 Gnosis of the Creed –by Swami Nirmalananda Giri
Chapter Ten—And was incarnate by the Holy Spirit
 What does “and was incarnate” mean? Immediately there comes to mind the words from the beginning of the Gospel of Saint John: “And the Word was made flesh.”
An Alteration Of Consciousness
As we have seen, the “descent” of the Lord Jesus was actually an attuning of consciousness, but He went even further. He did not just “turn the dial” to become aware of our sunken mode of existence, but “came down” and encased His infinitude in a mortal body. Vibrating on the fleshly level, He created for Himself an objective body of atomic matter which was subject to the laws and conditions of earthly existence. Of course, immortality cannot be changed into mortality, but the consciousness can be transferred from the immortality of spirit to the mortality of the body.
This is also true about us. We are immortal spirits, incapable of change or suffering, yet we chose to “pick the fruit” of physical consciousness and, becoming entrapped therein, have forgotten our true nature and suffer all the changes and pains of the body, including its continual death and rebirth.
Seeing this and moved with compassion, Christ descended and “took upon Himself our sins,” that is, our mortal condition, “yet without sin”–that is, without falling prey to the delusions engendered by mortal existence. By being “made like us in all things, excepting sin,” He showed us that mortality and immortality are not states of body or mind, but of consciousness. This is why in Hinduism there is the prayer: “Lead me from the unreal to the Real; lead me from darkness to the Light; lead me from death to Immortality.” It is a matter of the focus of consciousness.
The story of Christ is our story, which He enacted for us on the stage of the world. It is Christ Himself Who plays the role of the cosmic Everyman. Christ is not unique; He is each one of us! The life of Jesus of Nazareth was a great Mystery Drama revealing the truth about ourselves to any who will look. “He who has eyes to see, let him see.”
As we have said, “incarnate” means that He came into flesh, into the consciousness of matter. In essence, God and man are one, the difference is in their center of consciousness. The “descent” and “ascent” of the Only-begotten is simply an attuning “down” to the grosser modes of existence or “up,” back to the higher levels of existence. It is simple to state, but not so simple to accomplish. Another Aspect
There is a deeper message here, expressed by “came down from heaven.” It implies that to be incarnate is to be separated from “heaven,” from the limitless God-nature–in our consciousness though not in our real being. A Simile Of Our Condition
The condition of being incarnate in this universe is much like that of a mediocre plaster Buddha that sat for centuries in a Burmese temple. During some repairing of the temple in the twentieth century, it had to be moved by a large crane. The chain slipped and the image fell and cracked open, revealing that inside under a few inches of worthless plaster it was actually solid gold, weighing several tons, and was extraordinarily beautiful. Centuries before, it had been covered with plaster so invaders would not steal it. In the passing of time, its real composition had been forgotten, and it was thought to be mere plaster because of its superficial appearance. Though hundreds of years had passed and thousands of worshippers had believed it to be only plaster, as soon as the false shell was broken, its real status as gold was revealed, having never been changed by appearance or the ideas of observers. It is said to be the most valuable religious object in the world.
This is an accurate simile of ourselves. We are wrapped in the veil of matter, of seeming change and corruptibility. What we need is not to become something else, but to be released from appearing to be what we are not. In reality, it is not a transformation or an evolution, but an awakening, an enlightening. As soon as the shell of illusion is cracked, the truth is revealed.
Ocean water can be sealed in a container and sunk in the depths of the ocean for countless years. In that condition, the water inside will be separated from the ocean and have a separate existence. But the moment the vessel is broken open, the water will merge back into the ocean and become part of its vast life. We need the release yearned for by Saint Paul, when he asked: “Who will deliver me from the body of this death?” The Body Is A Tomb
The unhappy truth is that the flesh is a tomb, and birth into a body is the seal of death—for death is the loss of awareness of the spirit and the sinking into awareness of materiality. When the ancient sages said in the previously-quoted prayer: “Lead me from death to Immortality,” they meant literally: “Lead me from this world of death.” Our bodies are perpetually dying on the cellular level, so we live clothed in death.
God alone is immortal. The Rig-Veda of India says: “His shadow is immortality.” He is beyond the duality of dying or not dying, of mortality or immortality. Immortality is just the shadow of that Life which He is. If we can touch even His “shadow,” as the woman touched the hem of Jesus’ garment, we will be made immortal.
