from the Absolute First Cause, the Cosmic Mind, God, and linked with that part of the thinking mind and brain that receives and coordinates all the stimuli conveyed to various sensory centers in mankind. This "Christ-Soul" is "the Christ" of which we read in the New Testament which has descended into "matter" and as the Ancients said so appropriately in so doing became "entrapped in matter" and is "crucified on the cross of matter" in mankind.

Answer for yourself: Has this knowledge ever found expression in Christianity? Yes it has. As early as the second century and early 3rd century A.D. the Christian Gnostics knew and taught this Spiritual concept but their almost extermination by the emerging Roman "Literalistic" Orthodox Christianity will not only almost destroy them but almost all of their writings as well. Only in the last fifty years with the discovery of the Nag Hammadi Library in Egypt has the Gnostic Christ been restored to modern scholarship and the "literalistic" interpretation of Jesus Christ been exposed as a falsehood.

Answer for yourself: Do you know what is the first verse that began the original New Testament, the Gnostic New Testament which we sadly don't have today that reveals this Ancient Wisdom? Reconstructed from the writings of its Orthodox Christian "literalistic" persecutors as mentioned in their writings and attacks on Gnostic Christianity we find that Marcion's New Testament began with:

Adv.Marc.iv.7 ; Panarion 42 3:1/4:31 In the fifteenth year of Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate being governor of Judea, Jesus descended [out of heaven] into Capernaum, a city in Galilee, and was teaching [in the synagogue] on the Sabbath days; And they were astonished at his doctrine,

Jesus "descended" to Capernaum! "Descended" is a rather unusual way to say that someone "went" to another city. Imagine that. Missing are the infancy narratives, miracle birth narratives, angel stories, shepherds, frankincense and myrrh, donkeys, etc., in the first New Testament. Missing are all of the details which help set the stage for a later "human" interpretation of "the Christ". Jesus, as "the Christ", just "came down". He, Jesus, the word meaning "God's salvation", descended from Heaven as "the Christ"; this is exactly like"the neteru" which descends into matter. This is the Kabbalah at its best. This "matter" of which I speak of course is the flesh of mankind; this is the incarnation of God's Cosmic Mind, Christ, "spark", into the Human Species. The real incarnation you see is not in some child some 2,000 years ago long far away but rather "in you" and "in me". This is what Rome did not want you to know for with such knowledge that you are Divine, literally "gods" in flesh, then there comes with it the personal responsibility for living God's Laws and living righteously as Judaism teaches; not as the tragic history of Roman Christianity and its hatred for these Laws of God has exhibited. The only Law that Rome understood and lived by is "might makes right". Helen Ellerbe, inThe Dark Side Of Christian History, will prove my point beyond all doubt as it is detailed in her book.

The Ancients taught that man is "dead now" in his physical being and that the Soul "figuratively died" when it descended into and was confined in physical matter (flesh). It is from this Ancient understanding that we get the very Ancient and hoary idea of the "Crucifixion of the Karest/Christ" in matter as far back as Ancient Egypt. Plato, schooled in Egypt Wisdom, said that the human being is composed of two parts, an immortal Soul housed inside a mortal body. Plato built his theory on the religious idea of "dualism." Sadly this "dualism" is misunderstood today but it is right on again if you possess the necessary "keys" to understand it properly. Before we continue we need to correctly understand this spiritual concept of "dualism" correctly.

Since the rise of Zoroastrianism the spiritual concept of Dualism has been altered to the belief that all things in nature are separate and real, and they exist independently from any underlying essence or support. This concept of "independent existence" did not always exist in "dualism" as I will further mention in a moment when we look at Egypt who taught this concept correctly (the all in the ONE). The concept of Dualism claims that two forces, forces of opposition, for example the nature of good (Horus/Yetzer Ha Tov in Judaism) and evil (Set/Yetzer Ha Ra in Judaism), have always existed and always will exist side by side in the universe. All forces and powers in the Cosmos are dualistic and the goal is to maintain their equilibrium (Egypt called it Ma'at). This is a delicate balance as you might suspect. Dualism is the belief in pairs of opposites wherein everything has a polar counterpart (neteru). For example: male/female, here/there, hot/cold, good/evil, etc. Before Zoroastrianism Egypt and other nations both taught and recognized that while these elements seem real and abiding to the human mind, Ancient mystical philosophers throughout history have been claiming that this is only an outer expression of the underlying essence from which they all originate (the many in the ONE). In reality, the underlying essence of all things is non-dual and all encompassing. Modern science has been confirming this view of matter for the last one hundred years. The latest experiments in quantum physics show that all matter (flesh) is composed of energy and that this total energy in the Cosmos is never lost, it only changes shapes and forms. Most importantly, for this study, dualism is a state of mind that occurs as an immature level of understanding of the ultimate Cosmic reality we call God. It is akin to egotism and egotistic tendencies which tend to make a person see himself/herself as separate and distinct from the world and from other living beings. Through proper study and understanding one comes to see that "all is connected" in the Cosmos and in so doing then dualism is replaced with non-dualism and spiritual enlightenment then occurs. Dualism often teaches that the visible world of matter is evil. The invisible world of "spirit" is good. Such a dualistic view is trained to see either good or evil, acceptable or unacceptable, you and me, etc., and not the whole of creation composed of many parts. This misses the core truth of dualism however and negates the truth that God is the "all in all" and that in Him all things abide and consist (the all in the ONE). The underlying unity of duality needs to be uncovered and taught to correct mistaken understandings of dualism today (like Satan fighting God for example).

