THE MARK

Maurice Nicoll
 Contents
Preface
PHYSICAL AND SPIRITUAL MAN

TRANSFORMATION
Meaning
Transformation of Life
Transformation of Man
Transformation of Meaning
THE PARABLE OF THE SOWER
NOTE ON THE PARABLE OF THE GRAIN OF MUSTARD SEED
ΜΕΤΑΝΟΙΑ
NICODEMUS
TRUTH
A NEW HEAVEN AND A NEW EARTH
John the Baptist
The Teaching of Christ
Esoteric Schools
The Consummation of the Age
War in Heaven
THE NEW WILL
THE TELOS
Appendix
 PREFACE

B MauricehisNicoll,
EFORE death on August 30th, 1953, my father, Dr
was writing a book to which he referred
as The Mark.
When Dr Nicoll died he had not yet decided on the order of
the contents of this book, and they have therefore been arranged
as we think he would have wished.
The Parable of the Sower and the Seed, Metanoia, Nicodemus and
Truth had already been finished and corrected and were
clearly meant for inclusion in this book.
He also definitely wished to include the dream, headed The
New Will, the incomplete piece on War in Heaven, and the
unfinished chapter at the end of the book called The Telos.
A few fragments from his notebooks have been added where
it is thought they may interest the reader. The rest of the material
is taken from papers he wrote at various times, and which he
might, or might not, have included.
I would only add that here, often in passages of great beauty,
is the key for those who long for a greater understanding of the
teaching of Christ, and the meaning of our existence on this
earth.
JANE MOUNSEY
Physical and Spiritual Man
 PART ONE

A touchestouches
ΜΑΝ the Earth with his physical feet, but he
life with his psychological feet. His most ex-
ternal psychological level is sensual, a matter of sensation,
a matter of the senses. That is, his most external thinking and
feeling arise from what he perceives from sense. This level
represents the feet of his psychological being as distinct from the
feet of his physical being, and the kind of shoes which cover his
feet represent his particular views, opinions, and attitudes that
he wears or uses in his approach to sense-given life. Without
your five senses, external life would not exist for you.
How does a man walk the Earth? We speak here psycho-
logically. How does his outermost psychology relate itself to
external life?
Now a man who understands life only through the evidence
of his senses is not a psychological man. He is a sensual man. His
mind is based on sense. This is called elsewhere 'the mind of
the flesh'. [ό vovs της σαρκός (Col. ii.18.)] In such a case he
thinks from his feet - and has no head. Most particularly, he
thinks from what 'shoes' cover his feet. This is his form of truth,
different in different cases, but of the same order or level. He is
as yet far from being a Man. He thinks literally. He takes, say,
a parable literally. But, to become a Man, one must begin to
think, apart from literal sense. What is significant to anyone
who craves internal development is to think psychologically.
Why, for example, is it said so often in esoteric literature, as in
the Scriptures, that a man must remove his shoes before entering
a sacred place? It means that the sensual mind cannot under-
stand psychological truth. So he is told to remove his shoes -
that is, his sense-based truth - because the mind based on the
senses and the truth formed from their evidence is not capable
of comprehending a higher order or level of truth - that is,
psychological truth. To put the matter in other terms: the
physical man cannot comprehend the spiritual man.
So, when it is said that it is necessary to take off one's shoes
before entering a sacred or holy place, it signifies that the sensual
cannot comprehend the spiritual. Sensual thought cannot touch
a level above itself. Another kind of thinking is required. The
mind is at different levels and its lowest level cannot grasp the
working of higher levels. To try to understand psychological
truth with the lowest, most external level of the mind is im-
possible. So those shoes must be removed when entering into the
sphere of knowledge above sense-knowledge. To drag psycho-
logical understanding down to the level of sensual understanding is to
destroy everything in Man that can lead to his internal development and
make him a man inwardly.

People try to understand 'God' and the 'Divine' with their

sensual mind. They try to understand with their shoes, not
their head.

When the angel appeared to Moses in the burning bush, he

said to Moses: 'Draw not nigh hither: put off thy shoes from off
thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground'
(Exodus iii.5 A.V.). And when the angel with the drawn sword
stood before Joshua, when he came to Jericho, he said to
Joshua: 'Loose thy shoe from off thy foot; for the place whereon
thou standest is holy' (Joshua v.15 A.V.). The disciples of Christ
who were sent out to preach the Gospel had to go without
shoes. 'Provide . . . neither shoes' (Matthew x.10 A. V.).

A man has an organised physical body given to him. He then

comes under the organisation of the civilisation to which we
belong. This social organisation is kept going by means of laws.
A man commits murder. The laws of his country condemn him.
But Man has not a psychological body. He has no inner organi-
sation. He obeys the laws out of fear and for the sake of avoiding
scandal. In himself, if all restraints were abolished, he would
murder those he hates. Hate is a deep factor. In one sense it is
possible to say we all hate one another. We are told: 'Thou
shalt do no murder' (Exodus xx.13). Literally taken, this com-
mand is kept because of the fear of consequences. Psychologi-
cally it means that one must do no murder in one's thoughts or
feelings. It is just in this inner sphere that the inner development
can take place. It is the psychological meaning of the command.

THE FEET AND THE HEAD

The psychological man is constantly the theme of vision,
parable and dream. He is divided variously into outer and inner
parts. This is the same as lower and higher levels. The head
represents the highest or inmost division of the psychological
man. To mix the thinking of the feet (the shoes) with that of the
head is to confuse two levels. The thinking of the feet forms the
shoes and is sensual and so it concerns the outer objects of sense.
The thinking of the head is psychological and so concerns the
inner meaning of things. These two orders of truth are not contra-
dictory, but become so if they are viewed as opposites. They are
not opposites but on different levels. So there are different forms
of truth, on different levels. But if a man thinks only from his
feet he cannot understand levels. He thinks only on one level
and so turns things into opposites which are not opposites. So
it comes about that when people lose all sense of levels - of
higher and lower — the world turns into opposites and
violence.

THE NAKED MAN

In psychological language, clothes, coverings, garments, de-
note what the psychological man wears - that is, what truth he
follows. So the naked man is man naked psychologically, with-
out mental clothes. He is the man without a psychology, without
any kind of truth. It is said in Revelation: 'Blessed is he that
watcheth and keepeth his garments, lest he walk naked, and
they see his shame' (Revelation xvi.15 A . V .). The meaning
is psychological, not physical.

But what must be clothed? In one place it is said that the

King was naked:
'When the Son of Man shall come in his glory, and all the
angels with him, then shall he sit on the throne of his glory: and
before him shall be gathered all the nations: and he shall
separate them one from another, as the shepherd separateth the
sheep from the goats: and he shall set the sheep on his right
hand, but the goats on the left. Then shall the King say unto
them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit
the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world:
for I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and
ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in: naked,
and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in
prison, and ye came unto me.' (Matthew xxv.31-36 R.V.)
By the King, then, something in oneself is meant. Many assume
they follow truth. But what in them does?
The question apparently is: Is the King in oneself clothed ?
It seems the King is there already and it is a question of clothing
him or not. This King in oneself is either naked or clothed.
Also, people do good without knowing it - that is from goodness.
Does not the parable go on to say:
'Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when
saw we thee an hungred, and fed thee? or athirst, and gave thee
drink? And when saw we thee a stranger and took thee in? or
naked, and clothed thee? And when saw we thee sick, or in
prison, and came unto thee? And the King shall answer and
say unto them, Verily, I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it
unto one of these my brethren, even these least, ye did it unto
me.' (Matthew xxv.37-40 R.V.)

We understand that the physical man is composed of visible

flesh and blood and bones. We do not understand that the
psychological man is composed of invisible thoughts and feelings
and desires. What he thinks and desires determines the quality
of the psychological man. But while the given physical body is
ordered and can work harmoniously the psychological body is
not given and is by no means ordered. A man may think one
thing, feel another, and desire a third. From this point of view
Man's task is to bring about order in the psychological body
which is in disorder.
For this reason there has always existed a literature, under
various guises, that does not refer to the physical but to the
psychological man - as, for example, the fragments of teaching
preserved in the Gospels and many other fragments.
But again we are going wrong because this psychological man
is in some way already there, in us — only we have to clothe him.
Shall we say, then, that he is either naked or wrongly clothed
and that the task is to cover him from foot to head in the right
garments. Recollect that the King apparently is there — either
naked or clothed - and that in those cases where he is left naked
the person has failed and in those cases where he is clothed the
person has not failed.

WASH THE FEET IN WATER IN A BASIN

To purify the thinking, change the mind, is symbolised by
washing with water; this is washing the mind from the senses.
The basin is the receptive vessel to hold the water; to con-
centrate in.
The feet are the lowest mind in contact with the external
world. This must be changed in this life.
'After that he poureth water into a basin, and began to wash
the disciples' feet, and to wipe them with the towel wherewith
he was girded. Then cometh he to Simon Peter, and Peter saith
unto him, Lord, dost thou wash my feet? Jesus answered and
said unto him, What I do thou knowest not now: but thou shalt
know hereafter. Peter saith unto him, Thou shalt never wash
my feet. Jesus answered him, If I wash thee not, thou hast no
part with me. Simon Peter saith unto him, Lord, not my feet
only, but also my hands and my head. Jesus saith to him, He
that is washed needeth not save to wash his feet, but is clean
every whit: and ye are clean, but not all.' (John xiii.5-10 A.V.)
 PART TWO

IN the first five books of the Old Testament called the

Pentateuch, and attributed to Moses, a great number of
extraordinary stories are found, which are usually regarded
as historical. For example, there is the story of Pharaoh and the
butler and the baker, which occurs in Genesis XL, which ap-
parently has no particular meaning, and as it stands seems quite
trivial. However it is susceptible of being understood, as having
an inner meaning. Or again, there is the great story about
Moses getting the children of Israel out of Egypt and the
power of Pharaoh (Exodus). But this no doubt can again be
taken historically - that is, in the sense that Egypt means Egypt,
and Pharaoh means Pharaoh, just as in the previous example,
the butler can be taken as the actual butler, and the baker as
the actual baker.
Let us take the movement of the children of Israel out of
Egypt and their journey towards the promised land, not liter-
ally but as a parable having a psychological significance quite
apart from any historical significance. Let us take it in other
words as referring to man moving away from some power
signified by Pharaoh and Egypt, and journeying towards a new
state of himself. All esoteric teaching concerns a lower and a
higher level, and the essence of esotericism consists in the fact
that man is capable of undergoing a transformation and attain-
ing a new level of himself. Man has to escape from the power
of Pharaoh and Egypt and move in another direction first
signified as the wilderness and eventually as the promised land.
One can see in the allegory how difficult this is, for it is shown
how Pharaoh will not let the children of Israel leave Egypt,
although plague after plague is brought upon him. Man glued
to the senses, to visible reality, to external life, can only move
with great difficulty to a level of comprehension which lies
beyond the facts of the senses and their power over him. This is
the first problem of esoteric teaching and in the parable the
emphasis is put upon the power of Pharaoh which Moses tries
to overcome. Pharaoh represents the power of the lower level
and Moses the power of the higher level, Moses having been
told by God to get the children of Israel out of Egypt, Egypt
representing a psychological state of humanity. The many
different sides of a man which can grow into a new inner
development are firmly held down in Egypt by Pharaoh - i.e.
by the power of the lower level of understanding gained solely
through the world as it appears to the senses and the under-
standing that we gain from this first source of meaning. This
level of interpretation is Egypt and Pharaoh is the concentrated
power of this level. He can be compared with the 'ruler of the
feast' in the parable of the marriage at Cana (see page 171).
Let us look at some definitions in the Old Testament as to the
meaning of Egypt. In that extraordinary book called Isaiah
which is full of psychological interpretation and offers a key
almost to the earlier books of the Old Testament, it is said,
'Now the Egyptians are men, and not God: and their horses
flesh, and not spirit' (Isaiah xxxi.3). From this we can see that
if we take the narrative of the emancipation of the children of
Israel as meaning psychologically the passage from a state of
'flesh' to a state of 'spirit', we must understand that a mental
transformation is signified. In one of the epistles in the New
Testament, Paul speaks of the mind of the flesh or the carnal
mind (Colossians ii.18). 'Let no man beguile you of your reward
in a voluntary humility and worshipping of angels, intruding
into those things which he hath not seen, vainly puffed up by
his fleshly mind.' Therefore if we apply the story of the children of
Israel and Egypt to an interpretation above any literal historical
meaning, we can begin to understand that it is about the eman-
cipation of a man glued to the evidence of his senses - the man
of sensible facts - and his development into a new state of
understanding based on principles and meanings coming from
another level of insight, that is, a passage from 'flesh' to 'spirit'.
The horse, which is what a man rides on, represents in the
ancient language of parables, of which many traces exist in
ancient Greek mythology, the intellect or mind. When Isaiah
says that the horses of Egypt are flesh and not spirit, he gives a
clue to the whole meaning of the exodus from Egypt. He
enables us to understand the whole matter psychologically.
Pharaoh is 'flesh' - Moses is 'Spirit'. It is we ourselves who have
to get our children of Israel out of Egypt.
 Since everything in esoteric psychology is about man himself
and his possibilities, and with what things he has to go in
himself and what things he must give up and separate himself
from, we can realise that the great parables are not capable of
cut and dried explanation, nor indeed are they comprehensible
to us save in a small degree depending on our state of under-
standing meaning apart from literal meaning. Behind the words
used lies an inner sense. But this inner sense does not fit in easily
with our ordinary mind. We have to think in a new way and see
connections which although psychological are not literally
logical.
In trying to comprehend some inner meaning in the story of
Pharaoh and his butler and baker, we must take Pharaoh in
this case as meaning a man based on his senses beginning to
undergo a change in his understanding. It is, so to speak, your
Pharaoh that stands firmly in the senses and their evidence.
The butler and the baker represent two sides of oneself- one of
which has to be hanged and one of which is redeemed. In this
story we see that Egypt is transformed through the influence of
Joseph who finally becomes controller of Egypt. It is the same
story as that concerning the exodus of the children of Israel
from Egypt but told in another way. The psychological idea is
the same but in this case Egypt itself is brought under a new
mastery. When we understand that all these parables refer to
man himself and have really no historical significance and that
they must be taken apart from their literal meaning, then it is
not difficult to understand that they are really speaking about
the same thing - the emancipation of man from a lower level
and his transformation into a being of a higher level - although
the casting of the imagery is various.

THE FIGHT BETWEEN SERPENT AND HORSE

What we have to grasp is that the 'natural' man with his
sensual thinking cannot undergo the development inherently
possible in him. His sensual thinking will prevent it, because it
is antagonistic to psychological thinking. Unable to think
psychologically, being glued to the senses, he is bound to remain
an undeveloped man. Where can we find anything said about
this question of sensual and psychological thinking being anta-
gonistic? It is referred to in Genesis xlix.17. 'Dan shall be a
serpent by the way, an adder in the path, that biteth the horse
heels, so that his rider shall fall backward.'
The serpent is used as a symbol of sensual thinking. The heel
is the lowest natural, the lowest things of reasoning from the
sensual. 'The iniquity of my heels hath encompassed me' (Psalm
xlix.5). And in Genesis iii.15: Ί will put enmity between thee
and the woman, and thy seed and her seed: and it shall bruise
thy head and thou shalt bruise his heel.' The serpent is the
sensual understanding and the woman (here) spiritual under-
standing. Sense and spirit are here at variance. Christ reconciled,
joined, the Human and Divine, sense and spirit.
'Behold, I give you power to tread upon serpents and scor-
pions' (Luke x.19). The serpents and scorpions are those who
are deceitful and pretend civility with hatred in their hearts or
appear pious and in secret loathe, or champion reform to gain
power. What the person is and what the person appears to be
are in contradiction and so the mind is split. Deceit is the divided
mind. A man speaks well and thinks evil or does well and wills
evil, and so is full of hidden poison. Deceit is malice from the will,
cloaked by outward friendliness.
Christ called the Pharisees, 'Ye serpents, ye offspring of
vipers' (Matthew xxii.33 R.V), because outwardly they ap-
peared good and inwardly they were evil. This deceit penetrates
the whole being of a person and renders him incapable of
growth. He is dead - finished. Christ says to the Pharisees, as
examples of deception, 'Why wash the outside of the platter?'
'Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for ye make
clean the outside of the platter, but within they are full of
extortion and excess' (Matthew xxiii.25 A.V.).
 PART THREE
FAITH
THE word translated as faith (pistis - πιστις) in the New Testa-
ment means more than belief. It means another kind of thinking.
Let us take an example from the Gospels. In Matthew xvi.5-12
A.V. it is said:
'And when his disciples were come to the other side, they had
forgotten to take bread. Then Jesus said unto them, Take heed
and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and of the Sadducees.
And they reasoned among themselves, saying, It is because we
have taken no bread. Which when Jesus perceived, he said
unto them, Ο ye of little faith, why reason ye among yourselves,
because ye have brought no bread? . . . How is it that ye do
not understand that I spake it not to you concerning bread,
that ye should beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and of the
Sadducees? Then understood they how that he bade them
beware not of the leaven of bread, but of the doctrine of the
Pharisees and of the Sadducees.'
In this incident it is clear that the disciples took something
said by Christ in its sensual meaning — that is, according to the
literal sense of the words. Christ told them that this was a sign
that they had little faith. It is not a question of belief. They may
have believed greatly in the seen Christ. Yet they had little faith.
What does this mean? It means that faith is something more
than belief. In this case, faith means understanding on a level
other than literal understanding. Sensual understanding cannot
make contact with the meanings contained in Christ's teaching.
He was not speaking of literal leaven but of psychological leaven.
Christ was not speaking sensually but psychologically. His words
had no sensual meaning but only psychological meaning. The
leaven spoken of was not literal leaven nor was bread literal
bread but falsity infecting good. Sadducees and Pharisees are
always within us. The Sadducees can be compared with the
scientists of today. They did not believe in any life after death.
That is their leaven of falsity. The Pharisees can be compared
with people who are in appearances, who, so to speak, think the
important thing is to go to Church on Sunday 'to be seen of
 men' (Matthew vi.5). That is their leaven. They were stig-
matised as hypocrites - without inner belief. Now Christ here
connects the disciples' lack of psychological understanding and
consequent inability to see what was meant with littleness of
faith. In other words, Christ connects the capacity of psychological
understanding with the possession of faith; and sensual under-
standing with littleness of faith, or even elsewhere with blind-
ness, with complete absence of faith and inner death. Faith is
necessary to open a part of the mind not opened by the senses.
Let us turn now to some other passages concerning faith and
its high meanings. Many may have believed in Christ as a
visible miracle-worker. They believed through what they saw,
through the evidence of the senses. But in Hebrews xi.1 faith is
called a basis for belief in what if not seen. 'But faith is a basis for
things hoped for, a conviction of things unseen.' It is not only
a conviction of things unseen, but is a basis or plane on which
another world of relations and values can be reached, one that
is above the seen world and the cause of it. So the unknown
writer of Hebrews continues in these words:
'It is faith that lets us understand how the worlds were
fashioned by God's word; how it was that from things unseen
all that we see took their origin' (xi-3).
The writer goes on to describe how through the possession
of faith certain things have been done. Now although it may be
true that nowhere in the Scriptures is faith exactly defined, but
chiefly its effects, certain things are said about it - as above -
to shew it has to do with an inner perception of scale. If faith
causes a man to perceive in his mind that a world, invisible to
sense, lies above the seen world and is the cause of it, then he
perceives things in scale - that is, in terms of higher and lower
levels. When the centurion said that he was a man who was
under those above him in authority, while he himself had those
who were under him in rank, and added that it must be the
same with Christ, he was speaking in terms of scale. He meant
that Christ only had to give orders and his sick servant would
be healed. On hearing this Christ exclaimed that never before
had He met anyone who understood better what faith meant.
It is related that a centurion sent messengers to Christ asking
him to heal his servant:
 'And Jesus went with them. And when he was now not far
from the house, the centurion sent friends to him, saying unto
him, Lord, trouble not thyself: for I am not worthy that thou
shouldest come under my roof: wherefore neither thought I
myself worthy to come unto thee: but say the word, and my
servant shall be healed. For I also am a man set under authority,
having under myself soldiers: and I say to this one, Go, and he
goeth; and to another, Come, and he cometh, and to my
servant, Do this, and he doeth it. And when Jesus heard these
things, he marvelled at him, and turned and said to the multi-
tude that followed him, I say unto you, I have not found so
great faith, no, not in Israel. And they that were sent, returning
to the house, found the servant whole.' (Luke vii.6-10 R.V.)
To return to Hebrews, the writer goes on to say: ' . . . it is
impossible to please God without faith' (xi.6). That is, it is
impossible without the basis or foundation of faith, which makes
it possible for a man to think beyond the evidence of his senses
and realise the existence of invisible scale and understand
psychological meaning. To realise scale means to realise that
there are different levels of meaning. Literal meaning is one
thing, psychological or spiritual meaning is another thing -
although the words used are the same. For example, we saw
that the word yeast used in the incident quoted indicated two
levels of meaning. The disciples took it on the lower level and
were told it was because their faith was little. Their thinking was
sensual. They had difficulty in thinking in a new way on
another level. And their psychological thinking was so weak
just because they were based on sense and not on faith. Thus
sense and faith describe two ways of thinking, not opposites, not
antagonistic, but on different levels. For without the perception of
scale and levels, things are made to be opposite when they are
not so, and Man's mind is split into 'either - or', which leads to
endless confusions and mental wrangles and miseries. The writer
goes on to say: 'Nobody reaches God's presence until he has
learned to believe that God exists and that He rewards those
that try to find Him' (xi.6). It is apparent that if scale is behind
all things, if order is scale, and if to set in order is to set in scale
then what is higher and what is lower must exist. To everything
there must be an above and a below. A man who cannot
perceive scale, visible and invisible, as did that centurion by
means of his psychological understanding due to his great faith,
will be shut to the intuitions that only faith opens out to every
mind that hitherto has been asleep in the senses and the limited
world revealed by them.
Transformation
 MEANING

At God
the beginning (of Time) Meaning already was, and
had Meaning with Him, and God was Meaning'
(John i.1).
When a man finds no Meaning in anything he has at the
same time no feeling of God. Meaninglessness is a terrible illness.
It has to be got over. It is the same as godlessness, because if you
say there is no God, you are saying that there is no Meaning
in things. But if you think there is Meaning, you believe in God.
Meaning is God. You cannot say that you do not believe in God
but believe that there is Meaning in things. The two are the
same, in that one cannot be without the other. God is Meaning.
If you dislike the word God, then say Meaning instead. The word
God shuts some people's minds. The word Meaning cannot. It
opens the mind.
Meaning was before Time began. It was before creation, for
creation occurs in running Time, in which birth and death
exist. Birth and death belong to the passage of Time. But
Meaning was before Time and creation in Time began. There
is no way of describing existence in the higher-dimensional
world outside Time, save by the language of passing Time - of
past, present and future. Meaning is - not was - before the
beginning of creation in Time. It does not belong to what is
becoming and passing away but to what is, above Time. If,
then, there is Meaning above our heads, what is our Meaning
by creation?
 TRANSFORMATION OF LIFE

THE universe is not merely what the senses show. It is not

the outer scene alone — in fact, it is never the outer scene
alone but always the combination of oneself with it. It is
not merely the perceptions of the senses, this hard world of
earth, that outer point of light in the sky, but perceptions of
ideas, insights into truths, realisations of meaning, the seeing of
familiar things in a new light, intuition of essences, experiences
of suffering and of bliss. It is given as bread from heaven as
much as fact from earth. On its grandest scale it lies beyond all
command of the senses and is only discerned inwardly in the
understanding. There can suddenly be opened within the heart
or in the mind a realm of experience that is not the external
world (though it may interpenetrate it) and we are then bathed
in the light of meaning - in that light without violence, which is
pure experience, luminosity without shadow, in which the
hardness of self vanishes. We see: with the authority that mean-
ing gives us. We touch: without the sense of separateness and
externality that all physical touch inevitably gives us. We feel:
in depth, without talking to ourselves, without the mirror of
surface personality. Every experience of that light deeply creates
us. It is creating light, transforming meaning, which all have
sought since the beginning of time, light that can do no violence
to anyone, meaning that shows us what we have always known
and never had the strength to remember. Not only do we feel
ourselves created by every experience of that light, but this, we
say, is what we are always looking for - this meaning and
reality, this bliss that we have misinterpreted and sought in a
thousand useless physical directions - this is what we all desire,
which the outer light of life pretends to offer, but never properly
gives, this union which we perceive really is union, the secret
idea behind our odd, searching, incomplete lives.
How is this light obtained? How can we obtain this union
with meaning? Through what does it shine? Where must the
knife enter to open a way for it? It has always been spoken about.
A man must begin to dissect himself away from himself to find it.
This, in brief, is the substance of all teachings concerning it.
And this he cannot do unless he begins to see himself directly
as a new conscious experience, a new event, the daily event of
himself - not analytically, not critically, nor as a source for
talkativeness. This kind of consciousness, whose direction leads
towards the region through which meaning is received, is not
what we ordinarily have. Very much stands in our way. First
in strength is imagination. We imagine we have it. The imagi-
nation is a psychic material out of which every substitute for
reality can be made, the most powerful force in life; and
second, we have to put into constant practice this process of
using consciousness as a dissecting knife. This requires effort
that is not needed in life. So we easily forget, and fail to keep
alive what we began.
But before any such thing is conceivable, man must feel that
there is an internal side of the universe drawn in through the
inner senses: that he lives outwardly in nothing but a world of
effects whose hidden causes lead into the mysteries beyond all
human solution and that in himself there are states unknown
to him. For if a man is sense-governed, he is the wrong way
round. He thinks sense prior to mind. Nothing internal can then
belong to him: he has inverted the natural order. He will then
deal with everything, ultimately, by violence. For the sensory
object, taken as ultimate and highest reality, can be smashed,
injured, blown up or killed. That is why materialism is so
dangerous, psychologically. It not only closes the mind and its
possible ingiven development but turns everything the wrong
way round, so much so that man seriously explains the house
by its bricks or the universe by its atoms and is content with
explanations extraordinarily poor of this quality.

The object of every 'church' has always been the salvation

of man, and in himself man is the church, communicating with
what is above and what is below, having an outer and an inner
side. The great cathedrals are nothing but half-beautiful, un-
finished representations of a man.
But consider the knowledge that constructed them in those
dark, violent, superstitious times! Consider the terrific labours
and the steady intention. Something has always been kept alive
and handed on from generation to generation, from church to
church, from religion to religion - an idea about man - about
each man - about oneself. This idea was expressed by likening
a man to a seed which could not grow through the light of the
natural world, i.e. by sense alone. And the salvation of man
which has always been insisted upon as necessary for the health
of the whole world meant the growth of this seed which cannot

IDEAL PLAN FOR A CHURCH

From CATANEO , Quattro Primi Libri di Architettura, 1554

grow through the influences of ideas that belong to a mind

wholly commanded by the senses. So we come back to the
danger of materialism in regard to the real welfare of humanity.
If there is a higher part to a man, he is not lifted to it by the
ideas and customs belonging to the lower part. He must first
of all accept the existence of a higher side and then find how to
imitate it. And, this being so, he will expect to find, scattered
about the records of history, a literature that deals with the
ways and means of attaining this higher side. And, of course,
the ideas in this literature will not be of a similar order to the
ideas that belong to the lower physical side.

Nothing is true until it is assimilated. Truth can only be your

experience of it — not in books. There is a process of half-
thinking and half-imagining which is very intimate. It is partly
conversation with oneself, partly being oneself, partly seeing
oneself and partly listening to oneself - to new meanings that
are entering. It is half-active, half-passive, and something that
is purely oneself, neither active nor passive.
We rarely can pursue our own thoughts. The traffic in the
mind prevents us. We do not individually join one thing with
another, or see the truth of something for ourselves. The rush
of associations, the continual reactions to life, are too powerful.
Few of us will say we have built much inside. We have not re-
created - re-represented - the world but left it in the form of a
confused sensory image.

If we notice ourselves when reading, three people are con-

cerned. There is the reader, the person inside listening to him,
and a judge. These three people are all present when we read.
This listener cannot hear what outside people say. He listens to
the reader: and notices what the judge says. In order to re-
create the world - that is, to create the world in oneself, to give
it meaning, form, interpretation, order, significance - it is the
listener who must learn. One takes one's ideas, one's thoughts,
one's feelings and one's power of imagination and works inter-
nally with them, realising that no matter what other people
know or have said or have written or done, nothing has as yet
happened in oneself of any value. There has been no personal
assimilation of truth, no inner discovery of it, no creation in
oneself. If our emotional life were more awake then the union
of thought and emotion would feed this deepest and most real
part of us and we would feel the happiness that conies from the
mingling of meaning with life.
Our behaviour would be different because everything would
present itself to us with infinitely more differences than is pos-
 sible as long as we receive everything in a habitual way. Life
fails to nourish us because we view it habitually - through a few
habits of the mind. We recognise - and do little else. We call
this knowing - or even truth.
There is no doubt that we have - and sometimes realise -
powers of reception very much finer than those we employ. And
if we seek to define what development can mean we can say that
it consists in the far more conscious reception of daily life
through the use of these powers - a far finer perception whose
direction is towards both the inner and outer. That would mean
having continually to stand aside (through a continual recogni-
tion of them) from habits of mind and feeling - to dissect our-
selves from ourselves. As it is, we allow our lives to become a
monotonous repetition, not seeing the cause in ourselves but in
circumstances.
Consciousness is unshareable. Your consciousness is your own,
mine is my own. Since consciousness is unshareable, the whole
direction of one's life should be towards experiencing everything
for oneself, to be conscious to oneself of oneself, to see for oneself
and to be able to do for oneself. Only in this way is anything
created in oneself, and once created it is one's own and is
permanent and real.
So everything is fresh, everything is new, everything is un-
touched and unspoiled by previous explorers.
Everyone is at a certain stage in thought, feeling, in under-
standing, in experiencing. It is impossible for growth and
meaning to borrow truth; to be told dogmatically what is true,
is to accept mass-truth. It can only be an experience - according
to one's stage. No one can taste an apple for you. A description
of how it tastes is useless. Just in the same way, in everything
that really matters no one can really help you. Only your own
power of seeing the truth of anything can help you - and it is
exactly this power which we seek to throw away in the hope of
finding something easier. In every situation and problem, if we
could go deep enough into ourselves - away from habitual
reaction - we would know what to do, because we would light
upon new meaning, and see the situation transformed.
 The chief preliminary voluntary act - and it needs to be
lifelong in its voluntaryness - towards the inner spirit, the
source and conveyor of meaning, is that of affirmation. Only by
this act does all that is outward, external and dead become
connected with what is internal and alive. This is the chief of
all psychological acts. It is the preliminary and at the same time
the continually renewable act whereby psychology, in the
deepest sense - (that is, the science of personal evolution) -
begins. The final goal of it, far ahead, is the unity of oneself.
Man becomes gradually united through himself with himself and not
merely with what he accidentally has become and believes
himself to be. Affirmation is not by argument but by under-
standing. Negation leads always to an inner deprivation and so
to an increasing superficiality, impatience, loss of meaning, and
violence. One can always deny. What is easier? One can always
follow the path of negation, if one evades all acts of understand-
ing as sentimental or as scientifically and commercially valueless.
We know, however, better than we argue - better even than
we think. But once a man sets out on the path of negation with
malice - as many today - he finds on every side all the proofs
and corroborations he requires. Consider the effect of suspicion
in this respect! Yet the result is a lie, as we all know.
The psychological effect of affirmation is entirely in the
reverse direction. To grow one must affirm. Denial as an end
is violent, coercive, destructive. Now all that hidden, half-felt
side in us which can develop cannot be coerced. That is why the
senses do not give us a clear proof, an unmistakable affirmation,
of intelligence and meaning behind the scheme of things.
A clear sensory proof would coerce the mind, as, say, a God
visible in the bright sky. The conviction that there must be
something, when it springs from the understanding, the inner
intimate reflections, coerces no one. It opens the mind - in
certain vitally important directions. We can all be dragged
down by the aspect that seen life presents, its horrors, injustice
and suffering. Take life sensorially — as seen — and we can get
nowhere. But that may be part of the plot of the play.
Man has far more in him by birth than sense or its derivatives.
Mechanical evolution cannot explain his unused or rarely used
side. And if the scheme is development within the field of one's
own consciousness - if each person is a potential development
through the use of inherent powers (always private to himself)
then we could never expect that life, as seen and given, would
be of such a nature as to produce no deep problem and no
life-long struggle in him.
On the contrary, we would expect that it would contradict
him. Development must mean effort; and if life were sweet and
beautiful, without pain or misery, there would be no incitement
towards self-creation, no struggle whereby we come to recognise
the finer ingredients we possess and separate them from the
coarser. We slowly learn that in every situation fine and coarse
are mingled. In our physical construction we have finely
adjusted nervous instruments whereby we reject bad food. We
have also a digestive machinery which assimilates the finer and
eliminates the coarser. But in the realm of the living of our lives,
a corresponding machinery does not exist. It has to be created —
and this creates us. For this reason in every age we need teaching
of a special sort. What, for example, is the inner meaning of the
parables in the gospels save an indication of how to create such
a selective machinery and so how to become men?
Here is a method of self-creation - once we understand and
apply the given ideas. At this point, it can be said, a man begins
to exist - realising suddenly what it means to begin to live
consciously. He is no longer a creature driven to and fro by
circumstances, by fashion and by the latest craze. He is no
longer so much a slave to the terrible machinery of life in which
everyone is turning. He no longer thinks only in terms of a
sense-engendered life. He has within him another system. By this he
finds a new relation to what he experiences. Ideas different
from the ideas he acquired from brute-life enter and awaken
his mind. And, listening, the meaning of these ideas gradually
unfolds in his understanding. The first stage of a development
of his whole being is set in motion. In his intimate conversation
with himself he talks to himself in a new way, and the listener
in him hears and begins to stir.
The facts of life do not penetrate us deeply. The listener is
continually misled by them. But some ideas can penetrate to
depths that we have not previously known, and stir energies
that we have never experienced.
 TRANSFORMATION OF MAN
THE SALT OF THE EARTH
MANY words in the Gospels are used in a special sense. We
cannot suppose that the teaching given in the Gospels was
anything but a special teaching and one thing is quite plain -
that the teaching in the Gospels was not about the ordinary
aims of life. In giving his teaching, Christ was not speaking
about how to become a successful politician, a successful busi-
ness man, a lawyer or doctor, etc. He was speaking about a
special idea, connected with the Kingdom of Heaven. He was
speaking about how a man could undergo re-birth or inner
evolution or transformation. And since he was speaking about
a special idea about Man on earth many words were used in
a special sense — that is, they were used in a technical sense, just
as, let us say, an organic chemist, in dealing with the possible
combinations and transformations of elementary atoms into
endless new substances, speaks in a technical language, not
understood by those who have no idea of chemistry, which is a
science of transformation of one substance into another and
which in the early form of alchemy started from this idea - the
idea of transformation.
But in the case of the Gospels, what Christ spoke of was the
highest form of Organic Chemistry' - namely, the possible
transformation of Man himself into a new man. In the Gospels, Man
is regarded as material for a step in inner evolution. He is
regarded as an experiment in self-evolution. He is, in short, explained
as material sown on earth for the Kingdom of Heaven, which
represents that level of inner development latently possible in
him. Man is sown on earth as material for self-evolution once
he is brought in contact with the further sowing called the
'Word of the Kingdom'. Therefore, Man on earth, from the
standpoint of the Gospels, is incomplete, unfinished, not perfect,
and his deepest meaning lies in the fact that he is incomplete,
but capable through a new understanding and a new will of
reaching an inner completion. The further stage of a Man
cannot be reached by outer compulsion. No rules, no enforced
regulations, no strict rituals, no external coercion, can bring it
about. The completion, the self-evolution, the re-birth, and so
the fulfilment of a man can only be brought about through
himself, through his own individual seeing the truth, his own
understanding of it, his own desire for it, his own will applied
to it. This is the supreme idea of Man on earth, as taught by
Christ. Sown on earth as a seed for the Kingdom, in this sense,
he can remain a seed, a child of earth, or he can, only by hearing
a teaching similar to that given by Christ, by his own insight,
his own thought, his own inner grasp, evolve or not. No one
can make for him his own evolution. No exhortations, no re-
strictions, no penalties, no laws, no forms of outer compulsion,
can make him evolve in and from himself. It is his own question
— a matter of his own inner choice, a matter of his deepest, most
individual understanding. A man either begins to see for him-
self, to understand from himself, or he does not. It is all left, as
it were, free for him to decide in himself and from himself. It is
left free for a man to serve life or serve the Kingdom of Heaven.
People sometimes wonder why, if what Christ taught is true,
people are not made to become better, made to be good and so
on — why, in fact, God does not insist on it. But how could this
be so? If people were good from external compulsion, if they
saw God in the sky, and were afraid, they would be coerced.
They would do nothing from themselves, from their own inner
understanding, and their own will, but everything from fear of
being punished. And there would be no self-evolution. For this
reason there is nothing in the external world, nothing in nature,
that shews a man definitely whether there is a God or not. For
if the senses gave clear evidence, one way or another, a man
would be compelled through the outer side of him to believe or
not. But, if you will notice, there is nothing in nature, nothing
in what your senses shew you, that can be taken as certain
evidence one way or the other. Nature is beautiful and cruel.
Life is good and bad. It is impossible, starting from nature or life,
to decide anything. In other words, nothing compels a man from
outside — nothing external via sense coerces him. And this fact
is in itself extraordinary. You can interpret nature or life just as
you please. But it is not extraordinary if you understand that
Man is sown on earth for the purpose of individual re-birth,
individual inner development, from his own choice, from his
own deepest reflection and thoughts, from his own experience
and finally his own understanding or will - in short, that he is
born as material for self-evolution to the level of the Kingdom.
It is a question of a man's understanding, which is so insisted upon
in the Gospels - namely, those 'who have ears to hear'. For a
man is first his understanding - not his body, not his face, not
his outer physical appearance. And second, a man is his will
applied to his understanding. This is the Man of the Kingdom.
And you must realise that a man may be far on in life, and far
on in knowledge, and yet have no understanding - and still
less the will to live what he has seen and understood. So, seen
in the light of the teaching of the higher level - that is, in the
light of the teaching in the Gospels about the Kingdom, about
the higher Man - every man is nothing but his understanding
and his will in relation to it. This is the real man, in regard to
the idea of the Kingdom of Heaven. No matter what he is
externally, in position, in life, in appearance, and so on, the real
man is his understanding of the teaching of the higher Man and
his will towards it. It is not surprising therefore to find that
many technical words are used in the Gospels that refer to the
science of the higher Man or the Man of the Kingdom. There is,
for example, the word metanoia, µετάνοια, so wrongly translated
as repentance, which means change of thinking. There is the word
phronimos, φρόνιµος, wrongly translated as wise. There is the
word faith, πιστις, so often translated as belief: faith and belief
are two different things, that is, one can have faith where one
does not believe. There is the word soul, ψυχή, so often translated
wrongly as life as in the instance 'Greater love hath no man than
this, that a man lay down his life for his friends' (John xv.13).
We have already given this as the supreme definition of con-
scious love, that a man must lay down his soul — i.e. put those
whom he loves in place of himself, thus going against his soul.
And in another place (John x.15) Christ says: Ί lay down my
soul (translated life) for my sheep' (The New Man, p. 64).
But we must now study another word used in a technical way
that requires explanation. This is the word salt. There are
several passages in the Gospels in which the word salt is used.
What does salt mean? In what technical meaning was this
word used?
 'Salt is good, but if the salt have lost its savour wherewith
will ye season it? Have salt in yourselves: and be at peace with
one another'. (Mark ix.50)

The teaching in the Gospels that a man should do good

without any idea of reward is very difficult to understand. In
one place Christ says: 'But love ye your enemies, and do good
and lend, hoping for nothing again' (Luke vi.35 A.V.). But how
can we do good with no idea of reward, 'hoping for nothing' ?
Yet it is implied in many passages that if a man does good and
keeps the commandments with the end in view of gaining
happiness in heaven, as a reward, he will fail in his object. Now
we can understand, in regard to doing good in the wrong way,
that one example is that of the hypocrite (described in Matthew
vi-5) who makes long prayers at the street corners in order to
be seen of man and does his alms in public because he loves the
praise of men before everything else. But why is the doing of
good, not to be seen of men, but in order to be rewarded in
heaven, regarded as wrong? What is the reason? For there is
always a reason for everything said in the Gospels - a psycho-
logical reason, connected with what helps or hinders a man's
inner evolution. I mean that the Gospels do not contain a
collection of arbitrary rules and moral precepts, but are a set
of psychological charts and directions, some simple and some very
complicated at first sight, which, if a man could understand
them and if he could carry out their instructions rightly, would
lead him inevitably to the discovery of the Kingdom of Heaven
in himself. Now one of the things that is clearly said is that a
man must first hear and then do what Christ teaches. That is,
he must first understand, for to try to do anything without first
understanding what it is can lead nowhere; and then he must
begin to do what he thinks he has understood - that is, live it.
But a man may do what he thinks he understands in the wrong
way and from a wrong motive or a wrong side of himself. And
it is here that the teaching that a man should do good without
any idea of reward comes in. The reason why a man must not
do good with the end in view of a reward in heaven is because
he is then acting only from self. That is, expressed in the
technical language of the Gospels, he is not acting from those
emotions termed 'love of God' and 'love of neighbour' but only
from 'love of self and because of this cannot reach the level of
the Kingdom of Heaven. For we are made to understand that
the Kingdom of Heaven is founded on 'love of God' and 'love
of neighbour' in contradistinction to the Kingdom of Hell,
which is founded on love of self and hatred of one's neighbour
- and this means that a man doing everything for the sake of
an eventual reward, and so from the love of self and self-interest,
can neither see nor reach the Kingdom of Heaven. For Christ
says a man must be born again or anew before he can see the
Kingdom. And one meaning of that saying is that a man must
get beyond self, or become poor in spirit, as the state is described
in the first beatitude. Vanity, self-conceit, pride, contempt of
others, and all the endless coarse and subtle emotions and their
derivative thoughts, make a man 'rich in spirit' and belong to
the single root of the self love. - from which a man must begin to
detach himself.