But until that happens, here in this world we lie dead in a grave, in a tomb that is antithetical to spiritual consciousness. However, the physical body is transmuted as the consciousness rises, which is why the bodies of many saints do not decay after their souls depart. Having perfected their consciousness, their bodies have also partaken of that illumination. Being the “shadow” of their enlightened consciousness, their bodies also manifest the unchanging state of immortality. After centuries, the bodies of holy ones such as Saint Teresa of Avila and Saint Tikhon of Zadonsk are still fresh and “living.” There is one martyr whose body was recently discovered in Egypt who, though martyred centuries ago, has fresh, red blood, which laboratory tests (by non-Christians) have shown to still be alive! Their immortal spirits, being one with the immortal God, have immortalized even that which normally must perish.
But until that transmutation takes place and we “conquer death,” the body is the prison of death, poisoning us at every step of our journey through life, keeping us in the realm of the “dead,” cut off from the vision of God. A Bottleneck In Evolution
We should have graduated long ago into the angelic world and evolved from there, but through delusive attachments and desires we foolishly choose to turn back into this world again and again. Having come to the point where we are ready to step up into the angelic world, we decide that we are more comfortable and secure with the lower mode of earth life: eating, sleeping, mating, and dying. This is the very real and terrible story of the Fall.
The Result
We whirl in the round of birth and death, sowing in the flesh corruption and reaping in the flesh corruption. Such a state is truly being dead, while the Christ within all of us awaits the resurrection.
Through His resurrection Jesus demonstrated that we must all resurrect into the life of our immortal essence. This resurrection also transmutes the physical body. This is why He said to Saint Mary Magdalene: “Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended to my Father.” At that moment, having arisen, He was taking his physical body through the final stages of the resurrection transmutation. He had not so transmuted His body before that time, for then He would not have been able to undergo the suffering and death on the Cross. For a transmuted body, suffering and death is impossible. Moreover, through a transmuted body there would have been no undergoing of total human experience, which was a key purpose in His birth and life. Having united Himself utterly with the human status, He underwent the loss of consciousness of union with God–of even the presence of God–and in the extremity of that forgetfulness cried out: “My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me?” experiencing the alienation from God in which humanity lay helpless and bound.
After coming forth from the tomb, at the time Saint Mary first saw Him, He was rapidly moving through the process of completely transmuting the physical body. Afterwards, His body was so constituted that it could pass through doors and walls, moving from place to place with the speed of thought, showing the Apostles what they would be able to do, as well. The process of transformation is so powerful and produces such a field of energy around the body, that Saint Mary Magdalene would have been killed or greatly injured had she touched Him at that moment. This has happened on occasion when great saints, also undergoing this process, have been touched by the unwary. Such persons have experienced great pain or mental disorientation, or have even been struck unconscious by that great power. Their nervous systems simply could not stand it. When Uzzah touched the Ark of the Covenant he was struck dead, for his body could not stand the awesome power which was moving within the Ark. He was, in a sense, electrocuted by it. His Body And Our Bodies
Later on the Lord Jesus allowed His body to be touched, because the process was then completed and it was safe to touch Him. His Body healed and enlivened, but our fleshly egoic body kills us by drawing our awareness away from God, Who is Life. Therefore we must attune ourselves to the spirit, following the counsel of Saint Paul: “Make not provision for the flesh, to fulfil the lusts thereof.” That is, we must do nothing which will perpetuate the cycle of birth and death in the flesh, but instead bend all our will and effort to that which will enable us to resurrect into spirit.
Christ became incarnate, retaining the full consciousness of His identity with God, so that we, too, may move through this world, yet be living in the spirit, until we make the final transition into the immortal Kingdom which is God Himself. Lack Of Teaching On The Trinity
“Incarnate by the Holy Spirit.” The concept of a Trinity is to be found in some form in nearly every major religion of the world. Since Divinity Itself is a Mystery to the human intellect, it should be no surprise that to many the concept of a Trinity seems pointless and foolish. This situation is compounded by the fact that most teaching on the Trinity has been superficial and even at times ridiculous because it has not been approached from the only valid viewpoint: that of mystical revelation.
