Part 2

The Cross is the Way on which there is no travelling, for it perpetually enters into itself; it is the true Meth-od, not so much in the sense of the Way-between or the Medium or Mediator, as in the sense of the Means of Gnosis.

It is also called Seed because it is the mystery of the power of growth and development; it is self-initiative.

And if the Cross be Son and Father in separation and union, or as simultaneously Cause and Result, it is likewise Spirit or Atman, and therefore Life.

It is also Truth or the Perpetual Paradox, distinguishing and uniting in itself all pros and cons, and all analysis and synthesis in simultaneous operation.

Therefore also is it called Faith, because it is the that which is stable and unchanging amid perpetual change. Faith in its true mystic meaning seems to denote the power of withdrawing the personal consciousness from between the pairs of opposites, where these appear external and other than oneself, and embracing the opposites within the greater consciousness, when they are within oneself and appear as natural processes in the great economy.

Faith is of the contemplative mind; it embraces, it includes. It is therefore of the Great Mother, as the life and substance of the Cross; so also is it of Grace, elsewhere called Wisdom.

Finally, the Cross regarded from this point of view is called Bread, the substance of Life.

In a remarkable paper in _The Theosophical Review_, Nov., 1907, E. R. Innes speaks of a vision of a great drama of those Powers beyond the mind-spheres, which in the Indian scriptures are called Food and Eater--that is to say, the mystical union between the Not-self and the Self.

In the _Chhandogyopanishad_, for instance, we read of one who had passed into the heaven-world possessing a knowledge of the identity of the Self and Not-self. The transformations of his vehicles that thus occur in the inner states or worlds become as it were processes of natural digestion in his Great Body, for we read:

"Having what food he wills, what form he wills, this song he singing sits:

"'O wonder, wonder, wonder! Food I; food I; food I! Food-eater I; food-eater I; food-eater I!'"

(See my _World-Mystery_, 2nd ed., p. 179.)

Our author in similar fashion writes of a soul watching the processes of its own substance in the heaven-world.

"She watched the interaction of those two great currents of the One Great Life-Force--the Life-Force as Supporter, the Life-Force as Sustainer. She watched the great transfiguration of the crossing over of the surface-forms as life met life in perfect mystic union. As the currents crossed the forms changed, but without loss of life or consciousness. The Powers crossed and recrossed; and with each appearance of that sacred symbol there was further expansion and intensification of the Life-Force. At each piercing or insinuation of the one into the other, that which had been two became one, yet there still remained the two. She watched the great mystery of that Cross on which the Heavenly Man dies in order to live again.

"In heaven you do not demolish forms in order to sustain life, you daily insinuate yourself into all the forms you meet, and thus by supplying them with food, the food of your own greater life, you become each separate object, and gain in power and expansiveness. Thus in heaven by sacrifice do you grow and live, and slowly become the world. Thus in heaven do you give life to others in order to live yourself; thus do the many rebecome the One. The Great Mystery of the Bread of Life which must be partaken of by all before the Day of Triumph was acted out before her eyes."

And it might be added that as heaven is a state and not a place, the mystery can be consummated on earth, and that this is the true sacrifice of the Christ and the Way to become a Christ.

9. Ideas of this or a similar order may be held not rashly to underlie the words of our text. The Cross of Life may well be called the Harmony--or articulation, or joining-together--of Wisdom, for it is by means of Wisdom that all the contraries are joined together, and this Articulation constitutes the "firm necessity" of Fate, which was also called in the Gnostic schools the Harmony. And if it is a Cross of Life, it is also a Cross of Light, for Life and Light are the eternally united twin-natures, female and male, of the Logos, the Good. Life is Passion and Light is Understanding. The Logos divides Himself to experience and know Himself.

10. All opposites unite in Wisdom as a ground; she is the pure substance in which all the powers play. It is only when the Cross is regarded as a separator, that it may be said to have a right and a left, with good forces on the one hand and evil on the other. The forces are in reality in themselves the same forces; it is the personality of the man (represented by the upright of the Cross), which refers all things to its incomplete self, that regards them as good and evil.

This personality is rooted in the Lower Root or lower nature, and stretches upward towards the Above.

