====== The Inner Life ====== == THE HERALD OF THE NEW AGE | APRIL 1937 == ---- ==== EDITORIAL ==== === AFTER THE RESURRECTION === AT THIS Easter time—perhaps the most important Easter the world has yet known, it is fitting to consider the true meaning of the Resurrection as pertaining to man’s Spiritual life. We would have you remember that the life of Jesus Christ on earth was but a personal illustration given us by the Father, a portrayal in its entirety of the life that every man must and will duplicate—after the Christ or Holy Spirit has been born in his soul. The soul of such man will then exemplify in the outer life all of the phases of Jesus’ life, from childhood to Crucifixion, Resurrection and Ascension—but first requiring many lives on earth in which to bring all of these phases to the perfection manifested by Jesus. In other words, those who have been reborn of the Holy Spirit or have undergone the First Baptism are now showing in this life one or more phases of Jesus’ life—Spiritual babyhood, boyhood, young manhood, or having attained full growth, are preparing for Christhood, the Second Baptism. Only a limited number have had that sacred experience. At each Easter time, however, there are a few on earth who, having grown to the full stature of Jesus Christ, are initiated into their Christhood. At this coming Easter Ceremony in the spiritual realms, it being the end of the age and an unusual number of souls having come to their fruitage, and many more to their blossoming or birthing time, with some special great souls to the time of their Crucifixion and Resurrection, it can be imagined the great preparations being made for the reception of these many candidates by their respective Brotherhoods in Spirit. It is not our purpose to speak of these Ceremonies here, other than to remind our readers that they are very real and wonderful Ceremonies, attended and conducted by the Blessed Ones in the Heavenly Jerusalem who comprise the General Assembly, the Church of the First Born, the Spirits of Just Men made Perfect; all Christed souls constituting the Order of Melchizedek, ruled over by our Lord Jesus Christ, Who is King Priest of this Sacred Order. The outer ceremonies in the earthly Jerusalem are but man’s futile efforts to reflect in physical form the realities of what his soul senses in the Heavenly City. Also these Ceremonies are symbolic of the cosmic rebirth or the renewed and higher expression each succeeding year of everything in nature, from a blade of grass to man, man’s first rebirth or soul awakening being similar to the first blossoming time of a tree. But remember, man is a soul and that it has taken many life-times (seasons) of earth expression for his soul to grow to his blossoming time, even as some trees have to grow many years (seasons) before they reach their blossoming time. The fruits of this first year (season) of blossoming are few and of inferior quality; likewise with man. But with each succeeding season (year of the tree or lifetime of the soul) more and better quality of fruit is harvested. The fruit of the soul is Love; the perfected fruit is Loving, Impersonal, Christlike Service. Some believe that when we attain Love we attain all, and it is so to this extent—Love is the only way or means of attaining all. Did not Jesus, God’s Holy Love in manifestation, say, “I am the way, the truth and the life; no man cometh unto the Father except by Me?” And what is the Father but the Kingdom—God’s Consciousness, which means all Wisdom, along with all Love, that gives all Power? The First Baptism symbolizes the birth of Divine Love or the Christ or Holy Spirit in the soul. But that Love has to grow and unfold all its qualities and powers to maturity, as did Jesus when a babe, before it attains to perfect Christhood, symbolized by the Second Baptism, when Love comes forth and possesses the whole man—soul, mind, and mind’s creation, the body. The First Baptism is very wonderful to the one who receives it, and it seems to the mind in its ignorance to be the highest attainment, for it is the birth into a new consciousness and a new world, where all things are now seen with new eyes and a higher understanding. But even as with a babe, at first the soul in this new consciousness is able to grasp only a little of the wonders it sees, and all seem perfect. But soon it learns their limitations and necessarily has to battle with and put forth effort to overcome them. That develops growth, strength and understanding for the soul as well as for the babe. The Second Baptism outpictured by Jesus’ baptism in the Jordan is symbolic of perfected man, called the Son of Man, one who has attained to his fruitage—soul, mind and body now become selfless channels for Divine Love’s—the Holy Spirit’s—use. Thereafter the soul, under the guidance of its Higher Self, the Christ, does the Father’s work on earth even as in Heaven. As above stated there will be an unusual number of candidates for the First Baptism this Easter time, and a few for the Second Baptism, but more perhaps than at any other period since Christ was on earth, because of this being the end of the age, and