In its esoteric sense, the risen Christ is an emblem – built upon many symbols in Biblical literature – of the supreme intelligence dwelling in the holy temple of man, or, more accurately, of the mind. It is the end goal of human consciousness so aptly expressed by the Apostle Paul who stated, “I travail in birth until Christ be formed IN you.” The same sentiment is expressed in John 4:2, which further states, “Christ must come in the flesh,” or the expression of Jesus in the Gospel of John 14:20 which states, “In that day you will realize [consciously perceive] that I am in my father, and you are in me, and I in you.” In the context of all these scriptural expressions, one can begin to grasp Luke 17:21: “The kingdom of God is [truly] within you.” As above, so below. 

But what is this supreme intelligence, the risen Christ, in the MIND of man? I like to think of it as the supra-rational order of the Logos, which is an alchemical combination of two concepts: love, or unity, achieved through the wisdom of experience, wherein the spiritual law, or karma, is ever striving to bring to equilibrium between the knowledge of good and evil within man. Jesus is THE MASTER emblem of the mind which achieved this great feat in human form. For he fulfilled the law, and IN Christ Jesus, the schoolmaster, or law, achieved its end result. True liberty from that law is the mind’s destiny. Again, in its esoteric sense, this liberty is expressed through the mind that is no longer identified with, or trammeled by, the passions expressed in the lower mind through the bodies of man. As Paul states, and I paraphrase many of his thoughts…these members must be mortified if the mind is ever to be regenerated and escape the prison shackles of what he termed the “flesh.” For he also states, the mind of the flesh is death…” (Romans 8:6). 

The journey is long and arduous. There are many mental giants to slay. In our greatest trials and adversities, the Kingdom of Heaven is taken by force. Not physical force, but mental force. This mental force is the control of thought and emotion, that contrary to our true nature, is usually governed by personal desire in the flesh…until the resurrection, or that which is the conqueror, the Self over the Not-Self. Christ over the flesh.

But this is a paradox. How can using our mental faculties help us achieve spiritual growth if it is Christ, the true redeemer, and not the efforts of man him or herself? 

The paradox is easily resolved, and one finds that it is really no paradox at all when one understands how the MIND grows spiritually. The rest of this post will deal with that subject in detail using some of the Apostle Paul’s greatest teachings. 

Let’s consider the supposed paradox further: no man can redeem him or herself as traditional church doctrine teaches, because it is only through the saving grace of Christ. But the esoteric doctrine of past ages taught that man must save himself through his or her own unrelenting effort. Who is right? I believe both are right, because the concept of Christ coming in the flesh is an inherent part of both paths – faith and works – expressed through mental energy. My scripture to support this idea is written: 

“As a man THINKETH in his heart, so is he…” (Proverbs 23:7). 

Let’s break this down a little further. Paul uses symbolism to express this process. When the symbols are understood correctly, I believe the paradox is resolved. The author of Peter states that Paul’s writings are hard to understand. The reason for this is that Paul is using language that is esoteric / symbolic, and his symbolism expresses a process of MIND and THOUGHT. The popular teaching of Paul which states that a woman must be silent in church and submit to her husband is not speaking in literal terms. Failure to understand the esoteric teachings of Paul has led to misogynism in traditional religious doctrine. But Paul had no such ideas in mind. Paul uses terms like husband and wife, or man and woman, to show a process of regeneration of THOUGHT, which is why so many Greek words are used to express the concepts of correct thought in his writings. Let’s break down the symbols. 

Man means the intellectual side of the mind. A woman is the emotional side of the mind. Man (mind) and woman (emotion) come together to produce sons and daughters, or more thoughts and emotions. The firstborn sons which God demands that the Israelites (little developed mental qualities) dedicate to God simply means that our first thoughts in all life should be dedicated to spiritual pursuit. When this happens, then the daughters of men (mind) become the righteous woman, meaning a healthy balance between the intellect and emotion-nature within us. Isn’t this the true meaning of Paul’s words when he states that we are the bride to be prepared for the bridegroom which is Christ? When our thoughts are captivated by personal desire (the serpent seducing Eve), the daughter or emotion within man becomes the harlot. The harlot symbolically cheats the intellect within each individual through adultery. Did not Eve do the same? Did she not symbolically drag the intellect (Adam) into the depths of sin, or separation from spiritual life of the spirit of God. This is the true meaning of the story of Adam and Eve. Adam, or the intellect, was not deceived (1 Tim. 2:14), for by its very nature, pure intellect of a spiritual nature cannot be deceived. But when it becomes entangled with lower emotion, or personal desire, it is always deceived, because personal ambition is the very root and cause of God’s saying: Man’s heart (mind) is deceitful. Why? Because personal desire, when mired with thought, creates a separateness from God, which is missing the mark, or sin, the veil. This veil is what Paul means when he states now we see, or perceive mentally, through a glass darkly (1 Cor. 13:12). Consider that when the fallen angels (higher minds from heaven) came unto the daughters (or emotions) of men before Noah’s flood. What was the result? That the imagination, or THOUGHTS of man, was evil, or veiled from the truth!

