But he answered and said unto them, An evil and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign, and there shall no sign be given to it, but the sign of the prophet Jonas:

   For as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale's belly; so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.

   The men of Nineveh shall rise in judgment with this generation, and shall condemn it; because they repented at the preaching of Jonas; and, behold, a greater than Jonas is here.
   — Matthew 12:39-41

   This great allegory, like so many other allegories of the Bible, can be correctly interpreted only if one has the occult key. Its interpretation involves some of the profoundest occult truths, going back to the very basis of our evolutionary scheme

   According to the Western Wisdom Teachings as given out by the Elder Brothers of the Rose Cross through Max Heindel, there are seven great Days in our scheme of manifestation: the Saturn, Sun, Moon, Earth,Venus, Jupiter, and Vulcan Periods, and a great Cosmic Night following each Period. In each of these Periods there are Revolutions, or shorter periods of manifestations, of the evolving life waves which recapitulate previous conditions in the different Periods. At the present time we are in the fourth or Earth Revolution of the fourth or Earth Period.

   "Now, Jonah means dove, a well recognized symbol of the Holy Spirit, or third Aspect of the Triune God. During the three 'days' comprising the Saturn, Sun, and Moon Revolutions of the Earth Period, and in the 'nights', or rest periods, between, the Holy Spirit (Jehovah), with the assistance of other great Creative Hierarchies, worked in the Great Deep, perfecting (from without) the inward parts of the Earth and man, and removing the dead weight of the Moon. (The Moon became the home of that part of humanity too crystallized to stay on the parent planet.) Then the Earth emerged from its watery stage of development in the middle of the Atlantean Epoch, 'Jonah, the Spirit Dove,' or Holy Spirit Principle, having accomplished the salvation of the greater part of mankind.

   "Neither the Earth nor its inhabitants were capable of maintaining their equilibrium in space, and the Cosmic Christ therefore commenced to work with and on us, finally at the Baptism descending as a dove (not in the form of a dove, but as a dove) upon the man Jesus. And as Jonah, the dove of the Holy Spirit, was three Days and three Nights in the Great Fish (the Earth submerged in water), so at the end of our involutionary pilgrimage must the other dove, the Christ, enter the heart of the Earth for the coming three revolutionary Days and Nights to give us the needed impulse on our evolutionary journey. He must help us to etherealize the Earth in preparation for the Jupiter Period when we will function in bodies of ether."

   Thus the man Jesus gave up his dense and vital bodies to the Christ Spirit, so that Christ Jesus might function here on the Earth for three years, teaching and preaching the precepts which form the basis of the Christian religion. At the Crucifixion, the Christ Spirit was liberated from the bodies of Jesus and entered into the Earth to become its indwelling planetary Spirit, radiating its great Love-Wisdom Power outward to humanity so that the individualized Christ Spirit within each human being might be impinged upon and fostered into greater brilliance. So will He, "a greater than Jonas," aid humanity to unfold the Christ Within and become liberated from the bonds of materiality.
  — Rays from the Rose Cross Magazine, May, 1975, page 215