In The Elephant and the Kangaroo by T. H. White, “Mr. White” asks an illiterate Irishwoman: “Do you really believe the Holy Spirit is a dove flying upside down with a ribbon in its mouth, like the painting in the local church?” She has no answer, but weeks later when they are floating in barrels out in the Atlantic Ocean, with no preamble she announces: “It might be a pemmican.” “What might be a pemmican?” asks Mr. White. “The Holy Ghost,” she answers. This makes no sense to Mr. White, so he asks her: “What is a ‘pemmican’?” And she replies: “It be a kind of religious bird.” Then he realizes that she means a pelican, which in the West was sometimes used as a symbol of Christ! Although the incident in the book is humorous, the almost total lack of comprehension regarding the Trinity, and especially the Holy Spirit, is accurately portrayed by it.
The Christian East
The situation is not quite so bleak in the Christian East. In the mystical writings and liturgical texts of the Orthodox Churches, we are told that all things exist in the Holy Spirit, draw their life from the Life of the Holy Spirit, and are manifested in the Holy Spirit. This is because God the Father, being absolutely transcendent, does not interact with the world of relativity on any level. His only relationship with the world is the passive one of being its ultimate Source and Goal. No being in relative consciousness has seen the Father at any time. The Father at no time is an object of perception to finite consciousness.
Although symbolically called “He,” the Father is truly the Theos, the absolutely “other,” the Alien. God in His essential, transcendent being as the Father cannot be communicated either to creation or to creatures.
The Purpose Of The Son
For manifesting and relating to the creation, He, the Father, emanates or “begets” Himself as the Son to function as the guiding intelligence and will behind the creation. The Son is the Logos of the Father, Who does the Will of the Father, Who is the Father, and yet is distinct from the Father as an extension or expansion of the Father’s essential being. Do not try to understand this, for it is a Mystery. All so-called “heresies” have arisen from the egotistical attempts of finite intelligences to make the Divine Mysteries comprehensible to the limited mind of humanity. A Diagram That Misleads
During the Middle Ages the Western Church developed a diagram of the Trinity that is used even today. It has circles and lines of “is” and “is not,” so you can read: “The Father is not the Son; the Son is not the Holy Spirit; the Holy Spirit is not the Father.” On the other hand, read in another way, you get: “The Father is God; the Son is God; the Holy Spirit is God.” That is nonsense. If you could diagram God like you can diagram the wiring of a radio, He would not be God. The truth is, the Father is the Son and the Holy Spirit; the Son is the Father and the Holy Spirit; and the Holy Spirit is the Father and the Son. And it also so happens that God is not any of these, because they are symbolic terms only, and God is Reality, not symbol. “Father,” “Son,” and “Holy Spirit” are terms that are used to express mysteries to minds incapable of true understanding. A Workable Formulation
Let us attempt a formulation that at least gives us a glimmer of the actuality of the Trinity.
First, there is but ONE God. This fact is absolute. In no way are there three big Gods formed out of the same material that can therefore be called one from the standpoint of identity of essence, but are really three different or distinct “people.” To use such terms as “person,” “nature,” “substance,” or “essence” in an absolute sense in relation to God is futile and absurd, for they are drawn from our analyses of material nature.
Fire is one. Yet in fire we find heat, light, and color–all three of which are essential to its being. We could say that they are three modes of fire, but that would not at all be correct. Rather, fire is a process–the process of combustion–which manifests to the human observer as these three qualities of heat, light, and color. It is none of these, and yet it is all of these–and something more. So it is with God. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are seen by human beings as three appearances of the one God. Some will say they are “Persons,” and some will say they are “Aspects.”
Errors must result when the individual believes that his definition has encompassed the totality of divine reality. What we should realize is that our definitions may be correct to a degree, but only to a degree. They are only hints of what really Is. Rather than being contented with our cleverness in supposedly defining the Indefinable, we should yearn to pierce through the veil of our intellectual concepts and experience the reality of God’s being without any intermediary–just as we did “before the world was,” though hopefully with an increased capacity for the experiencing of that divine Object as though It were Subject.
