The Gnostic Crucifixion Part 3

"And the Births-of-matter rejoiced that they had been remembered, and were glad that they had come out of the narrow and difficult place, and prayed to the Hidden Mystery:

"'Give us authority that we may create for ourselves aeons and worlds according to Thy Word, upon which Thou didst agree with Thy servant; for Thou alone art the changeless One, Thou alone the boundless, the uncontainable, self-taught, self-born Self-father; Thou alone art the unshakeable and unknowable; Thou alone art Silence and Love, and Source of all; Thou alone art virgin of matter, spotless; whose Race no man can tell, whose manifestation no man can comprehend.'" (_F._, 564.)

To understand, man must pa.s.s beyond the stage of man, and self-realize himself as "kin to Him"--the Logos.

It is, however, doubtful whether "Race" is the correct reading in our text; but as it is the clear reading in 15 the above notes are germane to our study. The MS. apparently reads "every Limb." This again is one of the most general Gnostic mystical terms, and is taken over from the Osiric Mysteries. The Limbs of the G.o.d are scattered abroad, and collected together again in the resurrection. The inner meaning of this graphic symbolism may be gleaned from the following striking pa.s.sages.

In a MS. of the Gnostic Marcus there is a description of the method of symbolizing the Great Body of the Heavenly Man, whereby the twenty-four letters of the Greek alphabet were a.s.signed in pairs to the twelve Limbs.

This Body was the symbol of the ideal economy, dispensation or ordering of the universe, its planes, regions, hierarchies, and powers. (_F._, 366.)

This also is the true Body of man, the Source of all his bodies. And so we read the following mystery-saying in _The Gospel of Eve_:

"I stood on a lofty mountain and saw a Great Man, and another, a dwarf, and heard as it were a Voice of thunder, and drew nigh for to hear. And He spake unto me and said: 'I am thou, and thou art I; and wheresoever thou art, I am there, and in all am I sown (or scattered). And whencesoever thou willest, thou gatherest Me; and gathering Me, thou gatherest Thyself.'" (_F._, 439.)

This is a vision of the Great Person and little person, of the Higher Self and lower self. It may also be interpreted in terms of the Logos and humanity; but it comes nearer home to think of it as the mystery of the individual man--the scattering of the Limbs of the Great Person in the personalities that have been his in many births.

This idea is brought out more clearly in a pa.s.sage from _The Gospel of Philip_. It is an apology or defence, as it was called, a formula to be used by the soul in its ascent above, as it pa.s.sed through the s.p.a.ce of the Midst; and for the mystic it is a declaration of the state of a man who is in his last compulsory earth-life.

"I have recognised myself, and gathered myself together from all sides. I have sown no children for the Ruler, but have torn up his roots, and have gathered together my Limbs that were scattered abroad. I know Thee who Thou art; for I am of those from Above." (_Ibid._)

He has sown no children to the Ruler, the Lord of Death; he has not contracted any fresh debt, or created a new form of personality, into which he must again incarnate. But he has torn up the roots of Death, by shattering the form of egoity, and bursting the bonds of Fate. He has gathered together his Limbs, completed the articulation of his Perfect Body.

The Limbs were according to certain orderings, one of which was the configuration of the five-fold Star, the five-limbed Man. Thus in _The Acts of Thomas_ we read:

"Come Thou who art more ancient far than the five holy Limbs--Mind, Thought, Reflection, Thinking, Reasoning! Commune with them of later birth!" (_F._, 422.)

These five Limbs are also the five Words of the mystery of the Vesture of Light in the _Pistis Sophia_ (p. 16), with which the Christ is clothed in power on the Day of Triumph, the Great Day "Come unto us," when His Limbs are gathered together and the Song of the Powers begins:

"Come unto us, for we are Thy Fellow-Limbs. We are all one with thee. We are one and the same, and Thou art one and the same."

In the whole doc.u.ment much is said of the "sweet mysteries that are in the Limbs of the Ineffable," but it would be too long to repeat it here. It will be perhaps of greater service to append a very striking pa.s.sage, from _The Books of the Saviour_, which has been copied into the MS. of the _Pistis Sophia_ (pp. 253, 254):

"And they who are worthy of the Mysteries that dwell in the Ineffable, which are those that have not emanated--these are prior to the First Mystery. To use a similitude and correspondence of speech that ye may understand, they are the Limbs of the Ineffable. And each is according to the dignity of its Glory--the Head according to the dignity of the Head, the Eye according to the dignity of the Eye, the Ear according to the dignity of the Ear, and the rest of the Limbs [in like fas.h.i.+on]; so that the matter is plain: There are many Limbs (Members) but only one Body.

"Of this I have spoken in a plan, a correspondence and similitude, but not in its true form; nor have I revealed the Word in Truth, but as the Mystery of the Ineffable.

