That such a master-idea is difficult to grasp goes without saying; it was confessedly the supreme mystery. From it the mind, the formal mind of man, "falls back unable to grasp it"; for it is precisely this personal mind that creates duality, and insinuates itself between cause and effect. The spiritual Mind alone can embrace the opposites.
But to return to our text. "When He was hung on the _batos_ of the Cross"--when He had reached the state of balance, was in the mystic centre--then at the sixth hour, that is mid-day, when there was greatest light, there was also greatest darkness.
And then when the Lord, the Higher Self of the man, was balanced and justified, the man, the disciple, became conscious, in the cave of his heart--that is to say, in his inmost substantial nature--of the Presence of Light.
4. Thereon follow the illumination and the explanation of the familiar drama of appearance taught to those "without the mystery."
"The multitude below in Jerusalem" is the lower nature of the man, his unillumined mind. "Jerusalem Below" is set over against "Jerusalem Above," the City of God. Jerusalem Below is that nature in him that is still unordered and unpurified; while Jerusalem Above is that ordered and purified portion of his substance that can respond to the immediate shining of the Light, which further orders it according to the Ordering of Heaven.
And yet the drama below is real enough; there are ever crucifixion and piercing and the drinking of vinegar and gall, before the triumphant Christ is born. It is by such means that His Body is conformed; it is the mystery of the transformation of what we call evil into good. The Body of the Christ is perfected by the absorption of the impersonal evil of the world, which He transmutes into blessing.
"'Twas I who put it in thy heart to ascend this Mount." I am thy Self, thy true God; 'twas I energizing in thee who enabled thee to rise to the height of contemplation, where thou canst "hear what disciple should learn from Master and man from God." The man has now reached the stage of Hearer in the Spiritual Mysteries.
5. There then follows the vision of the great Cross of Light, fixed firm, and stretching from earth to heaven. Round its foot on earth is a vast multitude of all the nations of the world; they resemble one another in that they are configured according to the Darkness, their "Spark burns low." On the Cross, or in it, for doubtless the seer saw within as well as without, was another multitude of various grades of light, being formed into some marvellous Image like unto the Divine, but not yet completed--as it might be the Rose on the Cross, in the famous symbol of the Rosicrucians.