What is the psychological significance of looking back? In the

story of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, Lot's wife
'looked back'. She was turned into a pillar of salt. Salt signifies
many psychological things, good and bad. It can kill and pre-
serve. Christ said: 'Have salt', to his disciples, arguing about
who was first. But salt can conduct the meaning of psychological
sterility. Christ did not mean: 'Be psychologically sterile', but
the reverse, - as if the meaning were 'laugh at yourselves more -
do not be so serious.' In this particular sense of becoming use-
less, one who 'looks back' becomes internally sterile - dead,
although walking. In two very strange parables Christ connected
their hidden meaning with Lot's wife:
'Likewise even as it came to pass in the days of Lot; they ate,
they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they builded;
but in the day that Lot went out from Sodom it rained fire and
brimstone from heaven, and destroyed them all: after the same
manner shall it be in the day that the Son of Man is revealed.
In that day, he which shall be on the housetop, and his goods in the
house, let him not go down to take them away: and let him that is in the
field likewise not return back. Remember Lot's wife.' (Luke xvii.28-32)
In these two parables we can at least see that the idea of not
going back appears, and since Lot's wife is mentioned, going
back and looking back must have a common meaning of inner
death, inner sterileness. This cannot mean what Christ said
when his disciples were quarrelling about who should be first.
To them Christ said: 'Have salt one with another.' When the
future is becoming obscure, one looks back, or goes back even
to infantility, if hope is lost and replaced by fear. The illnesses
that this internal retreat in one's time-body - one's life - causes
are due to failure of the internal spirit which, in spite of outer
difficulties, must fight, must go on. In the esoteric conception,
Man has an inner goal, the approach to which constitutes his
real meaning and is a matter of his inner understanding, which
has to do with faith and so is a question of the activity of the
externally-unsupported spirit. A man gives up spiritual striving
in the real sense of 'he himself ' and begins to look back or goes
back. He is disturbed by outer trouble. So he becomes sterile -
and probably more successful in life. But spiritually he becomes
a pillar of salt, because he gives up something indefinable and
yet known to everyone internally, if they wish to know it. Is not
this one of the most difficult things to see and understand - in
one's own case? How many little pillars of salt lie in one's
time-body - in one's living past? And how many pillars of salt
exist in life, walking the streets daily?

What, then, does 'Have salt one with another' mean? Christ
said to his disciples: 'Everyone shall be salted with fire. Salt is
good: but if the salt have lost its saltness, wherewith will ye
season it? Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace one with
another.' (Mark ix.49-50)
There is the common phrase relating to a man who is not
overwhelmed by life and so negative: 'He has good salty talk.'
Salt has its meaning as what preserves, what keeps things from
going bad in oneself. A man can easily take the continual
changing events of life - the same for everyone - with or without
salt. He can be broken, depressed by them or not. In the case
Christ spoke of, the disciples were disputing about who was the
best, who was first - one of the commonest sources of self-pity,
grievance, and resulting violence. Not to be able to laugh at
oneself - to take oneself tragically - is absence of salt. A little
wit about oneself - yes, a little of the salt of wit - will give
another approach to life. Real esotericism should give a man
salt, as sectarian religion so rarely does.

LOT'S WIFE
The story of Lot's wife, as told in the Old Testament, has a
psychological meaning. But we can, of course, regard it as a
literal story, describing how a woman, by looking back, was
turned into a pillar of salt. Yet this view is scarcely possible if
we take into consideration a remark made in the Gospels that
refers to Lot's wife. Christ is speaking in a very strange way
about what he calls the 'consummation of the age' or the 'end
of the world'. He says: 'As it came to pass in the days of Lot;
they ate, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they
builded; but in the day that Lot went out from Sodom it
rained fire and brimstone from heaven, and destroyed
them all: after the same manner shall it be in the day that
the Son of Man is revealed. In that day, he which shall be
on the housetop, and his goods in the house, let him not go
down to take them away: and let him that is in the field
likewise not return back. Remember Lot's wife.' (Luke
xvii.28-32 R.V .)
Let us remind ourselves, to begin with, of the story of Lot's
wife. You will remember how it is related in Genesis that angels
came to Lot in Sodom to warn him to escape with his wife and
daughters and sons-in-law before the city was destroyed because
of its sin. The sons-in-law would not believe the warning and
Lot himself lingered, until the angels led him and his wife
and his two daughters out of Sodom. The narrative continues
thus:
'And it came to pass, when they had brought them forth
abroad, that he said, Escape for thy life; look not behind thee,
neither stay thou in all the Plain; escape to the mountain, lest
thou be consumed. And Lot said unto them, Oh, not so, my
lord: behold now, thy servant hath found grace in thy sight,
and thou hast magnified thy mercy, which thou hast shewed
unto me in saving my life; and I cannot escape to the mountain
lest evil overtake me, and I die: Behold now, this city is near
to flee unto, and it is a little one: Oh, let me escape thither (is
it not a little one?) and my soul shall live. And he said unto him,
See, I have accepted thee concerning this thing also, that I will
not overthrow the city of which thou hast spoken. Haste thee,
escape thither; for I cannot do anything till thou be come
thither. Therefore the name of the city was called Zoar. Then
the Lord rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone
and fire from the Lord out of heaven; and he overthrew those
cities, and all the Plain, and all the inhabitants of the cities,
and that which grew upon the ground. But his wife looked back
from behind him, and she became a pillar of salt.' (Genesis
xix.17-26)
All this has a psychological meaning, and refers to the passage
from one state to another in ourselves. It is all about a stage in
'inner development' - that is, about how an individual has to
leave behind him what he formerly was and what he clung to.
Let us take one phrase from the narrative quoted above. The
man called Lot had to leave what he was - he was beginning
to evolve. He argues and bargains and wishes to go to a small
city called Zoar. The angel eventually agrees and says: 'Haste
- I cannot do anything till thou be come thither.' Zoar repre-
sents a new state, but it means something small. When Lot
reaches this inner state, apparently less than was expected of
him, it is said: 'The sun was risen upon the earth when Lot
came to Zoar.' What does earth mean? In the Lord's Prayer it
is said: 'May thy will be done on earth as in heaven.' When a
man passes, in his inner development, to a new stage of under-
standing, the 'sun rises upon the earth'. A man's earth is in
himself. To evolve, a man must leave this 'earth', that is
himself. Notice that 'all the cities of the Plain and all that grew
upon the ground were destroyed'. Lot, as he was, is told that
he must 'escape to the mountain' - that is, reach something at
a higher level in himself. The angel says he cannot help Lot
unless he separates from his old state, called Sodom, and comes
into a certain new state called Zoar. His previous state cannot
be destroyed until he touches a new understanding. But Lot
doubts if he is able to reach this new state of himself. Ί shall
not be able to escape to the mountain', he exclaims, and begs
to be allowed to some extent to think and act as he used to,
from his former state. A new state is reached where a man not
only sees for himself the truth of the esoteric knowledge that he
has been given but, as it were, becomes it in his practice of life
so that it is a part of him that he cannot do without and no
longer merely something he knows or can recall to memory
when he finds the time. There is a great difference and indeed
an incommensurable difference between what a man knows and
what he is. Nor can what he knows become a living part of him
unless he sees the supreme good of it and realises that the good
of it is its highest aspect and far more important than the know-
ledge that leads to it. First he sees the truth of it, then the good
of it. All esoteric knowledge is germinal in that it leads on to
another stage and in fact continually grows and transforms its
meaning. So it changes in the man as the man changes, and he
cannot go back and cling hold of what he once understood for that
is to return to what he has already left behind. His previous
understanding will indeed now be dangerous to him. One must
lose one form of life to gain a new one.
Christ speaks of Lot in connection with the consummation
of the age or end of the world, when the 'Son of Man shall be
revealed'. But it refers to a man's inner state and the passing
from one state to another state. That is why it is said: 'Whoso-
ever shall seek to gain his life shall lose it: but whosoever shall
lose his life shall preserve it' (Luke xvii.33 R.V.). It refers to a
man reaching a certain understanding where what was holy to
him ceases to have any meaning - that is, where his ordinary
basis and ordinary values, what he has held as sacred, no longer
have any meaning for him. Here is the point where something
can take place in him. So it is said in the corresponding passage
in Matthew: 'When therefore ye see the abomination of deso-
lation which was spoken of by Daniel the prophet standing in
the holy place (let him that readeth understand) then let them
that are in Judaea flee to the mountains: let him that is on the
housetop not go down to take out the things that are in his
house: and let him that is in the field not return back to take
his cloke. But woe unto them that are with child and to them
 that give suck in those days. . . . ' (Matthew xxiv.15-19
R.V.)
To find that what we once thought holy is of no value is a very
difficult period.
You will notice that Christ says: 'Let him that readeth
understand.' This means that it must be understood not literally
but psychologically. A man can reach a point in which he must
either go on, and get beyond himself, beyond what he was, or
be destroyed. Lot was reluctant to move. His own city of Sodom
was himself as he was. He had to move away from himself- or
else die. When the abomination of desolation stands in the
place that is holy, then 'escape to the mountains' is necessary
because to lose values and meaning is the worst thing. But life is
meant to bring us to that point and here esoteric teaching - the
mountains - can meet you. One's former life - that is, all that is
useless in it - can then be destroyed as was Sodom, the city on
the plain. The whole story is about this inner change and re-
birth — about leaving the level at which one was and reaching
a new level.
You will remember, or you can read, that the episode of Lot
and Sodom follows on a visit of three strange men called angels
to Abram and his wife Sarai, who have both reached the age
of ninety, and they are told they will have a child. Abram is
re-named Abraham and Sarai re-named Sarah (= Princess).
In both cases a letter He, one of the sacred letters in the name
Javeh, is inserted. You must understand that the whole narra-
tive is psychological and refers not to a literal child but to
regeneration or re-birth. Sarah laughs at the angels and then
denies that she did this and is not quite forgiven. 'Nay; but
thou didst laugh,' one of the angels says to her. This is followed
by the failure of Lot's wife, in the next episode. Now if anyone
takes a step forward in evolution, what was formerly his state
must be destroyed. A person cannot remain what he is and at
the same time develop into a new kind of person. A seed cannot
remain a seed and become a plant at the same time. So when
we can see that the allegory of Abram and Sarai refers to some-
thing new arising - a son being born - we may expect to find,
in the continuation of the allegory or parable, that something
must be destroyed. The new cannot be contained in the old. The
new must destroy the old, taking from it what is necessary. To
 put new wine into old bottles is mentioned in the Gospels in
illustration of this truth.
However, since everyone thinks that they can change and
yet remain as they are, or, to put it differently, imagines that
change of themselves has nothing to do with becoming quite
different from what they are, it is difficult to understand that
when any reference in scripture is made to a new state (as a son
being born to Abram and Sarai) that it will naturally be
accompanied by some reference to death. The new cannot come
into existence save by the death of the old. You cannot remain
a seed and become a tree. Because of this difficulty in under-
standing, people do not realise why Christ died. They do not
realise that re-birth, or a new state, must mean also a death to
a former state. In view of this, it is not surprising to find that as
soon as a son is promised to Abram and Sarai there arises a
question of destruction of something — in this case called Sodom
and Gomorrah. It is all internal, all psychological, all about
how a man can actually pass from one level to another. The
names shift, the characters are varied, the scenes are different,
but it is all internal, all psychological, all, as it were, in the
language of parables or dreams, and referring to the same inner
process as, for example, in the Pilgrim's Progress which is told
'in the similitude of a dream' - that is, in that language. But it is
all about one person - a man - in his internal life and develop-
ment. Let us notice that Abram, now become Abraham, pleads
with God for the preservation of Sodom. He says: 'Wilt thou
consume the righteous with the wicked ? Peradventure there be
fifty righteous within the city: wilt thou consume and not spare
the place for the fifty righteous that are therein?' When God
agrees to this request, Abram pleads again for the city to be
saved even if there are only forty-five righteous men, and then
if only forty can be found, and then if only thirty can be found,
or even only twenty. Finally he says: 'Oh, let not the Lord be
angry, and I will speak yet but this once: peradventure only
ten shall be found there.' And God answered: Ί will not destroy
it for ten's sake.'
And then let us notice that Lot is unwilling to leave Sodom.
The idea is the same. It is with great reluctance that we leave
what is familiar and natural and easy. It is difficult to under-
stand anew. It is difficult to abandon one's merit and virtue and
feeling of success. It is very hard to see that our filthiness - that
is, Sodom in us - lies just in this merit and self-love and this
ascription of everything to our own cleverness. The inhabitants
of Sodom thought they could have intercourse with angels -
that is, that they were equal to them in understanding. Lot
knew better. He takes the angels into his house and shuts the
outer door on the men in the street. This represents an act of
inner realisation - namely, a distinction between what is valu-
able and what is worthless. Lot could distinguish those personal-
ities in himself that were worthless and nothing but different
experiences of self-love. They were outside his inner under-
standing and he shuts the door on them. You must understand
that the self-love is different from the love of neighbour or the
love of God.
These are the three stages of development. A man, to develop,
has to leave the first stage, because all that is formed and laid
down by the genius of self-love is wrongly connected. It is
simply a bad bit of machinery. This is Sodom. Consider what
arises from the undisciplined and unrecognised self-love. From
it come all the delights of power and possession, whether on a
big or on a small scale. From it arises every kind of appearance,
every sort of deceit, falseness, lying and external pretence. And
from it more deeply come hatred, revenge, the unpleasant
pleasure in harming others, all sorts of cruelties and making
mischief, which can give a secret feeling of power to the self-love
and inflate it. All this is Sodom, whether viewed in the realm
of a man's thought or in the realm of his feelings or in the
realm of his actions. For the change of a man into another state
of being he must leave this former state. So Lot must leave
Sodom and the angels warn him that he cannot linger and that
once set out on his journey he must not look back.
The journey is a psychological journey, for, when a man
passes from his previous inner state to a new one, he has gone
a journey from one state of himself to another. These journeys
on a small scale are always taking place in us. Things are
always moving in us. But here it is a journey from a lower to a
higher level. Lot must leave the plain and go to the mountains
and this means that nearly everything in him that is related to his
previous level must die or be abandoned. A man is related or
connected to different sides of himself in different ways. Just as
he has outside relations in the external world, such as mother,
father, wife, daughter, son, and so on, so has he relations in his
internal world of thoughts, feelings and desires, of ideas, aspira-
tions, of different glimpses of truth and of knowledge, of different
states of himself, of different wishes, different insights, different
perceptions, different aims and so on. Lot's wife is a relationship
or connection in Lot that had to become sterile. It was a fruitful
connection with Sodom. The death of this intimate relation is
represented by Lot's wife looking back and being turned to a
pillar of salt.

The subject in all the above quotations concerns the violation

of esoteric truth. Like everything else it can be misunderstood.
It can fall not only on the wrong people 'who will violate it and
so make it more useless' but it can fall on the wrong place in a
man himself, for a man is not one person but many people. He
has many different sides to himself. In consequence he may get
hold of a thing wrongly, not having the necessary quality of
understanding, and turn the whole thing into ridicule. Then
his state is worse than the first state. If esoteric knowledge were
on the same scale as ordinary knowledge that we can acquire
from any school or university the botching of it would produce
its own obvious results. We say simply that the man has failed,
that he does not understand a subject, he is no good at it. But
in the case of esoteric knowledge and the psychological develop-
ment that can take place from it, if it falls on good ground, the
understanding is quite different, because if it is botched a
person's possibilities of a real development of understanding
are permanently ruined. If we take the story of Lot and Sodom
as applying to the individual himself and the various sides of
him and if we can even vaguely comprehend the opening and
shutting of doors, as applying to a person's inner and outer
understanding, we can realise it is about a man separating him-
self from these factors in himself that are useful or useless for
his inner evolution. All those elements in a man that wish to
deny the existence of a definite psychological evolution 'press
 sore upon the man even Lot and draw near to break the (inner)
door' and so ruin his understanding. This is psychological
violation which the whole episode deals with. Everyone has in
him great sources of denial that in the further evolution that
leads to transformation will inevitably make war against him.
But these elements in this narrative are shewn as being made
blind so that they cannot find the door. This means that at a
certain stage of temptation, a man receives help. He receives
help from the higher level he is struggling to reach and the
antagonistic elements are, as it were, misdirected or blinded.
This refers to a certain stage in his inner life. At first the door
is almost broken down, but once he has accepted the 'two men',
once they are inside him, he is helped, because in the narrative
it says that 'the men put forth their hand and brought Lot into
the house to them and shut the door' (Genesis xix.10).
Another example of what might be called typical recurring
ideas in esoteric psychology is the use of the word 'street'. The
men that Lot has to struggle against are 'in the street'. They
demand that the two visitors should come out into the street
'that we may know them' (v.5). This latter expression contains
in the Hebrew a sexual meaning - expressions such as 'he knows
him' refer on the literal level to sexual intercourse. But all
unions of any kind can be expressed in such terms. In the
language of images, in the language of esoteric allegory and
parables, literal images are used to convey psychological mean-
ings. The point made is that the men in the street must not
have any kind of union with the two visitors who are inside
Lot's house. The idea of Man as a house containing many
rooms is a very ancient image. The inner constitution of a man
is compared to a house with rooms on different levels. The
'men in the street' in this narrative represent external sides of
Lot. They represent those elements in him which have external
understanding based on their external world as given through
the senses. The knowledge of esoteric psychology cannot be
sown on this side of a man because the outer side contradicts
the development of the inner side of a man. A man must realise
that there is something else apart from what he beholds in the
world. If he takes everything as he sees it happening he will be
extremely external and have no inner reflection. Esoteric
psychology in its action begins when a man perceives that there
must be something else, apart from what his senses shew him,
otherwise he will always be dragged down by the events of life
and will be unable to form in himself anything that can resist
the chaos of outer life. This is why the men 'in the street' must
be resisted. The same idea is met with in the parable of the
Sower and the Seed: 'The sower went forth to sow his seed: and
as he sowed, some fell by the way side; and it was trodden
under foot, and the birds of heaven devoured it' (Luke viii.5
R.V.). The truth, the knowledge of this further evolution of Man
that is the subject of esoteric psychology, must not fall 'by the
way side' in a man. It must not fall on those parts of him that
are 'in the street', on those sides of him concerned with outer
life only. The most external side of Man is that side of him that
deals with the world as he sees it, with the daily tasks, with the
effect of appearances on him. Esoteric knowledge must fall
more deeply than this. It must touch an inner side in a man.
And once it touches a deeper side there will inevitably start a
struggle between the inner understanding and the outer under-
standing. So Lot has to struggle with the men 'in the street' be-
cause he has reached a stage in which something quite definite
can happen to him and is at once in the danger of losing
what inner understanding he has. In fact, his inner under-
standing is in great danger of being violated by his outer under-
standing. When his two visitors come to him they say they
will 'abide' in the street all night and 'he urged them greatly;
and they turned in unto him and entered into his house; and
he made them a feast' (v.3). This means that he could under-
stand the difference between what is simply of life and what
belongs to esoteric knowledge. He understood that there was a
development possible for him but he had to insist on the reality
of it. He had to affirm it and so he pressed them greatly to come
into his house and they consented. Once inside the house they
made it possible for him to resist those 'in the street'. That is,
they made it possible for him to resist all his doubts, all those
sides that could never understand. But Lot is in that state in
which he cannot break away from himself and still wishes to
come to terms. He is not strong enough to separate himself from
his life-understanding and so he offers his two 'daughters' to
the men 'in the street' (v.8). You must understand of course
that this is not literal. It means that he wished to make a
compromise. He knew that esoteric truth must not be violated
and guards it but he has not the strength to rely on it fully. The
'daughters' represent two points of contact in him belonging to
the side of feeling rather than the side of knowledge. He does
not offer his two daughters to the two visitors but to the men
'in the street', although they are his daughters and so intimate
sides of himself in the realm of feeling. Later on these two
daughters have intercourse with him and produce a new side
of himself. The two visitors insist that he leaves Sodom, which
means his present state. They urge him to leave quickly but
Lot tarries 'And when the morning arose then the angels
hastened Lot saying, Arise, take thy wife and thy two daughters
which are here; lest thou be consumed in the iniquity of the
city. But he lingered, and the men laid hold upon his hand
and upon the hand of his wife and upon the hand of his two
daughters; the Lord being merciful unto him; and they brought
him forth and set him without the city', (v.15-16)
The city is then destroyed. All those elements that are useless
in regard to this possible transformation of a man are destroyed.
There is only a further reference to the men 'in the street' being
blinded and unable to find the door. But the psychological story
depicts a man who cannot face fully all those inner changes that
are necessary for transformation.
It is a story about a man who has reached a certain level and
is drawn up from one side and kept down from another side.
He still wishes to compromise with the men 'in the street', and
that side of him represented by his wife, which means some
intimate affection, still wishes to go back. The angels tell him
he must escape to the mountain - that is, to a higher level of
himself — but he cannot do it. The angels in him, the higher
understanding, say to him 'escape for thy life'. This is not the
physical life but the psychological life and they add: 'Look not
behind thee neither stay thou in all the Plain; escape to the
mountain lest thou be consumed' (v. 17). But Lot complains;
he does not wish to go to the mountain, in fact he is afraid to do
so. He says: Ί cannot escape to the mountain lest evil overtake
me and I die' (v. 19). He feels he is not able to reach this higher
level in himself and if he tries to do so he will die, he will die
psychologically, not having strength to live on this new level.
He begs to be allowed to go to a small city. He feels he is only
capable of a very small change and cannot endure what he is
asked to do and knows that he should do. So he argues with the
transforming forces in him and says to them: 'Behold now this
city is near to flee unto and it is a little one. Ο let me escape
thither (is it not a little one?) and my soul shall live', (v. 20)
The angels agree and one says: 'Haste thee, escape thither for
I cannot do anything until thou be come thither. Therefore
the name of the city was called Zoar'. (v. 22) Zoar means
smallness. No one can escape from himself unless he has some-
where to go to. A man cannot change himself unless he has
already something new to go to. Before the old can be destroyed
something new must present itself. Lot, both understanding
and reluctant, could not go to the mountain but had enough
formed in him of what was new to take refuge in. This is Zoar.
And his reluctance is shewn by his wife's turning back to the
former state. He has been told not to look behind him or to stay
in the Plain. The narrative says that 'the sun was risen upon
the earth when Lot came to Zoar' (v. 23). This is the language
of the new state. Lot reached a new state, a little one, called
Zoar. His 'earth' was illuminated by this new state. 'The sun
was risen upon the earth when Lot came unto Zoar. Then the
Lord rained upon Sodom and Gomorrah brimstone and fire,
and he overthrew those cities and all the Plain, and all the
inhabitants of the cities and that which grew upon the ground.'
(v. 24, 25) The old state was completely destroyed. All that
grew upon the ground, upon the Plain, was destroyed. All that
side of Lot was destroyed. 'But his wife looked back from behind
him and she became a pillar of salt' (v. 26). Salt has different
meanings in the esoteric language of parables but here it means
something quite sterile, quite dead. All Lot has left to him were
the 'two daughters'. We are then told that Lot feared to dwell
in Zoar but dwelt in a mountain in a cave with his 'two
daughters' and that through them he propagated when he had
been made drunk with wine.
All this narrative depicts the terrific struggle in a man and
in a sense how he failed and how all that he gave rise to event-
ually was wrong. But the essence of this struggle is depicted in
the scene in Sodom between the men in the street and the
angels inside the house. What we have to understand is that it
is a real description of the different stages in esoteric psychology.
It deals with the inner states of a man who is beginning to
undergo individual evolution. It deals with psychological re-
birth. It is not historical any more than anything in the Gospels
is historical. It is not literal but psychological and it was written
by people who knew about esoteric psychology. To take it
literally is to abuse its meaning completely and taken in this
way it will only disgust the reader.
 TRANSFORMATION OF MEANING

Let the dead bury their dead (Matthew viii.22). 'Surely,' says St.
Augustine, 'these dead buriers are not dead in body, for if this
were so, they could not bury dead bodies. Yet doth he call
them dead: where, but in the soul within? For as we may often
see in a household, itself sound and well, the master lying dead,
so in a sound body do many carry a dead soul within, and them
the Apostle arouses thus: Awake, thou that deepest, and arise
from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light'. (Sermon 38)
Man can be alive on this earth and yet be dead, at the same
time.
In the last text quoted by St. Augustine, which occurs in the
fifth chapter of Ephesians (v. 14), the emphasis is first placed
on awakening from sleep. A man must awake first, he must rise
out of his ordinary state, which is compared to a state of death
or sleep, and then light can reach him.
People find difficulty in not taking everything literally,
especially what is written or said with a meaning beyond the
words themselves. They can understand more easily the under-
lying meaning expressed in allegorical pictures - that is, visual
allegory, as in the daily cartoons, but not allegory in words.
Thus, the dead to them are the actual dead. Awaking is waking
up in the morning and sleep is sleep in bed. The deaf, the blind
and the lame are actually deaf, blind and lame people. And the
idea always seems to them far fetched that there is an outer
person in us - the body - who may actually be deaf, owing to
disease of the ears, or blind, owing to disease of the eyes, or
lame, owing to injury to the legs; and also an internal or inner
man who may be deaf, although the outer ears are not diseased,
and who may be blind, although the sight is unimpaired, or
lame although the physical legs are strong. This step in the trans-
formation of meaning from the sensual or sensory level to the
emotional and mental levels is one of the activities referred to
as faith. 'We walk', Paul said, 'by faith and not by sight' (ii Cor.
v. 7). Even if we believe we understand what this means, when
it comes to the point, all of us 'walk by sight' - that is, the literal,
apparent meaning of everything has the greatest power over us.
So people take always one another's actual words up, not the
meaning behind them.
For St. Augustine and many more before and after him, the
sick, the deaf, and the dead in the Gospels are the sick and deaf,
and the dead within. And in speaking of the two blind men who,
sitting by the way side as Jesus was passing, cried out and asked
that their eyes might be opened, he asks if we can really suppose
that this is merely an account of a miraculous event concerning
two physically blind men? Why does it say that the crowd try
to restrain them, and that they fight against it and insist on
attracting the attention of Jesus? 'They overcame the crowd,
who kept them back, by the great perseverance of their cry, that
their voice might reach the Lord's ears. . . . The Lord was
passing by and they cried out. The Lord stood still and they were
healed. For the Lord Jesus stood still and said, What will ye that I
shall do unto you? They said unto him, That our eyes may be opened.'
(Matthew xx.30-34) The blind here are those who cannot see
but wish to see. Augustine says they are those who are blind in
their hearts and realise it. Like the deaf, like the sick and the
dead, the blind are a certain kind of people. They are, in this
case, people in a certain inner state, knowing they are blind,
and wishing to see clearly. 'Cry out among the very crowds',
he says, 'and do not despair.' Who are these two blind men who
know they cannot see but who recognise the spiritual meaning
typified in the person of Jesus - what individual functions of
the soul are shewn here that struggle with the crowd of common-
place meanings and thoughts and finally, by their own deter-
mination, receive their power of vision? 'If two or three are
gathered together in my name . . . ' said Christ (Matthew
xviii.20). What two sides of ourselves must first take part that
our eyes may be opened - that is, our understanding? Why two,
to make it effective?

There are, Swedenborg says, two sides of a man which must

awaken and grow together if he seeks regeneration, the mind
and the will. One side is characterised by the general term
truth. The function of the intellect is to seek truth, to distinguish
it from falsity and lies. The other side is characterised by the
word good. Truth without good is useless. It is blind, ruthless,
cruel, harsh, domineering. Truth feeds on good and good on
truth. Truth only can live from good. In a bad world, where
there is no good but only violence, truth cannot continue to
live. It will be twisted into falsity, into lies. Then lies will seem
truth.
The will blindly always seeks 'good', but according to its own
quality. It is either a good or an evil will, and seeks corres-
pondingly - i.e. it always seeks what it regards as good. So the
human struggle is between different sorts of good and no one
seeks evil deliberately. -
The affection for truth and the affection for good must
increase together for a man to develop normally and the
'heavenly marriage' whereby a man becomes a unity is that of
good with truth and truth with good.
Again, every man is first two men, an external man and an
internal man. These at first are, or appear to be fused, just as if
they were one. Only when a man begins to reflect on his life,
and on the kind of man he is, and on his actions and speech and
intentions, does the internal man begin to become separated
from the external, and conscience can stir in him. This is a
necessary state preliminary to the first stage of regeneration.
Let it be again said that regeneration is the supreme idea of
man. It is the true evolution of man. A man, in this sense, is not a
violent external creature, more cunning or stronger than others,
a principal animal. What a man is, is according to his understanding.
And unless the inner man is separated from the outer, a man
remains incapable of becoming a man. He is incapable of under-
standing, which begins originally, perhaps, only by 'standing-
under' oneself, and this may be the inner sense of the word,
which is unknown etymologically.
The parable or incident of the two blind men comes at the
end of a chapter (Matthew xx). Two parables precede it, both
about being first. The opening parable likens the Kingdom of
Heaven to a householder who sends labourers at intervals to
work in his vineyard:
Tor the kingdom of heaven is like unto a man that is a
householder, which went out early in the morning to hire
labourers into his vineyard. And when he had agreed with the
labourers for a penny a day, he sent them into his vineyard.
And he went out about the third hour, and saw others standing
in the market place idle; and to them he said, Go ye also into
the vineyard, and whatsoever is right I will give you. And they
went their way. Again he went out about the sixth and ninth
hour, and did likewise. And about the eleventh hour he went
out, and found others standing; and he said unto them, Why
stand ye here all the day idle? They say unto him, Because no
man hath hired us. He saith unto them, Go ye also into the
vineyard. And when even was come, the lord of the vineyard
saith unto his steward, Call the labourers, and pay them their
hire, beginning from the last unto the first. And when they
came that were hired about the eleventh hour, they received
every man a penny. And when the first came, they supposed
that they would receive more; and they likewise received every
man a penny. And when they received it, they murmured
against the householder, saying, These last have spent but one
hour, and thou hast made them equal unto us, which have
borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat. But he
answered and said to one of them, Friend, I do thee no wrong:
didst thou not agree with me for a penny? Take up that which
is thine, and go thy way; it is my will to give unto this last, even
as unto thee. Is it not lawful for me to do what I will with mine
own? or is thine eye evil, because I am good? So the last shall
be first, and the first last.' (Matthew xx.1-16 R.V.)
The other parable is taken from an incident in which the
mother of two of the disciples asks Christ that they should sit
in the highest places in the kingdom: 'Command that these my
two sons may sit, one on thy right hand, and one on thy left
hand, in thy Kingdom.' The ten other disciples are indignant.
Christ says to them that in life people occupy high places, and
exercise authority over one another, but that amongst them it
must not be so: 'Ye know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it
over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them.
Not so shall it be among you: but whosoever would become
great among you, shall be your minister; and whosoever would
be first among you, shall be your servant: even as the Son of
man came not to be ministered unto but to minister, and to
give his life a ransom for many' (Matthew xx.25-28).
 Then follows the incident of the two blind men: 'And behold,
two blind men sitting by the wayside, when they heard that
Jesus was passing by, cried out, saying, Lord, have mercy on
us, thou son of David. And the multitude rebuked them, that
they should hold their peace: but they cried out the more,
saying, Lord, have mercy on us, thou son of David. And Jesus
stood still, and called them, and said, What will ye that I
should do unto you? They say unto him, Lord, that our eyes
may be opened. And Jesus, being moved with compassion,
touched their eyes: and straightway they received their sight,
and followed him.' (Matthew xx.30-34 R.V.)
Both the parable of the vineyard, and the private teaching
given following the request of the mother of the two disciples,
shew man as blind to the nature of the Kingdom of Heaven.
Man cannot understand what it is. The mother of the sons of
Zebedee is shewn as thinking of it as being like an earthly
kingdom, with all its pomp and pride of position. And the
labourers in the vineyard cannot understand it. It does not
seem fair or just to them. They are all treated in the same way.
Those that came to work last are given the same reward as
those who came first. The whole distinction made by the natural
human mind about justice is removed at a stroke. In fact, it is
called evil. 'Is thine eye evil, because I am good?' asks the master
of the vineyard of the first comers who are complaining to him,
and he adds: 'So the last shall be first, and the first last,' as if
this were a necessary state of things, the realisation of which had
to be brought about in the human mind, to replace its ordinary
conceptions. The parable is about our ordinary ways of thinking,
our mental concepts, whereas the comparison made in con-
nection with the request of the mother of Zebedee's sons has to
do with the vain side of man nourished by the mother, with his
self-emotions, his desire to triumph over others and satisfy his
mother's darling wishes, his inevitable and necessary firstness
with his mother. Intellectually man is blind, and emotionally man
is blind, to the idea of the 'Kingdom of Heaven'.

