 Gnosis of the Creed –by Swami Nirmalananda Giri
Chapter Nine—Came down from heaven
 Heaven
“Heaven,” uranos, symbolizes the limitless expanse of Consciousness which is God. Since that Consciousness-God is beyond all conditions of time and space, the expression “came down” cannot be interpreted in terms of movement in space. Jesus, being in full oneness with God, could not possibly “move”–come or go–anywhere, since there is no place where God is not already. David sang: “Whither shall I go from thy spirit?…If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there: if I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there. If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea; Even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me.” There is not even the distinction of up and down to people who are outside the orbit of our planet, much less to those united to the infinite God. “Presence” Is A Matter Of Attunement
Hundreds of radio and television broadcasts are simultaneously present in the air around us, which a radio can pick up one at a time through tuning in to them. In the same way, all realms of existence and all that is within them ever present to us, though usually beyond our perception; and the perception or non-perception of them is really only a matter of attunement. All we need do to perceive and function within them is to determine the specific rate of vibration that is the fundamental “key note” of their existence and then attune or align our consciousness with it. As with radio and television, the moment we are attuned rightly we will begin to see and hear. The saints can tune themselves to any wave length they desire and thus be instantly present with anyone who broadcasts to them through prayer. Saints still embodied on the earth plane can transfer their physical presence from one point to another in a moment, whatever the distance.
“Coming down from” is only a way of speaking to our earthbound consciousness, just as we often speak in a childish way in order to communicate with children, sometimes explaining things to them in a very incomplete, even inaccurate, way so they can at least grasp the fundamental principles. And the Creed is doing just that here.
It is important for us to realize (as best we can at this point in our development) that the incarnation of Jesus the Christ, His coming into manifestation, was simply a matter of “turning the dial.” In the realm of Divine reality, “descent” and “ascent” indicate the manifestation of the Infinite on planes of higher or lower consciousness. In saying that He came down, the Creed is indicating that He allied and merged His consciousness with the human consciousness and form, returning to the state He had long ago transcended. Why Did He Come Down?
What was the purpose for this? He attuned Himself to our consciousness and descended to us, taking on our form, that we might through Him attune ourselves to His consciousness and ascend to Him, divesting ourselves of all relative forms and conditions, and become united with Him–and consequently with God–in perfect oneness of being and life.
He descended that we might ascend. He became the bridge between finitude and infinity, between the life that is God and the death that is separation from God. He did not build the bridge, He became the bridge, spanning the awesome gulf between God and man. He did this by merging and “tuning down” His consciousness. The Bible says He “emptied himself, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men.”
This is the great mystery: He Who had attained changelessness underwent change. He Who had become birthless and deathless was born and died, having experienced need and pain–both of which had become impossible to Him.
He Who was sitting in the Throne of the Father, hearing the praises “Holy God, Holy Mighty, Holy Immortal,” became man, became weak, became mortal to fulfill the second part of that eternal hymn, the petition: “Have mercy on us!” Jesus Christ in His heavenly status was awesome even to the Cherubim and Seraphim–but in His incarnation He is even more awesome. The Dual Purpose For “Coming Down”
Why did He do such an awesome thing? First, to expiate the ancient wrong and pay the ancient debt, and secondly, to teach us the truth about ourselves, for His “story” is ours, as well. We, too, were with the Father in His bosom, Light from Light, true God from true God. But we sank (that is perhaps a better word than “fell”), and as we sank down through the worlds of manifestation, we took on ourselves grosser and grosser modes of consciousness. The vibrations of those grosser modes of awareness became congealed into body-vehicles that could manifest those states of consciousness. We did not stop descending until we arrived at the nadir of existence, that which we call physical “life,” and there we “forgot ourselves” and began to wander throughout ages upon ages–seeking, yet having forgotten what we were seeking. Spiritual Therapy
Since we descended by tuning our consciousness, we shall ascend in the same way. The first step is to establish ourselves in the practice of meditation. All our spiritual endeavors should be evaluated in the context of whether or not we are attaining this attunement of consciousness.
Meditation is therapy–esoteric medication. Through it we lift ourselves into the realms of higher vibration. It is a hierarchical “Jacob’s ladder” which we can climb upward to regain our heavenly kingdom in God.
