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In addition to teaching profound occult truths through His healing works, the Master also gave some practical truths consistent with everyday living, as in the case of the man with the withered hand. His words and acts were not only for the people of His own time but are equally applicable to the needs of the moderns.
The Scribes and Pharisees are always with us and sometimes they are even within us. Intolerance and condemnation of the action of others is pharisaical. Living in such strict accordance with the letter of the law that we relegate mercy, compassion and love to the background is characteristic of those literalists whom the Master reprimanded so often and so sternly.
Because it was the Sabbath, the Pharisees. objected to healing works being performed. The compassionate Lord was sad because of the hardness of their hearts and inquired of them, "Is it lawful to do good or evil on the Sabbath, to save a life or to destroy it?" They were silent before His question. Ofttimes the Christ power within us is hampered by rigid adherence to regulations which exclude the personal equation of pity and love and service outside the prescribed path.
In all spiritual healing, faith is the prime essential. Often the Christ used the word in His work; if not, then He caused the patient to demonstrate it. The man with the withered hand was commanded to "stretch it forth." With no thought of refusal, the effort was made-and the hand was moved and was whole again.
The annals of Mystic Masonry contain this same legend as related by Luke, who adds that it was the right hand which was withered or useless. The two hands symbolize the two paths of service in the occult world. Man in his present materialistic phase has virtually slain the Love power, allowing it to wither from disuse. When the Supreme Lord of Love appeared, He awakened the heart, and as the fires of the heart burned their path outward into the hands, the withered member was healed and made available once more for constructive work in the world.
It is significant in this connection that the withered hand was healed within the precincts of the Temple.
The story of the Centurion is recorded by both Matthew and Luke. This man, vested in military authority under the Roman government, had yet learned in his worldly contacts to practice the two principles which the Master enjoined upon all His disciples, namely, humility or self-effacement and active faith; truly an unusual achievement. Thus he was already qualified to become a follower of the Way, and to be made immediately the recipient of the Master's interest and benefits. "I have not found so great a faith, no, not in Israel," were the Master's words descriptive of the Centurion. The Centurion's bond slave, who was dear to him, was ill, and he had sent friends to ask the aid of the Great Healer, a request which was instantly granted. When the messengers returned home, they found the bond slave whole.
A supremely dedicated life centered in humility and service for others is the working formula for successful discipleship, and will always be productive of results, as exemplified in the response of the Master to the Centurion's request.
In this case, we have another instance of absent healing, as we saw in the story of the Syrophoenician woman and her daughter. Spirit permeates all things and all places in its active or positive manifestation, and matter itself is also Spirit, form being the result of crystallizations around the negative pole of Spirit, which is Space. Therefore the occultist declares that God is Spirit and that no man can be separated from Him in reality. Separateness of Man from God, Matter from Spirit, is but illusion; Unity is the reality, and as the concept of Unity is developed in consciousness, healing at a distance becomes possible. This is what Christ was demonstrating and teaching to the Disciples when He accomplished healings at a distance from the patient.
Verse eight is an esoteric description of a long and earnest preparatory training which leads to the conquest of self. The soldiers and servants are faculties within man himself. When the modern aspirant can affirm: "I say to this one, go, and lie goes: and to another, come, and he comes, and to my servant, do this, and he does it," then he, too, is ready to receive the commendation and favor of the Master and to become aware that his life and his work have been found worthy to come into the aura of His divine and protective Presence.
Again the healing ministry was continued in the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and yet again the blind leaders of the blind continued to remonstrate, rigid in their adherence to the letter of the law while altogether oblivious of the Spirit contained therein.
This healing concerns a woman who had been unable to straighten her body into a natural, normal position for eighteen years. Esoterically, the healings which occur within the synagogue and Temple precincts all have a special hidden meaning not ordinarily found in the other healings. Kabalistically, eighteen yields the number of nine, which is the cipher of freedom, of liberation and illumination. This woman had been inclined toward the earth (mortality) but now having found the Christ she is free, uplifted, centered no longer in the mortal life but in the way of Spirit. "He laid His hands on her and instantly she became erect and glorified God."
In the choosing of His disciples, invariably the Scriptures state: "He called unto them and they came to Him." In this statement we discover the first requisite of discipleship. He called, and this woman came, and she found the "Light which lighteth every man." He called to her, He spoke to her, He touched her. These are the first three steps taken by one who is ready to receive a higher unfoldment of consciousness, and they indicate the opening of the spiritual sense faculties by means of which the neophyte discovers a new world within himself and within nature.
Matthew, Mark and Luke all tell the story of the woman who had suffered with an infirmity for twelve years, and who was among the multitudes pressing and thronging about the Master as He passed on the way to the house of the nobleman, Jairus.
"If I but touch His garments I shall be made whole." These words ascribed to the woman are a part of an initiatory mantram. The garment represents the soul body in contradistinction to the personality. To become whole is to be able to pass through the portals of Initiation where one no longer "sees through a glass darkly, but face to face."
This woman and her healing represent the lifting of the feminine pole and rightfully belongs to the initiatory processes symbolically described in the raising of the daughter of Jairus. In the same way the raising of the Son of the Widow deals with the lifting of the masculine pole and is a part of the initiatory process described in the Resurrection of Lazarus.