Swedenborg, in his tremendous interpretation of the opening

books of the Old Testament, bases their significance upon the
 need for overcoming the psychologically maternal in man - that
is, all that is derived from birth through woman in man, and
takes it as an esoteric document of the highest man, Christ,
evolving internally. Strangely enough, this is not understood,
possibly even by those who follow his teaching.
Suppose the two blind men, the crowd, the outcry and Christ
passing and standing still represent man at a certain stage of
evolution. Can the inner state of a man be represented more
simply than by means of visual description and allegory, just as
the political situation is explained at a glance by a cartoon?
Of what import would the bare incident be, when it is so often
stated that the blind were healed? The description follows upon
two illustrations of defects in human nature, one very hard to
grasp theoretically, and the other easier to understand though
extremely difficult to deal with practically. Both these defects
have to do with the human idea of being first. Both are con-
nected with another idea, the notion of the first being last, of the
master being servant. It cannot be merely sentimental in meaning.
If the direction of human development called 'Kingdom of
Heaven' is so difficult even to grasp that it requires every kind
of analogy to indicate it, all the practical teachings - that is, the
methods - will be also very difficult to understand.
Now evolution is to come into a new state of being, one that
is higher. The evolution of man is the unfolding, the unrolling
of man, just as the evolution of a seed or egg is the unrolling of
the tree or bird, the unfolding of the full being. The being of a
seed is different from the being of a tree and the being of an egg
is different from the being of a bird. Their destinies or uses are
also different. Throughout the New Testament man is com-
pared to a seed. Otherwise there could be no doctrine of evolu-
tion, no real firm basic idea about man, - and so, no real eternal
psychology of man beyond all temporary fashions and notions.
Man comes from a seed: and man is again himself a new seed. That is,
man as he is by birth and natural growth is not full man,
evolved man, being a seed himself, the latent seed of himself,
having all the requisite physiological, and also psychic functions
(of thought, feeling, insight, consciousness, etc.) that can bring
about his own unfolding into evolved man or full man. All real
psychology - all true science of the soul - is about this new seed,
man himself. If we imagine this progress, we can realise it is not
in time, but in some other direction. What does this mean? The
parable of the labourers in the vineyard seems to be based on
the argument from time. Some worked a longer time than the
others. Is, then, one of those blind men, who cries out (and
fights with the crowd in himself) a side of man nearing a new
realisation of life and aware of a higher range in himself, which
begins by understanding that time is what prevents him? The
passage of time is not evolution. It is not the quantity of effort but
its quality that marks development. Time is not progress, and
length of time is nothing by itself. Evolution, development, is a
higher or deeper form of a thing. It is a movement towards
something above what a thing is, not to something tomorrow. It
is a moving towards what is more internal, to what is deeper
experience, to greater integrity and purity of vision, to quality
and not mere quantity.
The Parable of the Sower
 PART ONE
IΝ the Lord's Prayer, we are told to say: 'May thy will be
done on Earth as it is in Heaven.'

το θεληµα σου, ως ev ονρανφ, και επί γης.

Earth psychologically means that part of a man built in him
by the senses. This is 'Earth' in him psychologically. Man is
governed by what he sees. The Will of Heaven is not done in
this 'Earth' in him. He must learn to understand apart from
the senses.
In all that follows, one thing must be kept in mind - namely,
Man's relation to esoteric teaching that is sown from a higher
level in mankind. The categories of Man described in the fol-
lowing pages refer to categories of men in their relationship to
esoteric ideas - those who cannot understand them and those who
understand them wrongly and those who actually understand
and follow them.
Man is created as a self-developing organism, as a seed that
can grow upwards in the vertical scale of being, and from the
higher level that creates man comes all esoteric teaching - that
is, the eternal teaching about Man and his possible inner
evolution and the means whereby this can be attained.
When a person takes everything literally, it means that he is
using one level of thinking - the lowest or most external level.
At this level the outer world meets his senses and his thinking
is placed here. His eyes behold objects illuminated by the
physical light of the sun and his mind forms ideas from these
objects - from all he sees and hears and touches round him.
His ideas are thus derived from visible, tangible objects. He
thinks from these ideas, for everyone thinks and can only think,
from the ideas he possesses. Thus, ordinarily, all the ideas of a
person's mind are founded on things in the world - that is, his
mind is moulded on the things revealed by the senses. This is
the literal mind. This level of the mind cannot get away from
things. Only things and ideas derived from things are real to it. Take
away from it the ideas derived from the world of things and its
thought would be destroyed. Or give to this level of the mind
 the idea, let us say, that time is a dimension in which the past
and future is extended, and it will make nothing of it, because it
can only think from what it sees.
This lowest level of the mind which thinks naturally, from
appearance, is the first mind formed in us. And it is of the
greatest importance, because it relates us to external life. But
this level of mind must be used for what it is meant to be used
for. It must not be used for ideas that are not derived
from appearances. There are other levels of the mind, not
opened up by the external senses and to these levels other ideas
and ways of thought belong. Let us take the simplest possible
example of what it means to think from the senses - that is,
naturally, literally, or from appearances — and what it means
to think from a slightly higher level of mind. From appearances,
that is, according to the evidence of our senses, the sun rises in
the East and sets in the West. A man, thinking naturally, would
swear that this is so. Yet, thinking from a slightly higher level,
and so against appearances, this is not true. The Earth rotates and
makes it appear that the sun rises and sets. But no one sees the
Earth rotating. We see instead the sky apparently rotating and
therefore naturally think it swings round the Earth every twenty-
four hours. This is natural or mechanical thinking, based on
what the senses shew - that is, on appearances: it belongs to
the literal mind that thinks in terms of things and the ideas
derived from them.
Now it is very important that a man should learn to distin-
guish between different categories of ideas. He must eventually
come to know what it means 'to think in different categories' (Ous-
PENSKY, A New Model of the Universe, p. 324, Routledge). A man
cannot develop inwardly in himself otherwise. If he does not
learn that ideas belong to different categories, he will mix up
ideas belonging to different scales and they will come into
collision and seem contradictory. There are different kinds of
ideas. Ideas are of different levels, and levels cannot mix. The
very idea of levels is that things are different and cannot be
mixed up and must be kept distinct. All esoteric ideas are on a
level above the level of the mind that thinks naturally, accord-
ing to the appearance of things. It is impossible to understand
these ideas on the most mechanical, literal level of the mind.
Yet, at the same time, they must to some extent fall first on this
level, for no one can think in a new way unless he starts from
what he knows and understands already.
Very many problems exist in regard to the teaching of
esotericism. Esoteric ideas lie far beyond natural ideas. Yet some
connection must be made. This is one of the problems of
esotericism - namely, to find how it is possible to convey ideas
of a higher category, belonging to a higher level of the mind,
to those people who think naturally, literally, from the senses,
from things as they appear. In the Gospels, a bridge was effected
by means of parables.
 PART TWO

A PARABLE is a medium of connection between a lower and a

higher meaning. But it is necessary to look more closely at the
basis of parables and the reason they exist. In ancient teaching,
Man is taken as a link between a higher and a lower world,
between 'heaven' and 'earth'. Man lives physically on earth by
the light of the sun but psychologically he lives by the light
received by his level of understanding, which is light from
'heaven', a far more wonderful light. As a man grows in under-
standing, he stands more in this light and it can be said that it
is only by means of receiving some fraction of this light that a
man can think at all. A language exists, that was once known,
that connects Man on the level of the Earth with Man on the
level of Heaven. It is in this language that parables are cast. It is a
specific language, speaking, in terms of earthly objects, of
meanings that these earthly objects represent at a higher level.
In this language everything on earth represents something
belonging to the understanding. Objects represent ideas. All
physical things have definite psychological meanings - not
arbitrary subjective meanings invented by Man, but objective
meanings - that is, meanings quite apart from Man's subjective
associations. Everything created on the earth has a true, a real,
objective significance, because it represents something at a
higher level that only the understanding can grasp. If a man
were fully awake he would see the objective meaning of all
things around him. It would be enough if he were fully awake
in the emotional centre - that is, if he were conscious in the Higher
Emotional Centre. The Higher Emotional Centre is a world
above us. The language of the Higher Emotional Centre is the
language of the parable. It is the language of vision. It is, for
instance, the language in which the Book of Revelation is
written. In this strange book the language is cast in the image
of the senses. We read of horses, trumpets, swords, stars, sun,
moon, kings, wars, pestilences, and so on, and think it means,
literally, these objects. Its meaning lies in what these earthly
objects represent in this lost language, that still exists in us.
This language was once known and understood, and made
deliberate use of in myths, legends, parables and in other ways.
The emotional centre was once awake in Man. He then walked
and talked with God. He named everything created. That is,
he knew what every object represented.
'And out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of
the field, and every fowl of the air: and brought them unto
Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam
called every living creature, that was the name thereof (Genesis
ii.19).
If man were awake in the Higher Emotional Centre, through
its illumination he would see the significance of all things. He
would see things as they really are. He would know the properties,
qualities, and the use of all things. He would know what every-
thing represented. He would perceive the ideas that each
physical object represents. He would pass from a world of
physical things into a world of supernatural, inconceivable
meaning. He would be in a state of objective consciousness.
 PART THREE

EVERY word used in a parable in the Gospels, or in a descrip-

tion of a miracle, has a special meaning, belonging to this
language which connects the visible things of the world with
the understanding of the mind of the Higher Emotional Centre.
A parable is only alive when it is based on this language for then
it has connection with higher levels. Everything literal that is
constructed rightly in terms of this language conducts force from
higher levels and so has life in it. This is the basis of miracles, for a
miracle is brought about by attracting the laws of a higher world
to act in a lower world. It was the reason for ritual, only ritual
has lost its meaning partly because to be effective - that is, to
conduct force - not only an emotional understanding of its
meaning is necessary, but a certain emotional state must be
reached. For example, the laying on of hands was a ritual based
on this lost language. The hands represent power and laying on
represents contact. But as a mere ritual act nothing curative
can result. But ritual itself has great importance. Things
had to be done in the right way in order to correspond with
this language, otherwise force could not be transmitted. The case
is somewhat like ordinary language: if you arrange the words
rightly, they conduct meaning.
It is the basis of objective art. A parable is an example of
objective art. By being rightly arranged it conducts permanent or
eternal meaning: and it will be understood by everyone strictly
according to his level of being. That is, it will grow in meaning
as a man grows in the level of his understanding. At the lowest
natural level of the mind a parable will be understood literally.
It will seem merely to be a story about some shepherd or some
spendthrift son, and so on, and an actual king or shepherd or
son will be thought of and perhaps a scholar will make re-
searches to find out who, historically, is referred to. One has
only to read the more modern commentaries on the New
Testament to realise how literally everything in the Gospels can
be taken. In ancient times there was better understanding.
Let us begin with what is called the parable of parables in
the Gospels. It is the first parable given in Matthew and appears
in the thirteenth chapter. Up to that point in this gospel the
teaching of Christ is presented in the form of discourses, such as
the Sermon on the Mount. Then quite abruptly, Jesus begins
to teach in parables. The first parable is a key parable, because
Christ says to his disciples unless they can understand this
parable how can they expect to understand any other parable?
This is not recorded in the version given in Matthew but in
the account of the same parable in Mark iv where Christ says
to the disciples: 'Know ye not this parable? and how then will
ye know all the parables?' (v. 13). This key parable is the
Parable of the Sower and the Seed. It is given in Matthew xiii,
Mark iv and Luke viii, but not in John, because the gospel of
John is quite differently written and came from another school.
Let us begin with the version in Matthew. It is sometimes
important to notice the introduction to a parable. In this case,
the introduction is as follows:
On that day went Jesus out of the house, and sat by the sea
side. And there were gathered unto him great multitudes, so
that he entered into a boat, and sat; and all the multitude stood
on the beach. And he spake many things to them in parables...'
Now this can be taken literally, but it has another meaning.
That is, apart from its literal sense meaning it has a psychological
meaning. The sea is sometimes used, in the language of parables,
as meaning something distinct from the 'Earth' — that is, the
meaning here is that Christ is speaking of things not belonging
to the earthly literal understanding of Man, but of things at
first sight incomprehensible to the sense-based understanding.
He is speaking from another level and so is represented as not
being on earth, but on the sea, close to the beach. Different
categories of ideas belong to different levels of understanding,
and these different levels, in the natural language of the senses,
are represented in different ways, as by a mountain as distinct
from the ground, or by the sea as distinct from the land. The
opening of the Parable of the Sower as given in Matthew is:
'And he spake many things unto them in parables, saying,
Behold, a sower went forth to sow: and as he sowed some seeds
fell by the way side, and the birds came and devoured them'
(xiii.3, 4).

Let us take only this part of the parable and try to under-
stand its meaning. It so happens that this parable is one of the
parables that is given some interpretation by Christ. The dis-
ciples ask what the parable means, and also why he speaks in
parables. Let us leave out for the moment Christ's explanation
of why he speaks in parables, and take his interpretation of the
first part. It is as follows: 'Hear ye then the parable of the
sower. When anyone heareth the word of the kingdom, and
understandeth it not, then cometh the evil one, and snatcheth
away that which hath been sown in his heart. This is he that
was sown by the way side.' You will notice that in the last line
it says: 'This is he that was sown by the way side.' (ούτος έσην
ο παρά τψ όδον σπαρεις..) It refers to Man - to a certain kind of
man. Man is the seed. Yet seed is also defined as 'word of the
kingdom', (ο λόγος της βασιλείας.) This, of course, refers to the
teaching of the Kingdom of Heaven which is expressly said
elsewhere to be in a man. Christ said to the Pharisees on being
asked when the Kingdom of God would come:
'The Kingdom of God cometh not with observation: neither
shall they say, Lo, here! or, lo there! for behold, the Kingdom
of God is within you' (Luke xvii.20).
The seed that is sown is therefore both the teaching of
esotericism - the teaching of the possible inner evolution of Man
to a higher level called 'Heaven' - and it is also Man himself,
for it says here, 'This is he that was sown by the way side.' In all
esoteric teaching, Man is regarded as a seed. It is said of Man
in this respect that unless he dies to himself he cannot bear
fruit. When Jesus heard that certain Greeks had come to speak
with him, he said that his hour was at hand. Why did he say
this when the Greeks came? Here is the strange passage which
is found in John's Gospel only:
'Now there were certain Greeks among those that went up
to worship at the feast: these therefore came to Philip, which was
of Bethsaida of Galilee, and asked him, saying, Sir, we would see
Jesus. Philip cometh and telleth Andrew: Andrew cometh, and
Philip, and they tell Jesus. And Jesus answereth them, saying, The
hour is come, that the Son of Man should be glorified. Verily,
verily, I say unto you, Except a grain of wheat fall into the earth
and die, it abideth by itself alone: but if it die, it beareth much
fruit. He that loveth his life shall lose it: and he that hateth his
life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal.' (John xii.20-25)
And this passage is strangely interesting, for it was a fact that
in the Greek Orphic Mysteries, the green ear of wheat, that is,
the seed, was a central idea in this little known teaching. The
ear of wheat represented Man. This passage shews a very
definite connection between the older Greek schools and the
drama of Christ, but for some reason none of the commentators
on the New Testament seems to realise that this is so. Man is a
seed: and esotericism itself is a seed. But when a man hears the
ideas of esotericism and does not understand them, the birds
come and devour them. Birds represent something definite in
this language of parables. They are, in general, thoughts. You
meet in Plato the image that the mind of man is a bird cage, for
example. (The chief theme of the Ititus is this bird-cage.) It is
a bird-cage which all sorts of birds enter and leave. If a man
hears the ideas of esotericism and does not understand them, it
means he has false or wrong thoughts and these false thoughts,
like birds, devour the ideas, or alter them, twist them and make
lies out of them. That is, the ideas are devoured by false thought.
False thinking is the 'evil one' (ο πονηρός.) This is the meaning
of the devil in regard to the mind. And everyone can see this in
himself. Everyone who is sincere in his self-observation knows
what power a lie has and how he must struggle against lying
in himself - taking things wrongly, giving a false meaning to
what has happened, and so on. Birds, here, therefore, mean false
thinking. But they can also mean right thinking. The prophet
Elijah was fed by ravens in the wilderness. 'And the ravens
brought him bread and flesh in the morning, and bread and
flesh in the evening; and he drank of the brook (i Kings xvii.6).
Here birds mean the same thing but in the opposite sense.
He was fed by right thoughts, by right understanding. Wrong
understanding destroys us all internally. Right understanding
nourishes us all. Man is a seed sown on the earth and esoteri-
cism is a seed sown in Man to awaken the seed that Man is into
life. The first category of Man described here is a man 'who is
sown by the way side'. Such a man cannot understand the ideas
of esotericism, or misunderstands and falsifies them. People, as
seeds, are sown into the world differently and their power of
understanding varies according to where they are sown.
 PART FOUR

WE have now to think of the strange idea that men are differ-
ently sown into the earth, in the light of the Parable of the
Sower and the Seed as given in the version of Matthew. I will
quote again the first part of the parable:
'Behold, the sower went forth to sow; and as he sowed some
seeds fell by the way side, and the birds came and devoured
them.'
After Christ had told his disciples in reply to their question
why he spoke in parables, that it was given to them to under-
stand the mysteries of the Kingdom of Heaven but not to the
multitude, he says:
'Hear ye then the parable of the sower. When any one
heareth the word of the kingdom, and understandeth it not,
then cometh the evil one, and snatcheth away that which hath
been sown in his heart. This is he that was sown by the way
side.' (Matthew xiii.18, 19)
It is the last sentence which is strange: 'This is he that was
sown by the way side.' It is strange because it implies that Man
is sown differently into life. That is, men have not the same
opportunities for understanding esotericism. Christ has already
said that the multitude cannot understand the mysteries of the
Kingdom of Heaven but that his disciples can, for he has said
to the latter: 'Blessed are your eyes for they see: and your ears,
for they hear' (v. 16).
And this, of course, does not mean the literal eyes and ears,
the actual sense-organs. The eyes mean the inner sight of the
mind and the ears the hearing of the emotions - i.e. the
emotional understanding - for only the mind can see the truth
of a thing and only the emotional centre its value and good.
But in Christ's interpretation of the parables, he extended this
idea that only some out of many can understand and follow his
teaching, and defines six classes or categories of people. The
first category are those who hear the Word - that is, the teaching
and ideas of esotericism, and the idea of conscious man and the
idea of self-evolution to that state called the Kingdom of
Heaven which is the conscious circle of humanity - and under-
 stand nothing about it. Their eyes and ears are open to life, to
the world, to the things of the senses - that is, intellectually and
emotionally they only know the world. And this is not their
fault because it is said that such a man 'is he that is sown by
the way side'. Such a man is entirely in life. He is 'glued to his
senses' as it is put in the Greek teaching of Socrates, and ideas
that pass beyond the range of the senses are shut to him because
he can only think naturally, literally, in terms of things. And this
point is further emphasised in this language of parables which
we are studying, in the version given in Luke (viii 5.RV).
'The sower went forth to sow his seed: and as he sowed, some
fell by the way side; and it was trodden underfoot, and the
birds of the heaven devoured it.'
You will notice that a sentence is added here to the same
passage as given in Matthew. The seed fell by the way side,
'and was trodden underfoot'. Let us speak of the meaning of
'underfoot'. The foot is where a man touches the external world,
registered by the senses, and in the language of parables repre-
sents the most natural, literal, external, sense-based level in a
man's mind - that is, the part of the mind that thinks directly
from this source. The ritual of washing the feet means for one
thing to cleanse the natural mind from the fallacies of the
senses - that is, from appearances, from life as it appears. In
John xiii.14, after he had washed the disciples' feet, it is recorded
that Christ said: 'If ye know these things, happy are ye if ye
do them.'
'If I then, your Lord and Master, have washed your feet: ye
also ought to wash one another's feet. For I have given you an
example, that ye should do as I have done to you. Verily,
verily, I say unto you, The servant is not greater than his lord:
neither he that is sent greater than he that sent him. If ye know
these things, happy are ye if ye do them.'
But if a man cannot think and understand apart from the
evidence of his senses, he cannot cleanse the natural mind. He
can then neither think of nor yet understand anything about
the ideas of esotericism. For you must always remember that
esotericism begins from something none of the external senses
shews us, namely, the invisible oneself. It begins not with the
observation of the external world, but with self-observation, with
the invisible world of oneself. And I believe it would be a very
good thing if you would try to see what is meant here and
understand clearly that to observe oneself is not a matter of the
external eyes or ears or of touching yourself, and so on, but an
inner thing, beyond the range of the outer senses. When Christ
said: 'The Kingdom of Heaven cometh not by observation'
(Luke xvii.20), he meant it is not something outside, something
observable by the external senses, but internal - namely, a
stage of inner evolution above us and in ourselves in the vertical
scale of possible being - and the beginning of it is to observe
yourself, in the light of the ideas and teaching of esotericism.
For then you begin to understand why, as you are, the Kingdom
of Heaven is not attainable and that a very great deal of work
on oneself is necessary over a very long period before it is
possible to dream of such an attainment. How far we are from
the Kingdom of Heaven! But how wonderful it is to begin to
see the way to it! And this is what esoteric ideas can shew to
everyone who seeks it and treasures it. How wonderful it is to
understand that mechanical goodness cannot lead to it any
more than mechanical badness. How wonderful it is to begin to
realise what it means to work against one's own mechanicalness.
To return to the idea contained in the phrase 'trodden
underfoot'. Taking the foot as the natural, literal level of a man
where he rests on the earth, it is then possible to see the meaning
of the 'way side'. The seed falls by the way side and is trodden
underfoot. What is the way side? Psychologically, it is where
the traffic of life goes on in you. It is all your mechanical
thoughts. It is your mechanical side, the mechanical part of
you turned to life, to the senses. It is impossible for this mechani-
cal part - that is, the part which works almost automatically
from life - to understand esoteric ideas. If these ideas fall on this
mechanical part, they fall 'by the way side'. They fall on the
wrong place in a man - a place useful for life, but useless for
self development. Let me remind you: a man must be able to
think in different categories. He must think of his affairs in life.
He must think of esoteric ideas. But he must not think in the
same category of life-affairs and of the ideas of esotericism. He
must know and see that they are different in quality. And if he
cannot see that they are different, then he has no magnetic
centre. Esotericism is about living in life but it is not of life. Its
source is not from life. If it were it could not lift you above life -
above mechanicalness. How can what originates in life lift you
above life? Esotericism is a rope — above life. The magnetic
centre in a man means his power of distinguishing between
influences which are life influences and created within the
sphere of life, and influences which come from conscious man,
from outside life. A man must be able, for example, to distin-
guish between the football news or war news and esoteric ideas,
and not let them contradict and destroy one another. If you
have no sense of scale - and a sense of scale is one of the mean-
ings of having magnetic centre - then everything will be
contradictory simply because you do not put things where they
belong, on the right level, but mix them all up on the same
level. That is, you have no feeling of the vertical arm of the
cross, which represents different levels, and different categories
- in short, higher and lower, and so, more conscious and more
mechanical levels in you. And remember that if you want to be
in more conscious parts of yourself, you get there by directed
attention, to begin with. The whole idea of esotericism is to
make us first of all more conscious, more aware of what we are
thinking and feeling and saying and doing, and the object of
this is to get us to live in more conscious parts of ourselves, which
in most people are unoccupied or almost so. And self observa-
tion is an act of internal attention. The object of esotericism is
to lift us in the vertical scale of being.
Magnetic centre is therefore something in a man that gives
him the first feeling of things above and things below or things
more internal and more external and relates him to the idea of
the vertical scale of things, however dimly. For the vertical is
internal and everything higher in the vertical scale is more
internal in man. It is like a little machine in him that like a
small lift works upwards and downwards. A man with magnetic
centre therefore will not only understand literally and naturally,
but will catch the meaning of what is above the literal and
natural level. That is, he will understand internal meaning,
apart from external meaning. This is the starting point of every-
thing else in a man's evolution and if a man does not possess
this little machine then he is one of those sown into the world,
 who hearing the ideas of esotericism makes nothing of them.
You will see therefore that the first category or class of people
spoken of in the parable are those who have not magnetic
centre. It is expressly said that they are 'sown by the way side'.
And in the version in Luke it is put more strongly. Christ is
represented here as saying of this first category: 'The seed is the
word of God. And those by the way side are they that have
heard: then cometh the devil and taketh away the word from
their heart, that they may not believe and be saved.' Notice the
last sentence: 'that they may not believe and be saved.' What
does this mean? Everyone cannot be saved.
The 'Word of God' is the teaching of esotericism - that is, the
teaching of the means of self evolution, of what you must think
and do to begin to evolve in yourself to the level of conscious
man or the Kingdom of Heaven.
You must grasp the meaning of one analogy here. There is
an ancient Hermetic saying: 'As above, so below.' This means
that everything is stamped by the laws that prevail throughout
the created universe. What you find on a great scale, you find
represented on a small scale. As above, so below.
There is an analogy in the human body. The human body
represents in itself the ideas of conscious man and mechanical
man. The brain cells, so shut off and isolated, represent the
conscious circle of cells in regard to the rest of the body. They
are immortal in terms of the body. Now if all the body cells
tried to become brain cells - that is, evolve to the level of brain
cells - the body would break up. It would cease to be able to
be a body and perform its functions as such. But a few cells,
out of the billions and billions of living cells composing the
body, can escape without disorganising it. That is, a certain
number of body cells can become brain cells without upsetting
the work of the body as a whole. It is the same in regard to the
life of Nature, which is a great body. Certain cells in it — that is,
in this case, human beings — can escape from its laws without
disorganising its general function and purposes. If you think,
you will see what is meant. And one thing can be added here.
The number of those who at any particular time can begin to
escape from the service of nature are more than those who seek
to do so. It is this thought that helps one to understand the
situation. Otherwise people, first hearing this explanation, and
not trying to see its real significance, are inclined to say that it
is not just or fair. And I know that some of you will say some-
thing like this: 'In this passage quoted from Luke it says that
the devil comes and takes away the seed lest they should believe
and be saved. It looks as if some evil force prevented people
from awakening. That seems to be unfair and unjust, etc.' I
will try to answer this. In the version given in Matthew, the
devil is called the evil one, and in the parable itself, it is said
the birds devoured the seed. The birds signify, as already said,
in this case, false thinking or evil thinking. If a man thinks in a
false way, if he thinks evilly, how can he understand the teach-
ings of esotericism? He himself is the devil. He himself is the
evil one. Now let us change the idea of the devil into mechanical-
ness. If a man thinks mechanically, he cannot receive the ideas
of esotericism. In the mechanical parts of a man, 'the birds
devour the seeds' - that is, destroy them. The whole thing is to
keep esotericism away from mechanical thoughts, to value it,
to lift it up, to make it, as it were, sacred - that is, a special
thing, a holy thing, and this is the significance of a thing being
made holy - otherwise it falls on the wrong place in you and is
devoured and trodden underfoot. Understand that underfoot
means in your own mind. You must think consciously of eso-
tericism and be conscious when you think of it. You cannot
think of it always — at least to begin with — but you must not
let yourself think of it mechanically, negatively, and so on.
But there are certain forces that tend to keep Man in habits —
that is, in mechanicalness. They hang on mankind and keep
people doing and saying and thinking the same things over and
over again. For this reason you must make the ideas of esoteri-
cism stronger than the ideas of life, otherwise the pressure of
mechanical life will keep you literal, natural, sense-based, so
that hearing the ideas of esotericism you will reject them, think
evilly about them, be suspicious, blind, deaf, and so on. You
have only to try to speak to others of esotericism to see how 'the
birds devour the seed'. And if you are so poetical as to think that
people cannot really think falsely and cannot really think evilly,
then all I can say is that you have not yet begun to observe
yourself sincerely and seen what you yourself are capable of.
 PART FIVE

WE now come to the second category. The first category is the

most externally based man - the man of the senses. The second
category is more interior. Each category goes more and more
inwards, that is, higher and higher vertically. The second
category is described as follows in Matthew:
'And others (that is, seeds,) fell upon rocky places, where
they had not much earth: and straightway they sprang up,
because they had no deepness of earth, and when the sun was
risen they were scorched, and because they had no root, they
withered away.'
Let us try to understand this category of Man, in regard to
the sowing of the seeds of esoteric teaching in humanity. These
are the people who have a certain kind of magnetic centre,
which I will explain later. Let us first see how Christ is said to
have interpreted this part of the parable:
'And he that was sown upon rocky places, this is he that
heareth the word and straightway with joy receiveth it, yet he
hath no root in himself, but endureth for awhile, and when
tribulation and persecution ariseth because of the word,
straightway he stumbleth.'
At first sight this describes the man who can face no diffi-
culties in esotericism, either in himself, or in the teaching itself
— that is, he is a person who cannot work on himself and who
cannot work with others or bear their unpleasant manifestations.
In following an esoteric teaching, there has to be first evalu-
ation of the ideas of esotericism; then follows the application of
the ideas to oneself; and on this will follow necessarily the
realisation of one's own personal difficulties. If a man reaches
so far, he realises that his difficulties are not due to others, but
lie in himself. If he does not get violent or depressed, he may
pass further, because he can find the force to go on and not
waste his force in complaining and finding fault and in being
offended.
But this second category means something more than shallow
enthusiasm. It strikes far deeper in its meaning. In its deeper
meaning, the man sown in rocky places is the man who only
follows knowledge. He is the man who works only on the line of
knowledge. You must work (and that means, make effort) to
get the knowledge of esoteric ideas into your minds. This opens
up new connections. But you must also work on being - on
yourself, on the kind of man you are. If you are a violent man,
you must work on that. If you are a morose man, you must
work on that. If you nourish yourself with negative emotions,
you must change that, and so on. A man who works only on
the side of knowledge is one-sided. When human difficulties
arise, he breaks. He knows, but cannot do. Why cannot he do?
Because his level of being, the kind of man he is, is far below
his level of knowledge. That is the man meant in the parable.
He is the man who is sown on rocky ground. Rocks, stones, in
the language of parables, stand for knowledge - or let us call it
the knowledge of truth or truth alone. The Rock of Ages means
Eternal Truth. By truth is meant the knowledge of esotericism —
not ordinary life-truth, but the special truth relating to trans-
formation of Man - that is, esoteric truth. Ordinary knowledge
does not transform your being. But, nor again, does special
knowledge, unless you apply it - to yourself. For you yourself are
the subject of the knowledge, you are the experiment.
A man who has some magnetic centre receives the knowledge
of esotericism with joy. He wants to hear all about it and com-
pare it with other esoteric ideas he has studied. But when he
has to apply it to himself, because he has no emotional root, he
wilts and fades. Knowledge must become emotional to affect us.
Esoteric ideas must reach the emotional part of us to influence
us. The man in the parable wishes to keep everything as know-
ledge and get the satisfaction of knowing about Truth. He is
theoretical. He can hear the word but cannot do it: and does
not try to do it. He likes to hear new ideas about esotericism
and so on. He can see the difference between esoteric ideas and
life ideas but it all remains in his mind only. His magnetic
centre is in the region of knowledge only. When the 'sun is
arisen' — that is, when persecution and tribulation come — he is
weak. He cannot face his inner difficulties, his negativeness, his
doubts, his inner persecutions and tribulations, and so he
cannot fight for esotericism in himself and so can bear no fruit.
This is the second category. It is extraordinary to notice people
of this category, how they go from teacher to teacher, how they
take up now this with joy, and then you hear they are taking
up something else with equal enthusiasm. And in talking to
them, you find only a mass of odd bits of knowledge, often very
confused and without any practical application. Their interest
lies only in picking up certain kinds of ideas, but they do not
feel the depths of these ideas or their own relation to them, and
as soon as things become difficult they run away and take up
some other ideas. It is little else than a kind of mental curiosity
about esotericism. The whole thing is still external with them,
not so external as with the first category, but external-internal.
If they meet a teaching that gives them a personal shock they
are offended. This is the meaning of the phrase 'when perse-
cution or tribulation ariseth, because of the word, straightway
he stumbleth'. To stumble (σκανδαλίζω) means in the Greek to
be offended, to be scandalised. The person becomes negative, pities
himself, talks badly, cannot see any connection between what
he has been taught and how he is behaving.
As was said, the Rock of Ages means, in the language of
parables, Eternal Truth. And you will remember that the
disciple Simon was renamed by Christ. He was called Peter,
which in the Greek is petros (πετρος), meaning 'stone' or 'rock'.
Of Peter, Christ said, 'On this rock I will found my church'
(Matthew xvi.18). Peter had knowledge and could remember
it. But it was not yet emotional, so Christ told him he had as yet
no faith and would deny him. And because he was only a man
of knowledge, a man of truth, but capable of deeper under-
standing, Christ had to teach him what forgiveness meant. This
is why two parables about forgiveness are addressed to Peter,
for a man based on truth alone is harsh and unmerciful. He
forgives no one. And this is why it is said, after the denial of
Christ, that Peter wept. He wept because the teaching of Christ
became at that moment emotional. He saw it no longer merely
as knowledge. What had been intellectual penetrated to the
emotional level in him. He saw himself in the light of the know-
ledge he had been taught. He saw the distance that lay between
what he knew and what he was. In place of merely knowing he
began to understand. The allusion to Peter made here is only in
connection with the meaning of rock or stone in the language of
parables, and so with the significance of Simon's being renamed
Peter-that is, stone or rock. I am not saying that Peter belonged
to the second category in the Parable of the Sower, for when
tribulation and persecution arose, he had root in himself. But at
first he believed only through his teacher and not from himself.
Rock represents a primitive level of Truth that does not
quench the thirst. The 'hungry' and 'thirsty' are often mentioned
in Scripture. Without knowledge of Truth a man is said to
thirst. Nor can rock satisfy this thirst. From rock water must be
struck, as Moses struck it. Christ says that the man who believes
'shall never thirst'. In the Book of Amos it is said that a famine
is coming on the land and it is expressly explained that it is 'not
a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the
words of God' (Amos viii.11). It is plain beyond doubt that all
these words, famine, land, thirst, have a psychological reference,
and are not literal in meaning. In the following passage, lack
of truth is again represented as famine and thirst. 'They regard
not the work of the Lord, neither have they considered the
operation of his hands. Therefore my people are gone into
captivity for lack of knowledge: their glory are men of famine and
their multitude are parched with thirst.' (Isaiah v.12-14)
Lack
of the knowledge of Truth - a psychological state - is represented
in the visual language of parables by famine and lack of water,
which give rise to bodily states.
 PART SIX

THE third category is formulated in the parable in these words:

'And others fell upon the thorns: and the thorns grew up
and choked them.'
In his interpretation of this verse Christ is made to say:
'And he that was sown among the thorns, this is he that
heareth the word and the care of the world (aeon, αίων) and
the deceitfulness of riches choke the word and he becometh
unfruitful.'
In Mark, 'and the lusts of other things entering in choke the
word' is added to the interpretation.
And in Luke the interpretation of Christ is given as:
'These are they that have heard the word - (to hear means to
understand) - and as they go on their way, they are choked with
cares and riches and pleasures of this life, and bring no fruit to
perfection.'
In this category, people who hear and understand esotericism
are referred to: but their emotional part is wrong. In the second
category, 'Those sown on rocky ground' has reference to the
intellectual part: in this third category, attention is drawn to
the emotional part. Thorns refer to the emotional side, to the
side of the emotional interests. When Christ says in another place:
'Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of
thorns, or figs of thistles?' the same idea appears. The thorns
and thistles represent the emotional life. Wrong emotions can-
not produce good fruit. Nor can you expect fruit from people
whose ordinary emotional interests override the emotional
interest and valuation required for esoteric teaching to develop
in them. The magnetic centre in the emotional part is not
strong enough. The crown of thorns placed on Christ's head
before the crucifixion has an identical meaning. It represents
the state of those who crucified him. Christ was crucified by
those who could understand, and even did, but emotionally
could not develop his teaching, being always distracted by
intrigues, jealousies, by fears, by the lust for power, etc., called
here thorns and in other places briars or thistles, to which also
belongs the idea of cares, anxieties, and negative emotions. The
crown of thorns represented the general emotional state of
humanity at that time. They were choked emotionally by self-
interests and although many of them could understand Christ's
teaching, they could not give it any room. The 'will' side of
them, which springs out of the state of a man's emotional centre
and changes with his emotional development, was such that
they could not let the teaching of Christ act upon them in any
real way - that is, become the first thing, emotionally. For if you
do not feel emotional enough about knowledge it cannot touch
the side of your being - that is, it cannot act on you. It will
have no power over you. In other words, although you may
feel it to some extent emotionally, you cannot apply your
knowledge and begin to live it. Other emotional interests are
too strong.
This idea is expressed in many parables - namely, the idea
of what is really most important to you, emotionally. The
emotions make a thing important — that is, valued, loved,
coveted, sought after. The image in the parable means that a
man who is very identified with life and whose main emotional
interests are concerned with himself and his position in life
grows thorns in himself, which not only hurt and pain him,
but choke any emotional development. Such a man has mag-
netic centre in the emotional part of him, but it is not strong
enough, and is swamped by all the cares and anxieties of life
and all that life seems to offer. He can and does understand,
but he is sown in life in such a way that nothing can happen.
Now all these categories so far considered — the man who
understands nothing, the man who understands intellectually,
the man who understands emotionally, but not enough — also
represent more deeply the different stages of a single man in
his relation to esotericism. But of this we will speak later.
 PART SEVEN

