"The Bible has been given to the Western World by the Recording Angels who give to each and all exactly what they need for their development."
— Max Heindel
From our study of previous self-study modules we find that the two Creation stories harmonize very well. One deals with Form, which was built up through mineral, plant and animal and reached the human last. The other tells us that the Life which now ensouls human forms was manifested anterior to the Life which ensouls the forms of the other kingdoms.
One of these accounts of Creation would not have been sufficient. There are important particulars hidden behind the narrative of man's creation, in the second chapter; the seventh verse reads: "Then Jehovah formed man from the dust of the Earth, and blew into his nostrils the breath (nephesh), and man became a breathing creature (nephesh chayim)."
In other places in the King James version nephesh is translated "life," but in this particular instance (Gen. 2:17) it is rendered "living soul," thus conveying the idea that there was a distinction made between the life that ensouled the human form and that which ensouled inferior creations. There is no authority whatever for this difference in translation, which is purely arbitrary. The life-breath (nephesh) is the same in man and beast. This can be shown even to those who stand firmly upon the Bible as authority, for even the King James version distinctly states (Eccles. 3: 19,20): "...as one dieth, so dieth the other; yea they all have one breath (nephesh); so that man hath no pre-eminence above a beast:... All go unto one place."
The animals are but our "younger brothers," and though they are not now so finely organized, they will eventually reach a state as high as our own, and we shall then have ascended still higher.
If it is contended that man received his soul in the way described in this seventh verse of the second chapter of Genesis, and that he could have received it in no other way, it is pertinent to ask where and how woman received her soul.
The meaning of the chapter, and of the inspiration of the breath of life by Jehovah, is very plain and clear when we use the esoteric key, and it has the further and immense advantage of being logical.
The fact that the regent of the Moon (Jehovah), with His angels and archangels, was the principal in this action, fixes the time when this creation occurred. It was between the early and the middle parts of the Lemurian Epoch, and must have been after the Moon was thrown out from the Earth, because Jehovah had nothing to do with the generation of bodies before the Moon was thrown off. The forms were then more ethereal. There were not dense and concrete bodies. It is possible to make such bodies only by means of the hardening and crystallizing Moon-forces. It must have been in the first half of the Lemurian Epoch, because the separation of the sexes, which is recorded later, took place in the middle of that Epoch.
At that time man-in-the-making had not yet commenced to breathe by means of lungs. He had the gill-like apparatus still present in the human embryo while passing through the stage of antenatal life corresponding to that Epoch. He had no warm, red blood, for at that stage there was no indwelling individual spirit, the entire form was soft and pliable and the skeleton soft like cartilage. Before the later date, when it became necessary to separate humanity into sexes, the skeleton had grown firm and solid.
The work done by Jehovah was to build dense, hard bone substance into the soft bodies already existing. Before this time, i.e., during the Polarian and Hyperborean Epochs, neither animal nor man had bones.
The grotesque and impossible manner in which the separation of the sexes is said to have been accomplished (as described in the common versions of the Bible and, in this particular case, in the Masoretic text also) is another example of what may be done by changing vowels in the old Hebrew text. Read in one way, the word is "rib" (tsad); but in another, which has at least as good a claim to consideration with the additional advantage of being common-sense, it reads "side" (tsela). If we interpret this to mean that man was male-female and that Jehovah caused one side or sex in each being to remain latent, we shall not be doing violence to our reason, as we would by accepting the "rib" story.
When this alteration is made, the esoteric teaching as previously given, harmonizes with that of the Bible and both agree with the teachings of modern science that man was bisexual at one time, before he developed one sex at the expense of the other. In corroboration of this, it is pointed out that the fetus is bisexual up to a certain point; thereafter one sex pre-dominates, while the other remains in abeyance, so that each person still has the opposite sex organs in a rudimentary form and therefore is really bisexual, as was primitive man.
Apparently the Bible narrator does not wish to give, in this second creation account, an accurate picture of the whole of evolution, but rather to particularize a little more what was said in the first chapter. He tells us that man did not always breathe as he does now; that there was a time when he was not separated into sexes; and that it was Jehovah who effected the change, thus fixing the time of the occurrence. As we proceed, it will be found that much further information is given.
During the earlier Epochs and Periods the great creative Hierarchies had worked upon humanity as it was unconsciously evolving. There had been only one common consciousness among all human beings; one group-spirit for all mankind, as it were.
In the Lemurian Epoch a new step was taken. Bodies had been definitely formed, but they must have warm, red blood before they could be ensouled and become the abode of indwelling Spirits.
