The 13th century ecstatic poet, Rumi, told a now-famous story about an elephant. Some Sufis needed to raise money. To do that they brought an elephant to a place where an elephant had never been seen. They brought it in during the dark of night and kept it in a darkened tent. Then they sold tickets for brief visits to experience the elephant in the tent. One man went in and came out and said the elephant is like a temple with great pillars; another said it was like the large fans used to cool the queen. Yet another said the elephant is like a giant hose. At this point in the story Rumi remarks, “What a difference a little light would make.”

In the Rosicrucian philosophy we have been given more than a little light; we have received what is like the summer sun at noon on the Sahara. It sometimes seems like everything is revealed and made clear. The reality is different for the world. The sun does not brighten things everywhere at the same time; there are dark quarters. There are also theological pillars and fans. “To whom much is given, of him much will be required.” It is our duty to bring light where there is darkness. “Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your Father which is in heaven.” It is ours to expose the pillars and fans for what they are in the whole of things.

One of the theological pillars that needs clarification is the “doctrine of vicarious atonement.” There are many variants of this doctrine whose names reveal their meanings. They include the ransom theory, Christ the victor theory, the recapitulation theory, the satisfaction theory, the penal substitution theory, the moral influence theory, and others. They all have one thing in common – the idea that Christ died for our sins and in that death redeemed us.

According to the findings of Christian mystical seers Christ did have to die, but it wasn’t the death of Christ that gives us the blessing of the path to redemption and salvation, it is the life of Christ that does that. Mystical reasons for the necessity of death will come farther on. For now, it is more ripe to speak of the historical basis of this doctrine.

The Rosicrucian philosophy teaches that religion evolves as we evolve. In the time depicted in the Garden of Eden story, our consciousness was predom inantly inner. We did not need a religion. We beheld divinity, a fact echoed by St. Paul. We were then becoming aware of the without, and were only mildly aware of the taking on, and leaving off, of physical bodies. We were coming into the chemical Earth as it was forming. While we were becoming more outwardly conscious, we were losing our inward awareness. To become outward was one of the goals for us in the divine plan. To become preoccupied with the without so extensively that we lost touch with the within, and its laws, was not. We were distracted. The gradual losing of inwardness led to some insecurity in us. We were vulnerable, as we often are in periods of change. We responded by becoming more focused on the loss of our physical bodies, and the outer world. In this state we were tempted to seek immortality through reproduction of physical bodies at will. We took the temptation and rebelled against divine injunction about the sacred creative force. We did this before consciously knowing the inner laws about the creative force and its purpose. Consequently, we became out of harmony with the cosmos and its divine plan. The result was that we “fell” more deeply into matter than was intended.

In taking the sacred creative force into our volition, we were effectively declaring spiritual sovereignty from the spiritual hierarchies which previously controlled our progress. Procreative license did not satisfy our insecurity. We still needed the Divine and its guidance, so we sought spiritual connection through religion. When we declared spiritual sovereignty, the divine hierarchies had to respect that, as all divine beings do. They could no longer control us willy-nilly. They had to use other, indirect means to bring us to what we needed. One of the means to humble our burgeoning selfishness was sacrifice, in return for spiritual connection, which is exactly what the word religion means. We were asked to sacrifice our most precious possessions, animals, for divine blessing. For many thousands of years animal sacrifice was a part of religious experience. Ritual sacrifice became an integral, almost constant, component of religion.

“Blood is a peculiar essence.” Mystics and occultists know there is a power to be gained in the taking of the blood of an animal or another human. This is true whether it is done by an individual or a group. It is a power that binds those who are complicit, and, in that, freedom is sacrificed. Psychopathic murderers feel this power, and the taking of blood is a tool in the rituals of criminal and sorcerous societies. There have been cultures in which priestly leaders held power by perverting this principle in human sacrifice.

With these things in our long history, and still present in the psychic background, one can understand how many might be inclined to see the sacrifice and crucifixion of Christ as a propitiation, a cosmic ransom, a substitution, or a ritual sacrifice, after so many millennia of conditioning. However, understanding these origins of the theological theories, and the environment from which they sprang, does not make them true. Any Christian aspirant, of any ilk, ought to be ashamed to think their religion is founded in ritual, blood sacrifice. One of the worst forms of materialism is literalism, of the kind that leads to the belief that one is literally, not symbolically or analogously, consuming flesh and blood in communion. The religion of Christ, the new religion, the religion of the Son, is a religion founded in love, not in death and blood. The old religions, the religions of Jehovah, were religions of separation unto individualism, and they were preoccupied with death. The theories of vicarious atonement seem to be reversion to bargaining with God in the fear of death, the fear that took us into the “fall” in the first place. Perhaps a perusal of the purpose of the life of Christ can help to understand the necessity for the death if it was not literally a blood sacrifice, the binding power notwithstanding.