Humanity Cannot Comprehend Divinity
Only the mystic truly understands that God cannot be known by the mind; but He can be experienced by the spirit in mystical union. God cannot be known by the intermediary of any faculty of intelligence, but by direct participation in the Divine Life Itself. Our much vaunted theologies are the speculations and explanations of children which, because they are so limited and partial, have little practical value. Just as a child orients everything toward his childish experiences and outlook, so also do we in our theologizing. Even worse, we add the destructive folly of branding everyone who does not subscribe to our particular mode of theological madness as heretics, damning them to the everlasting flames of hell–itself one of the stupidest ideas ever imposed upon, and subsequently by, the exoteric churches.
Like children, we are interested in relating God to us rather than in relating ourselves to God. Also like children, our total involvement is in bringing God into our world as an object of amusement and gratification, rather than the stripping of ourselves from all earthliness to make the “flight of the alone to the Alone.” The character of human theologizing is perfectly summed up by a mistake once made by a typesetter in a prayer. Instead of “O Lord, all the world reveres Thee,” he set: “O Lord, all the world reverses Thee.” The Insight Of Saint Paul
This being so, Saint Paul wrote: “I, brethren, when I came to you, came not with excellency of speech or of wisdom, declaring unto you the testimony of God.…And my speech and my preaching was not with enticing words of man’s wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power.” Saint Paul did not philosophize, instead he proved the truth of Christ by the Power of Christ. He could say with the Lord Jesus that he had manifested the divine life to his disciples. He did not reason with them about God, he revealed God to them.
The Dual
Nature Of The Immanent God
The immanent God is dual, for everything that exists in a relative, objective manner is under the law of duality. The “other half,” the “opposite pole” of the Son, the Logos, is the Holy Spirit, Who is the counterpart of the Son as His dynamic power. We will get some idea of this relationship of the Son to the Holy Spirit if we look closer at the symbolic term for the Son, which also applies to the Holy Spirit: The Word. The Two Aspects Of A Word
In the silent depths of the mind there first arises a concept and then the word which expresses the concept. Both are silent, yet they are definitely “word.” Then we speak that word, clothe it in sound, and it is communicated through the motion of air waves that strike the eardrums. So there is both an inner and an outer word. One is the intelligent conceptualization and the other is the symbolic sound pattern that conveys that concept to another mind. One is silent, unheard, yet it is understood, for its silent message is conveyed by the sound as it enters the perception of another. Further Understanding
Thus is it with the Only-begotten Son and the Holy Spirit. Intending to relate to the external creation, God the transcendent Father projects, emanates Himself in a mysterious way and, through the law of relative existence, becomes dual, thus producing the Trinitarian status. However, this process of projection has never actually had a beginning, but is co-eternal with God, so it is not really correct to say that God “becomes” dual. Yet, since we are functioning in space and time and our entire vocabulary is based on that mode of experience, we must use inappropriate terminologies on occasion when speaking of the Unspeakable.
Christ, the Only-begotten Son of God, is the silent, intelligent consciousness and will behind all creation. Both of these aspects are implied in the Greek term logos, which we commonly translate “Word,” inadequate though that might be. The Holy Spirit, however, is the dynamic objectifying force of the primal, silent Word, the “breath of His mouth.” The creation itself is a dancing wave of energy, moved by the will of God. Therefore the Holy Spirit-Mother says in the Scriptures: “I was by him, as one brought up with him: and I was daily his delight, rejoicing [playing or dancing] always before him.” The same idea is expressed in the Devi Shukta, one of the major hymns of the Rig Veda.
The Son wills, and the Spirit Who was emanated with Him–“brought up with him”– dances out His thought and will as the Great Amen, the Sound of Many Waters, the Voice of Trumpets, the Mighty Rushing Wind. He is the silent Word; She is the spoken Word, the universal creative power. She is Mother, for in Her womb of matter the Son implants the individual consciousnesses, or spirits, to grow and evolve within Her enwrapping energies, making their way slowly upward, back through Him to the Father (which is the true meaning of the mediatorship of the Son). Another translation of the words “one brought up with him” is “a master workman.” Both support the concepts expressed in this section.
This dual aspect of the relative Godhead is shown in the beginning of the Bible: “God said, Let there be light: and there was light.”The “saying” is the Work (economia) of the Son. The act of producing–and being–the light is the Work of the Holy Spirit.
