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A Series of Lessons in Mystic Christianity1052
His youthful mind was not able to grasp the truth of His real nature, but as
that human instrument became perfected by age and training, He realized
the Truth and perceived His own Divinity.
But even a God, such as he, could not raise up the world from its burden
of Karma, by acting from the outside. Under the Cosmic Laws, established
by the Absolute, such work could be performed only from within the circle
of earth-life. And so Jesus saw that to raise up Man, He must become a Man.
That is, to help lift the earth’s Karma, He must enter into it, and place Himself
within its Circle of Influence. And this He did.
We wonder if our readers can realize, even faintly, just what this sacrifice
meant? Think of a Pure Spirit—a Free Soul—so filled with the love for the
race of men as to renounce deliberately, for æons of time, total immunity
from all mortal existence, and willingly to place itself under the burden of
pain, woe, misery and sin which formed the earth-people’s Karma. It was a
thousand-fold greater sacrifice than would be that of a Man of the Highest
spiritual and mental development—an Emerson, for example—who, in order
to raise up the race of earth-worms, would deliberately place himself within
the being and nature of the Group-Soul animating the race of earthworms,
and then stay within its influence, striving ever upward and onward until
finally, after æons and æons of time, he was able to bring up the earthworm
Group Soul to the level of Man. Think of this, and then realize what a sacrifice
Jesus made of Himself.
In the Wilderness, when Jesus took the final steps of renunciation and
sacrifice, He at once passed within the circle of the Race Karma and laid
Himself open to all the pain, misery, temptations and limitations of a Man. His
power, of course, remained with Him, but He was no longer a God outside
of the world-life, but an imprisoned God working from within the race,
using His mighty power, but bound by the Karmic Law. He became open to
influences from which previously He had been immune. For instance when
He was “tempted” by the Devil of Personal Attainment, and urged to seek
worldly glory and renown, He was tempted only because He had taken