A light perusal of the Gospels, without even going into any esoteric interpretation, is a good way to begin to understand of the incarnation of Christ. Doing that reveals that St. Johns Gospel does that much more than any of the synoptic Gospels. In St. John’s Gospel Christ frequently tells us why he came. He came to bring things to those who were in need, and who were willing to receive what he offered. The list of offerings is not very long but it is repetitious. It includes light, vision, love, peace, joy, truth and, above all, life. The gift of life, expressed in several forms, is clearly at the front of the purpose of Christ. The life is not offered in contradistinction to death, for which preoccupation it is an antidote. It is Life, per se, “abundant” life, “eternal” life, life not of this world. A simple scan of the scriptural source material for all forms of Christianity, should lay to rest notions of ransom, substitution or any other reasons for a sacrificial death. It doesn’t. One sees more crucifixes than celebrations of the life and love of Christ, as though death instead of life purges transgressions. Our continuance in spiritual blindness, instead of “light” and “vision” offered by Christ, seems to be self-perpetuating. It seems to be a stubborn persistence in materialism. We exiled ourselves from the Garden of Eden (inner vision), and we have become accustomed to our exile — we are sensible people, literally. Like little children, we think we can get away with something if we aren’t seen, and if we are caught our sins are atoned for. In that frame of mind, someone dying to remove our sins seems pleasant, and has even proven plausible to many. It doesn’t work that way. We cannot escape the consequences of our deeds anymore than we can escape ourselves. To understand the remission or forgiveness of sins, even a little, it is beneficial to appeal to esoteric Christianity, to Christian Mysticism.

It must be stated ab initio that this subject is well beyond the bounds of a short essay. Many books have been written on the remission and forgiveness of sins, and many more will be written. It must also be stated that a deep and living understanding of the subject is also currently beyond the author of this essay. At best, this will be a little sip from the deep well that issues the water of life.

There is a pagan creation story which roughly states that darkness (invisibility) was first. The first thing created in darkness was love and the first thing love created was the law, under which all else was created. Besides roughly paralleling one of the creation stories of Genesis, this story is the inverse of St. Paul saying, “the end of the law is love.” Love is the beginning and end of the law. It subtends it. Love is also an attribute of Life Spirit, the home of Christ, the Son, who represents it. All of the “I am” statements of Christ in St. John’s Gospel are attributes of Life Spirit. For example, when Christ says, “I am the truth,” Christ is speaking of pure truth which transcends the principles that contain it in the abstract subdivision of the world of thought, and through which principles, we currently experience truth. Central to these principles is the principle of cause and consequence, the law. The love of Life Spirit gives forth as manifest creation through the law. Creation is a manifestation of something new. Newness is another attribute of Life Spirit—”behold, I make all things new.”

Under the law we get back what we gave. There is something new in the interval between cause and consequence, or there would be no change, and we know from experience that, in the actualization of events, we and the world are forever changed. One cannot go back to the ignorance antecedent to the change. In the net of causes and consequences, we occupy ourselves with the activity of the causes and consequences. Like the law, our Self is also an idea, a divinely conceived idea, in the abstract subdivision of the world of thought. This is the same Self that was beguiled and misdirected in its infancy and innocence, at the “fall of humanity;” there was no lower nature to be culpable at that time. Thus, we were introduced to Self, selfishness, cause and consequence, and sin simultaneously. We have become preoccupied with all these things, especially in our focus deep in matter and materialism. We were meant to experience and create in matter but not so blindly, obsessively and selfishly. Something had to be done because we were on the verge of making our continuance on the Earth impossible. Our misuse of our creative power was severe.

What was done was that Christ came to live among us as one of us to offer us a way to redemption, if we accept it. Everything in Christ and Life Spirit is free and voluntary, including this act of Christ. Our acceptance of Christ and the way to redemption also had to be free and voluntary. Christ brought a new religion, not just a new sect, but a new order of religion. Previous religions were religions of Jehovah, of the Holy Ghost. Those religions were for individuation. The religion of Christ is the religion of the Life Spirit, of the Son. Some of what this means can be found in another essay about grace and the forgiveness of sins.

The self-proclaimed mission of Christ was not to do away with the law but to fulfill it. Without law there would be no order in the concrete cosmos. There would be no creative feedback for the Divine. The forgiveness of sins does not mean that causes will have no consequences. It means, in part, that the weight of personal heaviness is lifted. “My yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” We are freed when we live in Christ and Christ lives in us. In living the religion of Christ an internal, abundant love is perpetually injected into the causal stream. The love of Christ is supremely creative love. “They will know that you are mine in that you love one another” or “Love thine enemy.” Bringing Life Spirit into things makes everything new. It is like forgiveness between friends. The deed that necessitated forgiveness is still what it was, and it will still have consequences, but those consequences will take place in the state of clarity that is like starting with a clean state. One is no longer living under a pall of guilt. Again, the experience is like things are when one has made up with someone, and can start fresh, but, because of the love, everything is made better. The only difference in general reality from these examples is that in Christ, this attitude can be sustained, if we will it, everything is new.