many souls having been preparing for this particular time and are here to serve the Christ in the New Era now upon us. The world will consequently, succeeding this Easter time, hear of more and more great souls coming forth and taking their rightful places in world activities in the different departments of life, inspiring men to higher and finer ideals and leading them in practical ways to attain them. They will be the influences in the New Age which under Christ will lift men into a new consciousness, when the teachings of Christ will eventually be practiced, lived and applied in all departments of life. BUT WE would speak especially at this time of those souls who have arrived at the final resurrection time and are ready for the Third Initiation or Baptism. We therefore ask you to consider with us that there are certain few souls in incarnation today who in the past age have been such influences as described above, and who have now finished their work or period of expression on earth, who have gone or are going through their crucifixion, and on Friday before Easter will give up the ghost or the illusion of self forever; and then on Easter morning will be initiated into the sublime degree of full membership in the Order of Melchizedek.* We will now recall to you what was said in the article in the September 1936 issue of this Magazine and also in the booklet entitled “The King’s Chamber,” that the world is now in the King’s Chamber, that is the great Initiation Hall where all men are being judged, and that those who, within the two year period following September 1936, “make the righthand turn,” or have turned to the Lord in full surrender, during the next six years “will have their bodies resurrected so that they will have ascended into the same state, texture and vibration of being which Jesus made manifest after the Resurrection, before His final Ascension.” You will remember also that those who make the righthand turn will see straight ahead of them at the end of the Great Hall an Open Tomb. All those who are able to reach this Open Tomb will there face the Christ, and if able to stand in the radiant Glory of His Presence will disappear forever as individual lights in the outer world. Thereafter they will always be with Him, One with Him, expressing His Glory, His Wisdom, Love and Power. All this is highly symbolic and contains a wonderful and Sacred meaning for those who are able to comprehend it. Many today are able to face the Christ and to ascend and enter the Consciousness from which Jesus taught and spoke His memorable words of Truth, but their bodies remain seemingly the same as did Jesus’ body before His resurrection. But in time, as their ascensions become more frequent and the abiding in His Consciousness more prolonged, will that Consciousness, which is the Kingdom or the Father’s Consciousness, influence, draw and hold the mind, until it willingly undergoes the betrayal of the Judas nature of self in its last effort to express itself—for it along with all qualities of self must die and give up its life so that the Christ nature alone shall live—and suffers the crucifixion of self with its illusions of a separate body and life, along with its belief in a separate world. With the giving up of this illusion, it is finished. For with the freeing of the mind of these error beliefs, these creations of its sense of separation, the consciousness of the whole man then becomes clean and pure of all that could hold it to earth and the flesh, and the force of spiritual gravity draws all within into his true consciousness or plane of being with Christ, and that now becomes his abiding place. Jesus’ life is the pattern which all lives on earth must follow. Then for a period after the Resurrection these Great Souls will stay with Their disciples, even as did Jesus with His disciples, appearing to them at will, instructing them in the Work that is to be done in the New Age; after which They will ascend in Spirit to the part and place awaiting them in the Great Brotherhood of Christ, and from there do all Their work. We know that as this great Honor and Glory is only for the Elect of the race, those who read may feel it does not pertain or apply to them. Yet, dear friends, it is to be your Honor and Glory someday, if not at this Easter time, at some future one—when you have grown to your Christ maturity, have crucified self and have given up the ghost of separation. In “The King’s Chamber” is indicated that within the next eight years everyone who makes the righthand turn and walks straight ahead, resolutely facing the Christ within, will come to the Open Tomb, disappear into the Christ, will be resurrected, will ascend and become One with Him. Would you be of those? Then the way is clearly pointed you in these pages. But you will have to walk that way. ---- {{ editorial193704_721.jpg |}} ---- {{ editorial193704_722.jpg |}} ---- {{ editorial193704_723.jpg |}} ---- {{ editorial193704_724.jpg |}} ---- {{ editorial193704_725.jpg |}} ---- //← [[:the_inner_life_vol._5|previous]] // | [[:the_inner_life_vol._5|The Inner Life 1937]] | // [[:the_school_for_disciples_apr37|next]] → //