Another Perspective
We can approach this matter another way. Everything in the universe is composed of molecules, which in turn are composed of atoms, which themselves are bundles of particles. The particles themselves, in the final analysis, are waves of energy. So creation can be understood to be one vast wave of energy, which in turn is light. As said before, Saint Bernard saw that the entire cosmos is a single beam of light. And that beam of light, emanating from the Life beyond Light, is the Holy Spirit.
The entire universe is one great thought. God the Father is the immortal Thinker, God the Son is the Concept-Word that is thought by the Father, and God the Holy Spirit is the Speaking of the Thought itself. Once again we come back to the “essence and energies” definition of the Godhead spoken of in an earlier chapter. God Is ALL
Everything is light existing in Light. The universe is a vast expanse of forms of light floating in a sea of Light. And that Light is Consciousness Itself, Which is God. Most so-called theologians are horrified at the idea of pantheism, being unable to cope with the idea that God is everything that exists. But pantheism, which literally means “God is all,” is not a doctrine but an experience–the experience of the saints. It should be understood that we are not saying that the universe is God, we are saying that God is manifesting as the universe. There is a difference. We are not trying to deify “life” or “existence” or “reality” to replace the truth of the personal triune God. That is not pantheism at all, but an attempt to substitute physical existence for spiritual reality.
The brain and those brain centers by which we see, hear, taste, smell, and feel are just whorls in an infinite sea of Light. And that Light is the Holy Spirit. This is why “Light” and “God” are synonyms in the vocabulary of mysticism. Spirit And Energy
How is this ocean of light changed into waves of shapes and forms in the cycles of creation? Through the Holy Spirit, the “breath of God.” “And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.” When consciousness moves, we call it energy and light. When it does not move, we call it spirit. But it is only one Thing. It has no name and form of Its own, but is the origin of all names and forms, manifesting as the duality of subject and object.
Incarnation In Light
The vibrating light and power which we call “matter” is really the Holy Spirit. On a cosmic scale Christ-God, the Only-begotten of the Father, is the inmost light essence, wrapped in the energy light of every atom of this whirling creation which is the Holy Spirit.
The Creed states that Jesus was incarnate by the Holy Spirit. That is, the light ocean took a particle of itself and manifested it as a body that could be born. The Christ, Who is ever “incarnate” through the Holy Spirit on the macrocosmic level, became incarnate upon the earth, on the microcosmic level, through the Holy Spirit.
The Holy Spirit is eternally the bearer of Christ. The icons called “Throne of Heaven,” in which the Christ Child is seated on the lap of the enthroned Virgin, have a dual application–to Jesus and Mary in the microcosm and to the Son and the Holy Spirit in the macrocosm. The Holy Spirit is Urania, the Heaven-Mother, in whose “lap” of infinite sky “sits” the divine Sun, the source of life. The earliest depictions of Christ are found in the Roman catacombs. There Jesus is depicted as Helios, the Sun God. And the “womb” which bears Him is the Heaven-Mother, the Holy Spirit, the archetypal Theotokos, the “Birthgiver of God.” Incarnation Within The Holy Spirit
This “one Lord, Jesus Christ” became incarnate by entering into the moving Spirit and allowing Himself to be circumscribed and contained in a finite body. This is why in the Byzantine Orthodox Liturgy the priest prays: “In the grave with the body, in Hades with the soul, in Paradise with the thief, and on the throne with the Father wast Thou, O boundless Christ, filling all things.” We must not look upon Christ as being under the limitations of time and space. He entered the realm of the Holy Spirit, enclosing Himself in a body of matter, which is in essence the Holy Spirit in manifestation, and was ever the Master of His incarnate presence. The Screen Of Life
A motion picture screen has no color or form of its own. It does not move or change, yet the projectionist can produce upon it a countless variety of forms, colors, motions, etc., all in constant change. In the same way the Holy Spirit, manifesting as the material universe, is the “screen” upon which the drama of creation unfolds under the direction of the Son. Christ, the Maker of all things, without Whom “was not any thing made that was made,” projects His will onto the screen as the Word, and the Holy Spirit then assumes the desired appearance. It is an interaction of Light with Light. Descent Into Matter
Then, “in the fulness of time,” the Word created a body for Himself out of the vibrating power, the Great Amen, the Holy Spirit, and thereby “descended” into the plane of material existence, as had we–but without going astray. God is all around us, but by entering into relative existence we, in one sense, “went out” from God. The Lord refers to this in the book of Revelation, saying: “Him that overcometh will I make a pillar in the temple of my God, and he shall go no more out,” for we are constantly falling back into the womb of the universe through the perpetual cycle of birth and death upon the earth. However, when the mind is repolarized through conscious union with God the Absolute, it remains with Him forever; nothing can separate it. But until then, whenever it begins to turn away from God, from the inner kingdom, it becomes polarized toward that which is outward, and it falls–descends. The spirit looks at the “fruit” of separate existence from God as being “like God” in free will and independence. Considering it pleasant of prospect, it says: “How good to ‘eat’!” It then reaches outward, loses its balance (repolarizes), and falls over the abyss into manifested existence, into the ocean of light which is God–an involvement which produces forgetfulness of God. So the spirit is never really away from God, but rather has lost its awareness of God. The Divine Trap
The universe, although divine, is somewhat like Joel Chandler Harris’ tar baby–we touch it and get stuck. Then if we want to get unstuck, we kick it, fight it, and get stuck even more.