Col 1:16-17 16 For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and for him: 17 And he is before all things, and by him all things consist. (KJV)

Answer for yourself: What are we to learn from this? From these understandings, Plato, being schooled in Egyptian Religion, taught that a good immortal Soul, descended into matter as a mediator of sorts, is trapped inside an mortal and fleshly body that is capable of both good and evil (the polarization of opposite energies). Death of this physical body became a sort of liberation for the entrapped Divine Life (Soul of mankind). The immortal Soul, freed from the degraded body, can soar to the heights of bliss when returned to the Creator. Death became a "friend" in contrast to the Bible's description of death as mankind's last "enemy." From this background, the Christian Church eventually came to view death as the immediate release of the immortal Soul (Spirit) from the deceased body, on its way to eternal reward or eternal damnation. Or, simply, when you die, your body returns to the earth and your Soul goes immediately to heaven or to hell. But not to be overlooked and of major importance is the fact that this indwelling Soul must be awakened to tilt the scale of righteousness as it is considered dead in this body of degraded flesh and death. Thus the admonition of Paul to "awaken" as all the Gnostics taught.

Such stupor and slumber of man's real identity and condition is because mankind is unaware that within each natural man is an "inner man," a fallen spark of the Divine Substance. Since this exists in each man, we have the possibility of awakening from our spiritual dullness. What effects the awakening in mankind is not obedience, faith, or good works, but knowledge and this knowledge of mankind's Divine nature is the catalyst that motivates him to faith, good works and obedience to the Commands of God (the Egyptian 42 Negative Confessions and the Jewish Torah).

"For I have heard from one of the wise that we are now dead; and that the body is our sepulchre."--Plato

Paul speaking of that time before the Souls' incarnation into fleshly bodies relates:

Rom 7:9-10 9 For I was alive without the law once: but when the commandment came, (the command to incarnate in matter, flesh) sin revived, and I died. 10 And the commandment, which was ordained to life, I found to be unto death. (KJV)

It is becoming more clear now of which Paul speaks. What we forget when reading our Bibles is that 2,000 years ago those to whom Paul spoke were familiar with these concepts; it is us today who are not.

Eph 5:14 14 Wherefore he saith, Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light. (KJV)

This "light" is referring to illumination as to mankind's true identity and destiny as Souls passing through this plane of matter. As our studies increase we eventually find that the Ancient sages of old employed mythical and cabalistic devices to conceal and hide profound meanings in their sacred writings, using at times "mystical symbolism" to suggest to the uninstructed and unenlightened a shallow or superficial rendering, while conveying to those versed in this symbolical methodology a far more deep spiritual message. Without the "keys" to the interpretation of these symbols in these ancient sacred writings one is left to lean upon his own understanding; an understanding guaranteed to miss the Divine Truth hidden behind such symbol. The most startling of these stratagems was their use of the term "death". Teaching for the "living" was put out under the guise of instruction for "the dead"; ironically they were yet alive but spiritually dulled. Now we see even more clearly Paul's admonition to "awake thou that sleepest and rise from the dead" from Eph. 5:14 Until I began such serious studies after Seminary I never knew that great moralistic, ethical, virtuous and spiritual systems of old were camouflaged under the mask such titles as the Egyptian Book of the "Dead" and the Tibet Book of the "Dead". This being so, I found that as I studied more and advanced in my knowledge and acquired and gathered the "keys" to unlock this strange symbolism that I was having a complete revision of my understanding of the majority of what I had been taught by a "literalistic" Christianity. The more I studied I was both saddened but yet overjoyed at the same time finding at last the ultimate Divine Truth that had been for so long blurred and distorted under the "literalistic" interpretation of Rome and its presentation of a supposed "literal Jesus Story". It began to dawn upon me the more I studied that almost ever religious dogma and doctrine of Orthodox Literalistic Roman Christianity and Protestantism was in need of radical transformation and reinterpretation for almost no dogma and doctrine of the Christian Faith, especially as related to "its Christ", "resurrection", "salvation", etc., carried the original intended meaning of its parent teaching as taught in the beginning of mankind as seen by Ancient Egypt; those used by the Creator to give the whole of mankind these "doctrines" in the first place. A replacement religion was at work and I was an "ordained Pastor of it". I knew I had to resign and repent before my Creator. The inquiry into the Ancient Spiritual Masters and their understanding of the word "death" was for me the ground breaking experience I needed to spur me on to even deeper studies. Little did I know after Seminary, when I sought out to find a "Jewish Jesus" that my studies into Judaism would eventually lead me to Egypt where not only my eyes would be opened like never before to the truth behind my Christian faith but often my very breath taken from me by what I would find.

So we see that the Ancients taught that human Souls (Christ-Soul/spark/Conscious Energy) were confined in the body of matter as in a prison, a condition from which only "the Karest/Christ would both liberate and resurrect them from the 'dead'" while they let "lived". This amalgamation, which linked the Soul to body, was supposed to be a "kind of death" to the higher form of life (Soul). Evil is always, as the opposition to good, an inherent potential to this condition. The Soul, dwelling in the body as in a prison or a grave, is purified and separated from the potential evils of this condition by knowledge" of its true self tabernacling in matter and the flesh of mankind.

