Gleanings of a Mystic: A Series of Essays on Practical Mysticism

by Max Heindel

When stripped of nonessentials the argument of the orthodox Christian religion may be said to be as follows:

First, that tempted by the devil, our first parents sinned and were exiled from their previous state of celestial bliss, placed under the law, made subject to death, and became incapable of escaping by their own efforts.

Second, that God so loved the world that He gave Christ, His only begotten Son, for its redemption and to establish the kingdom of heaven. Thus death will finally be swallowed up in immortality.

This simple creed has provoked the smiles of atheists, and of the purely intellectual who have studied transcendental philosophies with their niceties of logic and argument; and even of some among those who study the Western Mystery Teaching.

Such an attitude of mind is entirely gratuitous. We might know that the divine leaders of mankind would not allow millions to continue in error for millennia. When the Western Mystery Teaching is stripped of its exceedingly illuminating explanations and detailed descriptions, when its basic teachings are stated, they are found to be in exact agreement with the orthodox Christian teachings.

There was a time when mankind lived in a sinless state; when sorrow, pain, and death were unknown. Neither is the personal tempter of Christianity a myth, for the Lucifer spirits may very well be said to be fallen angels, and their temptation of man resulted in focusing his consciousness upon the material phase of existence where he is under the law of decrepitude and death. Also it is truly the mission of Christ to aid mankind by elevating them to a more ethereal state where dissolution will no longer be necessary to free them from vehicles that have grown too hard and set for further use. For this is indeed a “body of death,” where only the smallest quantity of material is really alive, as part of its bulk is nutrient matter that has not yet been assimilated, another large part is already on its way to elimination, and only between these two poles may be found the material which is thoroughly quickened by the spirit.

We have in other chapters considered the sacraments of baptism and communion, sacraments that have to do particularly with the spirit. We will now seek to understand the deeper side of the sacrament of marriage, which has to do particularly with the body. Like the other sacraments the institution of marriage had its beginning and will also have its end. The commencement was described by the Christ when He said, “Have ye not read that He which made them at the beginning made them male and female, and said: For this cause shall a man leave father and mother and cleave to his wife; and they twain shall be one flesh? Wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh.” Matt. 19:4-6. He also indicated the end of marriage when he said: “In the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of God in heaven.” Matt. 22:30.

In this light the logic of the teaching is apparent, for marriage became necessary in order that birth might provide new instruments to take the place of those which had been ruptured by death; and when death has once been swallowed up in immortality and there is no need of providing new instruments, marriage also will be unnecessary.

Science with admirable audacity has sought to solve the mystery of fecundation, and has told us how invagination takes place in the walls of the ovary; how the little ovum is formed in the seclusion of its dark cavity; how it emerges therefrom and enters the Fallopian tube; is pierced by the spermatozoon of the male, and the nucleus of a human body is complete. We are thus supposed to be “at the fount and origin of life!” But life has neither beginning nor end, and what science mistakenly considers the fountain of life is really the source of death, as all that comes from the womb is destined sooner or later to reach the tomb. The marriage feast which prepares for birth, at the same time provides food for the insatiable jaws of death, and so long as marriage is necessary to generation and birth, disintegration and death must inevitably result. Therefore it is of prime importance to know the history of marriage, the laws and agencies involved, the duration of this institution, and how it may be transcended.

When we obtained our vital bodies in Hyperborea, the sun, moon, and earth were still united, and the solar-lunar forces permeated each being in even measure so that all were able to perpetuate their kind by buds and spores as do certain plants of today. The efforts of the vital body to soften the dense vehicle and keep it alive were not then interfered with, and these primal, plantlike bodies lived for ages. But man was then unconscious and stationary like a plant; he made no effort or exertion. The addition of a desire body furnished incentive and desire, and consciousness resulted from the war between the vital body, which builds, and the desire body, which destroys the dense body.