General Comments
The Noah Legend handed down by Moses pictured
the lower kingdoms (animal, plant and mineral) as being contained
within the ark, the physical body of the human being, as Atlantis
sank into the ocean bearing its name.1
The rise of sea levels relative to surviving land masses about
ten to twelve thousand years ago is now well documented scientifically,
and can be explained by melting polar caps, condensing ancient
mists,2
the submergence of some continents such as Atlantis through earthquake
and volcanic activity, and the upward thrusting of other continents
and islands. That a people living on Atlantis during these events
would describe the inundation of their known world as "the earth"
(Gen 7,17-24) is quite understandable. It was their "earth."
Whether or not the Individuality who lived
in Moses was the same who lived in Paul, as I have surmised,3
Paul's description of the redeemed human being as the liberator
of the rest of "groaning" creation (Rom 8,19-23) certainly corresponds
with the understanding that the human being was both the first
and the last in the creative scheme, an "image" in that sense
of the Alpha and Omega, the Christ. The awesomeness of this recognition
helps us, along with the Psalmist, to properly frame the question,
"What is man?"
We have seen in the "Evolution"
essay how both science and religion have fastened their star to
purely materialistic concepts of creation, whether or not claiming
divine guidance. If we are to gain a true perspective of the reality
of both creation and apocalypse, the beginning and the end, the
first and the last, we must leave that materialist mode and see
in the biblical account a description of how things came from
the spiritual world into material existence and how they will
leave it. Genesis and Revelation are telling this story, but in
a manner that can only be disclosed by the Spirit of Truth speaking
through the intuition of its prophets.
As a part of the general cultural development
of humanity, the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries ushered
in what is called the historical-critical method, a paradigm shift
in the approach to scriptural study and interpretation. While
its roots in regard to the Gospels really go back to Origen and
his recognition of the differences in the four Gospels,4
the documentary hypotheses of both the Old and New Testaments
are the brainchild of this later cultural development in both
the Jewish and Christian traditions.5
Early in the twentieth century, Steiner lamented the immense application
of human efforts in this approach, for his works show that the
spiritual truth represented in the scriptural accounts is completely
obscured by it.
We will likely neither comprehend the phrase
"Alpha and Omega" nor approach a meaningful answer to the title
question "What is man?" unless we familiarize ourselves with the
fractal, a term coined only late in the twentieth century.
MWCD defines it:
Any of various . . . curves or shapes for
which any suitably chosen part is similar in shape to a given
larger or smaller part when magnified or reduced to the same size.
Later we will see it illustrated far more
fully in the "Fire" essay. But for now we might think of it simply
as a pattern that remains constant whether magnified or reduced,
whether applied in a higher dimension or lower. In Gen 1,26 we
are told that the Elohim desire to pattern the human being after
themselves ("in our image, after our likeness"). The fractal that
portrays the human being is the same that portrays its creators
and its own creatures. A fractal is without beginning or end.6
We cannot understand either the human being or creation itself
without seeing in it the application of this principle. Hermes
expressed it in his aphorism, "As above, so below; as below, so
above."
Scripture, to be holy, must be of the same
character, true at infinitely different levels or dimensions.
Christ's parables have this holy character, none more so than
the one we call the "parable" of the Prodigal Son, where its higher
meaning is expressed by allegory. It is of the same fractal as
the entire canon, portraying the creation, descent and reascent
of the human being. A fractal can be observed as truth at countless
different levels, depending upon the level from which seen. For
this reason the Bible has always given reassurance of truth to
persons at infinitely different levels of comprehension and at
different periods of human development. But in order to do so
it speaks in pictures reflecting, but transcending, time and space:
pictures that can not be appropriated exclusively to any one time
frame, but that ultimately eliminate time and space as a factor.
In the final analysis, the "written word"
is a form of "graven image" proscribed by the second commandment
(Ex 20,4). It relates to the second set of tablets graven by Moses
(Ex 34) because the hardness of the people's hearts would not
accommodate the message on the first (Ex 32), reflected by the
mineralized tablets that constituted the human cerebrum. It was
for the same reason, the hardness of their hearts, that Moses
in that "second law" (literally "Deuteronomy"; Deut 24,1-4) allowed
divorce to occur (Mt 19,7-8; Mk 10,2-6). It is this aspect of
the written word that so troubled Paul (the same Individuality
as Moses?), who expressed it so well in 2 Cor 3. Theologians generally
agree that none of the Bible was actually written by Moses, and
this is in keeping with the second commandment. But as humanity
evolved and entered that age described by Isaiah at the Seraphim's
command (Is 6, 9-11), the age of "the valley of the shadow of
death" (Ps 23,4; Lk 1,79; cf. Ezek 37), it was necessary to write
down what had previously been only the more fluidly expressive
spoken word. No wonder some of the things in Paul's letters have
wrung so contrary to human conscience in later ages, things such
as slavery, the subordination of women, and the expulsion from
church fellowship based upon judgment of the local congregation.7
What could more powerfully show the written
word to be a "graven image" within Ex 20,4 than the fact that
Jesus Christ himself wrote not a single word for posterity. His
only act of writing was in a medium that the elements would quickly
destroy (Jn 8,6,8),8
and the one Gospel that mentions it does not tell us what he wrote,
doubtless because of John's deep understanding of what was important
to pass on. Not only did Christ not write anything, but providence
had it that no image of his mineral-physical body was preserved
for posterity by the art of his day, as was done for other prominent
persons. The fact that he was the most exalted human being who
ever lived yet left neither physical likeness nor writing is a
circumstance whose significance cannot be overemphasized.
But the written word became a practical
necessity even for sacred purposes, commencing at approximately
the time of First Isaiah (Is 1-39). However, if the Bible was
to present the deepest and most critical spiritual realities for
humanity's guidance, it had to present the archetypal image (image-ination)
in all its magnitude, and to do so in a manner that would be meaningful
at all times during the human being's evolutionary passage through
the "valley of the shadow"—when God's face was "hidden" through
the densification and materialization process. Hence the biblical
narrative was given in allegorical mode, utilizing sufficient
historical phenomena but always as the servant of the higher spiritual
reality. When the time is right, and the soul has sufficiently
developed to receive it ("I have yet many things to say to you,
but you cannot bear them now," Jn 16,12), the higher truth will
be revealed by the Holy Spirit to those whose karma (the higher
law) permit its recognition. The Holy Spirit "will teach you all
things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you"
(Jn 14,26). It "will guide you into all the truth" and "declare
to you the things that are to come. [It] will glorify me, for
[it] will take what is mine and declare it to you. All that the
Father has is mine; therefore I said that [it] will take what
is mine and declare it to you" (Jn 16,13-15). At that time it
will be seen that the higher truth was there in the Bible all
along—and the Bible is "holy" writing in that respect alone.
Evolution,
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