But in reality there are roots above and branches below, or roots below and branches above, of the trunk of this Tree of Life and Light. Though the nomenclature is somewhat different, I cannot refrain from quoting a striking passage from a Gnostic scripture to give the reader some idea of the lofty region of thought to which the Gnosis accustomed its disciples.

It is taken from _The Great Announcement_, a document ascribed by Hippolytus to the very beginning of the Christianized Gnosis. Strong efforts have been made to question this ascription, and to prove the document to be of a later date, but I think I have established a high probability that it may be even a pre-Christian writing (see _H._, i. 184).

The text is to be found in Hippolytus' _Refutation of all Heresies_ (vi., 18):

"To you, therefore, I say what I say and write what I write. And the writing is this:

"Of the universal Æons (Eternities) there are two Branchings, without beginning or end, from one Root, which is the Power unseeable, incomprehensible Silence.

"Of these Branchings one is manifested from Above--the Great Power, Mind of the universals, ordering all things, male; and the other from Below--Great Thought, female, generating all things.

"Thence partnering one another they pair (lit. have union--_syzygía_), and bring into manifestation the Middle Distance, incomprehensible Air without beginning or end.

"In this is that Father, who supports and nourishes the things which have beginning and end.

"This is He who has stood, stands and shall stand--a male-female Power in accordance with the transcendent Boundless Power, which hath neither beginning nor end, subsisting in onlyness.

"It was by emanating from this Power (_sci._, Incomprehensible Silence) that Thought-in-onlyness became two.

"Yet was He, (the Supernal Father) one; for having her (_sci._ Thought) in Himself He was alone [that is, all-one, or only, that is one-ly]. He was not, however, [in this state] 'first,' although transcendent; it was only in manifesting Himself from Himself that He became 'second' [that is to say, as He who stands]. Nay, He was not even called 'Father' till Thought named Him 'Father.'

"As, therefore, Himself pro-ducing Himself by means of Himself, He manifested to Himself His own Thought; so also His Thought on manifesting did not make [Him], but beholding Him, she concealed the Father, that is the Power, in Herself, and is [thus] male-female, Power and Thought.

"Thence is it that they partner one another (for Power in no way differs from Thought) and yet are one. From the things Above is discovered Power, and from those Below Thought.

"So is it, too, with that which is manifested from them; namely, that though it (_sci._ the Middle Distance, Incomprehensible Air) is one, it is found to be two, male-female, having the female in itself.

"Thus is Mind in Thought--inseparable from one another, which though one are yet found to be two."

I believe that our Vision of the Cross sets forth in living symbol precisely what is explained above in more "abstract" terms. It would, however, be a mistake to make abstractions of these sublime ideas; they must be realized as fullnesses, as transcendent realities. The Air, the Batos, the Middle Distance, is the manifestation, or thinking-manifest, of the Divine to Itself, the true meaning of _ma-ya_. (See the Trismegistic Sermon, "Though Unmanifest God is most Manifest," and the commentary, _H._, ii., 99-109).

11. I have translated the term [Greek: diapexamenos] by "cross-beaming," for [Greek: diapegion] is a "cross-beam"; and I would refer the reader to the famous myth of Plato known as "The Vision of Er," where the same idea is set forth when we read:

"There they saw the extremities of the Boundaries of the Heaven, extended in the midst of the Light; for this Light was the final Boundary of Heaven--_somewhat like the undergirdings of ships_--and thus confined its whole revolution." (See _H._, i., 440.)

This "cross-beaming" or operation of the Cross is the mode of the energizing of the Logos. It is the simultaneous separating and joining of the generable and the ingenerable, the two modes of the Self-generable; it is the link between personal and impersonal, bound and free, finite and infinite. It is the instrument of creation, male-female in one.

12. There is little surprise, therefore, in learning that this mystery is not the "cross of wood" which the disciple will see and has seen in the pictures framed by his lower mind, when reading the historicized narrative of the mystery-drama or hearing the great story. Nor is it to be imagined that the Lord could be hung upon such a cross of wood, seeing that He is crucified in all men--He whom even the disciple in contemplation cannot see as He is, but can only hear the Wisdom of His Voice.

