The Etheric Christ

    A divine sun being enters Jesus of Nazareth at the baptism by John and walks the earth for three years. This being so transforms, consumes, his body that after three years there is only ash left which is then swallowed by a fissure opened during an earthquake; the grave was truly empty. This body could no longer sustain the divine sun forces and Christ prays in Gethsemane, sweating blood, “God keep this chalice together for a little longer.”

   This divine sun being appears throughout history: Vishva Karman, Ahura Mazdao, Osiris, Ehjeh asher Ehjeh (I am the I AM), Apollo-Dionysus, Mithras. In the Ancient Indian cultural age (7227 - 5067 BC), Vishva Karman, meaning “all creating” in Sanskrit, appears as the creative power that holds the universe together. In the Ancient Persian cultural age (5067 - 2907 BC), Ahura Mazdao is the aura of the sun prophesied by the original Zarathustra. In the Egyptian-Chaldean cultural age (2907 - 747 BC), Osiris is the sun god. The Hebrew culture is also predominating in this age and Ehjeh asher Ehjeh is how god names himself to Moses. In the Greco-Latin culture (747 BC - 1413 AD), the joint being of Apollo and Dionysus is needed because as Apollo he is the sun but as Dionysus he is the abundant vegetative earth. Roman culture is also predominating at this time and Mithras, originally an Iranian sun god, is celebrated in the Mithraic mysteries. In each successive cultural age the divine sun god has come closer and closer, finally uniting with the earth at the Mystery of Golgotha, becoming the earth logos.

   This is the first and only time a divine being incarnated as human. Divine beings have overshadowed humans before but never become human and experienced death. This marks a turning point in evolution where the divine ego, I, individuality is incorporated into the human being. Previous to this time humanity is coming away from a group, tribal, egohood and even in the Greek era, with the beginning of philosophy and science (systematic knowledge), still the I is bound to citizenship of a particular city-state and not to individuality. Christ brings the possibility of human freedom and love. Freedom can only arise where there is individuality and love requires freedom at its basis. Because Christ inculcates the I into humanity he would be called by a Buddhist as Buddha-nature, by a Hindu as Atma, the divine Self, by us as our higher I.

   In our era, the fifth post-Atlantean cultural age (1413 - 3573 AD), from 1933 onwards the Christ embodies in an etheric human form. This is what is meant as the second coming and not a physical reappearance. This etheric form will be seen by more and more people as time goes on. He can seem physical and be in multiple places at once.

IAO - The Three Logoi

 

   John 1,1 : “In the very beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was a divine Being.”

   Consciousness, Life, and Form. Consciousness is creation from nothing, individuation. Life is soul, evolution, the universe in motion. Form is substance, the universe at rest.

   Consciousness is the indwelling essence. It is beginning of attention.

   Life is growth and development. It is the gesture, movement, behind a succession of forms. It is the development that oscillates between essence and form.

   Form is the house, the body, that is indwelled. It is the fixed shape.

   Consciousness to life to form is the evolutionary progress from I to world.

   In John 1,1 the Word begins as shape, sound, then comes into relationship, life, and finally is as essence, being. The process is reversed here because the view is from now into the past: Where we first meet sound, precise pattern, then life, and finally consciousness.

Illness and the path of self development

    “In all the areas where modern individuality is developing we will gradually discover that the heart has to be involved again. Rudolf Steiner mentioned the fact that what will be discovered in the twentieth century is that the process of life is the same as the process as that of illness. Illness is usually experienced as something negative, as something bad. Even if we take homeopathic medicine, deep within us we have the feeling that illness is not good. Steiner says that this will change, and that the more we understand karma the more we will feel that illness allows development. That is why illness exists, that is why problems are there. Suffering and crises foster the development of forces that lie dormant within the human being. To understand this fully, however, one has to love the developing individual.” [Jaap van der Haar, in The Knights Templar ed. Gil McHattie, pg. 117]

   To be healthy in an ill world is more harmful than simple denial. Illness would lead any respectable thinker towards the ideas of reincarnation and karma. Otherwise we need to abandon ourselves to senseless suffering and a life divorced from meaning. Illness is not the recompense for a misdeed but an opportunity to connect with spirit.

   The obvious goal of health when one is ill may be misleading. Health is fine as long as it comes with an acceptance of illness and not its rejection. The goal is to walk in the light shed by illness, a light that wants to lead to understanding and not directly or necessarily to health. The goal is the development of wisdom through understanding illness, living with illness.

   The search for wisdom is the search for self knowledge, self development. Illness opens up a vista that can be accessed in no other way. The hardest thing to understand and accept is that health is lived malady.

   John 11:1 “Now a certain man was sick, named Lazarus…” The name Lazarus means the invalid. Yet here is the hoped for meaning of illness: that it leads to resurrection, initiation. Lazarus becomes the evangelist John. In the 1200’s Lazarus-John is initiated by the circle of 12 as a young boy. After this initiation the boy wastes away, his body “… became quite transparent, and for a few days he lay as though dead.” [R. Steiner, Esoteric Christianity and the Mission of Christian Rosenkreutz, pg 42] He awakens transformed and gives back to the 12 their individual streams of wisdom in a new form. He dies relatively young but reincarnates soon after in the 1300’s as Christian Rosenkreutz.