G. R. S. Mead

“ Let the disciple then first see the suffering of the man through, not his own, but His Master’s eyes. He will first only see the mystery, grasp it intellectually; he will not as yet realize it. When he realizes it, there will then be bliss indeed, for he will begin to become the Master Himself. And the Master is the conqueror of woe—not, however, in the sense of the annihilator of it, but as the one who rejoices in it; for he knows that it is the necessary concomitant of bliss, and that the more pain he suffers in one portion of his nature, the more bliss he experiences in another ”

“ Here it is useless to tie oneself to the physical symbol of a cross. The Stauros (Cross) in its true self is a living idea, a reality or root-principle. It is the principle of separation and limit, dividing entity from non-entity, being from non-being, perfection from imperfection, fullness or sufficiency from deficiency or insufficiency—Light from Darkness. It is the that which causes all opposites. At the same time it shares in all opposites, for it is the immediate emanation of the Father Himself, and therefore unites while separating. ”

“ A height must be reached from which the whole human drama can be seen as a spectacle below and within; this height is not with regard to space and place, but with respect to consciousness and realization that all is taking place within the man’s Great Body as the operations of the Divine economy. They who are “without the mystery” are not arbitrarily excluded, but are those who prefer to go forth without instead of returning within. ”

“ There are many who love the life of the spirit, and who long for the light of gnostic illumination, but who are not sufficiently equipped to study the writings of the ancients at first hand, or to follow unaided the labours of scholars. These little volumes are therefore intended to serve as introduction to the study of the more difficult literature of the subject; and it is hoped that at the same time they may become for some, who have, as yet, not even heard of the Gnosis, stepping-stones to higher things. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ The gentle contempt of those who had entered into the mystery, for those unknowing ones who would fain limit the crucifixion to one brief historic event, is brought out strongly, and savours, though mildly, of the bitterness of the struggle between the two great forces of the inner and spiritualizing and the outer and materializing traditions. ”

“ The sentence “I long for one who will hear,” is instinct with the yearning of the Divine Love, the eagerness to bestow, the longing to speak if only there be one to hear.
8. There then follows a list of synonyms [Pg 33] of the Cross, every one of which shows that the Cross, if a symbol, must be taken to denote the master-symbol of all symbols. It is the key to the chief nomenclature of the Gnosis and the greatest terms of the Gospel. These terms, it is stated, are used by the Wisdom “for your sakes,” that is, to bring home in many ways to the hearts of men the intuition of the mystery. ”

“ I am thy Self, thy true God; ’twas I energizing in thee who enabled thee to rise to the height of contemplation, where thou canst “hear what disciple should learn from Master and man from God.” The man has now reached the stage of Hearer in the Spiritual Mysteries.
5. There then follows the vision of the great Cross of Light, fixed firm, and stretching from earth to heaven. Round its foot on earth is a vast multitude of all the nations of the world; they resemble one another in that they are configured according to the Darkness, their “Spark burns low.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 [Pg 47] “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. ”

“ The pure spiritual emanations or ideas or intelligences of the Light descend into the lowest Darkness of matter. For the moulding of vehicles or bodies for them it is necessary to call in the aid of the God of Fire, the creative or rather formative Power, who is “Living Fire begotten of Light.”
Hippolytus summarizes, doubtless imperfectly, from the Docetic document that lay before him, as follows:
“Moses refers to this God as the Fiery God who spake from the Batos, that is to say, from the Dark Air; for Batos is all the Air subjected to Darkness.” ”

“ That such a master-idea is difficult to grasp goes without saying; it was confessedly the supreme mystery. From it the mind, the formal mind of man, “falls back unable to grasp it”; for it is precisely this personal mind that creates duality, and insinuates itself between cause and effect. The spiritual Mind alone can embrace the opposites.
But to return to our text. “When He was hung on the batos of the Cross”—when He had reached the state of balance, was in the mystic centre—then at the sixth hour, that is mid-day, when there was greatest light, there was also greatest darkness. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I believe that our Vision of the Cross [Pg 43] 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 mā-yā. ”

“ For we are brought to birth in such a way, that we do seem to be poured into earth, so that the right is left, the left doth right become; in that our state is changed in those who are the authors of this life. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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:
[Pg 52] “‘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 ”

“ His Limbs conduct Him; His ‘Fleshes’ open the way for Him. Those who are born from Him create Him. They rest when they have caused the Kingly Osiris to be born.
“It is He who causes them to be born. It is He who engenders them. It is He who causes them to exist. His Birth is the Birth of Rā in Amenti. He causes the Kingly Osiris to be born; He causes the Birth of Himself.”
(See my World-Mystery, 2nd ed., p. 162.)
It requires no elaboration to show that this is precisely the same mystery as the secret set forth in our Vision of the Cross. ”

“ And then when the Lord, the Higher Self of the man, was balanced and [Pg 30] justified, the man, the disciple, became conscious, in the cave of his heart—that is to say, in his inmost substantial nature—of the Presence of Light.
4. Thereon follow the illumination and the explanation of the familiar drama of appearance taught to those “without the mystery.”
“The multitude below in Jerusalem” is the lower nature of the man, his unillumined mind. “Jerusalem Below” is set over against “Jerusalem Above,” the City of God. Jerusalem Below is that nature in him that is still unordered and unpurified ”

“ The reversed hanging typified the man of sex, or the man still under the sway of generation, separated into male and female. Such hang head-downwards in the Great Womb of Nature, and all is reversed for them. Hanged upright, the re-generate man contains in himself in active operation the twin powers in union, now used for spiritual creation, and self-perfection. ”

“ One thing, however, is certain: they lived in times when the rigid orthodoxy of the canon was not yet established. They were in the closest touch with the living tradition of scripture-writing, and they knew the manner of it.
The probability is that paragraphs 1-3 are from the pen of the redactor or compiler of the Acts, and that the narrative, beginning with the words “And my Lord stood in the midst of the Cave,” is incorporated from prior material—a mystic vision or apocalypse circulated in the inner circles. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Nevertheless when we come to the Mystery of the Crucifixion as set forth in our fragment, we are not entitled to argue that the popular history was developed from it in a similar fashion. The problem it raises is of another order, and to it we will return when the reader has been put in possession of the narrative, as translated from Bonnet’s text. John is supposed to be the narrator. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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) . ”