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The Reappearance of the Christ - Chapter II - The World Today
Reverently we might say that in this "occasion" of the Christ's, two facts were involved and that both of them are difficult for man to understand. The fact of the synchronization of His will with that of the Father, and the fact that this synchronization led to a basic decision, must be recognized by us. It is not easy for the average Christian to realize that the Christ passes on steadily to increasingly potent experiences, and that in His divine experience there is nothing static or permanent - except His unalterable love for humanity. A close study of the Gospel story, unimpeded by orthodox interpretations, reveals certain things. The usual interpretations, if men would but recognize them in their true meaning, are simply some man's understanding of a series of Aramaic, Greek or Latin words. The fact that the majority of accepted commentators lived many hundreds of years ago seems to have given such words a totally unwarranted value. The words of a commentator or of an interpreter today are apparently of no value in comparison with those of ancient date; yet the modern commentator is probably more intelligent and better educated than the ancient one and has, also, the benefit of the many recognized translations and a precise science. We are suffering theologically from the ignorance of the past; it is a peculiar thing that an ancient commentator is supposed to carry greater weight than the modern, more educated and intelligent man. If The New Testament is true in its presentation of the Christ, if it is true in its repetition of His words, that we can do "greater things" than He did, and if it is true in that He told us to "be perfect even as our Father in Heaven is perfect," what is there wrong in our recognizing the capacity of a human being to keep pace with the mind of Christ and to know what He intends us to know? Christ said that "if any [25] man will do the will of God, he shall know"; that was how the Christ Himself learnt and that is the mode He assures us will be successful for each of us. It was the dawning of this significance of the will of God upon the consciousness of the Christ which led Him to certain great decisions, and which forced Him to cry out: "Father, not my will but Thine be done." These words definitely indicate conflict and do not indicate the synchronization of the two wills; they indicate the determination on the part of the Christ that there should be no opposition between His will and that of God. Suddenly, He received a vision of the emerging, divine intention for humanity and - through humanity - for the planet as a whole. At the particular stage of spiritual development which Christ had then attained and which had made Him the Head of the spiritual Hierarchy, the One who engineered the emergence of the Kingdom of God and established Him as the Master of all the Masters and the Teacher of angels and of men, His consciousness was absolutely at one with the divine Plan; its application on Earth and its goal of establishing the Kingdom of God and the appearance of the fifth kingdom in nature was simply for Him the fulfiling of the law and to that fulfilment His entire life was and had been geared. The Plan, its goal, its techniques and its laws, its energy (that of love) and the close and growing relation between the spiritual Hierarchy and humanity were known to him, and fully understood. At the highest point of this consummated knowledge and at the moment of His complete surrender to the necessary sacrifice of His life to the fulfiling of this Plan, suddenly a great expansion of consciousness took place. The significance, the intention, the purpose of it all, and the comprehensive divine Idea (as it existed in the mind of the Father) [26] dawned upon His soul - not on His mind, for the revelation was far greater than that. He saw still further into the meaning of divinity than had ever before seemed possible; the world of meaning and the world of phenomena faded out and - esoterically speaking - He lost His all. For the time being, neither the energy of the creative mind nor the energy of love were left to Him. He was bereft of all that had made life bearable and full of meaning. A new type of energy became available - the energy of life itself, imbued with purpose and activated by intention. But it was new and unknown and hitherto unrealized. For the first time, the relation of the will which had hitherto expressed itself in His life through love and the creative work of inaugurating the new dispensation became clear to Him. At this point, He passed through the Gethsemane of renunciation. The greater, the larger and the more inclusive was revealed to Him and all that hitherto seemed so vital and important was lost to sight in the greater vision. It is this living realization of Being and of identification with the divine intention of God Himself, the Father, the Lord of the World upon levels of awareness of which we know nothing (as yet) which constituted the unfolding awareness of the Christ upon the Way of the Higher Evolution. This Way He treads today and He began to tread it in Palestine two thousand years ago. He knew, in a sense hitherto unknown to Him, what God intended and what human destiny meant, and the part that He had to play in the working out of that destiny. We have paid little attention down the centuries of human thinking to Christ's reaction to His own destiny, as it affected the human. We have paid small attention to the aspect of His reaction to knowledge, as it unfolded itself to [27] Him. We have been selfish and grasping in our reaction to His work and sacrifice.
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