Whether it is by intuition or by invitation (“ask and it shall be given unto you”), with Christ everything is new. “Behold, I make all things new.” The newness of being in a state of grace means our lives become more creative. There is nothing humdrum about the Christian life. Our lives are neither prescribed nor proscribed, they are as spontaneous as we ask them to be. Lest we forget, it is easier to say these things in word, then it is to live them. In the face of onerous consequences, the asking is not always so easy. There is no promise that for Christians life, will be easy (it never has been for Christians), but with Christ it will be easier, “my yoke ….” Nonetheless, the vitality of trying to live the Christian life is well worth all of the duress.

Bringing the Life Spirit into our lives, brings in love. Love needs an object, something to love. The pure love of Life Spirit, the love of Christ, loves anything and everything simultaneously according to the need for love. It is universal love. With regard to humans, this means altruism. In Christ, when we act, when we initiate new causes, we do so for the sake of the other and for the sake of love, i.e., for the Christ’s sake. Living this way gets around another problem with sin, the problem of selfishness, the selfishness we have nurtured in, and since, the “fall.” Again, this is not easy, though it is certainly worthwhile, and it becomes easier as we learn to love impersonally. In trying to live this way we become vulnerable to those who are not trying to live this way, but, if we are not vulnerable to suffering, we are not vulnerable to grace. “My grace is sufficient to thee.” This statement of the matter is a bit simplistic about what is a difficult moral issue involving self-respect, and other considerations. Though simplistic, it does point to the start of a new way of life of perpetual rebirth in the moment.

Many of our human acts are single-purposed. They are done to accomplish one thing. It is not like that in spiritual things. Many things in many directions on many levels are involved in spiritual acts. The incarnation and life of Christ is like that. Its objectives and ramifications are manifold. One of those objectives relates to what is called vicarious atonement in a more macroscopic sphere of activity.

Sometimes we err in such a way that we cannot immediately atone for our transgression. Circumstances do not always allow rectification of a chain of causes in the moment. Some causes take longer to ripen, than we have time for. Some consequences can only be harvested in certain seasons, like childhood illnesses for example. In large, this has been the case with our human destiny on Earth. Our fall into materialism is aptly described as a “fall” for its speed and precipitousness. We have many unredeemed sins, so many that some describe it as us “bearing a burden of sin.” These unreaped commissions are not only actions. Behind actions there are thoughts and desires. While actions might last for only a few moments, the thoughts and desires behind them linger for a long time, more in terms of millennia than minutes. Acts do not completely discharge thoughts and desires. They continue to have influence. They develop into an atmosphere of influence which some call the psychic background. A psychic atmosphere has great influence. It is likely that we have all experienced this. We may have participated in a group that went bad, and dark feelings lingered and spoiled, a once pleasant atmosphere so badly that the group could not recover. This example, though apt, is minuscule compared to the psychic atmosphere of the Earth after many millennia. Before Christ came the psychic background of the Earth was dark and heavy. Corruption was prevalent everywhere, even in the temples. It was so bad, the Divine Hierarchies, which guide and direct our evolutionary destiny, feared our progress could not be sustained. Something had to be done for the sake of all evolving beings on Earth. What was done is called a deed of Christ.

