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Edna Lister’s Lectures 1959
Adventures of the Mind
Edna Lister speech outline, February 3, 1959, Tacoma, WA
The June 14, 1958 issue of The Saturday Evening Post carried an article, the seventh in a series, called “Adventures of the Mind,” by Paul Tillich of Harvard University’s Divinity School, entitled, “The Lost Dimension in Religion.”
While man changes his world, he changes himself. Everything man encounters becomes a tool, but so does he. The question is, A tool for what? In rushing forward horizontally, man has lost the meaning of the symbols of religion, especially those of Christianity. Retold as historical stories, the myths, allegories, and metaphors lose their power because you cannot explain the mysteries behind them on a horizontal level. Paul Tillich’s “dimension of depth,” is our fourth dimension. We have found the way to climb back to God—by burning desire, vivid imagination, and acting as if you already have it.
1 Read Tillich’s “The Lost Dimension in Religion” here.
The Pioneering Mystic
Edna Lister outline, May 5, 1959, Cleveland, OH
The Christos, the Priest, and the Master degrees represent the vows, initiations, duties, and responsibilities of the self-conquering soul conqueror and mediator of the Mystic Brotherhood. The degree of the Mystic represents the physical respiratory rate of balance between the three lower and higher degrees, and between the true inner reality and the outer appearance of the world and the universe. The Adept, Disciple, and Neophyte degrees deal with the vows, initiations, duties, and responsibilities of the self-controlling medium of the White Brotherhood.
On the Via Christa, we use the term medium to describe “an individual held to be a channel of communication between the earthly world and a world of spirits; a person through whom other persons try to communicate with the spirits of the dead.” This definition shows that no consciousness is required on the part of the medium, who usually “works” while in a purely passive trance state.
A mediator is an embodied soul who “interposes between parties at variance for the purpose of reconciling them.” Jesus Christ is the mediator, the divine intercessor through whom sinners may be reconciled to God. Christ is a mediator by nature, as partaking of both natures, divine and human; and mediator by office, as transacting matters between God and man.
A medium uses the subconscious mind to draw information from below the Gates of Light, from the collective unconsciousness of the whole planet, the repository of the world’s collective mind, the aggregate of mental activity here. Sufficient prayer and praise can set aside any predictions a medium makes. A mediator receives information from the Oversoul in communion with the Christ mind above the Gates of Light, through her soul’s rational conscious mind.
All healing is the province of the Adept Degree, usually using only physical means such as drugs and surgery. However, a Mystic, who prays directly to God, who knows and accepts Him, can lower a too-high vibration, as in a fever or other congestion, and raise a low vibration, as in a coma or paralysis. Why does God answer the prayers of some souls but not, apparently, for others? God shows no favoritism—the one fervent, unselfish prayer for good, even if offered by an evildoer, is answered. The Mystic’s great ability is raising the rate of vibration of those around her so that others can see and hear spiritually on her vibration.
Often called the Seven Sacred Degrees, these are the degrees attained in the initiations of all valid mystery schools, and yes, some schools are frauds. The candidate for initiation must pass the tests of many sub-degrees of work that lead to earning each of these supreme seven. On the Via Christa, each of the supreme seven has seven lesser degrees, making 49 degrees in all. The Elect are always working on all levels of the Seven Sacred Degrees. You may not be aware that you are working on the Seven Degrees, but if you love God the Father, and His Son, Jesus the Christ, you are. If you do not, you are not.
| Descending | Degree | Ascending | Initiation |
| 1 | Christos | 7 | Ascension |
| 2 | Priest | 6 | Resurrection |
| 3 | Master | 5 | Crucifixion | 4 | Mystic | 4 | Transfiguration |
| 5 | Adept | 3 | Baptism by Fire |
| 6 | Disciple | 2 | Baptism by Water |
| 7 | Neophyte | 1 | Rebirth |
The ascension candidate’s first ascent through 7 x 7 = 49 degrees of initiation takes him twelve times round the Wheel of Terra in 144 steps. Each sign of the Zodiac (signs are also called houses) is home to twelve virtues (soul powers), totaling 144. The sign you were born under in this life is your sun sign, and you work on developing all its virtues while you are here. Meanwhile, you are also polishing the other eleven sets of virtues because you never operate under just one set. If you neglect the work in any of the signs you will owe soul debts and they accumulate quickly! The 144 steps encompass the 33 Via Christa Degrees as you make your way around the wheel twelve times.
When you step onto the hub of the wheel, which is known as the straight path of the Master, you open a new round of twelve times through the signs. As you ascend higher you are still polishing the virtues you left incomplete. On the first round you open the optic chiasm of the thalamus. To clairvoyant vision, this appears as Light coming through, shining forth from an inverted triangle in the center of your forehead.
As you make the second round through the 144 steps, your pineal body and pituitary gland open to the Light according to your degree of conquering self in past initiations. This, in turn, opens all the stored memories of your past emotional life, especially the negative ones. Most illnesses involving the head or the brain are caused by the toxic chemical by-products of memories, which are stored in the medulla oblongata, polluting the bloodstream. After a certain amount of medulla oblongata cleansing, the parathalamus bodies begin to open. You notice this as feeling a greater serenity. As the Light descends through the thyroid and parathyroid glands, their secretions awaken the thymus gland for eternal youth, which, in turn, prompts the adrenal glands to an ascended function that resists the temptation to fall into anger.
| Degree | Initiatory Requirement | ||
| Neophyte | The Search—Standing in the Outer Court | ||
| Disciple | The Illumination—Standing in the Radiance of the Holy Spirit | ||
| Adept | The Power—Standing in the Inner Court | ||
| Mystic | The Glory—Standing before the Altar | ||
| Master | The Attainment—Standing in the Courts of Melchizedek | ||
| Priest | The Awareness—Standing in the Kingdom of God | ||
The temple described in the word-diagram above is the Supreme Temple of the Sun, located on our Sun. Each of the requirements is initiatory, and each novitiate must complete the steps alone, without assistance. The radiance of the Holy Spirit shines through the royal blue drapery veiling the entrance to the inner court. As you approach the altar, you find yourself the only person there, no matter how many others had been near you before. All souls experience this.
The attainment of the Courts of Melchizedek earns your admission to the seven Cities of God at a much higher level. This also marks the beginning of becoming a seer and a prophet. Once you have become aware of the kingdom of God, you can easily remain aware of heaven as both a place and as a state of mind. By standing in the Sacred Sphere, you become aware of the Throne Circle of the Flame, a mental image that you will never forget.
Many other initiatory Orders also have 33 Degrees, including the Order of Melchizedek, the Priesthood of Aaron, the Egyptian Priesthood, and the mysteries of Moses. On the Via Christa, the Elect take the initiations of the first 30 degrees here on earth, as the daily round of living among family, friends, and the working world. However, all souls must take the final three degrees on the Sun, and you travel there at night to do so.
Completing the 33 degrees signifies lifting the creative fire up the 33 spinal vertebrae so you may begin to burn away the silver cord. The 144 steps include the Greater Mysteries, which deal with your attitude toward God, and the Lesser Mysteries, which deal with your expression on earth and your attitude toward your fellow man.
As you ascend on the first series of Seven Degrees, you awaken the seven vital centers, which triggers certain physical and metaphysical processes.
| Degree | Initiation | Vital Center | |
| Neophyte | Rebirth | The sacrum, frozen from attempting to kill desire, traps the creative fire below the solar plexus. You cannot ascend unless you awaken the sacrum. | |
| Disciple | Baptism by Water | The splenic center, where you must retrace the path of the creative fire to the crown, by sublimating your emotions until soul commands them to create only love from above. | |
| Adept | Baptism by Fire | The navel center, where you must conquer self, not just control it. Wear the Breastplate of Righteousness, which protects the soul. | |
| Mystic | Transfiguration | The Promised Land holds the heart center where you use love to balance the stomach, lungs and heart as Light descends and ascends through the vital centers. | |
| Master | Crucifixion | At the throat center you may exercise the power of the Word only by expressing Christ consciousness, ending all expression of I-me-my-mine. | |
| Priest | Resurrection | At the brow center, seat of the pituitary gland, you resurrect pure imagination to overcome intellectualism and to sublimate the creative fire. | |
| Christos | Ascension | The crown center, the seat of the pineal body, opens to the descending Light and ascending creative fire so they can meet just above the head. | |
Under the ascension that you experience in the Christos Degree, full illumination descends to the solar plexus on each deep breath, to explode, forming the two
| Degree | Lesson | ||
| Neophyte | You learn how to create physical balance by lifting your emotional desires. | ||
| Disciple | You learn mental balance by crucifying the selfishness of your personal will. | ||
| Adept | You learn spiritual balance by making the first marriage of the Lamb between desire and will, thereby unlocking Christed “I AM” consciousness. | ||
| Mystic | You learn to perfect the balance between love and wisdom by bridging the abyss between heaven and earth in consciousness. | ||
| Master | You learn the highest ethics and moral virtues by polishing the lessons of the 1,000 burnt offerings of self. | ||
| Priest | You learn how to fully surrender all self, with no reservations, leftovers, or holdouts of self. | ||
| Christos | You finally learn how to conquer the self by conquering the death of Christ consciousness at the hands of self, thus comprehending, “I die daily.”–1 Corinthians 15:31. | ||
Seven great universal soul groups are named after the Seven Sacred Degrees. As you ascend, you enter each great Soul Group of the One as the Many, and serve there, cyclically.
| Soul Group | Service | ||
| 49 of the Neophyte Degree | In charge of protecting all earth’s animal group souls, and ‘children,’ the innocents, all who call on the roving Legions and those just learning how to pray. | ||
| 49 of the Disciple Degree | In charge of outer creations of your released soul substance, teaching the purity of all life, and established functions of creations. | ||
| 49 of the Adept Degree | In charge of diversion, play, social life, recreation, sports, and rest activities. How you use your freedom determines your ascension. | ||
| 49 of the Mystic Degree | In charge of earth’s service: religions, professional, commercial; leading earth’s service upward from the remnants of self-pity through prayer and devotion into a Godlike universal service. | ||
| 49 of the Master Degree | In charge of changes from self-expression into full soul-expression; mastery by ‘letting,’ not by controlling. | ||
| 49 of the Priest Degree | In charge of creators’ relationships, both above and below, creating harmony by agreeing with God, and adjusting to man. | ||
| 49 of the Christos Degree | The Master’s own legions in charge of working with souls who need Christos initiation. | ||
The Pioneering Mystic
Edna Lister transcript, Margaret Pratt Doan, Ruth Johnson, Irene White, Virginia Whitehead, scribes, May 5, 1959, Cleveland, OH
We study God as both personality and principle. Personality is the outer expression of the embodied soul, the individualized expression of God, and is what the world sees of the embodied soul. Principle is the absolute, unchangeable, undeviating, immutable foundation upon which God has based and established all universes. The principles of Mind, Substance, and Power operate through five categories of expression: Mysticism, philosophy, science, metaphysics and psychology. The categories of expression are all paths that dovetail into one another. To transform the old into the new, you must build on the facts you have under these categories and integrate the new discoveries.
Mysticism reveals God’s hidden nature as personality, and that God speaks as personality through personality to personality. Philosophy reveals God’s nature as principle, absolute and relative; thus nothing can exist on the periphery of creation that does not exist at the Source. Science relates to outer physical facts, principles and laws subject to demonstrable physical proof through the five outer senses. Psychology studies God’s Mind and personalization in man, as man. Metaphysics deals with the how and why of things, and we use it to restate absolute and abstract principles to meet man’s relative needs. Thus, a metaphysician would restate the philosopher’s statement, “God is All,” to read, “God is everywhere evenly present and available.” Even religious orthodoxy admits that a divine spark animates every living thing. The categories of expression describe ways you may best understand how you use or invest your soul substance. Psychology and metaphysics are supposed to teach you to conquer all afflictions of the subconscious mind, not just to control self.
Metaphysicians call such “devils of self” the products of the appetitive portion of soul, the subconscious, which is the dustbin of illusions and delusions. These include the
Metaphysics describes what is beyond physics—the nature and origin of reality itself, the immortal soul, and the existence of God as the Supreme Being. Most of the world now lives by metaphysics, which is living the law of truth as revealed to you personally, also a great law of ascension. Many metaphysicians choose to worship God solely as principle, denying the personalities of the Father, Mother, and Son. You may add to another’s faith to build it, but you may never subtract from his faith without creating a soul debt. Belief in principle alone isn’t wrong, but is incomplete without some understanding of God as personality. For example, some metaphysical schools of thought deny that evil exists, yet their denial hasn’t wiped sin or evil from earth and cannot, since they are born of choices made by personalities, i.e. embodied souls.
Sin is missing the mark, living by a negative, not a positive pattern. Evil is a conscious choice made against the Light. Evil cannot exist without a base of individual personality and mind to support it. You miss the mark by being offended, bothered, irked, or irritated. You’re on the wrong track when you hold a grudge, pass judgment, pity the self, speak or act negatively, or deny the Christ principle, which is misusing the Holy Spirit, breaking the law of being alive, alert and aware.
Metaphysical teachings begin with the initiation of Rebirth in consciousness, but they take the aspirant only as far as the initiation of Resurrection of all good from the soul’s past, which is the pioneering Mystic’s starting point. “The Christ principle of selfless service gives of itself lavishly and counts no effort too long or too hard” is a metaphysical statement of principle, which you, as a personality, may restate as, “I am able to give of myself lavishly in selfless service, and count no effort too long or too hard.”
“I AM,” which is a great name of God, is never tired or weary. The physical body may ache, but to say, “I am tired,” sends out the Power of the Holy Breath in your words as a dark grey cloudiness, which then become force because you have separated Mind, Substance, and Power, the three emanations as One. Your words do not know what you meant when you said them, and they can’t take themselves back or unsay themselves. What you separate through misuse of spiritual power, you must recombine and lift to its original state before you can ascend, which is what we call paying a spiritual debt to the law.
Personalities add negativity, hatred, resentment, revenge motives, opinions, prejudices, and criticisms to the world’s unconscious “
The Mystic communes directly with God, or, philosophically stated, with divine Mind. The Mystic prays to God, knows God, accepts God, and longs with all his heart and soul to return to God, the Source of All Light and life. The Mystic passes beyond intellectually practicing metaphysical positive thinking, which still holds him stuck within his own skull. Positive thinking is good, but your burning desire must flame beyond the ceiling for you to ascend in consciousness. A true pioneering Mystic has the soul ambition to return to God under sacrificial surrender as a selfless servant of all Power. The Mystic is single-minded and determined to ascend after spiritual Rebirth and Resurrection from old beliefs and ways of living.
How Do I Become a Pioneering Mystic? To begin, you climb higher in consciousness every time you become aware of your shortcomings. You strengthen your conscious awareness every time you choose to ascend from a horizontal, worldly consciousness to vertical God-consciousness. As you think high, soul-inspiring, glorious thoughts and obey principle and law, you begin to pioneer in the new high territory of ascension. The Mystic uses the soul faculties of intuition and illumination, which are related to love and wisdom respectively, to commune directly with God and to become all higher law received through this communion. The Mystic also becomes the law of humility, which is internally balancing God’s Wisdom and Love perfectly as compassion. To the pioneering Mystic, conquering self is becoming all the laws received through initiations under the great Seven Sacred Degrees.
The Way of Christ, the Via Christa, is the Path of Ascension that you follow to work out your own personal salvation. The Seven Degree initiations form the basis for all other Via Christa initiations. Each Sacred Degree encompasses seven times seven lesser initiatory degrees. The Seven Degrees each name a great universal principle, a law, a soul quality that you must become, and a vow of conquering.
| Degree | Vow | Initiation | |
| Neophyte | “I vow to make my body a fitting dwelling place for my soul.” | Rebirth is the return to God consciousness, to be made anew. | |
| Disciple | “I vow to surrender completely to be the servant of all Power.” | Baptism by Water is conquering your emotional life. | |
| Adept | “I vow to be selfless in my release of Power.” | Baptism by Fire is burning away the dregs of selfishness. | |
| Mystic | “I vow to keep my silence shining and golden.” | Transfiguration is standing in the silence, maintaining constant contact with the Source, and naming all things good and very good. | |
| Master | “I vow to be a master in all responsibility.” | Crucifixion is laying self-will upon the crossbar of the Master’s cross and assuming full personal responsibility. | |
| Priest | “I vow to remain pure in heart, mind and purpose.” | Resurrection is rising into the Light to transform your cross into a ladder of ascension. | |
| Christos | “I make my supreme vow to surrender self completely.” | Ascension of consciousness requires living by the precepts of soul in the higher creative center. | |
As a Neophyte, you die to your old expressions of self and are reborn to the new Christ-life. Rebirth can be either a long process or an instantaneous act as you unify your desire and will in what we call the first Seven great universal soul groups are named after the Seven Sacred Degrees. As you ascend, you enter each great Soul Group of the One as the Many, and serve there, cyclically.
As a Mystic, you stand in the golden silence, maintaining a constant contact with the Source and naming all things good and very good. The materiality of self falls from the transfigured soul and his face shines as pure joy. As a Master, you lay self-will upon the crossbar of the Master’s cross and assume full responsibility for lifting everything with which your name is associated, with no excuses. As a Priest, you rise into the Light and transform your cross into a ladder of ascension. You unify your personal desire and will with love and wisdom in the second marriage of the Lamb. As a Christos, you attain the fortress of soul, the high tower of ascension in the garden of Eden, the head. You live by the precepts of soul in the higher creative center.
Soul Group
Service
49 of the Neophyte Degree
In charge of protecting all earth’s animal group souls, and ‘children,’ the innocents, all who call on the roving Legions and those just learning how to pray.
49 of the Disciple Degree
In charge of outer creations of your released soul substance, teaching the purity of all life, and established functions of creations.
49 of the Adept Degree
In charge of diversion, play, social life, recreation, sports, and rest activities. How you use your freedom determines your ascension.
49 of the Mystic Degree
In charge of earth’s service: religions, professional, commercial; leading earth’s service upward from the remnants of self-pity through prayer and devotion into a Godlike universal service.
49 of the Master Degree
In charge of changes from self-expression into full soul-expression; mastery by ‘letting,’ not by controlling.
49 of the Priest Degree
In charge of creators’ relationships, both above and below, creating harmony by agreeing with God, and adjusting to man.
49 of the Christos Degree
The Master’s own legions in charge of working with souls who need Christos initiation.
The goal of the Neophyte, Disciple, and Adept Degrees is self-control by controlling the body, emotions, and thoughts. These degrees cover the first three vital centers in the abdominal cavity, which we call the land of Egypt. All psychic phenomena, such as levitation, breath control, walking on coals, etc., manifest under the authoritarian self-control of the medium and adept.
Ordinary truth work stops here. Any truth work, no matter its degree or kind, is good if it helps someone to lift their consciousness, or raises the soul’s rate of vibration. Yet one thought of or statement about self cuts off your progress as a pioneering Mystic and you drop back to your previous level. If you are conscious of how far you’ve climbed, you block your ability to climb farther. Wherever you stop along the path, you revert to being merely an Adept on that degree.
Any soul who desires to ascend in consciousness under love and selflessness can climb on an ascending Mystic’s vibration, if he can give up the “little self” of impulsive appetitive soul and become conformed to law. The Mystic’s lifting power lies in his devotional attitude toward God and the respiratory rate of balance he attains at the heart center.
The Mystic Degree includes the stomach, heart, and lungs in the cellular physical body, and the heart center in the molecular desire body. The thoracic cavity is the Promised Land, and the heart center is the respiratory rate of balance between the lower abdominal centers and the higher brain centers. Here the Mystic deeply breathes the Holy Spirit as Light to balance the Love and Wisdom of God moving through. The heart is the balance point because you must balance Love and Wisdom to become compassion there.
A pioneering Mystic is awakening the pineal body and developing the soul faculty of illumination. You cannot have perfect intuition under a fully functioning pituitary gland until you have experienced some illumination. “I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me.”–John 12:32. On an ascending vibration and a sincere desire to lift, a Mystic can enter a room and raise the common vibration until everyone balances on the same high vibration, which is how you can spiritually see on another’s vibration. The Mystic’s power to lift is so great that his ascending vibration could heal anyone who desired healing.
A mystic ascends under criticism without paying attention to what others think or say about him. God and all the Heavenly Councils care nothing for another’s opinion or judgment of you. Councils judge you on what you are, as reflected by the lights and colors of your soul aura. Criticism provides a stage for your initiations to ascend in consciousness and to lift. For example, subconscious mind cannot discern the difference between righteous indignation and passing unrighteous judgment. The lid you put on temper can blow off under self-control. When you pass judgment in anger, you foolishly sit in the seat of the Almighty. Yet when you declare that what another has done is wrong, your judgment goes no farther than the room you occupy, and your own soul’s record.
Jesus the Christ rules the Mystic Brotherhood, which his Christed Legions oversee. The Mystic Brotherhood Degrees of Master, Priest, and Christos, cover the garden of Eden, which lies above the collar bones in man. These work degrees deal with being a mediator, soul conquering, and ascension. A mediator follows Jesus the Christ all the way home.
“Ever the silver cord be loosed, or the golden bowl be broken.”–Ecclesiastes 12:6. Your head is the golden bowl that contains the higher creative centers—the pineal body, pituitary gland, hypothalamus, and parathalamus bodies. The symbol
The parathalamus bodies are organs of immortality, comprehension, and spiritual hearing and seeing, which are not really functional until you extend your soul vision. They expand every time you wonder about truth or attempt to “see” spiritually beyond the veil of illusion that separates the inner and the outer worlds. As you aspire and ascend, Light seeps in to open them. Good seers have quite large parathalamus bodies. Your ability to see or hear spiritually increases to the number of your desire body’s optic nerves that cross the optic chiasm of the thalamus to connect the right and left parathalamus bodies to the cortex. Your desire body nerves also must cross over between the parathyroid glands behind the thyroid.
The mediator uses the same faculties as the medium but extends her consciousness and vision beyond the Gates of Light to see and hear in the Realms of Light. The mediator heeds and obeys the Orders of inner Councils, paying no attention to the outer world influences or the subconscious mind, except to lift them. The medium remains below the Gates of Light and sees by drawing outer vibrations into the room. When a Master becomes proud of how far he has climbed, his egotism sends him down the greased pole of self-consciousness, and he may sink to the Neophyte Degree!
“When can I become a pioneering Mystic?” Any place, any time, twenty-four hours a day, if you love enough. Only devotion to and love for God can lift you emotionally as you arise in selflessness through prayer. Your vision and hearing depend on the height, breadth, and depth of your devotion. A rebirth of devotion and love is the only way the Holy Spirit can awaken your parathalamus bodies of comprehension into soul wings of fire.
“Re-” means to go back to and “born” means to be made new. All religions teach the Rebirth, the Neophyte initiation. A Rebirth lifts you to Baptism by Water, the Disciple’s initiation. Water represents the emotional life, so walking on water symbolizes conquering your emotions. The Baptism by Water represents Holy Spirit poured out from above, which is usually a process but can be an instantaneous act, if you love God enough.
| Degree | Initiation | Vital Center | |
| Neophyte | Rebirth | The sacrum, frozen from attempting to kill desire, traps the creative fire below the solar plexus. You cannot ascend unless you awaken the sacrum. | |
| Disciple | Baptism by Water | The splenic center, where you must retrack the creative fire to the crown by sublimating emotions until soul commands them to create only love from above. | |
| Adept | Baptism by Fire | The navel center, where you must conquer self, not just control it. Wear the Breastplate of Righteousness, which protects the soul. | |
| Mystic | Transfiguration | The Promised Land holds the heart center where you use love to balance the stomach, lungs and heart as Light descends and ascends through the vital centers. | |
| Master | Crucifixion | At the throat center you may exercise the power of the Word only by expressing Christ consciousness, ending all expression of I-me-my-mine. | |
| Priest | Resurrection | At the brow center, seat of the pituitary gland, you resurrect pure soul vision to overcome intellectualism and to sublimate the creative fire. | |
| Christos | Ascension | The crown center, the seat of the pineal body, opens to the descending Light and ascending creative fire so they can meet just above the head. | |
You awaken the seven vital centers in the desire body as you first ascend on the Seven Degrees. The seven vital energy centers in the molecular desire body whirl and appear as wheels of light. Each center relates to a physical nerve plexus and gland.
The Neophyte Degree rules the sacrum center, the reproductive glands, and the sacrum plexus. Five pairs of nerves are associated here, which you must reawaken to sublimate the creative fire. The ten plagues on Egypt represent the sacral nerves. The sacrum center is the lower pole of Paracelsus, which is usually frozen by past misuse of creative fire and attempts to kill desire instead of sublimating it. Paying your Neophyte vows is essential to reawaken this center, its nerves and glands.
The Disciple Degree rules the splenic center, the islets of Langerhans in the pancreas and the hypogastric plexus. The splenic center controls all physical and emotional appetites. Your emotional insecurities are rooted in selfishness and possessiveness. Here you begin to draw in your emotions and the five physical senses to sublimate them and the mental faculties into the great soul faculty of apperception.
The Adept Degree rules the navel center, the adrenal glands and the solar plexus. The navel center is called the “seat of Satan,” the seat of the intellectual belief in self-control. The Adept is Pharaoh, ruler of the land of Egypt. The Breastplate of Judgment, earned at the heart center, protects the navel center. Without it you wander forty years in the wilderness.
| Degree | Nerve Plexus |
||
| Neophyte | Fibers from the fourth and fifth lumbar nerves, and the first to third sacral nerves form the sacral plexus, which innervates the abdominal organs, buttocks, hips, thighs, and legs. | ||
| Disciple | The islets of Langerhans secrete insulin and glucagon, hormones that regulate the carbohydrate metabolism. The hypogastric plexus innervates the colon, bladder, bladder sphincter, and reproductive organs. | ||
| Adept | The adrenal medulla helps to rouse or calm the body in response to emotional states of fight-flight. The solar (celiac or epigastric) plexus innervates the stomach, liver, pancreas, adrenal medulla, spleen, kidneys, colon, bladder, bladder sphincter and reproductive organs. | ||
| Mystic | The thymus, located behind the sternum (breastbone) but in front of the heart, grows until puberty, when it atrophies and is replaced by fat and connective tissue. Its atrophy may be the source of aging. The cardiac plexus innervates the heart with the vagus (X cranial nerve) fibers to slow the heart-rate. The vagus innervates the pharynx, larynx, carotid body, bronchial muscles, lungs, stomach, liver, pancreas, kidney, colon, and thoracic and abdominal viscera. | ||
| Master | The glossopharyngeal plexus innervates the pharynx, taste buds, carotid sinus and carotid body, thereby controlling respiration. It controls speech. The IX to XII cranial nerves are associated here: glossopharyngeal nerve (IX oral sensation, taste, and salivation), vagus nerve (X sensory supply to structures in the neck and to most organs in the chest and abdomen; blood pressure and heart rate), accessory nerve (XI shoulder elevation and head-turning), and the hypoglossal nerve (XII tongue movement). | ||
| Priest | The first eight cranial nerves are nerves are: the olfactory nerve (I the sense of smell), the optic nerve (II transmits visual information), oculomotor nerve (III coordinates eye movement), trochlear nerve (IV eye movement), trigeminal nerve (V sensation to the skin of the face, controls the muscles of chewing, teeth), abducens nerve (VI the ability of the eye to look down and inwards), facial nerve (VII facial expression, sense of taste), vestibulocochlear nerve (VIII hearing and balance). They innervate the eyes, nose, ears, mouth, teeth and face (note the relation to the physical senses); and the pituitary gland. All cranial nerves are paired, occurring on both the right and left sides of the body. | ||
| Christos | The central nervous system (brain and spinal cord) and the pineal body, responsible for melatonin production, stimulated by darkness and inhibited by light. Exact function of the human pineal remains unknown; current animal research suggests the pineal body is exceedingly light-sensitive and may function as a seasonal “clock” affecting sleep (hibernation) and the gonads, through the anterior pituitary. | ||
1 Guyton and Hall, Textbook of Medical Physiology.
The Mystic Degree rules the heart center, the thymus, and the cardiac plexus. The thymus is the gland of eternal youth, the immune system architect. The heart center is the respiratory rate of balance between the lower creative center at the sacrum, and the entrance to the higher creative center in the golden bowl. The Mystic possesses the Promised Land by perfectly balancing love and wisdom. The heart center is then the Mystic’s citadel of conquering. You cannot develop spiritual gifts without balance at the heart center, which you can create by completely conquering the drag of emotion and intellect.
The Master Degree rules the throat center, the glossopharyngeal plexus, thyroid, and parathyroid glands. The thyroid, located on both sides of the base of the neck, at the entrance to garden of Eden, secretes hormones that increase metabolism and nervous system activity. The parathyroid glands secrete a hormone that regulates the calcium-phosphorus metabolism, kidney excretion of calcium and calcium release from the bones (osteoporosis).
