Lecture XI

This scene of Peter's avowal now begins to reveal an infinitely profound meaning to those who have a dawning understanding of it. It denotes the founding of the humanity of the future—a humanity based upon the Ego-nature in man. What takes place in this intimate conversation between Christ and those who were closest to Him is that Christ transmits the power He Himself has brought from the Macrocosm to what the disciples are to establish. And from this point onwards the Gospel of St. Matthew recounts how the disciples are led upwards, step by step, to the stage where the powers of the Sun and of the Cosmos gathered together in the Christ Being can flow into them. We know that one form of Initiation is an expansion into the Macrocosm. And because Christ Himself is the impulse in this Initiation, He leads His disciples out into the Cosmos. While an individual aspirant is undergoing the process of this Initiation he passes consciously into the Macrocosm, gathering knowledge of it by degrees. Christ descends as it were from the Macrocosm, makes manifest its instreaming forces and conveys them to the disciples.