In the Light of Truth

7. The creation of man

God created man in his own image and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life. There are two separate processes: the fashioning and the animating. Both processes were strictly subject to the existing Divine Laws, outside which nothing can take place. No expression of God's Will will set itself in opposition to His own inalterable laws. Every revelation and every promise is fulfilled in agreement with these laws and must find its fulfilment in them, as there is no other alternative.

Thus it was also with the Creation of man: a step forward in the mighty process, the transition from the material to quite a new and higher state.

Before coming to the making of man, it is necessary to know something of the ethereal world, for the man of flesh and blood has been interpolated as a stepping stone between the ethereal and physical part of Creation, whereas his spirit has its origin in the world of pure spirit.

“God created man after his own image.” This process was a long chain of development which went on strictly in accordance with the Divine Laws God interwoven in His Creation.

These laws, a part of Himself, work automatically and unceasingly to do His Will thus, also in the making of man, the crown of all His work, in whom all the different species existing in Creation were to be united. For this purpose, by a very gradual process of development, the vessel was formed in the material world, in which an immortal spark could be incarnated. This process of moulding, continuously striving towards perfection, in time produced the highest species of animal, an animal who could think and thus make use of external aids to assist him in his life and to serve him for defence. Today, we can notice lower species of animals who make use of certain aids in securing and storing their food and who exhibit astounding cunning in self-defence.

The above-mentioned higher species of animal became extinct, was swept away by the changes in the crust of the earth. They are called the primordial man. But it is great error to say that they are man's ancestors. With equal right one could aver that the cow were part-mother to the child, as in the first months of their lives, children take cow's milk to build up their bodies, and thus by the cow's help, remain alive and grow.

That perfect, thinking animal, primordial man, has about as much as that to do with the actual man of the present day, for the physical body of man is but the indispensable instrument that he requires to enable him to exert power in every direction in the physical world, and to make himself understood.

To assert that man is descended from the ape, is going too far, this is making a small section of the process illustrate the whole. The main point has been left out.

It would be right if the physical body were the man himself. But the physical body is only the covering that he lays aside, when he returns into the ethereal world.

How then was the first human being produced? The highest stage of physical development in the material world having been reached in a perfect animal, it became necessary to avoid coming to a standstill, or indeed retrogressing, that some change should take place. This eventuality had been foreseen and provided against, and, when the physical body had reached its highest state of development, the spirit of man who had begun as an immortal spark (which had travelled through the immaterial realms, renewing and purifying all on its path) stood fully developed on the threshold at the appointed time, to enter into the physical vessel for the purpose of its further advancement.

While the physical vessel was developing to perfection in the physical world, the human soul, in the other world was developing sufficient strength and power of resistance to be able to retain its independence in the physical world. It was the union of these two parts that connected the different worlds more closely, from the physical and invisible worlds up to the spiritual world.

The birth of man was the consummation of this process. Procreation itself is purely animal even today. The more or less elevated sentiments attending it, have no necessary connection with the act itself, but they have a certain spiritual effect, owing to their attracting other sentiments (vibrations) of the same nature, and this is of the greatest importance. The development of the foetus is also purely physical, till pregnancy is half-way through.

At this period, when the foetus has reached a certain point of development, the spiritual body or soul, intended for this particular birth, and which, up till then, has kept close to the future mother, is incarnated.

The entrance of the soul causes the first movements of the growing child. The pregnant woman now, for the first time, feels blessed in the consciousness of the second being in her, which she is able to sense by touch, and her sentiments will now be in harmony with the developing soul!

Such is the process at every human birth. But to return to the first birth of man. This was the great step in the development of Creation. On the one side, in the physical world, stood the most perfect animal ready to furnish the physical vessel for the coming man; on the other hand, in the invisible world, the fully developed human soul was waiting to incarnate in the physical vessel, in order together with it, to give a further impetus to the evolution of all matter towards spirituality. Thus, when an act of procreation between the most noble pair of the most perfect animals had taken place, it did not happen as before, at the hour of birth, that an animal soul,*(Lecture No. 49: The Difference in the Origin of Man and Beast) but a human soul, containing an immortal spark, stood waiting and entered the physical vessel.

Those human souls whose abilities had principally developed a positive nature sought to incarnate in a male body and those whose abilities were of a more delicate and negative nature sought to incarnate in a female body,*(Lecture No. 78: Sex) each naturally choosing the sex with which its nature had most affinity.

This process does not justify the assertion that man, who has his origin in the spiritual world, descends from the animal called the primordial man (Urmensch) which could but furnish the physical vessel. Even the most extreme materialist of today would not dream of considering himself directly related to an animal and yet there is, and always was, a close physical relationship, whereas the real, the living man, the ego, has no conformity with, or derivation from, the animal.

After his birth the first man stood alone in the world, without parents, for he could not accept animals, however highly developed, as parents, or wish for any communion with them.

Now the woman, thanks to more valuable spiritual qualities, should and could be really more perfect than the man, if she had only endeavoured to render the impulses given her clearer and more harmonious: whereby she might have become a power that would have revolutionised and furthered the whole of material creation to a high degree of perfection.

Unfortunately, it was just she who failed; she made herself the toy of the strong sensations which were her part; thus she even tarnished and defiled her feelings and her imagination.

What deep significance lies in the Biblical narrative of the eating from the tree of knowledge: how the woman, tempted by the serpent, offered the man the apple. This event could not, from the physical point of view, have been better illustrated. The apple was offered by the woman. This means that she became conscious of her charms and intended to exploit them. Man, in taking and eating the fruit, responded, and desire waxed strong in him to draw the attention of the woman to himself by accumulating treasure and making himself master of desirable possessions, and thereby enhancing his value in her eyes.

Thus it was that intellect with its accompanying attributes: greed of gain, falsehood, oppression, was nurtured and became all-powerful. In time it completely subjugated mankind; men of their own free-will made themselves slaves of what was in reality their tool. Intellect became their master and the result of this was that mankind's power of comprehension was limited within the narrow horizon of material matters. Men could no longer understand what was transcendental and spiritual and indeed had cut themselves off from Paradise, where time and space in our sense do not exist. It follows that, for the intellectual man, the experiences of the intuitive man, his gift of intuitive sight, and tradition generally, become unintelligible fairy tales.

The ever increasing number of materialists, those who are only capable of detecting grosser matter, such as is confined to time and space, deride the idealists to whom, owing to their more intense and more developed inner life, the way to transcendentalism is not quite barred, and dismiss them as dreamers, if not fools and even impostors.

But now, the hour is at hand when the next great section in the history of Creation will be reached, and another great step in advance be made. And this will bring about what the first step in man's evolution should have done: the birth of the intuitive man.

That is the man whose influence will further and ennoble all the physical part of the world, as it was originally purposed he should do on earth.

Then there will be no room left for the restraining or hindering work of the materialist, limited as it is by space and time. He will become a homeless stranger in every land. He will wither and pass away like chaff that is sifted from the wheat. Have a care that, when the time comes, you do not prove too light!

[Grail Message by Abdrushin]  [Resonances to the Grail Message]