In mystical terms, “The life of the flesh is in the blood: and I have given it to you upon the altar to make an atonement for your souls: for it is the blood that maketh an atonement for the soul.”–Leviticus 17:11. The flow of life through you is carried in part by the River of Life, and by the physical bloodstream. Blood passes through two small, yet significant areas, the carotid body and the coccygeal body, called Paracelsus’ lower and upper poles of balance. Paracelsus’ lower pole of balance, the coccygeal body, ruled by the sacral plexus: The coccygeal body, is a small plexus of arteries enclosed and supported by fibrous tissues, found at the level of the coccyx. Associated with the median sacral artery, the coccygeal body’s function is heat conduction to the skin by the blood, controlled by the sympathetic nervous system under direction of the hypothalamus. It mediates communication between the venous and arterial systems.
Paracelsus’ upper pole of balance is in the carotid bodies at the bifurcations of the common carotid artery. The carotid bodies
2 J. Forbes, R. G. Menezes, "Carotid Bodies," Anatomy, Head and Neck.
3 R. Andani, Y.S. Khan, "Carotid Sinus." Anatomy, Head and Neck.
The throat center rules your God-given creative power of speech, which you express as self or soul. The Adept degree extends here and is conspicuous in the frequent use of the personal pronouns, I-me-my. You cross out self at the throat and begin
The Priest Degree rules the brow center, the first eight cranial nerves that control the function of your eyes, nose, ears, mouth, teeth and face (note the relation to the physical senses), and the pituitary, called the master regulating gland because it controls the function of many other glands. The brow center is the mystical third eye, which, when focused on the world, can cause mere intellectual fascination with color, tone and number, and delays ascension. By conquering selfish tendencies here you attain consecrated service as a Priest. You must ascend beyond all intellectual pursuits to
The Christos Degree rules the crown center, the central nervous system (the brain and spinal cord) and the pineal body, 
shaped like a pine cone. You reenter the garden of Eden through the crown center of consciousness, which is the link between rational consciousness and superconscious mind when you are open to the voice of your own Oversoul. You ascend from outer to inner in all ways, and surrender self-centered identity. This is the degree of the fully conquering soul who lives by pure illumination. The mental body 1,000-petaled lotus opens under Christed consciousness.
Etheric currents, Light waves from above, descend through the crown center under conscious deep breathing, while earth’s magnetic currents ascend through the soles of the feet. These two vibrations meet at the solar plexus, creating a clockwise whiling explosion of Light that forms two
You experience many new states of consciousness as you ascend and conquer on the Seven Degrees. In each state you learn something and begin to understand and comprehend.
| Degree | Lesson | ||
| Neophyte | You learn how to create physical balance by lifting your conflicting emotional desires. | ||
| Disciple | You learn mental balance by crucifying the selfishness of your personal expressions of will. | ||
| Adept | You learn spiritual balance by making the first marriage of the Lamb between desire and will, thereby unlocking Christed “I AM” consciousness. | ||
| Mystic | You learn to perfect the balance between love and wisdom by bridging the abyss between heaven and earth in consciousness. | ||
| Master | You learn the highest ethics and moral virtues by polishing the lessons of the 1,000 burnt offerings of self. | ||
| Priest | You learn how to fully surrender all self, with no reservations, leftovers, or holdouts of self. | ||
| Christos | You finally learn how to conquer the self by conquering the death of Christ consciousness at the hands of self, thus comprehending, “I die daily.”–1 Corinthians 15:31. | ||
The Neophyte always begins something new. You learn that you do not know it all, and you learn what you think you know. Every new learning experience makes you a Neophyte. The first law of expression is to lift desire and emotions to achieve physical balance.
The Disciple learns mental balance by crucifying self-will. Every time you pick up your cross of self to follow the Master, you are a Disciple. The second law of expression is to lift self-will to a state of emotional and mental calm under trial.
The Adept learns spiritual balance in the first marriage of the Lamb, where you mate self-will to God’s Will and selfish desires to God’s Love to become I AM, the Christed consciousness. The third law of expression is to ascend selfish desires, which balances emotions at the solar plexus center.
The Mystic learns high prayer and praise, for you cannot pray without praise in your heart. The fourth law of expression is to balance love and wisdom perfectly, to stand in balance under the pure white Light of the Christ.
The Master learns honor, and polishes his ethics and morals. The fifth law of expression is to accept responsibility. You begin
The Priest learns to live by soul conquering and selfless service. The sixth law of expression is to practice full surrender of all self.
The Christos learns that “I die daily” is the death of self. You learn to lift all fear of old age and death. The seventh law of expression is to live by pure illumination, the final, complete conquering of soul.
The first ascent through the Seven Degrees includes 12 x 12 = 144 steps through 7 x 7 = 49 Degree initiations. This takes you twelve times around the Zodiacal Wheel of Terra with one birth or earth incarnation in each sign. These 144 steps include twelve virtues to become, twelve laws of becoming and twelve ways of disobeying them under each sign or house.
You may take initiations in different degrees simultaneously. For instance, you may be taking the sixth Christos initiation and yet have earned only one degree as a Neophyte, which includes all physical laws. Although the astrological sign the sun was in the day you are born, your “sun sign,” the other eleven signs influence you also, and you continually polish their virtues as well. Every sign releases Power from above as it rises over the eastern horizon. {We do not live by the dictates of stars and planets, but by God’s will and desire for us laid down in His laws.} If you neglect to conquer the selfishness remaining in you that interferes with any of these virtues, you may owe soul debts to the law. You can do only one of two things, accept and ascend, or rebel and regress. Through the ages, some souls have fallen back to the animal kingdom; the dog stage is the last stage of regression from which the law permits lifting a fallen soul. Affection for animals lifts them, but love raises them more rapidly to human form to receive the bestowal of a rudimentary degree of soul consciousness.
The Via Christa is the Way of Christ. The 33 Via Christa Degrees are the attitudes of the Elect ascending creator gods, part of 144 steps you take as you make the rounds twelve times on the Wheel of Terra to conquer on the Seven Sacred Degrees. You raise the creative fire from the base of the spine up the 33 vertebrae to the brain during your first ascent on the Wheel. Then you awaken the optic chiasm of the thalamus and open the crown vital center. Light illumines the endocrine and central nervous systems as the crown center opens. Light shines through the mystical third eye, an inverted triangle on the forehead (centered just above the bridge of your nose), to illumine your path as a great beam of Light and you can “see” your soul record in the Book of Life. How much Light do you desire to send before you? How great a pioneering Mystic do you want to be?
The Greater Celestial Mysteries relate to your attitude toward God. The lesser mysteries deal with your attitudes toward others. The Mystic Brotherhood Via Christa, Order of Melchizedek, Clansmen of Aaron, Mysteries of Moses, and the ancient Egyptian priesthood all contain 33 degrees, and these systems complement one another. Each soul must earn the Via Christa degrees while embodied on earth. You take the first 30 in daily living on earth, and the final three Via Christa Degrees at night, standing before the Altar of Ascension at the Supreme Temple of the Sun on our Sun.
All Substance is Universal
Edna Lister transcript, Ruth Johnson, Irene White, Virginia Whitehead, scribes, May 12, 1959, Cleveland, OH
All substance is the One Substance of Light, everywhere evenly present and available for our use. We are discussing universal substance in its relationship to the embodied soul’s life on earth and its expression in crystallized form, which is called the Mystical History of the Descent of the Creator Gods.
We study God under five categories of expression: Mysticism, philosophy, science, metaphysics, and psychology. Mysticism involves the mysteries of God as personality. Philosophy deals with God as principle. Science is the only ladder between the outer and inner worlds, but it relates only to outer facts and principles. The field of metaphysics treats the realm just beyond our fingertips, and we use it to modify and dilute truth to fit man’s needs.
Psychology studies God as Mind and personality in man, as man. Popular psychology doesn’t include this refinement. The Master based all his teachings on these categories because they are exact laws that work. As above, so below—what exists at the periphery must exist at the center. You can have nothing on the outer that is not present at the Source, which is the basis of the metaphysical statement that “God is everywhere evenly present and available.” Metaphysics is the realm of “how” and “why.” We use metaphysics to modify statements of principle to suit individual needs. Mysticism correlates with personality as your expression of the life of God. You can live under God as deathless, ageless and abiding only by regarding God the Father as the Wisdom principle, God the Mother as the Love principle, and God the Son, the Holy Spirit, as the joy principle. You can enfold anything earthly religions can produce into the balance scales of love and wisdom.
Mysteries deal with three expressions of the life of God: The Father’s Mysteries relate to personality and principle as Wisdom. The Mother’s Mysteries of Love deal with principle and personality as the creative process. The Mysteries of the Holy Spirit, the Son of Power, relate to personality and principle in balanced action as Christed consciousness. So we teach God as both principle and personality, and heaven as both a state of consciousness and a place. You create your own heaven and your own hell. Everyone is free to choose his approach to God. everyone is privileged to worship God as he wishes, and you see some strange expressions of this. Some fashion a god like themselves, since their imagination goes no higher. You need not approach God as personality unless that comforts you.
“How do I prepare myself for a miracle?” You cannot force anything without causing the law of force to react—what you send out returns to you at least sevenfold. You can achieve your goals only on a balance of love and wisdom. You can attract anything through love, if you surrender in love to the one idea. For example, in Marie Corelli’s novel, The Life Everlasting, the heroine, undergoing initiation, wanted a rose blooming high on a wall beyond her reach. The young woman loved the rose. She desired to touch that rose to grow toward her and it came because she had learned the balance between love and wisdom. Suspended in time and space, universal substance filled her single vision of desire. She stood in complete surrender to her desire that the rose would come. She had no room in her mind to hold anything but that vision, and the rose came to her.
The principle of desire is how the oak grows from an acorn, the stalk from a kernel of corn, the lily from a bulb. A seed has only one aspiration and it grows into that desire. The reality lies underneath the surface appearance. What you need lies in space as an invisible seed, which becomes visible, given enough time, though you may never have asked for it. To transcend outer time, however, you must love God and surrender yourself to that one desire to bring it into manifestation.
Stand surrendered, envision the idea until you know your clear-cut prayer mold, then surrender to it. Love God, love how this vision becomes form. Talk to the Father. Thank God that He is condensing universal substance to fill your prayer mold. Exercise your talents! Learn to reach up and draw universal substance into your molds instantly. You can dream to escape the mundane and reach the realm of soul. This is how to prepare for a miracle. What you learn in this body, you will carry in your midbrain neurons. When you impress it indelibly upon your conscious memory cells you write it in your eternal record.
“How do I draw upon divine Mind?” Power vigorously descends and ascends the spine to
The digestive message travels from the salivary and parathyroid glands to create the proper digestive acids, balancing the activity of the gall bladder, spleen, and liver. Light descends from the thyroid to the thymus, the seat of eternal youth, and the thymus begins to regenerate. Then it descends to the adrenal glands and fills the bloodstream. {If you find it hard to believe that parts of the human body remain mysteries, read this: Scientists Just Discovered a Mysterious Organ Lurking in the Centre of the Human Head.}
Declare, “Name functions perfectly through his pineal body, pituitary and thyroid glands. The pure thyroid hormones now become visibly manifest in Name.” This is a wonderful treatment for your loved ones and for the world. As atomic energy and cosmic rays increase the Power reaching earth, this is a necessity. Many people have lazy thyroids. Use this declaration, and see them as being alive and alert with divine Power. The Power that fills your deep breaths alters the desire body chemistry and a perfect thyroid hormone can manifest. What you ask for another becomes your portion, doubled.
Any demand carries its own power of fulfillment. Nothing life presents you with is impossible to lift, even another’s outrageous demands. What shocks and gives you an adrenaline punch began as the white Light of the Christ. If you go down the greased pole of self on a demand—feeling resentment, anger, or hatred—you misuse your vitality. The adrenaline overload becomes toxic in your bloodstream when you are hot under the collar. If you ascend when life makes demands of you, you can open the secret of eternal youth. Mentaly declare, “I have contacted divine Mind, and I am living under eternal youth.” Light begins as universal substance and descends through the endocrine glands as Power. You have a built-in converter to make this Light your life.
The creator’s secret technique for eternal youth is to draw the abdominal muscles in, which is “girding your loins.” You consciously pull the magnetic currents of earth through your feet, raise your hands, and draw in Light, saying, “Let there be Light. Let Light move through me now.” This forms a sheath of magnetic currents over your solar plexus and diaphragm to protect against cross-vibrations, negativity, and evil. This is also how you open spiritual seeing and hearing, and eliminate illness. You can use this treatment for others, too; just call each of them by name.
Universal substance descends as Light through the crown and brow centers, activating the pineal body and pituitary gland. Then it moves to the thymus as vitalizing power for eternal youth. As you study the Bible, live by law, and become truth to a greater degree, these things happen, whether you realize it or not. Many people don’t care about eternal youth, asking, “What for?” Yet the vast majority of souls in the world live in fear of old age and death, and suffer from a “Nobody wants me” complex. You adulterate pristine universal substance with such dingy little world-thoughts.
How bright is your soul’s illumination? How strong is your desire? What is the degree of your flaming desire to know God? The heat of your desire determines the results you receive for your efforts. Are you afraid of Power? If you hesitantly say, “Nooo…” you are not balanced. Let God’s Power move through you to lift darkness from earth. Seek the soul assurance to be ready to release His full Power. Speak sweetly, firmly, and finally. If you want your centers alight with the explosion of the seeds of life, you must return to the states of consciousness in the Seven Degrees. Say, “I am that joy, I AM! I am that love, I AM! I am that Light, I AM!”
Universal substance is everywhere evenly present and available as the life sparks of Light. We have One God as one substance in all, through all, and as all. As above, so below. Everything is formed of this universal substance. Every cell in your body is universal substance. You are immortal now through this universal substance. Everything is the one substance of God, the substance of faith. “Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”–Hebrews 11:1. Faith can be conscious or unconscious. Unconscious faith operates through inanimate things and all animate life, including the animals. Faith operates as all things conscious. God gives the embodied soul the power of conscious direction and control over substance. God gives substance the power of becoming what the soul declares and stands upon. Thus, substance condenses from its universal state into the form of your desire.
| Neophyte | You learn how to create physical balance by lifting your conflicting emotional desires. | ||
| Disciple | You learn mental balance by crucifying the selfishness of your personal expressions of will. | ||
| Adept | You learn spiritual balance by making the first marriage of the Lamb between desire and will, thereby becoming Christed “I AM” consciousness. | ||
| Mystic | You learn to perfect the balance between love and wisdom by bridging the abyss between heaven and earth. | ||
| Master | You learn the highest ethics and moral virtues by polishing the lessons of the 1,000 burnt offerings of self. | ||
| Priest | You learn full surrender of all self, with no reservations of self, no leftovers or holdouts. | ||
| Christos | You learn the final conquering of self by soul, the conquering of death, even “I die daily.”–1 Corinthians 15:31. | ||
| Body | Power Station | cellular physical body | 12 glands, nerve plexus centers, bloodstream, appetitive soul vehicle |
| molecular desire body | 7 vital centers, appetitive soul vehicle | ||
| atomic mental body | 44 lotus centers, rational soul vehicle | ||
| electronic fire body | sun centers, Oversoul vehicle | ||
| other bodies | Oversoul vehicles indiscernable at this time | ||
Grades of Divine Substance in Form: According to scientific findings, everything is composed of substance, which we perceive as subatomic or elementary particles, atoms, elements, molecules and cells.
Cell: a small usually microscopic mass of protoplasm bounded externally by a semipermeable membrane, usually including one or more nuclei and various other organelles with their products, capable, alone or interacting with other cells, of performing all the fundamental functions of life, and forming the smallest structural unit of living matter capable of functioning independently. Molecule: the smallest particle of a substance that retains all the properties of the substance and is composed of one or more atoms. Element: a species of atoms which all have the same number of protons in their atomic nuclei (i.e., the same atomic number), constitute all matter, and often connote irreducible simplicity. Of the 118 elements on the periodic table, we now [2026] know that 98 are naturally occurring.
{Subatomic particles:
1 The “new” elements 93–99 are neptunium, plutonium, americium, curium, berkelium, californium, and technetium have been found in samples of uranium-rich pitchblende.
2 Christine Sutton, Encyclopedia Britannica.
As a soul, you now dwell in bodies of three discernable grades of substance: cellular physical, molecular desire, and atomic mental. Twenty-two trillion cells compose your physical body. Every cell is composed of molecules. Molecules form the desire body, the seat of sensation (the five senses) and emotional “feelings,” which also holds the vital centers. Molecules are filled with atoms. Every atom is a power station you can draw upon for energy. You have sufficient atomic power in one hand that, if you released it, could destroy an entire city. Your body becomes limp or tired because your shallow breathing has allowed the atoms to collapse. Every time you go to bed, more atoms die. People can rest themselves to death. When you are tired or stressed, breathe deeply and declare, “This is my sign of eternal strength,” and your adrenal glands will produce the energy you need. You need more life not rest! Don’t rest “down,” stretch out and rest “up” to inflate your atomic structure.
Your various bodies are complete and overlap each other. The ascending Elect are now forming the mental body. It will not obey appetitive soul’s demands as easily as the physical and desire bodies do, unless you let appetitive soul override your conscious desire and will. As you form your mental body, you slough the molecular desire body and your physical organs become lighter. The mental body atoms are filled with protons and electrons, the seat of the Oversoul’s fire body.
When rational soul enters the physical body, the mental body lotus centers must overlie the desire body vital centers. When the Oversoul begins to enter, the seven sun centers of the electronic fire body begin to form. When this happens you feel alive, alert and aware with the life of God. “There is a natural body and there is a spiritual body.”–1 Corinthians 15:44. Ascension draws invisible life sparks of universal substance from the outer to the inner, from the physical to the desire to the mental to the fire body. The natural body is corruptible; you must ascend it to the spiritual to become incorruptible.
If you’ve been lifting your soul substance life sparks, the universal substance you use this year will not be exactly the same substance you used last year. Here is how to
At the beginning of this Day of Manifestation, creator gods from Heavenly Realms descended to earth in long, slow stages. They rested in each realm to “precipitate”
3 Precipitate: “a substance separated from a solution or suspension by chemical or physical change.”
The Holy Pairs breathed, inhaling Light until their spheres exploded. They dispersed millions of life sparks, one-quarter of their original life sparks. These life sparks, which each Holy Pair had named and numbered, precipitated from Light to ether to gas to fire, and cooled to “water.” They evolve through all stages of creation, gaseous, mineral, vegetable and animal, and they carry memory impressions of those states. Each life spark contains a seed of soul at its heart. Life sparks that have evolved through the lower kingdoms contain memory impressions of every experience-expression, each of which can color an animal’s instinctive, or a human’s subconscious mind. The memory impressions are difficult to erase, as if the life sparks had never been a part of an androgynous being with its high heritage of rulership.
When a soul is ready to incarnate, his appetitive soul calls together these named and numbered life sparks, two by two into the ark of the Mother, the womb, to become the physical body he inhabits in earth life. The Elohim, the Watchers over Creation mentioned in Genesis, put the first Holy Pair to sleep and severed their cord of Light, which was their separation into masculine and feminine. Each always had his or her own body in one sheath. Rainbow lines of Light radiate between soul mates. In a marriage made in heaven, the lines of Light extend from the crown lotus, sometimes from the heart center.
The rational soul hooks the
The infant comes with the left side (the pituitary side) of the crown lotus open. A newborn recognizes people from soul consciousness for about three weeks or until the rational soul begins to enter. Rational soul life sparks start descending to possess the bloodstream at birth, and continue to descend in a series of seven seven-year cycles until the Oversoul descends at age 49 (7 x 7 = 49). Oversoul attaches to the rational soul by the silver cord. For soul flights, your silver cord stretches as far as your degree of self-surrender. When the last desire body appetitive soul substance joins the rational soul’s mental body for soul flights, you begin to burn away the silver cord. It takes
As you ascend, you continue to polish your unfinished conquering of self and receive illumination on your first ascent on the initiatory Wheel of Terra. When you ascend under soul illumination, you step to the hub of the wheel and open a new round of incarnations and initiations. This is the second ascent, twelve times through the signs, or 144 steps on the second creative Wheel of EVE. At the second ascent, you begin another set of 1,000 burnt offerings, which open the 1,000-petaled crown lotus and the petals of all 44 mental body lotus centers. Even if you blow up on the 999th day and must begin the burnt offerings again, you will have built all those days of strength as immunity to others’ emotions for the next lap. You do need immunity to others’ emotions so the same old traps won’t trip you again.
You receive the credits you have earned in every degree, even when you fail to complete your 1,000 burnt offerings. For example, when someone makes a promise, he opens the way for the substance of the promise, even if he does not keep the promise. When you receive substance from anyone anywhere, your acceptance and love reduce his debt. Be patient. No patience is the opposite of impatience. Universal patience waits upon the Lord for fulfillment above earth in the Source of Mind itself. When you really conquer self and cleanse your soul taints, you are able to hold, and not be touched, hurt, bored, or impatient. Work for acceptance and endurance of delays as perfect, but also give of self to see God, invisible and loving.
The second ascent of Degrees, the highest plateau of the Seven Degrees currently attainable, has seven requirements.
| Degree | Lesson Learned | ||
| Neophyte | You learn how to create physical balance by lifting your conflicting emotional desires. | ||
| Disciple | You learn mental balance by crucifying the selfishness of your personal expressions of will. | ||
| Adept | You learn spiritual balance by making the first marriage of the Lamb between desire and will, thereby becoming Christed “I AM” consciousness. | ||
| Mystic | You learn to perfect the balance between love and wisdom by bridging the abyss between heaven and earth. | ||
| Master | You learn the highest ethics and moral virtues by polishing the lessons of the 1,000 burnt offerings of self. | ||
| Priest | You learn full surrender of all self, with no reservations of self, no leftovers or holdouts. | ||
| Christos | You learn the final conquering of self by soul, the conquering of death, even “I die daily.”–1 Corinthians 15:31. | ||
| Degree | Requirements | ||
| Neophyte | The search for truth: Standing in the outer temple court, one searches for truth. You lift the first veil of illusion when you accept that Jesus the Christ is the First Begotten Son of God. | ||
| Disciple | Illumination to lift the second veil of illusion: Standing before the radiance shining through the royal blue drapery of the Holy Spirit, emblazoned with an eye, in the Supreme Temple of the Sun. | ||
| Adept | Comprehension of the nature of Power to lift the third veil of illusion: Standing in the inner court of the temple, one comprehends Light as Power. | ||
| Mystic | Contemplation of the Glory: Standing before your altar in the golden silence, you contemplate the Glory concealed by the fourth veil of illusion. | ||
| Master | Attainment of the gifts of the seer and prophet, which lie behind the fifth veil of illusion: Standing in the Courts of Melchizedek, you attain entry to the Seven Cities of God. | ||
| Priest | Awareness of the Kingdom of Heaven here and now to part the sixth veil of illusion: Standing in the Holy of Holies, you are aware of the Kingdom. | ||
| Christos | Opening the crown to lift the seventh veil of illusion: Ascending to the Sacred Sphere of the Flame at the Source Throne Circle, you open the crown. | ||
The Elect are all making at least their second ascent on the wheel and some are nearing its end. The pineal body and pituitary gland awaken to illumination and intuition as you make the second ascent, which opens the stored memories of past lives, especially the emotional negatives. What you experience inscribes these records on the blood platelets that you store in the desire body’s medulla oblongata.
Stored memories can be toxic enough to cause diseases of the brain and head, and they can cause migraines, viral infections and all manners of illness when the body spews them into the bloodstream. Yet how can any darkness continue to exist if you pour Light upon it? As you conquer on these degrees in the second ascent, you ascend your memory records, and the fervency of your prayers instantly absorbs the stored darkness. Light pours through the pineal, pituitary, thyroid, and parathyroid glands to awaken the thymus to Rebirth as eternal youth, and to ascend the adrenal glands. After sufficient medulla oblongata cleansing, your parathalamus bodies begin to open and quicken your intuition and illumination faculties.
In this age, every child born on earth has the parathalamus bodies as two infinitesimal slips next to the optic chiasm of the thalamus. The Elect are awakening their parathalamus bodies through the quality of their fervency, by maintaining a 24-hour contact with God. Your parathalamus bodies do not begin to open until you have completed the 144 steps of the second ascent of the Wheel of EVE.
The Fiery Cross of Ascension is the cross of the Mystic, who balances at the heart center between heaven and earth. Venus expresses earthly love, beauty, and the law of agreeing with God and adjusting to your fellow man. Neptune is the higher octave or vibration of Venus. Neptune expresses the hearing faculty and universal love and beauty as unity, which describes the Brotherhood of Man under the Fatherhood of God. Mercury here is the Messenger of the Word of God to man on earth. Uranus is the higher octave or vibration of Mercury. Uranus represents the soul vision faculty and the divine Wisdom of the Father who sends forth the Word.
Transfiguration, Resurrection, Ascension
Edna Lister transcript,Margaret Pratt Doan, Ruth Johnson, Lily V. Kondash, Irene White, Virginia Whitehead, scribes, May 19, 1959, Cleveland, OH
The begotten creator gods, who descended many millennia ago to open and rule a new Day of Manifestation, inhabit our solar system. “I heard the number of them which were sealed: and there were sealed an hundred and forty and four thousand of all the tribes of the children of Israel. After this I beheld, and, lo, a great multitude, which no man could number, of all nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues, stood before the throne, and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes, and palms in their hands; and cried with a loud voice, saying, Salvation to our God which sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb.”–Revelation 7:4,9-10 The 1st life wave of seven life waves, described in Revelation, is a vast group of souls, many lesser creator gods all differentiated from the One God.
The descent in this great Day of Manifestation occurred prehistorically, and no written record of it exists. The begotten creator gods did not form physical bodies, but descended by precipitating sheaths, waiting in each high realm until they formed a sheath heavy enough to function in the next lowest realm. The 144,000, 12,000 from each of twelve Golden Cities of God, representing the Tribes of Israel, descended first, each Holy Pair in a sphere of Light. They lived in their spheres and precipitated androgynous bodies while earth was in the gaseous state. The six days of creation described in the first chapter of Genesis are six great ages, gestating periods during which the heavenly hierarchy filled the molds of Creation with substance to become visible form.
When the gas cooled, it became misty. Water appeared, then plant and animal life. The androgynous beings inhaled Light until their spheres of Light burst and released billions of life sparks, which permeated earth to become the “dust of the ground” from which they later formed man. For aeons each Holy Pair dispersed enough paired life sparks to form every animal of earth. Then they budded smaller individual spheres from their great spheres of Light to bring the souls of the 2nd life wave to earth.
All creator gods who descend to rule leave their original positions open to the first portion conquering and returning. You are returning to the places from where you originally descended as a creator god. You need more than desire, ambition or a plan to return to your original position. Humility, selflessness, and sacrificial surrender to be used by all Power are the requirements for returning to your place. Humility is wisdom and love perfectly balanced as compassion on earth.
Jealousy grew among the descended creator gods. The myths tell the story and it isn’t very attractive. When certain rebellious creator gods threw earth from Sagittarius, many others were caught unaware. Most of those who obeyed law call themselves the White Brotherhood of today, but the 500 who disobeyed sank to form the Grey and Black Brotherhoods. The remainder of those who obeyed law are the Elect of today, because they elected, chose, to follow the First Begotten Son home to God. Heavenly Councils formed the Plan of Salvation to conquer darkness. All seven mystery schools of the ancient world taught this and a thread of it runs through all secret teachings.
The story of the descended creator gods is not the fall of man, but the fall to man. Capricorn is the Gate of the Gods. These begotten creator gods came through the Gate of Capricorn to build their final sphere-sheaths. They could recall their life sparks two by two from the animal kingdom to build their bodies. Adam and Eve were the first Holy Pair of androgynous beings in the 1st life wave described in Genesis, the second chapter. “And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam.”–Genesis 2:21. When the fall to man was ready, the Watchers put them in a “deep sleep” and severed the umbilical cords of Light that joined them at the naval. They were in separate bodies when they awakened and their spheres of Light were gone. The 1st life wave of descended begotten creator gods formed the sheaths for the created gods who were to head the 2nd life wave.
Revelation 14: “A Lamb stood on mount Zion and with him 144,000, having his Father’s name written in their foreheads…the 144,000, which were redeemed from the earth, the group having gotten victory over the beast.” Revelation 15:2 describes those who stand on the sea of glass, the ascending Elect who have conquered. The ancient pine tree symbol represents 144, the individual (1) standing upright in the garden of Eden. It shows that the dual four (4) of the pineal and pituitary in the higher creative center are fully open. The Elect believe in Jesus the Christ as the Only Begotten Son of God, a title that means he was the only portion of the First Begotten Son who held the full scepter of Power equally with God. Logos refers to the Christ principle, and is not the name of a personality. From the First Begotten Son springs the pattern for all possible personalities.
The First Begotten Son has opened every great civilization on earth. Seven begotten gods, the Lords of Creation under the First Begotten, have taught the Word throughout seven ages. Some call Jesus just a good man, but GOOD is the name of the dual Father and Mother on earth; the OO represents the Father and the Mother. Fallen created and begotten creator gods caused all the darkness, confusion, prejudice, hatred, and war we have on earth today, which is why the Elect have grieved.