The daughter of Jairus was twelve years of age. The infirm woman had been afflicted for sixty-two years. The two instances are related together in all three of the synoptic Gospels.
In order to understand the esoteric meaning underlying the healing of this woman who had been afflicted with an issue of blood for the greater part of life, we look to the ancient teachings on the mystery of the blood. "The blood is a most peculiar essence," Goethe tells us, and its vibratory rate indicates the esoteric status of the individual. The flowing of blood is a great cleanser and purifier of the desire nature. One who is ready for high spiritual work as prophet, teacher or healer, often undergoes some experience whereby a great loss of blood ensues. After this cleansing, he finds it less difficult to still the sense nature, and to silence the clamoring of appetite. Red blood represents man's carnal and materialistic nature. Eventually, through transmutation, blood will become a shining white essence.
All blood diseases are correlated to the element of Fire, and usually result from an overly stimulated desire body, either in the present embodiment or in some previous one.
The Initiator is always very solicitous of His charges as He instructs them in these veiled truths. This is the only recorded instance where Christ Jesus addressed a woman as "daughter." The Teacher becomes in very truth the father and protector of the "new-born" one. Matthew records His salutation to her as, "Be of good courage. Mark and Luke, "Go in Peace," or "Go into Peace" — that Peace which passeth all understanding, for it has found its center in Omnipotent and Omnipresent Good.
Eusebius in the seventh book of his Ecclesiastical History states that he saw at Cesarea Phillipi a statue erected by this woman at the gates of her house, representing Christ standing with His hands outstretched to her kneeling before Him "like one entreating."
This beautiful story, which veils the processes of Initiation from the general reader, is outlined in the three Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke.
Initiation is truly a dying to the old, personal life and being born anew. Luke says that the daughter of Jairus, a twelve-year old girl, "lay a-dying." But Christ said, "The maid is not dead but sleepeth." These are not contradictory statements when interpreted in the light of the Mystery Teachings, but have reference to the same experience.
Christ Jesus endeavored to demonstrate for the Disciples the healing of many and various forms of disease, their pre-existing cause and the method of dealing with it. In the presence of the most advanced of His Disciples He assisted three others to pass into the illumined state of Initiation.
The ego which inhabited the body of the daughter of Jairus was a very advanced one. In her we find an Initiate of the ancient Mysteries, returning as one of the earliest pioneers of the Christian Dispensation. She had been liberated on the inner planes, receiving the holy teachings pertaining to a higher awakened consciousness while her loved ones kept sacred vigil beside her physical casement. At the proper time, Christ, in the presence of the sleeping girl's father and mother and of Peter, James and John, (evidently the only ones present who were ready to understand these inner truths) assisted the maiden in returning and re-entering her physical body.
The Master greeted the girl when she returned with an expression of infinite beauty and tenderness revealing a wealth of inner meaning to the esotericist. Mark tells us that He said, "Talitha cumi." The word Talitha is an Aramaic diminutive meaning "little lamb." His words to her were, "Little Lamb, arise." Lamb or sheep is used throughout both the Old and New Testaments to describe the Initiate. The majority of high seers in the Mosaic era were "Shepherds." The Master Himself came as the Lamb of God, and in the later Initiation of Peter, His keynote is sounded in "Feed my sheep."
In the life cycle of the individual, the symbolic age of twelve is the crucial point for the child. It is then that the youth's desire nature begins to awaken, and the proclivities of past lives begin to manifest themselves. In an instance such as this of Jairus' daughter, an "old soul," one who has known many lives of experience in the earth school, this age marks a definite development of the spiritual nature. Instead of the awakening of the physical desires, there is a definite quickening of the accumulated soul powers of the past. Such a one has worked definitely and consciously with the processes of transmutation for many past lives. This was the case with the child Samuel when he began to prophesy, and the Master Jesus who was also twelve years old when He taught the elders in the Temple.
Inspirational experiences are fairly common even among ordinary adolescents, and psychologists have observed that if an individual does not undergo a religious conversion during this period of life it is likely he will never have such an experience.
It is significant to observe that in all three of the synoptic Gospels, the raising of Jairus' Daughter is preceded by the exorcism of evil spirits.
In the experiences of the Initiate himself the expulsion of devils has reference to passing the Dweller on the Threshold, which is an entity formed of the essence of all evil and negative deeds of past lives, and which the newly initiated must face, conquer and dissolve (partially at least) by transmutation before he can pass into "realms of light" to be hailed as a "new born."
Jairus was a nobleman, a ruler in the synagogue, and therefore a man of high authority. When anyone attains the degree to which this girl Initiate had attained, such are always the sons and daughters of the king, for having found and claimed the rightful heritage of Spirit, one demonstrates true kinship with the Father, "All that the Father hath is mine."
All scriptural references to raising the dead to life refer to the latent divinity within man, which when awakened causes him to become an illumined or enlightened one. Many biblical references to persons being "dead" or "asleep" refer to the materially-minded.
When the silver cord which links the ego to the body has been severed, it is no longer possible to re-animate the body. The Master stated clearly for those who have eyes to see and ears to hear, "the maid is not dead, but sleepeth," indicating that the ego was still linked to the body, which was therefore yet alive.
— Corinne Heline
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