In the Light of Truth

60. The Son of Man

A terrible curse has lain on mankind since the crime committed in murdering Jesus of Nazareth, the Bringer of Truth. Men did not recognise the real importance of the most important prophecy of this greatest of prophets — and even today, they pass by this glad promise, their eyes closely blindfolded, and the consequences will be that a great part of the human race will stumble past the last and only possibility of saving themselves, into the abyss of destruction.

The prophecy concerning the coming of the Son of Man was meant to be a ray of hope and also a warning.

But Jesus, the Bringer of Truth, was naturally abhorred by the Powers of Darkness, who influenced the masses to hate and persecute Him, and so confused and misled them that, not only did they not recognise Him — the Son of God — but also evidently lacked all sense of the importance of His Message even at the time when it was given.

The human mind was too dense and too self-centred to be able to grasp and clearly understand such a message. Messages coming from heights so far above the region man came from, passed him by unheeded, leaving no impression behind. To understand this message aright, there should have been a substratum of convinced faith to welcome it, but this not even the apostles were possessed of at that time.

The soil on which the Redeemer's Words fell, was too overgrown with weeds. To this must be added the excitement and agitation caused by the terrible experiences they had gone through in the Saviour's vicinity, all pressed into a few years of time, which naturally caused their feelings to concentrate on His Person so that when He spoke of another person in the distant future, what He said was not taken literally as it was meant, but was again applied to Him.

Thus the error has lived on in the minds of men until the present day. The Unbelievers did not trouble themselves about the Saviour's words and the Believers, just on account of their belief, violently opposed and prevented serious criticism of what tradition transmitted, from holy awe of offending against the Saviour's Word. But in so doing they overlooked the fact that it was not a question of His own original words but of what had been written down from tradition, long after His life on earth.

Thus the words, quite naturally, were subject to unconscious modification in men's minds, and were coloured by their personal views. There is a certain greatness, it is true, in this faithful adherence and up-holding of time-honoured human tradition, therefore, it shall not be blamed. Still, in spite of all this, the consequences resulting from erroneous conclusions based on faulty tradition do not fail to raise an obstacle in the way, for the law of returns cannot be circumvented in any case. And if this obstruction does no more than debar their progress, it is disastrous, for men must then perforce come to a standstill, till a word revealing the truth releases them.

He who believes in the Son of God and in His Word and does not regard it as a dead letter, but, having rightly interpreted it, lives according to its teaching, naturally must not wait for the Son of Man, for the latter only teaches what the Son of God already taught; but he can only forego the Son of Man's teaching if he has rightly understood the Saviour's words.

He, however, who clings to erroneous tradition and is blinded by error, cannot rise till his error is cleared up. It has been reserved for the Son of Man to do this, because the limited understanding of mankind is not capable of clearing away the brambles and creepers which have overgrown the truth.

Jesus spoke of the Coming of the Son of Man as the last possibility of salvation and pointed out that with His Coming judgment would take place and sentence be passed. Therefore, those who are then not willing, who are too stiff-necked or too indolent to accept explanation, must irrevocably be cast out. From this it follows that opportunity for man to reconsider and make up his mind anew will not recur.

After long and patient waiting the Time of the End will come; then there will be great tribulation such as was not since the beginning of the world. That again will be accompanied by the fierce struggle between Light and Darkness, which must end in the complete annihilation of Darkness.

It is not to be expected that all these events will coincide with human expectations, wishes and ideas; all past experience shows that this is never the case. It never happened that what God willed, agreed with what man was looking forward to. Reality always proved to be different from what man had preconceived, and it was always only long, long after, that he slowly grasped the meaning of what had happened. The spirit of man has gained nothing in the course of the ages, but has, on the contrary, become much more material.

The Son of Man! A veil still hangs over Him and His time. And if here and there a vague presentiment arises in a man's mind and awakens a longing for His Day to come, the many who are full of longing will probably pass Him by unsuspecting, nor will they wish to recognise Him, because their expectations promised them something different.

It is very difficult for man to accustom himself to the idea that a Divine being on the earth must externally be the same as other human beings in obedience to the Law of God.

Man will and must have His Divine being transcendental, and alas, he is so fast bound that he would not be capable of seeing aright what is transcendental, much less would he be able to bear the sight of it; nor is this in the least necessary.

The man who seeks to understand the Will of his Maker in the natural laws of the universe, will soon discover the truth, and will then perceive that Divinity can only come to him in a garb which harmonises with these adamantine laws and not otherwise. The result will be that he will become vigilant and will carefully scrutinise and apply the Divine law to all he meets and refrain from judging by human standards.

Hence, when the hour comes, he will recognise who it is, who brings him freedom through the Word. And he will be convinced by his own investigation and not by listening to the voice of the by-standers.