13. "I was held to be what I am not." As to what the many say concerning the mystery, they speak as the many vain and contradictory opinions. Nay, even those who believed in Him have not understood; they have been content with a poor and unworthy conception of the mystery.

The teaching seems to be that as the Christ-story was intended to be the setting-forth of an exemplar of what perfected man might be--namely, that the path was fully opened for him all the way up to God--it was spiritual suicide to rest content with a limited and prejudiced view. Every mould of thought was to be broken, every imperfect conception was to be transcended, if there was to be realization.

For those who cling to the outward forms and symbols the Place of Rest is neither seen nor spoken of. This Place of Rest, this Home of Peace, is in reality the very Cross itself, the Firm Foundation, the that on which the whole creation rests. And if the Place of Rest, where all things cross, and unite, the Mystic Centre of the whole system, which is everywhere, is not seen or spoken of, "much more shall the Lord of it be neither seen nor spoken of"--He who has the power, of the Centre, who can adjust His "centre of gravity" at every moment of time, and therewith the attitude of this Great Body or, if it be preferred, of his Mind, and thus be in perpetual balance, as the Justified and the Just One.

14. The interpretation of the Vision that follows in the text may in its turn be interpreted from several standpoints. It may be regarded cosmicly according to the _restauratio omnium_, when the whole creation becomes the object of the Great Mercy, as Basilides calls it; or it may be taken soteriologically as referring to the salvation or the making safe or sure of our humanity, or it may be referred to the perfection of the individual man.

The multitude of one appearance are the Earth-bound, the Hylics as the Gnostics called them; that is, those who are immersed in things of matter, the "delights of the world." They are the Dead, because they are under the sway of birth-and-death, the spheres of Fate. They have not yet "risen from the Dead," and consciously ascended the Cross of Light and Life.

Thus in the preface to _The Book of the Gnoses of the Invisible God_, that is to say, "The Book of the Gnosis of Jesus the Living One"--which begins with the beautiful words: "I have loved you and longed to give you Life"--we read the following Saying of the Lord:

"Jesus saith: Blessed is the man who crucifieth the world, and doth not let the world crucify him."

And later on the mystery is set forth in another Saying:

"Jesus saith: Blessed is the man who knoweth this Word, and hath brought down the Heaven, and borne the Earth and raised it heavenwards; and he becometh the Midst, for it (the Midst) is a 'nothing.'" (_F._, 518, 519.)

Those who have become spiritual, who have "risen from the Dead," are born into the Race of the Logos, they become kin with Him.

Of this Race much has been written by the mystics of the many different schools of these early days.

Thus the Jewish Gnostic commentator of the Naassene Document writes:

"One is the Nature Below which is subject to Death; and one is the Race without a king [that is, those who are kings of themselves] which is born Above" (_H._, i., 164.).

And the Christian Gnostic commentator refers to the "ineffable Race of perfect men" (_H._, i., 166), who are in the Logos.

Such _illuminati_ were called by one tradition of the Christianized Gnosis the Race of Elxai, the Hidden Power or Holy Spirit, the Spouse of Iexai, the Hidden Lord or Logos. (_H._, ii., 242; see my _Did Jesus live 100 B.C.?_ chap. xviii.)

Philo of Alexandria tells us that "Wisdom, who, after the fashion of a mother, brings forth the self-taught Race, declares that God is the Sower of it" (_H._, i., 220). This is the term he applies to his beloved Therapeuts, adding that "this Race is rare and found with difficulty."

Elsewhere he tells us that the angels are the "people" of God; but there is a still higher degree of union, whereby a man becomes one of the Race, or Kin, of God. This Race is an intimate union of all them who are "kin to Him"; they become one. For this Race "is one, the highest one; but 'people' is the name of many."

"As many, then, as have advanced in discipline and instruction, and been perfected therein, have their lot among this 'many.'

"But they who have passed beyond these introductory exercises, becoming natural disciples of God, receiving Wisdom free from all toil, migrate to this incorruptible and perfect Race, receiving a lot superior to their former lives in genesis" (_H._, i., 554.).