AFTER the three categories of people mentioned in the Parable

of the Sower and the Seed who cannot undergo inner evolution,
because they have been sown into the world in such a manner
as to make this impossible, a further three categories are
defined. These form one class, being those who are sown on
good ground and yield fruit, some a hundred-fold, some sixty
and some thirty. Of these Christ says, in his interpretation of
the parable:
'And he that was sown upon the good ground, this is he that
heareth the word and understandeth it; who verily beareth
fruit, and bringeth forth, some a hundred-fold, some sixty, some
thirty.' (Matthew xiii.23)
In all, four kinds of ground are described in the parable: the
ground called the way side, the ground called rocky, the ground
choked with thorns, and good ground. Those seeds sown in bad
ground produce no fruit, while those sown in good ground
produce fruit in three degrees represented by the numbers 100,
60 and 30. You will notice an inversion here, for it would have
been more natural to expect the order the other way round,
culminating in those who produced most fruit. In the accounts
given in Mark and Luke the inversion does not appear. In
Mark, Christ is made to give the interpretation in these words:
'And those are they that were sown upon the good ground;
such as hear the word and accept it, and bear fruit, thirty-fold,
and sixty-fold, and a hundred-fold.' (Mark iv.20)
And in Luke:
'And that in the good ground, these are such as in an honest
and good heart, having heard the word, hold it fast, and bring
forth fruit with patience.' (Luke viii.15)
In the account of this part of the parable itself, Luke writes:
'And other fell into the good ground, and grew, and brought
forth fruit a hundred-fold. As he said these things, he cried, He
that hath ears to hear, let him hear.' (Luke viii.8)
The interpretation of the parable put into the mouth of
Christ varies in each of the evangelists. For instance, Luke does
not understand that Man himself is sown into life differently
and so gives the interpretation as 'those by the way side are
they that have heard' (οί δε παρά την οδον), and 'those on the
rock are they which, when they have heard, receive the word
with joy' (οί δε em της πετράς), and so on, whereas both Matthew
and Mark speak of people being sown into life differently, some
being sown by the way side, some on rocky ground, and so on,
and the word of God being sown in turn upon them, with quite
different results. The Gospels were written long after Christ's
crucifixion. Luke never saw Christ. He was originally a follower
of Paul, who was not taught by Christ but possibly got what
teaching he had from some school near Damascus. The closer
a Gospel is to the original source of teaching, the fuller and
richer the language of its parables. If we look at the curious
inversion of numbers in Matthew as having some significance
not understood by Mark or Luke, it might be considered that
it is the Gospel that is the closest to the source and to the original.
But it is usually considered that Mark is the original Gospel.
The first three Gospels are called synoptic. But this does not
mean they were written by eyewitnesses, as often supposed.
It means merely that they see eye to eye in contradistinction
to the Gospel of John. If the Gospel of Matthew was written
by the disciple Matthew, called originally Levi, the tax gatherer,
then only this Gospel was written by an actual eyewitness of
Christ. Mark and Luke were either not born or were little
children when Christ died. It must be understood that the
knowledge of the teaching given by Christ was preserved in
schools, where people were taught orally and the teaching kept
living, and that the date of the first publication of the teaching
in written form is quite another question of secondary impor-
tance. The teaching about Man's possible inner evolution and
his real meaning on Earth has always been kept alive in schools
and preserved in this way throughout the ages. It emerges at
stated intervals, or rather calculated periods in history, in
religious or other forms, to give an impetus to lift mankind
above the level of barbarism, to which it inevitably tends if left
to itself, and so makes possible the development of art, science,
and literature, so as to bring people to a certain 'normal level'
of understanding, which must be reached by at least some
before any question of inner evolution begins to be possible. What
we call our 'Christian culture', in which, historically speaking,
various movements in art, literature, philosophy, and science
have been able to take place and would otherwise have been
impossible, began with an impetus given partly by the carefully
enacted drama of Christ and partly by the work of many others,
before and after. And although it may be true to say that there
have been no Christians in the real sense - that is, people who
attained the degree of inner evolution reached by Christ through
endless temptations and through suffering quite apart from the
death on the cross - it must not be forgotten that this impetus
was the source of a gradual organisation of life which raised
Man, outwardly, above the level of barbarism, and made
possible a civilisation.
Let us now return to the general idea of the Parable of the
Sower before seeking for the meaning of the 'good ground', for
parts and details cannot be understood save in relation to the
general idea as a whole. The parable as a whole is about the
teaching of the inner evolution of Man and the categories of
people defined in it refer to the possibilities of people differently
placed (or sown) in life with regard to receiving and under-
standing this teaching and undergoing the inner evolution that
it is concerned with. Behind every parable there lies a general
idea and the details and language vary in meaning according
to it. Everything in this parable is said in reference to the
general idea that, first, there is a teaching called here the Word:
and second, that some cannot and some can understand this
Word or teaching, and out of those who can, some accept it
fully, and apply it. The latter are called those sown on good
earth and these can bring forth fruit to perfection. Now a
teaching about inner evolution necessarily is about a man
himself. The man himself is the subject of the experiment. It is
he who must evolve, through the knowledge and application
of the truth about inner evolution. Only in this way can he
produce fruit. The seed of the Word grows in him. At the same
time he himself is a seed that can grow, through the seed of the
teaching sown in him, and the seed of the Word cannot grow
in him unless he grows or evolves himself. That is, as he grows
in himself, the seed of the Word grows. This may be difficult
to understand at first, for people take knowledge or truth quite
apart from themselves - that is, apart from the kind of people
they are. The idea that there is an order of knowledge or truth
that cannot be understood aright save through a personal
development of oneself by means of it seems strange. Yet, if you
think of it, it is obvious that if there is a teaching about self-
evolution it must involve an evolution of oneself. Its art must be
applied to oneself. The art, artist, and the subject he works
upon, are all one. Now no one will ever take the trouble to
apply any sort of knowledge, of whatever order, unless he sees
the good of it. If a man does not see the good of a thing he will
not learn much about it. Or he may learn something, but,
finding it difficult to apply, give it up. What makes a man
strong in whatever he does, in connection with his knowledge,
is his own conviction of the good of it. If he has no deep con-
viction of the good of a thing, even though he may be intellectu-
ally interested in it as a form of knowledge or truth, it will have
no real weight with him. We have seen that the category in the
parable defined as those sown on rocky ground are of this
nature. They receive truth but have no depth of earth - that is,
they cannot see the good of it enough and once too many
difficulties arise their interest withers away.
It is only those who are classified as being sown in good earth
that produce fruit. To have good earth means to have the
power of seeing the good. To see the good of the 'Word' sufficiently
- that is, the knowledge that teaches the truth about inner
evolution or the 'Kingdom of Heaven', which is within a man -
is possible only to this category. The first category in the parable,
those sown by the way side, cannot see any good in it. The idea
of inner evolution means nothing to them. The second category,
those sown on rocky ground, see a little good in it. The third
category, those sown among thorns, see good too much in other
things - in all the cares and preoccupations of life. The last
category see the good in different degrees, but in every case see
it enough to produce fruit. Fruit means to bring to fruition, in
themselves, the teaching of inner evolution. They themselves are
the fruit, through their own evolution. It is the same case with
many things in nature that evolve mechanically. A grub becomes
a butterfly. But this is mechanical. It happens. In the case of
Man, his possible evolution to a higher state of himself does not
happen. He must labour consciously. But as in the case of the
grub it is he himself that is the subject of the experiment in this
inner metamorphosis or transformation that the Gospels emphasise
so clearly as the real goal of Man. Man as he is is 'Earth': Man,
having undergone inner transformation, is 'Heaven'. When
people use the Lord's Prayer and say, 'May thy will be done on
earth as in heaven' they are really praying for this transfor-
mation in themselves — without knowing it. They are praying for
the fullest possible fruition of their own lives, of themselves. But
the Earth in a man is of different qualities. It is in some merely
the way side, in some rocky ground, in some it is choked with
thorns, and in some it is good earth. For, in order to change, a
man must first of all be able to receive this teaching about inner
change on his natural level, in his own 'earth'. The seed must
find a right soil and the soil is the kind of man. As we have seen,
in this respect there are different kinds of man, or different soils.
Truth falling on Man as a seed by itself is powerless. Truth
must find the right soil. This truth, this knowledge, this teaching
about inner evolution, must unite with good to develop and
grow. This means a man must be able to see the good of the
truth he is taught, or otherwise nothing can take place. To be
able to see the good of any form of knowledge is something
quite different from 'being good'. In a way, it has nothing to do
with 'being good', but rather with having the power of good.
To be able to see the value of a thing is to have good - that is,
to have the power of seeing its worth. This is goodness. And this
is the fundamental conception of good in the Gospels. Every
form of knowledge, every form of truth, must find and unite
with its proper good to become living. Every truth has its own
particular good and Man is the point where they can meet and
unite. Good and truth must unite to produce fruit. When a
man begins to see the good of some truth he had been taught,
then a union between what he knows and what he is begins to
take place. This is because a man is unable to will anything
unless he feels it to be good. Merely to see a thing is true is not
enough. He must will the truth and for this to be possible he
must see the good of the truth, the good of the knowledge he has
been taught. Truth then becomes internally connected with
him, so is made living. Then the more good he sees in it, the
more will the truth grow, and develop: and the more truth he
sees, the more will the good he sees in it grow.
But I will later on say more about the meaning of good and
connect it with early Greek teaching. All these ideas are hidden
in the Parable of the Sower, and many others as well, for a
parable lies in the dimension of height and depth, and its
meaning extends from the simplest outer literal or external
meaning to the highest possible inner meaning, only compre-
hensible in the highest state of consciousness, where language
and imagery pass into pure meaning. (See Appendix, p. 208.)
The Grain of Mustard Seed
Άnd God?
he said, Whereunto shall we liken the kingdom of
or with what comparison shall we compare it?
It is like a grain of mustard seed, which, when it is sown
in the earth, is less than all the seeds that be in the earth: But
when it is sown, it groweth up, and becometh greater than all
herbs, and shooteth out great branches: so that the fowls of
the air may lodge under the shadow of it.' (Mark iv.30-32)
Why is the seed of the higher level called the least of all seeds?
Because at the level of the senses and of the mind based on their
overpowering evidence, the idea of a higher level of meaning -
of far finer distinction of meaning - is almost nothing. The
higher level can be nothing but a point in the lower - an unde-
veloped point - just as the lower level and all that belongs to its
form of life and its meanings is nothing but a point in the higher
level - in this case, a very little meaning. This can be represented
as one of the ideas in an ancient diagram, called the Seal of
Solomon.

The lower level and all that belongs to it terminates as a

point in the higher level, as very little or a mere nothing of
total meaning. And all that belongs to the higher level is a
mere point in the lower. Now if we draw a tree starting from
the point where the higher touches the lower level, and stretch-
ing up to the higher, it would represent the connection that is
meant in the parable.
Metanoia
 PART ONE

THY WILL BE DONE ON EARTH...

WHAT stranger prayer could be uttered than this : 'Thy

will be done on earth' ? The meaning of the phrase is
that the will of God is not done on the earth.
In spite of this, religious people usually imagine that what
happens on earth is always God's will, and they seek to comfort
and strengthen one another with this thought, even in the face
of the most senseless and fortuitous accidents, disaster and death.
People who are not religious take it as evidence that there is no
God.
There is something strange here, a lack of understanding or
a misunderstanding, some strange confusion of thought.
People judge of the existence or non-existence of God from
what happens on earth. Every decade books are written proving
that the existence of God is impossible in view of the fact that
there is so much evil in life, and so much cruelty and waste in
nature, while most people in the privacy of their own thoughts
come to a similar conclusion. They witness an accident in
which harmless people are suddenly killed, or an epidemic
which cripples and destroys scores of children; volcanoes erupt,
flood and famine wipe out their millions ; they see the cruelty of
nature — animal feeding on animal, while ruthless laws regulate
the whole creation.
In the face of this, and arguing from the standpoint of the
visible world, is it possible to believe that God - as the supreme
Principle of highest Good - exists? This problem is the first
that confronts any person who begins to think seriously, and,
as a rule, the result of his thought is doubt or pessimism. The
atheist, who bases his conclusions on the visible world with all
its tragedies, is quite right in judging that life as seen does not
teach God's existence.
People do not understand that what happens on earth simply
happens ; they go further, they even want to read into disasters
that happen to humanity a special meaning, namely, that they
 are in the nature of a punishment inflicted by 'God'. They see
the will of God acting on earth.
But this is denied in the New Testament. When the disciples
reported to Jesus that Pilate had murdered some Galilaeans
(Luke xiii.1-5), Christ replied: 'Suppose ye that these Galilaeans
were sinners above all other Galilaeans, because they suffered
such things?' Clearly the disciples must have thought that the
murdered Galilaeans had been punished by God for their sins.
That was their explanation of the catastrophe, and that is how
we are sometimes inclined to take misfortune to others. They
saw the hand of God punishing evil on earth. So it followed,
from this way of reasoning, that the murdered Galilaeans must
have been especially wicked. Christ asked the disciples if they
really believed that and then answered them: Ί tell you, Nay:
but except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish.'
What does this answer mean? It means that the important
thing to grasp is not a question of sin and punishment in life or
to try to explain what happens in life every day. The important
thing is to 'repent'. Life proves nothing. People who die
atrocious deaths are not sinners any more than others. What we
see is not the point. If we always look to visible life for evidence
of the existence or non-existence of God, nothing will come of
it. That is what the disciples were thinking and they are told
that the answer does not lie there, but in something called
'repentance' - a word, which, as we shall see, does not convey
the real sense of the original Greek. The disciples' attitude to
life and their attitude to the teaching to which they were
listening were both wrong. They were mixing their ordinary
ideas, derived from life, with the ideas of which Christ was
speaking. So Christ continues to explain and goes on to ask
them whether they imagine that an accident which had hap-
pened recently in a suburb of Jerusalem also meant that those
who had been killed were especial sinners. He asks: Or those
eighteen upon whom the tower in Siloam fell, and slew them,
think ye that they were sinners above all men that dwelt in
Jerusalem? I tell you, Nay: but except ye repent, ye shall all
likewise perish.' (Luke xiii.4-5)
To both questions the same answer: the evils that happen to
people in life have nothing to do with divine punishment for
sin and must not be taken in that way. Searching for God in
life, questioning life anxiously, starting from outer life and its
events as a basis, and so being always influenced by what
happens in outer life, by all the incidents taking place every
moment in the world, is to miss the whole meaning of what
Christ was teaching. But so little is this understood and so
difficult is it to grasp the underlying conception, that in the
Authorised Version of the Gospels a synopsis of the contents of
the thirteenth chapter of Luke actually is headed by the words:
Christ preacheth repentance upon the punishment of the Galilaeans and
others. The astonishing thing is that this is exactly what was not
preached. Christ even emphasised his meaning by adding an
example to make it as clear as possible to his disciples how
entirely wrong was their attitude to life. They had asked him
about the Galilaeans and were told that their death had
nothing to do with divine punishment for sin. And Christ goes
on to add that the fall of the tower in Siloam which killed
eighteen men had again nothing to do with punishment for sin.
Yet this wrong attitude to life, which Christ is trying to correct
in his disciples, has persisted throughout religious thought and
has finally produced the fatal collision between religion and
science today. It is possible to say, of all books and teaching
dealing with religion, that a division into two classes can be
made; one, the overwhelming class, starts from the disciples'
point of view; the other, very small, from the meaning of
Christ's answer to his disciples.
In the answers which Christ gives to his disciples it is ob-
viously implied that the will of God is not done on earth. And
this is what the Lord's Prayer says. Therefore, to draw con-
clusions about God from what happens on earth is to start from
an entirely wrong point of view. Yet, since it is so difficult to
free ourselves from the senses, it is from this point of view that
everyone starts in his thoughts about the existence of God.
People continually start from this wrong level, just as did the
disciples, and so everything becomes mixed up in their minds.
And, like the disciples who wished to make moral reflections
upon punishment for sin on earth out of the local news of the
day, they regard the visible external world as the first theatre
of divine vengeance and see in its events the hand of God
punishing or rewarding human beings according to their
behaviour. They even wish to see the hand of God in war. They
see God as right or justice on earth. They see the hand of God
in war and believe that God is on their side and that victory
will mean that the will of God is fulfilled. It is this external,
sense-based idea of religion that is rebuked by Christ. He says
that all people suffer the same fate unless they repent. But what
is to repent?
How is the word to be understood? Already it is possible to
discern what the real meaning of the word must be - the word
which is such a bad word because it so completely mis-translates
the original Greek word. The meaning begins to appear in the
very context in which it is used - namely, from what Christ is
explaining to his disciples in connection with their way of
taking life as the result of the will of God. They have to see life
differently. There is another way of looking upon life - and this
is the most important thing that anyone can understand.
Unless, Christ says, a man 'repents', he is useless and suffers a
common fate - that is, a fate common to everyone who has not
reached the stage of understanding called repentance.
To see the will of God done on earth in everything that
happens in life is not to understand what this interesting word
'repentance' means. Only through something called, or mis-
called, repentance, does a man's attitude to life become right, and
as long as he does not repent he shares a common fate with all
others, good or bad, moral or immoral, civic or uncivic.
In some way everyone takes life wrongly, and unless the
initial error is altered, everyone suffers the same fate. Without
repentance, morally good or bad are equally failures. ' . . . those
eighteen, upon whom the tower in Siloam fell, and slew them,
think ye,' Christ asks, 'that they were sinners above all men
that dwelt in Jerusalem? I tell you, Nay: but except ye repent,
ye shall all likewise perish.' In Jerusalem there dwelt many
morally good and bad, righteous and unrighteous, civic and
uncivic, as in any city today, in London, Paris, or Berlin - but
everyone perishes in the same way, all alike, unless they repent.
' . . . Except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish.'
The word translated throughout the New Testament as
repentance is in the Greek meta-noia (µετάνοια) which means
 change of mind. The Greek particle meta (µετα) is found in several
words of comparatively ordinary usage, such as metaphor,
metaphysics, metamorphosis. Let us take metaphor; it means
transference of meaning. To speak metaphorically is to speak
beyond the literal words, to carry over or beyond and so transfer
the meaning of what is said beyond the words used. Meta-
physics, again, refers to the study of what is beyond purely
observable physical science, such as the study of the nature of
being or the theory of knowledge or the fact of consciousness.
Metamorphosis is used to describe the transformation of form
in insect-life, the transformation of a grub into a butterfly - a
transference or transformation of structure into entirely new
structure, into something beyond. The particle meta therefore
indicates transference, or transformation, or beyondness.
The other part of this word translated as repentance — noia —
is from the Greek word nous (νους), which means mind. The
word metanoia therefore has to do with transformation of the mind
in its essential meaning. Why, then, is the translation repen-
tance inadequate, or indeed, wrong? The English word
repentance is derived from the Latin poenitare which means 'to
feel sorry'. Penitence, feeling sorry, feeling pain or regret - this
is a mood experienced by everyone from time to time. But the
Greek word metanoia stands far above such a meaning, and is
not a mere mood. It contains no idea of pain or sorrow. It refers
to a new mind, not a new heart, for it is impossible to have a
new heart without first possessing a new mind. A new mind
means an entirely new way of thinking, new ideas, new know-
ledge, and a new approach to everything in life. Although a
great deal has been written about the real meaning of this
great word and about its wrong interpretation and although it
has been emphasised again and again by scholars that repentance
does not give the right rendering, recent new and so-called
'colloquial' translations of the New Testament (such as Moffatt's
and others) still render the word as 'repentance' and so imply
that a moral and not a mental change is indicated.
It is now worth while going back to Christ's words to his
disciples about the question of the murdered Galilaeans and
the men killed at Siloam in view of this meaning of metanoia.
The whole conversation becomes clearer. The disciples are
thinking wrongly and Christ is answering them not in the sense
'unless they repent' but 'unless they can think quite differently' -
that is, think in a new way. He is saying that otherwise they are
bound and fixed and cannot escape from a general fate common
to all people who start always from the seen, the apparent, the
visible, or, in short, from the senses, and derive their ideas and
views from visible evidence. The first step is metanoia. The
inadequacy of the word repentance can be clearly seen in Paul's
letters to the Corinthians. People can be grieved and hurt by
life up to the point where they lose all belief and cease even to
think, and try to gratify themselves as best they can, or merely
give up hope and live as dead things.
More rarely they may begin to reflect on what has happened
to them and so come gradually to some new standpoint, to
some new way of taking life. Something may begin to start
individually in their thought. A new activity of the mind may
begin — their minds begin to awaken. In moments of great
personal disaster and suffering people often feel that everything
that happens in life is unreal, and this is a right understanding
of life. It is touching a stage in which metanoia is reached - that
is, transformation of the mind. Everything appears suddenly in
a new light, something makes one understand that all that is
happening in life is not the important thing, but what is im-
portant is one's attitude. For a moment a turning point is
reached in which a revolution of the mind is possible. What was
previously passive and governed by the senses, governed by the
events of life, no longer submits to the outer world, and begins
to have an independent existence. And this rousing of the active
mind is what Paul speaks of in the following passage, in which
the word repent occurs several times in the English translation
although in the Greek the word metanoia occurs only once.
Paul writes to the Corinthians as follows: 'For though I made
you sorry with a letter, I do not repent, though I did repent:
for I perceive that the same epistle hath made you sorry, though
it were but for a season. Now I rejoice, not that ye were made
sorry, but that ye sorrowed unto repentance.' (ii Corinthians
vii.8, 9)
In this passage the word metanoia occurs only once - in the
phrase 'unto repentance' (eis metanoian), είς µετανοιαν, and the
 passage merely shews how inadequate is the word repentance.
When Paul says, Ί do not repent. . . ' he used a quite different
word, µεταµελοµαι, which is equivalent to the Latin poenitet me,
which is exactly from what our ordinary word repentance comes.
Yet these Greek words of such infinitely different values are
translated by exactly the same word in English.
It is not sorrow or repenting in any ordinary sense that
brings about a change of mind. Man may sorrow, but not to
the point of metanoia. Yet there is a special kind of suffering that
leads to metanoia and it is of this suffering that Paul speaks when
he contrasts it with the ordinary suffering of life: 'For godly
sorrow worketh repentance to salvation . . . ; but the sorrow of
the world worketh death' (ii Corinthians vii.10). 'Ye sorrowed
unto repentance' - it was this right suffering of the Corinthians
which brought them to repentance. Dean Stanley, one of the
few English commentators who understand the meaning of
metanoia, remarks: 'The passage shews how inadequate is our
word "repentance". Ye were grieved so as to change your mind or
your repentance amounted to a revolution of mind.' And this is exactly
what is meant and in a far deeper sense it is what all life means
— to bring a man to the point where, instead of saying blindly
to himself 'This cannot be true', he undergoes an awakening, a
momentary sense of the unreality of what is happening in the
world, and the unreality of its connection with himself. This is
metanoia: this is the beginning of the transformation of the mind.
The whole point of Christ's remarks to his disciples about the
murder of the Galilaeans and the accident at Siloam lies in the
idea that the meaning of the phrase, 'Thy will be done on
earth', cannot be understood without understanding the word
metanoia or change of mind. However we may believe that we
know what is meant, yet we do not understand it at our present
level of thinking. And unless a man separates in himself the
world as seen with all its events, and the idea of a supreme
meaning for his own existence in visible life, he remains in a
state in which metanoia or change of mind is impossible. Repen-
tance, that is, a new attitude, a totally different way of thinking,
can only begin when people realise that God's will is not done
on earth. People often say, when they hear of misfortunes
happening to others: 'It serves them right.' And everyone has
this standpoint in some degree, however he may think other-
wise. Everyone especially who feels he is moral and who under-
stands religion solely as morality, has this point of view. This
external view of religion, in which life is regarded as a place of
punishment or reward, is based on the idea that God's will is
done on earth, and everyone has seen people being treated
from this point of view. (I remember one case especially in
which a very moral man, who was a medical missionary, treated
a girl who was suffering from syphilis exactly in this way, as if
she had been punished by God for her sins and therefore should
be treated as something vile, and in this particular instance,
not worthy to have an anaesthetic for a very painful local
operation.) Is it not a fact that most of the savage cruelty,
torture, bitterness and evil that marks religious history is based
simply on the fundamental error of seeing God's will done on
earth and so imagining that one knows what God's will is?
Therefore it is of the most vital importance to try to realise what
Christ was saying to his disciples in connection with the
murdered Galilaeans and the people killed at Siloam. These
events had nothing to do with God's will and the disciples were
told to consider them from a new standpoint - and this in-
volved, not repentance - for why should the disciples repent, in the
ordinary sense, about the Galilaeans or the men of Siloam -
but a change of mind. And this change of mind means that a man
must no longer think that people on earth are being punished
for their sins or that those who do not happen to agree with
their own moral views or ideas of right or religious principles
are sinners, and, if they happen to undergo misfortunes, are
clearly punished by God for being such wicked people. This,
Christ is saying very clearly, is an entirely wrong attitude to
life. Whether people are religious or not, they often believe that
those who do not agree with them, in political ideas, or moral
or scientific or social ideas, apart from religious ideas, are
wicked, and they assume towards them an attitude of special
distinction or superiority, and even think they should be
punished or destroyed. Their belief is from life and rests upon
life - that is, it is external and not an inner question within
themselves. And unless this viewpoint is entirely abandoned, the
first beginning of a man's inner evolution cannot take place.
For it makes no difference whether a person judges others by
his religion or by his politics or by morality or by anything
else. The point is that all that belongs to life, all that belongs
to the external world, witnessed through our meagre senses, is
not the place from which a man can start who wishes to undergo
this transformation which Christ teaches first as metanoia and
later as re-birth. We have to speak of re-birth later, but it must
be noticed that metanoia or change of thinking is the first stage.
And the first example of this change of thinking is to cease to
imagine that God's will is done on earth. So the phrase in the
Lord's Prayer: 'Thy will be done on earth' — when taken in
conjunction with what Christ said to his disciples, when ob-
viously they were taking the point of view that the Galilaeans
and the people at Siloam were punished for their sins by what
happened to them, and clearly were at that level of mentality
from which they thought that God's will actually was done on
earth and that everything that happened on earth was the
result of God's will - this phrase, in the Lord's Prayer, means
something of incalculable importance. What Christ really says
is: 'Unless you change your minds, you will all perish just in
the same way.' This is the first clear example of what Christ
taught of the meaning of the extremely difficult word metanoia.
The extraordinary meanness in human understanding which
makes a man think that if another man is not of his persuasion
and suffers hardship it is because it serves him right, is based on
the idea that outer life and the evils of the world are a sign of
meaning. And meanness signifies a lack of sufficient meaning.
However we understand the supreme symbol of meaning -
namely, ultimately God - and whether we actually believe in
God or not, everyone acts personally from what he takes as his
meaning. For without meaning no one can exist. A meaningless
existence is insupportable. So it is clear that everyone lives by
his own meaning, whatever it may be, and therefore sees in life
what relates to his own meaning. But Christ says that to find
meaning in life, in the sense of supreme meaning or God acting
in life, is quite wrong. The highest meaning exists apart from
the events that happen in life, and unless a man can change his
mind in this respect, he suffers a common fate with the good and
bad in life. He has not begun to find the right basis to start
from. That is to say, if we all believe in God, in this sense, as
the source of meaning, and we believe that our personal exis-
tences have a special meaning and we seek this special meaning
in outer life, seeing rewards and punishments in life as full of
the highest meaning, we start from the wrong basis. So it
follows that the strange word metanoia is of such importance.
It is not the external world that a man must start from. If he
does - as everyone does - he is not yet capable of any further
change, any further evolution. To find meaning in external life,
to take what meaning one finds in external life and to judge
from it, according to one's upbringing - all this is contrary to
metanoia. It is about this common view of life that Christ is
speaking to his disciples when he emphasises how necessary is
metanoia - that is, change of mind. But the point is that no private
individual is free from this view of things. In fact, every private
individual keeps up his own self-esteem and self-adoration from
his outer beliefs, from a groundwork formed in him in his early
years, from a feeling that he is better than others, whether he is
placed in a higher or lower position in life. And everyone
believes, religiously or otherwise, that the external world is the
theatre of moral action, in which we must prove, by contempt
or violence or persecution, that we are always right. So everyone
sees ultimate meaning - and that is 'God' - in external life and
acts accordingly. Moral people act in this way, political people
in this way, and so on. It is extremely difficult to separate
oneself from this view of things. But to begin to do so is to begin
to practise change of mind, or metanoia. Everyone judges life,
without ever knowing he does, according to his morals, scruples,
principles and so on, and these are all based on the view that
outer life is the source of everything. But Christ says that nothing
can be got in this way from life as we see it. What happens in
outer life is no guide to anything. But people think that life
itself is the whole question; and they do not see that, whatever
they do, life remains always the same, and they fail to grasp that
life is by its very nature something that can bring a man to
metanoia - the supreme goal. It is not a place where 'God's will
is done' - hence the prayer 'Thy will be done on earth'. And
unless a man understands what this phrase means and begins
to see all its implications he does not understand what he is
saying when he repeats the Lord's Prayer. And it is not only
this phrase but every phrase which has to be understood in the
Lord's Prayer, so that a man, saying the Lord's Prayer, would
have to be in the highest state of consciousness, understanding
the value of every word and phrase to make it significant, that
is, to make it prayer in the real meaning of prayer. This would
be metanoia in the fullest sense.
 PART TWO

FROM the standpoint of the New Testament, what is the nature

of the world and the meaning of our existence upon it? Paul
says: 'The creation was subject to vanity, not of its own will,
but by reason of him who subjected it. . . ' (Romans viii.20).
Paul is speaking of the state of things on earth. Put thus, it is a
very strange and startling idea. He teaches that life on earth is
not for man's good and is not directed by the good, and that
everything on earth merely happens. Paul does not say that
things on this earth are right or intentional or governed by a
supreme God. On the contrary, he says, quite openly, that
things on this earth are 'subject to vanity', not because the
inhabitants wish it, 'but by reason of him who subjected it'.
This implies a power who, in regard to creation on this small
earth, is inimical to man. If we suppose that all that has power
over creation on earth is to be called by the name God and if at
the same time we believe that God is One and also all Good, this
statement of Paul is incomprehensible. How, if a supreme God
rules directly all the phenomenally created worlds and his will
reaches them directly, can it be said that creation is subjected
to 'vanity', against its will? If Paul is preaching the idea of
Good, the fundamental conception of a supreme and good force
acting on all living things, how can he make so strange a
statement? Man, he says, as part of creation, is forcibly sub-
jected to vanity against his will. How is it possible, then, to
entertain the view that God is Good? Certainly, looking at life
and its events, and believing that a supremely good God directs
all things, it is impossible to explain even a fraction of the
incidents that take place on the earth. But Paul does not say
that the power acting on this created earth, with all its creatures,
is good. Actually he speaks of a 'God of this world' (ό θεος του
αιώνος τούτου), who 'blinds the minds of men' (ii Corinthians
iv.4). Man, as part of creation, has been subjected to vanity and
is under some power, some influence, some good, that acts
against his will, against what he wants. The creature was
subjected to vanity not of its own will. By whose will? 'By reason
of him who subjected it.' Paul does not call him God. What
explanation does Paul give? The creation was subjected to
vanity (in the Greek µαταιοτης; this means faultiness, uselessness,
meaninglessness or in the Latin frustration, in-vainness]. Paul adds,
in the hope that it might escape from bondage, into liberty ('into the
liberty of the glory of the children of God'). We ourselves, he
says, are all in this situation. Not only, he continues, 'the whole
creation groans and travails in pain together . . . not only so,
but ourselves also, which have the first fruits of the spirit, even
we ourselves groan within ourselves' - as if confined in a narrow
prison - 'awaiting our adoption' - as Sons of God.
The useless suffering of creation, of the world, is recognised.
No attempt is made to hide it or to say that it is the best of
worlds. All this suffering, all this pain, all this misery, all this
death, destruction and meaninglessness is not explained in
terms of itself. Life is not explicable as such. It cannot, as such,
be understood. Another idea is concealed behind its visible
outward appearance, an idea not derived from the deductions
we can make from what we see, but an idea for which there is
no sense-proof.
 PART THREE

IF we wish to begin to understand the technical meaning of the

teaching in the Gospels, it is necessary to get rid of all senti-
mental views about its import. The inner meaning of Christ's
teaching is not sentimental. It has nothing to do with comfort-
ing weak and useless people or encouraging slave-morality. The
sentimental liberties taken in literature and art and poetry that
have grown up around the teaching of Christ are merely an
example of the complete misunderstanding of what this tre-
mendous and ruthless teaching meant.
Christ's teaching is about a possible individual evolution in
a man.
If we try to find the first technical word - or rather, techni-
cally speaking, the first stage that it is necessary for a man to
reach before anything further is possible in his development -
it lies exactly, as we have seen, in the difficult word metanoia.
John the Baptist, the herald of the new message, is portrayed as
teaching repentance - that is, metanoia or change of mind, or
transformation of thinking. Unless a person begins to think in
some entirely new way he cannot enter upon all that follows in
the teaching of Christ. Everything in the Gospels depends on
this, and no one can understand what the whole teaching,
which is wrapped up in such difficult parables and paradoxes,
points to, unless this starting point is grasped.
Christ, mentioning one meaning of the word to his disciples,
taught a further stage called technically re-birth following on
change of mind. But both taught still another idea. John came
preaching metanoia and the 'Kingdom of Heaven' and Christ,
speaking to Nicodemus, taught re-birth and the 'Kingdom of
Heaven'.
What we have to grasp is that metanoia - change of mind - is
impossible unless another idea is grasped - the idea of the
'Kingdom of Heaven'. This idea is impossible to grasp unless
the concept of the individual evolution of a man is realised -
i.e. that everyone on this planet is capable of a certain inner
growth and individual development, and that this is his true
significance and his deepest meaning, and begins with metanoia.
But change of mind is useless, impossible, impracticable, save
in view of this other idea that makes a change of mind possible
and gives it its meaning and its fulfilment. If life on this earth
is all, then metanoia is impossible. And this other idea makes all
man-invented psychology unimportant and arbitrary. For if a
man is born on earth as an individual capable of undergoing
a transformation latent in him, comparable to the transfor-
mation of a grub into a winged insect, which possibility is latent
in the grub, then a true and genuine psychology of man can
and does exist - a psychology of transformation of oneself. But
if not, all psychological systems are so much temporary fashion
and invention. So if we wish to begin to understand what the
Gospels are about, it must be understood that they are about
a possible inner development or transformation of man, and
that this begins with metanoia as its starting-point. And as we
have seen, this metanoia begins with seeing that God's will is not
being done on earth, which means, in other words, that a man
ceases to find his supreme meaning in the outer events of life
and in all he has undergone in life. Where then does he find it?
He finds it in an idea that is apart from external life and is
called the 'Kingdom of Heaven'. So it is not surprising that
after Christ has explained to his disciples that it is useless to try
to see God's will being done in life's accidents and catastrophes,
and tells them that change of mind in their attitude and think-
ing is essential, he at once goes on to speak of the 'Kingdom of
Heaven' by means of a parable. He has just said that the men
killed at Siloam were not worse offenders than the rest of the
inhabitants of Jerusalem and has repeated the words: Ί tell
you, Nay: but, except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish',
and immediately goes on to tell this parable: Ά certain man
had a fig tree planted in his vineyard; and he came and sought
fruit thereon, and found none. Then said he unto the dresser of
his vineyard, Behold, these three years I come seeking fruit on
this tree, and find none: cut it down; why cumbereth it the
ground? And he answering said unto him, Lord, let it alone
this year also, till I shall dig about it, and dung it: And if it
bear fruit, well: and if not, then after that thou shalt cut it
down.' (Luke xiii.6-9)