In nature no process is sudden. We would get a wrong idea were we to imagine that air blown into the nostrils could put a soul into an image of clay and galvanize it into life as a sentient, thinking being.
The individual spirit was very weak and impotent and quite unfitted for the task of guiding its dense vehicle. In that respect it is not yet very strong. To any qualified observer, it is evident that the desire body rules the personality more than does the Spirit, even at our present stage of advancement. But in the middle of the Lemurian Epoch, when the lower personality — the threefold body — was to be endowed with the light of the Ego, the latter, if left to itself, would have been absolutely powerless to guide its instrument.
Therefore it was necessary for someone much more highly evolved to help the individual Spirit and gradually prepare the way for its complete union with its instruments. It was analogous to a new nation, over which, until it becomes capable of forming a stable government for itself, some stronger power establishes a protectorate, guarding it alike from external dangers and internal indiscretions. Such a protectorate was exercised over evolving humanity by the Race Spirit and is exercised over the animals by the Group Spirit, in a somewhat different way.
Jehovah is the Most High. He is Race-God, as one might express it, having dominion over all form. He is the Chief Ruler and the highest Power in maintaining the form and exercising an orderly government over it. The Archangels are the Race Spirits, each having dominion over a certain group of people. They also have dominion over animals, while the angels have dominion over the plants.
In the tenth and eleventh chapters of Daniel we are given an insight into the workings of the invisible government of the Race Spirits, the powers behind the throne. Daniel is much disturbed in spirit; he fasts, for fully three weeks, praying for light, and at the end of that time an Archangel, a Race Spirit, appears before him and addresses him: "Fear not, Daniel: for from the first day that thou didst set thine heart to understand, and to chasten thyself before thy God, thy words were heard, and I am come for thy words. But the prince of the kingdom of Persia withstood me one and twenty days but, lo, Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me; and I remained there with the kings of Persia." After he explains to Daniel what is to happen, he says: "Knowest thou wherefore I came unto thee? and now I will return to fight with the prince of Persia: and when I am gone forth, lo, the prince of Grecia shall come,... .and there is none that holdeth with me in these things, but Michael your prince." The archangel also says: "In the first year of Darius the Mede, even I stood to confirm and to strengthen him."
The Archangels have dominion over races or groups of people and also over the animals, for these two kingdoms have desire bodies and the Archangels are expert architects of desire matter, because in the Sun Period the densest globe was composed of that material, and the humanity of that Period, who are now Archangels, learned to build their densest vehicles of desire stuff as we are now learning to build our bodies of the chemical elements whereof our Earth-globe is composed. Thus it will be readily understood that the Archangels are peculiarly qualified to help later life waves through the stage where they learn to build and control a desire body.
For analogous reasons the Angels work in the vital bodies of man, animal, and plant. Their densest bodies are composed of ether and so was the Globe D in the Moon Period when they were human.
Jehovah and his Archangels, therefore, hold a similar relation to Races that the Group Spirit does to animals. When individual members of a Race have evolved entire self-control and government, they are emancipated from the influence of the Race Spirit and kindred beings.
The Ego works directly through the blood. The Race Spirit guides the Races by working in the blood, as the Group Spirit guides the animals of its species through the blood. So also does the Ego control its own vehicles, but with a difference.
The Ego operates by means of the heat of the blood, while the Race (i.e., tribal, or family) Spirit works by means of the air, as it is drawn into the lungs. That is why Jehovah, or His Messengers, "breathed into man's nostrils," thereby securing admission for the Race Spirit, community-spirits, etc.
Before the advent of Jehovah, when the Earth was yet a part of the Sun, there was one common Group Spirit, composed of all the creative Hierarchies, which controlled the entire human family, but it was intended that each body should be the temple and pliable instrument of an indwelling spirit and that means an infinite division of rulership.
Jehovah came with His Angels and Archangels and made the first great division into Races, giving to each group the guiding influence of a Race Spirit — an Archangel. For each Ego He appointed one of the Angels to act as guardian until the individual Spirit had grown strong enough to become emancipated from all outside influence. This occurred in the Atlantean Epoch.
Questions:
(You are welcome to e-mail your answers and/or comments
to us. Please be sure to include the course name and Independent Study Module number in your
e-mail to us.)
1. With what do the two stories of creation deal?
2. What Biblical authority is there for the statement that all life is one?
3. When did the inspiration of the breath of life by Jehovah take place?
4. Describe the form of man as it was at this time.
5. What is the esoteric teaching in regard to the "rib" story?
6. What is the particular work of Jehovah? Of the Archangels?
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