Gleanings of a Mystic. Max Heindel

he has placed before them the blessing and the curse, exhorts them to choose the good or take the consequence of their actions; then he leaves them.

      

      The phenomenon of the rainbow requires that the sun be near the horizon, the nearer the better; also a clear atmosphere, and a dark rain cloud in the opposite quarter of the heavens. When under such conditions an observer stands with his back to the sun, he may see the sun’s rays refracted through the rain drops as a rainbow. In early Atlantean times when there had been no rain as yet and the atmosphere was a warm, moist fog through which the sun appeared as one of our arc lamps on a foggy day, the phenomenon of the rainbow was an impossibility. It could not have made its appearance until the mist had condensed to rain, flooded the basins of the earth, and left the atmosphere clear as described in the story of Noah, which thus points to the law of alternating cycles that brings day and night, summer and winter, in unvarying sequence, and to which man is subject in the present age.

      Noah cultivated the vine and provided a spirit to stimulate man. Thus, equipped with a composite constitution, a composite diet appropriate thereto, and divine laws to guide them, mankind were left to their own devices in the battle of life.

Chapter IV

       The Sacrament of Communion

       “In Remembrance of Me.”

       Table of Contents

      PART II

      “The Lord Jesus, the same night in which he was betrayed took bread; and when he had given thanks, he brake it and said, Take, eat; this is MY body, which is broken for you. This do in remembrance of me. After the same manner also he took the cup, when he had supped, saying This cup is the New Testament in MY blood. This do ye, as oft as ye drink it, in remembrance of me. For as often as ye eat this bread, and drink this cup, ye do shew the Lord’s death till he come. Wherefore, whosoever shall eat this bread, and drink this cup of the Lord unworthily, shall be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord.... For he that eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and drinketh damnation to himself.... For this cause many are weak and sickly among you, and many sleep.”—I Cor. 11:23-30.

      In the foregoing passages there is a deeply hidden esoteric meaning which is particularly obscured in the English translation, but in the German, Latin, and Greek, the student still has a hint as to what was really intended by that last parting injunction of the Savior to His disciples. Before examining this phase of the subject, let us first consider the words, “in remembrance of me.” We shall then perhaps be in better condition to understand what is meant by the “cup” and the “bread.”

      Suppose a man from a distant country comes into our midst and travels about from place to place. Everywhere he will see small communities gathering around the Table of the Lord to celebrate this most sacred of all Christian rites, and should he ask why, he would be told that they do this in remembrance of One who lived a life nobler than any other has lived upon this earth; One who was kindness and love personified; One who was the servant of all, regardless of gain or loss to self. Should this stranger then compare the attitude of these religious communities on Sunday at the celebration of this rite, with their civic lives during the remainder of the week, what would he see?

      Every one among us goes out into the world to fight the battle of existence. Under the law of necessity we forget the love which should be the ruling factor in Christian lives. Every man’s hand is against his brother. Every one strives for position, wealth, and power that goes with these attributes. We forget on Monday what we reverently remembered on Sunday, and all the world is poor in consequence. We also make a distinction between the bread and wine which we drink at the so-called “Lord’s Table,” and the food of which we partake during the intervals between attendance at Communion. But there is no warrant in the Scriptures for any such distinction, as anyone may see, even in the English version, by leaving out the words printed in italics which have been inserted by the translators to give what they thought was the sense of a passage. On the contrary, we are told that whether we eat or drink, or whatever we do, all should be done to the glory of God. Our every act should be a prayer. The perfunctory “grace” at meals is in reality a blasphemy, and the silent thought of gratitude to the Giver of daily bread is far to be preferred. When we remember at each meal that it has been drawn from the substance of the earth, which is the body of the indwelling Christ Spirit, we can properly understand how that body is being broken for us daily, and we can appreciate the loving kindness which prompted Him thus to give Himself for us; for let us also remember that there is not a moment, day or night, that He is not suffering because bound to this earth. When we thus eat and thus realize the true situation, we are indeed declaring to ourselves the death of the Lord, whose spirit is groaning and travailing, waiting for the day of liberation when there shall be no need of such a dense environment as we now require.

      But there is another, a greater and more wonderful mystery hidden in these words of the Christ. Richard Wagner, with the rare intuition of the master musician, sensed this idea when he sat in meditation by the Zurich Sea on a Good Friday, and there flashed into his mind the thought, “What connection is there between the death of the Savior and the millions of seeds sprouting forth from the earth at this time of the year?” If we meditate upon that life which is annually poured out in the spring, we see it as something gigantic and awe-inspiring; a flood of life which transforms the globe from one of frozen death to rejuvenated life in a short space of time; and the life which thus diffuses itself in the budding of millions and millions of plants is the life of the Earth Spirit.

      From that come both the wheat and the grape. They are the body and blood of the imprisoned Earth Spirit, given to sustain mankind during the present phase of its evolution. We repudiate the contention of people who claim that the world owes them a living, regardless of their own efforts and without material responsibility on their part, but we nevertheless insist that there is a spiritual responsibility connected with the bread and wine given at the Lord’s Supper: It must be eaten worthily, otherwise, under pain of ill health and even death. This from the ordinary manner of reading would seem far-fetched, but when we bring the light of esotericism to bear, examine other translations of the Bible, and look at conditions in the world as we find them today, we shall see that it is not so far-fetched after all.

      To begin with, we must go back to the time when man lived under the guardianship of the angels, unconsciously building the body which he now uses. That was in ancient Lemuria. A brain was needed for the evolution of thought, and a larynx for verbal expression of the same. Therefore, half of the creative force was turned upwards and used by man to form these organs. Thus mankind became single sexed and was forced to seek a complement when it was necessary to create a new body to serve as an instrument in a higher phase of evolution.

      While the act of love was consummated under the wise guardianship of the angels, man’s existence was free from sorrow, pain, and death. But when, under the tutelage of the Lucifer Spirits, he ate of the Tree of Knowledge and perpetuated the race without regard for interplanetary lines of force, he transgressed the law, and the bodies thus formed crystallized unduly, and became subject to death in a much more perceptible manner than had hitherto been the case. Thus he was forced to create new bodies more frequently as the span of life in them shortened. Celestial warders of the creative force drove him from the garden of love into the wilderness of the world, and he was made responsible for his actions under the cosmic law which governs the universe. Thus for ages he struggled on, seeking to work out his own salvation, and the earth in consequence crystallized more and more.

      Divine hierarchies, the Christ Spirit included, worked upon the earth from without as the group spirit guides the animals under its protectorate; but as Paul truly says, none could be justified under the law, for under the law all sinned, and all must die. There is in the old covenant no hope beyond the present, save a foreshadowing of one who is to come and restore righteousness. Thus John tells us that the law was given by Moses, and grace came by the Lord Jesus Christ. But what is grace? Can grace work contrary to law and abrogate it entirely? Certainly not. The laws of God are steadfast and sure, or the universe would become chaos. The law of gravity keeps