What possible connection can this parable have with the

text immediately preceding it? How can it bear upon the
significance of the words, 'Unless you repent, ye shall all like-
wise perish'? The parable, as will be seen clearly later, is one
dealing with the 'Kingdom of Heaven', which is never spoken
of in a direct way but is always 'likened unto' or compared with
something, and so indicated by an illustration, by some story
or by a familiar everyday image. A parable is a comparison.
In relation to the idea of the 'Kingdom of Heaven', man is
often compared with a tree capable of bearing fruit, or mankind
as a whole with a vineyard. The parable becomes compre-
hensible in its connection with the previous verses if we have
realised something of the meaning of the words addressed by
Christ to his disciples. Mankind is like a tree or a vineyard
capable of producing fruit and unless this fruit is produced, the
vineyard is in danger of being exterminated as useless - hence
the words 'ye shall all likewise perish'.
The first step, the first stage of man's producing fruit is
metanoia — that is, of undergoing some transformation of mind
that causes him no longer to seek for God's will being done on
earth or to take external life as his chief source of meaning or
to dwell on what has happened to him or to others in outer life,
but to turn to an absolutely new idea, and so to an absolutely
new way of thinking, to a change of mind, given by the idea
that the real meaning of humanity or man is comparable to a
fig tree or vineyard whose object is to produce fruit - that is, in
the case of a man, to reach a new inner state, within himself,
which is called the 'Kingdom of Heaven'. The real meaning of
human life on earth is not to be found in external life, or in
the things of life, but in the idea of a transformation which,
happening within a man, leads to a state called the 'Kingdom
of Heaven'. So all the troubles and misfortunes, all the private
misery and heartaches, all the disappointments and vexations,
and all the unhappiness, as well as all the happiness that every-
one experiences in life, are, seen in the light of the 'Kingdom of
Heaven', nothing but a means to an end, and in themselves
have no meaning at all, and have nothing to do with God's will.
It is this new idea, this change of mind, that is indicated by the
word metanoia, which is so poorly and inadequately translated as
repentance.
 With this new attitude to life, in view of the idea of the
Kingdom of Heaven, everyone is changed. People's whole lives
are changed. The entire meaning of their lives is changed and
all that happens to them, all their tragedies, all their secret
discontents and painful thoughts and sense of failure, is trans-
formed - once external life is seen to be not the main issue or
where we must believe that all meaning lies or where, indeed,
God's will is acting. This is metanoia in relation to the idea of
the Kingdom of Heaven.
 PART FOUR
THE IDEA OF THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN
THE first notion that can be formed of the 'Kingdom of Heaven'
is that it is a place where the will of God is done: 'Thy will be
done on earth as it is in Heaven.' But as a rule people suppose
not only that God's will is done on earth but that what is meant
by Heaven is some hereafter which everyone who has led a
good life passes into at death, and it is always contrasted with
the idea of Hell, which again is always taken, not as a possible
state that a man may reach on earth, but a place to which
wicked and bad people go eventually after they die. A great
many important ideas in the Gospels are taken precisely in
this way, as referring to a hereafter in time, and no connection
at all is made with a man living on the earth now - that is, with
a man existing at the present moment.
But a man living on the earth now can, at different moments,
be in a better or worse state.
He can for a moment touch a better state of himself, from
which he sees everything in a better light, or a worse state, from
which he sees everything in a worse way. He can rise or fall
vertically. He can see things from a higher level or a lower
level.
Everyone is aware of this fact.
And this rising and falling, these moments of insight and of
darkness, which characterise everyone's life, have nothing to
do with time and a hereafter, but are states that a man is
capable of reaching in himself now. They belong to a movement,
upwards and downwards, within a man, and so are, as it were,
vertical.
When a man is in an evil state, such as a state of suspicion,
everything is connected in one way. When circumstances
change his state, he sees everything connected quite differently.
This is such a common experience that it is unnecessary to
emphasise its truth. But the future of a man in a state of sus-
picion, as regards states or levels of understanding, is not in
time but within him. He may be dragged increasingly down-
wards by his suspicion until eventually he acts in some violent
and irrevocable way. His true future is to reach another state
of himself and this future which is psychological does not lie
hereafter, in the mere passage of days - that is, in time - but in
a change within himself. So a man has always two futures, one
in passing time and the other in change of state. And it is this
latter future, in the state of a man, that is spoken of in almost
every line of the Gospels. People ordinarily think that time is
progress, and that the mere passage of days and years and
centuries will and even must lead to a better condition of
affairs. Or, in the case of themselves, they hope and believe that
next year or the year after, everything will be different. But it is
very difficult to believe that this is so. Life remains much the
same. And as a person ages, things do not improve. Time is not
the factor that brings about a transformation either in the
general level of life or in an individual. But here there is a deep-
seated illusion that acts upon everyone. Tomorrow will be dif-
ferent. Tomorrow will bring about better conditions of affairs.
And this illusion, which is so complex that it is impossible to
disentangle all the currents of thought and emotion which enter
into it, governs mankind and every single person in one way or
another. Everyone, finding life, privately, so difficult and really
impossible to grasp, naturally feels that there is always one thing
that remains open - namely, tomorrow. Or, on the other hand,
thinking that he should try to do something, and make some
effort, he feels again that there is always tomorrow. Every man
quite sincerely and genuinely thinks of tomorrow as an oppor-
tunity to do what he feels he should do and he escapes from the
burden, that most people feel, of his own shortcomings, by the
aid of tomorrow.
But the most important thing is that people think of their
lives in terms of past, present and future. They think of their
lives in terms of time, not of state. So it is very easy to believe
that a better state can be reached eventually, or in some here-
after. But the hereafter of anyone is not merely in time, but in
himself, and consists in changing his state now, at the moment
when he realises the state he is in.
To return to the example of suspicion - a man begins to pass
into a state of suspicion and, as it continues, begins to consent
more and more to the ideas and connections of things that this
 state suggests to him. Every psychiatrist knows very well that
once this state passes beyond a certain indefinable point, in-
sanity is close at hand - in fact, it is diagnostic. What is this
man's true future? Is it in time or in some other direction? In
time his future is an increasing belief in the hypnotic ideas that
his state induces. But another future of the man is possible,
now, namely, the reaching of a better state. This future, which
is not in future time but now, can be thought of as vertical to
time - as belonging to an upright line, indicating higher and
lower states, like a scale or ladder. If we imagine time, diagram-
matically, drawn as a horizontal line - that is, a line represent-
ing past, present and future - this vertical line, entering a man
at any moment of time, indicates the possibility of a higher or
lower state of himself at that moment of time. And if we wish
to understand anything about the Gospels, this imaginary
upright line, indicating the possible states of man, must be
grasped, for the Gospels are all about a man reaching a higher
state of himself, not externally in the world, but in himself in
this life, and not in a hereafter, but now.
But the meaning implied by the word metanoia is far more
than mere temporary change of state. A man who tries to
restrain himself and struggles not to go with what he believes is
his worst side and strives to keep to what he regards as good or
the path of duty and to live what he believes to be a righteous
life, does not reach the stage of metanoia. And even though he
may feel convinced that his mode of life is not due to the desire
to feel meritorious, or to be an example in the eyes of other
people, or to the fear of the police, or of social contempt, or of
losing his reputation as a respected man, but that it is really
due to himself, yet he does not undergo any change of mind.
And, as it was said, there must have been many people in
Jerusalem who led good and moral lives, yet Christ's words
'unless ye repent' — that is, undergo a change of mind — 'ye
shall all likewise perish' shew that something else is meant.
Here lies one of the deepest ideas in the psychological teach-
ing of the Gospels. A radical permanent transformation is
taught as being possible and metanoia is the technical description
of it. But a man cannot reach a permanent higher level of
himself unless there is built up in him a connection of ideas
 that can gradually lift him beyond his present level. The idea
of the Kingdom of Heaven is therefore a supreme idea in this
respect. It represents the higher Good. It stands beyond visible
life and material truth and physical theories and, however
dimly conceived, opens a direction in a man's mind that is
new and brings about new connections in his thoughts and
feelings and new communications in his understanding. The
idea of the self-evolution of man, the idea of metanoia or trans-
formation of mind, and the idea of the Kingdom of Heaven
are all connected and related ideas. What must be understood
is that for this self-evolution and transformation to begin a man
must cease to follow only the evidence of the senses. He must
give up deductions from nature and phenomena and events
and occurrences of life. He must no longer see in external life
the full meaning of his own life or strive to find it outside
himself, nor must he see the will of God being done in life on
earth. It must be realised that a man who has come to the con-
clusion that there can be nothing higher than what he repre-
sents, and that there is no 'God' because of the bad and evil
state of the world, is in the same situation, psychologically
speaking, as the disciples who thought everything that happened
on earth was due to the will of God.
The idea of metanoia and the Kingdom of God lies in another
direction. A man must turn round from the world and see
himself. Many of the parables in the Gospels deal with this,
and one of the most significant is the parable of the prodigal
son. Just before the parable, which is about metanoia, is given,
Christ is shewn as speaking of the importance of 'repentance'.
He remarks to his hearers that 'joy shall be in heaven over one
sinner that repenteth, more than over ninety and nine just
persons, which need no repentance'; and again, 'there is joy
in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that
repenteth'. Then he relates the following parable: Ά certain
man had two sons: And the younger of them said to his father,
Father, give me the portion of goods that falleth to me. And he
divided unto them his living. And not many days after the
younger son gathered all together, and took his journey into a
far country, and there he wasted his substance with riotous
living. And when he had spent all, there arose a mighty famine
in that land: and he began to be in want. And he went and
joined himself to a citizen of that country; and he sent him into
his fields to feed swine. And he would fain have filled his belly
with husks that the swine did eat; and no man gave unto him.
And when he came to himself, he said, How many hired ser-
vants of my father's have bread enough and to spare, and I
perish with hunger. I will arise and go to my father, and will
say unto him, Father, I have sinned against heaven, and before
thee, and am no more worthy to be called thy son: make me
as one of thy hired servants. And he arose, and came to his
father. But when he was yet a great way off, his father saw him,
and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed
him. And the son said unto him, Father I have sinned against
heaven, and in thy sight, and am no more worthy to be called
thy son. But the father said to his servants, Bring forth the best
robe, and put it on him; and put a ring on his hand, and shoes
on his feet: And bring hither the fatted calf, and kill it; and let
us eat, and be merry: For this my son was dead and is alive
again; he was lost, and is found. And they began to be merry.
Now his elder son was in the field: and as he came and drew
nigh to the house, he heard music and dancing. And he called
one of the servants, and asked what these things meant. And
he said unto him, Thy brother is come; and thy father hath
killed the fatted calf because he hath received him safe and
sound. And he was angry, and would not go in: therefore came
his father out, and entreated him. And he answering said to his
father, Lo, these many years do I serve thee, neither transgressed
I at any time thy commandment: and yet thou never gavest
me a kid, that I might make merry with my friends: But as
soon as this thy son was come, which hath devoured thy living
with harlots, thou hast killed for him the fatted calf. And he
said unto him, Son, thou art ever with me, and all that I have
is thine. It was meet that we should make merry and be glad:
for this thy brother was dead, and is alive again; and was lost,
and is found.' (Luke xv.11-32)
In this great parable it is shewn how a man turns round in
himself from seeking everything in life and changes his direction.
And it is interesting to observe that in this parable the prodigal
son was in the state of having lost himself as is shewn by the
phrase 'And when he came to himself' or, more literally, 'When
he came into himself (είς έαυτον δε έλθων).
But people very often connect some idea of literal profligacy,
as of spending money and so wasting an inheritance, with the
parable, and picture a young man actually reduced to poverty
and actually eating husks. They do not think that this refers to
themselves, to a psychological state of themselves, in fact, to a
state reached by everyone - a state where a man loses himself
and all the external forms of life and outer things of life nourish
him as little as do husks.
It has already been said that a parable is a comparison. Its
physical, literal or sensual meaning is one thing, but its real
meaning lies on a level above the senses. A parable is thus a
transforming-machine between two levels of meaning. It has its
literal meaning, and also another psychological meaning. It is
a medium through which greater meaning can be indicated
apart from the words or images used in it, which have their
own lesser meaning, and for this reason it is used throughout
the Gospels. The meaning of a parable is always psychological,
and never literal or physical.
A parable thus bridges two levels of meaning, sensual and
psychological. In one place it is said that Christ spoke to the
multitude only in parables, but gave direct teaching to his own
disciples in private. And it must be recalled that Christ is
continually said to have told his hearers that they did not
understand what he was saying because they had no ears to
hear with and no eyes to see with - that is, their understanding
was shut, and all internal or psychological meaning was in-
comprehensible to them and everything was taken quite liter-
ally, as relating to the realm of external, physical facts and
events.
The parable of the prodigal son is not about a young man
who squanders his fortune. It is about everyone born on this
earth. But the last part does not by any means refer to everyone
because only a few realise their situation and 'come to them-
selves'. This is the moment of metanoia. And it must be noticed
here that the prodigal son does not 'repent' but 'comes to
himself and realising his situation seeks to begin to escape from
the power of external things over him. There is no mention of
repentance, but only of a certain change of mind, called here
'coming to oneself and referred to, just before the parable is
given, as metanoia - that is, as a transformation in thinking, as
an entirely new way of taking life.
Nicodemus
 PART ONE

N and the state

ICODEMUS, a Pharisee and ruler, came by night to Christ,
of obscurity in which he was is shewn in
the conversation which follows, given in the Gospel of
John (iii.2-10).
' "Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher come from God;
for no one can do these miracles which you are doing, unless
God is with him."
"In very truth I tell you," answered Jesus, "that unless a man
is born anew he cannot see the Kingdom of God."
"How is it possible", Nicodemus asked, "for a man to be
born when he is old? Can he a second time enter his mother's
womb and be born?"
"In very truth I tell you," replied Jesus, "that unless a man
is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the Kingdom
of God. Whatever is born of the flesh is flesh, and whatever is
born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not be astonished at my telling
you, 'You must all be born anew'. The wind blows where it
chooses, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it
comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone who is
born of the Spirit."
"How is all this possible?" asked Nicodemus.
"Are you," replied Jesus, " 'the Teacher of Israel', and yet
do you not understand these things?" '

There is something strange in the sequence of these words,

especially at the beginning. What does Nicodemus mean and
what does Christ mean? Nicodemus has not asked a question,
yet Christ is said to answer him. What is he answering? It is not
obvious at first sight that anything needs to be answered in the
preliminary words which are put into the mouth of Nicodemus.
In this narrative of a supposed conversation at night between
the Pharisee and Christ, Nicodemus is shewn as saying, earnestly
and without any intention of flattery, that he has seen the
miracles done by Christ and is therefore convinced that Christ
is a teacher come from God. 'We know', he says, 'that you are
a teacher come from God, because no one can do these miracles
which you are doing, unless God is with him.' This seems a
reasonable statement requiring no answer, and one that is going
to lead on to some actual question or perhaps a confession or a
request for advice. But it is just at this point that Christ is
described as interrupting him by an answer. What was the
reason of this interruption and what was there in the prelimi-
nary words of Nicodemus that it was necessary to answer? It
might be supposed that Christ would have agreed with Nico-
demus and have said to him, in so many words, that he was
quite right in his conclusion and that the miracles were con-
vincing evidence that he was a teacher come from God. But,
instead, Christ says something that is apparently irrelevant
and it is this apparently irrelevant and uncalled for answer
that gives the passage a strange quality, as if it were out of focus,
as if two entirely differing meanings were forced together. And
it is just in this fact that the significance of the passage lies.
The standpoint of Nicodemus and the standpoint of Christ are
brought into open collision at the outset in two briefly for-
mulated sentences in order to shew the extraordinary difference
between them, and, like everything else in the Gospels, the
passage is in the nature of a test for the understanding of
whoever reads it. In the two opening verses of the conversation
the words follow one another smoothly, but the meanings
involved in them are contrary, and this fact is brought out into
greater clearness subsequently in the rest of the passage when
Nicodemus is shewn as not understanding anything at all of
what Christ is speaking about.

What is the standpoint of Nicodemus? It is a standpoint which

has its origin in the senses. Nicodemus begins from what he has
seen with his physical eyes, and presumably he wishes to build
up his belief in Christ's teaching from this starting-point. He
has seen miracles done and signs wrought and this evidence of
the senses decides his belief in Christ. He does not start from
anything he has seen internally but from what he has seen
externally. Christ corrects him. Nicodemus had not even yet
asked a question but he had begun to talk in a certain entirely
wrong way; and this is what is taken up by Christ. Christ does
not directly say that Nicodemus is quite wrong in his approach,
but implies it by his answer. He does not actually say to Nico-
demus that it is useless beginning with visible proofs of God
but implies that the whole question is one that concerns man.
He says: 'In very truth I tell you, that unless a man is born
anew . . . ' he cannot 'see' God. That is, Christ says to Nico-
demus, that only a new man, another kind of man, can know
anything about God. But Nicodemus, searching for outer
evidence of God's manifestations and impressed by the miracles,
cannot take in what is meant. He thinks that the whole question
is to find a visible outside proof that 'God' exists, or is mani-
fested in this or that person. And he wishes, quite earnestly, to
start from such seen and so outer evidence. So, having seen the
miracles, he felt that Christ must at least be a remarkable
person and, in fact, a divine man.
Everyone naturally tends to think like this and start from
this point and regard the evidence of the seen as final proof,
because the mind is first developed by contact with objects of
sense and so is based naturally on the seen world. Nicodemus'
faith starts from the sensual and so from what is outside, and
Christ shews here that this is impossible. Whatever is of the
senses and verifiable by them is not the right starting-point. If
man is capable of undergoing an inner development, an indivi-
dual transformation, here technically called re-birth, it is clear
from what Christ implies that it cannot begin from the evidence
of the seen and so can have no starting-point in life. So that
whatever we may imagine about the meaning of re-birth, it is
obvious that we can already understand one thing - that it can
only begin with something internal, something seen within a
man, something understood and realised internally, and cannot
begin from the worship of anything outside a man, or from
any conviction reached by external evidence, such as miracles,
or by anything belonging to external life, or, in short, anything
coming from outside through the channels of the five external
senses.
 PART TWO

'How is it possible', Nicodemus asked, 'for a man to be born

when he is old? Can he a second time enter his mother's womb
and be born?'
The idea of re-birth is taken literally in terms of sense by
Nicodemus. To be born again must mean, to his mind, to be
born physically again, to enter physically again the womb of
one's own mother and once more find oneself on the earth,
starting life afresh as an infant. But this idea - the idea of
starting afresh, of being actually born physically again in this
sense from the same mother - is an idea that exists historically
in the thought of humanity.
The repetition of the same life, the idea that everything
repeats itself, that time is curved and so a circle, coming back
to the same point, where everything recurs again, just as it was
before, has existed as a definite idea and has been referred to
in the past by many ancient writers and believed in by many
people. This is not the same idea as reincarnation. Time as a
circle, that is, time as bringing back the past and restoring
everything once more — in fact, the idea of the recurrence of all
things — is a very old idea, going back to the beginning of our
western culture, and, in fact, probably going back to Pytha-
goras, and one that has been revived at different times and
sometimes brought forward as one explanation of life and of
people's actions, differences, talents and destinies. This idea,
that Nicodemus seems to touch, or at least seems to be made to
touch by John, based on the recurrence of all things, accounts
for many things in life that are otherwise difficult to account
for. A man may remember his life - the life he has lived before
and is now living again - or he may remember nothing. But if
he remembers, he knows beforehand - that is, he senses what is
going to happen, because it has happened before - and there
remains in him some dim feeling, some vague sense of the
future. Or he finds that very early in life he seems to be more
ready, more interested, more able to grasp and understand
certain sides of life that seem familiar, or to realise what he
wants to do, so that sometimes he may develop very early, as a
musician, a writer, an artist, or a 'man of destiny', as it is called,
or perhaps merely as a man who feels something deeply, but
does not know or has forgotten what to do, or he may remember
only what not to do.
In this literal sense a man, or rather all men, may be born
again, physically, from the same mother, and once more find
themselves in the same time, in the same events, in the same
historical period; and if a man remembers something, through
former suffering, or through some awakened interest, he will
know more of some aspect of his time than others and, without
directly knowing, he will feel what he has to do and to what
course he must devote himself and what he must avoid; and he
may even know how to act in some emergency, because it all
happened before. From this point of view all events, all wars,
all the incidents belonging to a particular time, have happened
again and again and are always happening in Time itself. The
knowledge which comes from a memory of having 'done all this
before', strange, vague and probably always indirect, the
memory that all this has happened before and that certain things
must inevitably happen once more will make a man feel that
he is not placed in life as others are, who remember nothing,
but that there is something different in him, something authori-
tative that he must respond to, whether it leads him to success
or failure. And such a man will not believe that a single life
explains him, or others, or that everyone begins life at birth.
In this sense - that is, in the sense of the physical, literal
recurrence of all things - a man will certainly again enter his
own mother's womb. And in this sense, if death means that
everyone returns at once to the moment of his birth and is
again born, literally, at the same time as he has always been
born - the same year, the same day and the same hour - then
a man can be said to enter again 'when he is old' into his
mother's womb and once more be born into the same life, as a
baby. And even if he remembers nothing, he will do, and be
able to do more easily, what he did before, whether good or bad.
And if he feels things before they come, the knowledge of the
future will really be a knowledge of the past - of what he has
lived in and experienced before - because, if time is curved
and forms a circle, then there is no real past or future, since
everything will turn in its own circle of time, and the events
of the past will always return, and so become the future, and
the events of the future will always be what has already been,
and so the past. So past and future will be relative terms, accord-
ing to one's position in the circle of one's own life - that is, the
shifting moment we call the present, which we can never catch,
never really live in, never really see, save through our senses,
which give us only the present moment - as if, perhaps, we were
looking through a slit at a vast inconceivable world standing in
an eternal present, in all the dimensions of 'Time', in which all
we call past, present, and future is simultaneous in existence -
and seeing it only in a brief way, as a section, a slice, as a world
limited to three dimensions moving under the power of an un-
graspable mysterious engine called Time, which always silently
hurries us on, whether asleep or awake, from everything we
had and from everything we felt or thought, forcing us to live
our lives and reach the moment of death.
The remark of Nicodemus: 'Can a man enter a second time
into his mother's womb?' may not therefore have been given
in John's account without intention. The idea of literal recur-
rence may have been introduced here purposely. The Gospels
were not written from the point of view of what, actually, in a
narrow historical sense, occurred. Everything in the Gospels
was written in order to convey meaning or illustrate meaning.
The important thing, whether it is a question of parable, inci-
dent, or conversation, is to grasp what is meant. The Gospels are
only secondarily historical as regards truth. Primarily they
convey truth of another order. Whether the conversation be-
tween Christ and Nicodemus by night actually took place is
unimportant because the importance of everything mentioned
in the Gospels lies not in historical truth, but in meaning. That
is to say, an incident, which may or may not have happened,
was used to bring forward some psychological aspect and indicate
some meaning in relation to the main teaching given by Christ.
So, in a certain sense, the Gospels are invented and the incidents
are grouped in such a way as to convey meaning rather
than to record literal historical truth. Nicodemus did not
necessarily speak as he did. He may not even have met Christ.
Obviously he is used by John as a type of man in superficial
 touch with Christ's teaching, to shew how such a type reacts
to it.
The Gospels are very concentrated meaning, outwardly
clothed in incident and event, where actual parable is not used.
And all the teaching is given in a high form of paradox because
it was a teaching not easily understood and not possible to give
in direct form. Another language was necessary to convey the
ideas of which Christ spoke, a language which ordinary man-
kind - that is, people as we are - cannot take in, and so parable,
incident and illustration were used as a medium.
Nicodemus appears in the Gospels as a man who can only
understand Christ's teaching in a literal way and he is also a
man who certainly believed that an earthly Kingdom of Heaven
was coming, in which a real, physical King would reign, and
probably kill off everyone who did not agree with what Nico-
demus felt was right. It is so obvious that Christ is trying to take
Nicodemus off the level of physical interpretation and explain
to him that man as he is, with all his prejudices and dislikes and
all the illusions of the senses, is not a person who can 'see' God
and that he must first of all undergo a process called 're-birth'
before he can even begin to believe he knows or understands
anything of God's will. Another level of being is necessary before
anything is possible in regard to speech of 'God'. So Christ says
to Nicodemus 'unless a man is born anew' — that is, unless he is
born as a new man and becomes actually another kind of man
— he cannot see God — that is, he cannot even imagine what
'God' is.
But people wish to realise 'God' on their own level of being,
and many believe they can talk of God and God's will, and
people preach and write about God's will, as if they know
exactly what God's will means, without even troubling them-
selves with the meaning of the Lord's Prayer: 'May thy will be
done on earth.' They imagine not only that God's will is done
on earth and that if their friends suffer misfortune it signifies
that God's will is being done towards them, as a punishment,
but they suppose that they know about God and what God
wishes, and listen to sermons about God's wishes, and even feel
superior towards all those who do not act in a religious way,
according to their ideas, or go to the same churches. This is the
usual situation in life of that thing called 'religion'. But Christ
taught no religion. He taught re-birth. And the whole meaning
of the Gospels is metanoia and re-birth. But because no one under-
stands that there is anything so specific and real behind what
Christ taught and because everything Christ clearly and specifi-
cally taught was turned into 'religion', the whole meaning of
his teaching was changed into something else — something that
was merely a matter of argument, of division, of sectarianism,
and so of eventual violent and bloody persecutions, and horrible
wars. All this was due to not understanding the teaching of Christ.
It was inevitable because what Christ taught and what mean-
ings lie hidden in the Gospel narrative are beyond mankind be-
cause he spoke of a higher level of man, of a development of man
beyond the level he is at, whatever sort of man he is, or believes
that he is.
 PART THREE

WHAT does it mean that a man must be born anew? How can
a man in this life, surrounded by all the overpowering pheno-
mena, all the changing events, of the external world, be born
anew and become a new man, another kind of man, a different
man? A man, Christ says to Nicodemus, is born of 'flesh' and
'water' as he is, and to become a different man, a man born
anew, he must be born of 'water' and 'spirit'. And elsewhere in
the New Testament, it is shewn that a man must die to himself
as he is before he can be born anew. That is, he must die to the
'flesh' before he is born of the 'spirit'. But these words, which
have so often been listened to by hundreds and thousands of
people so easily become merely words and give only the satis-
faction of familiarity, of being recognised, and nothing else.
What does 'flesh' mean, and what is 'water', and what is
'spirit'?
People may think they at least understand what 'flesh' means
and that dying to the 'flesh' or overcoming the 'flesh' means to
subject the body to some discipline or to starve it or to give up
all physical pleasures. This is probably what is most usually
understood by going against the 'flesh'. Certainly many people
understand it in this way, and think of anchorites, hermits and
saints merely as people who have made this their main aim,
hoping to reach some higher level, some higher development,
of themselves by such means. Nothing more absurd could be
imagined, for no one, starting only from this external viewpoint,
can ever reach anything or has ever reached anything. Such
people have not grasped the meaning of a phrase used by Christ,
in another place, when he speaks of those who wish to follow his
teaching. He says that in order to follow him - that is, his
teaching - the teaching of re-birth - 'a man must deny himself.
But people usually fancy this means to deny themselves of
something external, of comforts, of perhaps something that they
are especially fond of. They do not grasp that for a man to deny
himself, he must deny himself.
In the passage in which Christ utters these words (Matthew
xvi. 24), the literal Greek means that a man must utterly deny
himself (άπαρνησασθω εαυτόν). And it is obvious that if man is
capable of a further development that is latent in him and so
of reaching a higher level of himself, he cannot remain the same
man, the same 'himself and yet undergo this inner change. For
to change internally, to change oneself, does not mean to add
something on to what one is already, as a man adds something
to his knowledge by taking up a new subject. The idea of trans-
formation has nothing to do with addition. The Greek word
meta-morphosis (µεταµορφοοµαι) — used by Matthew, translated as
'transfiguration' (xvii.2), and by Paul in the passage where he
says: 'Be not fashioned according to the world but be ye trans-
formed by the entire renewal of your minds . . . ' (Romans
xii.2) - means an entire transformation of mind. In the experi-
ments nature has made in the field of insect-transformation, the
metamorphosis of a grub into a butterfly is not a new addition
to the grub, as the addition of wings, but a transformation.
Change in the sense of mere growth and decay or increase and
decrease exists everywhere in the universe; but there also exists
everywhere another order of change, the phenomenon of trans-
formation. All chemistry is transformation, and so, in a sense,
miraculous. The fire burning in the hearth is transformation.
The development of a chicken within an egg is transformation.
The growth of a human being from a cell is transformation.
The transformation of a cell into a man or of a grub into a
butterfly belongs to nature, whereas the transformation spoken
of by Christ does not belong to nature. All that we have dis-
covered about nature and this form of evolution and transfor-
mation belongs to a quite different order from what is spoken
of in the Gospels and in many other writings more ancient than
they are. It is not astonishing to think that since nature brings
about transformation by its own slow and gradual processes
there is also in the life of the mind, feeling and consciousness, a
process of a similar kind whose object is to bring about a further
transformation. The fact that transformation is found in the
external world, in the phenomenal world, in the natural world,
inevitably suggests that there is also transformation in the
psychological, the mental, the emotional world, the world that
everyone really lives in. It is this transformation of which Christ
speaks to Nicodemus.
 This transformation - or re-birth - if we try to understand
what is possible concerning it - depends on a man's no longer
being in or of the 'flesh'. He is, as he is, of 'flesh' and 'water'.
He can become of 'water' and 'spirit'. That means that one
connecting element or one principle or factor remains in this
transformation - namely, 'water'. All these terms are clearly
technical terms. That is, they belonged to a special language
understood by those who were in close touch with Christ. But
if we consider the significance of the term metanoia, we will be
able to grasp that the 'flesh' refers to the 'mind of the flesh' - a
term actually used in the New Testament - and that Nicodemus
represented, by his literal attitude, the mind of the flesh - that
is, the mind based on the external senses, turned outwards to
life or 'fashioned according to the world'. Something far more
subtle than mere vanity and worldliness is meant here. The
deeper meaning does not lie in such considerations. The mind
fed only upon the 'flesh' - upon the food supplied by the senses
- cannot make contact with the 'spirit'. The first thing we must
notice is that if a man must deny himself- that is, all the ideas
he has of himself, all the forms of imagination he has of himself
and all the illusions about himself that make him think he is
what he supposes - then the 'flesh' cannot help him to change.
For no one can see into himself with the sense-organs provided
for contact with the external world and no one can even begin
to see 'himself by external observation. The mind based on the
senses cannot bring him to the right place from which to start
and so he will be like Nicodemus, who starts outside himself
and is corrected by Christ who tells him that the whole point is
that a man can be re-born - and so must begin from within - in
other words, from 'himself and not from observed miracles or
deductions about God from the outer evidence of the senses.
 PART FOUR

THE WOMAN OF SAMARIA

WHAT is meant by the word water? In the phrase: 'Except a
man be born of water and the spirit he cannot enter the King-
dom of Heaven' the word obviously has a special meaning and
belongs to a language of words used in a particular way.
Nothing is said in the conversation between Nicodemus and
Christ to shew what it means. But it is used in other passages in
the New Testament in a special way, as for example in the
conversation between Christ and the woman of Samaria who
had come to draw water at Jacob's well. In this conversation,
which resembles in some points the conversation with Nico-
demus, there is an obvious play of meaning on the word water.
The passage is given in Weymouth's translation as follows:
Jesus, tired out with his journey, sat down by the well to rest. It
was about noon.
Presently there came a woman of Samaria to draw water. Jesus
asked her to give him some water; for his disciples were gone to the
town to buy provisions.
'How is it', replied the woman, 'that a Jew like you asks me who
am a Samaritan woman, for water?'
(For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.)
'If you had known God's free gift,' replied Jesus, 'and who it is
that said to you, "Give me some water," you would have asked him
and he would have given you living water.'
'Sir,' she said, 'you have nothing to draw with, and the well is
deep; so where can you get the living water from? Are you greater
than our forefather Jacob, who gave us the well, and himself drank
from it, as did also his sons and his cattle?'
'Every one,' replied Jesus, 'who drinks this water will be thirsty
again; but whoever drinks the water that I shall give him will never,
never thirst. The water that I shall give him will become a fountain
within him of water springing up for eternal life.'
'Sir,' said the woman, 'give me that water, that I may never be
thirsty, nor continually be coming all the way here to draw water.'
'Go and call your husband,' said Jesus; 'and come back.'
Ί have no husband,' she replied.

'You rightly say that you have no husband,' said Jesus; 'for you
have had five husbands, and the man you have at present is not
your husband. You have spoken the truth in saying that.'
'Sir,' replied the woman, Ί see that you are a prophet.' (John
iv.6-19)

In the verses quoted above the conversation seems to fall into

two parts that are not connected, or, if they are, the connection
is not obvious. This first part ends with the woman's asking for
the wonderful water which Christ has spoken of. But as in the
case of Nicodemus, who took the idea of re-birth literally,
something also appears to be taken here in a literal sense. And
just after this, the second part begins. Christ abruptly tells the
woman to fetch her husband. Why does he do this? What
possible connection has this with the first part?
It seems strange that Christ, after speaking of 'eternal life'
and the 'living water' that can give it - that is, after speaking
on the highest possible scale of meaning - should descend to
the commonplace level of moral criticism and apparently accuse
a woman who happened to draw water at the well of not being
married and of having had five husbands. But if the theme is
marriage, in the sense of the union of two things that give rise
to a birth of something new, all birth being the result of the
union of two things, a connection is found that does away with
the feeling of bathos which arises when the passage is taken on
the literal level of meaning. For it is then possible to see that
the second part directly follows on the first part and brings
into a narrower focus the situation of man in regard to the ideas
of Christ's teaching and to the ideas he derives from the world
outside him, from the evidence of his senses.
Let us attempt to find the connection, avoiding the literal
or sensory meaning. Christ has told the woman that she has had
five husbands and added: ' . . . he whom thou now hast is not
thy husband.' What is the idea? The idea is that of some wrong
union. This follows immediately on the idea of a wrong under-
standing; for Christ has just spoken to her of 'living water' and
told her that anyone who drinks of the water that she is drawing
will thirst again but anyone who drinks the water he can give
will never thirst, and she has taken this in some literal way, as
her answer shews: 'Sir,' she said, 'give me that water, that I
may never be thirsty, nor continually be coming all the way
here to draw water.' Her answer shews that there is some wrong
understanding, because the idea from which Christ is speaking
escapes her and she answers from her own idea, which is a
different idea - just as Nicodemus answered Christ from his
own idea.
A person can only think from the ideas his mind is furnished
with and if another person speaks from ideas that he does not
possess he can only misunderstand him, or, if he tries to under-
stand, understand him wrongly. Both Nicodemus and the
woman of Samaria represent, at the lowest level of sensual
meaning, actual people and any parable about them will in-
clude in it elements that belong to this literal aspect. But they
also represent certain states of mind or levels of thought and
understanding and so begin to pass from the physical level of
actual external visible people into a subtle psychological level,
for any typical state of mind or stage of understanding reached
by people in the course of their experience of life is something
psychological or internal, and quite distinct from any outer
appearance — that is, quite distinct from what we behold of
them as external objects, rendered through our five senses.
But a parable, in the Gospels, always begins from the purely
sensual level and the ideas belonging to it, and so, taken as such,
it seems merely to be what it appears to be - that is, a story about
a king, or a vineyard, or a person called Nicodemus, or a
Samaritan woman who comes to a literal well in order to draw
literal water. In other words, a parable always starts from the
first level of meaning that a man acquires from his contact with
life - the level of sensual meaning and the ideas belonging to it,
which enable a man to live in the world and deal with it
according to his natural intelligence. The teaching of Christ is
on a different level of meaning, one that refers to the acquiring
of quite new ideas, and aims, and new interpretations of life,
in the light of a possible individual evolution of man, contained
within him as a possibility, but not fulfilled by the action of
life or by any mere adaptation to the external world of life and
its changing events, passing in time from moment to moment.
Christ speaks of another level of man - of another and new
state of his mind and of a new integration or stage of under-
 standing - and this new level was nearly always connected, not
with time, but with the word eternal, which we shall speak about
later on.
But for a man to pass beyond himself, and so beyond the
existing ideas he lives by - that is, for him first of all to undergo
metanoia or change of mind - it is necessary for him to find the
ideas and forms of truth that will lead in this direction, for if
there be potentially in every man a higher state of himself
awaiting his own entry into it, there must also be a definite
science, a definite knowledge and practice relating to the
attainment of this state, just as, if a man wishes to learn some-
thing such as mathematics, it is necessary for him to find definite
knowledge and right ideas and forms of truth that actually
relate to this possibility. For the possibility of acquiring know-
ledge will not be realised if a man has union with the wrong
ideas or goes to the wrong teacher, or in this case to a man who
does not even understand mathematics himself. It will then be
nothing but a case of the blind leading the blind. And Christ
at the least represents a man who has reached a higher level of
man, and all his teaching is about what it is necessary to think,
and not to think, to do, and not to do, for a man to reach this
higher level and attain this inner development and undergo this
inherently possible individual evolution without which, as he
said, 'all men equally perish' - and this, it must be repeated, is
not the ordinary idea people have of the meaning of religion.
Many commentators on the New Testament, from the earliest
times, have thought that the woman of Samaria represented a
man's soul. What is a man's soul? It is the concentration of his
interests, his desires, his impulses. And all these represent where
he believes what is best, and what is most true, lie. A man strives
always towards all he thinks is most true and real and good and
desirable. A man's soul is his most secret and his deepest 'love',
his most imperious side, his most energising force. A miser's
'soul' is his avarice. He sees literal gold as the end of life. An
ambitious man sees the end of life in getting to the highest
position or gaining the greatest outward power, or the largest
possessions. A vain person desires the greatest adulation and
praise from external life. Or a man loves comfort, eating,
drinking. And, more deeply, everyone's love of himself is his
soul. Soul is the greatest meaning in the man as he actually is.
The woman of Samaria as the 'soul' in a man is represented
as having had five husbands - that is, it has been wedded to
all the five senses in its search for what it believes is best and
most true - and now is living with 'a man who is not her hus-
band'. What can this mean? It can only mean a state of the
soul, when the contact with the external world, through the
five channels of sense, no longer claims the same hold or excites
the same fascination. At this point the 'soul' vaguely turns to
other interests - perhaps to some sort of philosophy or to
different forms of so-called occultism, to opinions, theories and
imagination and so on, in an endeavour to satisfy its thirst with
truth other than the truth of the senses. In the narration before
us — which can only be a parable and not a mere narration of
an actual incident — the soul, thirsting for 'water', in this state
meets with Christ. Christ says that what it is living with is not
its husband. The 'truth' it is following does not really belong
to it, and so is like a false union. Now it is possible to see why
Christ has previously spoken of 'living water'. He has been
speaking of a form of truth that can satisfy the searching soul:
and this means an order of truth that can lead to a man's
attaining inner growth and development once he makes union
with it by acknowledging it and living it.
The whole parable is about truth. If the use of the word water
is studied in this parable it can be seen that it really has four
meanings, one lying behind and beyond the other, as does all
meaning in parables. First, on the most external sensual level,
it is simply literal water and this level forms the framework.
Second, it is water as denoting truth of a certain kind, as the
truth connected with the five senses - and this truth is, on its
own level, real, because the term marriage is applied to it.
Third, it is opinion, theory, mere imagination, which is not
called a marriage, but a false relation and so can lead nowhere.
And finally it means that order of truth, and those ideas and
practices that stir a person inwardly into a state of being alive
and form a living spring in him of fresh meanings, so that he
never thirsts. All this play of meaning cannot be rendered in
any words, because one meaning passes into another and again
into a third. But that the meaning of water is truth can easily be
proved by quoting a phrase in the third part of the parable,
which is given as follows in Weymouth's translation. Christ
says: ' . . . a time is coming - indeed, has already come - when
true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth;
for indeed the Father desires such worshippers. God is Spirit;
and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.'
 PART FIVE