The eminent Plato is himself found saying that "men are placed in the body as in a prison" and that he considered "the body as the sepulchre of the Soul". Rev. Robert Taylor in discussing an opinion of Macrobius ascribed to him the conception that "the Soul in the present life may be said to die, as far as it is possible for a Soul to die; occultly intimating that the death of the Soul was nothing more than a profound union with the ruinous bonds of the body."

One noted that the incarnation or entry of the Soul into the body was often alluded to not only as a "death" but as a "burial"! Pythagoras wrote that "whatever we see when awake is death". Likewise the distinguished Plotinus, the famous founder of Neoplatonism, had given similar indications such as the following:

"Death to the Soul is to descend into matter and be entirely subjected to it. This is what is meant by falling asleep in Hades."

Paul accentuates this idea also most directly when, speaking of Christ, he says that "we suffer death with him in his baptism," thus identifying death and baptism (the Christ's descent into matter) as the same one experience, and both meaning the incarnation.

And the distinguished Virgil, the Roman poet, had shown that he was imbued with this same Greek philosophy when he wrote: "Souls are deadened by earthly forms and members subject to death."

Answer for yourself: What are we seeing here?

For the first time we are seeing that the Bible is a collection of dramas and allegories of the "Soul's life in body..." and a more specific point, that "death" in the Bible (and related words) have "borne today in traditional Christian teaching a connotation very different from the one commonly understood by those who originated the original religious doctrines which we read today and which we are taught to believe today as necessary for our salvation. In a nutshell we are seeing that "to die" means, for the Soul, to live here on earth; "death" means the soul's life here in the flesh; and "the dead" is a term denoting those alive here in the mortal body!

Alvin Kuhn, in his "The Lost Meaning of Death" states: "And Socrates had soliloquized in a long passage on the subject of death, asking Cebes if it might not after all be true that we had come hither from a far more radiant life elsewhere, and that we should properly regard the present life as in reality a death. "May it not be true that we are really dead?" he asks, intimating, like Wordsworth, that we seem at times to have faint glimpses of a more vivid existence from which we have fallen into this dullness of mortal life. But he is not the only one to voice this sentiment. It had been a matter of some surprise, also, to note Milton’s expression of Adam’s astonishment in the Paradise Lost, when on being driven from the garden under condemnation of death, that Adam found his sentence taking the form of a lingering existence, not a destruction of his life, as he had expected. He discovered that his "death" meant not his extinction, but a less vivid type of life. He found himself condemned to a "living" death. He was made to live and "suffer death", not to be annihilated".

Answer for yourself: Would we be correct to regard such expressions as this of Milton in his much appraised Paradise Lost as not only being found in the Ancient Egyptian religion but even in the the Gorgias of Plato? You bet.

Kuhn goes on to relate from Plato's Gorgias the saying of Socrates: Well, well, as you say, life is strange. For I tell you I should not wonder if Euripides the words were true, when he says: Who knows if to live is to be dead, And to be dead, to live?

Kuhn does not give the exact quote from Plato's Gorgias in his "The Lost Key To The Scriptures" but summarizes the Ancient Knowledge surrounding the idea when he says: "But indeed, as you say also, life is a grievous thing. For I should not wonder if Euripides spoke the truth when he says: ‘Who knows whether to live is not to die, and to die is not to live?’ And we perhaps are in reality dead. For I have heard from one of the wise that we are now dead; and that the body is our sepulchre; but that the part of the Soul in which the desires are contained is of such a nature that it can be persuaded and hurled upward and downwards."

Answer for yourself: Did you notice that the Soul is mentioned as moving "upward and downward" in this hierarchy of "neteru" or levels of existences? I hope you did. Does this remotely remind you of the levels of the Sefirot in the Kabbalah? I hope it did! During the middle ages and after, alchemical thinking divided nature into animal, vegetable, and mineral. There is in fact a natural succession from inert mineral to the plant that is alive but not (apparently) responsive to the animal that has awareness but not reason. Hence the human kingdom as the next rung on the ladder of being. We, as God's Mind and Consciousness, move from "glory to glory" in the spiritual evolution of our Souls. This is the "ladder of God" that Jacob mentions in Genesis when he saw "angels" descending and ascending!

Gen 28:12 12 And he dreamed, and behold a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven: and behold the angels (neteru) of God ascending and descending on it. (KJV)

Alvin Kuhn goes on to relate in his "The Lost Meaning of Death" that Thomas Taylor gives a portion of the comment of Olympiodorus on this passage, as follows: "For the Soul, coming hither, as she imparts life to the body, so she partakes through this of a certain privation of life; but this is an evil. When separated, therefore, from the body, she lives in reality; for she dies here, through participating of privation of life, because the body becomes the source of evils. And hence it is necessary to subdue the body."