When it is time for a soul to take on an earth body, the
The Oversoul is half the soul’s substance. It remains above and uses superconscious mind. One-quarter of the soul’s substance are the life sparks that become the cells of the physical body and form the appetitive soul that uses subconscious mind. These are the same life sparks the Holy Pairs threw off in the beginning of this Day of Manifestation. One-quarter of the life sparks form the rational soul that uses conscious mind.
You are considered to be in the body when you finish building a new brain cortex. Each soul builds a new set of brain cells with each new body. You develop brain cells through outside stimuli and experiences as you learn about truth. Now you are ready for transfiguration. Jesus is our ensample of Transfiguration, Resurrection, and Ascension.
Transfiguration: Transfiguration is the Mystic Degree initiation. When Jesus was transfigured, he recalled and integrated his past embodiments as Moses and Elijah. A catalyst brings together two different substances and transfigures them into a new, common substance, which serves as the vibratory rate of balance between the visible and invisible worlds. Transfiguration raises the physical cells’ vibratory rate of balance from the coarser material to the radiant electronic fire body.
The Oversoul descends into the fire body under transfiguration, causing the outer sheath to glister with the white Light of the Christ. Jesus had often disappeared, which is called translation, but his transfiguration was his fire body vibration shining through his outer physical sheath as all materiality fell from him. His face glistered with the Light from within, visible and brilliant as the sun—even his clothes shone. Peter, James, and John could see only his white fire body.
You do not instantly transfigure yourself completely but a bit at a time. When you dream of darkness, you resurrect a point of fear to lift over the abyss. When the Elect stop weeping tears of self-pity, we will erase tears from earth. Every time you pray as a Mystic you transfigure a little. Breathe deeply. Hatha Yoga, the yoga of breath, teaches this, and many concentrate on this phase for decades. You use prayer to draw in the life sparks. Open to the Father and Light enters to transfigure the physical body as it ascends.
At night, to open your body to God’s permeating Power, say, “I commend my spirit unto Thee, oh Father. Let Thy Spirit move through this body. Let it be healed and purified. Let it be Light.” When you declare perfection before going to sleep, you open yourself to God’s Power and substance and awaken light and happy. In the morning, breathe deeply and declare, “Name, move into your body and take charge to occupy it for the day.” Don’t dangle halfway between here and there. Stand ten feet tall. Open yourself to the River of Life. Say, “Let the Spirit of Light move through me.” If you close out God’s Power, you push 14.7 pounds psi of atmospheric pressure before us, but if you open yourself, it flows through you.
Under the process of transfiguration, you integrate twelve cellular physical glands and plexus centers with the seven vital centers of the molecular desire body. The atomic mental body holds 44 lotus centers that distribute the life powers. The fire body is formless electronic substance, except its seven sun centers, which align over the vital centers to dispense Light and multiply Power for health under ascension. Reach for Power to permeate your body. You show your age in how you stand. Are you weak-kneed and slouching or youthful, erect and ready for more life and Light? You can renew every cell of your body in one week, in the twinkling of an eye.
The fire body begins to possess the physical as the sun centers form in the seat of Oversoul, the sun centers start whirling and draw life sparks from the mental body. The Elect were unable to complete this process before 1953, when the Gates of Light closed to the 1st life wave of descended creator gods. The Tribes that descended from twelve Golden Cities of God are still drawing the physical body into the desire and the desire into the mental body. The desire body is an exact counterpart to the physical and they must align exactly with the mental vehicle. Misalignment of the physical and desire bodies causes all heart and brain trouble. Practice transfiguration—breathe yourself straight into your body each morning to align your desire body over your physical body, part for part, then you can contact your Oversoul, which sends Power from your fire body for perfect health.
All initiatory work is based on and patterns after the double Altar of Ascension, situated at fifteen degrees Scorpio in the Temple of Ara, the Altar. The White Brotherhood degrees extend only to the third Adept Degree. The Mystic Brotherhood degrees begin at the Mystic, the fourth degree. You then cross the Abyss to Becoming to take the final three Via Christa Degrees in the Supreme Temple of the Sun.
The Neophyte, Disciple and Adept Degrees deal with the principle of Doing or right application of the laws you have learned. The Moon rules the Neophyte because your first emotional conquering is overcoming the Moon’s emotional influence to be moody and vacillating. When you tire of conquering self on the higher degrees, you sink to sit on your lunar cushion of emotion. Venus rules the Disciple, the seeker after truth. When a teacher has taught you all he knows, you leave him behind and enter another class, but the happiness and satisfaction you found in his class propels you to step into greater beauty and become more radiant. Mars rules the Adept, who tries to conquer pride, intolerance, and other self-taints, without much success. You experience significant inner conflict under Mars, the planet of ego and energy. It is up to you whether you want to use this energy for trying to control self’s conflicts or for conquering self.
The fourth degree represents the vibratory rate of balance between the inner and outer worlds in consciousness, between doing and being the law. Mercury rules the Mystic who communes directly with God in prayer. Mercury rules quicksilver, symbolic of the instant transference of information. You become effective only under eloquent, expert prayer as your instant reaction to any challenge or threat to your equilibrium, harmony, and balance. This is how you reach the Transfiguration from self control to soul command. Prayer is the best way to pass each test quickly, and the only way to cross each abyss. You can’t just think about it, analyze and rationalize under the negative mental-intellectual Mercury vibration. Mere intellectual prayer, prayer by rote, sinks into the body and your consciousness remains within your skull, under the ceiling.
You undergo initiations of being the law you have learned under the Master, Priest, and Christos Degrees. Saturn, the planet of contraction, rules the Master. Saturn is the tempter and makes you strong as you gain mastery by accepting your personal responsibility under tests and trials. Jupiter, the expansion planet, rules the Priest, who must ignite the fire of Spirit, and keep it burning on the Altar of Ascension. The Sun, the Light of life, rules the Christos Degree of complete surrender to become selflessness, where you burn away all self. Each planet rules certain parts of the physical body and phases of the emotional and mental lives. The planets relate to the degrees so you can know what detriments you must conquer.
Potential Power is the universal Power of the Father and Mother as One within the Universal Sun Center of Power, which is the Source of All Light. Potential Power descends as individually whirling life sparks of Light substance, streaming in rays to become all potential Power in the universes. The rays reform and condense still further in the rate of vibration to descend as the Father, Mother, and Son, the Three-as-One. Thus, the universal Christ principle, the white Light of the Christ as the Son principle of potential personality, is kinetic energy here in the world of appearances. The potential Power you release becomes the kinetic energy that vitalizes you, your affairs and works for the good of all those on your lines of Light and responsibility.
The Trinity of Being for our universe is just below the Central Sun. The Father, Mother, and Son are still the Three-as-One, expressing as all potential of Mind, Power, and Substance. The vibration is lowered and further condensed here but is not yet physical as we would recognize it. An Abyss to Becoming separates the Trinities of Being and Doing at the point of contact between the visible and invisible world that you reach in high prayer. A space always exists between Being and Doing where Power may move into what you decree. To reach Transfiguration, you climb on these degrees until you touch this prayer point of contact. Prayer is the only pathway through any abyss.
All potential Power of the Three-as-One descends through whirling sun centers as pillars of fire to become Wisdom, Love, and Selflessness, which is the Trinity of Doing, the outer Trinity of Man. Love, Wisdom, and Selflessness become the kinetic energy in your life. The Three-as-One is in man as the One. Jesus lived in his electronic fire body but still held his atomic mental body or he could not have remained visible. The fire body sun centers appear as golden, radiating pastel rays to the mystic eye. When your sun centers are active, you will draw people to you wherever you walk. In three weeks, 3,000 people followed Jesus into the upper chamber. When your sun centers are active others know you have “something” and they follow the Light in you.
Resurrection: Initially, Resurrection is drawing the whirling life sparks from physical glands and plexus centers into the desire body vital centers. You then draw the life sparks into the mental body lotus centers and then into the electronic body sun centers. The oily sheath surrounding each life spark holds the physical body together, but falls away under resurrection, which is already happening for those who pray. Some people unconsciously walk in vehicles that are partly physical, partly desire body lowered in the rate of vibration to look exactly like the physical, only more refined. A refined sheath results from drawing redeemed life sparks from one body into another. When an embodied soul become mired in the “sticky” effect of unsublimated physical chemistry (the hormones and neurotransmitters), The prayer treatment is, “Let my sun centers’ fires permeate every nerve, cell, molecule and atom of my body vehicles to absorb all congestion.” Use this treatment for diagnoses of cancer, elevated serum cholesterol, arterial plaque, osteoporosis, varicose veins, inflammation, etc.
You resurrect yourself every time you step up in consciousness from an emotional-mental tailspin. Whatever you leave unconquered creates a crystallized spot in the desire body. You control and crystallize any emotion you do not transfigure by conquering. The pineal body and the liver control the emotions. Those who are usually emotionally negative in their attitudes toward life have collapsed their pineal body. Those who are prejudiced have trouble with their pituitary gland. Those who hate, lie, or argue have trouble with their gall bladder or liver.
To resurrect the body requires coordination between soul surrender of self and physical relaxation. Many have learned to relax their muscles, ligaments and bones, but their nerves remain so tense they cannot sleep. Others have learned to relax their nerves but their muscles twitch and the ligaments draw. Relaxation is a combination of surrender and using the rag doll movement. First, stretch your arms down and clench your fists. Then raise your arms slowly over your head and arch your back until you stretch your spine into a backward curve. Then go limp, suddenly relaxing and bending forward from the waist as far as you can toward the floor.
Every thought you think and word you utter is divine substance. Prayer is divine substance in action. To make every thought a prayer is the ascension of consciousness—this is becoming Christlike, being what God intends you to be. This is prayer without ceasing and making every moment pay a dividend in the life of God. For example, pray for each television actor or announcer you see, surround them with arms of Light and lift all detriments. Pray for the world while you watch or listen to the news so you are all prayed up and ready to stretch out on a cloud of Light when you go to bed, which will provide coordinated relaxation.
Jesus lived in his mental body and he could do phenomenal things—walk on water, materialize loaves and fishes, and disappear. Jesus used his atomic body to make soul flights. He could have disappeared from the cross in an instant had he chosen to do so. When the Gospels say Jesus went “out of sight” he disappeared, it means he “translated” his physical mass, his body, into Light. Einstein’s work reveals that mass is equal to the lowest speed of substance. Light-energy is equal to the highest measurable speed of substance. Mass and Light are one. You fill your aura with Light and life on every breath. Fill your auric sheath with as much Light and life as you please—it’s unlimited.
Ascension: Jesus filled his aura with great Light and life. He lifted his mass as he ascended and the Fathers bestowed more soul substance upon him. Great begotten gods o’ershadowed him to hold his body’s high vibration in form. Jesus was a greater descended creator god on the cross than anyone who has ever walked earth. The only earthly element left in his body was the bloodstream, which is why they pierced his side on the cross, to drain his bloodstream. His platelets anchored him to occupy his desire body and physical bloodstream. On the cross, he drew these platelets into his desire body medulla oblongata to store his soul records of the incarnation.
The seven words Jesus spoke while on the cross were seven vibrations to lift and to pay soul debts. He drew in every bit of force that he had created during his life—for example, blasting the barren fig tree, or whipping the moneychangers. Jesus suffered when the life sparks in his electronic body were withdrawn from him, and he said, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” His responsibility to transform his mass, all the life sparks bestowed upon him, into pure energy was tremendous!
Jesus knew that the energy conversion resulting from potential Power he released would be great enough to destroy the planet with earthquakes, thunder and lightning. The Hiroshima blast resulted from resurrecting the potential energy of just two ounces of uranium into kinetic energy. The resulting nuclear chain reaction was uncontrolled and destructive. Jesus’ whole travail, his anguish was that all could be lost in the instant his life sparks were indrawn to the Central Sun of our galaxy, the Milky Way. He controlled his translation and the pure energy joined his form on the other side. Energy companies are now doing this in nuclear reactors.
Jesus told Joseph of Arimathea how to handle his body until he laid it in the tomb. High ones held Jesus’ body in apparent form and allowed no one to touch it because it was no longer mass, just pure energy. The empty tomb held nothing but potential energy as life sparks with Jesus’ name and number. The potential Power he called to earth during his ministry is that portion of Christed substance you invoke for healing today. You invoke the Power of Jesus’ life sparks when you pray and call upon his name. Potential Power is the blood of the Lamb. Prayer and the power of communion with God are redeeming all mankind.
You must draw in and lift every life spark to the sun to make soul flights. The silver cord stretches when appetitive soul consciousness as desire ascends to join rational soul’s will. Then you can extend your full rational consciousness in vision. You leave appetitive soul in control of the brain cells as a recording machine. As you transfigure your life, you resurrect all the old and open new brain cells. You, too, can “dream dreams and see visions.” When you mate desire to will, and open the Christ consciousness of I AM, you lift the last of appetitive soul and burn away the silver cord, strand by strand, to open the 1,000-petaled lotus at the crown of your head. Each strand represents a burnt offering, all negatives being consumed. You cannot precipitate a body until you burn away the silver cord. You achieve this through coordinated relaxation. The nerves hold the cells and organs tense. You can relax muscles but leave the nerves tense—yet the muscles, nerves, and ligaments must relax and let go together.
Go out on a cloud of Light and wait while holding enough consciousness in your brain cells to record. If you see darkness, you have not said, “Father, send angels to stand at my bed and wrap me in the Light of the Christ.” Wrap your body in the Christ Light before you sleep so your brain cells will record what you see at night. In the morning, take time to send your consciousness out in your desire body to look along a line of Light and see what you have done while your body was asleep. Extend your physical eyes and ears through the desire body.
Reaching up for the stars will open the lotus centers. The crown center opens and impulsive appetitive soul becomes a reflecting mirror recording everything on the brain cells. Light reflects from the optic thalamus through the triangle in the forehead, shines before you as the Spirit of the Lord, and you open the records stored in the midbrain neurons. You use your ears and eyes here when conscious. God is alive and alert, not a “half” anything! Looking like a zombie is not Godlike.
Rational soul’s conscious mind must stop, look, and listen. Keep your conscious eyes and ears on the business of living. Oversoul maintains your high point of contact day and night. Seeing is a matter of focusing your attention on the substance between you and the walls, between you and the clouds. Failure to focus causes practically all poor vision. Your ability rusts and you need glasses. Vision is like a camera lens that can focus at five, ten or twenty feet. Take time to focus, which brings the desire body eyes into outer manifestation. When people learn to focus their eyes, 90 percent of the glasses that people wear will be useless.
Learn to walk in the Light that veils the creator gods as they walk the earth. To see in the heavenly realms, first imagine rainbow fields of color and beyond to the silver fields of Light ripples. Keep looking through the substance. You may see the Master, a loved one, someone coming toward you, or you may be conscious of a temple in the mist. Move through the mist and into golden Light. This is ascension here and now, changing all physical ills and problems into the image and likeness of God. Jesus said, “He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do.”–John 14:12. The kingdom of heaven is open to all believers. How much do you believe? How far do you believe?
The Four Kabbalistic Worlds
Edna Lister transcript, Margaret Pratt Doan, Ruth Johnson, Irene White, Virginia Whitehead, scribes, May 26, 1959, Cleveland, OH
Seven great schools exist within the framework of mystical Kabbalistic teaching, which is the universal School of Wisdom. Jesus is the chief teacher, all others are subordinate to him. All other occult schools branch from Kabbalah. Kabbalah is the noun form of a Hebrew verb meaning “to receive, to accept.” Studying Kabbalah releases great Power and opens new brain cells. The inner teachers know your standing from the combination of “lights and colors” you emit from your forehead. When you reach a certain point in development and conquering—they know when you are ready—they unveil the mysteries in stages so you can remain stable under the Power your study releases.
All mysteries of the Wheels of Ezekiel—astrology and numerology for example—fall under the Kabbalistic system; it covers the principles of Light, number, color, tone, and name (form). Pythagoras derived his work from an early Kabbalistic system. The magical books of the Hebrews contain the history of Kabbalah. The common title is spelled Kabbalah, though you may omit the final “h.” Qabalah is a spelling that invokes great Power from the source of knowledge, and is nearer to the true meaning of the written Hebrew word.
Traditionally, the mystery texts state that Angels taught man the mysteries. Raziel (Secrets of God) taught the mysteries to Adam. Japhiel (Beauty of God) taught them to Shem. Zadkiel (Righteousness of God) taught them to Abraham. These angels are among the Supreme Father’s direct, personal messengers. Abraham received the mysteries directly from the Father, who took on form as Melchizedek the King of Salem. Abraham, in turn, taught them to those whom he conducted into the Father’s mysteries. Moses also received the mysteries directly from the Supreme Father. He initiated Aaron, the second High Priest in line from Melchizedek, into the mysteries of Kabbalah. From him we have passed it on orally, teaching by word of “mouth to ear” throughout the ages.
A single lifetime is considered insufficient to master the depth and breadth of Kabbalah, which is the key to the full Wisdom of God. A profound study of all books of the Bible and the Apocrypha is necessary to gain even a superficial understanding of the Kabbalah. Eleven incarnations of study, application, and obedience to divine law will lead to mastery of the Kabbalah’s mysteries.
The Hebrews held their alphabet, which they call the autiot, or “signs,” in especial reverence. They have alluded to it as the Heavenly Alphabet, the Celestial Writing, the Writing of the Angels, the Bridge Twixt Heaven and Earth, the Passing of the River, and Over the Waters, just to name a few. The Hebrew alphabet is the mystic vehicle of correspondence between God, the angels, and man. If we did not have the Bible and its mysteries, we would have no ladder between heaven and earth. This writing of the angels directly connects to the science of astrology because of the influence of heavenly vibrations sent through the stars and the planets.
Before Terra fell from the rulership of Sagittarius, Capricorn was the Gate of Descent for earthly lives. Souls descended through Capricorn and incarnated in the remaining signs to ascend through Sagittarius. The heaviest body sheath then was about the consistency of your present desire body. When Terra fell, the Zodiacal Path was lowered, creating the plane of the ecliptic. As earth ascends, it rises. Now all souls enter earth life through the Gate of the Mother in Cancer, to gestate a sufficiently heavy, crystallized physical sheath. Sagittarius remains the high fire gate by which souls ascend, because you can melt crystallization only by the application of heat.
Letters of the Hebrew alphabet formerly named all constellations in the Zodiacal Path, and the seven planets. This alphabet is of heavenly origin, and is sacred. After Terrae fell, they took it from the stars and presented it as an alphabet in simple form so man could understand it. By the aid of this glittering alphabet, they read the Will of God in the heavens. That type of astrology had no detriments. According to Hindu belief, seven veils of illusion are seven different grades of substance or rates of vibration through which you pass to attain perfection. This is their way of saying that you must pass the Seven Sacred Degrees of Initiation. The three Paths of the Kabbalah are called veils also. They are gematria, notaricon, and temurah.
The Three Paths of the Kabbalah
Gematria includes metaphysical mathematics and common numerical values, and each letter has a corresponding numerical value. Words or names of the same numerical value have a sympathetic and corresponding relation to each other. A Kabbalistic interpretation of names using gematria should be added to comparison of astrological charts for couples planning to be married. Gematria enfolds unwritten Kabbalah, which is taught orally.
No word is spoken without the use of numbers: A word is a number, a number is a word. Thus, the Word becomes form. Gematria involves correspondences in vibration, sympathetic relationships, and numerical identification. It is a process through which words and sentences can be considered and analogies deduced. Gematria is based on the relative values of words, and correlates God as both principle and personality. Gematria reveals the metaphysical correspondences, which deal with the effect of emotions on physical organs. The causes of heart trouble, for example, may be subjected to numerical identification as a possible means of integrating mental acceptance of emotional disharmonies. Constant emotional or mental irritation affects the spleen.
Notaricon is the path of the literal Kabbalah using the philosophical value of numbers. The notaricon deals with the absolute and relative trinities, the descent of the gods and their actions on earth. The absolute trinity is Wisdom, Love, and the Word. The relative trinity is number, name and form. You apply notaricon to understand the trinities, the descent of the creator gods and their actions on earth.
Notaricon considers and observes the initial, central and final letters and words of Biblical verses and other sacred writings. An angel’s name, for instance, tells you from where he works and the position he holds. Using notaricon, you learn that how you write words indicates their different worlds of origin. For example, words in all lowercase letters suggest small creations. Words written in capitals imply immensities beyond the limits of human conception.
A cabal is a small group engaged in secret dealings. An historical example is the British Privy Council, the first example of a modern government cabinet, which plotted to overthrow King Charles II. This “accidental coincidence” exemplifies a law in notaricon; their names revealed what they really were: CABAL:
Clifford
Ashley
Buckingham
Arlington
Lauderdale
Temurah deals with permutation, all possible changes in the physical world as revealed through the mystery of numbers. Billions of different combinations of Light, Power, and substance were contained within the invisible potential of the Creation. Billions of combinations of substance are now visible on earth as the expressions of man’s character through creation. God numbers and names all substance. Temurah reveals the different combinations of substance formed through creation and how this works in your character.
Where would we be without the ability to change? Crystallized! People would be frozen in their bodies. Temurah includes talismans, tarot cards, legerdemain, and dreams, called practical Kabbalah. Temurah also means “explanation.” All rituals, creeds, and dogmas come under temurah. A permutation is a mathematical term meaning “all possible combinations.” For example, under temurah, Medieval mages constructed the names of angels and sacred objects by transposing letters in magical scripts. Thirteen letters of a magical script transposed into thirteen letters of our alphabet might read:
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 |
| A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z |
Temurah would substitute N for A, O for B, etc., and so create a double meaning for each name, which is why some angels have such peculiar names. We use the Hebrew alphabet quite differently under temurah. We do not reveal the method because it releases an unsuitable amount of Power.
| World | Expression | Manifestation |
| Atziluth|Archetypal | Number|Fire | Electronic fire body via 7 sun centers |
| Briah|Creative | Color|Air | Atomic mental body via 44 lotus centers |
| Yetsirah|Formative | Tone|Water | Molecular desire body via 7 vital centers |
| Assiah|Material | Form|Earth | Cellular physical body via 12 glands and nerve centers |
The four Worlds of Kabbalah have Hebrew names: Atziluth, the World of Emanation, Briah, the World of Creation, Yetsirah, the World of Formation, and Assiah, the World of Material Form. Thus, Absolute Being as God the One becomes relative being or God the Many expressing in form. Applying the law of correspondence, “As above, so below,” we may determine the following:
| As Above | So Below | ||
| Atziluth = Number | Fire = fiery soul body | ||
| Briah = Color | Air = mental body | ||
| Yetsirah = Tone | Water = desire body | ||
| Assiah = Name (Form) | Earth = physical body | ||
The form principle (name) is a subsidiary idea under the number principle, since number is a designation and name makes an explanation of it. Name is supposed to explain number. In other words, God numbered you in heaven before your parents named you here on earth. Number is the source of name, or is supposed to be. What can defeat this principle from acting properly? The spiritual inattentiveness of parents who choose a meaningless or outlandish name, and parents who abide by the custom of reusing family names that have become meaningless in regard to the soul’s true nature and needs. The name is a method of strengthening, upholding, and supporting the embodied soul.
Assiah is the World of Material Form, which expresses through mathematics, the application of Number. Assiah derives from the Hebrew verb, “to make.” Material form rules the cellular physical body, its twelve glands and nerve plexus centers. The World of Form covers the three lower vital centers in man, sacrum, splenic, and solar plexus centers. These centers are in the abdominal cavity, called the “land of Egypt.” Even after the twelve Tribes of Israel were freed from Egypt they still desired to make a golden calf to worship, the material form of a god. Selfish desire always seeks to make a thing in its own idea of the proper image.
Atziluth is the archetypal World of Emanation, which expresses through the mystical Kabbalistic significations of names and numbers. Atziluth means “to emanate.” The aura and electronic fire body of Oversoul come under the World of Color and Fire. The fire body has seven sun centers that the Elect are now forming. Each soul has an Oversoul star (symbolically blue and five-pointed) that serves as the storehouse for his or her soul substance. This is the basis for the mystical dictum that “You must exalt yourself to your place in the stars.” How do you contact your universal storehouse of soul substance? When you ascend and use your mental and soul faculties from above, you no longer slide down the greased pole of selfishness. The skull is the golden bowl, which contains the brain and higher creative centers—the brain’s glands and nerves—the mental equipment the embodied soul uses.
Briah is the World of Creation, which expresses through religion and the philosophy of numbers. Briah means “to create.” Within the World of Creative Tone, stars and planets create the “music of the spheres.” Briah is the second great World of the Hidden Wisdom of God. The World of Creation covers the throat and brow centers, the atomic mental body and its forty-four lotus centers. This is the entrance to the “garden of Eden.”
Yetsirah is the Formative World of Water, which expresses through number (astrology and numerology). Yetsirah means “to form.” The molecular desire body and its seven vital centers, which are wheels of light that change color and radiance as influenced by emotions, come under formation. Water is changeable and represents the emotions. The Formative World covers the heart center and the thoracic cavity, the Promised Land. Unfolding the Wisdom of God is the first step in mysticism. Yetsirah is the first World of the Hidden Wisdom of God.
Many souls coming to earth since about 1940 have more mental faculties opened and ready for use. The parents of these children had already developed greater soul knowledge and awareness themselves. These generations continue to open and develop more brain cells, giving their children the advantage of more convolutions, increasing the surface area in the brain’s cortex, accommodating many more neurons, and greatly increasing the potential for further mental development.
Certain nerve endings in a healthy person’s desire body brain are phosphorescent at their tips, which extend above the skull; they are the source of the halo shown in religious paintings. When you reach up in devotion, Light descends, and it sets these tips afire—so this is a good method of staying up in consciousness. The tips of Light become the mental body’s 1,000-petaled lotus, and are your protective antennae. If you look down or think negatively, they fold back because a low point in consciousness destroys the harmony that sets them afire.
The First Three Sacred Degrees
Neophyte Degree: Breathing, water, diet, rest, diversion, and exercise are the Neophyte vows for divine metabolism, to make the body a fit dwelling place for the soul. You feel tired or dragged out only when your consciousness is living in bondage in the land of Egypt. Nine salivary glands line the mouth and throat. The throat is the most important body center because your physical health depends on the proper functioning of the salivary glands. Besides moistening food and beginning the digestive process, saliva acts as a solvent on waste products and helps to regulate the body’s water balance. The physical metabolism depends on proper functioning of the thyroid gland at the throat center and the pineal body and pituitary gland, mediated by the depth of the breath. When you breathe deeply, you draw the highest etheric substances from the cosmic rays.
The Neophyte Degree rules the sacrum plexus nerve ganglia and vital center, which lies below the sacroiliac at the base of the spine. The letter “A” within an inverted triangle symbolically represents the sacrum. The sacral nerves and vital center are often frozen, especially in those who have worked at killing desire under certain Eastern beliefs. You cannot kill desire but you can lift it. A frozen creative center causes the embodied soul to be inarticulate in expressing love and affection.
The navel vital center and spleen are one under the Disciple Degree. The navel vital center lies between the thyroid and solar plexus. The sphincter muscle at the navel center is the outlet for splenic things like gossip, negativity, and verbal violence. The only intake at this center is a demonic entity entering for possession. The focus of Light ascends from the navel vital center as you ascend in consciousness.
The Mystic Degree, Your Point of Balance: You take in the three highest degrees of breath through the 1,000-petaled lotus and crown center atop the head. These three high, potent powers of being combine with or “fall into” four lesser grades of substance that you breathe as air through your nostrils. You cannot be whole until you have the four breaths as one in the white Light of the Christ. The lotus petals unfold and open to Light under deep breathing. They fold in and close unless you inflate the mental body atoms under deep breathing.
When you feel tired or gloomy, your crown center has slowed its whirling and your lotus petals are wilting closed. Consciously enter the Light, stretch, reach up with your arms, and breathe deeply several times during the day to keep the lotus petals whirling and open. Ascend in consciousness until you feel as though you are talking with a blue star. This is a constructive use of your imagination! Unless you breathe deeply, you do not charge your physical metabolism with Light from the cosmic rays that feed your soul as you breathe.
You take the final three degrees, Master, Priest, and Christos, in the Supreme Temple of the Sun. You always work ahead to the Christos Degree. Whenever you conquer on even a small point, you gain credits for a degree ahead, a little at a time. Credit is the source of your strength. For example, the Priest’s work degrees begin with opening the windows of the soul at the brow vital center and end as you open your active link with your Oversoul star, your connection with the mindthat was in Christ Jesus. You are supposed to use your faculties and think from there. This is how you finish the Priest Degree.
The Master Degree begins at the throat vital center, the “I-me-my” center of speech. Here you begin to conquer the little self, not just control it. Consecrated mastery on the Via Christa opens the three windows of the soul at the brow vital center so you may see, hear and speak without self. The thyroid gland is the Adept’s seat of power. The throat center is the I-me-my center, the point of final crossing out of self.