IN his conversation with Christ, Pilate asks the question: 'What

is truth?' The incident is given in the Authorised Version as
follows:
'Then Pilate entered into the judgement hall again, and
called Jesus, and said unto him, Art thou the King of the Jews?
Jesus answered him, Sayest thou this thing of thyself, or did
others tell it thee of me? Pilate answered, Am I a Jew? Thine
own nation and the chief priests have delivered thee unto me:
what hast thou done? Jesus answered, My kingdom is not of
this world: if my kingdom were of this world, then would my
servants fight, that I should not be delivered to the Jews: but
now is my kingdom not from hence. Pilate therefore said unto
him, Art thou a king then? Jesus answered, Thou sayest that I
am a king. To this end was I born, and for this cause came I
into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth.
Everyone that is of the truth heareth my voice. Pilate saith unto
him, What is truth? And when he had said this, he went out
again unto the Jews, and saith unto them, I find in him no
fault at all.' (John xviii.33-38)
Pilate does not wait for an answer to his question about truth.
In this picture of him by John he is drawn as going straight out
to the multitude. But this action, as well as everything else said
about him throughout the trial of Christ, gives one answer to his
question about truth. For the narrative throws into clear relief
the type of man to which Pilate belongs, and shews what truth
means to this type of man. Pilate is at first sight an enigmatical
figure. But he is actually a man for whom truth is a question of
policy, and, however well-educated, however enlightened and
humane such a man may be, he will always act at the critical
moment in the same way. However he may think and feel
privately, he will avoid all personal responsibility, all indepen-
dent judgement, and follow the multitude. Christ says to Pilate:
'Everyone that is of the truth heareth my voice.' Pilate says:
'What is truth?' and goes straight out to the multitude, which
is his truth. And although he knows Christ is guilty of no crime
and says so, he does not follow his own knowledge. The voice
 of the multitude decides his policy; and this, for him, is the
right thing to do, and this for him is truth. For whatever a man
feels it is right to do is for him truth. Although everyone has a
different idea of truth, whatever a man calls truth, it is that
which seems right to him and what he does.
For Nicodemus truth was a matter of the senses. He begins
to believe in Christ from the evidence of miracles he has seen
with his own eyes; and he is told by Christ in so many words
that this is a wrong and useless starting-point. For Pilate truth
was a matter of calculation, caution and compromise, but at
the same time he knows better. He is afraid to act from what
he knows and feels. So, in the account given in Matthew
(xxvii.24), it is said that, fearing a tumult, 'he took water, and
washed his hands before the multitude, saying, I am innocent
of the blood of this just person: see ye to it.' And this is Pilate
throughout the ages.
In the Apocryphal Gospel entitled The Gospel of Nicodemus or
Acts of Pilate the efforts of Pilate to liberate Christ are more
emphatically portrayed. But an incident is narrated where
Pilate, speaking privately to Christ, asks: 'What shall I do with
thee?' Jesus answers: 'Do as it hath been given thee.' Pilate
asks: 'How hath it been given?' And Jesus replies: 'The pro-
phets foretold concerning my death and resurrection.' He had
to die and so Pilate had to condemn him to death. This extra-
ordinary passage means that Christ practically told Pilate to
put him to death and, however unwilling Pilate was to do so,
he was helped by what Christ said to him privately to act as he
did. And this passage, apart from many other reasons, has given
effect to the deeper view that the whole drama of Christ was de-
liberately and consciously acted for a definite reason. And in this
connection, anyone can see for himself in the account given by
John that while Pilate was anxious to free Christ, yet Christ had
warned his disciples continually of his predestined death. And
in view of such new thoughts, the whole of the Gospel drama
changes its entire import and significance, so that it is not
possible to imagine that Christ was a mere victim of a cruel
world or to take the sentimental view of the fate that he suffered.
Christ had to die, in fulfilment of the part he was playing. And
Pilate, being the kind of man he was, and following the form
of truth that affected him most powerfully, eventually acted
in the requisite way.
In the same Apocryphal Gospel of Nicodemus and Pilate
there is an addition to the part of the narrative where Pilate
asks what truth is. It is as follows: 'Pilate saith unto him: What
is truth? Jesus saith unto him: Truth is of heaven. Pilate saith:
Is there not truth upon the earth? Jesus saith unto Pilate: Thou
seest how that they which speak the truth are judged of them
that have authority upon earth.'
What perhaps is not often understood is that Christ taught
a definite teaching of which we have only fragments collected
in the Gospels. But what has been preserved shews that the
teaching was nothing like a mere exhortation to be pious but a
definite practice, based on definite knowledge and definite
ideas, concerning the possibility of a man's establishing a con-
nection with a higher state of himself. This practice was internal
— that is, no emphasis is laid on the performance of external
rites, but the emphasis is upon the inner work that a man does
on himself, once his mind begins to awaken and his inner
consciousness becomes active and he begins to see what he is
like and what his situation on earth is really like. The evolution
or perfecting of a man cannot take place unless this internal
work, carried out in relation to understanding certain definite
ideas, is undertaken. A man who always lies, a man eaten up
with vanity, a man filled with self-righteousness, or with hatred,
and so on, is incapable of evolution as he is, not for moral
reasons, but because his inner psychic life is distorted or crippled.
Thus people, from this point of view, were spoken of in the
Gospels as the halt, the lame, the blind, the deaf, and so on.
Truth, therefore, always referred to this possible inner evolution
and its goal, called the Kingdom of Heaven. It referred to the
inner state of a man - that is, to the kind of man. For it does not
require any great amount of thought to see that a man who is
always lying or always hating cannot develop rightly even in
the ordinary development that external life brings about, nor
can anything good come out of a man with a distorted inner
life: and from this it is possible to see that many other features
and many other qualities or absence of qualities will hinder a
man internally, about which special knowledge is necessary.
For if there be a higher level of a man in himself, and a possible
connection with it, and if others have reached it in themselves,
there must exist a special knowledge relating to this develop-
ment and so a certain form of truth bearing upon it. And it is
this kind of knowledge and this form of truth that is spoken of
in the Gospels, and it is for this reason that it has been already
mentioned more than once that Christ taught a 'definite
teaching', beginning with metanoia and leading to re-birth.
Of his teaching Christ says many important things, some of
which are very difficult to understand. But he always connects
'truth' only with his teaching - that is, 'truth' begins with the
knowledge of his teaching. In one place he says: 'My teaching
is not mine, but his that sent me . . . he that speaketh from
himself seeketh his own glory, but he that seeketh the glory of
him that sent him, the same is true' (John vii.16-18). And he
repeatedly makes it clear that what he taught was not the know-
ledge that a man can gain from his ordinary contact with the
world. As we have seen, Pilate is made to ask, in the passage
from the Apocryphal Gospel, whether truth does not exist on
earth, and Christ replies to the effect that if it did people would
not wish to crucify him. In another place, Christ says: Ί am
from above: ye are of this world' (John vii.23). This and many
other passages shew that by truth was meant, in the Gospels,
that which leads a man to the attainment of that inner state of
development, or rather, to that further state of himself, spoken
of as re-birth, and in verse 32 as freedom. 'The truth will make
you free.'
There is truth, in other words, that does not enslave a man
and bind him more and more to the power of the external
world, as in the case of Pilate, but truth that frees him. But
since truth is perceived only by means of ideas, knowledge must
precede truth, for truth is born out of knowledge as a personal ex-
perience. Knowledge can be taught, but the truth of it can only
be seen by each individual. There is knowledge of every kind
and truth arising from it of every kind. But the highest know-
ledge and truth refer to the inner evolution of man. Wherever
knowledge is spoken of in the New Testament it refers to know-
ledge of this order, for there can be no knowledge more impor-
tant and no form of truth more useful than that which develops
a man and transforms him into a new being. In the Gospels,
when Christ says: 'Woe to you expounders of the Law! for you
have taken away the key of knowledge . . .' (της γνώσεως) (Luke
xi-52) it is to this order of knowledge that he refers: and simi-
larly the phrase 'knowledge of salvation', γνωσις σωτήριας, (Luke
i.77) refers to this special knowledge concerning man's possible
evolution. In the Epistles of Paul, the term 'knowledge' (γνωσις)
is frequently used, but the word occurs very rarely in the
Gospels (only in the two phrases quoted above) whereas the
word 'truth' (αλήθεια) is constantly used, and for this reason it
is necessary to speak about the meaning of truth in more detail.
What does truth mean to us? What does a man call truth and
what does he call knowledge, and what relation has truth to
knowledge? And what kinds of truth and of knowledge exist?
These questions will be discussed in the next chapter. But what
can be understood at present is that the Gospels speak of truth
as the key to re-birth and that there can be no possibility of
re-birth unless a man has begun to see the truth. Everything in
a man that is a lie hinders him and nearly everything in any
man is a lie. All the lies in a man, all the lies upon which his
life is founded and upon which the world is founded, stand in
the way and keep every man where he is, and so keep the whole
of mankind where it is. There can be no evolution of a man
save through truth and all that is essential and real and good
in a man can grow only in the light of truth. This truth is that
of which Christ speaks when he says that 'truth is of heaven'
(Apoc. Gospel of Nicodemus). There is no truth upon the earth;
and this means also that there is no truth in that side of a man
that is of the earth. The things of the visible world have their
own truth. Christ speaks of another order of truth. The truth of
which Christ speaks is 'from above' (άνωθεν), and a man must
start from within, from the spirit of his own understanding, in
order to reach up to it, for this truth is above the earthly senses
and thus it is of heaven'.
Truth
 PART ONE

I gain
Tis necessary to go back to the fifteenth chapter of Luke to
the setting in which, first, the Parable of the Prodigal
Son is placed, and then, immediately following it, the
Parable of the Unjust Steward.
The Pharisees are murmuring against Christ because he eats
with publicans and sinners. In their idea of religion, in their
external view of it, this is a sin. They say: 'This man receives
sinners and eats with them.' Christ then gives the Parable of
the Lost Sheep:
'What man of you, having a hundred sheep, and having lost
one of them, doth not leave the ninety and nine in the wilder-
ness and go after that which is lost, until he find it? And when
he hath found it, he layeth it on his shoulders, rejoicing. And
when he cometh home, he calleth together his friends and his
neighbours, saying unto them, Rejoice with me, for I have
found my sheep which was lost. I say unto you, that even so
there shall be joy in heaven over one sinner that repenteth,
more than over ninety and nine righteous persons, which need
no repentance.' (Luke xv.4-7)
This may seem simple at first sight, but it is not by any
means easy to follow. In the narrative, a shepherd goes forth
and searches after what is lost until he finds it and brings it
home. In the explanation a sinner repents. What is the con-
nection?
Let us look at the Parable of the Lost Piece of Silver which
follows immediately afterwards:
Or what woman having ten pieces of silver, if she lose one
piece, doth not light a lamp, and sweep the house, and seek
diligently until she find it? And when she hath found it, she
calleth together her friends and neighbours, saying, Rejoice with
me, for I have found the piece which I have lost. Even so, I say
unto you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over
one sinner that repenteth.' (Luke xv.8-10)
In both parables the finding of one out of many is the subject.
And this one, when found, is connected with metanoia (repen-
tance) .
 Both the lost sheep and the lost piece of silver represent
something lost, the finding of which is explained as 'repentance'.
That is, there lies in these two parables a further indication of
what metanoia or transformation of mind, means. Since 'repen-
tance' is an internal act taking place in a man the parables
must have an internal meaning - that is, the lost sheep is something
lost in a man which he must find himself; and similarly in the case
of the lost piece of silver. And it must be said again that this
something in each case is designated by the numeral one. The
finding of the one, therefore, defines the meaning of metanoia
taking place in a man.
He leaves the many in order to find the one that is missing.
These two parables are given the external setting so often
found in the Gospels. The Pharisees are, as usual, criticising
Christ, in this case because he eats with publicans and sinners;
and so these two parables are often interpreted as referring to
them, in the sense that since Christ came to save sinners, the
lost sheep means one of these sinners; and, possibly, the ninety
and nine mean the Pharisees, who 'need no repentance'. The
phrase 'have no need of repentance' (ού χρειαυ έχουσι µετανοίας)
means literally in the Greek 'have no use for repentance'. It is
ironical. Those who justify themselves at every moment and ima-
gine that they are righteous feel they have nothing to repent of
and so 'have no need of repentance' in the sense of not wanting
it, having no use for it. Their opinions are fixed, and their ideas
are settled and for such people 'change of mind' is impossible
simply because there is nothing in them that seeks it. In the
most external sense, this passage means that only one man out
of a hundred feels the necessity of re-understanding his life and -
finding new meanings for his existence. The rest are self-satisfied
and seek nothing, feeling that they are righteous. But Christ
repeatedly says elsewhere that no one can evolve internally
unless his 'righteousness' exceeds that of the Pharisees. Other-
wise, everything he does is of the same quality. The Pharisees
were unreal, an imitation. What they did was done to gain
merit, or praise, or out of fear of loss of reputation. The Pharisee
in a man is this side.
A man acting from this side does not act from anything
genuine in himself but from various complex outer considera-
 tions relating to how he stands, what others will say, what his
pride will allow, or what will give him more esteem or attract
most attention. So Christ says of the Pharisees: 'Woe, unto you
Pharisees! for ye love the chief seats in the synagogues and the
salutations in the market-place' (Luke xi.43), and elsewhere
he defines them as those that 'love the praise of men more than
the glory of God' (John xii.43).
In such men nothing is real, and if nothing is real in a man,
he cannot see what is real. He may oppose tyranny, he may
preach repentance or he may die heroically, and yet it is not
he who does all this. In such a man - that is, in all of us - there
is only the truth of all that this side aims at, the 'truth' of
position, merit, and so on; and if the external world were
suddenly taken away, with all its values, aims and ambitions
and its restraints, scarcely anything, or even nothing, would
remain. That is to say, the 'man' as we knew him would
collapse and vanish, or only very little would remain — and
what remained would not resemble the man we knew.
To return to the parables, in which the idea of a man's leav-
ing many in order to find the one is expressed - how can this be
understood? In order to understand what this idea can mean,
let us suppose a man finds himself in possession of a number of
bullets and wishes to aim at a target. He tries one and another
bullet, and then a third, and fails. He then examines the bullets
and finds to his astonishment that one of them is marked with
his name or has some mark upon it that he recognises instantly
as his own. He uses this and finds that even without aiming very
carefully he actually hits the target. With this one bullet which
is his own he cannot miss.
In the Gospels the word translated as sin means in the
literal Greek άµαρτανω, 'missing the mark', as of a spear thrown
at some object and failing to hit it. And from meaning to miss
the mark, it came to mean failing in one's purpose, and so
erring or doing wrong.
In everyone there is a conventional side which has been
acquired from life, and which is not a man's own. Or if we take
the Pharisee in a man, whatever a man does from this side is a
pretence and not done genuinely from the man himself.
Everyone who makes an effort from what is not really his own
or does something that is not from himself can only miss the mark,
for the one thing in him that can succeed is not being used.
He is not making effort from the one point in him that is real.
This point is, in fact, lost. This is what it is first of all necessary
to understand before considering any further these parables
and their connection with those following them.
 PART TWO

IN the eighteenth chapter of Matthew the Parable of the Lost

Sheep appears in a slightly different form, but apparently in a
quite different context. This often occurs in the Gospels, and, to
the literal-minded man, these discrepancies prove a stumbling
block. He will argue that because the parables do not always
correspond word for word and are not always given in the same
context, they cannot be 'true'. But it is a mistake to suppose that
truth is only conformity to external or to historical fact. Truth
is not of one order. Physical truth is one level of truth. The
parables obviously do not represent physical truth or literal
facts, as they are called - that is, the Parable of the Lost Sheep
does not rest, for its truth, upon any actual shepherd who had
exactly a hundred sheep and lost precisely one of them. The
truth contained in parables is of another order. It is psychologi-
cal, and this means that parables refer to the inner life of man -
to inner truth.
A great part of the real teaching given by Christ about man
and his possible evolution is contained in the parables. And
since the most important thing was to give them, they are
inserted into the general account of the drama of Christ where-
ever an opportunity occurs. This is one reason why the Gospels
are not uniform.
No single interpretation can exhaust the meaning of a
parable. But if no attempt at all is made to see what it means it
cannot 'work' in the mind. A parable is designed to pass
beyond the purely literal, sense-based mind that demands a
visible proof for everything, and to fall on the internal under-
standing from which alone a man can grow, for a man is his
understanding. So it can be said that a parable is designed to
make a man think; and unless a man begins to think in a
certain way for himself metanoia is impossible and so his evolu-
tion cannot begin. For this reason Christ emphasised that
'repentance' (metanoia) is the first essential step.
In the eighteenth chapter of Matthew the parable of the
Lost Sheep does not appear in the familiar setting, so often
used, of the Pharisees criticising Christ. The context in which
it is given refers to the theme of the little one, the one that must
not be caused to stumble. The disciples ask Christ who is the
greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven and he calls a little child
and says:
'Except ye turn and become as little children, ye shall in no
wise enter into the Kingdom of Heaven. Whosoever therefore
shall humble himself as this little child, the same is the greatest
in the Kingdom of Heaven. And whoso shall receive one such
little one in my name, receiveth me, but whoso shall cause one
of these little ones which believe on me to stumble, it is profit-
able for him that a great millstone should be hanged about his
neck, and that he should be sunk in the depth of the sea.'
(Matthew xviii.3-6)
There is a change of meaning in regard to little one in this
parable. At first paidion (παιδιον) is used, which means, in the
Greek, a little child. But when Christ says: 'Whoso shall cause
one of these little ones which believe on me to stumble', the
Greek word is different — it is mikros (µικρός), which means
small, little, as in microscopical. This refers no longer to little
children but to people who have begun to follow Christ and to
have a little understanding - or rather, have begun to under-
stand through what is little in them - that is, it refers to those
in whom metanoia has begun.
Then, further on, after saying that occasions for stumbling
must necessarily come, 'but woe to that man through whom
the occasion cometh', he adds:
'See that ye despise not one of these little ones (ton mikron)
(έυος των µικρών). For I say unto you, that in heaven their
angels do always behold the face of my Father which is in
heaven. How think ye? If any man have a hundred sheep, and
one of them be gone astray, doth he not leave the ninety and
nine and go unto the mountains and seek that which goeth
astray? And if so be that he find it, verily I say unto you, he
rejoiceth over it more than over the ninety and nine which
have not gone astray. Even so it is not the will of your Father
which is in heaven, that one of these little ones should perish.'
(Matthew xviii. 10-14)
Here the lost sheep is the 'little one'. In this parable a con-
nection is made between the one that is lost and 'the will of your
Father which is in heaven'. It is on this one that the will of God
is directed; or, it is this one in a man that can connect him with
'heaven'. 'Even so it is not the will of your Father in heaven
that one of these little ones should perish.' And although no
direct mention of 'repentance' is made, we must remind our-
selves again of the phrase spoken by Christ: 'Except ye repent
ye shall all likewise perish.' That is, as already said, a man who
does not reach to the state called repentance, or metanoia,
perishes. But the will of God begins to act on a man who
'repents'; and this has to do with finding what is lost or gone
astray in him. And if we turn again to the phrase in the Lord's
Prayer: 'May thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven', and
apply it again, in its inward sense, to the inner state of a man,
it is possible to realise that it refers to 'heaven' in a man, or
rather, to that possibility in a man of coming under new
influences, called the will of God. And this is, in this parable,
connected with the finding of what is lost in himself - namely,
this one, of which it is expressly said that it is not the will of
heaven that it should perish.
To take another analogy: let us suppose a man wishes to
extract gold from the earth. In order to do this, he must have
some apparatus for the purpose. But the apparatus is only a
means to an end. The end is to extract gold and, once the gold
is found, the apparatus is of no further use.
The view of man taken in the Gospels is similar in some
respects to this analogy. Man is regarded as lost as he is. But
there exists in him something as precious as gold. At first he
must learn how to live in the world and acquire from it, as it
were, an apparatus for living. But this is not, in view of the
teaching in the Gospels, his end (τελος). The apparatus a man
acquires from life may be good or bad and if it is bad there does
not exist in him anything that can carry him further. All good
that he acquires from life is not really his own but is his first
stage, and a stage that it is absolutely necessary to reach, in
regard to the whole teaching about human evolution. This
acquired side of him, which is not really his own and at the
same time makes it possible for him to play some useful part in
life, and to behave decently, do his duty and so on, is not the
part of him from which he can evolve. But unless it is formed in
him, no inner growth or evolution is possible. All this side,
which, as was said, may be good and useful and which must
be acquired from life by education and training - for without
it nothing further can happen in him - can be roughly called
'the ninety and nine' - or that side of him which 'needs no
repentance'. It needs no 'repentance' because it cannot grow.
A man in whom this side is well built up, in the best possible
way, through the action of the best influences in external life,
is not yet himself alive. However good, he is still, from the inner
standpoint of Christ's teaching, dead or lost. But what it is
necessary to understand is that life brings a man only to one
stage of his possible evolution, and all the teachings in the
Gospels, and elsewhere in similar teachings where man is dealt
with in the most internal sense, is concerned with a further
evolution, which begins with metanoia. But for a man to unlearn,
to become 'as a little child' (ώς τα παίδια), to seek for what is lost
in him, necessarily goes against all that he feels himself through
and all that he has accomplished and all that he considers
valuable in his career. All this side is represented by 'the ninety
and nine', who need no 'repentance' simply because it is not
necessary. For a man to shift his inner basis and begin in a new
way - or to 'turn', or to detach himself from his reasonable
feelings of merit - means a struggle that cannot even begin
unless he sees all that he has done is a means to another end. It
is of this end (τελος) that the Gospels speak, almost in every
word.
 PART THREE

EVEN after about three years' contact with Christ the disciples
had not undergone 'repentance'. Almost the last words spoken
by Christ to Peter were: Ί have prayed for yourself that your
faith may not fail, and you, as soon as you have repented
(έπιστρεψας), must strengthen your brethren' (Luke xxii.32).
The Greek word epistrepho (επιστρέφω) used here means 'to turn
about, to return' and metaphorically 'to repent, to come to
oneself.
It is already obvious that metanoia (repentance) signifies a
'turning round': 'Except ye turn (στραφητε) and become as little
children' is the phrase used in Matthew xviii.3. In the Author-
ised Version it is translated 'unless ye be converted'. But
conversion has come to have a vague sentimental meaning.
Literally, it means something definite - namely, a 'turning
round' of the mind, a true mental transformation. The word in
the Greek is used of horses being checked and turned, or soldiers
being wheeled round. In the Acts of the Apostles (iii.19) the
words metanoia and wheeling round occur together (µετανοήσατε
και επιστρεφαε) and are translated: 'Repent and be turned.'
A definite inner act is meant, one that can really take place -
namely, the mind can undergo revulsion. And this act is shown
clearly in the Parable of the Prodigal Son where the younger
son 'comes to himself and returns to his father.
In this parable, which, as was said in a previous chapter, is
so often taken quite literally, as referring to a young man who
squanders his fortune, and which gives rise so often to comments
on the unjust behaviour of the father, the same idea appears as
in the two preceding parables. Something which has been lost
is found. In this case, what is lost is called the younger son. In the
first parable, it is one sheep out of a hundred, in the second, one
piece of silver out of ten, and in the above parable it is one out
of two brothers. And although no direct verbal reference is
made to 'repentance', as in the first two parables, it is clear
that the whole parable represents the act taking place in a man;
and that this act has to do with the finding of this one, as is so
clearly expressed in the preceding parables. In addition, in this
parable, the finding of what was lost is connected with a further
idea - namely, the difference between being alive and being
dead: 'For this thy brother was dead, and is alive again; and
was lost and is found.' It is clear that being dead and being
alive cannot here have a physical meaning, but can only refer
to the inner state of a man. That is, the state of a man in whom
this one is lost represents a man in whom metanoia has not taken
place and is compared with death. It must be noticed that,
when this change has taken place, the subject is referred to not
only as being alive but alive again (άνεζησε). Why again? And
why is the younger son the subject of the parable? And why, as
we have seen from a previous quotation, is it necessary for a
man to become as a little child? And to what must something
in a man turn round to, something that has got lost in him;
and what is it that gets lost, that is one in him, for which
everything else is left?
It is clear that if something gets lost in a man, there was a
state of him when it was not lost; and that if a man can become
alive again, there was a state when he was alive.

There is something in us, eternally young, that can under-

stand beyond this visible world, beyond phenomenal reality.
But this one thing in us, eternally young, is lost by us in the
world of objects and the external things of the senses, and,
using the logic of the senses, wastes itself in useless speculations
which are without meaning for it, because it is capable of
understanding a higher logic and a new world, utterly different
from this dark world of sense and temporal logic into which it
passes and in which it becomes lost. This magical side of our-
selves which in childhood we feel, is destroyed by life, and
remains only as a memory, dimly felt at moments, recalling for
a fleeting instant something that we knew once and possessed
and which has gone out of our lives.
It is this, this one in us, that must find itself again, for it is
about this absent part of ourselves, which is lost, that all these
parables are speaking. Its real destiny is to be taken out of life,
withdrawn from the power of outer things and outer events. In
this way a man is made alive again. For as we are, in our present
state, in which this one is lost, we are all living in a wrong way,
however we desire to do good and however we act. This one
has lost its true connection and as long as this is the case with
a man he has not reached his right state, from which his own
evolution can begin. He has not 'repented' - that is, undergone
metanoia. So he perishes. And as long as this one thing in him is
lost, all he does is wrong. For when a man is overpowered by
outer life and influenced only by all that acts upon him from
outside, and argues only from what he can see, he is machine-
driven by his senses and internally, the wrong way round. He
is dominated by external life and has no life in himself. That
part of him which is truly himself, and from which his own
individual existence and growth can begin, is lost. It is in the
wrong place. And this is sin. That is, in this state, everyone has
missed the mark, missed the very idea of his own existence.
And people often feel something of this for themselves and
know that by feeling too strongly or being over-anxious about
things or always upset and worried and at the mercy of life,
they are doing wrong in some indefinable way, which has
nothing to do with morality or moral wrong; and that they
should not let life have such power over them, and that by
doing so they are guilty of some crime which they feel instinc-
tively and do not understand. And they do not realise that, all
through the Gospels, it is precisely this wrong state of a man that
is being spoken of, and that in view of it, nothing else is of im-
portance ; and that unless a man realises that he is in this state
and begins to seek for that part of him which is lost in things
that do not matter and do not belong to it, and draws back in
himself and begins to alter his relation to life, he has failed in
his purpose and has not understood the secret of his existence.
People think the Gospels are about external life, and about a
moral relation to external life; and they do not see they are
about man and his possible re-birth. In nearly every sentence
they are speaking about man's inner state, about the wrong
state he is in, and how this state must be changed. They speak,
not about external life or outer morality, but about man him-
self and the condition he is in within himself in life. They do
not speak about a man as being simply good or moral but
about a man's actually changing and becoming a different
man. This is their whole message - that a man can and must
change in himself and become a different person, however
'good' or 'bad' he is in life. And the first step is metanoia.

What is the nature of this side of us, this side that is really
ourselves and which we have all lost? Is it possible to define it or
make it more clear to our understanding? This one, in the guise
of the prodigal son, journeys into a far country. He wastes his
substance and spends everything, and at the same time a
famine arises in that country. He begins to be in want and no
man gives him anything; and it is then that he 'comes to
himself and remembers: 'How many hired servants of my
father's have bread enough and to spare, and I perish of hunger!'
he exclaims. What is this hunger, this want, this famine? And
what is bread? The parable must be lifted wholly from its literal
setting and its physical meaning. It is not physical hunger or
want that is meant, nor literal bread; nor do 'wasting his sub-
stance' and 'spending everything' refer to actual money. The
man was dead - but he came to himself; and so began to be
alive again. In the act of remembering himself a truth came to
him. He did not really belong to the place he was in, in the far
country to which he had journeyed, where no man gave him
anything and the food of swine was all that he could get. Life
had become meaningless; and such meaning as offered itself
was like the food of swine - nothing but husks. There is not a
single thing in external life that cannot become entirely
meaningless. This is not a moral truth but a fact, however
uncomfortable it may be to face it. It is equally a fact, belonging
to the nature of things, that everyone seeks the fulfilment of
himself, and all that he craves, in life. Although he is dis-
appointed he feels either that his case is exceptional, or that he
will eventually find what he seeks, or he feels that if his circum-
stances were different, or if life were different, everything would
come to him as he desires. But life cannot be essentially different.
Life, essentially, is always the same; and a man is always locked
up in the prison of himself, of his own jealousies and hatreds,
and cannot escape this feeling of himself, however outer cir-
cumstances change. It is not from life that a man suffers but
from himself. As long as he sees all he needs and all he desires
as outside him and strives to reach it in this way, he wastes
meaning and eventually reaches famine in spite of the greatest
riches he may have gained. And as long as he feels that what is
himself consists in all this, he 'sins' - that is, he misses altogether
what man is meant to do and can become - he misses the mark.
There is no worse sickness than meaninglessness. But life can
become meaningless in two entirely different ways. It can be-
come simply without any interest, so that all one is doing or
has done seems useless and without purpose and one's own
existence without any meaning. But there is a quite different
experience, in which, in view of greater meaning, all ordinary
meaning ceases to have any value. In such an experience,
which happens at one time or another to many people, a man
is drawn back from all the meaning in life. This experience
comes when a man in a flash suddenly feels that he is different
from all that he sees, hears and touches. He becomes aware that
he himself exists. His own existence is no longer an existence
merged with life. He becomes distinct from all that surrounds
him. He realises that he is himself- not what he has been taking
himself as - and he ceases to feel himself only through comparison
with others as better or worse than others. He sees that he is
alone, one, and unknown to others, and invisible. He sees that
he is himself, and that others see only his body. He knows that
if he could keep this state, this new sudden consciousness of
himself, life could never hurt him and nothing in life would
ever seem unjust and he could never be jealous or envious or
hate. In such a moment a man comes to himself.
The moment passes and once more a man is in his ordinary
state — that is, this intense, internal meaning of himself as a
separate creation, as an individual, as utterly unique and
distinct from everything else, vanishes. Once more he finds
himself dominated by his senses, merged in external life and its
meanings and in the things and aims of that reality that is
offered by sense. Once more he begins to think from his senses
and their logic and to gratify the appetites that are satisfied by
what is outside him. The internal meaning of himself has
disappeared. The realisation of what is most real, what has most
meaning, passes, and is replaced by another 'reality', by another
set of meanings, which are now seen as outside him. He is no
longer distinct from his senses and their images of life. He has
forgotten himself and is once more a man lost or dead. But if he
remembers anything, he knows that the state of consciousness
he experienced is the secret of his life and that, if he could find
it again and keep it, nothing else would matter.
This is metanoia in the fullest meaning. It is a new state of
consciousness, suddenly touched and as suddenly vanishing. In
this state of consciousness a man finds himself. He finds what is
lost. He finds 'I'. This is the first truth - the first realisation of it.
This is when a man becomes alive, and is the point from where
inner evolution starts. Everything a man attempts in his ordi-
nary state is done in the wrong way and from the wrong place
in himself. So Christ repeats: 'Unless ye repent (unless ye reach
metanoia) ... ye cannot enter the Kingdom of Heaven.' And in
the Parable of the Prodigal Son, this revulsion of the mind in a
man is put in dramatic form, for the whole parable is internal
in its meaning. The one in a man becomes withdrawn from the
power of sense and the conceptions of sense and comes to itself
and remembers. What was lost is found. The man awakens from
the sleep of the senses, from death, and becomes alive again.
 PART FOUR

