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A Series of Lessons in Mystic Christianity1062
into heaven”—this passage shows the belief that He returned to the place
from which He came, for the Nicene Creed has stated that he “came down
from heaven and was incarnate…and was made man.”
The passage in both creeds stating that He then took his place “on the
right hand of the Father” is intended to show that He took the place of
the highest honor in the gift of the Father. The mystic teachings explain this
by showing that The Christ is separated from The Father by but the most
ethereal intervening of spiritual substance, and that He is a Cosmic Principle
second in importance only to the Father. Truly this is the place of honor on
“the right hand of the Father.”
“He shall come to judge the quick and the dead.”
In this passage we see the intimation that not only with the “quick” or
living people is The Christ concerned, but also with the “dead,” that is, with
those who “passed out” before and after His time and who have passed on
to the Astral World, as we have explained in this lesson. Whether or not the
framers of the Creed so understood it—whether or not they were deluded
by the tradition of the “Day of Judgment”—certainly the Early Christians, or
rather, the mystics among them, understood the teachings as we have given
them and spoke of Him as “living in the dead as well as in the living,” as one
of the occult records expresses it.
“The communion of saints” is the spiritual understanding of the Mysteries
by the Illumined Ones. “The forgiveness of sins” is the overcoming of the
carnal mind and desires. “The resurrection of the dead and the life of
the world to come” is the promise of life beyond the grave, and not the
crude idea of the physical resurrection of the body, which has crept into
the Apostles’ Creed, evidently having been inserted at a later date in order
to bolster up the pet theories of a school of theologians. Note that the
Nicene Creed says merely “the dead” and not “the body.” The version of
the teachings preserved by the Mystics has a corresponding passage, “And
we know the truth of the deathlessness of the soul.” (The italics are ours.)