Science calls the pituitary the master regulating gland of the body because it regulates growth, skin color, and the other endocrine glands through the hormones it secretes. Your mental body charges the pineal body and pituitary gland with Light from cosmic rays taken in through the top of the head under deep breathing. A perfectly balanced pituitary sends a thyroid-stimulating hormone to the thyroid gland, which then directs the parathyroid glands to maintain calcium balance and the salivary glands for efficient digestion. The thyroid gland regulates the body’s overall metabolic rate, reduces or increases the rate of metabolism to maintain balance. A thyroid message goes to the thymus gland, which controls immunity, then into the bloodstream and throughout the body to maintain perfect health. Just breathe and let it flow through you.
You are the Light in Seven Degrees. Light fills your Oversoul star under the consecrated vibration of the Priest Degree. Yellow, blue, and red rays form the pure white Light of the Christ, the Son of selflessness and joy, a vibration you touch under the Christos Degree. This star is the Oversoul’s seat of thinking and it rests just above your head. Light from your star shines through three
Thus, you open your windows of the soul to New Jerusalem. The rays recombine to form the Christ Light that strikes the optic chiasm of the thalamus and enters the pineal body and pituitary gland. Light then descends the spine to different parts of the body as healing, integrating rays. This is exactly what Daniel did when he learned of the plot to destroy him: “Now when Daniel knew that the writing was signed, he went into his house; and his windows being open in his chamber toward Jerusalem, he kneeled upon his knees three times a day, and prayed, and gave thanks before his God, as he did aforetime.”–Daniel 6:10. They threw him into a den of lions believing he would die, but the Light Daniel invoked with his prayers held him safe. Daniel’s windows, his pineal body, hypothalamus, and pituitary gland were open to Jerusalem, the City of Peace. “Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee: because he trusteth in thee.”–Isaiah 26:3.
Compare Psalm 119 under the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet. Then study the four Gospels and compare the stories they tell. Notice all the different ways used to illustrate the same idea according to the three great phases of Kabbalistic work: gematria, temurah, and notaricon. For instance, ponder the first two chapters of Genesis and consider why God created mankind twice. The wheels described in the first and tenth chapters of Ezekiel refer to the vital centers in man. Lifting the creative fire lifts crystallization in the vital centers and aids you in ascension of consciousness.
Read the book of Job, which is the history of a descended creator god who came to earth and said he could meet any challenge of earth life. Belial, the Father of Lies, had challenged that no descended creator god could live here and be successful without knowing his own soul identity. If one could come to earth and lead a blameless life, Belial would give up. Job, on his personal pride vibration, went before the a Heavenly Council and said he could meet the challenge. Thus Job earned the challenge of conquering a sample of every initiation and test. Always look beyond the surface appearance of life in this world. For only beyond the veils of illusion will you find truth. “In every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God. And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.”–Philippians 4:6-7. “We have the mind of Christ.”–1 Corinthians 2:16.
God as Principle and Personality
Edna Lister transcript, Ruth Johnson, Lillian V. Kondash, Irene White, scribes, June 9, 1959, Cleveland, OH
“I believe in God, the Manifold Creator, the Father-Mother of us all, Maker of the visible and invisible universe. I believe in Father-Mother God as both the Source of all life and the expression of all life. I believe in Father-Mother God as both Personality and Principle: Personality, which is the Father of Wisdom who plans and the Mother of Love who sustains all which they create; Principle as both spiritual Substance, which becomes, and divine Law that directs and controls. I believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, begotten, not made, before all worlds God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God.” These opening words of our Great Creed clearly state the foundation of our faith in God.
Principle is “the absolute universal, unchangeable, undeviating foundation upon which all universes are based and established.” Emanation is “the act of issuing or “flowing forth” from some origin or source, the pantheistic doctrine that all existing things have been created as effluxes, an outflow of the Divine Essence.”
Pantheism is “the form of monism that identifies mind and matter, the infinite and the infinite, making them manifestations of one universal or absolute Being; the doctrine which holds that the self-existent and self-developing universe, conceived as a whole, is God.” Monism is “the doctrine of cosmology that attempts to explain the phenomena of the cosmos by one principle of being or one ultimate substance.”
God as the One becomes the Many. The first events in the Creation were the explosions of the three emanations—Wisdom, Love, and the Christ principle of the Logos, the Word. Wisdom carried within itself the Father God principle as the masculine aspect of God, which it later became. Love carried within itself the Mother God principle as the feminine aspect of God, which it later became. The Christ principle of Power carried within itself the Word, the Son, and the Holy Spirit as the neutral aspect of God, which it later became. The emanations flowed forth in sequence as far as the Plan of Creation was set to send them.
Wisdom is the Mind that thinks and plans the forms for the molds of Creation. Love is the substance that fills the molds to nourish and sustain Creation. Love’s other aspect is the devouring death ray, which draws the life and substance from all creations at the end of their life or usefulness. The Christ principle is the Light, the Power, the action that maintains the equilibrium of the Source of All, works through the ascending Elect as harmony, and returns to the Source as balance throughout the universe during a Day of Manifestation. This is the hidden science of Creation, the story of how the Three-as-One descend into the four symbolic elements of the material nature of the manifest universe.
The emanations flow unceasingly from and back to the Source of All Light in perfect, unvarying rhythm as the
God is enthroned as personality: “I saw a great white throne, and him that sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away; and there was found no place for them. And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened: and another book was opened, which is the book of life: and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works. And the sea gave up the dead which were in it; and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them: and they were judged every man according to their works. And death and hell were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death. And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire.”–Revelation 20:11-15.
Only personalities can misuse principle. Only personalities can redeem misused soul substance. Twelve dark (currently invisible) planet-like spheres lie within a five-degree band visually below the Zodiacal Belt, in the etheric currents of our Sun’s farthest reach.
“The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness; because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God hath shewed it unto them. For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse: because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools.”–Romans 1:18-22. The “wrath of God” substance attracts and is attracted by the name and number of the specific spiritual debt where it originated. A portion of this substance is poured onto earth every two hours. As Jesus said his sheep knew him, so do your debts know you.
Separating the Sheep from the Goats: “When the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory: and before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats: and he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left.”–Matthew 25:31-33. From the time of his Transfiguration, great heavenly beings above had held Jesus’ electronic fire body together in form until the spear pierced his side and drained the remains of his earthly bloodstream during his Crucifixion. When he said, “Father, into Thy hands I commend my spirit” (Luke 23:46), Power exploded the substance that filled his aura and was used to create twelve planet-like spheres of Light to counteract the twelve spheres of hardened darkness. The spheres of Light are named for the tribes of Israel. The Elect may release their Power to any crisis, such as a hurricane, for example. When you pray, the winds of the storm lift and carry the force upward for cleansing and purification.
God is both principle and personality. The Idea for everything on the outer must exist in the Source, which is a purely Platonic view. If God had no idea of personality at the Source, we could have no personality here in this world. God personalizes in the instant the emanations begin. The passage from Revelation–“And I saw a great white throne, and him that sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away”—describes God as a great Father who had form, though not physical form as we would recognize it. Jesus mentioned his Father 134 times in the Gospel of John, which is ample basis for worshiping the Father as principle under philosophy. We study God as principle under the Father’s Wisdom ray but cannot fully understand it without applying personality under the mysticism of the Mother’s Love ray. Scripture does not mention the Mother because she is hidden until the descended creators, the Elect, begin their final ascent home to God. Jesus called her the “Queen of the South” in Matthew 12:42 and Luke 11:31, which is generally interpreted as being merely the “Queen of Sheba” when it may also be read as the “Queen of Seven.” These designations are among the mysteries within the Bible.
“The Lord possessed me in the beginning of his way, before his works of old. I was set up from everlasting, from the beginning, or ever the earth was.”–Job 8:22-23. Picture billions of galaxies confined within the Universal Source, just life sparks whirling within themselves, with no external vibration, perfectly still. The most ancient of mystics call this the endless Void of Light; the Kabbalist names this Ayn Sof Aur, the Source of Infinite Light. I AM THAT I AM concentrated itself at the center of its Infinite Light.
This emanation of life sparks flowed like a river and traveled as far as the planned Power propelled it; there it whirled until it formed a magnetic retaining and restraining wall. When this emanation of Light as the substance of Wisdom began its return journey to the Source, God sent forth another emanation of Light as the substance of Love—they intersected at the center of the newly-formed universe.
1 The heliosphere: the region in space influenced by the sun or solar wind. The word “heliosphere” was likely coined by Alexander J. Dessler, who is credited with first use of the word in scientific literature in 1967.
2 At this stage, the absolute Light-as-God is still pre-personal; therefore, the only applicable pronoun is “it.”
3 This describes Light as both a particle and as a wave, a theory central to Edna Lister’s view of physics, astrophysics, and cosmology by February 1941.
3 This describes Light as both a particle and as a wave, a theory central to Edna Lister’s view of physics, astrophysics, and cosmology by February 1941.
The first emanation is Wisdom, which becomes the masculine Father-God principle of all the Mind that thinks and plans the molds for all expression through form. Mind builds form. The second emanation is Love, which becomes the feminine Mother-God principle of all the Love substance that nourishes and sustains the molds formed by Mind. Love fills form. Love is also the devouring indigo blue death ray, without which we couldn’t dissolve old, useless forms or be healed of growths or tumors.
Indigo Blue Death Ray
When Love returned to the Source-Sphere, Love and Wisdom whirled together, creating a dual vibration that later became the Son. The third emanation is Power, the Logos, the Word, which becomes the Son-God principles of selflessness and joy when embodied. Power, as kinetic energy, animated all forms planned by Mind and filled with Substance. Power, which is also called the Logos or Word, is Light expressing as Power, energy, and action. Light as Power expresses as harmony. Light as energy expresses as equilibrium. Light as action expresses as perfect balance. The Logos is the Christ principle, which may express as the Holy Breath, Holy Spirit, or Holy Ghost, depending on the needs of Creation. The Father and Mother work through the Son, which is a neutral vibration. This all occurs at the beginning of the first Day of Manifestation.
Principle is the absolute, unchangeable, undeviating, immutable foundation upon which God bases and establishes all universes. You can grasp principle and comply with the laws Jesus taught because principle works as the
As the emanations completed their second circuit, God begot lesser beings, the Elohim, who precipitated sheaths of substance about themselves to descend and plan the rest of manifestation. The three emanations fall into the four elements. Mind, Substance, and Power fall into fire, air, water, and earth. This is the hidden science of creation. The emanations never change. The Absolute Trinity of Emanations is the finest degree of substance as life sparks that the River of Life condenses in rates of vibration. Wisdom, Love, and the Logos, the Absolute Trinity, flow throughout the universe in regular waves, fill space with condensed life sparks, flowing from and returning to the Source.
W represents the everlasting arms of the Father upholding creation. M represents the o’ershadowing wings of the Mother protecting all creation. This word-diagram represents the IS-ness of God as principle, or being that is, and the DO-ness of God as personality, which doing that becomes. Wisdom expresses as Mind, Love expresses as Substance, and the Logos expresses as Power under the Supreme Trinity, which we use in order to create. You extend your mind to contact divine Mind, speak the Word to cause substance to flow into your prayer molds, and release Power as kinetic energy.
Absolute Laws: The emanations and the Absolute Trinity form all foundation principles and primary laws. You move from primary to secondary law, from absolute to relative, under the Supreme Trinity. Primary law is the first rank in any series of original laws that differentiates one principle into many laws to simplify application of absolute abstract principles to man’s present degree of understanding, for governing his daily life. Primary absolute laws control and govern all rational soul unfoldment, all human relationships, behavior, and expression.
Relative laws are secondary and derive from absolute and abstract laws, modifying and diluting them to meet individual needs in intelligence and state of consciousness. You do not set aside principle when you modify and dilute law. Any relative law must conform to the absolute principle behind it. Law is as unchanging as principle—you cannot divorce law from its principle, nor subtract principle from law. For example, God cannot set aside law to comfort any personal grief. You master the situation by mastering your emotions until you understand but are emotionally undisturbed. The law to apply is: “What is that to thee?” Many apply this as “Leave me alone,” forgetting the rest of the law: “Follow thou me.” Reach up, look higher for illumination and comprehension.
The following metaphysical statements modify and dilute primary absolute laws of action to make them usable by finite consciousness. We use metaphysics to modify and dilute philosophical principles so we may use philosophy to touch the mystical invisible. “God is everywhere evenly present and available” describes God as Omnipresent, God in all, through all and as all, in all ways, in all places, of all things unconscious and as all things conscious. “How do I declare everything good?” Apply a
God gives the immortal soul the power of the spoken Word for conscious direction and control over substance. God gives substance the power of becoming. This is the basis of metaphysical healing. Hold your hands with palms facing outward to direct and control the life sparks to heal. Lift your hands with palms cupped upward to bring them back.
You may only raise or lower substance in its rate of vibration. By ascending or descending, by expanding or condensing is how substance functions for healing. Becoming means expanding or contracting substance into all good—like the miracle of the loaves and fishes, or the miraculous disappearance of the woman’s issue of blood. Mind acts upon Substance and causes Power to send it into a form-mold for manifestation. Manifestation is a philosophical term for Mind, Substance, and Power expressing through form. All the cross-vibrations in the world today cause mental confusion, so you must work constantly to keep your brain cells aware, alert, and alive. We, the Elect, have had to endure all manners of suffering of men, as did Jesus.
During the early years of the 20th Century, Thomas Parker Boyd conducted experiments to investigate the clinical aspects of psychology and hypnosis as a tool in healing. An Episcopalian cleric, Boyd began his career for God as a Western circuit rider serving Methodist and Episcopalian congregations. Later Boyd became a leader of the Emmanuel Healing Movement on the West Coast, and together with Henry Kleifisch and Edna Lister founded the Society of the Healing Christ in San Francisco in 1933. He worked with professors at the University of California, Berkeley, including Dr. George M. Stratton. Dr. Boyd wanted to find the Source. He hypnotized one young man and asked, “Where is God?” There was no answer. Then Boyd asked, “Can you find God?” The young man answered, “He is everywhere. Everywhere is here.” They found much that they couldn’t account for, especially in heredity’s impact on personality.
What is unexplainable under scientific laws may be accounted for under the law of action and reaction, which Eastern philosophy calls the law of karma, which is spiritual debt; we call this the law of cause and effect. So it goes as yesterday’s mysteries become today’s miracles. Throughout the ages various groups have always taught the doctrine of many lives, or reincarnation, and many have “seen” their past lives and the events that have caused so many effects in the present. Those who see and hear spiritually have an unshakable conviction in reincarnation as truth. Nothing explains the whole of life except the doctrine of many lives. “How can I know my past lives?” The Heavenly Councils reveal the record of a past life when a soul needs or can profit from the lessons it contains. The Guards pour Light upon his brain cells, he sees, he understands, and learns the lesson anew.
Those who reject reincarnation seek to escape responsibility for their spiritual debts, which does not eliminate the debts but only delays repayment. The Elect, the descended creator gods, each have lived more than 200,000 lives. We have lifted darkness ever since we first descended, but it has been accumulating since then. So the darkness we are paying for and lifting now is not too heavy, considering the time past and the amount we have already paid. When God’s Councils spread our indebtedness to law over many lifetimes, we can pay in not too hard a way. The easiest way is to call everything good so God can move in and make it so.
Heaven is a State of Consciousness and a Place
Edna Lister transcript, Ruth Johnson, Lotus Landis, Irene White, Ross Whitehead, Virginia Whitehead, scribes, June 16, 1959, Cleveland, OH
Before the lecture began, a man in the audience had asked Edna Lister, “If heaven-consciousness is real, does that mean that those who are possessed by a demon or evil spirit are hell-conscious?”! She answered him seriously:
A person can be obsessed with an idea, possessed by a devil he has created himself, or ridden by an evil spirit, also called a demon. One is obsessed with an idea, not a demon. Both an obsession and a persecution complex are self-created, and can cause the soul to cower from others—both invite possession by a self-created devil, sometimes his own
Psychology and metaphysics both teach that you condition your life by your thinking, and that thinking correctly can change any present condition. We say, “Come out!” Psychology says, “Talk it out,” which takes longer and may not work, depending on whether the troubled soul really wants to be freed.
You breathe the Breath of God every time you inhale, and this breath feeds your soul—or you misuse or waste it. You can take the Light from Holy Breath and send it out as a darkened cloud, ranging from pale grey to black. The easiest way to misuse your soul substance is by using idle words. An angry man or gossiping woman gives away their soul with every idle word they speak. They do not know how ill they are! How can you help them? By praying for them. Everyone who prays relieves the earth of darkness.
“Dis-” means out of place. Disposition means a personality is out of place. To say, “What a disposition!”, automatically means the personality is off-balance, the aura is off-color. You may say, “What a fine character,” acknowledging that a person is balanced. It doesn’t matter whether you say he’s “bad” or “just fine,” you still use your soul substance as an opinion. You give away soul substance with every idle word. The law is, if you go to the altar with a contrite heart, God forgives you, for now, although you still must pay a debt for the injury you caused. Say, “Father, wipe the hurt from everyone’s heart here on earth,” and He does so that night while they sleep.
Do you believe that heaven is a state of consciousness? It is. You create your own heaven. You create your own hell, too. Do you consider this room a place? If you do, you are in your heaven right now. Heaven isn’t any easier to find in another place. It doesn’t matter if you think living in the city makes it harder or going to the mountains makes it easier. Heaven is where you are right now, and you just take yourself along. To declare everything good right here and now is the secret of having your heaven here and now. God declares each of you good. For you to do less makes your present place less than heavenly. Heaven is a place, and you take yourself along.
You may see yourself as Light and glorious in heaven, but you must still conquer your earthy soul taints. When you leave the body on a soul flight at night, you appear before an inner Council for a just appraisal of your performance, an evaluation that you may accept or reject. If you accept, you return in the morning intending to do better today. If you repudiate, you feel depressed, irritable, and low in spirit.
What do you believe? Do you believe the declaration, “This is good”? Do you believe that God is Wisdom? Do you believe that God is all-loving? Do you believe that God is honorable? Do you believe that God is loyal? Do you rejoice in the Lord? Are you glad? If you believe that God is all justice, love, patience, and mercy, would you harm anyone? How can you believe that God, who planned this universe and created it with such wonders, would deliberately annihilate it? This is nothing more than opinion and prejudice. Our God is the God of all: Jew, Christian, Hindu, Buddhist, from atheist to animist. Do you think that God will waste such a creation, such countless millions of souls? The great God of All wants all His children to be saved. He wants all His children to come home to heaven as a place, as a state of consciousness, but without their prejudices or they could not remain.
Look beyond the mask of agnosticism so many teenagers wear. Say, “You’ve worked out a wonderful pose before the world, a mental armor that keeps you from violating the truth that is within you. Deep in your heart you do believe in God.” Their agnostic front holds their belief in God’s glory inviolate. The young are so vulnerable and they think it smart to say, “You have to show me!” You never need to prove that God is or that heaven is a place. Instead, tell them to disprove it. Ask, “What is your proof? Prove to me there is no God.” It is up to you and to no other to have an answer for your faith, to know why you believe. Seeking God is an individualistic thing. Everyone wants to communicate with God. The soul who won’t accept God just won’t accept responsibility—he simply wants to avoid paying his soul debts. Irresponsibility, a wayward state of consciousness, is the root of agnosticism and atheism.
You are threefold in consciousness—subconscious, conscious, and superconscious, and you have faculties of desire, thinking, and imagination. You condition your life by your thinking. A metaphysician would say, “If I think correctly, I can recondition my attitudes and my life.” However, no matter what your head says, if your gut makes you feel something different, your imagination will follow your feelings.
You have lived by your emotional feelings for your whole life, and they have caused all kinds of limitations and fears in your life and affairs. You may find yourself in an emotional upheaval and not know why. You can hear something upsetting and think of divine perfection, yet if your feelings are hurt or your emotions disturbed, you go down the greased pole in consciousness while imagination builds dark pictures of the worst that can happen. Your feelings are your emotional life. Someone may speak a truth that you can see logically but don’t accept emotionally, which is how opinions and prejudices spring from crystallized emotions. Nourishing your opinions and prejudices can make you so stubborn and willful that no one can convince you otherwise, a trait that holds the world in bondage. By resisting truth, you build a wall that keeps anything new from entering.
You can recondition your life by changing your thinking and cleanse your emotional life of wrong or conflicting desires as well, but you must ascend to do so. “Ice” is the lowest form of crystallized substance. The state of your emotions dictates the flexibility of your thinking so you must either sublimate your emotional desires, or your crystallized emotions will still control you. “How do I lift my emotional life?” The secret is to declare everything good. God said, “Let there be Light!” to begin manifestation. The Days of Creation were great geological ages. Before anything—gases, water, rock—was, everything was Light. Light is the substance of everything. What is your body? Light. What is your soul? Light. “God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.”–Genesis 1:4. “And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good.”–Genesis 1:31.
Jesus lived his life by the law of “This is good and very good,” which is the secret of perfect creations. It raises the rate of vibration of any person, situation or thing. By raising (or expanding) and lowering (or contracting) the rate of vibration of Light, you can make forms. Expansion and contraction are principles that condition your imagination and emotions as well. Three-quarters of any healing is just plain common sense. Healing is raising your state of consciousness, and your thinking definitely conditions your state of consciousness. Your state of consciousness reflects your present emotions, thinking, and imagination. You really do create your own heaven and your own hell. You can, you do change your physical life and your material life by changing from negative to positive. You must recondition your life, so coninue to declare, “All is good,” no matter how it looks. Declare that everything that comes to you is good. “We know that all things work together for good to them that love God.”–Romans 8:28. Say, “This is good, Father. I know Your Power can fix this, just as it moved upon the face of the waters and formed the perfect earth.”
God is everywhere evenly present and available. (Edna Miriam held out her hand and said,) I hold a handful of air. You cannot see it but we all know it’s there. All of God is there. You are as immortal now as you ever will be. You—the Light, the soul, the Christed One—condition the outer physical sheath you wear with your thinking and emotions. To declare, “God dwelling in this body conditions this body when I sublimate my emotions,” works when you accept it as truth. You can accept truth but your responsibility is to be truth, which is a perfect state of consciousness.
Who has put you in your present condition? Who has put you where you are? Have you accepted responsibility for reconditioning your life? What is the condition of your present state of consciousness? To declare your creations good means that you’re mothering and loving them. When you mother your creations, and love even if they are malformations, Light begins to work everything together unto perfection, which is the power behind the proclamation, “This is good!”
The Greek letter Ψ, psi, symbolizes the individual standing upright with arms raised toward heaven. If you “see” a Ψ, declare that it contains the three windows of your soul open toward New Jerusalem, through the blue, five-pointed Oversoul star above your golden bowl. The three windows inside the golden bowl are (left to right) the optic chiasm, the thalamus, and the hypothalamus in the brain. Seven desire body vital centers overlay seven physical glands and nerve plexus centers, where the colors of the aura are fastened. Light pours over the nerve plexus centers giving vitality to physical organs.
1 The colors shown here are digital pigment, not the living Light that is so apparent to the discerning eyes of soul.
The blue ray of love, anchored at the thyroid, forms an outline around the body and encases the head in its volatile rays. This Mother blue auric sheath forms the moment the soul takes over the parent cells, sperm and ovum, to build a body. The blue ray nourishes and sustains, and serves as a shock absorber for the physical body. When you yearn over your creations and declare them good, you draw the blue ray into your aura.
The yellow ray of wisdom surrounds the blue sheath. It’s anchored at the upper point of the breastbone, then descends through the heart and thymus gland. A sudden pain there could signal a heart attack, but usually means the thymus, which atrophies at puberty, is enlarging again. Eternal youth and immortality operate through the thymus gland and as the psalmist sang, “Thou shalt enlarge my heart” (Psalm 119:32), which refers to the expansion of the thymus into eternal youth. Fear stops the expansion, the rejuvenation process, and soul growth. The yellow ray descends from the heart center through the solar plexus. It fastens into the liver’s right side and the center of the spleen’s left side in the same way the silver cord hooks into the parent cells within the heart.
The rose-red ray of determination, or soul growth, representing the red ray of energy, joy and selflessness, is shaped like a heart. The upper lobes cover the bosom, including the rib cage, extend above the shoulders, and ends at the coccyx.
The green ray of growth, or increase, moves through and around the ears and parathyroid glands to fasten into the thyroid gland.
Twin orchid rays of joy fasten in the hip joints, arise, cross left to right, right to left in front, encompassing the elbows and solar plexus. They extend around your head like clouds.
The rose-violet ray of consecration is rooted in the solar plexus.
The rose-purple ray of devotion is rooted in the navel center. It extends farther than the rose-violet ray, creating a circle that includes the upper thighs. This describes the soul aura of Light. You are also enclosed in a sphere of the golden Light of the Christ over all.
From the Natural to the Spiritual Body: “It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body.”–1 Corinthians 15:44. You have the natural body in the cellular-physical. Your spiritual body occupies three grades of substance, the molecular desire body, the atomic mental body, and the electronic fire body of the soul. Your desire body is a replica of your physical, part for part. When you leave your physical sheath at night, you take your other three bodies with you, leaving just a bit of appetitive soul to tend the physical.
If you do not breathe deeply when you return in the morning, these bodies may not align perfectly. Your desire body heart must overlay your physical heart or you may feel like your heart is beating too hard, too fast, skipping a beat, or fluttering. If people who experience this were to breathe deeply into the physical, they would not be so likely to worry about their heart.
Each organ represents some faculty or attribute of the emotional and mental life. For example, physically the spleen filters your blood to remove bacteria, particulate matter, platelets and non-functioning red blood cells from circulation. Metaphysically, the spleen represents opinions, prejudices, reluctance, and hate. Bones metaphysically represent your expression of the structure or framework of law in life.
The liver, your largest organ besides your skin, supports metabolism, immunity, digestion, detoxification, vitamin storage, and is a main source of body heat. Metaphysically, the liver represents sincerity and ethics. We all know someone who is always sure that he is right and everyone else is wrong and this is his sincere opinion. Either the soul maintains a high moral standard of ethics or the liver will suffer. From this, it also follows that lies, in any form, will eventually cause a liver disease.
If you are out of sync with divine law, the yellow ray of Wisdom unbalances at the thymus and you lose the proper yellow hue for perfect functioning. If you mentally dangle in opinions and prejudice, the yellow ray cuts off on the left side to the spleen. If the yellow ray is crooked on the right toward the liver, it will cause bronchial trouble and asthma. Treat the person to reestablish the yellow ray’s balance so it will remain where it belongs and function perfectly. These rays must be attached in the right way.
When someone wants to grow, he talks about green, buys a green tie, or a woman may buy a new green blouse or scarf. Shades of red deal with energy, motion, and action. If the green ray is sinking under the rose-red ray, the person can’t seem to get into action. The green sinks under the yellow and red in the aura of one who reads and studies but never does anything with what he learns.
When you act under the direction of the white Light of the Christ, it straightens out all the colors of your aura. Your aura changes, moment to moment, with your emotional life. Start your day by saying, “I rejoice and am glad,” nine times. Use the rhythm of nine and breathe into your body with the seven degrees of breath as one breath. Do this every morning and throughout the day as needed. It really “gingers you up.”
“This corruptible must put on incorruption and this mortal must put on immortality.”–1 Corinthians 15:53. You must cleanse the blood platelets’ life sparks for incorruptibility and immortality. During a final illness, the person unconsciously withdraws platelets and takes his last breath when they are completely indrawn. You absorb platelet records into the desire body medulla oblongata at death.
The indigo blue Death Ray: At the transition from earth to heaven, called the death of the body, the blue ray changes to the deepest, darkest indigo blue, the disintegrating death ray that releases the joy necessary to help the soul escape the magnetic tie to the physical body. This process may be visible to the “second sight” of clairvoyance.
When a soul is passing to the other side, the indigo begins to fan from just below the breastbone and extends upward. The soul leaves the body when indigo appears as a complete fan over the head. A cloud of deep purple, which accompanies a creeping paralysis or coldness, often ascends from the feet as the soul’s angelic guardians lift and withdraw his soul records, desire body blood platelets, and life sparks from the physical body. A patient will linger if any platelets remain crystallized in the physical. The treatment is to declare that Light enters and releases the platelets.
The treatment is to say, “Let all crystallization of past emotions and wrong living be released from Name’s organs. Let all Name’s crystallized emotions be healed. Let Name’s platelets be absorbed in the white Light of the Christ. In the name of Jesus the Christ, let it be so.” You can do this treatment from a distance, and once you have completed it, thank God that it is so accomplished 1,000 times an hour and as often as it returns to your mind. If you see the person’s face in your mind’s eye, treat!
The Eightfold Path and the Powers of Being
Edna Lister transcript, Margaret Pratt Doan, Ruth Johnson, Lotus Landis, Irene White, Ross Whitehead, scribes, June 23, 1959, Cleveland, OH
Following is the highest possible interpretation for the Noble Eightfold Path of Buddha, containing the original teachings from the Sources. Jesus taught the rhythms of seven in the Seven Degrees and the powers of being, which are eight phases of the Logos emanation of Power that we use in healing work.