The idea here hinted at is one of the basic theses of both Egyptian and Greek philosophy. For the Greek mind, with concepts derived from the Esoteric wisdom, considered that all life resulted from streams of life-giving Cosmic Energy flowing forth from God, or the One, the infinite fountainhead of all things, sweeping on, to their eventual home in matter. These streams of force sprang outward from the zenith of Spiritual Energy (Ein Sof) and diminution of their power is a Cosmic Law as they preceded farther and farther from the primal source, until at last they came to a pause in the inert arms of matter (think of a ladder descending down into matter; the invisible to the visible). These "Living Energies" from the Ein Sof, the Invisible One, Atum, God, and their living qualities (neteru) was was eventually opposed and finally dampened and deadened in the darkness and depths of matter, where descending Energy and motion came to a "dead" halt or suffered its symbolic "death". One need only picture in his mind the "dying away" of the ripples made by casting a stone in the lake pond. This is a perfect allegorical illusion to the type of "death" here described. God comes to "rest" in matter. It is the Sabbath of God. All Divine Life and Cosmic Intelligent Energy (God) comes out from its first Cause and meets its "symbolic death" in matter. But again we are required to distinguish between this "death" of a force, power, or energy and its absolute annihilation or extinction. Physics teaches us today that Energy may be transformed, or transmuted from one form to another, but Energy, considered as a quantity, can never be destroyed. It never "dies"; only changes forms. The invisible becomes visible. Thus the incarnation! Life/Energy was merely held dormant in the grip of an element able to silence its activities. Life had not ceased to be; only its powers had only gone into dormancy. They would emerge again.

For in the strict sense of the term, we must realize that such a thing as death in the sense of total annihilation either of being or matter is an unthinkable and impossible thing. That which "IS" cannot cease to "BE". That only which can happen to it is a change of state or transmutation of form. It can only come into manifestation and go out again, yet never is not. William Kingsland, in his The Gnosis or Ancient Wisdom in the Scriptures states: "In Eastern philosophy this outgoing and return of Energy is postulated as an eternal periodical process: the outgoing being called a "Day" of Brahma (the Logos or Demiurge), and the complete withdrawal - which lasts as long as the outgoing, an incalculable period -- a "Night" of Brahma.

Answer for yourself: Is this the cycle of "birth" and "death" that we know in this physical realm in which our Souls have come to live? Yes.

Humankind, being the mirror or reflection of the cosmic process, has the same outgoing and return. In the shadow of such considerations we must come to understand that what is called "death" anywhere is but the passing from a more to a less vivid and active state of manifestation. "Death" is therefore accurately defined as the less heightened, less vibrant, condition of any form of being or life. And this gives solid philosophical base for the re-establishment of the ancient meaning of "death". As life is often called a "hell on earth", one might easily extend the metaphor and make of it a bona fide "death". This is a "death" from which we, as Souls, must awake while living in this matter. Thus the need for the guidance of "the Christ" which descended into this matter as well.

God is a God of righteousness and a God of Truth. His righteousness demands that we be obedient to Him. His Truth awakens our conscience where we willingly become obedient to Him (Romans 13:5, "Wherefore ye must needs be subject, not only for wrath, but also for conscience sake." ). If we earnestly hear God's Truth, our mind and conscience are renewed continually awakening conscience for us to walk in what is "...good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God" (Romans 12:2)

This brings us to Egyptian Religion once again and "the Karest/Christ". The Egyptian Bible has been called "the Book of the Dead". It was given a more correct name in the Egyptian language as Peri-em-heru, and was translated as meaning:

Answer for yourself: Did you catch the above names of the Egyptian Bible and what they symbolically mean?

Ephesians 5:14, "Wherefore he saith, Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light."

Answer for yourself: Does the awakeing of the hidden God in us, this spark of Energy, this "Christ within" all of mankind the antidote for the darkness and "death" of our physical habilitation of our Souls? Yes it is. And again the Gnostics and Ancient Wisdom teaches us that this "awakening" comes by knowledge; the knowledge of God about our true identity as Souls and the Divine Himself tabernacling in fleshly matter.

But it is not that easy. Hidden in the time of this Ancient Spiritual Bible are all teaching that prepares mankind to move into the "day" or "daylight" and out of "darkness". Why is this?

The names "The Day of Manifestation," or "The Coming Forth by Day," or "Into the Daylight" refers to the end of a long period of life lived in darkness. This common translation, "the Book of the Dead", should at once provoke the thought that there was a mysterious incompatibility between the Egyptian titles and the English one (given to it by the German scholar Lepsius..."The Book of the Dead".

Answer for yourself: How could a book whose title read 'The Coming Forth By Day" be fitly named the "Book of the Dead"? There is something that we are missing. There is a mystery here to be uncovered.

Answer for yourself: What is the "Book of the Dead" all about anyway?

The "Egyptian Book of the Dead" deals mainly with the great trial of the Soul of the deceased in the Hall of Judgment, the Hall of Osiris; and Osiris was the Lord of Amenta (underworld), the realm of the dead, the dark underworld. He was the king of "those in their graves". The book is very similar to the typical Christian judgment which is being enacted in the world of Souls following the demise of the body. Here we find a thrilling puzzle. It needs to be stated that the Greeks had derived most of their profound spiritual conceptions from the {short description of image}Egyptians. So it is to Egypt we go first to find the original interpretation of the religious concepts which we read in our Christian Bibles today to ensure we get the "original" teaching and not those changed down through time. We have seen that "dead" referred to mankind possessing a Soul while they live in human bodies and does not refer to the demise of the body. Thus the real meaning of the "Book of the Dead" is hidden in the fact that it is a prepatory manual to ready mankind while he yet lived as "dead Souls" for their ultimate Soul's release and return to God at the demise of the physical body. In reality what we think of "dead" is really "life" and what we think of "life" is really "death"; we have got it just backwards today and the implications of the "resurrection of these dead" which we are taught as Christians is staggering.