And so in one of the Hymns of Thrice Greatest Hermes, after the triple trisagion, the "Hermes" or Illuminated prays:

"And fill me with Thy Power and with this Grace of Thine, that I may give the Light to those in ignorance of the Race--my Brethren and Thy Sons." (_H._, ii., 20.).

Philo calls it "self-taught," just as the Buddhists speak of the Arhats as _asekha_; and the Trismegistic teacher writes:

"This Race, my sons, is never taught; but when He willeth it, its memory is restored by God." (_H._, ii., 221.)

The "Elect Race" of Valentinus is the "Sonship" of Basilides that incarnates on earth for the abolition of Death. (_F._, 303.)

In the _Pistis Sophia_ document, the Sophia, or the soul turning towards the Light, first utters seven repentances, or "turnings-of-the-mind," or rather of the whole nature. At the fourth of these, the turning-point of some subcycle of the great Return, she prays that the Image of the Light may not be turned or averted from her, for the time is come when "those who turn in the lowest regions" should be regarded--"the mystery which is made the type of the Race." (_F._, 471.)

Again in the introduction to _The Book of the Great Logos according to the Mystery_, the disciples beg the Master to explain the Mystery of the Word. Jesus answers that the Life of His Father consists in their purifying their souls from all earthly stain, and making them to become the Race of the Mind, so that they may be filled with understanding and by His teaching perfect themselves. (_F._, 528.)

Finally in the marvellous _Untitled Apocalypse_ of the Bruce Codex we read:

"These words said the Lord of the Universe to them, and disappeared from them, and hid Himself from them.

"And the Births-of-matter rejoiced that they had been remembered, and were glad that they had come out of the narrow and difficult place, and prayed to the Hidden Mystery:

"'Give us authority that we may create for ourselves æons and worlds according to Thy Word, upon which Thou didst agree with Thy servant; for Thou alone art the changeless One, Thou alone the boundless, the uncontainable, self-taught, self-born Self-father; Thou alone art the unshakeable and unknowable; Thou alone art Silence and Love, and Source of all; Thou alone art virgin of matter, spotless; whose Race no man can tell, whose manifestation no man can comprehend.'" (_F._, 564.)

To understand, man must pass beyond the stage of man, and self-realize himself as "kin to Him"--the Logos.

It is, however, doubtful whether "Race" is the correct reading in our text; but as it is the clear reading in 15 the above notes are germane to our study. The MS. apparently reads "every Limb." This again is one of the most general Gnostic mystical terms, and is taken over from the Osiric Mysteries. The Limbs of the God are scattered abroad, and collected together again in the resurrection. The inner meaning of this graphic symbolism may be gleaned from the following striking passages.

In a MS. of the Gnostic Marcus there is a description of the method of symbolizing the Great Body of the Heavenly Man, whereby the twenty-four letters of the Greek alphabet were assigned in pairs to the twelve Limbs. This Body was the symbol of the ideal economy, dispensation or ordering of the universe, its planes, regions, hierarchies, and powers. (_F._, 366.)

This also is the true Body of man, the Source of all his bodies. And so we read the following mystery-saying in _The Gospel of Eve_:

"I stood on a lofty mountain and saw a Great Man, and another, a dwarf, and heard as it were a Voice of thunder, and drew nigh for to hear. And He spake unto me and said: 'I am thou, and thou art I; and wheresoever thou art, I am there, and in all am I sown (or scattered). And whencesoever thou willest, thou gatherest Me; and gathering Me, thou gatherest Thyself.'" (_F._, 439.)

This is a vision of the Great Person and little person, of the Higher Self and lower self. It may also be interpreted in terms of the Logos and humanity; but it comes nearer home to think of it as the mystery of the individual man--the scattering of the Limbs of the Great Person in the personalities that have been his in many births.

This idea is brought out more clearly in a passage from _The Gospel of Philip_. It is an apology or defence, as it was called, a formula to be used by the soul in its ascent above, as it passed through the space of the Midst; and for the mystic it is a declaration of the state of a man who is in his last compulsory earth-life.

