Atma-Buddhi Manas or Christ. Thus, when man enters the true Church, i.e., the spiritual realm of divine light of wisdom, then will that light of divine wisdom penetrate him, and man, having become all "mind," will be rendered self-luminous and self-knowing thereby. All that prevents man from entering into that state is his selfish will and egoism, and therefore when man, relatively to his own selfish will (constituting his own terrestrial self), has become entirely helpless, as if nailed to a cross, and if his selfish will has died upon that cross, then will take place his glorious resurrection as a divine being, even as the very Christ Himself. Then will his former illusion, whereby he imagined himself to be an isolated being and a thing separate from the rest of humanity, have passed away, and he will recognize the God in him, and himself as that God, living in the Light that pervades the All, and being himself the All, and with arms outstretched upon the cross of life, drawing to his heart every human being by the power of divine love.

"Our whole religion consists in learning how to go out of dissension and vanity, and to re-enter into the one Tree, wherefrom we have come in Adam, and which is Christ in us. (Regener. viii. 2.)

This divine love is neither a chimera nor a dream, nor the belief in it a superstition, but it is the most substantial reality; for it is the very essence of that of which the world has been created. Its beauty can be perceived by man in everything by means of what is beautiful in himself, and it is tangible to the soul touched by it. It is not confined in gross material bodies, but superior to everything. It is self-existent and free, and causes the soul, the light, to arise out of the dark fiery will, comparable to a beautiful plant growing out of the dark soil. It is not an unconscious mechanical force or attraction, but divine will and selfconsciousness, in other words, the Spirit of God.

The realm of this divine love-light is the only true church, outside of which no salvation can be found, neither by scientific acquisitions nor by anything that is inferior to divine love. The true divine self of every human being is a member and an inhabitant of that church; he is himself that church; God in him is his

"He who fully enters into this state of divine rest in Christ arrives through Him at the perception of divinity. He then sees God in himself and everywhere; he speaks with God and God speaks with him, and he understands what is the Word, the Essence, and the Will of God. Such a person, and none other, is capable to teach the Word of God out of himself; for God is One with him, and he wills nothing but what God wills through him." (Myster. Magn., xlii. 63.)

Science says that each thing has an aura of unknown extent wherein the qualities of that thing are revealed, and the same truth may perhaps be more correctly expressed reversely by saying that each thing and each being is a part of an individual power of unknown size, possessing certain qualities, and having evolved a form or organism, wherein some of these qualities have become manifest.

"The external man is measurable; the inner man is unmeasurable, but visible and tangible in celestial flesh and blood. We can be great or little in the celestial figure." (Three Princ., xxv. 88.)

Thus our visible material bodies are only a manifestation of a part of a true man living in the kingdom of light. The real man is an inhabitant of heaven, it is merely his shadow which walks in mortal form upon the earth.

Not to identify ourselves with the limited shadow, but to attain the knowledge of our celestial self, is the object of this terrestrial life.

This recognition of one's own divine unlimited self no mortal being can attain by his or her own power, because only that which is immortal in man can recognize itself as being immortal. Without the presence of eternal truth that truth cannot be recognized, nor can, in the absence of light, the darkness illumine itself.

"If you say: I cannot do this; I am too weak; I then answer: I cannot do it either, for it rests not in my own willing and running, but in the mercy of God. I cannot by my own power take away the power from the wrath of God, which is kindled in me; but as His heart out of love and in love has entered humanity, I

will throw away my will into his tincture, and in my corrupted will I will become as a nothing. Then may He be in me what He pleases. I shall then not know my (corrupted) self, but only Him. The nothing is the highest Good; for there is no Turba therein, and nothing can touch me therein; for I am then nothing relatively to myself, but I belong to God. He knows what I am; I do not know it, and it is none of my business to know it. Thus is the cure of the diseased soul effected. He who dares to attempt it with me will experience what God will make out of him." (Signat., ix. 55.)

It is therefore not sinful man, the shadow, that can know the true light, the Christ; but Christ recognizing His own divine image in man. Thus Christ lives in the sanctuary of man, and all that is capable in man of recognizing the Christ in him, lives in the Christ; but if man has attained that state in the Christ, he will then cease to be merely a man, but free of the illusion of self, he will know himself to be God. He will then no longer desire to attain, or to become something, but rest in his own divine self-consciousness, knowing his shadowy self to be nothing but a delusion, and his divine self All in the Christ.

APPARITIONS.

"THE Soul originates from three principles; she lives therefore in a threefold anguish, and is held by three ties. The first tie links her to eternity and reaches within the abyss of hell (the fiery will); the second is the kingdom of heaven; the third is the region of the stars with the elements. The third kingdom is not eternal, but has a certain period of existence; nevertheless it is this kingdom that causes the man to grow up, endowing him with manners and will, and desires relating to good and to evil. It gives him beauty, riches and honors, and makes him a terrestrial god. It is with him unto the end of his time, and then it departs; and as it aided him to obtain life, so it aids him in death, and cuts him loose from the astral soul.

"First the four elements break away from the one element, and thus the activity in the third principle ceases; and this is the most terrible thing, that the four elements are broken up within themselves. Then the tincture with the shadow (of what was man) enters into the other, and with this the shadow remains in the root of the element from which the four elements were born, and from which they issued. This breaking up alone is the suffering and the pain; it is the destruction of the sensitive house of the soul.

"But if the essences of the soul in the first principle have been so much attached to the ways of this world that they have desired only for the lust of the latter, for temporal honor, power, and pomp; the will, the soul, i.e., the essences out of the first principle, still retain the astral essences as their most precious treasure, and desire to dwell therein; but as these essences

are now deprived of their mother, the four elements, they become gradually consumed in the essences of the first principle.

"Then will the soul in her astral garment, floating within the doors of the depth, experience great uneasiness owing to her earthly state, and by the power that belongs to her astral constitution she may reappear in he shape of her former corporeal body, asking for this or for that, such as has been her desire before she passed away, and seeking to obtain rest; and she may also go about haunting places and trying to manifest her presence at night, according to her sidereal spirit, making noises of various kinds.

"That with which she has clothed herself during life, this will be her garment. If it is luxury, lust, ambition, riches, malevolence, anger, lies, or the illusions of the world, then will the strong power of the essences out of the first principle hold on to these things by means of the sidereal spirit, and render it active according to the astral quality. The sidereal spirit restlessly clings to that for which it desires; as is said by Christ, 'Where your treasure is, there is your heart.' Therefore it often happens that the ghosts of dead persons are seen going about in great unrest. That with which the soul has clothed herself here in the body (in her will and thought), that constitutes her anguish, and according to her anguish will be her shape and form in the astral state, until this state and anguish is consumed. Her eternal dwelling-place is the deep abyss without end or number, and the works which she performed here are embodied in the forms in her tincture, and follow her.

"There is no light neither from this world nor from God, but the ignition of her own fire is her light, it being the terrible flash of her wrath and inimical. The kind of the anguish of such souls differs according to the quality of that with which the soul has burdened herself. For such a soul there is no help; she cannot enter into the light of God'; and even if St. Peter had left a thousand keys upon the earth, neither of them would unlock the door, for she has severed the bond that connected her with Divinity." (See Three Principles, xix. and foll.)