Answer for yourself: Do you see it?

The "resurrection from the dead" refers not to the decayed physical body but to our spiritual awakening while we are yet "dead" but live in our mortal bodies.

Answer for yourself: How is that? For starters resurrection is something that happens to us while we yet walk and breath as mortals and not something that happens to us after the demise of our fleshly bodies! THINK! The resurrection of the dead is to happen to us while we live this earthly existence:

Eph 5:14-15 14 Wherefore he saith, Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light. 15 See then that ye walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise, (KJV)

As you can now surmise our Spiritual awakening to our true Divineness is the resurrection of what Paul speaks; an "awakening" of our spirit man with the aid of the "indwelling Christ" as the catalyst for our Souls "resurrection" while we yet live.

One must experience a spiritual resurrection here while in this life. Paul was teaching exactly this, when he admonished the Colossians (3:1), "If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God."

Answer for yourself: Did you see that we are to "seek the things above" since we are "risen" with Christ while we yet live in our bodies? Did you see that our "resurrection" occurs while we yet live in fleshly bodies if the "indwelling Christ" is awakened and risen in our "dead" bodies while we yet live?

This same apostle tells us that "If we have been planted together in the likeness of his (Jesus') death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection, knowing this, that our old man (flesh) is crucified" (Rom. 6:5, 6).

Answer for yourself: Did you notice the word "likeness"?

Strong's Concordance: 3667 homoioma (hom-oy'-o-mah); from 3666; a form; abstractly, resemblance: KJV-- made like to, likeness, shape, similitude.

Answer for yourself: Did we see clearly that our "resurrection" is but an abstract idea?

Answer for yourself: What does "abstract" mean? It means:

We are speaking of a "literal-physical" resurrection here; rather, a "spiritual one".

Answer for yourself: What should that say to us? Again we see the idea of the "resurrection" occurring while we yet live since after such a spiritual enlightenment that we can "know" that our flesh is put to death since "Christ has risen" in us.

Answer for yourself: Ok...let us move on. Was their figurative use of the word "death" based on some hidden meaning in the Book of the Dead? Could it be possible, one conjectured, that all our ancient Christian scholarship, as well as current, had missed the fundamental meaning of the word "death" by their failure to catch the true meaning of ancient symbolism? Could it be that some mighty truth lurked undiscovered under the metaphor that the Early Church Fathers either missed or rejected?

We find upon study that the ancient writers of sacred books of religion when they spoke of "death" they referred to our present life on earth in these bodies of flesh! And when they spoke of "the dead", they again referred to us, here and now, alive as we seem to be! Alvin Kuhn relates in his "The Lost Meaning of Death": "We are "alive" but "dead" right now. And by the terms grave, tomb, coffin, sepulchre, mummy-case, out of which we would be resurrected the Ancient Spiritual Masters meant these living bodies of ours! In their theology, "to die" was to incarnate in bodies on earth. It was found that the two words "womb" and "tomb" are from the same stem and convey the same connotation. He who enters life by way of the womb has entered the tomb of living death. In their eyes, death was to live the kind of life we are living here. In reality for the Soul there is no such thing as death, in the sense of total destruction, for the Soul is indestructible. And one saw then that our life here justly deserved the designation of death because it was the most restricted sphere of existence in which the Soul was ever called upon to become embodied and imprisoned. This type of life of the Soul in matter was the profoundest "death" it was ever subjected to, as an individual entity! It could go no lower in its descent from the Ein Sof, be restricted no more thoroughly than now at it dwells in the the flesh of mankind. It should come as an astonishing realization to you that you and I could never be any more "dead" than we are now in our mortal habitat. We are truly in the very jaws of "death", in the "valley of the shadow of death", and we are therefore the "dead" of all the ancient philosophical books.

Answer for yourself: What is the staggering implication of this that we have missed? All religions had been designed as instruction and guidance for "those in their graves" of this earthly life, and its sacred books were meant to be a light for us, "the dead", in the dark underworld of Hades, Sheol, Amenta! But long ago was lost the knowledge that such instruction was for us; that we were "the dead" for whom all religious systems were devised, and for whose revival out of the tomb of the physical body the whole end and aim of religion was conceived. And at the bottom of all of this is "the Karest/Christ" whom is sent into the flesh of mankind to lift the animal nature of mankind above "this living death" of his fleshy existence.

For, it seems, few if any Christian scholars, or Christian theologians, have been aware of the disguised meaning of the word "death" in their Bibles or suspected that it masked a cryptic signification. Once you study both find and see this major truth then it necessitates a reevaluation of almost every Christian teaching, dogma, and exegesis of the Christian Scriptures. Now, a clear inspection of Greek and Egyptian religious systems brings the lost clue finally to the light of day and awareness. The implications to existing Christian religious dogmas is staggering for the mind to even begin to comprehend.