"And all the Limbs that are in Him..., that is, they that dwell in the Mystery of the Ineffable, and they that dwell in Him, and also the Three s.p.a.ces that follow according to their Mysteries--of all of these in truth and verity am I the Treasure; apart from which there is no Treasure peculiar to [this] cosmos. But there are other Words and Mysteries and Regions [of other worlds].

"Now, therefore, Blessed is he who hath found the Words of the Mysteries of the s.p.a.ce towards the exterior. He is a G.o.d who hath found the Words of the Mysteries of the second s.p.a.ce, in the midst. He is a Saviour and free of every s.p.a.ce who hath found the Words of the Mysteries of the third s.p.a.ce towards the interior....

"But He, on the other hand, who hath found the Words of the Mysteries which I have set forth for you according to a similitude--namely, the Limbs of the Ineffable--Amen I say unto you, that man who hath found the Words of those Mysteries in the Truth of G.o.d, he is the First in Truth, and like unto Him; for it is through these Words and Mysteries that [all things are made] and the universe itself stands through that First One. Therefore is he who hath found the Words of these Mysteries, like unto the First. For it is the gnosis of the Gnosis of the Ineffable in which I have spoken with you this day."

It is thus seen that the means used in revealing the manner of the highest Mysteries of the Ineffable was by the similitude of the Limbs or Members of the Body. It, therefore, follows, as we have already seen, that this symbolism was one of the most, if not the most, fundamental in this Gnosis. The three stages of perfectioning are those of the Saint, G.o.d and Saviour. But these are still stages in evolution or process, no matter how sublime they be. The fourth or consummation is other; it transcends process, it is ever itself with itself, embracing all processes and all powers simultaneously. But we must not be tempted to comment on this instructive pa.s.sage, for there is quite enough material in it to develop into a small treatise in itself. For an admirable intuition of the Mystery of the Limbs of the Ineffable, and the meaning of the words "the Head is according to the dignity of the Head," etc., the reader is referred to the beautiful pa.s.sage in _The Unt.i.tled Apocalypse_ of the Bruce Codex, quoted in the comments on _The Hymn of Jesus_ (pp. 54, 55).

The Gnostic seers lost themselves in the contemplation of the simultaneous simplicity and multiplicity of these Mysteries. Thus again in the same _Unt.i.tled Apocalypse_ we read:

"He it is whose Limbs (Members) make a myriad of myriads of Powers, each one of which comes from Him." (_F._, 547).

This graphic symbolism of the Limbs is derived from the tradition of the Osiric Mysteries. Many a pa.s.sage could be quoted in ill.u.s.tration from _The Book of the Coming-forth by Day_, that strange and marvellous collection of Egyptian Rituals commonly known as the _Book of the Dead_; but perhaps the under-meaning of the mystery is nowhere more clearly shown than in the following magnificent pa.s.sage from _The Litany of the Sun_, inscribed on the Tombs of the Kings of ancient Thebes:

"The Kingly Osiris is an intelligent Essence. His Limbs conduct Him; His 'Fleshes' open the way for Him. Those who are born from Him create Him.

They rest when they have caused the Kingly Osiris to be born.

"It is He who causes them to be born. It is He who engenders them. It is He who causes them to exist. His Birth is the Birth of Ra in Amenti. He causes the Kingly Osiris to be born; He causes the Birth of Himself."

(See my _World-Mystery_, 2nd ed., p. 162.)

It requires no elaboration to show that this is precisely the same mystery as the secret set forth in our Vision of the Cross. The Kingly Osiris is Atman, the Self, the True Man, the Monad. This is the Kingly Osiris in his male-female nature, self-creative. Atman is both the producer and product of evolution. In a restricted sense the above may be interpreted from the standpoint of the individuality and its series of personalities in incarnation.

15. And now to return to the text. The Race is the Upper Nature, now scattered abroad in the hearts of men; it is the true Spirit of man, the hidden Divinity within him. It is this which re-turns, and so causes the man to turn or repent. It is obedient, that is audient, to the Voice of the Self, the compelling Utterance of the Logos. He who not only hears, but hearkens to or obeys the sweet counsels of this Great Persuasion, becomes this Upper Nature consciously; and therefore it no longer is what it was, for it is conscious in the man, and so the man is above men of the lower nature.

16. These mysterious sentences all set forth the state of true Self-consciousness. So long as man is not conscious that he is Divine, so long is the Divine in him not what it really is; the "lower" "limits" the "higher." Union is attained by "hearkening," by "attention." Then it is that the man becomes his Higher Self, and that Higher Self becomes in its turn the Self, having taken his self in separation into his Self as union.