Every man who thinks, must of himself come to the conclusion that the Son of God and the Son of Man cannot be one and the same person. The difference is quite clearly expressed in the words themselves. Although Christ lived on earth in the flesh, it was a condition from the first that the pure Divinity in God the Son should be reunited to the pure Divinity of God the Father. This could not be otherwise.

The Son of God confirms this Himself when He says, He goes to His Father, and that He is one with His Father. For this reason His Mission of Mediator between God and His created universe could only last a limited time. The Son of God being purely Divine, was necessarily drawn by the attraction of the more powerful homogeneity to the sphere from which He came. That He must return thither and remain there after having laid aside all that was not Divine prevented Him from being a mediator between the Godhead and His created universe with mankind for all time. The result of the Son of God's return and reunion with the Father would have been that a new cleft would have separated the Godhead from His Creation, for a mediator between them would have been missing. The Son of God himself announced the Coming of the Son of Man who then was to be the Mediator between the Godhead and His Creation in perpetuity. In this lies the sublime love of the Creator for His work.

The difference between the Son of Man and the Son of God is that, though proceeding from unsubstantiate Divinity itself, the Son of Man is at the same time connected with the sphere of self-conscious spiritual beings. He is a part of both and thus forms a bridge between Divinity and the culminating point of His Creation. This union involves the obligation of being separated from Divinity unsubstantiate, but allows of admittance to Divinity, which moreover is a necessary condition. The admixture of spirituality to Divinity prevents a reunion which would otherwise be unavoidable. This again is a sacrifice of Love on the part of the Creator, the fulfilment of a promise of such magnitude that only God Himself is capable of giving and of keeping. That is the difference between the Son of God and the Son of Man. Humanity will hardly ever be able to grasp its full significance.

This also justifies the designation Son of Man; for in Him a twin birth took place: there is the Son that was born of Divinity, and there is the Son that issued from the Region of Spirituality. From the lower sphere of that region the germs of the human souls come as unconscious spirit sparks.

The Mission of the Son of Man is the continuation and completion of the mission of the Son of God as the latter could only be a temporary mediator. Hence this continuation and completion is at the same time a confirmation, making the Mission stable and permanent. Whereas the Son of God was born into the world, without previous preparation of any kind and straightway began His Mission, the Son of Man went through a long preparatory course before beginning His Mission; His task being more terrestrial than that of the Son of God. Coming from the highest heights, he had to descend to the lowest depths not only before but after coming into the world, so as to experience in His own person all the misery and suffering man is heir to. Only then will He be able, when His hour comes, to interfere effectively in the grievances and short-comings of the world and help bring about salutary changes. For this reason, it was not enough for Him to learn the bitter sides of life; he had also to suffer from them.

Again it was for the sake of man that He had to undergo apprenticeship in this way. To man's limited understanding such guidance from above is incomprehensible, for he can only judge by externals; therefore it was just the Son of Man's life that they reproached Him with, thus trying to make His task more difficult. The very same that they did at the time of Christ. The Son of Man had to learn how painful are the results of error and underwent that suffering too in the interests of the future welfare of mankind; and the Powers of Darkness, trembling at the prospect of annihilation, will inflame man's hatred and incite them to use these painful experiences as stones to throw at Him.

That such incredible things still can happen in spite of Christ's life on earth, finds its explanation in the fact that in reality more than half the present inhabitants of the earth do not belong here but should be maturing in far lower regions. This is all owing to man's gradual moral deterioration, the result of his having made himself the slave of his intellect.

When man's limited intellect gets the upper-hand it will always further and encourage what is material and its accompanying evils. Thus the decline of a higher standard of morals made a breach through which a hand was held out to souls belonging to lower spheres, by grasping which they rose to incarnation here — souls who otherwise could never have come on the earth's surface on account of their heavy weight and density.

But above all, this is due to the purely animal sensations indulged in during sexual intercourse and the general striving for the lusts of the flesh which has been customary for centuries past and has enabled inferior souls to climb up. These dark souls circle round the pregnant woman and profit by the opportunity presented to incarnate. The light souls have, until now, voluntarily retired before the darkness, to avoid soiling themselves.

Gradually it has come to pass that the ethereal surrounding of the earth has grown denser, darker and heavier, so heavy that the physical matter of the globe itself is kept out of its appointed course, a course that would have made it more accessible to higher spiritual influence. Therefore, as the greater number of all incarnated souls rightfully belong to regions which stand much lower than the earth itself, it will be but Divine justice that such souls be swept away to sink back to the place to which they belong.

There they are all on the same plane and have no opportunity of burdening themselves with fresh sin. They are better able to mature in their own sphere, rising by successive steps through suffering.

It does not lie with mankind to choose the Son of Man, God's messenger. It will be by the power of God that He will come at the proper time; it will be in an hour when mankind, helpless and prostrate, is whining for mercy and deliverance. Then they will cease to revile; consternation and terror will silence them, and they will willingly accept the gifts the Creator gives them through His envoy. But he who will not accept shall be cast forth for all eternity.

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