This passage from the lowest consciousness of earth up to the highest consciousness of Spirit is the true “Path of the Masters.” Salvation Is Reattunement To God
It is not amiss to say that salvation is simply the reattunement of our consciousness. When we lose the consciousness of our divine identity, we begin to think we are mere mortals, tossed about by the waves of constant birth and death. Believing we are “sinners” we therefore “sin” by foolish and harmful acts. We grieve over our mortality and our sinfulness, considering ourselves “lost,” but these are only states of distorted consciousness that need to be dispelled.
We are dreaming terrible dreams of bondage, suffering, and death. We need to awake and be free. That is not an easy or simple process, but it is the only viable one. We must take the road to awakening sooner or later–so why not now? To really “make a decision for Christ” is to make the resolve to recover our own Christhood and then begin the very real labor of recovering our lost state of consciousness as the sons of God. The Hypnosis Of The World
Human beings can be hypnotized and told: “You are hot,” and they will begin to perspire. Or, if they are told: “You are cold,” they will begin to shiver. If a hypnotized person is touched and told: “I am touching you with a red-hot iron,” he will blister! Our earthly life is itself a hypnotic spell. We are experiencing the illusions of birth, sin, suffering, desire, and death under the evil suggestions of Satan, “the accuser,” “the murderer from the beginning.” We believe and accept the suggestions of the subtle serpent, and under that spell lies have become truth and truth has become as lies unto us. Self-Awakening Is Necessary
We wilfully fell under the spell of relative existence, and by the exercise of will alone can we awaken from it. This is the law. We turned away from God and embraced illusion. We entered into the great lie because we thought it would be fun to play with. When Eve looked at the fruit and decided it would be good to eat, in that moment she mutated herself into a duality. She felt that she would obtain fulfillment from an external object, as though she, herself, were an externalized being. That was her amartano, her terrible falling-short. She turned away from her true, inner self and turned her life forces outward.
In this way she started herself, Adam, and all their descendants running in the futile pursuit of outward satisfaction. In the old-time motion picture comedies, the children dangle a carrot in front of the horse and the horse runs after it, but no matter how much energy he expends, it is always just beyond his reach. In the same way, we live out our lives of frustrated hopes on this earth, reaching and reaching and reaching until we discover too late, in our emptiness, that we have only propelled ourselves downward into grosser and grosser forms of existence.
“It shall even be as when an hungry man dreameth, and, behold, he eateth; but he awaketh, and his soul is empty: or as when a thirsty man dreameth, and, behold, he drinketh; but he awaketh, and, behold, he is faint, and his soul hath appetite.” Difference Between Us And Christ
The Holy Scriptures witness that the Lord Jesus became in all things like us except for “sin.” That is, without succumbing to delusion and thereby losing His state of awakened consciousness, He attuned Himself to our level of existence and entered into it fully. We are slaves to this condition, but He was the Master of it and intended to impart His mastery and freedom to us. He attuned Himself to our consciousness so we could in turn attune our consciousness to His, which is the link between us and the infinite consciousness of God. Through our reattunement, He unites us through Himself to God.
We must comprehend the necessity of our reattunement, which is a dynamic process and practice, far more vital than mere religious belief, “faith,” “hope,” or obedience. The word “religion” comes from the Latin religere, which means “to bind back.” Religion in its true sense is the reuniting of ourselves with God through reattunement. For we must realize that our passage from humanity to divinity is not effected by any external being or force, but by our own doing.
Salvation Is In The Will
He “came down from heaven,” He “clothed Himself in the robe of matter.” It only follows then that the way to be “saved” is to divest ourselves of matter and become freed into Spirit. But it must be our choice. In Shaw’s play Man and Superman, it is revealed to the characters that people can pass easily from heaven to hell–it is simply a matter of choice. No one is condemned to hell or rewarded with heaven. What you want and go after, you get! As Jesus said: “Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you.”
The Path Of Salvation
When we really understand the meaning of the words: “came down from heaven,” we then see the path of salvation which Christ came down to reveal. He brings light into our darkness, saying: “Here is the path.” But He does not pick us up and carry us along it.
People like the Good Shepherd depictions because they want Jesus to carry them back to God without any effort at all on their part. They dream up all sorts of spiritual gimmicks: an external Second Coming of Christ, the Rapture, the Aquarian Age, the Jupiter Effect, Halley’s Comet (remember the hoopla about “the Comet Kahoutek” in the ’seventies?), the Space Brothers, the Mother Ship and so forth, hoping that something–anything!–besides their own effort and will can save them. But in His coming Christ put it all in our hands. “Choose you this day whom ye will serve” is His eternal counsel.
