“‘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.