We are trying to be happy in a world whose very effect on us is misery. In our delusion we think that the way to be happy is to become more and more involved in the world, but the more we are involved in the world the more we are “stuck up” in it. We become all the more bound by it the more intimately it touches us. As a result, we suffer increasingly, becoming, at last, helpless slaves.
Just as in the Uncle Remus story the rabbit begins to be roasted by the fire, so we are roasted in the fire of Gehenna spoken of by Jesus in the ninth chapter of the Gospel of Saint Mark. For this flawed world is the place indicated by Jesus through the symbol of Gehenna, the Valley of Hinnom, which was the garbage dump outside Jerusalem where the smoke of the burning filth “ascendeth up for ever and ever,” where the fire never went out and yet never reached sufficient intensity to destroy the maggots that constantly crawled and worked throughout the masses of refuse. It unfortunately is an appropriate and accurate symbol of this earthly life away from God, “Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched.” Christ, The Seed
To save us, He “was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin.” Never did ignorance touch Him, but He willingly took upon Himself the product of ignorance: a mortal body. By doing so, He enabled us to ascend by the very thing through which we had descended, enabling us to come to fruition as sons of God. Like the leaven in dough the consciousness developed in meditation ultimately spreads through the whole mass of our being and changes it into a living substance. Through involvement with our mortal bodies we came under the yoke of death, but through meditating within that very body we are enabled to regain our lost life of Paradise. The Power Of Incarnation
Since Christ came to reveal to us the truth about ourselves, part of the “message” given to us through the Creed is that the power which enables incarnation is the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit has manifested as the universe in which the numberless intelligences, the spirits, are embodying themselves in the long process of descending and ascending, either going back to God or hiding from God, delaying their return homeward. All is effected through the power of the Holy Spirit.
The Dove Of Light
It should be no surprise to us that the Holy Spirit is not a dove, though the Gospel describes Her as descending “like” or “in the form of” a dove. The Holy Spirit’s appearance at the Baptism of Christ was no doubt like the light forms that were seen so plentifully when the Virgin was appearing in Zeitoun, a suburb of Cairo, in the 1960’s. Because of their general outline they came to be designated as “doves,” though they were forms of light.
The Light Which had overshadowed the Virgin Mary according to the prophecy of the Archangel Gabriel, and through Which Jesus had descended to dwell in Her womb as the Incarnate Lord, shone upon Him on the banks of the Jordan River, showing us that when the Light shines on us in our inmost being, we are from that moment enabled to begin our ascent through the Light back to the Bosom of the Father from which Christ descended to us.
The Holy Spirit, our Mother, gives us birth into this world and into eternity, as well. She is the womb that bears us into whatever region of “the many mansions” within our Father’s House we are sent by our spiritual destiny. But within the scope of our life in this world, when the inner Light shines upon us, we must realize that the purpose of that illumination is to begin our ascent back to the Father. No longer should we remain in the muddle of this world. We should actively strive to ascend in the Light. The Holy Spirit Is Life
Another aspect of the Holy Spirit is Life. The Holy Spirit imparts life to us in relative existence, giving us the opportunity for the return to the Father and our original perfection. For this reason, in Eastern Christian theology and hymns the Holy Spirit is most commonly called “The Life Giver” and “The Spirit of Life.” In this context the term “life” has a twofold meaning, a higher and a lower. The lower meaning is our human idea of life, which is life in a body, in a seemingly separate existence from God. This, of course, is illusory, but it is possible by the grace of God to grow and evolve out of the illusion. The higher meaning is that of divine illumination which reveals to us the truth of our being–an illumination which reveals that our present mode of life is but a dream, though a divine dream.