Gautama Buddha (483-563 BC), the “enlightened one,” founded the philosophy of Buddhism in India. He taught a doctrine of four noble truths: Existence is suffering, the cause of suffering is desire, there is an end to suffering, namely transcendence, or Nirvana, and a path to the end of suffering, the practice of meditation on the Eightfold Noble Path. Although sublime, the eightfold path does not completely succeed because the soul climbing on it cannot pass beyond the third Adept Degree; thus, they are still adepts even at their eighth point of ascension. Modern versions of the eightfold path seek self-control, but they fail to sublimate the undue influence of the impulsive appetitive soul. The Via Christa is the way of complete soul ascension to become as perfect as our Father in Heaven is perfect.
| Degree | Neophyte | ||
| Keyword | Acceptance of the need to conquer self, not just to control it | ||
| Initiation | Rebirth | ||
| Buddhist Path | Control of the self through discrimination in choices | ||
| Power of Being | Conquering the urges working in the lower self, the impulsive appetive soul as the subconscious mind | ||
“I accept all that comes to me as mine. I earned it in past lives, created it in this life, or it is something of darkness that only I may lift for my Father; therefore, I do accept and lift all that comes unto me. I now accept my responsibility to lift all that comes to me, which entails assuming all responsibility for all darkness around me, the responsibility to sacrifice self, and the responsibility of full surrender to be the servant of all Power. I now observe every detail of my life. I am alive and alert to observe above and below. As I use observation in my outer life, according to my practice of observation, exactly so shall I see and hear in heaven.” The higher mental faculties—logic, reason, discernment, discrimination, and discretion—can open only under acceptance.
Rebirth is the Mystic Brotherhood initiation of the Via Christa. Jesus emphasized this: “Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.”–John 3:3. A rebirth breaks the shackles of the appetitive soul subconscious mind with all its old ideas, opinions, and prejudices. You must be reborn in consciousness to control, let alone to master your “little self.” A rebirth makes you childlike in the simplicity of your acceptance. “Whoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child, he shall not enter therein.”
Self-control is the Buddhist path. Control is the first step in conquering self and it begins with bridling the tongue. Stop using idle words, especially “I’m trying.” Buddhism calls this “right understanding,” or knowledge, and teaches that you must speak no ill or injure anyone. Self-control is the province of the Adept on the Via Christa, and is but the first step in self-mastery. Here you apply discrimination, which is the mental faculty of differentiation, being able to make an exact distinction between different ideas and actions. Discrimination is how you decide what is right and what is wrong.
Hatha Yoga, the yoga of physical control, especially of the breath, is under self-control, and is part of the five laws of the Neophyte: Breathing, water, diet, rest, and exercise. Rest includes sleep, recreation, diversion and all activities that inspire and quicken, including reading and painting. When you coordinate and apply these laws in their proper relationship, you balance yourself physically.
The first Power of Being is conquering the forces working in the lower self, which is the subconscious or appetitive soul. Conquering of the self begins the work toward acceptance of what is, and of self-mastery. You already have the powers to conquer appetitive soul, so why work for just self-control? Buddhism works for 20 years to control self under Hatha Yoga, while travelers on the Via Christa do all this plus Rajah Yoga, which is the royal path to illumination.
| Degree | Disciple | ||
| Keyword | Surrender of self-centered will and selfish desires | ||
| Initiation | Baptism by Water | ||
| Buddhist Path | Control of actions and all outer expression through discretion | ||
| Power of Being | Command of all powers under the process of growth, to expand or condence substance | ||
All Power comes from above. “My Father worketh hitheto, and I work.”–John 5:17. Here you surrender self-will and self-desires to become the servant of all Power. To surrender is to let go. By letting go of self-credits, self-doubts, all thoughts of self, you conquer through obedience to the law of surrender, knowing that God’s Power does the work as you.
The Buddhist path is control of actions and it involves “right thought,” or intention, which they teach as controlling all actions. You rightly direct all outer expression under the faculty of discretion, which is the power of deciding or judging. Discretion, the faculty that governs knowing when to speak and when to remain silent, is a law of surrender.
Baptism by Water is the Mystic Brotherhood initiation. The Disciple stabilizes his emotions, symbolized by water, into the Christ-life by surrendering emotional jags and reactions, including opinions, prejudice, resentment, blame, guilt, and all old, worn-out memories.
The Power of Being is command of all inner forces under the process of growth, which deal with the principles of expansion and contraction. Expansion and growth come under acceptance and surrender. Condensation and crystallization come under contraction and repudiation. You earn command of all inner forces by stabilizing your emotions until all healing Power moves through you to raise or lower the rate of vibration of your soul substance. This is the power of healing. Work for self-mastery and you will already have gained self-control.
“I arise and go into my Father’s house.” Jesus said, “If any man will come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.”–Matthew 16:24. The law helps those who help themselves. You must work out your own problems and salvation while in this world.
| Degree | Adept | ||
| Keyword | Obedience | ||
| Initiation | Baptism by Fire | ||
| Buddhist Path | Cultivation of perseverance in which all obstacles become a challenge to steadfastness and wise, useful speech | ||
| Power of Being | Command over all impulses and appetites by drawing in all magnetic power, by “letting” God use you, with no personal use of force | ||
Obey the law and live. The law of obedience covers all law, “For whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all.”–James 2:10. The Adept’s responsibility is to balance the mental life. “Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus.”–Philippians 2:5.
Baptism by Fire is the Mystic Brotherhood initiation. The flames of the Holy Spirit—the pure, unadulterated atomic fire of the Holy Breath as love—pour upon you at any hour after surrender until only love is left. A Baptism by Fire always brings you a choice of love or hate, positive or negative. However, love brooks nothing but love. Treat the soul who invests his soul substance in hate by declaring, “Father, raise this beautiful substance of love that Name sent to me. Ascend, purify and restore love to Name.” Use this to redeem the lost soul substance of those who criticize and curse. Stand in a circle of love, gird your loins, cross your arms, declare that the curses are love, and thank God for them.
The Buddhist path is cultivation of perseverance, which is steadfastness. All obstacles become a challenge for the initiate to practice steadfastness and perseverance. This path includes “right speech,” which means using wise, careful words. What do you declare? “I am a swine” or “I am good”? One declaration of “This is good! Let there be Light!” sets the whole eightfold path into action without having to consider each law.
The Power of Being is command over all outer forces. You can command only yourself under complete surrender. Use the gesture of a creator to “gird up your loins.” Contract the abdominal muscles to draw all magnetic currents to the solar plexus center. Hold them there and draw the etheric currents on a deep breath. As magnetic and etheric currents meet at the solar plexus, an explosion follows, which is Light “watering” the glands. This makes you a pillar, an instrument of the living God.
Three is the number of perfected personal expression. To do the greater works that Jesus did requires a vivid imagination and flaming desire. You can do only by letting, standing steadfastly and letting God do the work as you with no force of self-will. You may not use Power but you do let Power use you. Standing is conquering by becoming the Power released to go forth and do the work. You overcome and overlook. To overcome is to come up over all ideas of self and limitation. To overlook is to look up over outer appearances to see God’s Reality.
| Degree | Mystic | ||
| Keyword | Praise as Gratitude | ||
| Initiation | Transfiguration | ||
| Buddhist Path | Cultivation of tolerance in conduct through contemplation to comprehend the All | ||
| Power of Being | Setting gravitation aside; becoming too Light for earth | ||
The Mystic serves God day and night, inwardly singing “Holy, holy, holy.” Praise frees you to pray with fervor at your heart center, which is the respiratory rate of balance among the three lower and three higher vital centers.
Transfiguration is the Mystic Brotherhood initiation. The process of Transfiguration is drawing the physical life sparks into the desire body, from there into the mental body, and ascending your consciousness which is encoded in your soul substance. You transfigure your self under service to God only. Four, the number of service, represents the pineal body of wisdom and illumination.
The Buddhist path is cultivation of tolerance and “right action,” which is right conduct. Buddhism cultivates tolerance through contemplation and seeking comprehension of the “all.” This is not enough. To apply tolerance, you must live in the world and learn how to agree with God that “This is Good,” and to adjust to your fellow man.
The Power of Being is setting aside gravitation, which is becoming too light to be held by earth gravity. It is walking on Light-beams, a raised and ascended atomic mental body vibration, which is transfiguration. You must sublimate your emotions to levitate or walk on water. The ALL lifts the “little self” into Christed I AM consciousness under praise, thankfulness, gratitude, and devotion. Acceptance, surrender, obedience, and praise are the paths to transfiguration and levitation.
| Degree | Master | ||
| Keyword | “I AM good!” | ||
| Initiation | Crucifixion of self-centered will | ||
| Buddhist Path | Cultivation of an impersonal personal attitude toward life | ||
| Power of Being | Condensation to become too heavy to lift or to move | ||
Good is the Father’s name on earth and is a component of the name of every life spark, atom, molecule and cell on earth. “I AM good” lets God use you because it recalls you to your Oversoul. Call upon “I AM good” to rise above every negative circumstance. You apply this law from the heart center, above the diaphragm. “I AM good” anchors your identity with God. Fasten yourself to Him.
To gird your loins, stand, emphatically declare, “I AM good!” draw the magnetic and etheric currents in, and hold them at your solar plexus to cover the lower centers in your abdomen, the sacrum, splenic, and. This forms a sheath to protect the solar plexus against worldly shocks and blows. The girdle of Aphrodite, the cestus, was her husband’s gift to her, woven of gold and with charms to arouse desire. Following the second
Crucifixion of selfish will is the Mystic Brotherhood initiation. When you crucify self-centered will, you mate desire with will to become the Christed I AM consciousness. “I AM good!” causes desire to mate with will in a marriage of the Lamb, which opens the pituitary gland as intuition and the pineal as illumination. The symbol of a fully opened pineal body and pituitary gland is 144,000, the name of the Elect on earth. “I AM good!” tunes you into the River of Life that cleanses and purifies as you move with it. Tune in the vibration of the faith of all ages rather than the world vibration. You can apply it 24 hours a day.
The Buddhist path is cultivation of an impersonal attitude toward life, which Buddhism calls “right livelihood.” On the Via Christa, the cultivation of an impersonal attitude is taking no offense. Strength comes with ascension, finding and holding your new relationship with God and man, agreeing and adjusting in harmony with your current in the River of Life. Think of how many souls go through life wanting others to adjust to them in harmony. “I AM good!” is good management of your life and faith. Learn to go to God first and pour love upon your neighbor. Lift the situation and stand in and on the Light to adjust in harmony.
The Power of Being is becoming too heavy to be moved, which is exhaling and invoking the Power on the fifth atomic breath to become too heavy. You apply the law of condensation to substance to lower its rate of vibration and to precipitate under the law of gravitation for protection. Both laws operate under the principle of contraction, which gives you the absolute ability to stand unshakable, immovable by any darkness. You become too heavy to be moved from the Light. Breath is the whole substance of life throughout the universes. You precipitate a visible body by breathing under the laws of condensation and gravitation.
| Degree | Priest | ||
| Keyword | Becoming | ||
| Initiation | Resurrection | ||
| Buddhist Path | Balance, equilibrium, equanimity | ||
| Power of Being | Becoming invisible by clothing yourself in Light | ||
The Priest works under the law of becoming all the law he has learned through transmutation or sublimation. The Priest’s is the “lonely path” because you walk it alone in life as you string your lost pearls of wisdom, separate the wheat from the chaff, and keep only the good. The secret to success in this endeavor is always knowing that you are really never alone.
Resurrection is the Mystic Brotherhood initiation. You resurrect love, the emotional life and wisdom, the mental life. To do this you apply a just appraisal in three steps, surrender, praise and lifting. You surrender self under the laws of forgiveness. Praise all previous good. You lift all to the Father, knowing that He does the work. As you resurrect yourself from old ways of thinking and emotions, you move into all life as the Father and Mother principles of wisdom and love.
The Buddhist path is balance and equilibrium, which is “right conduct.” Balance, equilibrium, and equanimity are yours when you stand on the hub of the first
The Power of Being is becoming invisible, to clothe yourself in supreme Light and make to yourself invisible to darkness. Lost articles become invisible when you are irritated, upset or blame another when they disappear. You cannot blame and invoke the Light at the same time. “In quietness and confidence shall be your strength,” as you make things visible in the golden silence of your soul under the law of becoming.
| Degree | Christos | ||
| Keyword | Responsibility | ||
| Initiation | Ascension | ||
| Buddhist Path | Six attributes of the priest for ascension | ||
| Power of Being | Power to create life by the spoken Word | ||
Ascension is the seventh Mystic Brotherhood initiation. To ascend is to climb or go up to a higher position, to rise by a process of growth. It means to proceed from the inferior to the superior, to rise in degree of characteristic quality. To ascend is to ascend to a higher point in consciousness and conquering. Ascension is continually moving up in consciousness, continually growing in awareness, continually increasing the rate of vibration and continually expanding the aura.
The Buddhist path contains the six attributes of the Priest: 1) Face life with no running from yourself or others. 2) Bridle your tongue, will, and imagination. 3) Synthesize the five senses into apperception. 4) Seek full use of your mystic eyes and ears. 5) Translate life’s experiences into soul ascension. 6) Balance love and wisdom, expressing in the world as compassion.
The Power of Being is to create or to invoke life by the spoken Word, first for others, then for yourself. You reach this by complete surrender to become the servant of all Power. This is standing in the Light as Light. Under the law of responsibility, you assume all blame and responsibility for all about you, wherever your name is used.
| Degree | Christos | ||
| Keyword | Joy | ||
| Initiation | Immortality, to live now in eternity | ||
| Buddhist Path | To return to the beginning to add illumination to your life | ||
| Power of Being | Overcoming death by becoming law and comprehension | ||
Immortality is the Mystic Brotherhood initiation. Joy lifts, ascends, heals and cleanses. Immortality means to live in eternity now as the immortal being of Light that you are.
The Buddhist path is the final discarding of the “husks” of consciousness. To ascend, you discard the husks of self, opinions, prejudices and old forms. You return to the beginning and add Rajah Yoga’s illumination to the Hatha Yoga of breath and karma yoga of earth living. You pick up your pearls, life experiences, everything of love and wisdom you cast aside during your descent into matter, and your past embodiments.
The Power of Being is overcoming death by becoming law and comprehension, casting off the grip of earth gravity, and responding only to paradise gravity. The physical ascends into the desire body, the desire draws into the mental body and you walk in an atomic body. This marks the final ascension of desires, thinking, and imagination.
You ascend through the lesser steps of the great Seven Degrees. The first ascent contains 144 through 7 x 7 = 49 Degrees of initiation, or twelve times around the Wheel of Terra acquiring twelve virtues per sign. Even while incarnated in one sign, you are still polishing the virtues of the other eleven. You never operate under just one sign, but always under all twelve. If you neglect polishing the virtues of one sign-incarnation, your debts pile up until you catch up. The first ascent awakens the optic chiasm of the thalamus, where Light enters and shines through the mystical “third eye” in the forehead, which is the window of the soul open toward Jerusalem.
These 144 steps equal 33 Via Christa Degrees as you make the rounds of the signs twelve times. When you step to the Hub of the Wheel of Ezekiel, you open a new round of twelve times through the signs. You are higher, but are still polishing the conquering you left undone. On this second ascent, you begin the 1,000 burnt offerings, 1,000 days of selflessness to open the mental body lotus petals. You complete one day of burnt offerings by being as perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect. Thank God, smile and say, “I love you, Father” a thousand times an hour.
Healing by Principle
Edna Lister outline, 44th International New Thought Alliance Congress Opening Session, July 12, 1959, San Diego, CA. Genesis 1:1, John 1:1
“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”–Genesis 1:1.
“In the beginning was the Word, the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”–John 1:1.
Many different schools of thought have given a “word,” which they have claimed is “the Word.” Yet one word cannot express all principle. “In the beginning” all of God was the Word, therefore all principles were contained in the Word as God. When we really accept and fully understand these statements of truth, we will need no healing because they are statements of complete perfection that only ignorance and disobedience to principle can set aside. Only ignorance and disobedience need healing.
So the Word was a vast emanation or a composite vibration of all principles and laws, the same laws we have been rediscovering for ourselves as metaphysicians. The Word as God is the Source principle upon which we draw for all healing power. You cannot set aside love, wisdom, faith or joy and say, “This is the Word.” Each is a principle, and part of the universal principle. All principle is the immutable, undeviating, changeless foundation upon which healing power is based, as well as the foundation upon which all universes are established.
Metaphysics and science move along, side by side under changeless, workable laws. Lincoln Barnett, in The Universe and Dr. Einstein, explains exactly and scientifically what happens when you have had healing. Scientists at first thought that “mass” was one kind of substance and “energy” was another. Under Einstein’s laws of relativity, they have found that mass, energy and light are the same substance in different rates of vibration. Mass is slow, energy is faster, and the Light above that is a high rate of vibration.
Metaphysicians have always known that God is everywhere evenly present and available in all His parts, attributes and qualities. We know that all disease is a stagnation of life in the body cells. Healing under the principle of faith raises the actual cellular vibrations, mass is changed into energy, and you have a miracle. Einstein’s mass-energy theory has explained the resurrection of the body of Jesus.
On the Mount of Transfiguration, he showed Peter, James and John that he could raise his physical mass body through energy into Light. Every healing is a resurrection from mass, the heavy body substance, into energy. Perfect unconquerable faith can do this for you now as the “greater works.” Do you believe this? No one is apt to move from mass through energy and float off as Light for a while yet. You don’t need to worry that you’ll get “too good” too soon!
The world of science challenges metaphysicians today. Science is doing the “greater works,” more so than metaphysics. What will we do to equal that? “In the beginning was the Word” of all Power. Today it is still the Word of all Power. Science calls this atomic power, and metaphysicians name it the Christed Energy of Light, and it is pure, unchangeable principle that cannot fail.
Are you afraid of it? Are you like the timid little boy who, when asked what he wanted to be, said, “I want to be a scarecrow so I won’t be afraid”? If you hide behind the scarecrow idea, you find that when you should be standing firmly upon principle, you are stuffed with straw instead of fortitude. You need not be afraid of doing the “greater works” by speaking the Word of the Power of the “beginning.”
The principle of faith, of the principle of all truth is not an emotional “bubble bath,” where you get excited occasionally when you hear a sermon, a lecture or read a book. Nor is it a mental amendment to your past life, where you take it out, think about it or make a trite statement about it once or twice a day. Truth is no substitute for anything, but a principle to live by as an entirely new way of life. It is a reconditioning, a reconversion into a new Christed Age image and likeness of God as in the beginning.
Truth is a surrender of self-centered desires and self-centered will, both moving into the House of the Lord to become the I AM Christed consciousness. Desire then becomes intuition, moving beside the still waters of Spirit, while will becomes pure illumination of wisdom and turns itself into the green pastures of growth and cosmic expansion. Principle already has your passport waiting for you in the House of the Lord. I AM accepts it, and the door opens to all health, success and glory. Do you believe that this is your “new beginning?”
The now is an escalator moving you up into the House of the Lord where principle can recreate what it created in the beginning, where you stand in the ultimate glory, with a youthful, singing heart. You are as immortal now as you ever will be, for you are formed by principle of this one substance and the Word is God.
Symbolism Within the 33 Via Christa Degrees
Edna Lister transcript, Ruth Johnson, Irene White, Virginia Whitehead, scribes, October 6, 1959, Cleveland, OH
Symbolism is “the art or practice of using symbols especially by investing things with a symbolic meaning or by expressing the invisible or intangible by means of visible or sensory representations: such as (a) artistic imitation or invention that is a method of revealing or suggesting immaterial, ideal, or otherwise intangible truth or states; (b) the use of conventional or traditional signs in the representation of divine beings and spirits.”–Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary
A symbol is the outward sign of an inner concept or truth. Symbolism began with the first communication among men to express ideas in the mind that become tangible as words, images, or gestures. The meaning of many symbols is obscure. Tarot cards, for example, are outer symbols, but their abstract meaning is of an inner significance. A rosary is an outer symbol of an inner prayer life. A wedding ring symbolizes the unbreakable unity of a marriage made in heaven (although not all marriages are).
People interpret symbols in many ways. They interpret what they see by reading lips, eyes, minds, facial expressions, and body posture. You’ve heard it said, “I can read you like a book.” The person doing the reading sees a mental image or symbol of what the other fellow is saying. Another may speak and you then “see” the symbols behind his words. You may see a picture in your mind’s eye and never realize that you are reading a record in the Book of Life.
The danger with symbols is that you can color what you see with your thoughts, opinions, and fears, then misunderstand or misinterpret the message. If you fear a so-called negative symbol, a black cat or a broken mirror for instance, you may actually draw that imagined darkness to you. For example, an astrologer could say that you have a void, are lacking an element in your chart. Even if some element is missing, your chart is always complete because one factor inevitably balances another for wholeness. God is everywhere evenly present and available, so don’t mistakenly embrace another’s negative interpretation as your situation.
Silence clears the mind and clarifies thought. Students in ancient mystery schools weren’t allowed to speak or comment for several years. Pythagoras trained his students this way to wipe the beliefs, interpretations, and opinions of the outer world from their minds, which is why it is good to have Neophytes in every Order. It’s a stage of preparation necessary to eliminate preconceived opinions, prejudice, and intolerance. Diplomats are trained this way; they attend special preparatory schools to learn diplomatic language and deportment, to separate them from previously learned social customs.
Your words, spoken and written, are the symbols you use to express certain ideas that you must then leave to the other fellow to interpret. Choose your symbols and tones of voice wisely. For example, nearly all marital difficulties stem from a negative tone of voice that is more influential to the listener than the actual words spoken. For example, if your spouse said, “I love you,” in a whining voice, what would you think? Is it love? Or does he or she only want something? You really hear only the whining tone and interpret it accordingly. Whining symbolizes the appetitive soul, and pushes the hearer away. Any tone of voice easily becomes an involuntary habit. Record your voice, then listen to its tones. When someone takes offense at something you’ve said, is it because your tone came from a dark taint in your subconscious mind? Cleanse what is not beautiful from your life and being.
Reading symbols can unveil truth. The study of symbolism is interesting and comprehensive in its scope. Archaeologists and anthropologists can unfold and interpret the nature and course of entire civilizations through the record of their signs and symbols. These researchers have done more to reveal man’s hidden past than have ministers, priests, and religious writers in interpreting ancient mystery documents.
Primitive man worked out elaborate and complex symbol systems to explain life’s mysteries, and to regulate and maintain proper social behavior. These systems still exist in symbolic words, gestures or art, such as Egyptian hieroglyphics. Even when civilizations are wiped out, their symbols remain to be read by the discerning eye. They may reveal the significance of long-ago events, and give you a feel for the quality of life in an ancient time. All ancient civilizations worshiped the One Supreme Spiritual Being and created symbols to represent it. American Indians see this as a White Buffalo, while East Indians personify it as a White Elephant. To this day, we live our lives surrounded by the evidence of ancient allegories and parables. Young people and children still read the myths of the gods and Aesop’s fables.
A student of the esoteric studies the hidden mysteries and finds a different, higher interpretation than does the exoteric student. Some schools of opinion have so twisted or biased the exoteric interpretation of symbols they’ve lost their real meaning. This easily becomes opinion and prejudice, especially when the interpreter takes personal pride in having the “right” answer. The exoteric seeker will always argue the “rightness” of his interpretation, while the esoteric student remains silent, knowing better than to speak out.
To use force or argument to change another’s opinion of meaning is useless, a waste of time and energy. “Convince a man against his will and he’ll be of the same opinion still,” said Dale Carnegie. You cannot convince another against his will. He’ll hold the same opinion when you’re finished, and you will have created a soul debt to pay for forcing your opinion on him.
Most difficulties in communication today arise from so many different interpretations of the same symbols, which can cause difficulty in family life. For example, children are great symbolists, reading and interpreting the symbolic value of your tones of voice, gestures, and all you say and do. Parents are the symbols of their children’s heavenly Father and Mother, but confuse their offspring when they act in unbecoming ways. “Symbols…do not derive their real value from historical data, but from the universal and eternal truths which they embody.” The esoteric interpretation of a symbol always states an inner law. A true student of the esoteric receives a symbolic concept from divine Mind and uses his soul faculties to interpret the meaning perfectly.
Seven Basic Symbols
There are as many interpretations of any one symbol as there are developments arising from the seven basic symbols as a whole. These symbols represent the soul’s descent to earth, into physical manifestation, and conquering self on earth to regain divine or cosmic balance. Symbolically, straight lines are masculine, expressing the Father of Wisdom as the Mind of God. Curved lines are feminine, expressing the Mother of Love as the Substance of God.
The point represents the primacy of the Father of All at the Source, the center or heart of creation. From this One springs all manifestation within the universes. The circle of the Mother’s unity represents the pure, inexperienced soul’s sheath of substance ready to descend into matter or material, physical manifestation. The point within a circle represents the soul, with God in the heart at its center, immersed in matter, but still symbolizing the Oneness that never has been lost.
The circle bisected horizontally represents the soul looking earthward. Here he spreads out blindly, horizontally, using only the earthly physical senses. The circle bisected horizontally and downward vertically represents the balanced and receptive soul. No soul can conquer or ascend without the Father’s foursquare foundation, and the Mother’s encircling unity. He has become a creator with the Father, Mother, and Son; he is becoming the master of his fate and captain of his soul. This is soul ascension. The circle bisected horizontally and upward vertically represents the soul ascending from the physical senses to find God. Yet he still lacks a real ladder of ascension and foursquare foundation. He is unbalanced, has his head in the clouds, and is prey to false gods. This is haphazardly trying. The circle bisected horizontally and vertically represents the soul standing upright with arms outstretched. He is gaining awareness, trying to find his Source through earthly concepts, pursuits, beliefs, and teachings.
Mystic Lines of Expression
An upright T symbolizes the Tau cross of complete service and alignment with the cardinal points of the compass to maintain a foursquare foundation for soul. The wings of the Holy Spirit are bestowed and descend for complete conquering of self. An inverted T symbolizes the arms of the Almighty upholding the conquering soul, whose golden bowl is open to full God-consciousness. This is the Holy Spirit operating in full support of the soul’s ascension.
The square cross, the crux quadrata, symbolizes upright man, whose arms are outstretched to receive support of the Holy Spirit. The four arms of this cross represent experience-lessons and the soul’s descent from the Source to earth. This is the soul committed to full service and surrendered to complete learning through earth’s experience-lessons. In ancient Hebrew, the lower case Tau (Tav = ת) cross was also square. The left-facing swastika (counterclockwise) symbolizes the cross of service and creativity with God, and is a most ancient symbol. It represents rising from darkness into the Light. Under soul conquering of the self, Power whirls out to earth through the cardinal points, and four elements—earth, water, air, and fire. The letter “I” symbolizes a syllable in “I AM,” a mystical lost Name of God.
For many centuries the wise used symbols to conceal the “lost Word.” The Word is the Logos, an emanation or vibration of God’s Light as Power. Man lost the Word as he lost his consciousness of God and awareness of His presence. Those who deliberately descended into darkness repudiated God and forgot their divine heritage. They buried the truth of symbolism under their ignorance, as they denied the laws of the universe that the symbols represented. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”–John 1:1. The Word is God. God is God’s name in heaven; Good is God’s name on earth. When you declare all that comes to you is good, you call that lost Name, the Word into your life as all Good. What was lost is found: The lost word is GOOD.
The ancients originally concealed their arcane wisdom in what mystics call the Greater Mysteries of Antiquity. These mysteries, reported as lost to the outer world, were never lost, but veiled to conceal them from profane view. They have been and are taught orally, mouth to ear throughout all ages as parables, allegories, myths, and in symbols. Jesus himself taught the mysteries in many of his parables and allegories. The mysteries have always been available to those who earnestly, sincerely sought them because their original symbolism was taught as an exact science, although their truth is now buried beneath centuries of ignorance. Melchizedek, King of Salem (Genesis 14:18), taught the mysteries to Abraham, Solomon and Pythagoras, and gave Euclid the principles of geometry. One example of this is Solomon, which is the name of deity in three ancient languages. SOL is Assyrian; OM is East Indian; ON is Persian.
God is The One supreme or ultimate reality, The One Being perfect in power, wisdom, and goodness, who is worshipped as creator and ruler of the universe. Deity is the rank or essential nature of a god, divinity; (a) capitalized God is the Supreme Being; (b) a god or goddess; (c) one exalted or revered as supremely good or powerful. The terms “God” and “deity” differ philosophically. “God” designates the Absolute Godhead, whereas “deity” generally designates a relative personalization of the absolute.