THE Prodigal Son finds that famine surrounds him and remem-
bers that there is bread and enough in his father's house. But,
as was said, neither this famine nor this bread are to be taken
literally. The bread that is lacking to the Prodigal Son is not
literal bread; and, similarly, when it is said in the Lord's Prayer:
'Give us this day our daily bread,' it is not literal bread that is
meant. Let us take the meaning of bread in the Lord's Prayer.
The word translated here as daily is unknown in classical Greek
and is used in the New Testament only in the two places where
the Lord's Prayer is given (Matthew vi.11 and Luke xi.3). The
Greek word is epi-ousios (επιούσιος), and this word, like the word
metanoia, is not a word that can be easily understood or rendered
by any simple translation. The word epiousios does not mean
daily. It has a far more complicated meaning. Although this has
always been realised and many interpretations have been given,
the translation both in the Authorised and Revised Versions of
the New Testament remains as daily. And so most people
perhaps imagine that daily bread is meant and believe that they
are asking for enough to eat, day by day, in a literal sense. Those
who have plenty of bread to eat, mouth these words without
understanding them and, if they think at all of the meaning of
the words they are saying, they believe they must refer to poor
people who lack sufficient nourishment. They do not think that
it is extraordinary that this phrase, which comes so early in the
Lord's Prayer, should refer simply to physical nourishment;
and they see nothing strange in the context: 'Give us this day
our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses.'
The request for 'daily bread' is the first personal request
made in the Lord's Prayer and therefore the most important;
and it is followed by the second personal request: 'Forgive us.'
That is, after the tremendous significance of the opening phrases
of the Lord's Prayer, which have so far only been touched upon
at one point - namely, that God's will is not done on earth -
people let themselves think that the whole level of the prayer is
suddenly changed and a personal request for literal food is
made, followed by the second personal request that our sins
 should be forgiven, That is, they believe that the first request
is a physical one; and, although they realise that the forgiveness
of sins must be something far greater, something spiritual, and
so psychological in the deepest sense, they do not see anything
odd in the fact that this request for daily bread should come first.
There are three personal requests in the Lord's Prayer - the
first for 'daily bread', the second for 'forgiveness', and the
third 'not to be led into temptation'. At this point the prayer
ends. This is the original form of the Prayer, But there were
added to it the words: 'for thine is the Kingdom and the power
and the glory for ever and ever Amen.' In the form given in
Matthew and in Luke, the only two Gospels which give the
Lord's Prayer, these latter words do not occur in the Revised
Version, although they are included in the Authorised Version,
in Matthew's rendering of the Prayer.
In the Parable of the Prodigal Son it is clear that once a man
turns in himself and goes in an opposite direction — and this
reversal is clearly enough presented in the merely outer pictorial
form of the parable - he goes in a direction where he can get
bread and enough, and escapes the famine he finds himself living
in. But what is this bread? It is this qualifying word epiousios
(επιούσιος) in the Lord's Prayer, translated so inadequately as
daily, that defines the nature of this bread. Let us make some
attempt to understand this word. It can be divided into two
parts, epi and ousios. In the Greek, the word ousia (ουσία) means
that which is one's own; it refers in a legal sense, to what is one's
own individual property. Taking the derivation of the word in
this way and only up to this point, the first personal request in
the Lord's Prayer comes to have a new meaning. By uttering
this sentence: 'Give us this day our daily bread', one is asking
really for what is one's own - not for literal daily bread, but for
the nourishment that nourishes what is one's own. In life,
where nothing is what it pretends, and everyone leads an
artificial and unreal existence, and has long ago lost what is
'his own' and no longer remembers anything, this request put
in this way begins to have a deep significance. Let us note that
in the first phrases of the Prayer, after acknowledging that a
higher level of existence is possible and that there are powers
above the level of humanity, and so, that a new state of a man
can be reached, and after praying that God's will may be done
on earth, and thus individually in a man, in the 'Earth' of a man,
the sensory man, the first personal request is that what is his own,
and thus real, may be given nourishment. This is no ordinary
bread that is asked for, but the very food through which a man
can grow internally, in his own being, in his own thought, in
his own feeling, in his own understanding. But if this transfor-
mation or re-birth of a man - with which the Gospels are solely
concerned and of which they speak in almost every line - if this
transformation is possible, there must be something internally
close to or touching every man which, if he can hear, if he can
feel and begin to understand and eventually follow, will lead
him to metanoia, to this re-turning, and thus to an entirely new
sense of himself and the meaning of his life on earth.
In the word epi-ousios, the particle epi (έπι), in its most primi-
tive sense denotes position — namely, the position of anything
that is resting upon something else, and so, above it and touching
it. Thus the full meaning of this word, translated as daily, in its
connection with the following word bread (which in the Greek
is the ordinary word for bread, άρτος), signifies that that which
is real in a man, what is his own, and what he has lost, is just
above and touching him; and this part of the Lord's Prayer is
a personal request to feel what has been lost, this lost feeling,
and to feel it now - this day, this moment - because this feeling
is food - not literal food - but the food that enables a man to
become alive. When the younger son in the parable 'came to
himself, he felt the first traces of this feeling, of this food, which
he had forgotten - and so he turned and began to recognise
him anew.
 PART FIVE
THE PARABLE OF THE UNJUST STEWARD
THIS parable is about a man who fails and the direction in
which he turns when he fails. It follows on the general parable
of the Prodigal Son where a man is shewn as 'coming to himself
and 'returning'. But this return is represented only in principle.
The prodigal son awakens and returns and he is seen from afar
by his father and welcomed. But nothing is said of the difficulties
of the way back. It depicts only success, and rejoicing at the
recovery of what was lost and the coming to life again of what
was dead. But the Parable of the Unjust Steward is about a man
who fails but who acts in a way that is commended. This par-
able is always regarded as the most complicated and confusing
parable in the Gospels. It is related as follows:
'There was a certain rich man, which had a steward; and the
same was accused unto him that he had wasted his goods. And
he called him, and said unto him, How is it that I hear this of
thee? Give an account of thy stewardship; for thou mayest be
no longer steward. Then the steward said within himself, What
shall I do? for my lord taketh away from me the stewardship:
I cannot dig; to beg I am ashamed. I am resolved what to do,
that, when I am put out of the stewardship, they may receive
me into their houses. So he called every one of his lord's
debtor's unto him, and said unto the first, How much owest
thou unto my lord? And he said, An hundred measures of oil.
And he said unto him, Take thy bill, and sit down quickly, and
write fifty. Then said he to another, And how much owest
thou? And he said, An hundred measures of wheat. And he
said unto him, Take thy bill, and write fourscore. And the
lord commended the unjust steward, because he had done
wisely: for the children of this world are in their generation
wiser than the children of light. And I say unto you, Make to
yourselves friends of the mammon of unrighteousness; that,
when ye fail, they may receive you into everlasting habitations.
He that is faithful in that which is least is faithful also in much.
If therefore ye have not been faithful in the unrighteous mam-
mon, who will commit to your trust the true riches? And if ye
 have not been faithful in that which is another man's, who shall
give you that which is your own? No servant can serve two
masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or
else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot
serve God and mammon.' (Luke xvi.1-13 A.V.)
As can be seen from the comments made by Christ, this
parable is about the true riches and what is one's own, which are
contrasted with the mammon of unrighteousness and what belongs to
another. 'If therefore ye have not been faithful in the unrighteous
mammon, who will commit to your trust the true riches?'
Christ says in his comments, 'And if ye have not been faithful
in that which is another man's, who shall give you that which
is your own?' Unlike the Parable of the Prodigal Son, this
parable, as already said, is about failure and how it can be
faced. The unjust steward has failed in regard to his rich lord,
but he thinks of a remarkable plan, which he carries out, and
is commended by his lord and by Christ. 'And his lord com-
mended the unjust steward, because he had done wisely: for
the children of this world are in their generation wiser than the
children of light. And I say unto you, Make to yourselves
friends of the mammon of unrighteousness; that, when ye fail,
they may receive you into everlasting habitations.'
The steward had failed. In what respect? By interpretation,
he had failed as steward of the true riches. But the parable and
its interpretation concern a man who under the circumstances
retrieves himself. The parable does not directly say that as a
consequence he could eventually become again a steward of
the true riches. But in the comments made about it, it seems
probable. Christ says that unless a man is faithful in the least, he
cannot be faithful in much. 'In the least' (έv έλαχιστω) is the
mammon of unrighteousness. Compared with the true riches,
the mammon of unrighteousness and its truth are the least. But
unless a man can be faithful to the mammon of unrighteousness,
he cannot expect to have the true riches and what is his own.
Only note the word faithful (πιστός), which connects with the
whole meaning of faith in the Gospels. Of this word and its
meaning we have spoken earlier. But faith does not mean mere
practical efficiency - and the parable is not about this. Faith
implies, even in quite an ordinary worldly sense, trust and
belief, beyond what is self-evident. A man in ordinary life is
called faithful usually in connection with being tempted — that
is, tempted to believe no longer in what he is doing and so
not holding to his trust, and so by a faithful steward people
understand one who continues to give his service under difficult
circumstances or even against his own interests.
The steward is called wise - and the Greek word used here,
phronimos (φρόνιµος), is very important to understand. It means
having presence of mind, being practical in discernment and
quick at intelligent action. In the Parable of the Ten Virgins
(Matthew xxv), five virgins were phronimoi (φρόνιµοι)
(translated
wise) and five were morai (µωραι,) (whence the modern word
moron is derived, meaning idiotic or imbecile). The word
phronimos appears many times in the Gospels, always with an
essential important meaning. In Matthew xxiv is an allusion
to a steward, who must always be on the watch, in case his
house is broken into and robbed: 'Who then is a faithful (πιστός)
and wise (φρόνιµος) servant, whom his Lord hath made ruler
over his household . . . ', etc.
The Greek word sophos (σοφός), also translated in the Gospels
as 'wise' has quite another meaning, as when Jesus says: Ί thank
thee, Ο Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because thou hast
hidden these things from the wise (άπο σοφών) and prudent and
hast revealed them unto babes' (Luke x.21). Wise here is sophos
(σοφός) in the Greek, and it is clearly used in a bad sense,
though it is translated in this misleading way.
Phronimos (φρόνιµος) is obviously used in the Gospels in a
special way and refers to a quality that people must have who
wish to follow Christ, as is evident in the parable of the man who
built his house on the rock and the man who built it on the
sand, where Christ says: 'Whosoever heareth these sayings of
mine and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise (φρόνιµος)
man, which built his house upon a rock and the rain descended
and the floods came and it fell n o t . . . ' (Matt. vii.24).
Here 'wise' is φρόνιµος. From all this, and from other examples
which could be quoted, it is obvious that since the steward was
called φρόνιµος, it meant something technically of great im-
portance in this language used by Christ, and points to a high
quality in the steward, that manifests itself at the right moment
in the right way. The steward acted in a consciously intelligent
way - or in a conscious way. The commentators usually say
merely that the word means prudent but it means more than this.
The steward is called 'wise' directly, and he is also called,
indirectly, in the comments, 'faithful'. These two defining
terms cannot be disconnected. The steward, in what he does,
is not only intelligent but faithful. Faithful in what? This is
shewn in the words: 'He that is faithful in the least is also
faithful in much.' The steward was faithful, in what he finally
did, 'in the least' - that is, towards the mammon of unrighteous-
ness. He had to turn away from his stewardship of the true
riches, and, without complaining, he turned to the world. Instead
of being the steward of the righteous world - that is, the King-
dom of Heaven — he became a faithful steward of the unright-
eous world, the world of mammon, the world we all live in, with
its truth, its ideas, its values, concepts, knowledge, science, and
so on. For this reason, after his action, which is commended, he
is called 'the steward of unrighteousness'. And this is quite
wrongly translated as 'unjust steward' or 'unrighteous steward'.
In the parable the steward is never called the unjust steward.
In the Greek version, after his action, he is called Oikomonos tes
adikias' (οικονόµος της αδικίας) and this means the steward of
unrighteousness; and this is followed in the next verse by the
phrase mamona tes adikias (µαµωνας της αδικίας), which means the
mammon of unrighteousness. He has become a steward of the
unrighteous world, and is now referred to as 'faithful in the
least'. And Christ says that unless a man learns to be faithful
in the least — that is, in the mammon of unrighteousness — he cannot
expect to be faithful in the true riches.
A man must learn all he can learn from life and know all he
can know of the knowledge and truth belonging to life before
he can safely go on to higher truth and higher knowledge. This
is the essential meaning of the parable and the comments, which
were directed especially towards the disciples. If a man fails in
his highest purpose he must turn to what he can know and
understand. This interpretation of the parable explains, in the
first place, why the steward was merely told that he could no
longer remain the steward of his rich lord. The accusation is
not defined, and even a malicious accusation, and something
 that was mere hearsay, is suggested in the original Greek. It is
plain from the parable that the steward had neither been taking
money from his lord's debtors nor had he saved money for
himself. The debtors owe very great amounts and the steward
had nothing.
Let us now come to the parable itself. The parable is not about
shrewd finance or sharp practice, and if it is taken from this point of
view, the more it is studied the more incomprehensible and
confusing it becomes. The first comment about it, namely,
'but the children of this world (or world-period, αιών) are wiser
in their generation than the children of light' means that this
world in its degree, or the men of this world-period at their level
of truth and knowledge and science, are far more intelligent and
practical and industrious than the 'children of light' in their
degree or at their level of knowledge and truth - that is, there
is a great deal to be learned from this world and its truth and
knowledge and, in general, its science. The steward can no
longer remain a 'child of the light'. He can no longer be a
steward of the true riches, of the truth which Christ spoke of.
He has come up against a barrier and cannot go on. Perhaps he
has been told this, as it is said in the parable, or perhaps he has
begun to know it for himself, since he makes no complaint when
he is told he has failed. But, instead of despairing, he tries to
form a plan and eventually exclaims: Ί am resolved what to
do' - which, in the Greek (έγνων τι ποιήσω], implies rather that
an idea struck him suddenly, or that he suddenly saw what was
possible, not from what he had known already, but from what
he now saw, in the situation in which he found himself. Up to
then, he had perhaps regarded the world as of no importance;
but now he turned towards it. If he had ceased to be able to
progress along the path of return which he had followed, it
still remained open to him to make the most of what lay behind
him. But he had to readjust his ideas and also his attitude; this
is shewn in the action he takes. This is the plan that he resolves
upon: he makes the world seem to be better than it is in order to
return to it and gain from it what he can, in order to live - but
still as a steward. He becomes a steward of unrighteousness, of
the world and its knowledge, while retaining all that he, as a
steward of the true riches, has learned, and, by applying what
he knows already to all that he can learn from the knowledge
existing in the world, he can keep alive in himself. For by the
term steward (οικονόµος) we must understand a man who has
reached a responsible state of mind, a certain development of
understanding. He decided to be faithful in the least, (έυ έλαχιστω)
and for this he is commended, and not only so, but it is implied
that by being faithful to the mammon of unrighteousness - that is,
to the least, and to what is not his own - a man prepares himself
to be faithful to what are the true riches and what is his own. But
in doing this, the steward does not serve mammon but 'makes
friends to himself out of mammon' (φίλους έκ του µαµωνα της
αδικίας) - that is, he makes use of mammon. To serve mammon is
one thing; and Christ says no man can serve God and mammon.
But to make use of mammon, to make use of the world and its
discoveries and its knowledge, which are its riches, is not the
same as being of mammon and serving the world and its truth,
in the sense of taking it all as the only truth and knowledge.
Christ's advice to his disciples in this connection has puzzled
many readers because of the misleading translation. In the
verse containing the passage: 'Make to yourselves friends of the
mammon of unrighteousness, that, when ye fail, they may re-
ceive you into everlasting habitations' (or 'eternal tabernacles'),
the phrase 'everlasting habitations' or 'eternal tabernacles' is
incorrectly translated. In the previous verse (8) the phrase 'the
children of this world' occurs; and here the word for 'world' is
aion (αίωυ) in the Greek, which has different meanings and is
rendered in many different ways in the Gospels. Here it means
'world-period' or 'time-period' or 'age'. The same word, as an
adjective, αιώνιος, appears in the next verse, but translated as
eternal - that is, eternal tabernacles or habitations - implying at
once some higher significance, which is impossible in view of
the context. The phrase, literally, 'the children of this aeon',
refers on directly to 'their aeonian habitations' in the next verse,
and the rendering should be 'the children of this time-period'
and 'the habitations of this time-period', and by habitations
(literally tents) (σκηναί) is meant what this world-period, or
human age, regards as established or settled, what it thinks is
truth, and so esteems and believes in, and so inhabits. The
general sense of the verse therefore is not contradictory as would
 appear from the customary translation, but means that the
steward makes use of his time-period and is able to make a
place for himself in it and use its truth and all that belongs to it.
In the parable, the debtors (χρεωφειλετης) represent the world.
Man, in his ordinary state, not having 'come to himself', and
not aware that his real meaning is not found only in external
life and its aims, is regarded in the Gospels as a debtor. Through-
out the Parable of the Unjust Steward and the commentary on
it runs the idea of the two orders of truth, one that refers to a
man's inner evolution and development, so that he eventually
comes into his own, and the other which refers to external life
and everything that is not a man's own. Seen from below there
is a gulf between them - and the gulf is mentioned in the
Parable of Lazarus, which follows this Parable (Luke xvi. 19-31).
It is impossible to pass from worldly truth and science to the
truth of which Christ spoke, because what is lower in scale
cannot comprehend what is above it. But higher truth can
comprehend lower truth and use it - so that the steward's action
is understandable. Everyone who remains in ignorance of the
idea of higher truth is regarded in the Gospels as a debtor, and al-
though higher truth has always been sown into the world and
people have read it, they do not understand it — and for this
reason, in the following Parable of Lazarus, Christ says that
even if a man were to rise from the dead, people would not
repent, that is, undergo any transformation of mind (Luke
xvi.31). 'Neither will they be persuaded, though one rise from
the dead.' Men are regarded as debtors in relation to higher
truth - that is, to a higher possibility in them. If a man remains
inferior to himself, he owes to himself, and so is a debtor to
himself. If, for example, a man knows better but acts worse, he
owes himself - that is, he is in debt to his better nature and his
better understanding. This makes everyone unhappy, because
most people feel this about themselves, only they do not really
know where they owe, or about what they are in debt to them-
selves. But from the standpoint of the Gospels, where it is taught
that a man must undergo an inner evolution beginning with
metanoia and ending in re-birth and the Kingdom of Heaven,
everyone without exception is regarded as a debtor. There are
many parables about owing, one of which compares man with
a debtor who owes millions. In the Lord's Prayer, the second
request is to forgive one's debts — that is, in the literal Greek
(άφιηµί), to have all that one owes cancelled, completely written
off, which is the real meaning of forgiveness. The steward
cannot cancel the debts of his lord's debtors for that would
mean to pretend that the world is righteous and owes nothing
and is the same as the Kingdom of Heaven. But he writes them
down for himself - in his own mind. He remits part of what
they owe - that is, he makes it appear that they, the debtors,
namely, life, owe less than they do. In this way he bridges the
gulf between the true riches of knowledge and the world. He
is not shaken by his apparent dismissal nor is his attitude to
the true riches changed. There is still an opportunity for him
and he uses it. He remains a faithful steward, but now he turns
his knowledge towards the world — the unrighteous world — and
so becomes a steward of unrighteousness. And to do this he
deliberately sees life as owing less than it does — that is, as better
than it is - and people as better than they are, and he uses the
knowledge existing in the world in the light of his own know-
ledge gained as a steward of the righteous world or the true
riches. So he makes use of the 'mammon of unrighteousness'
and for this he is commended by Christ. But the Pharisees are
made to misunderstand completely Christ's comments, and
believe he is speaking simply of worldly wealth and think that
all that has been said refers to literal riches - namely, money.
'And the Pharisees who were lovers of money heard all these
things and they scoffed at him' (Luke xvi.14 R . V .).

Let us suppose a man to have entered perhaps a school of

some kind, or a monastery, and to have put himself under some
discipline with the object of reaching higher truth. Or let us
take the disciples who had put themselves under Christ as their
teacher and who, as they are described in the Gospels, under-
stand very little of what they are taught. What is a man to do
under such circumstances, if he is told that he can no longer
remain? Let us suppose that he already knows something,
understands a little, and perhaps has reached a position such as
that of the steward in the parable. He is suddenly accused, or
some charge is trumped up against him maliciously and without
its accuracy being established. This man is told he can no
longer be steward - as the parable relates. Where can he turn?
Up to that moment he has probably thought that life and its
truths are useless and this may have been the reason for his
seeking another order of truth. He may have been hurt by life
and incapable of doing anything in it, or quite possibly he has
had little experience of life. Let us imagine that his teacher, or
whoever he is following, sees quite clearly that he can get no
further as he is, and must go back to life and learn from it, and,
in order to test him, he tells him he must go. And it is this word
test that we may very well introduce into the parable from its
very opening in order to explain the work of the rich lord and
the vagueness of the charge. Is the man going to act wrongly,
become weak, complain or feel that he is badly treated and
seek to justify himself? Note the reference in verse fifteen to
the Pharisees justifying themselves. 'Ye are they which justify
yourselves before men: but God knoweth your hearts: for that
which is highly esteemed among men is abomination in the
sight of God.' Or is he going to act as a man who still retains the
discipline and understanding of all he has learned - that is, to
act as a man who is φρόνιµος ? The steward in the parable acts
in this way. That is, he does the right things from the standpoint
of Christ, and from the standpoint of all that he has been taught
and is following. Seen in this light, the parable transforms itself
into a wonderful parable of mercy and intelligence, a parable
concerning a man who, meeting with what everyone must meet
with under the circumstances, acts in the right way, and,
without attempting to justify himself, takes thought and at once
does what he clearly sees is the only thing left to him to do, if
he acts rightly.

NOTE ON THE PARABLE OF THE UNJUST STEWARD

It will be easier to understand this parable if we take Christ
as the rich Lord - that is, lord of the true riches and so of the
righteous world - and the steward as one of his disciples - that
is, one who is being taught, as in a school. The debtors who owe
so much, who, in fact, owe wholly and completely, for the
number one hundred intrinsically has this sense, are those
belonging to the outer world or the unrighteous Mammon.
The steward, for some reason, is told he can no longer be a
steward of the true riches. He must go back, therefore, to the
unrighteous world. The theme of the parable is how he goes
back. He cannot serve God and serve Mammon, for that is
expressly mentioned in the commentary. He cannot, that is to
say, go back into the unrighteous world and immerse himself
in its interests and ambitions, for then he will no longer serve
God. But he must leave the school where he has been a learner
in the capacity of a steward. He decides on a plan whereby he
remains a steward, but now of the unrighteous world, and after
carrying out this plan he is then called in the parable the
steward of unrighteousness - that is, steward of the unrighteous
world of Mammon - but not 'unjust steward', as it is translated.
This plan enables him to make use of the unrighteous world,
and he is called phronimos - that is, clever, intelligent, shrewd -
by Christ. He makes friends out of the unrighteous Mammon
and is received into its worldly (not eternal) household. What
is this plan? The plan he resolves upon is a right plan and
Christ remarks that unless a man is faithful in the least, he
cannot be faithful in what is greater and so cannot receive the
true riches. The plan that the steward carried out towards the
least - that is, the unrighteous Mammon, and so the debtors -
is therefore connected, by Christ's comments on the parable,
with the idea of being faithful. And the plan is that the steward
resolves to forgive some of the debts owed by the 'sons of the
world' by telling them and giving them his authority to write
down their debts by so much. And the extraordinarily deep
meaning here contains the sense also that he takes on himself
something of what they owe. He makes himself responsible for
part of their shortcomings and in this way makes everything
more possible for them. This is being faithful in the least, for the
idea of faith in the Gospels is often connected with the power of
making all that belongs to the world less than it is. In the
Gospels by the power of faith is always meant a transforming
power. The steward is faithful in the least, therefore, because
he transforms the situation of some of the debtors. The steward,
with the knowledge he has gained of the true riches, makes
possible a starting point for his lord's debtors. Through the
power of his faith, he ignores part of what he sees, and even
what some of the debtors themselves know, and in this way
continues to be a steward, but now towards the unrighteous
world and its debtors. And in the idea of 'making friends out
of the Mammon of unrighteousness' is also contained the
meaning that, still holding to the knowledge he has so far
gained as steward of the true riches, and not for a moment
becoming negative towards it owing to what has happened to
him, he turns to the knowledge of the world and of 'the sons
of the age' who are more phronimos, more clever in their own
way, than the 'sons of the light'. For if a man has already
obtained some knowledge and understanding of the 'true riches'
and does not, under exceptional trials, even deny them, he will
find that everything he reads and studies belonging to the
ordinary world assists him and confirms him in his viewpoint,
because he can see, from what he has learned, what is useful
and what is useless, what is true and what is false, having
already gained a standpoint that makes this possible.
The parable is about a man at a certain stage of development
- that is, about a man who has gone a certain distance along
the path of return so clearly shewn in the parable of the prodigal
son — who reaches a point where he is told he must go back to
life, and the issue of the parable under discussion is how he
goes back to life, and the parable shows how such a man in
such difficult circumstances goes back in the right way.
 A New Heaven
and A New Earth
 JOHN THE BAPTIST

The strange remark of Christ about the Kingdom of Heaven

being taken by violence and how the violent seize it by
force must be taken in connection with John the Baptist
and what Christ says about him. It will be best therefore to
quote in full the incident as recorded in Matthew:
'Now when John heard in the prison the works of the Christ,
he sent by his disciples, and said unto him, Art thou he that
cometh, or look we for another? And Jesus answered and said
unto them, Go your way and tell John the things which ye do
hear and see: the blind receive their sight, and the lame walk,
the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, and the dead are
raised up and the poor have good tidings preached to them.
And blessed is he whosoever shall find none occasion of stum-
bling in me. And as these went their way, Jesus began to say
unto the multitudes concerning John, What went ye out into
the wilderness to behold? a reed shaken by the wind? But what
went ye out for to see? a man clothed in soft raiment? Behold,
they that wear soft raiment are in kings' houses. But wherefore
went ye out? to see a prophet? Yea, I say unto you, and much
more than a prophet. This is he, of whom it is written, Behold,
I send my messenger before thy face, who shall prepare thy way
before thee. Verily I say unto you, Among them that are born
of women there hath not arisen a greater than John the Baptist:
yet he that is but little in the kingdom of heaven is greater than
he. And from the days of John the Baptist until now, the kingdom of
heaven suffereth violence, and men of violence take it by force. For all
the prophets and the law prophesied until John. And if ye are
willing to receive it, this is Elijah, which is to come.' (Matthew
xi.2-14 R.V.)
First of all, note that Christ said: 'From the time of John the
Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and
men of violence take it by force.' The phrase 'until now' can
only mean: 'Until I, Christ, came.' It is clear that the path
followed by John the Baptist was not the same as the teaching
of Christ and this is implied all through the passage if we begin
to grasp what was meant by such phrases as 'a reed shaken',
'kings' houses', 'soft raiment', and so on. We know that the
Baptist was clad not in soft raiment but in skins. 'John himself
had his raiment of camel's hair, and a leathern girdle about his
loins' (Matthew iii.4). And it is clear that Christ refers to John
the Baptist in a special way in saying that although he is the
greatest of those born of women, the least in the Kingdom of
Heaven is greater than he. We can only understand this as
meaning that the Baptist was on one level of understanding
but not on the level of the understanding of the least in the
Kingdom of Heaven, and, therefore, that John's teaching was
on a different level from the level of Christ's teaching. John is
surprised that Christ's disciples do not fast, that they drink
wine, and so on, while the Baptist's disciples fast and abstain.
The disciples of John were sent to Christ to ask: 'Why do we
and the Pharisees fast oft, but thy disciples fast not?' So John
doubts Christ. 'Art thou indeed the Christ?' (Matthew xi.3).
The behaviour of Christ obviously worried the Baptist. He could
not understand Christ. He saw the attainment of the higher
level of Being, called the Kingdom of Heaven, as lying through
violence to oneself, through abstinence, the keeping of rituals
and fasts, the literal keeping of the 'Word' at all moments and
under every circumstance. There was, no doubt, little mercy in
his harsh outlook and harsh understanding of truth. His under-
standing perhaps rested on the literal meaning of the doctrines
he followed. The Sabbath Day was, perhaps, to him an exact
literal observation of the Commandment. Nothing must be
done. No one must even be healed on the Sabbath. If he ever
heard of Christ's remark, when accused by the literal-minded
Pharisees of breaking the Sabbath, he would not have under-
stood it. The Pharisees had blamed Christ's disciples for pluck-
ing and eating the ears of corn as they walked through the
cornfields, saying: 'Behold, why do they on the sabbath day
that which is not lawful?' They blamed Christ for healing on
the Sabbath. Christ said to them: 'The Sabbath was made for
man, and not man for the sabbath' - a thing difficult to the
understanding of many today (Mark ii.27).
Up to the time of the appearance of John the Baptist the
Kingdom of Heaven had been prophesied as something that
would come in the future. 'For all the prophets and the law
prophesied until John' (Matthew xi.13). But the Baptist, as
herald of Christ, taught that the Kingdom was now here, now
present, immediate. It was a time of crisis. He cried: 'Repent,
for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand,' meaning, in the person
of Christ on Earth. Why, then, did he not follow Christ, when
Christ came to be baptised by him? At one moment he seems
to recognise Christ, at another moment he seems to doubt. It
has always been extraordinary to me that the Baptist on meeting
Christ did not unmistakably know him and follow him -
straightway, as Mark would have put it. Sometimes I have
thought that Christ was cold to John - that even he did not
like him. And yet, when the Baptist was beheaded for inter-
fering with the marriage affairs of Herod, 'When Jesus heard
it, he withdrew from thence in a boat, to a desert place apart'
(Matthew xiv.13). No doubt that he gave John's spirit force
then, for later, when Christ was transfigured on the mountain,
did not Moses appear on one side of him and Elijah on the
other? 'Behold, there appeared unto them (the disciples) Moses
and Elijah talking with him' (Matthew xvii.3). And had not
Christ already told his disciples concerning John: 'If ye will re-
ceive it, this is Elijah, which is to come' (Matthew xi. 14). It is
almost as if Christ did not want to work on him in life but did
his work on him after his physical death, when he could reach
him better. Certainly, at the Transfiguration, John was no lon-
ger wearing skins and leather but was clad in light. It is said in
one gospel, 'There talked with him two men, which were Moses
and Elijah, who appeared in glory' (Luke ix.30, 31). We know
that by withdrawal and long meditation we can give force to
another person, for this is one form of intelligent sacrifice. How
much more, then, could Christ do this, to both the physically liv-
ing and dead. Did he not give force to Peter living, where Luke
records that Christ said to Peter: 'Simon, Simon, behold, Satan
asked to have you, that he might sift you as wheat: but I made
supplication for thee, that thy faith fail not: and do thou, when
once thou hast turned, stablish thy brethren' (Luke xxii.31,32).
Seen thus, there is John the Baptist, the greatest of men born
of woman, but not in the Kingdom of Heaven; and John the
Baptist transfigured by Christ and so in the Kingdom, no more
a man born of woman, but a man re-born and so beyond
violence. Did not Christ say to his Mother: 'Woman, what have
I to do with thee?' when he had reached that level of inner
development, the outer sign of which was his power to transform
water into wine? To take the word of the law literally is to do
violence to others and to oneself. The literal sense, say, of a
parable, does not convey its inner levels of meaning. Literal
truth is without mercy, grace or charity, and can be most crude
and most violent in its results, as we see in religious persecutions.
The harsh clothing of the Baptist is contrasted with the soft
raiment of those who live in kings' palaces. A man is clothed
psychologically in the things he follows. The mind is clothed
in the truths it holds to. To change one's mind (metanoia) is to
clothe it anew - with new thoughts and new truths. John the
Baptist taught this metanoia. It is translated as 'repent', but it
means 'change your mind'. Yet, taking his clothing as re-
presenting his teaching, he is shewn in harsh vesture, living in
the wilderness. He cried: 'Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven
is at hand.' Here we can understand that this metanoia, this
change of mind, had reference to the fact that the Kingdom of
Heaven was an actuality and that men had to begin to think of
their meaning on Earth in view of this supreme selective
Kingdom far more important than any kingdom on Earth.
John did not know the teaching of Christ. But he was the first
to say that the Kingdom of Heaven is not in the future, but
now. There are, then, three teachings here about the Kingdom.
The prophets spoke of things that were to come: the Kingdom
was to come, in the future. The Baptist said the Kingdom is at
hand — and so was greater than the prophets — 'Yea,' said
Christ of him, 'and much more than a prophet'. And Christ
later said: 'The Kingdom of Heaven is within you' - that is
not in the future or in some locality - a thing which perhaps the
Baptist had not grasped. For external, literal truth does not
grasp internal, psychological, spiritual truth. Yes, Heaven is
not a place above and Hell not below in space. Heaven and
Hell are within a man, so we notice that the conception of the
Kingdom lay first in the future in time, then as being present
in time and space, and finally as being in a man himself apart
from external time and space.
In thinking of the two most enigmatical figures - to me - in
the Gospels, John the Baptist and Judas Iscariot, I have often
wondered what the Baptist would have thought of the many
parables Christ used to illustrate what the Kingdom of Heaven
is - usually beginning with the words: 'The Kingdom of Heaven
is likened unto . . . ' No doubt with his harsh literal conceptions
of truth the Baptist thought of the Kingdom as a place that one
had to take by force - by some tremendous effort over the flesh,
by every sort of self-denial. But, if so, Christ says that this is not
the way. The harshness is no good. It is not the way into the
Kingdom. Christ asked whether in going to see the Baptist in
the wilderness (where his food was locusts and wild honey) the
people expected to see something weak - a reed shaken by the
wind? If so, they were wrong. The Baptist was strong - as a
man born of woman, which is the first birth. But all esoteric
religion teaches a second birth as did Christ when he said: 'Ye
must be born again — from above.' Are we to think that John
realised this? Are we to imagine from what Christ says of him
that he had grasped what can take a man into the Kingdom?
It seems to me that the answer is no. He thought that, as he was,
a natural man, a man born of woman, he could take the
Kingdom of Heaven by violence to his appetites. And it seems
that for a brief period this was possible: 'From the time of John
the Baptist until now the Kingdom suffereth violence.' But
certainly not after. In bringing in this contrast to the Baptist's
harsh method, Christ speaks of those clad in soft raiment. They,
he implies, are in the Kingdom. They were capable of under-
standing far beyond the rigid, literal word and where the
Baptist saw only one thing, they saw a thousand things. They
were flexible, not rigid. Their understanding was not keeping
literally a law. They had mercy, charity, and, above all,
relative thinking. They were, in brief, on another level of under-
standing, wider, more intelligent and gracious, where narrow,
rigid truth no longer was put before the lovely wideness of
goodness, but where the marriage of truth and good had taken
place within them, so that literal truth was never allowed to
go before goodness and so where no one could do non-goodness
in the name of truth, and no one could hate or kill his neighbour
in the name of literal truth. For if you put narrow, rigid truth
before goodwill and goodness you are clad, as the Baptist, in
harsh skins and leather and the food of your goodness is locusts
and wild honey and your dwelling place is the wilderness
barren of all life. So we find in the Gospel of John, which has
nothing to do with John the Baptist, that Jesus is described by
the beloved disciple in these terms: 'And we beheld him full
of grace and truth.' Yes, grace first, and truth from grace after.

One therefore asks: 'Is the Kingdom of Heaven, if it is within

us, some conscious state of understanding that is sometimes
open and sometimes shut?' Then one might easily say: 'If this
is so can people press into it only at different times in the world's
history?' I would add: 'Is this then the good news ('Еυαγγελιου)
— namely, that now a man, a woman, may enter because in the
flux of things the doors happen to be open?' Do you remember
the man who got into the Kingdom of Heaven wrongly? I
quote from the Parable of the Marriage-Feast:
'When the king came in to behold the guests, he saw there a
man which had not on a wedding-garment: and he saith unto
him, Friend, how earnest thou in hither not having a wedding-
garment. And he was speechless. Then the king said to the
servants, Bind him hand and foot, and cast him into the outer
darkness; there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth. For
many are called, but few chosen.' (Matthew xxii. 11-14)
One can see that this man had not at least the soft raiment
that Christ spoke of. Sheer unmerciful truth is not a wedding
garment - a relaxing and releasing thought to many brought
up under an interpretation of Christ's teaching based solely on
literal truth with no inner mercy and no goodwill, and no trace
of psychological understanding. Is it not extraordinary how
the literal word for word meaning is still upheld without the
slightest idea that this is not enough and is not real understanding,
and that in such an interpretation of Christ, such a man,
causing endless perplexity and pain to others, has no wedding-
garment and is destined to be turned out of the Kingdom. Is
it too much to say that such a man, so formidable in the literal
interpretation of truth, who theorises from pulpits, a man who
perhaps condemns everyone, who regards Man as made for the
Sabbath and refuses to believe that the Sabbath was made for
Man, is one who, having no grace or inner charity or human
kindness, and so no wedding-garment, is nothing but a man of
self-will and violence and not a man at all, in the sense of Christ?
It is just as if people might imagine that by going to Church
regularly all their lives they are already in the Kingdom of God.
Is it not clear that this cannot be the case and that metanoia and
re-birth is the essential and real meaning of all that Christ taught
and that no one is in a real sense a Christian - and, worse still,
that so many think they are so? Only Christ himself was a
Christian. Why? Because he united perfectly in himself the
human mother-side with the Divine side and rendered the
connection between Heaven and Earth open again at a stage
in human history when all connection was being lost and
mankind was being cut off from all higher values and so higher
direction.
 THE TEACHING OF CHRIST

THE problem of esoteric teaching is to connect a higher level of

understanding with a lower level. The supreme example is
Jesus Christ, who was born of a human mother and yet was the
Son of God. We can understand nothing about the drama of
Jesus Christ unless we understand that he was in a way two
things - the son of man and the son of God. This means that
he was in contact with a lower level and yet in some way in
contact with a higher level. Speaking in a more general way
the problem of esoteric teaching, which is sown into the earth
at definite intervals, is to maintain some kind of contact with a
higher level of being. When contact between the upper and
lower notes is lost, all that is below perishes, goes mad, and
ends in violence. Christ came as a mediator between the higher
and lower level. His task was, as simply a human being exposed
to every temptation, to overcome everything belonging to the
lower level, that is, the human level, and to unite the human level
with the divine level. God came down to earth as a human
being but as such was unable to use the divine. We can under-
stand in our small way that otherwise his task would have been
easy and we often wonder why his task was not easy, being of
divine origin — that is, that he had in him the divine and as such
was the Son of God. Unless we understand this we cannot
realise why he was tempted up to the last moment. We argue
in some such way as this: if Christ were the Son of God, why
was he tempted? Why did he suffer such agonies? Why was
everything so difficult for him? Why could he not simply show
people his powers? Why did he not turn stones into bread? But
the whole question is infinitely more strange and subtle. At the
stage of history when Christ appeared, there was the greatest
danger that the human race might be cut off from all com-
munication with a higher level of understanding. The whole
world was burning up into violence and materiality. All higher
values were disappearing or had disappeared. There was no
kind of understanding that man is a spiritual being and not
merely a creature of the flesh. And in this situation someone
had to establish the connection between the level of earth and
the level of Heaven. But you can see that if a man were endowed
with powers of a higher level, or the level of Heaven as it is
called in the Gospels, and having these powers, or rather, being
able to use these powers on earth, he would not make an ex-
ample of a human being raising himself up through inner
battles, inner doubts and human temptations. If you read the
Gospels closely, you will see that Christ had not only many
temptations but many doubts and even on the cross, he said:
'My God, why hast thou forsaken me?' Now if we realise that
the task of Christ was to connect the human with the divine,
the Son of Man with the Son of God and for this reason he had
to suffer everything that a human being must suffer in climbing
the ladder of inner development, we can understand the central
meaning of the Gospels much better. We can also understand
why he had to overcome his mother, as is exemplified in many
parables and miracles, because his mother represents his human
side. By overcoming, by fulfilling his task, Christ once more
established connection between the higher and the lower level,
between the spiritual and the natural and for that reason he
had to undergo all his sufferings and finally undergo the death
of a criminal without any help being given to him. But by
bridging this gap between the human and the divine, he re-
established the connection, and set things in order once more
and made it possible for the human race to receive influx from
a higher level.
Christ was therefore two things and his task was to connect
these two things and for this reason everything that we read
about Christ is paradoxical and requires a form of understand-
ing that is not logical in the ordinary sense. He descended and
eventually ascended but his ascent was due to his own efforts;
starting from his birth on this earth from his mother he had to
overcome this birth and be re-born and for this reason the teach-
ing of the Gospels is full of this idea of re-birth. How often Christ
says 'Ye must be re-born' and how difficult it is to understand
what this means. But if we catch a glimpse of what we might
call the idea of Christ and the whole drama of his death and
resurrection, we can then understand better why, in the extra-
ordinary parable or incident called the marriage at Cana, when
he turns water into wine, he says, to his Mother, 'Woman,
what have I to do with thee?' We can realise that the signifi-
cance of this incident in the second chapter of John refers to a
stage that Jesus had reached in himself and that it signifies that
he had overcome the human side of himself and had at least
reached some definite step in this inner evolution. He was now
in possession of another level of understanding in the long path
of his return to the divine level. He has, for the time being,
nothing to do with that side of him represented by the mother.
And yet he says to his mother, who will finally crucify him,
'Woman, what have I to do with thee? Mine hour is not yet
come.' We can understand dimly this means that the human
side was not yet overcome and that the final overcoming of it
meant death on the cross. His body came from his mother and
it too had to be triumphed over, and indeed transformed, so that
even after its death it could be used as a living physical body
no longer having its sustenance from life but from forces outside
life. This typified the complete union of the human with the
divine, of the lower with the higher.
But when Jesus reached the stage of being able to turn water
into wine, this complete transmutation had not taken place. It
was preceded by a psychological transformation represented
by the power of turning water into wine, which in the words
of John, was his first sign. The miracle followed from the sign.
It is not called a miracle but a sign, that is, a sign that Jesus
had reached a certain stage of inner power, which he could
communicate to representative objects such as water. Water,
in the ancient representative language of parables, is truth.
The turning of water into wine signifies the turning of truth
into something that is not merely truth but a stage beyond truth;
when you see the truth of Truth and its values, truth is no longer
simply truth but becomes full of meaning. What was formerly
truth by faith begins to multiply itself into endless meaning,
so that it is no longer merely truth but a continual source of
meaning that can intoxicate the soul as wine. A union has taken
place between truth and something else. We can call it the
meaning of truth or the good that lies in truth and reaches us
through the medium of truth as its recipient. So Jesus calls
upon the servants, who, if you notice, are commanded by the
mother to obey him and to fill the water pots full of water to
 the brim, and transforms the water into wine. This means that
all the truth that Jesus has acquired can be transformed into its
real meaning by him.
In our own experience we sometimes suddenly see the con-
nection between a number of things that have previously been
separate and unconnected and then we understand differently,
just as when the separate letters of the alphabet which we are
learning as children, magically turn into words or even whole
sentences and we reach an entirely different level of under-
standing.
Now glance at the end of the parable after Jesus has turned
water into wine. This wine is taken to the ruler of the feast, who
makes a curious remark. He says that ordinarily, that means
in life, for the ruler of the feast represents life and its methods,
the good wine comes first. 'Every man setteth on first the good
wine; and when men have drunk freely, then that which is
worse: thou hast kept the good wine until now. This beginning
of his signs did Jesus in Cana of Galilee and manifested his
glory; and his disciples believed on him.' Notice the word good
is used. In some esoteric teaching the words truth and good are
used and they speak of a marriage that is possible between
truth and good, such that the man sees the good of a truth he
has been taught and so begins to be governed by good and not
merely by truth. Notice that the good comes last, in as it were
an inverse order to life, as the ruler of the feast indicates. In
life we tend to take the good first and the worst afterwards. In
this connection it might be said that to climb the ladder of
self development we must pay beforehand.