The evolutionary creation in which we have been blessed to participate does not happen all at once in one activity. It happens in waves. It is like the petals of a rose, some are falling off while others are beginning to form. Each evolutionary wave has unique conditions for it to pass through the stages of creation. In the world around us, we see the evolutionary waves in the mineral, vegetable and animal stages, that precede our human stage. Those who have done the work to develop spiritual vision, report there are many other waves of beings in more advanced stages. In those stages are Angels, Archangels, Lords of Mind and many others. Each wave has reached each stage under differing cosmic conditions, as the whole of the creation unfolds. Consequently, each wave has developed a specialty according to the state of being in which it attained self-consciousness, in the human-like stage, the stage of objectification. We humans have reached self-consciousness in the Chemical Subdivision of the Physical World. We are becoming masters of form in chemical matter. The current Angels reached self-consciousness during the period before this, in the Etheric Subdivision of the Physical World, the Archangels attained self-consciousness in the period before the Angels did, and they reached it in the Desire World, and so on. Not every being in any wave puts the same amount of effort into the creative work. Some in each wave supersede the normal input and they become the Initiate Class capable of penetrating the mysteries of the creation. Among Initiates some excel so much that they go as far as one can go into the mysteries and they are called the Highest Initiate Class. One of the Highest Initiates becomes so perfect in the creative work as to become the Highest Initiate. That singular Highest Initiate becomes the epitome of its wave which it leads and represents. It also represents the aspect of divinity in the Creator invested in its life wave, and the substance specialized by it. Christ is the Highest Initiate of the Archangels and the being representing the second attribute of deity, the Son. Christ, when invested in form, is the living epitome of the Desire World by having created a desire body almost beyond human comprehension, especially in the attractive desires of loving and giving. It was this desire body that was brought into the psychic background of the Earth at the crucifixion. This gift has already radically changed our evolutionary environment, and will wax in influence as we learn to respond to it. This is a macrocosmic manifestation of what is called “the cleansing blood.” This cleansing blood does not remit our sins, but it does give us something new, and powerful, to creatively do that ourselves. It gave us a brighter creative atmosphere or psychic background. Creative advancements since the crucifixion are proof of this.

This gift is, in its higher aspects, called grace. The love of the higher desire world is a manifestation of the much higher love of Life Spirit. Life Spirit is the home of Christ. Life Spirit transcends the Abstract Subdivision of the World of Thought, so it transcends the law. It is free, except in the paradoxical way that love cannot help but love, in its very nature. We did not deserve the love that brightened our psychic environment. There was nothing in our stream of causes and consequences that indicated that we deserved grace and all the wondrous things that it is, and that its love can give. Christ gave us a break that we didn’t deserve. Can we do the same and receive grace by passing it on? Think about this the next time someone cuts you off in traffic.

The curious thing about freedom is that everything about it is free. “Freely have you received, now freely give.” One cannot store freedom, it must be given, it must be live, that is the way of Life Spirit. Freedom must also be accepted freely. We must accept grace to receive it. It can be denied but one wonders who would want to. In cases of pride, it must be asked for. Before we could receive the grace of Christ, we had to accept Christ as one of us.

We humans have strange ways of accepting strangers. Some of them involve blood. The heart and blood are the seat of the Life Spirit in the human body. Thus, for example, we find the altruistic love of Life Spirit manifest in the mixing of blood. Mixing of blood is how much of the separative prejudice of races and cultures are being dissolved. Blood is mixed in other ways beyond interracial marriage, though often it more symbolic than actual. Native Americans and some Scandinavians required mixing of blood by cutting vessels and letting blood flow together to be accepted into their community. To us earthlings, Christ, manifest through the body of Jesus, was an alien, not one of us. We had to accept Christ to receive the divine gift of grace. Mortality is the defining agency of our humanity. We say things like “man is mortal.” It may seem strangely perverse to our seemingly finer sensibilities, but, by our own definition, to receive Christ among us, we had to kill Christ by killing the body of Jesus as though killing Christ. We received the greatest gift that humanity has ever been given, in our most ignominious behavior. Paradox. This should not be a surprise because paradoxical opposites unite in the truth beyond reason, in Life Spirit.

Again, many things are accomplished in one deed. Christ, the epitome of life, had to face death as any human does in order to be able to bring grace to us in our most frail need, the fear of death. Christ had never been in an etheric and a chemical body. There was something new to Christ also in the incarnation. Christ had never experienced exile in the outer world, alone and away from direct knowledge of divinity, as we do. Christ did not know the fear of death. To be able to bring grace to us in a way that we could accept and benefit from it, Christ had to experience what we experience. “Come unto me, ye who labor and are heavy laden, and I shall give you rest.” Those are words that cannot be spoken by a being that had only experienced spiritual joy. The body of Jesus had to experience human existence, and it had to die, and Christ had to experience it for our sake. There was agony on the cross as well as exaltation.

The body of Jesus had to die by the letting of blood. There is an occult principle about blood death that has been known for centuries. In the orient it is called samsara. It has been found that if the body of an individual dies without the letting of blood, there is an attachment to the physical world. The principle seems to have something to do with the engagement of the spirit in the spiritualization of matter while working directly through the blood, but that is a topic which is too much for now. With the letting of blood the spirit and the higher vehicles can escape directly into the inner world’s atmosphere without lingering attachment in engagement to a world unredeemed. Had the body of Jesus with Christ engaged in it, died of natural causes or poisoning or some other death without blood flow, Christ would have been stuck here, like us, until the end of the chemical Earth. This would have been a tragedy of colossal proportion, perhaps something as monstrous as a second “fall.” It had to be by blood, a different kind of “cleansing blood.”

Did Christ die for our sins? Yes, but it seems not for any of the reasons given in any of the versions of the doctrine of vicarious atonement.