The Beatitudes
We showed in the last lecture that what Christ Jesus means for human evolution is the gradual equipment of the human ego with those forces and capacities formerly only possible of attainment in the Mysteries of the past, when the ego was to a certain extent suppressed. In all ancient initiations it was possible to rise up into the spiritual worlds, into what we called the Kingdoms of Heaven, but with human nature constituted as it was in pre-Christian times, this could not be done while within the ego or while the nature of the ego remained as it was on the physical plane. We have, therefore, to distinguish two conditions of the human soul; one, recognized to-day as normal during waking life, when the objects of the physical plane are perceived by means of the ego; another, in which the ego is clouded, and there is no clear consciousness. It was during this latter condition of his soul that man was exalted to the Kingdoms of Heaven in the days of the ancient Mysteries.