The descent from the infinite Being into relative existence, and the passing from “life” to “life” in various material forms, was meant to be done with full mastery in peace and actual spiritual joy. But the rebellion of Lucifer and of Adam and Eve spoiled all of that and turned what should have been a pilgrimage of joy into a nightmare of bondage and suffering–which we mistake for an inescapable reality. And so, She Who provides the very substance of our dreams, which are Herself as Light, in time reveals to us the nature of our dream and calls us unto awakening. She who lulls us to sleep awakens us “in the fulness of time.”
All beings are asleep under the Mother’s “spell,” but when the time is right She awakens us. Some She awakens gradually and gently, and some She awakens quickly and roughly. These latter are those who have not heeded Her previous, gentle hints. This is why it is best to take up intense spiritual life now, while Mother is still just hinting at us. For in time, if we delay too long, Mother can get very forceful, indeed.
The Divine Duality
Within the realm of the immanent, Personal God there is duality, a polarization of the Godhead into Positive and Negative, into “Male” and “Female.” The Only-begotten Son is the male, positive half, and the Holy Spirit Mother is the feminine, negative half.
The Yin-Yang symbol of the Taoists is as accurate as humanly-conceived symbols can be. The complete circle is divided into two equal shapes, one red (or sometimes black) and the other white, to indicate the active and passive principles. The shapes of the two halves are absolutely equal in form and area. But in each half there is a core, a dot that is of the other half’s color. This indicates that the essential nature of each is the being of the other. The red is essentially white, and the white is essentially red. This is contradictory, but so are all successful approximations of Reality.
To us, in the context of Gnostic Christianity, the meaning is that the Only-begotten Son is the essential life of the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit is the essential life of the Only-begotten Son. Why? Because they are One, though Two. Consciousness is in energy and energy is in consciousness. Spirit is in matter and matter is in Spirit. Intelligence is in vibration and vibration is in intelligence. The Son-Father is in the Mother and the Mother is in the Son-Father. Eternity is in time and time is in eternity. They are inseparable.
The Only-begotten Son and the Holy Spirit are the archetypal pair of an infinite series of dualities,reaching from the rarest heights of pure Spirit to the grossest depths of matter. They are seen as two in the defective sight of the imperfect, but to the perfect, the illumined, they are seen to be One.
But we must know the Two before we can know the One. For by the Duality we ascend to the Unity, just as we long ago departed from the Unity and descended into the Duality.
Matter Is Divine
Science has “discovered” that matter is never destroyed or lost–only changed into other forms. From eternity matter has never been increased or decreased by one particle, for matter is the undiminishable life and light of the Holy Spirit. The fact that nothing in the universe can really go out of existence is proof of its divinity. The universe is immortal, because it is a manifestation of the immortal God–the Holy Spirit. A Cosmic Significance
There is another meaning to the statement that the Only-begotten came down from heaven and was incarnate by the Holy Spirit for our salvation. When creation is to manifest for the evolution-salvation of the individual spirits, God both expands himself and enters into creation, incarnating Himself in matter as its guiding Intelligence. In this way God descends and is incarnate within the Holy Spirit’s manifestation as matter. So each projection of creation is an incarnation of God as expressed by Bishop James I. Wedgwood in his prayer regarding the Son “Who abiding unchangeable within Thyself, didst nevertheless in the mystery of Thy boundless love and Thine eternal Sacrifice breathe forth Thine own divine life into Thy universe and thus didst offer Thyself as the Lam slain from the foundation of the world, dying in very truth that we might live. Omnipotent, all-pervading, by that self-same sacrifice Thou dost continually uphold all creation,…the enduring sacrifice by which the world is nourished and sustained.”