17. This "attention" is the straining or striving towards the One; and therefore no attention must be paid to the many. The whole strife of warring opinions and doubts must be reconciled, or at-oned, within the Mystery. The thought must be allowed to dwell but little on "those without." A height must be reached from which the whole human drama can be seen as a spectacle below and within; this height is not with regard to s.p.a.ce and place, but with respect to consciousness and realization that all is taking place within the man's Great Body as the operations of the Divine economy. They who are "without the mystery" are not arbitrarily excluded, but are those who prefer to go forth without instead of returning within.

18. They who have re-turned, or turned back on themselves, and entered into themselves for the realization of true Self-consciousness, alone can understand the meaning of the Great Pa.s.sion, as has been so admirably set forth in the Mystery-Ritual of the Dance.

Those who have consciousness of these spiritual verities, nay, even those who have but dimly felt their greatness, will easily understand that the story of the crucifixion as believed in by the ma.s.ses was for the Gnostics but the shadow of an eternal happening that most intimately concerned every man in his inmost nature.

19. The outer story was centred round a dramatic crisis of death on a stationary cross--a dead symbol, and a symbol of death. But the inner rite was one of movement and "dancing," a living symbol and a symbol of life.

This was shown to the disciple--indeed, as we have seen, he was made in the Dance to partake in it--that he might know the mystery of suffering in a moment of Great Experience. He saw it and became it; it was shown him in action. He had seen sorrow and suffering, and the cause of it had been dimly felt; but its ceasing he did not yet know really, for the ceasing of sorrow could only come when he could realize sorrow and joy, suffering and bliss, simultaneously. And that mystery the Christ alone knows.

20. Let the disciple then first see the suffering of the man through, not his own, but His Master's eyes. He will first only see the mystery, grasp it intellectually; he will not as yet realize it. When he realizes it, there will then be bliss indeed, for he will begin to become the Master Himself. And the Master is the conqueror of woe--not, however, in the sense of the annihilator of it, but as the one who rejoices in it; for he knows that it is the necessary concomitant of bliss, and that the more pain he suffers in one portion of his nature, the more bliss he experiences in another; the deeper the one the deeper the other, and therewith the intenser becomes his whole nature. His Great Body is learning to respond to greater and greater impulses or "vibrations."

The consummation is that he becomes capable of experiencing joy in sorrow and sorrow in joy; and thus reaches to the gnosis that these are inseparables, and that the solution of the mystery is the power of ever experiencing both simultaneously.

21. It may thus to some extent become clear that what is a.s.serted of the Christ in the general Gospel-story is typically true and yet is not true.

Those who look at one side only of the living picture see in a gla.s.s darkly.

If we could only realize that all the ugliness and misery and confusion of life is but the underside, as it were, of a pattern woven on the Great Loom or embroidered by Divine Fingers! We can in our imperfect consciousness see only the underside, the medley of crossing of threads, the knots and finis.h.i.+ngs-off; we cannot see the pattern. Nevertheless it exists simultaneously with the underside. The Christ sees both sides simultaneously, and understands.

22. But the term that our Gnostic writer chooses with which to depict this grade of being is not Christ, but Word or Reason (Logos). This Reason is not the ratiocinative faculty in man which conditions him as a duality; it is rather more as a Divine Monad, as Pure Reason, or that which can hold all opposites in one. It is called Word because it is the immediate intelligible Utterance of G.o.d.

23. This is the first mystery that man must learn to understand; then will he be able to understand G.o.d as unity; and only finally will he understand the greatest mystery of all--man, the personal man, the thing we each of us now are, G.o.d in multiplicity, and why there is suffering.

24. With this the writer breaks off, knowing fully how difficult it is to express in human speech the living ideas that have come to birth in him, and knowing that there are still more marvellous truths of which he has caught some glimpse or heard some echo, but which he feels he can in no way set forth in proper decency.

And so he tells us the Lord is taken up, unseen by the mult.i.tudes. That is to say, presumably, no one in the state of the multiplicity of the lower nature can behold the vision of unity.

25. When he descends from the height of contemplation, however, he remembers enough to enable him to laugh at the echoes of his former doubts and fancies and misconceptions, and to make him realize the marvellous power of the natural living symbolic language that underlies the words of the mystery-narrative that sets forth the story of the Christ.

POSTCRIPT.

The vision itself is not so marvellous as the instruction; nevertheless it allows us to see that the Cross in its supernal nature is the Heavenly Man with arms outstretched in blessing, showering benefits on all--the perpetual Self-sacrifice (_F._, 330). And in this connection we should remind ourselves of the following striking sentence from _The Unt.i.tled Apocalypse_ of the Bruce Codex, an apocalypse which contains perhaps the most sublime visions that have survived to us from the Gnosis: