Christians and the Esoteric

 It is often said that there is nothing esoteric in Christianity. Everything is public and out in the open, and there are no hidden secrets divulged only to higher level initiates. It is true that Christ did exteriorise the mysteries, enacting literally what had taken place symbolically in those ancient rites and so potentially making rebirth into spirit available to everyone who believed in him, though what belief in Christ really means in this context is something to ponder. But time moves on and what was applicable at one moment in history may be less so later on.

Spirituality means escaping the iron grip of matter. Not because matter is evil but because it is matter, i.e. not spirit or, at least, not spirit in its pristine, undisguised form. As one escapes matter one moves up through the levels of manifested reality which, in human terms, means through the levels of the physical nature, the emotions, thought and personal identity. Each one of these levels must be conquered but all are incorporated into the whole. We descend from the pure consciousness of the spiritual world into matter to learn the lessons of matter and acquire its virtues which are the qualities associated with action and doing, relating and feeling, and knowing and understanding, qualities one can only acquire through experience in a dualistic world of subject and object. In the process of our immersion in matter we can forget who we are and identify with the 'bodies' or modes of being through which we temporarily operate in order to gain the ability to become gods, free agents with creative power motivated by love. It is this false identification that is the problem so the fault does not lie with matter, which is merely the medium through which spirit expresses and comes to know itself, but our identification with it.

What does this have to do with the esoteric? Simply this. At an earlier phase of development the majority of human beings were focused in the physical and emotional worlds. Few people had developed mentally to a high level, but that is no longer the case. Many people have now reached a relatively high degree of intellectual development and these people need to understand. They cannot just proceed on faith. Their ability to believe must be coupled with understanding for them to flourish and grow spiritually, and for their belief actually to be rooted in the whole of their being. The esoteric is really just about knowledge. It is not spiritual in the spiritual sense but intellectual. And yet for modern man to be spiritual in the spiritual sense he needs intellectual support.

A follower of Christ in our day must combine a degree of esoteric understanding with faith. If he neglects this his faith will be shallow even if it is intense. His spiritual development will be limited and his entry into the mind of Christ will be partial. This is in line with the growth of human consciousness. The old ways may suffice for some but for those who would not just follow Christ but actually start to become like him then knowledge must supplement faith even if it remains the case that true knowledge actually arises from real faith. "Credo ut intelligam".

The esoteric is not there to replace faith in Christ. It is not a higher level of spirituality but a means of deepening faith and taking it from something that is exterior to the inner man, in the sense that it is located in thought and feeling, to something that is more like knowing through being. It elevates faith to a higher plane where the boundaries between faith and knowledge start to dissolve. If faith is of the heart, as it should be, then the esoteric is of the head and we need both to be spiritually whole. Indeed, only when we have both do we really have either one of them in the proper sense.