The myth of the sun god (SOL) unfolds the mystery of the serpent of wisdom standing upright on its tail, as symbolized by the letter “S.” The Mother of heaven is symbolized by “OM.” She is hidden by the Father on the way down and out during involution. The Mother is not hidden in evolution, so the “S” becomes the symbol of the revealed Mother covering the Father on the soul’s return home. “ON” represents the trinity of the Holy Spirit working through the higher creative centers in the head. All interpretations of philosophy emerge from the principles of Light and number combining to give color and tone quality as well as quantity. Pythagoras taught the mysteries in five great principles revealing quality and quantity:
Pythagoras used seven geometric symbols to instruct candidates in the mysteries. The right angle is a symbol of morality and justice. The equilateral triangle symbolizes God as the essence of Light and truth. The square symbolizes divine Mind. The cube symbolizes the mind of man purified. The point within a circle, and the dodecahedron, a twelve-sided shape, are symbols of the universe. The triple Tau triangle in the center of a circle is a symbol of health. The letter Ψ (psi) symbolizes the soul freedom to choose your own path in life.
The triple Tau cross in the center of a circle and a triangle, typifies the Sacred Name; and represents the Sacred Triad, the Creating, Preserving, and Destroying powers. As the single Tau represents the one God, so, no doubt, the Triple Tau was meant to represent the divine attributes of wisdom, strength, and harmony.
We go by these rules from Scripture: “Ye have heard that it hath been said by them of old time, Thou shalt not forswear thyself, but shalt perform unto the Lord thine oaths: But I say unto you, Swear not at all; neither by heaven; for it is God’s throne: Nor by the earth; for it is his footstool: neither by Jerusalem; for it is the city of the great King. Neither shalt thou swear by thy head, because thou canst not make one hair white or black. But let your communication be, Yea, yea; Nay, nay: for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil.”–Matthew 5:33-37. “Above all, my brethren, do not swear, either by heaven or by earth or with any other oath; but your yes is to be yes, and your no, no, so that you may not fall under judgment.”–James 5:12.
Melchizedek, King of Righteousness, taught Abraham, Moses, and Solomon the heavenly mysteries in three degrees of initiation—mysteries that were devised for the building of the outer frameworks of God's holy mysteries, from the open air altars in high places, to the Tent of the Congregation in the wilderness, and finally to build the Temple in Jerusalem, which was built in stone. The candidates for Melchizedek’s three degrees were taught in symbols. God appointed Abraham, Moses, and Solomon, who in turn appointed divinely inspired artisans (such as Bezaleel and Aholiab), but in every case, God is the Architect. “And Moses said unto the children of Israel, See, the LORD hath called by name Bezaleel the son of Uri, the son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah; and he hath filled him with the spirit of God, in wisdom, in understanding, and in knowledge, and in all manner of workmanship; and to devise curious works, to work in gold, and in silver, and in brass, and in the cutting of stones, to set them, and in carving of wood, to make any manner of cunning work. And he hath put in his heart that he may teach, both he, and Aholiab, the son of Ahisamach, of the tribe of Dan. Them hath he filled with wisdom of heart, to work all manner of work, of the engraver, and of the cunning workman, and of the embroiderer, in blue, and in purple, in scarlet, and in fine linen, and of the weaver, even of them that do any work, and of those that devise cunning work.”–Exodus 35:30-35
For millennia men have constructed physical buildings using material substances. To do this they created a set of to tools to aid them: compasses, which are geometric drafting tools used to create precise circles and arcs; a set square, which is a right angle tool used to join two surfaces at a 90-degree angle. A plumb line, called a plummet, is a cord with a non-magnetic weight attached to one end, which carpenters use to keep their work straight. The Lord describes Himself as a builder: “See, I lay a stone in Zion, a tested stone, a precious cornerstone for a sure foundation” (Isaiah 28:16). As the Lord builds, He makes sure it is perfect: “I will make justice the measuring line and righteousness the plumb line” (Isaiah 28:17). Finally, you must have a true knowledge of geometry.
The pioneering mystic uses the same tools metaphorically to erect a spiritual temple of the soul, of character, including virtue and morality. A great and often overlooked keynote of the Via Christa is personal responsibility, which is essential for the ascension of consciousness to the mind that was in Christ Jesus. Among the mysteries is this law: “I am my brother’s keeper.” To become like unto the Master is to become more full godlike, so you assume personal responsibility for your fellow man. Man’s greatest psychological sin has been his repudiation of his responsibility for his fellow man. Caring for the welfare of others is essential to the soul’s ascension into the Light.
Symbols derive their value from the universal truth they embody and unfold. The life of Jesus Christ is symbolic of what the heart of every soul desires to become. “Tear every shred of history from the life of the Christ today, and prove beyond all controversy that he never existed, and Humanity, from its heart-of-hearts, would create him again tomorrow and justify the creation by every intuition of the human soul and by every need of the daily life of man.”–J. D. Buck, American homeopath, naturopath, and professor of physiology.
Solomon’s Temple is a Temple of the Soul, which embodies a sublime philosophy expressing religious wisdom. Implicit within the 33 Via Christa Degrees is the one great idea and goal, which is mastering every ability, every faculty of mind as soul to build a perfect temple. Solomon’s Temple represents rebuilding the Temple of the Soul by reawakening and purifying the higher creative centers in the brain—the pineal body, pituitary gland, optic chiasm of the thalamus, and the medulla oblongata—restoring them to their higher function. This is the purpose of walking the Via Christa, the Way of Christ. An attitude of true humility is one of the greatest keys to unlocking the symbolism of the Way of Christ. Humility is wisdom and love in perfect balance within the soul, expressing as compassion to the world. A lack of humility is arrogant, the appetitive soul taking credit from God. Solomon’s Temple contains the greatest symbols:
A triangle within a five-pointed star represents the soul involved in the five physical senses and lost in self. It also represents the “stone which the builders rejected” (Psalm 118:22, Matthew 21:42), the keystone of the arch in Solomon’s Temple of the Soul. The stone is rejected because it symbolizes the soul enmeshed in the five senses and expressing the negative personality traits. The five-pointed star symbolizes the Oversoul star; inverted, it represents evil, a perversion of soul enmeshed in the five senses. The equilateral triangle symbolizes the Triune God, the Three-as-One, or Mind, Substance, and Power.
The triangle within a circle represents the higher creative centers within the head, the golden bowl (Ecclesiastes 12:6). As it appears on the one dollar bill, the triangle within a circle symbolizes our Founding Fathers’ faith in the descent of New Jerusalem in America. It also represents the keystone of the exalted race of the Elect, the Sons and Daughters of God. An inverted triangle symbolizes the sacrum plexus at the base of the spine. These two triangles—at the head and the sacrum—represent the spine, the rod of power joining the lower with the higher creative centers. Here you draw in, sublimate, and synthesize the five physical senses into apperception, the soul faculty that inducts Light as the mind that was in Christ Jesus, knowing as God knows. You earn apperception by walking the
△ Beauty Strength |
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The bronze pillars at the entrance of Solomon’s Temple of the Soul are named Jachin and Boaz (1 Kings 7:21), and they symbolize the equinoxes, the equilibrium that explains the great mysteries of nature. They represent pairings: the appetitive soul and rational soul portions which are the earthly foundation for the Oversoul. Jachin and Boaz also represent the pillar of cloud by day and fire by night that guided the Tribes of Israel through the wilderness. Jachin, the right-hand (south) pillar of cloud, represents the appetitive soul; Boaz, the left-hand (north) pillar of fire, represents the rational soul. Jachin means “He will establish”; Boaz means “in Him is strength.” Jachin and Boaz, symbolize the Christian’s profound faith and implicit trust in God and the Redeemer that are his strength, and the good works established by faith leading to salvation.
The pillars of Jachin and Boaz are topped by the triangular keystone rejected by the builders, then redeemed: “The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone”–Psalm 118:22, which Jesus quotes in the Gospels: Matthew 21:42, Mark 12:10, Luke 20:17. Wisdom, Strength, and Beauty form the triangular keystone of soul. Strength is composed of morality and intelligence, patience and perseverance, faithfulness and courage, method and insight, ingenuity and energy. You must pass through the darkness, to reach the light: Trial yields triumph and heartache yields joy. Universal harmony binds the universe together, not arbitrary will. “The king went to Gibeon to sacrifice there; for that was the great high place: a thousand burnt offerings did Solomon offer upon that altar.”–1 Kings 3:4. The only way to redeem the keystone and lift it atop the pillars of Solomon’s Temple is to make
The entrance to Solomon’s Temple also represents the five physical senses as the gateway to the palace of the king—called the golden bowl or the higher creative centers. Sacrifices made for self, to benefit the self, are rejected because they are bound in the five senses. As you enter the palace, you awaken the pituitary gland for intuition and the pineal body to have illumination. It’s just as necessary to defend your Temple of the Soul after you’ve entered as it is to possess it in the first place. “Take unto you the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand.”–Ephesians 6:13. Having done all to draw the five senses in, you must stand firm.
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The triangle within a square with all points of the triangle touching the square symbolizes man incarnate on earth learning his spiritual lessons through experience with the five senses. It also represents the process of reincarnation. The triangle within a square not touching the square represents the stone the builders rejected. This is the stone that the soul—you—must redeem to make it the keystone of the entrance to your Temple of the Soul. The square within a triangle symbolizes regeneration, resurrection, and ascension. This is tying your earth to heaven as you synthesize the five physical senses into one soul faculty, apperception. You reach this by stepping onto the Path of Destiny, an initiation called crossing the burning sands of the desert. It may take years to complete, since many frequently quit when only halfway through. They retreat to the easier initiations on the line of fate, also called the Wheel of Fate, which is the Zodiacal belt of astrology.
What does “all” mean to you? How great is your “all”? How far upward in ascension does it take you? All the way? Your ability to stand firm can be no greater than your conception of “all”. If you have reservations or limits to your “all”, you are plagued with delays and lacks, otherwise you have miracles! Examine, ponder your concept of “all” and you’ll discover the secret of success or failure in your life.
A different symbol represents each of Solomon’s Orders in sacred writings. The square is the symbol of the absolute necessity of building a foursquare foundation for the soul. Your Temple can stand only on a stable foundation, and you build it by unfolding the mysteries of the cube that forms the Master’s Cross. The compass represents the absolute necessity of the soul’s orientation to the cardinal points—north, south, east, and west. Know what direction you’re headed, and always keep your vision directed north, which is up. The Bible is the symbol of the Supreme Creator who gave it as His gift to man. Mundane architects are designers and planners of physical buildings; mystic architects are creators with God who have a direct line of consciousness to divine Mind. The oracles in ancient temples were able to hear the Voice of God direct.
△ Death Resurrection |
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Melchizedek, the King of Righteousness, is the Great Architect who gave Solomon the realities of religion in the mysteries of death, resurrection, and the hope of immortality, which is soul ascension. The mystery of Death reveals that physical death is a life vibration raised so high that physical cells, molecules, and atoms cannot stand the strain—they burst and so free the soul to ascend to its home. The indigo blue death ray is the highest degree of the emanation of Mother Love—joy. Death of the little self, of your old desires, thinking, and imagination is the lowest degree of initiation under the Mother-blue ray of love. Thus, the mother of life always conceals death, which always reveals the Mother of Love.
Mother Blue Indigo Blue
The mystery of Resurrection reveals that you must winnow the grain of experience, retaining only the wisdom of the good. Make sure you also lift the chaff, the husks, of your misused soul substance to be burned in the fire of love and consumed in Light. You are responsible for the husks, and you cannot leave even an iota of darkness for another to lift. Many saints find that they have to incarnate again to lift their remaining husks of self.
The mystery of the hope of Immortality reveals that the soul is eternal. You are as immortal now as you shall ever be. To rebuild your Temple of the Soul and enter the Palace of the King, you must live in a state of fervent expectancy under soul conquering while declaring, “I am immortal now!”
The Neophyte Degree on the Via Christa deals with the realities of religion in life. Behind the truth of appearances lies the absolute truth of God’s reality. The term, religion, comes from the Latin, religare, which means “to bind together, to bind back, to collect.” You bind yourself together with God’s reality, forsake the truth of appearances, and redeem the soul substance you have invested in the world.
The Neophyte dedicates eight hours to God’s service by helping those in need, eight hours for work, and devote the remaining eight hours to refreshing relaxation and sleep. These three eight-hour periods are symbolic of the absolute Wisdom, Love, and the Logos aspects of the Triune God, which descend as the relative Supreme Trinity of Mind, Substance, and Power within time and space. This 3 × 8 totals the 24 hours of a day, which equals six, the number of the creator (24 = 2 + 4 = 6.)
As you dedicate eight hours of caring service to God, you recognize that all substance is of God. You serve God through right use of your soul substance in desire, thinking, and imagination. Eight hours includes all social and recreational interaction with family, friends and business associates. You deduct two hours from your service and social periods to relax with exercise, reading books, and to prepare for refreshing sleep.
| Point | Virtue | ||
| East | Temperance symbolizes the need to remain balanced, poised and in command of all mental faculties. | ||
| South | Prudence represents the need to agree and adjust to earthly demands. | ||
| West | Fortitude represents the need to hold fast to your principles. Read Kipling’s poem, If. | ||
| North | Justice represents the need to hold Honor above all, loyalty first to God, then to others. | ||
The Foursquare Foundation of the Via Christa: The aspirant must practice four cardinal virtues that correspond to the four cardinal points of the compass, symbolizing right orientation. The Via Christa expands the definitions of the cardinal virtues and directions to form a foursquare foundation for right action and rebuilding the Temple of the Soul.
| Point | Virtue, a Soul Power | ||
| East | Temperance raises the creative fire from the sacrum to the Garden of Eden, the higher creative center in the head as perfectly balanced poise under Light. | ||
| South | Prudence agrees first with God that whatever comes to you is good, then adjusts to others without an argument. | ||
| West | Fortitude stands on principle, holds fast to God’s truth, and knows that God works all things together for good. | ||
| North | Justice is stainless honor of soul above all, expressed as loyalty to God as your Source first, before earthly loyalties. | ||
Preparation for Ascension: As you ascend, the increased action of the thymus gland regenerates your body, releases the spiritual power to ascend, and you are resurrected from the old, aggressive action of the adrenal glands, which protect the “little me,” the self. You undergo long and arduous preparation to become the master of your fate and captain of your soul. The Neophyte candidate for ascension prepares for full conquering in five steps:
1. Wear protective, conquering Light as a garment.
2. Comprehend the Fatherhood of God over all races of humankind.
3. Comprehend the Brotherhood of Man as encompassing all races of mankind.
4. Comprehend the true level of equality as the equal right of all souls to become, to conquer self, and to return to God.
5. Develop and maintain a childlike soul attitude of simplicity and sincerity.
To move from separation from God under the darkness of self into the Unity of the Light of God in soul, you must place your trust in God. Your obligation and personal responsibility before the altar within the Temple of the Soul is to let God, the Architect, use you to become your own Master Builder of soul.
The Mystical 33 Degrees: Introduction
Edna Lister transcript, Margaret Pratt Doan, Ruth Johnson, Irene White, Virginia Whitehead, scribes, October 13, 1959, Cleveland, OH
The 33 Degrees of the Via Christa, the Way of Christ contain many initiations not revealed in other ancient traditions. The terms we use to describe the Via Christa Degrees are different, more mystical than those used in most ancient mystery schools. The degrees are ancient beyond time, and we must build on the truth contained in their symbolism to understand the Via Christa.
Symbolism began with the first communication of ideas among men, but time and events have buried the truth behind the symbols and made it difficult to discover. Atheists, agnostics, and the indifferent materialists complain that no modern proof of the truth of symbols has been offered, then search to prove that the symbolic meanings are not true. Yet the very existence of the symbols reveals a meaning rooted in a profound philosophy and a universal science that have never been transcended. True searchers all discover one common truth: Throughout all history, man’s upward advance has been guided by those who know and uphold the higher purpose of Creation.
“When Abram was ninety years old and nine, the Lord appeared to Abram, and said unto him, I am the Almighty God; walk before me, and be thou perfect. And I will make my covenant between me and thee, and will multiply thee exceedingly.”–Genesis 17:1-2. Jesus Christ restated this imperitive when he said, “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.”–Mathew 5:48. Such absolute truths have their enemies in every age. By the time truly dedicated searchers discover the truth, they know better than to reveal what they know. “Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you.”–Mathew 7:6. Silence is the first requisite to unfolding the Mysteries of God. True searchers never tell all that they find, so they hold the mysteries safe and inviolable by profane eyes or minds. As a searcher, you must arm yourself with the keys to symbolism to unfold the heavenly mysteries here on the outer.
Symbolism takes as many forms as there are cultures and ways of thinking. For example, the symbolism of the subconscious mind reveals itself in dreams, yet you cannot fully interpret a dream until you understand the symbolism that clothes it. Even a nightmare follows the symbolic pattern that impulsive-appetitive soul’s subconscious mind dictates. Therein lie all the various strata of your past misuse of Mind, Substance, and Power. All the sources of your inner conflicts rise to the surface for you to lift through such dreams so you may resolve them. Write the pattern of the dream, then review and analyze its symbols. For example, to dream of riding a white horse without saddle or bridle means you are conquering self without needing assistance. A horse of another color would have a different meaning. Symbolism is also revealed through conscious, deliberate soul flights and dream-visions in the night hours. You may study the mundane or philosophical symbolism of numerology, or the Hebrew alphabet’s mystical symbolism in Kabbalah. You may learn of the symbolism of words or of geometric patterns, such as the symbols of the signs and planets of the Zodiac.
The message hidden within the symbols of the 33 Degrees lies not in where they originated but in what they teach. For example, the symbol of the phoenix reveals how the divine Ideal, the truth of the mysteries always arises from every attempt to purge it from man’s memory and thus to obliterate it. The searcher himself endows all immortal Ideals with the Breath of Life as he becomes them. These Ideals, when lived as laws of life, become the soul’s wings and it rises from the dead self as it is born anew.
The first twenty-seven Via Christa Degrees are lesser degrees, divided into three groups of nine each, called the First, Second, and Third Triple Trinities of Degrees as shown below.
△ Equality Morality |
△ Justice Religion |
△ Simplicity Sincerity |
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△ Fidelity Devotion |
△ Bravery Action |
△ To Improve To Defend |
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△ Fact Legend |
△ Love Power |
△ Time Space |
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You take the first thirty of the Via Christa Degrees (including Comprehension, Resurrection, and Ascension) while living on earth by attending classes at night while on soul flights. However, you take all examinations in your daily living on earth, and you receive promotion based on how well you do. In life’s initiations you face temptations to misuse God’s Mind, Substance, and Power, symbolic of the temptations the Master faced during his forty days in the wilderness. Temptations always cover what you lack, your weak points, such as criticism, opinions, prejudice, and revenge motives. For instance, your intellectual pride and arrogance in ages past may make you a boring or irritating know-it-all today.
Those who refuse to cleanse their soul taints and work out their salvation at home, work, or among family or friends, receive no inner credits at all. They regress while they think they are still climbing in consciousness. Others, who know nothing about the degrees, receive heavenly robes and crowns at night just by living a life of giving and loving, while their friends usually say they let people impose on them. You receive credits for all your work in outer living, minus the demerits for gossiping, holding grudges, or feeling like a martyr.
Thousands of couples who began as Holy Mates (the world calls them soulmates) are living together on earth today and fighting it out. On the inner, before beginning their earth life, they promise to train each another in the coming life. A divine mate makes a good teacher because they polish your rough spots and file off your sharp edges. Difficulty arises in any relationship when you pay your vows without charity, which is a phase of love under compassion. Many live as though only he or she can be right in the marriage. They receive credit for faith for this, yet trap themselves in the first ten degrees. They always tell you how “good” they are by how much they have “helped” their partner to change. How you live by the pattern of your ideals always determines how you earn credits in the degrees. Ending an incarnation of good service while still holding a grudge can neutralize the credits you worked so hard to earn in that life.
You take the last three Via Christa Degrees on the Sun, in the Supreme Temple of the Sun. To earn these degrees, you must ignite the fire of the seven sun centers in your electronic fire body. You do not wait for the sun centers to ignite before you begin. When your credits on the outer degrees are high enough, with no regression or backsliding, you are ready for the initiations on the final Via Christa Degrees.
Your Great Guardian sponsors watch for your high points of joy, where you are not frozen or stuck in the “same-old, same-old.” Joy is the one vibration that takes you to the Sun any time. When you feel sad or low, just stand with arms extended upward and say, “I rejoice and am glad!” in three groups of three, or nine times. You must be emotionally mature enough to keep your conscious thoughts clean. Though you may not consciously be aware of your activity at night, you will return in the morning joyous with new illumination and greater understanding. Comprehension is the final Via Christa Degree of service and dedication that combines all other degrees.
You must also study the Great Pyramid’s symbolism fully to understand the intiations of the Via Christa. The Great Pyramid includes the initiations of the ten Commandments expressed at three levels, physical-material, emotional-mental and spiritual-emanations or three levels times ten commands equals 30 degrees (3 x 10 = 30). You must use and apply the ten Commandments on each higher level of consciousness as you ascend. You begin seeking physical-material comprehension in the first ascending passageway, called the Hall of Truth in Darkness. You enter the Queen’s Chamber to begin conquering your emotional and mental phases of life. You enter the Grand Gallery, which is the Hall of Truth in Light, to polish your emotional and mental conquering. You take the final three degrees in the King’s Chamber, working under the emanations of Wisdom, Love, and the Logos while you “Abstain from all appearance of evil.”–1 Thessalonians 5:22, and declare all things good. You never work on just one level or degree at a time, but are always working on all degrees at once.
The first of the Seven Degrees is the Neophyte, whose vow is to the make his body a fit dwelling place for the soul. All physical vows, such as diet, rest, exercise, breathing, and drinking sufficient water, go with this degree—and you must hold and keep these vows through all later initiations. “He placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life.”–Genesis 3:24. The angel with a flaming sword stands at the gate to Eden, the head and higher creative centers, to turn the soul back to earth for losing soul substance while embodied. Sometimes a soul who has finished all the higher degrees has come to earth only to polish Neophyte vows, yet spends an entire incarnation trying to conquer bodily limitations!
You can be on earth living by the final three high Christos Degrees and still run into difficulty by creating more spiritual debts to pay. You are polishing all degrees in this lifetime and the final test is ascension of the life sparks in your outer body sheath. The only way you can destroy your lesser vehicles—the cellular-physical, molecular-desire, and atomic-mental—is by deflating their atoms. Breathing deeply is the only way to inflate the atoms. Breathe deeply to build the body.
The thousand burnt offerings that Solomon made include resurrection, ascension and comprehension. “The king went to Gibeon to sacrifice there; for that was the great high place: a thousand burnt offerings did Solomon offer upon that altar.”–1 Kings 3:4. The first 30 degrees prepare you to complete
△ Resurrection Ascension |
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The final three Christos Degrees include the final three of the 33 Degrees. The thirty-first Degree of Resurrection contains five lesser degrees. Each great degree contains seven lesser degrees. You must complete 1,000 burnt offerings to complete these degree initiations. The 32nd Degree of Ascension includes seven great initiations polishing the degrees from Neophyte to Christos. Each degree has nine lesser degrees, totaling 63 initiations.
The Seeds of Life: Six (6) is the number symbolizing the Mother. Nine (9) is the number representing the Father. They express together as the Father-Mother combined to form two seeds of life. These seeds ripen in each embodied soul, according to the vigor and vitality of breathing, every 29.5 days or once a lunar month. For vital breathing, bend forward, breathe, then stand with your arms upraised. This draws the magnetic currents of earth into your solar plexus while drawing in the etheric currents or white Light of the Christ from above. Stand and say, “Let these etheric and magnetic currents moving through me now join together to form the seeds of life.”
When the magnetic currents meet the etheric currents, the nerve endings in the mental body lotus centers radiate a phosphorescent glow, as though you had indrawn into the center of the sun. The currents meet and mingle at the solar plexus creating the seeds of life in an explosion of Light. One seed descends to the lower creative center at the sacrum for outer physical creation. The other seed ascends to the higher creative centers in the brain to water the garden of Eden, to feed the thalamus, optic chiasm, pineal body, pituitary gland, and parathalamus bodies. This sublimates the creative fire and opens the sun centers of the electronic (subatomic) body. When the sun centers whirl, they first become visible in the desire body. You are immortal now in a perfectly indestructible electronic fire body. It is your responsibility, your work, and your joy to set the seven sun centers of this fire body whirling. You must raise your lesser vehicles in their rate of vibration and draw them into the electronic fire body to ascend.
Mundane numerology uses the numerical value of numbers only. You unfold the philosophical values with the number of strokes (straight lines represent the Father, and curved lines represent the Mother). Kabbalah reveals the mystical values of numbers through symbols.
3 lines form the number 2
4 lines form the number 3
3 lines form the number 4
4 lines form the number 5
2 lines form the number 6
2 lines form the number 7
4 lines form the number 8
5 lines form the number 9
44
Io, a virgin priestess of Hera, attracted the attention of Zeus. Jealous Hera turned Io into a white heifer. This woman (Io) first traps you in horizontal, worldly individuality (I) but at last returns you to unity (O). These Io figures unveil the hidden Mother. The greatest misuse of Power occurs under the Mother’s mysteries; therefore, evil’s devotees use them in black magic. These Io figures were also used in certain Egyptian hieroglyphics. The beginning circle (O-) represents the subconscious; the final circle (-O) represents making oneness with God or unity.
1 Bozena Brýdlova, Io Unveiled, The Brydlovan Theory of the Origin of Numbers.
Three threes (333) are a triple trinity forming a “vanishing nine,” which represents the fire triplicity of ascended, perfected personality (Aries, Leo, and Sagittarius). These figures do not reveal the triple trinity, just the duality (male-female) on earth. Black magic divided and separated these trinities. This is the story of the Creation of the universe and how theft and perversion of the mysteries of the hidden Mother were used to invent black magic. We reveal these figures here to lift the vibration associated with them into the Light for cleansing and purification.
Figures six and seven each have two twos or 22, the Path of the second Mastery. Then six plus seven equals 13, revealing the relationship between 22 and 13. Four (4) represents Jupiter, and five (5) represents Saturn. These form the “54 Companions of Perseus,” who represent the duality of earth. Jupiter represents joy and power; Saturn represents the combination of law and the stability that molds and holds. Four is 1111, which becomes four (4) when you ascend; it represents individuality at all levels as perfected personal expression. The 2222 becomes eight (8) and enfolds, which equals four twos. Moses’ number is 345 and Jesus’ number is 543; added, they total 888, the number of the Crown of Christ. The total (44) represents the trinity of air, the pineal body, pituitary gland, the hypothalamus, and the optic chiasm of the thalamus.
The 33 Degrees of Soul Conquering
Edna Lister transcript, Margaret Pratt Doan, Ruth Johnson, Irene White, Virginia Whitehead, scribes< October 20, 1959, Cleveland, OH
The point within a circle represents man within God, the “omnipotent Deity whose center is everywhere, and his circumference nowhere.” The point (God) extended itself into a circle (Creation, the universe). The circle within a circle, a symbol of Deity represents “everything that should lead to reflection: The center, the ray, and the circumference, represented to them God, Man, and the Universe.” The Greek letter psi Ψ within a circle represents the soul (psyche, ψυχή) of man reaching up to God; every soul eventually will climb from the self-limited consciousness of the masses and ascend as one of God’s Elect, having chosen to serve Him.
△ Giving Balance |
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△ Morality Equality |
△ Justice Religion |
△ Simplicity Sincerity |
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△ Morality Equality |
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The keynote of the first trinity of Via Christa Degrees is Responsibility through Honor, Morality and Equality, which represent initiations of the Degrees of the Via Christa. Honor requires that reason, love, and faith guide us in our studies. The square teaches Morality, the level, Equality, and the plumb, ethical conduct. The square symbolizes action in accord with virtue, balancing action with virtue. The square also represents the Cherubim, which have four faces: “As for the likeness of their faces, each had the face of a man; each of the four had the face of a lion on the right side, each of the four had the face of an ox on the left side, and each of the four had the face of an eagle.”–Ezekiel 1:10. New Jerusalem “Lies foursquare and the length is as large as the breadth: and he measured the city with the reed, twelve thousand furlongs. The length, breadth and height of it are equal. And he measured the wall thereof, 144 cubits, according to the measure of a man, that is, of the angel.”–Revelation 21:16-17. The cube, which reveals the greater nature of the square, is one of the most meaningful symbols, and represents this measure.
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The Platonic solids are the cube, dodecahedron, icosahedron, octahedron, and tetrahedron shown above. They are sometimes called “cosmic figures.” Plato described the solids in his Timaeus ca. 350 BC. He equated the the cube with earth, the dodecahedron with the stuff of which the constellations and heavens were made, the icosahedron with water, the octahedron with air, and the tetrahedron with the element of fire. The cube is a foursquare solid form that unfolds into a cross. It represents the regeneration of the foursquare man, complete in his virtue. The symbol of regenerated man is 144, which symbolically represents the total functional power of all glands, nerve plexus centers, molecular vital centers, atomic lotus centers, and electronic sun centers. The number four (4) represents the pineal body and the virtues of secrecy, and honor.