"I have recognised myself, and gathered myself together from all sides. I have sown no children for the Ruler, but have torn up his roots, and have gathered together my Limbs that were scattered abroad. I know Thee who Thou art; for I am of those from Above." (_Ibid._)

He has sown no children to the Ruler, the Lord of Death; he has not contracted any fresh debt, or created a new form of personality, into which he must again incarnate. But he has torn up the roots of Death, by shattering the form of egoity, and bursting the bonds of Fate. He has gathered together his Limbs, completed the articulation of his Perfect Body.

The Limbs were according to certain orderings, one of which was the configuration of the five-fold Star, the five-limbed Man. Thus in _The Acts of Thomas_ we read:

"Come Thou who art more ancient far than the five holy Limbs--Mind, Thought, Reflection, Thinking, Reasoning! Commune with them of later birth!" (_F._, 422.)

These five Limbs are also the five Words of the mystery of the Vesture of Light in the _Pistis Sophia_ (p. 16), with which the Christ is clothed in power on the Day of Triumph, the Great Day "Come unto us," when His Limbs are gathered together and the Song of the Powers begins:

"Come unto us, for we are Thy Fellow-Limbs. We are all one with thee. We are one and the same, and Thou art one and the same."

In the whole document much is said of the "sweet mysteries that are in the Limbs of the Ineffable," but it would be too long to repeat it here. It will be perhaps of greater service to append a very striking passage, from _The Books of the Saviour_, which has been copied into the MS. of the _Pistis Sophia_ (pp. 253, 254):

"And they who are worthy of the Mysteries that dwell in the Ineffable, which are those that have not emanated--these are prior to the First Mystery. To use a similitude and correspondence of speech that ye may understand, they are the Limbs of the Ineffable. And each is according to the dignity of its Glory--the Head according to the dignity of the Head, the Eye according to the dignity of the Eye, the Ear according to the dignity of the Ear, and the rest of the Limbs [in like fashion]; so that the matter is plain: There are many Limbs (Members) but only one Body.

"Of this I have spoken in a plan, a correspondence and similitude, but not in its true form; nor have I revealed the Word in Truth, but as the Mystery of the Ineffable.

"And all the Limbs that are in Him..., that is, they that dwell in the Mystery of the Ineffable, and they that dwell in Him, and also the Three Spaces that follow according to their Mysteries--of all of these in truth and verity am I the Treasure; apart from which there is no Treasure peculiar to [this] cosmos. But there are other Words and Mysteries and Regions [of other worlds].

"Now, therefore, Blessed is he who hath found the Words of the Mysteries of the Space towards the exterior. He is a God who hath found the Words of the Mysteries of the second Space, in the midst. He is a Saviour and free of every space who hath found the Words of the Mysteries of the third Space towards the interior....

"But He, on the other hand, who hath found the Words of the Mysteries which I have set forth for you according to a similitude--namely, the Limbs of the Ineffable--Amen I say unto you, that man who hath found the Words of those Mysteries in the Truth of God, he is the First in Truth, and like unto Him; for it is through these Words and Mysteries that [all things are made] and the universe itself stands through that First One. Therefore is he who hath found the Words of these Mysteries, like unto the First. For it is the gnosis of the Gnosis of the Ineffable in which I have spoken with you this day."

It is thus seen that the means used in revealing the manner of the highest Mysteries of the Ineffable was by the similitude of the Limbs or Members of the Body. It, therefore, follows, as we have already seen, that this symbolism was one of the most, if not the most, fundamental in this Gnosis. The three stages of perfectioning are those of the Saint, God and Saviour. But these are still stages in evolution or process, no matter how sublime they be. The fourth or consummation is other; it transcends process, it is ever itself with itself, embracing all processes and all powers simultaneously. But we must not be tempted to comment on this instructive passage, for there is quite enough material in it to develop into a small treatise in itself. For an admirable intuition of the Mystery of the Limbs of the Ineffable, and the meaning of the words "the Head is according to the dignity of the Head," etc., the reader is referred to the beautiful passage in _The Untitled Apocalypse_ of the Bruce Codex, quoted in the comments on _The Hymn of Jesus_ (pp. 54, 55).