Christianity, touted as a system of exclusive sacred truth or a unique revelation of divine wisdom, is already reeling under the impact of blow after blow dealt it by not only the study of Comparative Religion, Astrotheology, Comparative Mythology, the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Nag Hammadi Library, and Egyptian archeology; all of which is being made available today to the "truth seeker". The "deadly parallels" found to run so consistently and so remarkably between the "Jesus Story" and the legends of some twenty or more former Christly figures or Sun-gods, in the role of world-saviors, are rapidly piling up the evidence that tends tojeopardize the validity of the entire body of Gospel narrative as literal history. It is beginning to dawn on intelligent and informed students that the New Testament Gospels are not the biography of any "person" or living character at all who was resurrected from the death of a physical body, but are old dramatic books of the religious Brotherhoods, portraying, not the "life" of any one man, but only the spiritual history of a typical archetypical figure which is the "pattern" for all mankind and the Soul's maturation while "dead" in these bodies of matter. All previous Messianic characters, or Sun-gods, were only such typical and representations of the pattern for and dramatization of man’s inner life; all of which was presented under the form of a representative and symbolic "history". The Christs, all of them, were simply ideal figures held up before men to provide them with an inspiring picture of their own potential attainable perfection which is the intended goal of our incarnation. Unbelievable as it may appear, it is the fact of history that with the lapse of time and the decay of philosophical culture, the more ignorant came to take these dramatic heroes and Sun-gods for actually living persons. And a designing priestcraft, either itself now fallen into the depths of similar ignorance, or motivated by hidden agendas, or both, found it advantageous to the interests of a worldly ecclesiastical system to continue such a misunderstanding of "the Christ" in order to wield power and authority over the ignorant through fear of damnation if any rejected this supposed saving "orthodoxy. The "Christ internal" was made "the Christ external" and mankind has suffered ever since and lost the Divine Truth and goal for his existence because of the loss of the "keys" required to interpret this Divine Ancient Spiritual Wisdom and "Soul Science". At any rate, the Gospels, which were only spiritual allegories (see the writings of Philo, Clement and Origen, and note Paul’s statement that the story of Abraham, Sarah and Hagar "is an allegory"), were about the third century converted into a supposed "infallible and inerrant literal history". In so doing mankind lost the knowledge of not only the spiritual concept of "death" but the truth about the "Christ within". And it was at this juncture that the ancient meaning of the term "death" was lost to even the minds of most learned of the leaders of Christianity, and with it fled all possibility of retaining the Ancient understanding of mankind's present spiritual nature and the intended path for the Souls' growth and maturation in this body of "death".

With that being said understand clearly that the resultant of the Divine Energies of Spirit unified with those of matter and flesh of mankind (clay) becomes the "one new man" of St. Paul's description, born of the wedlock of the two. This "one new man", the "indwelling Christ Consciousness", is thus born out of the blending of the two natures in man. It is the Christ coming to his new birth in our experience and in our nature which is the real incarnation that balances these two natures in mankind. Paul states that he groans and travails with the Christians until "Christ be formed within you." Our life of combined Spirit and flesh on earth is to give birth to the Christ Consciousness in us. This is a process to say the least but even at that understand that this is the radical foundation for all religion; or at least it was until Rome's reinterpretation of this Divine Concept whereby they confined and limited "the Christ" to one presumed "historical person" in Palestine in the first century. This Christ Selfhood in us is generated by the friction between the two natures in opposition within us. It is born out of the struggle between Soul and flesh/body, it is generated by the tension between the two poles of being, positive and negative, or Spirit and Matter, in the makeup of man. In humanity the Christ nature is to be made conscious of its own divine selfhood. "Christ Consciousness" is to be brought by human experience from merely potential divinity to divinity actualized; that is, made aware of its deific being. This explains why the Gnostics continually taught as the cornerstone of Gnosticism: "Know Thyself" (that man is Divine, know from where you came, and where you return when you leave this plane of existence). "Know Thyself" might be expanded into a formula for Gnosis: "Know that within thyself which is divine, and through it, come to know Divinity". The awakening of "the Christ" within man is a struggle to inform matter and pervade the whole of flesh with the will of God through His Christ, thereby sanctifying mankind, body, Soul, and Spirit with God's living Energies and Mind. This is the ultimate war and struggle against the inertia of matter and the animal nature in mankind. Success comes only if man "awakens" to his Divine Nature within him by the actions of the indwelling Christ and by the internal illumination and enlightenment which comes through truth and knowledge.

Eph 5:14 14 Wherefore he saith, Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light. (KJV)

Once awakened then the indwelling Christ's job is to illuminate the mind of man as to his true identity as a Son of God. Mankind needs a "second birth" to achieve this Divine self-recognition (exampled by Virgo, Pisces, Spring Equinox and Winter Solstice as seen in earlier articles). Matter provides the clay whereby the Creator can build mankind into the designs He will for "His good pleasure" and so evolve the species into the Adam Kadmon, the perfect Cosmic reflection of Himself.

Eph 2:10 10 For we are his workmanship, created in (through) Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them. (KJV)

We are to grow Spiritually through the inter-workings of the Christ in our flesh in order to manifest God in this fleshly realm of existence:

Lev 20:7 7 Sanctify yourselves therefore, and be ye holy: for I am the LORD your God. (KJV)

The flesh by itself cannot do this as the testimony of the human race verifies; however, God intends the whole lump to be "leavened" by the awakening of the "Divine Spark" within mankind and allowing "the Christ" to be formed in mankind and leaven the whole person; body, Soul, and Spirit.

The Ancient Spiritual Masters taught for thousands of years that the Spirit/Energy of God and matter have come together to give birth to the Christos. This is exampled and paralleled in Judaism in the diagram and teachings of the Kabbalah. What is being described is the blending of Spirit/Energy and matter. This is the function of matter as mother ("mother" being mater in Latin) to which Paul refers when {short description of image}he says: "For the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain until now," labouring to bring forth "the Sons of God," who are elsewhere "the sons of mind." The Christly principle of intellect was being gestated in the womb of mother nature, and the evolutionary office of matter was to bring it to birth in the fullness of time. Nature, which had created the animal, was next to create man, the human, whose mark of differentiation from the beast was the faculty of mind and intellect. The wedding of the two cosmic elements, Spirit and Matter and the birth of their Son, the Christos, could take place only where the two parents could have vital communion with each other. It could therefore occur only where Spirit could impregnate matter with its life-giving power. This opportunity was provided by life only at one place on this planet,  -  in the physical body of man. Only here do Soul and flesh have affective communion, for only here is there the condition of exact equilibration demanded that provided the opportunity for the "Descent of the Christ/Soul" as the 3rd nature as described by Plato above in the beginning of this article.

Truth does indeed emanate from the cosmic realm of Divine Ideas and is brought down from that high source by the Soul, for only the Soul can grasp and carry it. Souls descend from on high, bearing the light of Divine Consciousness. But, says the profound Greek philosopher Plato, this light is dimmed and nearly extinguished by being plunged into the darkness of the body (it dies, is dead in flesh). St. Paul long ago stated the case: “For God, who hath caused the light to shine out of the darkness, hath shined in our hearts . . . but we have this treasure in earthen vessels.” The weak vision of man has distorted the archetypal forms of divine truth, which he sees but dimly in the darkness of his earthly prison.

Doubtless the original formulators of the Ancient Spiritual and Divine Myths never dreamed there would come a time so decadent as our own today that the products of their allegorical genius would be mistaken for the body of reality itself; that the transparent character of their imagery would fail to be apparent and their symbols be mistaken as if "literal history". They could not have guessed that their Divine allegories and dramas would be mistakenly taken for supposed "historical and literal" objective reality and their "personifications" of Divine attributes of God (neteru) for living humans, or that their ideal world of living imagery would become rigidly fixed into purported literal-history.

Mankind lost immeasurable Divine Light when this occurred. Sadly archetypal forms of Divine Truth were mistakenly fixated in impossible “historical” events. Ancient Egypt’s cryptic but luminous paradigms of spiritual truth were turned by Christian dullness and darkness of mind into Hebrew miracles at the historic level. No one has seen this more lucidly than the English scholar and Egyptologist, Gerald Massey, as two passages reveal:

The world of scholarship which once repudiated Massey’s contentions is now proving him right. When, however, he said that we have misinterpreted our Bible myths, it was a gross understatement of the tragic fact that has robbed the world of intended Divine Truth so necessary for the evolution of mankind.

Massey has had corroboration from other astute investigators in the field of mythicism. Godfrey Higgins, in his monumental work, Anacalypsis, says that “what are called early histories are not histories of man, but are contrivances under the appearance of history to perpetuate doctrines . . . in a manner understood only by those who had a key to the enigma.”

The noted scholar Gerald Massey says, “I have amply demonstrated the fact that the myths were no mere products of ancient ignorance, but are the deposited results of a primitive knowledge; that they were founded upon natural phenomena and remain the register of the earliest scientific observation.”

Surely a Christian should give heed when Origen, the most learned of the fathers of the church, speaks as follows: “The priests have a secret philosophy concerning their religion contained in their national scriptures, while the common people only hear fables which they do not understand. If these fables were heard from a private man without the gloss of a priest they would appear exceedingly absurd.”

With the near-total extinguishing of the genius of the Ancient Interpretation by Roman Christianity the Dark Ages were born. The loss of the "keys" of interpretation to the Ancient Divine Wisdom so necessary to interpret correctly these spiritual truths and Divine Allegories the succeeding ages fell into to a mental darkness so profound that it amounted to a unlimited blindness that exists today in the Western mentality. And no remedy can be found, no awakening from the delusion, until the whole body of our heritage of ancient literature is reexamined and reinterpreted through the lens of allegory.

The epic of the soul on earth, its battle of evolution on the horizon line between the heaven of spirit and the earth of sense, can again enlighten the lives of thinking men only if the historical misinterpretation of the Ancient Divine Allegories is removed. The symbols, graphs, images, and devices for the expression of Spiritual truth that were converted into alleged history must be exposed and returned to their original intended meanings. The figures personating the divine central Sun of Righteousness that is to rise in the collective consciousness of the human race with healing in its wings, along with its following of attributes and qualities that were transposed into men and women, must be restored to their original conceptual forms. There is no incident or detail of narrative in the scared Christian Scriptures that cannot be made to glow with a far more inspiring luminosity of meaning when taken allegorically rather than objectively and "literally". The content of the sacred literature, expressing the Nous, the God-mind, and the materialization of the divine ideas in the living world of matter, must be restored to the plane of its original conceptuality. The entire body of Scripture must now be transfigured in our consciousness with the light it was designed first to conceal, then to reveal. If done it can inaugurate finally a reenlightenment and transfiguration of human society.

