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 mil47lennia. 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 of48 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 life49 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.
Thus dissolution became only a question of time, particularly as the constructive energy of the vital body was also necessarily divided, one part or pole being used in the vital functions of the body, the other to replace a vehicle lost by death. But as the two50 poles of a magnet or dynamo are requisite to manifestation, so also two single-sexed beings became necessary for generation; thus marriage and birth were necessarily inaugurated to offset the effect of death. Death, then, is the price we pay for consciousness in the present world; marriage and repeated births are our weapons against the king of terrors until our constitution shall change and we become as angels.
Please mark that it is not stated that we are to become angels, but that we are to become as angels. For the angels are the humanity of the Moon Period; they belong to an entirely different stream of evolution, as different as are human spirits from those of our present animals. Paul states in his letter to the Hebrews that man was made for a little while inferior to the angels; he descended lower into the scale of materiality during the Earth Period, while the angels have never inhabited a globe denser than ether. As we build our bodies from the chemical constituents of the earth, so do the angels build theirs of ether. This substance is the direct avenue of all life forces, and when man has once become as the angels and has learned to build his body of ether, naturally there will be no death and no need of marriage to bring about birth.
But looking at marriage from another point of view, looking upon it as a union of souls rather than as a union of the sexes, we contact the wonderful mystery of Love. union of the sexes might serve to perpetuate the race, of course, but the true marriage is a51 companionship of souls also, which altogether transcends sex. Yet those really able to meet upon that lofty plane of spiritual intimacy gladly offer their bodies as living sacrifices upon the altar of Love of the Unborn, to woo a waiting spirit into an immaculately conceived body. Thus humanity may be saved from the reign of death.
This is readily apparent as soon as we consider the gentle action of the vital body and contrast it with that of the desire body in a fit of temper, where it is said that a man has “lost control” of himself. Under such conditions the muscles become tense, and nervous energy is expended at a suicidal rate, so that after such an outbreak the body may sometimes be prostrated for weeks. The hardest labor brings no such fatigue as a fit of temper; likewise a child conceived in passion under the crystallizing tendencies of the desire nature is naturally short-lived, and it is a regrettable fact that length of life is nowadays almost a misnomer; in view of the appalling infant mortality it ought to be called brevity of existence.
The building tendencies of the vital body, which is the vehicle of love, are not so easily watched, but observation proves that contentment lengthens the life of any one who cultivates this quality, and we may safely reason that a child conceived under conditions of harmony and love stands a better chance of life than one conceived under conditions of anger, inebriety, and passion.
52
According to Genesis it was said to the woman, “In sorrow shalt thou bear children,” and it has always been a sore puzzle to Bible commentators what logical connection there may be between the eating of fruit and the pains of parturition. But when we understand the chaste references of the Bible to the act of generation, the connection is readily perceived. While the insensitive Negro or Indian mother may bear her child and shortly afterward resume her labors in the field, the western woman, more acutely sensitive and of high-strung nervous temperament, is year by year finding it more difficult to go through the ordeal of motherhood, though aided by the best and most skilled scientific help.
The contributory reasons are various: In the first place, while we are exceedingly careful in selecting our horses and cattle for breeding, while we insist upon pedigree for the animals in order that we may bring out the very best strain of stock upon our farms, we exercise no such care with respect to the selection of a father or mother for our children. We mate upon impulse and regret it at our leisure, aided by laws which make it all too easy to enter or leave the sacred bonds of matrimony. The words pronounced by minister or judge are taken to be a license for unlimited indulgence, as if any man-made law could license the contravention of the law of God. While animals mate only at a certain time of the year and the mother is53 undisturbed during the period of pregnancy, this is not true of the human race.
In view of these facts is it to be wondered at that we find such a dread of maternity, and is it not time that we seek to remedy the matter by a more sane relation between marriage partners? Astrology will reveal the temper and tendencies of each human being; it will enable two people to blend their characters in such a manner that a love life may be lived, and it will indicate the periods when interplanetary lines of force are most nearly conducive to painless parturition. Thus it will enable us to draw from the bosom of nature, children of love, capable of living long lives in good health. Finally the day will come when these bodies will have been made so perfect in their ethereal purity that they may last throughout the coming Age, and thus make marriage superfluous.
But if we can love now when we see one another “through a glass darkly,” through the mask of personality and the veil of misunderstanding, we may be sure that the love of soul for soul, purged of passion in the furnace of sorrow, will be our brightest gem in heaven as its shadow is on earth.