More chapters of the Gnosis of the Creed:
• Chapter One—The Nicene Creed
• Chapter Two—I believe
• Chapter Three—In one God, the Father almighty
• Chapter Four—Maker of heaven and earth, And of all things visible and invisible
• Chapter Five—And in one Lord
• Chapter Six—Jesus Christ
• Chapter Seven—The Only-begotten Son of God, Begotten of the Father before all ages. Light from Light, True God from true God. Begotten not made, Being of one substance with the Father; By Whom all things were made.
• Chapter Eight—Who for us men, and for our salvation
• Chapter Nine—Came down from heaven
• Chapter Ten—And was incarnate by the Holy Spirit
• Chapter Eleven—Of the Virgin Mary. And was made Man.
• Chapter Twelve—He was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate. Suffered and was buried.
• Chapter Thirteen—And the third day He rose again according to the Scriptures. And ascended into heaven. He sitteth at the right hand of the Father.
• Chapter Fourteen—And He shall come again with glory to judge the living and the dead.
• Chapter Fifteen—Of Whose kingdom there shall be no end.
• Chapter Sixteen—And in the Holy Spirit, the Lady and Giver of life: Who proceedeth from the Father. Who together with the Father and the Son Is worshipped and glorified. Who spoke by the prophets.
• Chapter Seventeen—And in one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church.
• Chapter Eighteen—I confess one baptism for the remission of sins.
• Chapter Nineteen—And I look for the resurrection of the dead. And the life of the age to come. Amen.
1) John 1:14 [Go back]
2) Hebrews 4:15 [Go back]
3) Romans 7:24 [Go back]
4) Matthew 9:20-22 [Go back]
5) “Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. For he that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption; but he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting. And let us not be weary in well doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not.” (Galatians 6:7-9) [Go back]
6) John 20:17 [Go back]
7) Matthew 27:46 [Go back]
8) “And as they thus spake, Jesus himself stood in the midst of them, and saith unto them, Peace be unto you.” (Luke 24:36) “Then the same day at evening, being the first day of the week, when the doors were shut where the disciples were assembled for fear of the Jews, came Jesus and stood in the midst, and saith unto them, Peace be unto you.” (John 20:19) [Go back]
9) “And as they thus spake, Jesus himself stood in the midst of them, and saith unto them, Peace be unto you. But they were terrified and affrighted, and supposed that they had seen a spirit. And he said unto them, Why are ye troubled? and why do thoughts arise in your hearts? Behold my hands and my feet, that it is I myself: handle me, and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have. And when he had thus spoken, he shewed them his hands and his feet.” (Luke 24:36-40) [Go back]
10) Romans 13:14 [Go back]
11) “And he [God] said, Thou canst not see my face: for there shall no man see me, and live.” (Exodus 33:20) “No man hath seen God at any time.” (John 1:18) “Ye have neither heard his voice at any time, nor seen his shape.” (John 5:37b) “Not that any man hath seen the Father, save he which is of God, he hath seen the Father.” (John 6:46) [Go back]
12) “And now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory which I had with thee before the world was.” (John 17:5) [Go back]
13) I Corinthians 2:1,4 [Go back]
14) “I have manifested thy name unto the men which thou gavest me out of the world: thine they were, and thou gavest them me; and they have kept thy word. Now they have known that all things whatsoever thou hast given me are of thee.” (John 17:6,7) [Go back]
15) “By the word of the Lord were the heavens made; and all the host of them by the breath of his mouth.” (Psalms 33:6) [Go back]
16) Proverbs 8:30 [Go back]
17) Revelation 3:14 [Go back]
18) Ezekiel 43:2; Revelation 1:15, 14:2 [Go back]
19) Exodus 19:16,19; Revelation 1:10 [Go back]
20) Acts 2:2; Ezekiel 3:12,13 [Go back]
21) Genesis 1:3 [Go back]
22) Job 37:10 [Go back]
23) Genesis 1:2 [Go back]
24) Galatians 4:4; Ephesians 1:10 [Go back]
25) Revelation 3:12 [Go back]
26) Revelation 14:11 [Go back]
27) Mark 9:44,46,48 [Go back]
28) Hebrews 4:15 [Go back]
29) Matthew 3:16; Mark 1:10; Luke 3:22; John 1:32 [Go back]
30) “And the angel answered and said unto her, The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee: therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God.” (Luke 1:35) [Go back]
31) “In my Father’s house are many mansions.” (John 14:2) [Go back] |