The Ancients called this "Soul-Science" In ancient times, the principles of this "Soul-Science" were the very core of the Mysteries. Knowledge and instruction were not withheld from any who manifested potential capability and worthiness, as well as the desire and the will to attain the high goal of spiritual enlightenment. Thus began the tradition of secrecy. Only the reflective, discerning mind can see through and beyond the outer appearance and catch the spiritual counterpart in the world that remains hidden to the less thoughtful. The Christian movement laid hold of the great body of imagery designed to depict spiritual truth and esoteric wisdom, and transliterated it into "literal history" and when this was done the darkness overtook the light.

Failure of modern effort to read the deep message of the Book is due to the fact that modern scholars stupidly and stubbornly refuse to see that Ancient Scriptural writing was esoteric or hidden as to its meaning, and allegorical and symbolical as to its method. The ancients did not use newspaper directness. On the contrary they put up their secret wisdom, granted to them by the great Sages, in the form of allegories and myths, which were to be taken as fiction in their outward dress, but as the picture of the profoundest truth and knowledge in an inward sense. By a combination of symbols, nature signs and allegories, often woven into a background of real history, they sought to portray the deepest types of spiritual experience. The Bible has been crassly taken for literal truth about living personages on the stage of mortal history when it fact this is often only a symbolic and personification of Divine Principles. It has been rendered literally and historically to the detriment of its hidden Divine Truths. This is the most gross blunder, the most pretentious error, in all human history; this mistaking of spiritual allegorism for literal human narrative. New research makes it positively clear that the Old Testament narratives are in their entirety rewritings of old Egyptian material, distorted and obscured as it passed down through history and later Hebrew hands. Egyptian scripture was never historical. It was spiritual symbology; pure and simple. The weirdest phenomenon of history transpired when later ignorance took the Egyptian constructions and converted them into absurd literal narrative. And the thinking of the whole world of the civilized West has thus been based on history that never occurred, and the Christian Church has been founded on a set of miracles that were never performed by some Jewish magician. The only miracle envisaged in ancient theology was the transformation of human character by the indwelling god, and this spiritual miracle was poetized, dramatized and allegorized in a hundred forms of outward representation, all of which was absurdly taken for personal history later. This conversion of spiritual into biographical history has made Christianity the instrument of the grossest degradation of sublime ancient truth to which it has ever been subject. That is to say, that all Christian doctrines present the Ancient Wisdom in a more literal and hence cruder form of meaning than had ever been done before in earlier religions the world over. In the nailing of a personal Jesus on a wooden cross Christianity reduced the glorious drama of the spiritual life to its grossest and most repellant form. Little is it known that it was 700 years before Rome pictures a man hanging on a cross. This betrays the evolution of the Christian idea; not the truth. It is the business of enlightened Theosophy to lift this weight of crude literal dogmatism from off the modern imagination and conscience at whatever cost. The human soul is itself bound on the cross of gross superstition so long as these crude notions dominate the conscious and subconscious thought of modern man. The light of the true spiritual Gnosis of olden times must be cast into the dark nooks and corners of modern thinking, and disperse the mists of such errant and arrant doctrinism that we find in a "literal-historical" Christianity today. It is my firm belief, based on years of the most diligent research, that it is impossible to understand the allegories of the Bible without a knowledge of ancient methods of sacred writing, and of the ancient philosophies.

In closing it was my discovery after years of study following Seminary that all religious writings deal with but one central fact, the incarnation of man, or the descent and resurrection of the soul. It is the whole story of religion. The old books deal with nothing beyond this story and its involvements. It is itself the key to all philosophy and religion. In the light of this one fact all complicated meanings can be reduced to clear significance. It clears up the infinite complexities of the symbology that have confounded the learned scholars and theologians. That man is a god dwelling in an animal form is the central and cardinal fact of all religion.

Our Bible, sadly misinterpreted by its most loyal devotees, is in reality a collection of ancient works that embody in veiled figures the fundamentals of the genuine old wisdom of the hierophants and initiates into these Divine Mysteries of antiquity. One might say indeed, that it is a repository of the great Mystery teaching of early times. In fact it is an assemblage of material comprising the substance of Hermeticism, Gnosticism, Kabalism, Chaldean astrology, Greek Orphism and Hindu Wisdom, drawn mostly from ancient Egypt. It could even be said that it is a book of Platonic Theosophy. For Plato summed up most of the elements of these systems. To an orthodox churchman it would doubtless seem to belittle the Book to say that it contains nothing but the Platonic philosophy. But this is only because the average Christian and layman knows nothing of the grandeur of the Platonic wisdom. For this Book, the Bible, when correctly interpreted and its true meaning restored by the "keys" necessary for its elucidation is truly "of the gods," and perhaps the most luminous presentation of spiritual knowledge ever to be entrusted to the human intellect. Fortunate is Christianity that its Bible is heavily charged with the elements of the great Divine Wisdom of past ages. Sadly, few know. This article is created to help the reader awaken to the "Christ within" and the Divine Truth that slumbers within him.

{short description of image}Bennoah1@airmail.net