Three Bodies, Page 7

Scriptures Most Directly Indicative of “Three Bodies” (continued)

Other Examples in Canonical Order:

3. Gen 1,16: Lights were made in the heavens, i.e., Sun, Moon and stars. We can well relate their relative influence in the following way:

4. Gen 2,21; 15,12; 28,11,16: Three significant “sleeps” (or “deep sleeps”) occur in Genesis:

(a) The first human being (Gen 2,21) is divided into two sexes, whereby Adam, the first “hard” man (Gen 3,17), comes into existence;

(b) Abraham (Gen 15,12) is given insight into the destiny of his descendants; and

(c) Jacob (Gen 28,11,16) has his “ladder” vision.

5. Gen 3,16,17,19: Pain, toil and death represent, respectively, the astral, etheric and physical consequences of the Fall.

6. Gen 6,16: The Ark Noah was to build (whose three dimensions of 300 by 50 by 30 [vs 15] are in proportion to the physical body of the post-Atlantean human being) was to have three decks, namely, a lower, second and third.

7. Gen 12,10-20; 20,1-18; 26,1-16: Three times was the ruse, “She is my sister,” used by Abram/Abraham and/or Isaac in dealing with the descendants of Ham’s son, Egypt. The first time Abram said it to the Pharaoh in Egypt; the second Abraham said it to the Philistine king Abimelech; and the third Isaac said it to Abimelech. See the discussion on these in “Egypt.” Theology has wrestled with and rationalized the immorality of this in such lustrous ancestors, but seeing it as an illustration of the development of the three bodies elevates it above immorality, vindicating the story as a wholesome verity.

8. Gen 18,2,6: Three “men” (i.e., angels) appeared to Abraham by the oaks of Mamre (see “Under the Tree”); and he told Sarah to take “three measures of fine meal, knead it and make cakes” (see Mt 13,33 above).

9. Gen 40,10,18-19: In the dreams of Joseph’s fellow inmates, the butler and the baker, there were three branches that budded (cf. Heb 9,4) and began to grow grapes, and three cake baskets portending death. One can see here in the three cake baskets the three bodies that will become beastly, i.e., die, if not transformed by the Ego to become the three higher spiritual states, represented by the three budding branches. Moreover, just as is the case with Judah in Gen 38 below, Joseph here may be seen as the Ego. He came from the higher zodiacal realm of twelve, as one of Jacob’s twelve sons, descended both into a pit and into “Egypt,” and was later involved with two rounds of seven (good and bad years), as a result of which he was exalted more highly.

10. Ex 21,12-14: Moses is commanded to establish “Cities of Refuge” (see 5 ABD 657) for those who accidentally, or without willfullness, kill another, so they will be able to escape the Mosaic law of retribution. The structure of the pattern of Cities is given in those later books that show the execution of this command: Num 35,9-15; Deut 4,41 and 19,1-13; Josh 20. Three such Cities were to be established “in the land of Canaan” and three “beyond the Jordan” (Num 35,14), i.e., in the “promised land.” How beautifully this very structure depicts (see “As Above, So Below”) the transformation of the lower three bodies into the higher three states of the “promised land,” the “Kingdom of Heaven” (cf. Mt 13,33).

11. Josh 15,14 and Judg 1,20: Caleb drives out the “three sons” of Anak. Anak (see 1 ABD 222) represented the daunting giants (e.g. Deut 2,10,21 and 9,2) in the Promised Land of Canaan, announced by the Hebrew spies (e.g., Deut 1,28). More pointedly, Num 13,33 identifies Anak’s sons as the “Nephilim,” the prehistoric Atlantean giants described in Gen 6,1-4, which accords with the evolutionary development of the human being before its three bodies had condensed and solidified to their post-Atlantean size and shape prescribed by the dimensions of the Ark (Gen 6,15) with its “three decks” (i.e., “bodies”; see Gen 6,16 above). The entire account is an earthly and metaphorical acting out of the heavenly pattern whereby the human being must “drive out” or “transform” the lower three bodies (“three sons”) into the higher three spiritual states of manas-buddhi-atma (I-9). More immediately, however, was the necessity for Israel, in accordance with that pattern, to drive out the atavistic elements represented by the Nephilim, in order to prepare a human vehicle (Jesus of Nazareth) capable of housing the incarnating Christ (see “The Nativity”).

12. Judg 16: Samson mocks Delilah three times (vs 15), before he gives up “all his mind” (vs 18) and loses his strength. Note that the number “seven” is used precisely three times (it appears four times but only on three occasions, in vss 7-8, 13 and 19); and also that three thousand (vs 27) looked on Samson with sport; and the dead he slew at his death were more than those whom he had slain during his life (vs 30). Moreover, it was at “Midnight” (vs 3) that “he arose and took hold of the doors of the gate of the city . . . and carried them to the top of the hill that is before Hebron” (“City of Four” per 3 ABD 107; i.e., enter the “I Am”). The symbolism in this chapter is incredibly descriptive of the human being’s evolutionary cycle, with its three bodies, each related to a cycle of seven, and the “I Am” (“all his mind”); and the high point (“top of the hill”) of each journey between lives is its “Midnight” hour (see I-33).

13. Ezek 41,6; 42,3,6: Similarly to the Ark that Noah built with three decks (see #6 above), these passages speak of “three stories” in the temple in Ezekiel’s vision. Indeed, the “Temple” of the human soul (Ego, or “I Am”) is composed of the threefold Body, which the Lord (the “I Am”) enters and dwells within. Later herein we will see that “Temple,” in the more restrictive sense, applies only to the astral body (see #39, Rev 21,22 and 11,1-2). In that case, the lower two bodies, the physical and etheric, compose “the court outside the temple” (Rev 11,2), those parts which will not be fully “Perfected” during Earth evolution, but must await the Jupiter and Venus Conditions of Consciousness (see I-1).

14. Ezek 47,3-6: Ezek 47 can be seen to present the entirety of the Bible within a single chapter, from the creation to ultimate redemption. For an exposition see the Commentary. However, vss 3-6 can be seen, within that framework, to portray both the three Conditions of Consciousness (Old Saturn, Sun and Moon) prior to Earth evolution, during which the human being’s three bodies had their respective origins, and the first three Evolutionary Epochs of Earth evolution (Polarian, Hyperborean, Lemurian) leading up to the time when the human being loses its atavistic clairvoyance and its “remembrance” of former things (incarnations). This is portrayed by the “eastward” (see “East”) journey “through the water,” which progressed in three stages, from “ankle-deep” to “knee-deep” and then “up to the loins,” before becoming “a river that could not be passed through.” This “river” can be seen as the legendary River Lethe that cannot be crossed by the human being’s consciousness during the present Epoch. Thus, during the time of the three bodies, before the earthly development of the Ego, one could “cross” the water with consciousness, but in the fourth stage it could not be done—unless, presumably, one becomes a “Son of man,” as was Ezekiel in the vision. See fn 6.