VI. Christ and the 20th Century

The old gnosis sought the Christ-Being in that region in which mankind hovered before he had assumed his material existence, and where he felt himself surrounded alone by spiritual life and spiritual reality. If we understand this ancient gnosis rightly, then must we look upon it from the gnostic point of view, that when man had so far developed as to have reached a point when his Etheric Body should be enclosed within a material covering in order that he might take part in the general course of physical evolution, there remained behind in the purely spiritual realms what might be termed a by-gone companion of man or ‘alter ego’, in the form of an element of the Christ-Being, which did not descend with him into the physical world. Further, according to this conception, mankind was destined to undergo a process of continued development in the material plane, and it was his mission to show evidence of achievement and progress. Hence, according to the gnosis, this Christ-Element continues to dwell in the spiritual realms while mankind undergoes his period of material evolution, so that during the whole time of man’s earthly history, the Christ-Being is not to be sought in that region to which man is related as a physical perceptual entity, but alone in the realms of pure spirit.