Your practice of ethics and morality is the proper application of wisdom to your life and affairs, putting what you know into action as your ethics and morality. The Via Christa Degrees interpret these principles as they concern the soul. Ascension of consciousness involves subduing the passions, being honest, speaking only the good, maintaining silence on what is sacred, and practicing charity. In learning math and geometry we use drawing compasses, protractors, triangles and squares. The moral application of these valuable instruments—to circumscribe your desires, and keep your passions within due bounds.”
To walk the Via Christa requires that you subdue self and its passions, e.g. anger, impulses, and appetites. You act foursquare under wisdom’s illumination. Use wise speech with no idle words, gossip (don’t “cast your pearls before swine”). Declaim no monologues of self: “Let your communication be, Yea, yea; Nay, nay: for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil.”–Matthew 5:37. Maintaining secrecy means remaining in the golden silence. To practice chastity is to “Abstain from all appearance of evil.”–1 Thessalonians 5:22. A chaste virgin is pure in heart, mind and purpose, and has climbed to the point of viewing the past with no desire to repeat it. This is practicing chastity with experience.
Morality is rectitude in conduct, symbolized by the plumb line. “Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? declare, if thou hast understanding. Who hath laid the measures thereof, if thou knowest? or who hath stretched the line upon it? Whereupon are the foundations thereof fastened? or who laid the corner stone thereof.”–Job 38:4-6. On the Via Christa, the plumb also symbolizes the absolute necessity of having a straight vertical line of consciousness up to God. The plumb is God’s ray of Light descending; He does not move the plumb around, but if you leave the path you have no plumb line of Light to guide you. The plumb measures how uprightly you walk. God cannot walk a crooked path with you because “Strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.”–Matthew 7:14.
Three rules apply for rectitude in conduct: To be modest and unaffected with those in a higher station is doing your duty. Be gracious and courteous with all. Be noble and selfless with those in a lesser position or in need. Arrogance is a weed that grows in every unkept barnyard, and no arrogance is as great as proclaiming another man’s errors and faults. Morality guides the ethic of being responsible for releasing God’s Power as Light. Morality dictates how you agree and adjust to the laws of God and man. You accept law socially under morality, and through tests and temptations you learn to agree with God, adjust to man, and to release Power.
Ordinary Christian dogma teaches fraternity but repudiates equality. Most religious sects say all others are going to hell, and there is no equality in this. In a monastery you find fraternity and equality, but a mere trace of liberty. Solomon’s Degrees taught liberty as full freedom, equality in the brotherhood of man, and freedom through fraternity. Liberty and equality, are based on fraternity or the unqualified brotherhood of man. The level symbolizes equality, the equal right to become and to advance. However, earthly equality ends with air to breathe 24 hours a day, then equality depends on what you do. We expand the meaning of Responsibility in the first lesser trinity of the Via Christa Degrees. Honor is seeing your responsibility. Equality is accepting your responsibility. Morality is fulfilling your responsibility.
△ Justice Religion |
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Giving is the keynote of the second trinity of lesser degrees which includes the degrees of Inspiration, Justice and Religion.
Inspiration motivates both learning and teaching. Ignorance is darkness—knowledge is Light. If you don’t or you refuse to learn, you remain in darkness. When you find Light, you learn. Inspiration is the door to living the fully conscious life, like unto the unfolding of your soul. When you breathe the Breath of Life, you are inspired. “He breathed on them, and saith unto them, Receive ye the Holy Ghost”–John 20:22. The words of inspiration: “I am the door: by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved.”–John 10:9. The promise in the Word: “He that heareth my word, and believeth on Him that sent me, hath everlasting life”–John 5:24.
The Ark of the Mother is an all-encompassing symbol—in its concrete form, it is that resting place where an incoming soul builds his body. In a more cosmic application, the universe is an ark gestating the Creation. The unfolding soul, the Ark of the Covenant, the Holy of Holies and Shekinah Glory all symbolize illumination, Light within darkness. “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.”–Genesis 1:1-3.
Within the Ark of the Covenant is placed a sistrum, a musical rattle, shaped as an ankh (the crux ansata, a T-cross upholding an inverted teardrop) symbolizing the hidden Mother pouring out sound as a {fractal} law of Nature, which your soul can hear and know in the Silence. The ancient Egyptians used a sistrum in their rites to “awaken the dead,” to raise the rate of vibration by its metallic agitation and thus drown earth’s noises. In the Holy of Holies you stand before the Ark of the Covenant under the Shekinah glory, in the presence of The One. This represents kneeling at the Rim of the Source being bathed in the Shekinah glory pouring forth. You breathe this Light as the Breath of Life, the inspiration that enlivens you.
Justice: “Moral evil is falsehood in actions, as falsehood is crime in words. Injustice is the essence of falsehood; and every false word is an injustice. Injustice is the death of the moral being, as falsehood is the poison of the intelligence.” Further—“there are two kinds of injustice: the first, of those who offer an injury; the second, of those who have it in their power to avert an injury from those to whom it is offered, and yet do it not. So active injustice may be done in two ways—by force and by fraud, of which force is lion-like, and fraud fox-like, both utterly repugnant to social duty, but fraud the more detestable.”
Justice includes faithfulness to all vows, promises, and pledges. You assume vows as a duty owed to God, to your soul and to your fellow man, and owe a debt to law for disobedience. God as Logic requires that you apply your faculty of discrimination in this. For example, don’t vow to be patient then invite someone to disagree with you. You owe debts to the law for disobeying the vows you make, yet you can easily pay your debts with love and more fervency in prayer. The greatest gift you can give your Father is to ascend in a time of crisis: “Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and His righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.”–Matthew 6:33. This law doesn’t mean taking time to deliberate whether to choose God or to be a martyr. The time to love is right now. Drop a bomb of Light into the siuation and the payload of love it releases will deliver enough love to cover the debt.
Even a child can seek the kingdom of heaven first, and declare it good. Each night check yourself on whether you sought the kingdom before you spoke or acted. If you did, then “All these things shall be added unto you.” This is your soul’s All. God is All That Is. Spend a mere three minutes a day pondering the All, which is a world of beauty, and great beams of Light will lift you upward as the reward for ascending and staying high in consciousness. The study of the All is the greatest concept we have ever received from divine Mind. It releases great Power, so stand in its Light to be used by all God’s Power.
Religion. From the beginning of time man has had only one true religion and worshiped God as The Light, the All That Is. The totality of religion is expressed in the mysteries of “I AM THAT I AM,” the burning bush, a thousand burnt offerings made in sacrifice of self, and soul-conquering. Religion is a state of being (“I AM THAT I AM,”), which is forever the divine nature to which the soul clings. You take six steps to reach this state of being: Awareness, recognition, acceptance, forgiveness, surrender, and obedience.
Symbols are the visible forms that depict the essence of invisible religion. Each soul is a symbol of the “Allness” of its Source. Religious practice is waiting in the high place for the Lord, and it serves to correlate your relationship to God—God is not in you, you are in God because He made your, sour, body, the solar system, and the universe in which you live. Religion is a clarion call to action, and often a thorn in the flesh. Religious ritual relaxes your mind, but the sermon is supposed to awaken your soul. If a sermon does not disturb a soul or compel it to higher aspiration, that soul is half dead. Treat the half-dead ones with greater Light as life.
△ Simplicity Sincerity |
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Balance is the keynote of the third trinity of Via Christa degrees and it includes the Eye of God, Simplicity and Sincerity. This is a trinity of outer personal perfection and of being a creator with God. It covers the sixth and part of the seventh Via Christa Degrees.
The All-Seeing Eye is an emblem of omniscience (all-knowing), which to the ancients was the Sun, the eternal fire. Kabbalistically the Eye symbolizes Ayn Sof Aur, the Source of Infinite Light, the Divine Power, manifested as Light, creating the Universe. The all-seeing Eye of God teaches that just as God sees all that mankind does, all men and women must look to God to see and to know His desire and will for them. Seeing the Eye also implies that Shekinah Glory is descending to redeem the soul. The optic chiasm of the thalamus begins to open as the soul’s mystic eye under this trinity. As the mystic eye opens, the embodied soul usually sees only the other fellow’s faults and the laws he breaks. This is his first recognition of law, not for himself but for others. Pray for the soul who nitpicks and criticizes. The Eye of God may also symbolize the inner Hall of Records or Light descending to open the memory records in the midbrain neurons. If you dream of an eye, you can be certain your optic thalamus is really opening and the Oversoul, the source of conscience, is telling you to ascend.
Simplicity is being as a little child. Jesus said, “Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child, he shall not enter therein.”–Mark 10:15. Simplicity is accompanied by confidence, and kindness, thus “Truth and simplicity live amid many wiles and sophistries” without being distorted. Simplicity includes the virtues of industry, honor, and faithfulness. When you become a peacemaker and pacemaker, you can turn the anger of a professed enemy into wise counsel. Faithfulness is maintaining secrecy by never leaving the golden silence. Under simplicity love shares its kingdom with intuition.
The simplicity of industry is knowing that all work, no matter whether it be great or small, attains some spiritual goal. By practicing simplicity, you can redeem time with no waste and use what you have on hand first. This is how to pay debts for any past improvidence. You earn what you receive and make every day a day of judgment, favoring the simplicity of soul or the confusion of self. Judge your day by evaluating the it to see if you have left any holes of ungraciousness, sharp words, or indifference. Raise your hands, praise the Father, and ask that Shekinah Glory fills any voids you may have left behind before you go to sleep at night.
Sincerity is a perfect balance between intellect and emotional desire. All protection is through God’s will.” The word of the Lord to His prophet Ezekiel proves this: “And he called to the man clothed with linen, which had the writer’s inkhorn by his side; and the Lord said, Go through the midst of the city, through the midst of Jerusalem, and set a mark upon the foreheads of the men that sigh and that cry for all the abominations that be done in the midst thereof. And to the others he said in mine hearing, Go ye after him through the city, and smite: let not your eye spare, neither have ye pity: Slay utterly old and young, both maids, and little children, and women: but come not near any man upon whom is the mark; and begin at my sanctuary.”–Ezekiel 9:3-6.
We say, “Father, let Thy will, not mine, be done.” Our guarantee of God’s protection is in the words of this psalm: “He that dwelleth in the secret place of the most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty. I will say of the Lord, He is my refuge and my fortress: my God; in him will I trust. Surely he shall deliver thee from the snare of the fowler, and from the noisome pestilence. He shall cover thee with his feathers, and under his wings shalt thou trust: his truth shall be thy shield and buckler. Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night; nor for the arrow that flieth by day; nor for the pestilence that walketh in darkness; nor for the destruction that wasteth at noonday. A thousand shall fall at thy side, and ten thousand at thy right hand; but it shall not come nigh thee. Only with thine eyes shalt thou behold and see the reward of the wicked. Because thou hast made the Lord, which is my refuge, even the most High, thy habitation; there shall no evil befall thee, neither shall any plague come nigh thy dwelling. For he shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy ways. They shall bear thee up in their hands, lest thou dash thy foot against a stone.”–Psalm 91:1-12.
Sincerity is using your mental faculties of logic, reason, discernment, discrimination, and discretion to divest yourself of preconceptions, opinions, prejudices, and selfish ideas. Without sincerity you have an active injustice with a force that is lion-like and a fraud that is fox-like. Nothing is impossible to God, but He cannot un-commit a deed. You can lift it, wipe it out and ascend the substance but it remains in the eternal record of the Book of Life. The law of restraint governs sincerity. Restraint covers others’ transgressions and is silent when words would destroy a person, property, happiness or a reputation. Walk softly, speak gently, maintain golden silence, and use wise speech.
Again, the three lesser trinities of Honor, Morality and Equality; Inspiration, Justice and Religion; the Eye of God, Simplicity and Sincerity comprise the first Triple Trinity, the keynotes of which are Responsibility, Giving and Balance through responsibility: “I am my brother’s keeper.”
The 33 Degrees of Soul Conquering
Edna Lister transcript, Margaret Pratt Doan, Ruth Johnson, Irene White, Virginia Whitehead, scribes, October 27, 1959, Cleveland, OH
Your every thought and word releases Light-as-Power because thoughts and the spoken Word are vibrations. Every word you speak releases some degree and kind of the power within the Holy Breath, which can create or destroy. Hence the importance of the proverb, “Bridle your tongue.” As St. James said, “The tongue is a little member, and boasteth great things. Behold, how great a matter a little fire kindleth! And the tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity: so is the tongue among our members, that it defileth the whole body, and setteth on fire the course of nature; and it is set on fire of hell. For every kind of beasts, and of birds, and of serpents, and of things in the sea, is tamed, and hath been tamed of mankind: But the tongue can no man tame; it is an unruly evil, full of deadly poison. Therewith bless we God, even the Father; and therewith curse we men, which are made after the similitude of God. Out of the same mouth proceedeth blessing and cursing. My brethren, these things ought not so to be.”–James 3:5-10.
All Power exercised as energy is derived from the one ansolute Power of God. Lightning, electricity and atomic energy are all degrees of one Power exercised as energy. Einstein’s theories reveal that mass, energy, and vibration are all subordinate to one vibration. Misunderstanding relationship among various degrees and kinds is the fundamental problem. Divine Mind, Substance and Power flow throughout the universe as the River of Life, feeding God’s Creation. The teacher in a classroom releases an idea his words impinge on your brain cells and awaken them. You, the reach with mental antennae, the lotus petals of your electronic body, to retrieve the idea from the river; you take all your ideas from it. The concept falls on your brain cells, becomes an idea in your mind, then you translate the idea into words. The River of Life’s current moves clockwise in the now and so should you. Opinions and prejudices rotate counterclockwise into the past. Every cell in your body contains the memory of your ancestors, which forms the basis of heredity. When you finally lift your taints from the present life, you must still lift all those from the past.
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The unawakened soul, newly descended from God, before gaining any experience on earth. | ||
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The expanded, experienced soul on earth. | ||
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The soul absorbed in the Light of God, which possesses him. | ||
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The Oversoul. | ||
A study the symbolism of Pythagoras, for instance, may enable you read its symbols for yourself. When you can acurately read symbols, you can read life itself. The world of appearances is a reversed image of reality, although the vision of the beholder may be out of focus or warped. The points of these triangles are marked with a virtue, each belonging to a different trinity. Each Zodiacal sign has twelve virtues. You cannot advance except through study and application of what you learn. Study is not just reading a book, it means to ponder deeply after reading. You may read a paragraph 500 times without understanding it. If you ponder it every time, suddenly you will know what it means. This is real study, seeking the esoteric teachings and exploring the Wisdom Mysteries.
The Scottish Rite’s 33 degrees correspond to some degree our Via Christa. The Scottish Rite teaches the neophyte that the Lodge meeting always begins with “God dwells in this holy place” as the rightful background spirit working in all human interactions. One can enter a room of complete confusion and mentally shout, “God dwells in this holy place!” and observe what happens. Use this treatment for a headache: Stand with your hands over your head. All days in the office, all meetings and meals should begin with “God dwells in this holy place,” which sets a high keynote for the day.
The 4th to 14th degrees are “ineffable” because they deal with the ecstasy of knowing the Source and loving God. The 15th and 16th degrees are historical in character and teach the history of the descended creator gods, oracles and mysteries. These degrees contain the “why” of metaphysics. The Via Christa Degrees teach that work proceeds from symbolism to action. The 17th and 18th degrees are philosophical in character, consider the Source, and study Being as principle. The 19th through the 32nd degrees move you to action.
The second Triple Trinity of Degrees includes the keynotes of Gratitude, Sacrifice, and Conquering expressed within its three lesser trinities. All trinities deal with Kabbalistic work.
△ Sacrifice Conquering |
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△ Fidelity Devotion |
△ Consecration Action |
△ To Defend To Expand |
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△ Fidelity Devotion |
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The fourth trinity of Via Christa Degrees is comprised of Fidelity, Obedience and Devotion. Its keynote is Gratitude. Whether you will advance in ascension or remain stationary depends upon your obedience to law, and fidelity to truth. To attain the truth, and to serve God by serving your fellow man is the noblest destiny.
Fidelity is faithfulness and loyalty, being in strict conformity to the truth or fact of an original pattern. Our understanding of truth is always changing as civilization advances. Yet, we must seek our relationship to the original pattern of the Via Christa and leave ignorance and selfishness behind. Selfishness is the result of the sin of believing that you are separate from your Source. Science and religion both teach selfishness in the law that self-preservation is the first rule of life. The creed of materialism results from this “me first” attitude. When you walk the Via Christa, love cures you of self. You must return to the original light of your Oversoul star in all fidelity to God.
Obedience is to abide by law—to hear, hearken, heed, and obey. No one is too “good” to obey a law as he outgrows it. If you like order in your life, you obey the law of attention to detail in your clothing, home and office, yet you do not force this on others. Here you apply six laws of comprehension: “Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.”–Matthew 6:33. “Agree with thine adversary quickly, whiles thou art in the way with him.”–Matthew 5:25. “What is that to thee? Follow thou me.”–John 21:22. “Abstain from all appearance of evil.”– 1 Thessalonians 5:22. “I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me.”–John 12:32. “This is good and very good.”–Genesis 1.
Devotion is appreciation of the Infinite Eternal, the greatness and goodness of the One, and absolute reliance upon principle always. Most people just rely on providence. All souls have three capacities: Aspiration toward, devotion to and worship of a Source greater than self. Invocation of Power is why some people get results from worshiping snakes, etc. Their devotion embraces complete belief and trust. True devotion is to revere and venerate The One.
△ Bravery Action |
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The Fifth Trinity of Via Christa Degrees is Sacrifice and it includes the Degrees of Consecration, Courage, and Action.
Consecration is to set aside time, love or effort toward one purpose or some definite cause. We are multiple-thinking people. You can be consecrated to half a dozen purposes and they will all come to pass if you maintain a clear-cut vision of each.
The Via Christa teaches: Thou shalt cover (conceal) the transgressions of thy brother. Walk softly, speak gently, hold wise silence, and use golden speech.
Bravery is courage and daring. When you act despite fear, courage is a splendor. Light emanates from your heart and you are able to act into the face of harm or evil without flinching. Bravery is to stand, to dare, and to do.
Action is to get up and do. Sentimentality is not love, and it has no permanent, controlling, conquering principles. Sentimental types are often selfish and demanding. Degree work is not sentimental but practical; it isn’t restraint piled on top of custom or a cover-up for self. Selfish ones avoid action and sacrifice and call this restraint. Bees are a symbol of constructive action and industry, where everyone is busy working together for the common good.
We live in deeds, not years; in thoughts, not breaths;
In feelings, not in figures on a dial.
We should count time by heart-throbs. He most lives
Who thinks most—feels the noblest—acts the best.
–Philip James Bailey, “Festus”
△ To Improve To Expand |
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The Sixth Trinity of Via Christa Degrees is To Defend, To Improve and To Expand. The keynote is To Conquer.
To Defend is to ward off attack, to keep safe, protect or vindicate another. The Lord gave Joshua the law that you must possess every foot of ground whereon you stand (Joshua 1:3), then “having done all, you stand” (Ephesians 6:13), which is the only way you can spiritualize your individuality. You may not claim tolerance of evil or any wrong thing as a virtue.
To Improve: The Via Christa teaches that to defend your faith, you must triumph over temptation to run away or to let go. You must choose a side and choose every hour of each day where you shall stand. Every time you choose the virtues and obey law, you improve your subconscious. To plod along in the right course makes you invincible. Improvement is not a flash in the pan or brilliance in action but a steady, constant forward and upward conquering hour by hour. It includes rigid self-discipline and attention to the smallest detail. You never let the appetitive get away with anything. You make no demands and offer no self-justification.
To Expand is to spread out, to swell, to increase in bulk, to grow larger. Your right to stretch your arms and expand ends where the other fellow’s ribs begin. Expand also means to expound upon, but if you tell all you know, you end your development.
Our precepts include: “Be true to all men. Be frank and sincere. Be earnest in whatever it is your duty to do. No one must ever repent that he has relied on your resolve, profession or word.” The Via Christa says that once you assume an obligation, you may not run away, seek escape, or drop it. You can make any duty a joy if you increase your devotion and love to add life to the duty. Ponder “For God so loved the world.” When you understand this, you can put joy into your duty.
Virtue is the prize of the severely-contested race and hard-fought battle; and it is worth all the fatigue and wounds of the conflict. Man should go forth with courage, a brave and strong heart, to battle with calamity and to become its master. It is worth all the fatigue and wounds of conflict. The lot of sorrow is great and sublime.
The 33 Degrees of Soul Conquering
Edna Lister lecture transcript, Margaret Pratt Doan, Ruth Johnson, Irene White, Virginia Whitehead, scribes, November 3, 1959, Cleveland, OH
△ Action Immortality |
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The third Triple Trinity of Degrees includes the keynotes of Relationship, Action and Immortality. We can trace the names of these degrees used in the Blue Lodge only to 1700 AD, if that far.
△ Fact Legend |
△ Love Power |
△ Time Space |
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△ Facts Legend |
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The Seventh Trinity of Via Christa Degrees is Relationship and it contains the Degrees of Facts, Legend and Soul Vision.
Facts are of the world. For instance, it is a fact that adversity will evoke nobility of soul, a reaction opposite to what has happened. The most selfish family members will rise to be a sacrifice under the pressure of a great emergency. Something is always happening to help you sacrifice self. Life is what you make it. Each interprets life’s facts to suit himself, and people are either optimists or pessimists in their interpretation. Society adopts its norms from outer facts, but conformity to outer facts alone, without applying legend and vision, leads to death a slow death of wisdom. Factual conformity creates what the world calls the “practical” type. Earthly facts rightly interpreted can reveal God in a rainbow or a symphony. Yet prejudice can color and opinion can distort these same facts. Each considers the facts and makes for himself a god. Those who say “Nature is my god” are of the materialist faction. The atheist makes a god of his facts and names that god “Nothing.” He considers all his facts and comes up with the hole in the doughnut!
Legend includes the stories from ancient Lemuria, Atlantis and mythology. Those who need reassurance of God create legends to fill their emotional needs. A core of truth is in each legend and you must unwrap and unfold that truth. Legends gather the moss of bigotry, pride and fear from the personalities of the storytellers. Moss-covered people try to place their moss on others. Don’t live in the shade where it can grow! Get out and up into the Light to find the truth. Be a searcher who unfolds the truth found in all legends to add their hidden facts. Unwrap the moss-covered facts, unfold the facts that time has distorted.
Soul Vision makes itself at home in purity of heart, mind and purpose. You must “iron out all the wrinkles.” The soul visionary teaches forgiveness because he knows that each embodied soul plants the thorns in his own path, and each must pull them out to clear his particular jungle. Thorns hurt and you must pull them by hand the hard way. He who plants the most thorns curses God the hardest for his self-inflicted “punishment.” The power to commune with God is vision that reflects uncreated Light. Vision raises the soul vibration to think as God. Adding vision to facts and legend eliminates the chance for misinterpretation and creates balance as comprehension of God, the Maker of All. People misinterpret vision because they don’t know God. “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and unto God the things that are God’s” means to give this world’s facts their due but nothing more.
△ Love Power |
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The Eighth Trinity of Via Christa Degrees includes the degrees of Wisdom, Love and Power, and its keynote is Action.
Wisdom: The yellow, blue and red creative rays of Light represent the creative principles of Reproduction, Regeneration and Recreation that are always ascending from earth. When misused, these principles cause dissolution, destruction and disintegration, which are always descending or regressing toward earth. Each principle operates for good. This is creative Power in all its aspects. Wisdom must have a lower, negative pole of disintegration or it could have no active pole of ascension. For example, what would happen to earth if all corpses remained intact? “Wisdom usually states a law once briefly or hints darkly often” is an ancient dictum. How often do you catch yourself thinking, “I knew it was wrong” or “I knew better than to do that”? Wisdom exists in every heart, planted there in the beginning. Wisdom in action is immutable, universal, eternal religion, knowledge and comprehension of God.
Love: 1 Corinthians, the thirteenth chapter, teaches the religion of love. Love loosens the bonds of wickedness, undoes heavy burdens, frees the oppressed and breaks every yoke of bondage on all three levels: facts, legend and vision. Love is the act of offering up self-credits and self-interests because doing so is right and just. True love is incapable of intolerance. Look upon another’s success as if it were your own. Look upon your success as if it were another’s. Always making the other fellow comfortable is balance. Love brings soul vision, “seeing” and “hearing,” then you grow up to soul vision, plodding in stages.
The Hebrews were forbidden to speak the “lost name” of God; it was unpronounceable because of the Power it released. To forget means losing memory or consciousness of the knowledge of a subject. Communication of inner knowledge of symbol and word meanings constitutes the mysteries. Woe unto the one who lightly reveals mysteries! Wisdom’s Power turns and rends the revealer. Law withholds Power from the unqualified before they can destroy themselves.
Power: Every teacher is responsible for the Power her spoken word releases. If a teacher says “This is good,” she releases the Power of God’s name on earth. If a student says it is not good, he releases the force of darkness, which is the teacher’s responsibility and may harm her. Every symbol has a dual meaning, reflecting the power to create or to destroy. The same Power both creates and destroys. Jesus demonstrated this principle by withering a fig tree. He chose a barren tree to avoid destroying what was still useful. His disciple Thomas, the doubter, may have asked for a demonstration, even as we might today.
Power must disintegrate the form of substance so new forms may manifest. You can create the new good only after you destroy the old evil. The handful of life sparks in an old, disintegrating rug forms the soul of the new rug. One symbol contains the whole power of the law that particular principle represents. The spoken Word, “Let it come to pass,” invokes and activates all life energies connected with that principle. When you speak the Word for healing, you invoke the faith and power energies of those who “watch over” to heal the one in need.
△ Space Time |
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The Ninth Trinity of Via Christa Degrees. Space, Time, and Eternity are the Degrees of this lesser trinity. The keynote is Immortality through conquering space and time.
Space is not empty, but is filled with Emanations of Mind, Power, and Substance, whirling vibrations of Light and substance as life. God fills space with God. What is power over space? It is not just man’s mechanical conquering of space but the soul’s conquering of space through spiritual seeing and hearing, extended vision and soul flights. The rational soul is always ready to fly to the Oversoul star where you attach the silver cord. You travel while your physical body is sleep. With ascension, you burn away the silver cord, strand by strand, to reach the Sources. Your Guards catch and hold your silver cord at your star to keep your heart safe from harm while you ascend still higher.
God’s infinite skill has fashioned us. You are so exquisitely balanced that every drop of sin is misery, a poison physically, emotionally and mentally. Sin is missing the high mark of your soul’s vision. Your Guards store all the substance of your visions in your star, ready to release it into outer manifestation on your spoken word. God’s Voice carries throughout all space, through every life spark. When He speaks, every life spark in the universe responds. When God speaks to you, all your life sparks ascend. If you let this Voice possess you, your life sparks will respond to the vibration of His Voice.
Time. Everyone has the same amount of time, yet some seem to have more time than others. A typical conversation frequently includes these phrases: “I didn’t have time. I just didn’t get anything done.” In other conversations you may hear, “I had such a good day. Everything went so smoothly. I finished everything I’d planned and had time to spare.” Why do we see such an apparent inequality of time? The world measures all degrees of health, wealth and social life in time—it depends on how you use time. The River of Life is harmony. When you tune into its current, you face the Light and ascend. If you resist the River of Life, its current drags you under because you are not in harmony with life. How does this work?
You have three creative tools: emotional desires, thinking and imagination. You can use them tuned up to the Light or out into the world, horizontally. When you tune up, it is as Isaiah described: “I will go before thee and make the crooked places straight. I will break in pieces the gates of brass and cut in sunder the bars of iron and I will give thee the treasures of darkness and hidden riches of secret places.” You receive all this for using joy as your tuning fork to find time’s harmony. When you flow with the current, you lose all rigidity of action. You can tune in the music of the spheres, which is a joy vibration. The secret is to shut out worry. You can ascend while doing mundane tasks and do more in a short time than you dreamed possible. Say joyfully, “Now is the high time of salvation” and time does stand still.
Eternity radiates in every direction from now. It overlaps and holds the past, present and future in this handful of life right now. A handful of life is immortal and stretches to eternity. You stand in eternity this very minute, and you get from it what you put into it. The Beatitudes are your basis for how to live in eternity now—not in the future or the past but now. You cannot live a single day in eternity without acting, without putting mind to a trial of its truth, fidelity, forbearance, and faith. Eternity is a trial of the soul’s truth, fidelity, forbearance and faith. To forbear is to bear for, to bear love for another. If you don’t put your mind to this, you lose your place in the River of Life, called harmony. The law of harmony is as inflexible as the law of gravitation and it does not tolerate laziness, waste of words, idleness or cruelty.
Initiations for the 13th Degree. The following is an overall guide to eight Initiations of the 13th Degree, which symbolizes the Path of Christ. On the low pole, thirteen is the number of death, but on the high pole it symbolizes immortality.
“The guide for giving is freedom through giving. Praise to contact God. Enoch was one hundred sixty-five years old when he begat Methuselah. Life is endless. Laying the cornerstone represents opening the third eye. They took the ark and the sacred flame from Solomon’s temple in Jerusalem, and man lost God. You must build the new Temple of God. The first step in preparation is that you consider the site for the temple in the ‘high place’ of Gibeon.”