(To the reader: A fuller account of this 'sign' from a rather

different point of view, can be found in The New Man.)
 ESOTERIC SCHOOLS

LET us consider some passages where the term wine is used, both
in the Old and New Testaments, in a sense that evidently
cannot be literal. When, in Genesis XLIX. 11, it is said, 'He
washed his garments in wine and his vesture in the blood of
grapes. His eyes shall be red with wine and his teeth white with
milk', it is fairly apparent that wine has a special meaning
connected with what a man 'wears' and how he 'sees'. To
imagine that this passage has a literal meaning is to make
nonsense of it. Psychologically, what a man dresses in refers not
to the literal clothing of the body, but to the clothing of the
mind, to the mental beliefs and attitudes. Everyone is dressed
up psychologically in opinions and viewpoints, which form his
mental garments; and his mental eyes view things through
them. There is a description of both 'garments' and 'eyes' being
washed in some state of insight called 'wine'. Psychologically, a
man is dressed in what he believes is true: and mentally he sees
by the same means. If wine represents a particular stage in the
development of the understanding of Truth, the phrase the
eyes being 'red with wine' refers to the state of vision belonging
to it. Some very high state is indicated, a state of the develop-
ment of the understanding beyond the level of water.
In the Apocalypse, in the vision of the four horses, it is said
of the black horse: 'And I saw, and behold, a black horse; and
he that sat thereon had a balance in his hand. And I heard a
voice saying, A measure of wheat for a penny and three measures
of barley for a penny; and the oil and the wine hurt thou not.'
(Revelation vi.5,6) It cannot be assumed that the wine here
refers to literal wine, nor indeed the oil. At this earthly level of
thought indicated by the black horse, where a strict balance
rules and everything is measured, so that a man must pay
strictly for what he gets - even here there is oil and wine - that
is, something higher - and this must not be hurt. In the Parable
of the Good Samaritan wine again appears, in a significance
that can be taken either literally or psychologically.
In esoteric teaching, the term vineyard is often used in con-
nection with schools of teaching that seek inner evolution. The
attempts made to raise man internally, the schools formed for
this purpose, are compared with vineyards from which grapes
and wine, or a vintage, are expected. 'For the Kingdom of
Heaven is like unto a man that is a householder which went out
early in the morning to hire labourers into his vineyard . . . '
(Matthew xx.1). Or, to take another illustration which shews
how easily all teachings about Man's inner possibilities and
evolution can be distorted or fail:
'And he began to speak unto them in parables. A man
planted a vineyard, and set a hedge about it, and digged a
pit for the wine press, and built a tower, and let it out to
husbandmen, and went into another country. And at the
season, he sent to the husbandmen a servant, that he might
receive from the husbandmen the fruits of the vineyard. And they
took him, and beat him, and sent him away empty. And again
he sent unto them another servant; and him they wounded in
the head, and handled shamefully. And he sent another; and
him they killed; and many others; beating some, and killing
some. He had yet one, a beloved son; he sent him last unto
them, saying, They will reverence my son. But those husband-
men said among themselves, This is the heir; come, let us kill
him, and the inheritance shall be ours. And they took him, and
killed him, and cast him forth out of the vineyard. What
therefore will the lord of the vineyard do ? He will come and
destroy the husbandmen, and will give the vineyard unto
others.' (Mark xii.1-9)
There have always been attempts in known history to lift
Man from the stage of barbarism by the dissemination of
definite ideas about the deeper meaning of one's life on earth.
The inner side of these endeavours is not a matter of ordinary
history. All that we can read about is usually a history of the
misuse and misinterpretation of the ideas, when they pass into
life, so that they become sources of political intrigue, greed,
violence, horrible persecutions and wars. Yet in our period it is
quite clear that if the teachings of Christ, as given in the Sermon
on the Mount alone, were followed by humanity, all wars,
injustices and social evils, would at once cease and a new world
would begin. But for this to take place everyone would have to
awaken to what he or she is really like internally.
 The object of a vineyard is to produce fruit and wine. A
definite teaching about the means to an inner stage of develop-
ment is planted, as a vineyard. The prophet Jeremiah complains
about the Children of Israel and asks them why they want to go
back to Egypt - that is, their previous state: 'And now what
hast thou to do in the way of Egypt, to drink the waters of
Shihor?' God, he says, broke their yoke of old time. Ί have
broken thy yoke and burst thy bands; and thou saidst, I will not
serve; for upon every high hill and under every green tree thou
didst bow thyself playing the harlot. Yet I had planted thee a
noble vine, wholly a right seed: how then art thou turned into
the degenerate plant of a strange vine unto me?' (Jeremiah
ii.18-21). The meaning is psychological: it is obviously not
literal. They are accused of returning to old beliefs, to the state
called 'Egypt' and mixing this teaching or seed with other
teachings, which is called 'playing the harlot'.
When a teaching is given it must be kept pure until it has
effected its purpose. It lasts only for a time. In every part of
Time, different teachings appear and last for longer or shorter
periods. Their object is to lift man. They are similar in internal
form, in so far as they aim at Man's individual evolution through
a development of the understanding and quality of his being.
Each vineyard is planted to produce its particular wine. There
can be no mixing of seed, or ideas. This condition is expressed
in some words of Moses: 'Thou shalt not sow thy vine with two
kinds of seed . . . thou shalt not plow with an ox and an ass.
Thou shalt not wear a mixed stuff, wool and linen, together'
(Deuteronomy xxii.9). It is evident that these words have
meaning apart from their literal sense. But they can of course
be taken as observances to be carried out literally, and so without
meaning. When a 'vineyard' begins to die - that is, when the
significance of the teaching originally planted in it is perverted
or lost - it is destroyed. The Old Testament is full of destruction,
in this sense. Teaching constantly went wrong because people
perverted it. The prophet Jeremiah laments the destruction of
a school called Moab: 'With more than the weeping of Jazer
will I weep for thee, Ο vine of Sibmah; thy branches passed
over the sea, they reached even to the sea of Jazer: upon thy
summer fruits and upon thy vintage the spoiler is fallen. And
gladness and joy is taken away, from the fruitful field and from
the land of Moab; and I have caused wine to cease from the
winepresses: none shall tread with shouting; the shouting shall
be no shouting.' (Jeremiah xlviii.32-33) This refers to a loss of
teaching. The same prophet says in another place: 'Many
shepherds have destroyed my vineyard' (xii.10). That is, many
teachers have destroyed the original teaching. Amos describes
the destruction of a teaching in this way: 'The multitude of
your gardens and your vineyards and your fig trees and your
olive trees hath the palmer worm devoured' (Amos iv.9). The
teaching has been eaten up by wrong ideas. Sometimes the
grapes are found to be sour, as in Moses' description of the
vineyard of those who perverted the Truth: 'For their vine is
of the vine of Sodom, and of the fields of Gomorrah; their grapes
are grapes of gall, their clusters are bitter; their wine is the
poison of dragons, and the cruel venom of the asps, (Deutero-
nomy xxxii.32, 33). This happens especially when a teaching or
'vineyard' has become a means of worldly power and of
political intrigue, as in the following prophecy about the school
called Jerusalem: 'There shall be no grapes on the vine, no
figs on the fig tree and the leaf shall fade' (Jeremiah viii.13).
Many other examples could be given. What can be under-
stood is that there has always been teaching of a certain order
sown in mankind and that always there has been a failure of
such teaching in process of time. But this does not mean that the
teaching has not, at its height, produced results. It fails in time:
or, to put it differently, it endures only a certain limited time.
It is valuable to understand this, because we are inclined to
think that a thing should last continuously if it is real and true.
But just as there are fashions of every kind, as in science, or
society, or politics, so is the case with esoteric teaching. Yet it
is not really the same because it reappears in another form,
another guise, and yet in essence is always about the same
object - the evolution of Man. People must become more
conscious first of themselves and then of others. They must
forego violence as an easy solution to things. They must
genuinely forgive each other, which is only possible by being
conscious of themselves and what they are like and what they
do. They must behave to others as they would wish others to
behave to them - a very difficult thing. They must understand
that their lives have another meaning and that the nature of
one's existence is not understandable in terms of things that
happen on the Earth. They must see the beams in their own eyes
before they make an unpleasant uproar about the mote in
another's eye. They must cease being good for show, they must
stop hatred, stop pretending, stop lying, and so on. All these
ideas belong to the Way of Individual Evolution which esoteric
teaching is always about. It is impossible to understand the
history of mankind without taking into consideration the in-
fluences of esoteric teaching, from which we have gained all art
and culture. Man without teaching remains barbarian. But as
regards the limited extension in time of any particular example
of teaching of this quality, we can cite the words of Christ where
he warns his pupils that Anti-Christ is bound to come: 'Take
heed that no man lead you astray. For many shall come in my
name, saying, I am the Christ; and shall lead many astray. And
ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars: see that ye be not
troubled: for these things must needs come to pass; but the
end is not yet.' (Matthew xxiv.4-6)
 THE CONSUMMATION OF THE AGE

IN the esoteric teaching in the Gospels many references to the

second coming of the 'Son of Man' are found. To understand
what they mean, it is necessary to realise one of the funda-
mental ideas of esoteric psychology in reference to the human
race on earth. A particular form of esoteric teaching given at a
certain moment in time — that is, historically speaking - lasts
only for a limited period. Its force and its meaning gradually
begin to die. In the case of the teaching of Christ, which gave
meaning and force to many developments in human life we
notice that Christ did not say that this teaching would last for
ever. He gave a very clear indication that it could only last for
a certain time. In this connection he speaks of what will happen,
what signs will occur, when the force, the impulse that was
given by his strength begins to wane in the world. He warns his
disciples that a time will come when truth is exhausted, and
then speaks about the sign of the second coming of the 'Son of
Man'. His disciples ask him what shall be the sign of the second
coming of the 'Son of Man'. 'Disciples came unto Jesus, saying,
Tell us when those things shall be and what is the sign of Thy
coming and of the consummation of the age (αίων); and Jesus
answering said to them, See that no one lead you astray; for
many shall come in My name, saying I am the Christ, and shall
lead many astray; but ye shall hear of wars and rumours of
wars; see that ye be not disturbed; for all these things must
needs be, but the end is not yet. For nation shall be stirred up
against nation, and Kingdom against Kingdom; and there
shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes. But all these
things are the beginning of sorrows.' (Matthew xxvi.3-9)
The phrase 'consummation of the age' is sometimes trans-
lated as 'end of the world'. For this reason many susceptible
people think that a time will come when the visible world will
be destroyed. However, in the Greek, ή συντελεια του αίωνος, the
meaning is quite different and it has nothing to do with the
visible world. We rather have to think of the meaning as
referring to the end of a period of culture, the end of a phase of
humanity, and the beginning of an increasing confusion, in
which literally nation may rise against nation and so on. But
the psychological meaning refers to something quite different.
In many of the esoteric books of the Old Testament, which
have a meaning quite apart from the literal sense, the idea that
truth may fail on the earth is frequently found. When a nation
or a people lose their fundamental and traditional values and
no longer have any background, they can be compared with
an earthquake. Now when esoteric truth fails, when man
becomes entirely sensual, a creature of the senses, and believes
nothing else but the evidence of the senses, when all meaning
has been destroyed apart from physical meaning, he inevitably
begins to degenerate and pass into increasing violence because
he has no inner direction and no inner values, which have
always been created in him by one form or another of esoteric
teaching. Esoteric teaching always gives values beyond physical
life and it is only through these values that any culture can be
formed. When all inner values break up, when there is no truth
to govern a man more internally, so that he realises he cannot
do certain things, owing to a sense of inner integrity, then the
'end of the world' begins. The whole force of inner development
begins to die, the whole idea that man is on this earth to learn
something, the whole possibility of inner development ceases.
And when this is widespread it is the consummation of the age;
the force brought into the world away back in time is exhausted.
But we have to notice that when this happens 'a second coming'
is at hand. From Matthew xxiv, we can see that man regarded
psychologically from the standpoint of higher and esoteric
teaching must be given truth to lift him from the level of
violence, self-interest and appetite, and that when this truth
by its passage through generation after generation becomes
completely distorted, a period of confusion follows which leads
to a second manifestation of the truth, represented as the second
coming of the Son of Man. People imagine that truth will
always maintain itself but all truth wears itself out and a new
form (of the same truth) must be sown on humanity. Every
nation, every race, has been given truth. It is always the same
truth but given in different forms, sometimes with the emphasis
more on one side, or more on another side, according to the
conditions of the time. But when truth of this kind breaks up
and loses all its guiding force, when it has lost all its effective
power, there is a consummation of the age followed by a period
of confusion, which heralds the coming of another form of the
same truth. With this brief description we can perhaps realise
that the consummation of the age does not mean the end of the
world but the end of one manifestation of the truth; and also
that it will be inevitably followed by a new manifestation of
truth - which of course may take centuries to come into force.
It is a cycle that recurs. So we can understand that the 'Son
of Man' will come again, for this means the renewal of esoteric
teaching on the earth. The force is given and gradually dies
away in time — the period of chaos follows: the force once more
comes down again. Each manifestation is called in the esoteric
teaching of Christ, the Second Coming of the Son of Man - of
some Being taking on the level of humanity, raising himself up
through his own overcoming of all human temptations, and
once more re-establishing order and so again opening the way
for human development. The higher level is then once more
open to the lower level, and the purpose of man's original
creation to pass from a lower to a higher level of being and
understanding is once more made possible.

What, then, is this truth that is sown into the world at definite
intervals to lift man beyond his senses? Is it merely a question
of arbitrary literal commandments? We can notice that Christ
began his teaching not with any literal commandments but
with a psychological idea - the idea of metanoia which means
change of mind. Esoteric teaching begins with the idea that
change of mind is the first thing. This word, metanoia, awk-
wardly translated as repentance, means a new way of thinking
about the meaning of one's own life. Esoteric teaching is to
make us think differently. That is its starting point: to feel the
mystery of one's own existence, of how one thinks and feels and
moves, and to feel the mystery of consciousness, and to feel the
mystery of the minute organisation of matter. All this can begin
to effect metanoia in a man. The contrary is to feel that every-
thing is attributable to oneself. The one feeling opens the mind
to its higher range of possibilities, the other feeling closes the
mind and turns us downwards through the senses.
 WAR IN HEAVEN

THINGS do not remain the same.

'Behold the former things are come to pass, and new things
do I declare: before they spring forth I tell you of them'
(Isaiah xlii.9).
But apparently it is not only conditions on earth that change,
but in heaven also.
'There shall be a new heaven and a new earth' (Revelation
xxi.1).
Moreover it is indicated that those in heaven do not neces-
sarily remain there when a new heaven is created. We read of
there being 'war in heaven' - of Michael and his angels fighting
with the Dragon and his angels (Revelation xii.7). The Dragon
and his angels were cast out of heaven 'neither was their place
found any more in heaven'. They seem to represent all those
who externally are moral and pious, but inwardly have no
belief. Christ laid great stress on the necessity for inner belief
and the uselessness of outer religion only. It would appear that
the outer practice of religion may be rewarded by a sojourn in
some kind of heaven which comes to an end. As in their life on
earth these people who inwardly believe nothing but are
externally rigid, literal and forbidding are compared to dragons.
There is nothing of grace about the dragon-faced. Peter says:
'We look for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth
righteousness' (ii Peter iii.13).
It is clear that self-righteousness which comes from pride is
not meant, for it has no connection with righteousness, which
springs from inner goodness.
Christ said some things about the changing nature of the
Kingdom of Heaven. Speaking of John the Baptist, after saying:
'Among them that are born of women there hath not risen a
greater than John the Baptist: notwithstanding he that is least
in the Kingdom of Heaven is greater than he', he goes on to say:
'From the days of John the Baptist until now the Kingdom of
Heaven suffereth violence and the violent take it by force'
(Matthew xi.12).
What can this strange remark mean? It can only mean that
the conditions of entry into the Kingdom of Heaven change.
From the time that the Baptist began to preach, to the beginning
of Christ's teaching, there was a period where 'the violent take
it by force'. Does this mean that those who did violence to
themselves gained the Kingdom or has it an entirely different
meaning?

The conditions of entry into the Kingdom of Heaven, and the

frequent mention of a covenant being made between God and
Man are connected. A covenant is an agreement made between
two persons to the effect that if one of them fulfils certain
conditions, the other will do what he promised. It is not
permanent, as the phrase 'covenant of an age' shews. The
Hebrew word OLAM translated often in the Old Testament as
'everlasting' really means age-lasting, lasting for an aeon, as in
the passage in Jeremiah xxxii.40.
'And I will make an everlasting covenant with them, that I
will not turn away from them, to do them good.'
In a developing humanity which is being raised from a state
of relative barbarism, it would not be expected to be permanent.
The Ten Commandments given to the Israelites on Mount
Sinai were a covenant between God and Israel. If the Israelites
obeyed them, God would prosper them:
'If ye walk in my statutes, and keep my commandments and
do them.... I will have respect unto you, and make you
fruitful, and multiply you, and establish my covenant with
you. . . . And if ye shall despise my statutes or if your soul
abhor my judgements, so that ye will not do all my command-
ments, but that ye break my covenant.... I will destroy your
high places, and cut down your images, and cast your carcases
upon the carcases of your idols, and my soul shall abhor you.'
(Leviticus xxvi.3, 9, 15, 30)
The commandments are about what was to be done and
about what must not be done. That was the Mark to aim at.
Consider the first Commandment: 'Thou shalt have no other
gods before me', and the last: 'Thou shalt not covet thy
neighbour's house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife,
nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass,
nor anything that is thy neighbour's' (Exodus xx.3, 17). Are
these possible to carry out? It has often been said that what a
man loves most is really his god. A man may of course imagine
he loves God before everything. In that case he does not notice
himself. Although self-love is a giant power, it is not easy to
observe even a fraction of it. When it peeps out unmistakably,
we justify ourselves at once. Again, who can say that he is
aware of all his forms of covetousness and that they have no
power over him? If he says so, does he observe himself enough?

Sin means to miss the Mark. In the New Testament, the word
translated as 'sin' is taken from aiming an arrow at a mark and
missing it. In the Old Testament, the Ten Commandments
were the Mark - that is, the Law. Christ said he brought a new
law: love one another. He speaks of a certain kind of love -
conscious love - and not of emotional love which changes so
easily into its opposite. Ά new commandment I give unto
you, That ye love one another: as I have loved you, that ye
also love one another' (John xiii.34).

Christ speaks in a parable of the end of the age. He uses the

word aeon, which refers to a period during which certain possi-
bilities and conditions exist. With the coming of Christ one of
these periods began, and with it certain conditions for entry
into the Kingdom of Heaven. Those who followed the teaching
of Christ sincerely, from their hearts, and not merely externally,
could gain the Kingdom of Heaven. The Parable which is
usually called 'The Parable of the Tares and the Wheat' is as
follows:
'The kingdom of heaven is likened unto a man which sowed
good seed in his field: But while men slept, his enemy came and
sowed tares among the wheat, and went his way. But when the
blade was sprung up, and brought forth fruit, then appeared
the tares also. So the servants of the householder came and said
unto him, Sir, didst not thou sow good seed in thy field? from
whence then hath it tares? He said unto them, An enemy hath
done this. The servants said unto him, Wilt thou then that we
go and gather them up? But he said, Nay; lest while ye gather
up the tares, ye root up also the wheat with them. Let both
grow together until the harvest: and in the time of harvest I
will say to the reapers, Gather ye together first the tares and
bind them in bundles to burn them: but gather the wheat into
my barn.' (Matthew xiii.24-30)
Christ explains that this parable is about the end of the aeon
(not world as it is translated):
'He that soweth the good seed is the Son of man; the field is
the world; the good seed are the children of the kingdom; but
the tares are the children of the wicked one; the enemy that
sowed them is the devil; the harvest is the end of the world;
and the reapers are the angels. As therefore the tares are
gathered and burned in the fire; so shall it be in the end of this
world (aeon). The Son of man shall send forth his angels and
they shall gather out of his kingdom all things that offend, and
them which do iniquity; and shall cast them into a furnace of
fire: there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth. Then shall
the righteous shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their
Father. Who hath ears to hear, let him hear.' (Matthew
xiii.37-43)
This explanation of the parable refers to the termination of
a period of conscious selection. In each age there is the idea of
selection - not blind but intelligent. Each age or period appears
to bring about a different kind of selection. In one short parable
Christ compares the Kingdom of Heaven in general to fisher-
men using a net to catch fish. When they had got sufficient they
selected the good and threw the useless away.
'Again, the kingdom of heaven is like unto a net that was
cast into the sea, and gathered of every kind: which, when it was
full, they drew to shore, and sat down, and gathered the good
into vessels, but cast the bad away' (Matthew xiii.47-48).
The New Will
Sis notonewidepushes
OME me up a grass slope. There is a ditch. It
but difficult to cross. The difficult-to-cross ditch
at the top of the slope is full of the bones of prehistoric
animals - the remains of violent things, of beasts of prey, of
monsters, of snakes. They go far down into this abyss. There is
a plank to cross by, but the air seems full of restraining power,
like the invisible influence of some powerful magnet; and this,
with the fear of crossing this depth — although the width is not
great — holds me back. I cannot say for how long for there is
no ordinary time in all this. Then I find myself across — on the
other side. What wonderful vision do I now behold? I see some-
one teaching or drilling some recruits. That is all. At first sight
there seems nothing marvellous. He smiles. He indicates some-
how that he does not necessarily expect to get any results from
what he is doing. He does not seem to mind. He does not shew
any signs of impatience when they are rude to him. The lesson
is nearly over, but this will not make any difference to him.
It is as if he said, 'Well, this has to be done. One cannot expect
much. One must give them help, though they don't want it.'
It is his invulnerableness that strikes me. He is not hurt or
angered by their sneers or lack of discipline. He has some
curious power but hardly uses it. I pass on marvelling that he
could do it. I could not take on such a thankless task. Eventually
I come to a place, perhaps a shop, where boats are stored.
Beyond is the sea.

When I wake I think of this man. To do what he is doing is

so utterly contrary to anything I would do. I would need a
new will to do it.
It would mean I would have to go in a direction I never
went in. I thought much about this direction. How could I
define it to myself? I would have been violent to those recruits.
Yes, that was it. He showed no violence. He had not a will of
violence. He seemed purified from all violence. That was the
secret. That was the source of the curious power I detected in
him. A man without violence. And then I reflected that to reach
him I had had to get across to the other side of the deep gulf
full of the bones of prehistoric beasts, full of the remains of
violent creatures. This had been done for me somehow and I
found myself in the border of another country, at the edge of
it only, but beyond the prehistoric beasts. Here this non-violent
man lived and taught. It was the country of the non-violent,
where recruits were being taught. They seemed an indifferent
lot but perhaps they represented people who could learn
something eventually.
He had nearly finished his lesson. Beyond, was the sea and
there were boats stored near it. No doubt when he had finished
the course, he was going on somewhere, beyond the land. As
for me, I had been given only a glance into the meaning of a
new will — a will not based on violence or on having your own
way. I repeat - only a glance. For I knew I had not, save in
spirit, really crossed that deep gulf yet, filled with the bones of
the violent past, and left it behind finally. There were no
recruits for me - or were those recruits different 'I's in myself
that he was trying to teach? Certainly none of the waiting boats
was mine. But from this glance I know more practically what
going in a new direction is and what a new will purified from
violence means. I know also that the possibilities of following
this new will and new direction lie in every moment of one's
life - and that I continually forget.
The Telos
 PART ONE

C ment, byshewsrepartee.'
HRIST his conscious attitudes of power by an argu-
How can you forgive sins?' they ask,
when he has told the paralytic, borne by four, and let
down through the roof, that his sins are cancelled. Ί will shew
you that I have this power,' is the reply. 'Arise, take up your
bed and go to your house.' The implication is that the paralytic
could not have been cured unless his sins had been cancelled
and his inner state altered, through his contact with inward
truth being restored. The paralytic immediately arises and
takes up the bed (formerly borne by four - yes, formerly borne
of four with him helpless, and now borne by one — himself) and
goes forth before them all - not as he came, let through the roof,
the press of people being too great. The outer change reflects
the inner transformation: whereas in himself, when indeed
there was such a press, he was taken no notice of, now he goes
out before them all. Why? Because his sins are forgiven, can-
celled, torn up, like a promissory note, so that his internal
accusers no longer can persuade him that he is utterly insignifi-
cant, of no importance. They, who hitherto prevented his
coming near Christ now see him walking before Him - before
them all - no longer lying passive, but standing active, no
longer in mind horizontal in the heavy feeling of Time but
vertical in the light of Eternity. The time-situation has changed
in a flash to the Eternity-situation where a man from being
prone, becomes upright, his sins having been forgiven. For
Eternity, which is fullness, must always be forgiving Time for
its poorness, its wretchedness, its inability to imitate eternal
things: and so the eternal Christ forgives men on earth, provided
they have faith, which is vision. Faith is the power of looking up.
For when the paralytic and the four bearing him were unable to
approach because of the press and had climbed up and opened
the roof, is it not said that Christ perceived their faith - for is
not all faith climbing and opening the roof, breaking up that
which prevents us looking up? Notice he perceived their faith -
not the paralytic's only, but also the faith of the four who bore
him and climbed up and opened the roof taking the helpless
paralytic with them. 'They uncovered the roof where he was
and when they had broken it up they let down the bed whereon
the sick of the palsy lay.' But Christ, perceiving their faith,
speaks only to the paralytic, for not all five are one in faith
(Mark ii.1-12).
 PART TWO

THE possibility of some definite change in a human being is

indicated in 'esoteric' teaching. This is plain. We find it in the
few fragments of Christ's teaching that have been preserved.
We can find it in other sources. But what is this change? It is
difficult to say. The Gospels are the most difficult books to
understand. We can see that much of Christ's teaching is deli-
berately veiled in the form of parable. He actually says so. 'And
the disciples came, and said unto him, Why speakest thou unto
them in parables? He answered and said unto them, Because
it is given unto you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of
heaven, but to them it is not given. For to whomsoever hath,
to him shall be given, and he shall have more abundance: but
whosoever hath not from him shall be taken away even that he
hath. Therefore speak I to them in parables: because they
seeing see not; and hearing hear not, neither do they under-
stand.' (Matthew xiii.10) Parables contain an 'esoteric' mean-
ing, which means simply an inner meaning. Again, sometimes
Christ used a high form of paradox. Yet it is plain enough that
a definite transformation is being spoken of all through and that
fragments of hard-to-understand teaching concerning how to
attain it are scattered about but without any clear order. The
idea seems to be that a man is incomplete as he is, like an
unfinished house, and that to complete him he has to be largely
pulled down and rebuilt. In another way much of what he has
learned has to be unlearned. Much that is useless or false in
him has to be stripped off. In this way he is transformed. He
becomes a new man.

Now this end of transformation of a man can be thought of

as The Mark to be aimed at. One may never see it or never
grasp. Or one may have poor aim.

Sin means to miss the mark. The Greek word άµαρτανω

(hamartano) really means 'to miss the mark'. But it is translated
 as sin. Literally the word was used in archery, when the target
was missed.
It would seem clear, therefore, that we cannot understand
the idea of sin in the right way unless we gain some idea of
what it is we have to aim at. To miss the mark is 'sin'; but
what is the mark? The existence of a mark evidently causes sin,
because if there were no mark to aim at, there would be nothing
to miss and therefore no sin. In fact, Paul exclaims that had
there been no commandments he would never have sinned.
The commandments caused him to sin - a startling idea -
just as in the mythos of Adam and Eve the prohibition to eat
allegorically the fruit of the tree of knowledge caused sin and
the fall of Man. The mark was somehow missed.
Speaking of the tenth commandment, 'Thou shalt not covet',
Paul says: 'Had it not been for the law I would never have
known what sin means. Thus I would never have known what
it is to covet unless the law had said: "Thou shalt not covet."
The commandment gave an impulse to sin and sin resulted for
me in all manner of covetous desire - for sin apart from law is
lifeless.' (Romans vii.7) He would not have recognised such a
thing as sin but by means of the law. He was alive and flourish-
ing, he says, without the law, 'but when the commandment
came, sin came alive and I died'. Whatever his meaning is in
this and the verses that follow we can at any rate understand
that Paul took the law — the commandments — as the mark and
the keeping of them as the aim. But he says more than once
that no one can possibly keep the ten commandments and that
Man cannot be saved by the law but only be condemned. He
says Christ came to do 'what the law could not do'.

In Romans (vii) he sees that 'the law is spiritual' (v. 14). 'So
then with the mind I myself serve the law of God: but with the
flesh the law of sin' (25). 'For I delight in the law of God after
the inward man' (22). Notice how he places the feeling of I in
the inward man, not in the outer or carnal man. He does not
say / to the flesh: 'For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh)
dwelleth no good thing' (18). He is dividing himself into the
inner and outer man. So he says: 'For the good which I would
I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do' (19). Two
different senses of / are meant. It is not the same / that would
and does not, or would not and does. Let us call one of these It.
Then the passage would read, 'For the good that I would It
does not: but the evil which I would not, that It does.' It then
becomes clear why he goes on to say, 'Now if I do that I would
not, it is no more / that do it' (20). It does it, not /. So he
concludes that to this part of him that does what he would not,
and does not what he would, he can say: This is not I. Through
this the feeling of / is withdrawn from it and concentrated in
the inner man.
It is said at the beginning of chapter eight that the command-
ments failed to set men free because no man could keep them,
therefore Christ came to do 'what the law could not do'. ' . . . that
the ordinance of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not
after the flesh but after the spirit' (2-4). The telos is to free us.
Tor Christ is the end (telos) of the law unto righteousness to
everyone that believeth' (x.4).
The Mark is the End - τελος - and this is 'conforming to the
image of his Son' (the firstborn of many others) (Romans
VIII.29).
You cannot start with the law. Paul's whole teaching is based
on the forming of 'Christ in you'. Then the keeping of the law
follows naturally.
Appendix
I Nthe Old Testament, the word translated as repent is the
Hebrew shub - to turn or return, to change direction, to
turn right round and face the other way. In the Koran, two
words are translated as repentance: nadam - remorse, tawbah -
returning, turning unto God.
'The Latin word is retrospective. It looks back with a revul-
sion of feeling to past acts; whereas the Greek word is prospec-
tive - it speaks of a moral renewal with a view to transformation
of the entire man.' (Hastings)
'We translate it (metanoia) "repentance", with the meaning
of lamenting for our sins; and we translate it wrongly. Of
metanoia, as Jesus used the word, lamenting one's sins was a
small part: the main part was something far more active and
further, the setting up an immense new inward movement for
obtaining the rule of life. And metanoia accordingly is a change
of the inner man.' (Matthew Arnold: Literature and Dogma.)

EPIOUSIOS

The translation of epiousios, επιούσιος, which has been some-

times rendered as super-substantial (Give us this day our super-
substantial bread) though based on the derivation of the Greek
word given on page 147, does not sufficiently express the clear
ideas contained in the original word, but is far better than some
translations which trace the origin of the word differently. For
example, in the footnote in the Revised Version 'bread for
tomorrow' is given, taking the meaning of the particle epi (έπι),
not as referring to the present order of scale or position, namely,
to what is adjacent but above, but as having a time sense; and
from this point of view 'eternal bread' has been suggested, or
'bread of the future life'. The Greek word translated as eternal
does not occur in the Lord's Prayer save in the added part,
where it is translated 'for ever and ever' quite wrongly, it
having no meaning of endless time, but referring to an order
above time.
 EARLY GREEK TEACHING
'Blessed is the man who has gained the notion of divine
wisdom: wretched he who has a dim notion of the gods in his
heart' (Empedocles: Fragment 132). The whole idea of all the
ancient divine philosophy influenced by Pythagorean teaching
was purification and loosening, so that mind and heart were re-
opened to realities and truths that could be internally reached,
and that daily life obscured. The soul has fallen from a blessed
state — a state of bliss - where the Eternal Realities were beheld,
into the stream of time, into half-realities and confusion of the
senses. So the meaning of earthly life is first to arouse the chario-
teer of the soul. The ultimate aim is to regain the vision without
which the soul dies. The method is by purification (catharsis) and
loosening (lusis). It is not for those who 'think that nothing exists
save what they can grasp in their two hands'.
The pre-Pythagorean Orphic mystery seems to have con-
tained the same idea. But it was popularly grasped as a religion
in the ordinary sense, in which festivities were held, rites
practised and sacrifices made for those in Hades; and a purely
ceremonial instruction prescribed for those at an early stage of
teaching and understanding. Of these it was said that there
were 'Many who hear the word, but few Bacchi'. Exactly the
same idea and in a similar connection is expressed in the New
Testament: 'Many are called, but few are chosen.' This re-
markable interpretation of the meaning of life, which finds
parallels in many ancient sources, has as its base the doctrine of
evolution. Man can evolve in a definite direction and towards
a definite goal, which some have reached, and of these a few
have left behind their instructions, which become usually turned
into religions. So the Greek philosophers despised the Orphic
rites. They did so because they felt that only philosophy was
the real way of preventing the soul's re-incarnation into time,
and effecting its return to the star which belongs to it. And by
philosophy they meant first of all a continued state of attention,
which Plato above all things has made clear in the person of
Socrates. In fact the whole of the dialogues can be seen in this
light as a description of a means, used by the school of which
Plato was a member. This continued effort of the mind was
accompanied by catharsis and lusis. We can at least understand
what lusis meant. Literally, the verb from which the noun is
derived means to loosen, and an important secondary meaning
is 'to ransom, to unbind by payment'.
Socrates was constantly shewn as loosening men from them-
selves — from their borrowed opinions, imagination and false
assumption of knowing. Everyone suffers from himself, which
he does not see. People remain ignorant because they imagine
they already know. 'We can draw a line which divides ignorance
into halves, one a very great and bad sort. . . quite distinct
from all other sorts . . . what is it? When a person supposes he
knows, and does not know. This appears to be the great source
of errors. . . . ' (Sophist, 229 B.C.) To free men from the illusion
of knowing was clearly one side of the loosening that frees the
soul. This is a painful process that few can tolerate because it
involves the action of another on the person himself — that is,
in his intimate psychology, in the seat of his self-love and self-
importance.
Many became offended, some furious. And a similar situation
is mentioned in the Gospels more than once. People were
nearly always offended by what Christ said. He said to the
Pharisees: 'If ye were blind, ye should have no sin: but now ye
say, We see; therefore your sin remaineth.' Man is not equal
to the development indicated in religion. He cannot even see
the idea concealed in its language. And he cannot make the
necessary efforts. He misunderstands the whole thing and
believes that religion or creed at bottom is external worship
and nothing more than a social or political invention for making
people moral or obedient, or a sort of tenacious superstition.
He cannot understand that it is about super-psychology - that
is, about real psychology, about the next state or level of man
and what it is necessary to do and think and feel and imitate
and understand in order to reach that level. He does not see
that all real religion, and this is its test, is not about another
world, but about another man latent but unborn in every man, who is
in another world of meaning, and that what it is talking about
in parable, allegory and paradox, is this superman in man. And
this is why it talks in parable, allegory and paradox, because
there is no way possible to describe the transformations leading
to, and the states belonging to, a higher level when ordinary
language itself is a function belonging to a lower level - the
level of things seen.

TELEIOSIS
Zosimus Panopolitanus speaks of a τελειωσις, a transformation
which is the goal of human beings. Zosimus, speaking of the
τελειωσις of the soul, mentions a certain mirror. When the soul
looks at itself in this mirror it sees what it must get rid of. What,
asks Zosimus, are the instructions given to man? Know thyself:
and this refers to the mirror. 'It (the instruction) indicates
thereby the spiritual (pneumatic) and intellectual (noetic)
mirror. What is this mirror, then, if not the divine spirit? When
a man looks in it and sees himself in it, he turns away from all
that is called gods and daemons.' He attaches himself to a
process of purification, through the instrument of the mirror,
which becomes the holy spirit, and becomes a perfect man. By
means of the mirror he eventually sees God who is in him, by
the intermediation of the holy spirit - in the light of the eye of
the spirit.
This passage is, in full, as follows: 'This mirror represents
the divine spirit. When the soul looks at itself in the mirror, it
sees the shameful things that are in it, and rejects them; it makes
its stains disappear, and remains without blame. When it is
purified, it imitates and takes for its model, the holy spirit; it
becomes spirit itself; it possesses calm, and returns unceasingly
to that superior state in which one knows God and is known (by
God). Then, having come to be stainless, it gets rid of its bonds,
and it (raises itself) towards the Omnipotent. What says the
philosophic word? 'Know thyself.' It indicates thereby the
spiritual and intellectual mirror. What is this mirror then, if
not the divine and primordial spirit? Unless one says that it is
the principle of principles, the Son of God, the Word, he whose
thoughts and sentiments proceed also from the holy spirit.
Such is the explanation of the mirror. When a man looks in
it and sees himself in it, he turns his face away from all that is
called gods and daemons, and, attaching himself to the holy
spirit, he becomes a perfect man; he sees God who is in him, by
the intermediation of this holy spirit.
 'Behold your soul by means of this spiritual mirror of electrum,
made with the two intelligences, that is, with the Son of God
the Word, joined to the holy spirit, and filled with the spiri-
tuality of the Trinity.' (Hermetica, vol. 4, p. 143. Edited Scott
and Ferguson. Oxford.)

Christ says, 'If you would be perfect . . . ' (Matthew xix.21)

τελειος. The ancient mysteries taught at Eleusis in Attica and
elsewhere were called τελεται, finishings, perfectings. Their
significance was to complete man through gradual instruction
in the knowledge of divine truth.
The mysteries differed from popular religions which often
were elementary and barbarous. They seem always to have
existed as a hidden stream of knowledge, while popular religions
rose and fell.