An Evil Fantasy
Not only is the idea of salvation by an external entity mistaken, it is actually harmful, for it denies our inner power, which is God’s power. Such a denial is a whisper of Satan, “the destroyer,” the force which destroys our consciousness of who we really are.
Another word sometimes translated “Devil” is Apollon, which means “the accuser,” the one who tells us: “You are only a mortal, you are weak and sinful, you cannot rise above your bonds.” It deceives us into identifying with what we are not. That is why Jesus calls him a liar, and Saint John calls him “the accuser of the brethren.” Satan in the primary sense is our own delusion about our self. And those who propagate that delusion under the guise of religion or materialism are the real Satanists.
An excellent parable of “satanic” spiritual delusion is that of the washerman who owned several donkeys to carry the laundry. He never bothered to tie them up at night, but would just pass a loose rope around their legs, give it a tug, and take it away. The donkeys never moved throughout the night because they thought they were tied up! We believe we are bound and limited, so we say: “I can’t do that. Oh, I’m not ready for such intense spiritual life. It will be a while before I am evolved enough for that,” and such egoic nonsense. Another Delusion
On the other hand, if we start to awaken, Satan tries another strategy. When we begin to see the mess we are in, he denies it, and says: “Listen. You are God. We are all perfect. So what do you need to do? You are already There. It’s all just an illusion, just a show, and you are controlling it. Go with the flow! Don’t get roped into some unnatural type of negative ‘spiritual struggle’ business. And stay away from organized religion, whatever you do! Make up your own religion. Find your own way. You need worship nothing beyond your own self. Recognize your own divinity. Let others be free to be what they are, and you make sure they do the same for you. There’s nowhere to go, friend. It is all right here.” This is a classic example of truth being turned into a lie. And it makes a lot of money for its evangelists.
Whether Satan convinces us that we cannot help ourselves or that we need not help ourselves, the result is the same: we stay in his realm of delusion. I am speaking objectively, but the real Satan is within, in the form of wilful ignorance. Still Another Delusion
Another delusion that traps a great many people because it appears noble and religious is that of “missionarying” to others rather than digging in and getting spiritual experience for themselves. Those under the spell of this delusion consider it “selfish” to meditate and seek personal, inner knowledge. They preach that we should only “help” others, and “spread the good news,” and “uplift” people. Of course, the secondary delusion that goes along with that one is the belief that some type of mind-gaming with intellectual “challenge” and “inspiration” is going to really produce a change in people, which of course it will not. So these people “serve God without, in our fellow man,” by meddling around in other people’s lives and minds. Eventually they become engulfed in “social action,” and at long last wind up full circle and drop out of spiritual life altogether–and usually out of the social action, too. (Of course there are those who cant continually about “service” and never do a dot of service or commit an unselfish act even by accident. But it sounds good.) Two Things Needed
If we consider the matter carefully we will see that only two things are really needed: awakening and setting of the will. Not that these are easy! But they are needed to carry us through. Christ descended by His will to show us that we, too, have descended by our will and therefore can ascend by our will. He descended consciously and with mastership into matter. We, on the other hand, have descended into matter and become enslaved by becoming unconscious and entrapped therein.
The remedy, then, is evident: become conscious and regain the mastership. Then we will ascend whence we came, just as Jesus did. That is the Christ path. When He said: “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes unto the Father but by Me,” He was speaking not only of the truth that through union with Him we can return to God, but also that through becoming Christ we return to the Father, the Source of our being. And that is attaining salvation. Christians
This is why we are Christians, “other Christs.” We are not merely believers in Christ, we are Christs. Or, more accurately, we are in the process of becoming Christs. Until we attain Christhood we are all learners, preparing for that.
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) Psalm 139:7-10 [Go back]
2) Philippians 2:7 [Go back]
3) Genesis 28:10-12 [Go back]
4) Revelation 12:10 [Go back]
5) John 8:44 [Go back]
6) “Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made.” Genesis 3:1) [Go back]
7) Genesis 3:6 [Go back]
8) Isaiah 29:8 [Go back]
9) “For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin.” (Hebrews 4:15) [Go back]
10) Matthew 7:7 [Go back]
11) Joshua 24:15 [Go back]
12) Revelation 12:10 [Go back]
13) Romans 1:25 [Go back]
14) John 14:6 [Go back]
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