The Via Christa teaches these precepts: Sacrifice selfishness. Praise God without ceasing to tune in to the principle of harmony. The soul is immortal. You do not die, but ascend to heaven. God translated Enoch, which means Enoch did not die. God transformed and removed him to Heaven. You cannot see spiritually without Light, so you open the pineal body for illumination.
The ark represents the sacred “gestating place” of your creations. The sacred flame is the creative fire, but if you desecrate it, you have no place to gestate your creations. You are entering the Temple of New Jerusalem. God is dwelling in His Holy Temple. Surrender selfish expressions to be filled Light and used by Power. Finally, you consider entering the higher creative center of the pineal body and pituitary gland. Eight (8) represents the pineal body (4) and pituitary gland (4) wide awake; together they form a double four. This symbolizes eight, the Power number, for it conjoins earth with heaven, making a heaven on earth. The pine tree symbol of the higher creative center represents the number eight. You cannot not open the higher creative center until the pituitary gland opens as intuition and the pineal body opens as illumination. Say, “Father, I accept Thy Life Immortal! I accept Thy Love Eternal! I accept Thy joy of Spirit!”
The Symbolic Divinities of the 33 Via Christa Degrees
Edna Lister transcript, Ruth Johnson, Irene White, and Ross Whitehead, scribes, November 24, 1959, Cleveland, OH
Every civilization, from the beginning of time, has had its own creator gods sent by the Seven Lords of Creation. The gods projected, or precipitated, bodies to descend to each civilization and teach the law by word of mouth. This happened after Lemuria and Atlantis fell. Some initiates from the ancient temple schools in Egypt were withdrawn from the populace at the beginning of each new upward surge, always heralded by a “new” supreme god or goddess. Whenever records were apparently destroyed, some group always rescued the records, then gathered in the high places on mountaintops and kept the records hidden. The population believed that all records had been destroyed, and they were, for them.
To the ancients, who possessed no astronomical instruments and looked at the heavens with the eyes of children, the earth was level, a plain of unknown extent. They speculated, but had no direct knowledge. Their observations taught them that every 24 hours the sun rose, sometimes near and sometimes far, and traveled across the sky. When it set it took the light and brought darkness.
Another celestial body was visible at night—the moon, which was sometimes a thin crescent that grew into a full orb. The moon had the same limits as the sun—it appeared and disappeared. Man is enveloped in thick darkness when light disappears. He is left alone with himself; his existence is blank, a nothing. Only the return of Light can restore his equilibrium, his life. Light, then, became man’s first divinity. Poets, who imagined a chaos that gave birth to a cosmos, sang of Light.
God is Light. Light has been the first dogma of Orpheus, Moses, and theologians throughout the ages. Pythagoras defined God as “A Living and Absolute Verity clothed with Light.” Light was Ormuzd, adored by the Persians. Darkness was Ahriman, the origin of all evils. Light was the life of the universe, the friend of man, the substance of the gods, and of the soul. The sky they believed was a great, solid concave arch along which traveled the sun, moon, planets, and stars. The sun was a great fiery globe of unknown dimensions. The moon was a mass of softer light, dark enough to hide and light enough to see. It was credited with all supernatural powers.
The ancients finally observed that at times the days and nights were equal in length, and that this brought the return of spring and the time of harvest. The Egyptians learned to measure the intervals of time between the Nile inundations. They observed the lunar cycle from its reappearance as the new moon through the crescent and to the full orb. Finally they discerned the relation of the stars to the sun and planets. They named star groups after objects that seemed connected with them. Lambs are born in spring; therefore the spring stars are associated with mating and vigor returned. They named only eight constellations at that time—those known today as Aquarius, Cancer, Libra, Leo, Aries, Taurus, and Scorpio.
Aquarius. Thus the Ethiopians of Thebes (the Sabeans) styled those winter stars under which the Nile commenced to overflow the “stars of the inundation,” or “water poured out.” This became the constellation Aquarius, the Waterbearer who pours out the waters of the River of Life.
Cancer. Those stars among which the sun moved when he reached the northern Tropic of Capricorn and began to “retreat” southward to the summer region were called the “stars of the crab.” This became known as the sign Cancer.
Libra. They observed that as the sun approached autumn, the mid-point between southern and northern extremes, the days and nights became equal in length. Therefore, they called these the “stars of the balance.” This constellation became Libra, the Scales of Balance.
Leo. In the heat of summer water dried up throughout the land. Lions were driven in by thirst from the desert to drink at the Nile. The summer stars were thus called the “stars of the lion.” This became the constellation, Leo the Lion.
Virgo. Those stars prominent at the time of harvest were called the “stars of the gleaning virgin,” who held a sheaf of wheat. This became the constellation of Virgo the Virgin.
Aries. The stars of spring, when the ewes brought forth their young, were called the “stars of the lamb.” These became the constellation of Aries the Ram.
The Rose, the Cross and the Crown
Edna Lister transcript, Ruth Johnson, Irene White, scribes December 1, 1959, Cleveland, OH
The cross of the Master and the cross of St. Andrew are both X-shaped. In the ancient Mithraic mysteries, this cross represents humility, patience and self-denial. The Order of St. Andrew practiced these virtues. The Master’s X-shaped cross is symbolic of crossing out self. This represents two pathways of approach to God: Principle, which is intellectual, and personality, which is devotional. This is represented in the Zodiac by an X connecting Gemini to Sagittarius and Taurus to Scorpio for devotion and love. The cross from Cancer to Capricorn and Leo to Aquarius symbolizes principle. X was the sign of the creative wisdom or the Logos of The One, the Son of God. Plato said, “He expressed him upon the universe in the figure of the letter X.”
The Rose Cross is an ancient high degree. A cross with three roses on the upper arms and a fourth at the joining of the crosspiece represents fourfold spirit; the Master’s cross on the inner, the cross of sacrifice, crucifixion and unfolding of soul. The cross of outer service has roses carved on the four outstretched arms with nothing at the crosspiece.
The color rose represents determination. The rose, for initiates, became the living symbol of the revelation and opening of the harmonies of being. Yellow represents the discrimination of wisdom. Red represents duty and energy. Pink indicates sacrifice. White symbolizes purity and the Shekinah Glory, the radiance of the Presence. The Knights Templar used the Rose Cross, the Master’s cross with a rose in the center, as their symbol, signifying responsibility and unfoldment. After the candidate completes the initiatory work of the four elements (earth, air, fire, and water), the 4 + 4 + 4 + 4 petals are superimposed in the center of the cross. The four petals are named Beauty and Pleasure on the upright rod of power, and Life and Love on the meridian crossbar.
The rose as a symbol: The mystical meaning of the rose as a symbol can be found in the Kabbalistic commentaries on the Canticles. The Rose of Sharon originally symbolized Israel, and later was used to symbolize Christ. The conquest of the rose was a problem propounded to science by initiation. While religion was trying to establish the triumph of the cross of crucifixion, occult philosophy sought to unite the Order of the Rose and Cross in all phenomena of being. A magnificent pantacle
The Cross and the Crown: The Hermeticists used the cross and crown with no mention of the rose. They figured it out through alchemy and dealt with Kabbalistic figures. They had as a symbol the cross of service with a 12-petaled rose. At the crown of this cross is the eagle-azoth-air-charcoal. On the right arm of the cross is the Mother principle and water-man-mercury. On the left arm of the cross is the Father principle and the lion-sulphur-fire. At the bottom of the cross is the bull-earth-salt.
Azoth
2 Azoth is mercury, regarded by alchemists as the first principle of metals, was the universal remedy of Paracelsus.
The X represents four philosophical ideas: Spirit in movement at the top and matter in repose at the bottom (this could be a Hindu sitting under a banyan tree). Alchemy studies chemical analysis, a study of the elements, reducing the four elements to three—the absolute, the fixed, and the volatile. The absolute is abstract principle; the fixed is immutable principle; the volatile is principle modified to suit varying intelligence. The absolute is pure reason; the fixed is necessity of obedience; the volatile is liberty to accept or to discard. They declared the above definitions to be synonymous for one another.
Hermetic definitions: The masters of Hermetic philosophy taught slightly different definitions: sulfur represents the ether principle; mercury represents the water principle; salt represents the Blood of the Dragon. Your body is at the outermost point of crystallization: heavy and dense enough to see. Salt represents that expression of crystallized substance. The Father equates with blood or salt, the red ray of Power, the blood of the Lamb; the Son equates with azoth or mercurial water; the Holy Spirit with the Breath or ether.
In reducing Being to symbol triads, the Hermeticists found that salt represented the body, sulfur the soul, and mercury the spirit. Sulfur is yellow, symbolic of the Wisdom ray, but it can be smelly when symbolic of misused soul substance.
The crux ansata is the Tau cross crowned with a loop, the ankh symbolizing eternal life. In one inner initiation you are given a crux ansata, which heals anything it touches, to wear on your wrist. The Tau cross represents the Holy Spirit and Shekinah Glory. It is surmounted by the circle of immortality, called eternal life in the Egyptian mysteries.
It was called the Cross of Chivalry because the person who was immobilized on the cross represented the principle of crucifixion; it represented a rod of power in the Grand Man of the Zodiac. The same mysteries were held in the Tau cross topped with a coiled serpent instead of a circle. Some symbols stood the serpent upright, representing exalted wisdom.
Another example of the Tau cross is the caduceus used by Hermes (Mercury), Hercules and Athena. Sometimes the cross was surmounted with an upraised half-circle (like Neptune or the Horns of Isis). The caduceus, which was a winged wand in the beginning, was personified by Virgo.
Originally, the cross represented the four elements proceeding from a common center, a symbol of Supreme Deity. It also appeared with serpents crossed in the middle, formed like horns (Scorpio and Taurus).
The triple Tau cross. The triple Tau cross represents the Sacred Name and Triad of Powers: Creating, Preserving, and Destroying. It also represents the Three Pillars of the Tree of Life: Wisdom, Strength and Harmony. In Egypt, the mark of the Tau cross was set on the foreheads of prisoners who were found innocent. In Egyptian myth and mysteries, it is depicted on the scepter of Osiris. Those who passed through the Mithraic mysteries also received the sign of the Tau cross on their foreheads.
Planetary symbols. The symbol of Saturn is a cross surmounting a crescent. The symbol for Jupiter is a cross upholding a crescent. The symbol for Mars includes the cross set obliquely to the upper left of a circle. The symbol for Venus is a cross supporting a circle. The symbol for Mercury is the cross supporting a circle, crowned with a crescent. The nature of the souls of the planets are revealed in these symbols.
Blood as a symbol. The blood sacrifices in the Old Testament were based on the belief that the bloodstream holds the key to evil, darkness, and sin. Sacrificial bloodletting came from the superstitious idea that they were purging evil. In reality blood platelets hold the memory records of the soul’s past misuse of substance and disobedienmce to law. The blood of Jesus was pure and flowed into the earth, sank in and penetrated to the core of the planet with tremendous power. The life sparks released then have served ever since as the active, regenerating power to lift the life sparks of animals and man. This is why so few could remain on Golgotha: only those who loved the Master enough. The power filled earth with a regenerating quality. This was veiled and the centurions were protected.
The disciples and Mary were bathed in the Blood of the Lamb and this was the reason the three Marys saw Jesus first was that his blood opened them to illumination. Generation comes with the letting of blood and regeneration comes with the transmutation of blood, the life sparks in the bloodstream being cleansed of past memory records.
The Cup of the Last Supper, the Holy Grail, symbolized the awakening in the head of the etheric organs, the parathalamus bodies. They were awakened the moment the cup was ascended to the Supreme Temple of the Sun and placed on the Ark of the Covenant between the Cherubim.
For the levitation, the heat of the bloodstream must be raised from red to the white Light of the Christ. The ascension of the cells of the body actually changes the bloodstream from red to white metaphysically. Under ascension, the red blood is changed to the golden transparency of the sun. From the time you begin your ascension to the time you reach the point of being transfigured is an arduous way. On one side of the cross you have earth and fire, on the other side you have the Holy Spirit as water and air. Some indigenous tribes become blood brothers with a ritual exchanging of blood, which represents a sworn unity of heart, mind, and purpose. To mingle blood creates an insoluble tie though time.
As the bloodstream is ascended it is rechemicalized. Eventually, a rare element from sunlight replaces 75 percent of the oxygen in the bloodstream until it becomes golden-white and etheric. Leukemia and blood diseases may occur among those who have used force in religious matters. If they purify themselves they can be cured. The teaching of conquering self and soul ascension is the true cure, part of the transmuting into the fourth dimension.
A right-leaning cross surmounted with a crown over the right crossbar is a symbol of greater surrender of self. When the crown is exalted over an upright cross, it means the first 33 Degrees are passed. This is the classic “old rugged cross.” If the crown is hanging on the left arm of the crossbar, it means intuition is being awakened and unfolded. If the crown is over the upright arm, the will has been crucified and the initiate has ascended.
The cross reveals nine phases in the growth of the soul and the four great initiations of Jesus. From the base of the cross ascending: 1. Jesus’ Birth in the Manger. 2. Jesus Teaches as a Child in the Temple. 3. Jesus is Baptised by John. 4. Jesus is Tempted in the Wilderness. 5. Jesus Preaches the Sermon on Mount. 6. Peter’s Plea of “Save Me!” as he Attempts to Walk on Water. 7. Jesus is Crucified. 8. Jesus Greets Mary at the Tomb. 9. Jesus Ascendes into Heaven.
“I will give thee a crown of life”–Revelation 2:10. “Behold, I come quickly: hold that fast which thou hast, that no man take thy crown.”–Revelation 3:11. This means let nothing of the outer bring you down from the soul star and the three windows of the soul. The center of the rose is its sun center. The heart of every man is in the heart of the rose, the heart center.
The Truth of Being
Edna Lister transcript, Ruth Johnson, Irene White, Virginia Whitehead, scribes, December 8, 1959, Cleveland, OH
The first and greatest truth is that Light is the Source of All. Three Trinities of the Truth of Being operate within 33 Via Christa Degrees as the principles of Omniscience, Omnipresence, and Omnipotence. The omni- prefix means “in all ways, in all places, of all things, both in the Source and throughout its creations.” We use these truths of being to move all potential powers, attributes and qualities into kinetic action.
First Truth of Being Absolute Being is God the One. Relative being is God as the Many. Thus, being is both that which is and that which appears. God as principle expresses as the foundation principles of being. This is the Trinity of the Godhead described philosophically, which contains no personality and is inoffensive to intellect. These principles form the triune River of Life of God as the emanations ceaselessly flow from the Source through all creation and return to the Source. These foundation principles of being form the basis for the metaphysical statement, “God is everywhere evenly present and available as all Mind, all Substance, and all Power.” The figure of Mercury in this Trinity, a symbol of Hermes the Thrice Great, represents ascension and completely lifting or sublimating the emotional life of desires so that it no longer interferes with the embodied soul’s application of the mental faculties available through the Oversoul’s access to the “mind that was in Christ Jesus.”
The first great truth is that Omnipotence is the Power principle, all-powerful in all ways of all creation, in all places of all creation, through all things unconscious and as all conscious things. Power is the Son of Selfless Joy Personality aspect of God. Omnipotence describes potential Power. This truth is your basis for knowing that you can contact all potential Power and by decreeing and declaring cause it to become the kinetic energy of your life. Potential Power applied to a body or mass causes it to act. Kinetic energy is Power exercised and in motion, all God’s potential powers awaiting His use. God grants the soul the power of conscious direction and control of all Mind, Substance, and Power. Soul must apply Mind to act on Power and Substance; Power of itself can do nothing, and Substance can become only what Mind decides.
The second great truth is that Omnipresence is the Principle of Substance ever-present in all ways of all creation, in all places of all creation, through all things unconscious and as all conscious things. Substance is the Mother of Love personality aspect of God and Wisdom, Love and Joy combined as One. Omnipresence describes the flowing River of Life. Joy is the Holy Spirit presence of God as substance ready and available to become form and action in all places. You must think, plan and act on emotional desires to be put them into expression.
The third great truth is that Omniscience is the principle of all-knowing Mind in all ways of all creation, through all places of all creation, as all creation, conscious or unconscious. Mind is the Father of Wisdom personality aspect of God. Omniscience involves the science of knowing. One can have all knowledge, all knowing in all ways, of all things and in all places. One can have much knowledge and it may remain potential only. You need burning, flaming desire, will, and vivid imagination to draw knowing as intuition and illumination from the River of Life.
The second Truth of Being Trinity includes Awareness, Acceptance and Surrender. This Trinity is the symbol of the conquering embodied soul who has crossed out self. The nine rays on the rising sun symbolize crossing out self by applying the first three great Truths of Being.
Awareness: The fourth great truth of being is knowing that you must become aware. You must know how to apply what you know before you can use it constructively. To be alive, alert and alight is to be aware, and you must hold your point of Light to maintain your awareness.
The fifth great truth is knowledge of your ability to accept whatever come. Acceptance knows that this place I occupy now is my proper place as I prepare for my next step higher. This is mine to lift now. Whatever comes to me is something God has sent for me to lift. No one else is aware of it when it arrives. My awareness is a sign that I am the one who must lift. One accepts in love for God. One accepts in love as God and always adds, “This is now good (God)!” Thus, you see God in everything.
The sixth great truth is Surrender, which is giving up all self-will; Abraham expressed surrender as he gave up his son Isaac. One surrenders to the love of God, then God’s Power and love possess one. I surrender because I am in love with God right now. I know that God is the only good for me. You surrender to the point where you become as Creator gods in devotion and praise.
Justice, Compassion and Conquering form the third Great Trinity of the Truth of Being. They are three basic truths governing your attitude toward your fellow man and the world of appearances. The square within a triangle symbolizes the soul’s need for a foursquare foundation, to be square with the world, knowing and squaring the inner and outer.
The seventh great truth is Justice, being square in your thinking, knowing that everything is good according to its degree and kind. Knowing that each person is in a different grade is most important in your relationships. You relate to your neighbor according to his degree and kind. Each is good where he is now, so you must lift any contrary thought to a cloud the instant it arises, saying, "I am loves you." Use no force with anyone. Gentle lifting without judgment can free all men.
The eighth great truth of being is that Compassion, which is all Love and Wisdom, expresses as Balance, Harmony and Equilibrium. You must have compassion for individuals, groups and nations to know their degree and kind and how best to relate to them. This is being square in your love of others. Compassion is not emotional sentimentality or sympathy that weakens another’s strength but a quiet, nurturing love that encourages growth. Compassion lives in the light of love. Emotional sentimentality and sympathy live in the darkness of self. When you use a gentle tone of voice in your declarations, you integrate compassion with, "Thou shalt also decree a thing and it shall be established unto thee." You add all Laws to this.
The ninth great truth of being is Conquering by applying and expressing Justice and Compassion. To conquer is to overcome all darkness of self, to know, to be and to do the truth. This integrates “let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your Father who is in Heaven” with “by their fruits ye shall know them.”
Hearing the Voice of the Supreme
According to Eastern teaching, you take seven steps to hear the Voice of the Supreme. Symbolism is the language of the soul. Symbolically, these seven steps are:
Hearing the dull rumble of thunder, which is the mill of God grinding exceeding slow but exceeding fine, the little self grinding against the River of Life.
Hearing a trumpet blast, which is a chastening to pay your spiritual debts.
Hearing two bamboo flutes, one shrill, the other sweet, which is the call of earth tempting the self and of the joy vibration enticing the soul.
Hearing a chant from heavenly choirs and the music of heavenly spheres, which is the first call to arise and ascend.
Hearing the sweet echo of the ocean in a seashell, which is remembering and stringing the pearls of experience.
Hearing the sound of a silver cymbal that might awaken the distant stars, which is the call of a loved one.
Hearing a voice like the nightingale’s song of parting from its mate, which causes the soul to remember having and losing.
In the first step, you slay and lay self at the Master’s feet, or it swallows all sound and you hear the Voice of God no more. At the seventh step, the student lives at one with God.
God’s Covenants With Man
Edna Lister transcript, Irene White, scribe, December 15, 1959, Cleveland, OH
God made several great Covenants with man, with Noah in Genesis 8, 9, with Abraham in Genesis 17, and by His prophets Isaiah and Jeremiah.
The first Covenant God made with Noah was when “The Lord said in his heart, I will not again curse the ground any more for man’s sake; for the imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth; neither will I again smite any more every thing living, as I have done. While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease.”–Genesis 8:21-22.
“And I, behold, I establish my covenant with you, and with your seed after you; and with every living creature that is with you, of the fowl, of the cattle, and of every beast of the earth with you; from all that go out of the ark, to every beast of the earth. And I will establish my covenant with you, neither shall all flesh be cut off any more by the waters of a flood; neither shall there any more be a flood to destroy the earth. And God said, This is the token of the covenant which I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for perpetual generations: I do set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a token of a covenant between me and the earth. And it shall come to pass, when I bring a cloud over the earth, that the bow shall be seen in the cloud: And I will remember my covenant, which is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh; and the waters shall no more become a flood to destroy all flesh. And the bow shall be in the cloud; and I will look upon it, that I may remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is upon the earth. And God said unto Noah, This is the token of the covenant, which I have established between me and all flesh that is upon the earth.”–Genesis 9:9-17.
“When Abram was ninety years old and nine, the Lord appeared to Abram, and said unto him, I am the Almighty God; walk before me, and be thou perfect. And I will make my covenant between me and thee, and will multiply thee exceedingly. And Abram fell on his face: and God talked with him, saying, as for me, behold, my covenant is with thee, and thou shalt be a father of many nations. Neither shall thy name any more be called Abram, but thy name shall be Abraham; for a father of many nations have I made thee. And I will make thee exceeding fruitful, and I will make nations of thee, and kings shall come out of thee. And I will establish my covenant between me and thee and thy seed after thee in their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be a God unto thee, and to thy seed after thee. And I will give unto thee, and to thy seed after thee, the land wherein thou art a stranger, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession.”–Genesis 17:1-8.
The third Covenant is that which God made with all men by His prophets when He said: “I will gather all nations and tongues; and they shall come, and see my glory.”–Isaiah 66:18.
“Behold, I create new heavens and a new earth: and the former shall not be remembered, nor come into mind.”–Isaiah 65:17.
“The sun shall be no more thy light by day; neither for brightness shall the moon give light unto thee: but the Lord shall be unto thee an everlasting light, and thy God thy glory. Thy sun shall no more go down; neither shall thy moon withdraw itself: for the Lord shall be thine everlasting light.”–Isaiah 60:19-20.
His Spirit and His Word shall remain with man forever: “The heavens shall vanish away like smoke, and the earth shall wax old like a garment, and they that dwell therein shall die in like manner: but my salvation shall be forever, and my righteousness shall not be abolished.”–Isaiah 51:6.
“It is a light thing that thou shouldest be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob, and to restore the preserved of Israel: I will also give thee for a light to the Gentiles, that thou mayest be my salvation unto the end of the earth.”–Isaiah 49:6.
“Therefore the redeemed of the Lord shall return, and come with singing unto Zion; and everlasting joy shall be upon their head: they shall obtain gladness and joy; and sorrow and mourning shall flee away.”–Isaiah 55:11.
“This shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; After those days, saith the Lord, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people. And they shall teach no more every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord: for they shall all know me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them.”–Jeremiah 31:33-34.
“I will give them one heart, and one way, that they may fear me for ever, for the good of them, and of their children after them: And I will make an everlasting covenant with them, that I will not turn away from them, to do them good; but I will put my fear in their hearts, that they shall not depart from me.”–Jeremiah 32:39-40.
Nine Great Truths in 33 Degrees
The 1st Great Truth: “No man hath seen God at any time. He is One, Eternal…Who thought, and with the Thought created the Universe and all living things, and the souls of men: That is: the Permanent, while everything beside is a perpetual genesis.”
The 2nd Great Truth: “The Soul of Man is Immortal…a living spirit, a spark of the Great Central Light, that hath entered into and dwells in the body…nor can be annihilated; but still exists and possesses activity and intelligence, even as it existed in God, before it was enveloped in the body.”
The 3rd Great Truth: Conscience: “The impulse which directs to right conduct…for the principle that impels you to right conduct, and warns you against guilt, springs out of the nature of things.…It is coeval with the Divine Intelligence itself.”
The 4th Great Truth: “The moral truths are as absolute as the metaphysical truths. Even the Deity cannot make it that there should be effects without a cause, or phenomena without substance.…The moral laws are the necessary relations that flow from the nature of things, and they are not created by, but have existed eternally in God.”
The 5th Great Truth: “There is an essential distinction between Good and Evil, what is just and what is unjust; and to this distinction is attached, for every intelligent and free creature, the absolute obligation of conforming to what is good and just.” When you declare a thing good, you unite it with the First Cause.
The first five truths apply to the soul. The remaining truths apply to man’s relationship to his fellow man. I am my brother’s keeper.
The 6th Great Truth: “The necessity of practicing the moral truths, is obligation. The moral truths, necessary in the eye of reason, are obligatory on the will. The moral obligation, like the moral truth that is its foundation, is absolute. As the necessary truths are not more or less necessary, so the obligation is not more or less obligatory. There are degrees of importance among different obligations; but none in the obligation itself. You are not nearly obliged, almost obliged. You are wholly so, or not at all.…If the obligation is absolute, it is immutable and universal.”
The 7th Great Truth: “The immutable law of God requires, that besides respecting the absolute rights of others, and being merely just, we should do good, be charitable, and obey the dictates of the generous and noble sentiments of the soul.…Charity knows neither rule nor limit. It goes beyond all obligation. Its beauty consists in its liberty.”
The 8th Great Truth: “The laws which control and regulate the Universe of God are those of motion and harmony.…Evil is merely temporal, and all is in reality good and perfect.” Evil is being out of harmony.
9th Great Truth: “The Justice, the Wisdom, and the Mercy of God are alike infinite, alike perfect, and yet do not in the least jar nor conflict one with the other; but form a great perfect trinity of attributes, three and yet one.”
Three Rules for Right Conduct
(1) To be modest and unaffected with your superiors is duty; (2) with your equals, courtesy; (3) with your inferiors, nobleness. With equals, graciousness is courtesy. With inferiors, graciousness, courtesy, and selflessness combined are nobleness. These rules are included in the first six Beatitudes.
Strength is composed of morality and intelligence, patience and perseverance, faithfulness and courage, method and insight, ingenuity and energy. The end of all mysteries: “Then we shall see what now we can only believe. The cloud will be lifted up, the gate of mystery be passed, and the full light shine forever.…Then that which caused us trial shall yield you triumph; and that which made your heart ache shall fill us with gladness; and we shall then feel that there, as here, the only true happiness is to learn, to advance, and to improve; which could not happen unless we had commenced with error, ignorance, and imperfection. We must pass through the darkness, to reach the light.”
God formed the soul of man for a purpose: “that we must be upright and virtuous; that if tempted we must resist; that we must govern our unruly passions, and hold in hand our sensual appetites. And this is not the dictate of an arbitrary will, nor of some stern and impracticable law; but it is part of the great firm law of harmony that binds the Universe together: not the mere enactment of arbitrary will; but the dictate of Infinite Wisdom.”
The soul needs mystery, and God is often hidden behind the veil of the mysteries. As Philo said, “When the soul is deprived of the light of God, which leads it to the knowledge of things, it no longer enjoys more than a feeble and secondary light, which gives it, not the understanding of things, but that of words only, as in this baser world.” The Mysteries of the ancient world were a series of symbols. The object of all the mysteries was to inspire men with piety, and to console them in the miseries of life.
Seven Avatars
Osiris brought the truth of the immortality of the soul, the origin of the soul, its condition here below, its destination, and its future. Zoroaster brought the truth that all is Light; the first emanation was the primitive Light.
Aphrodite, the goddess of love and physical beauty, wore a helmet over her golden bowl, her head. She brought the truth of the Motherhood of God, and originally represented the need for respect for women and motherhood. Later, this degenerated into hedonism and physical pleasure.
Buddha left his family’s wealth behind in favor of the begging bowl and taught selflessness through the sacrifice of material possessions. He brought the truth of transfiguration.
Jesus taught all that any previous avatars had taught, and the greatest doctrine of them all, past and future. He arose in ascension from poverty to beyond all the wealth men offered him. Jesus brought the truth of the sacrifice of self and the ascension of soul.
Mohammad announced his creed, “There is but one God, and Mohammad is His Apostle,” to the Arabian idolaters, imitating Moses and Jesus Christ. Finally, with an army, he forcibly converted men and preached the doctrines found in the Koran.
The seventh avatar will be the woman clothed in the sun who will bring the truth that although we live in the world, we create our own heaven on earth right here and now.
.
Edna Miriam Lister
1884 – 1971
The original Christian Pioneering Mystic,
Platonist philosopher, American Idealist, Founder, Society of the Universal Living Christ, minister, teacher, author, wife, and mother.
See the Treatment for lifting life sparks.
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