The garden of Eden is about the separation of mind and emotion through Adam and Eve, which come into conflict with one another after the desire mind (the serpent) tempts the emotional side of the mind to eat (perceive) the knowledge of good and evil. Paul understood very well that the concept of Good and Evil meant in genesis relates to karma, for he states, let God not be mocked, for a man shall reap what he sows. But this law of karma, represented in the Torah, has a redeeming quality, which is why Paul calls all of the law, or Torah, spiritual. This is also the reason why he saw Christ, or the Logos, within the Old Testament working alongside the Israelite delivery. For Paul, the Isrealite delivery is the mind liberated from captivity in Egypt, which represents mental bondage. So how does this law of karma have a redeeming quality? Because as a man reaps what he sows, he slowly becomes self-aware, through experience, of that which causes life or death. It is truly a schoolmaster to show us that the mind, when captivated by desire, brings death (or separation / sin) from the unity of God. The Israelites, once in the wilderness, desired to go back to that mental prison in Egypt because they had “flesh” to eat. The mind likes to stay where it is comfortable, even if it is a prison, because ignorance can be temporarily quite comforting. But even in that temporary comfort, death is the end result, for all the wages of sin (separation from God) are death. 

God states, my people perish for a lack of knowledge. Ignorance, in all aspects of life, leads to destruction. The constant cycle of life and death, or, more accurately, birth and rebirth, is the destiny of the mind that has not conqueurored its desire nature, which is more subtle than any beast (passion of the body) in the field (the mental arena of life). The risen Christ at the end of the long mental journey signifies the release of the mind in physical birth and rebirth, and being able to explore higher conscious realms with a new type of spiritual body that hasn’t lost its true identity in the flesh. 

So when Paul uses terms like man and woman, he is expressing the process whereby the mind of man once again unites Adam and Eve, and the conflict between intelligence and emotion can be finally resolved. 

Let’s use an easy analogy. All married couples go through mental and emotional turmoil after the honeymoon stage is over, and the different currents of thought and personal desires of each spouse begin to clash. Why do they clash? Because each is an individual with different personal desires, interests, passions, beliefs, etc. What originally brought them together, personal desire, eventually becomes the very thing that tears them apart. The married couple that grows to maturity and remains a happy healthy unit can only do so by each one sacrificing his or her own personal desires for the other. Such a sacrificial love of action from the mental efforts of both parties brings a certain intellectual and emotional balance to the divided unit. Paul uses the natural concept of marriage to show how the same process happens within the individual. The risen Christ can only arise in the flesh when personal desires have been checked. Not only checked, but conquered. This is the long and arduous battle within the mind (the crucifixion of Golgotha, the skull / mind)  or church, of the human being. For the church is not the body itself, but an aspect of the mind which is free from personal desires and pulls of our limiting and transient personalities. Personalities are formed through a complex web of thoughts and emotions in response to the environment and one’s own innate essence built up from former lives. It is very real to our current limited reality, but also transient and corrupt in the grander scheme in the unfoldment of consciousness. The mind, the immortal thinker, is a sojourner (the prodigal Son) in this land we call the body, and the personality which is formed in each life from the mind’s interaction of being in the body, must be transcended if the mind is to be released from its prison. Hebrews 11:8-10 esoterically illustrates this process which is also the allegory of the prodigal son:

“By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going. ⁹ By faith he made his home in the promised land like a stranger in a foreign country; he lived in tents, as did Isaac and Jacob, who were heirs with him of the same promise. ¹⁰ For he was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God.”

The “tents” which are spoken of are the limited bodies which the immortal mind must endure its long process of adversity through, to learn and grow, and become self-consciously aware. This is why the original tabernacle of Moses in the wilderness was all called the “tent” of meeting for God and the people. The “city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God,” is all the mental faculties gathered together under the Christ, who sends the Holy Spirit, or wisdom, which transcends the limited nature of the bodies of man. When this is achieved, as Revelation states, “In him that overcometh I will make a pillar in the temple of my God (permanent mental foundation), and he shall go no more out…” (the cycle of birth and death, birth and rebirth).

Now let’s get into the nitty gritty of why Paul really tells us that a woman must be silent in the church. First off realize that the church is your higher mind, the immortal aspect of your soul. It has to be constructed of Christ, and little by little, our conscious essence is added to it in each life that you live whenever a thought reaches heaven because it is void of personal desire. It is the body (faculties of the mind) that the Christ is responsible for constructing as it permeates every aspect of our being, both body and soul. The disciples being centered around Jesus is representative of the 12 mental faculties being “gathered” together by Christ to be turned into apostles (mature mental faculties) at the next stage of spiritual and mental growth. Thus, spiritually speaking, we progress from Israelites, to disciples, to apostles. The Apostle Paul, that outside apostle who received direct revelation from the risen Christ on the road to Damascus, is symbolic of the bridge that births Christ within the mind of man. 

Now Paul tells us that a woman must be silent in the church because it is our emotions of personal desire (the woman – think Eve that succumbed to desire) that distorts the intellectual and rational nature of man’s thinking process. The heart of man is deceitful above all else, because the emotional woman (within man, as the unready bride of Christ) is always speaking loudly and drowning out the ability for true intellectual discernment, or truth of the spirit. This is also the great harlot of scripture, and it must be silenced because it always distorts the truth through its own personal desires. So when one does as Jesus states, and goes into the prayer closet and shuts the door for spiritual guidance, all emotional thought governing the intellect must be silenced! But in this act of the focused mind, the seeming paradox arises. Even though it takes mental effort to silence the emotions, the intellect, in this act, is itself laying down it’s life (silencing desire) for the woman, which in turn allows the harlot to be transformed into the higher emotions of love and unity, or the righteous woman! In such a sacrificial act of the intellect, through faith AND works, the intellect stops being in conflict with its emotional side. It leads in love, which brings unity between the two. 

This is why Adam states a man shall leave his mother and father (the parents of karma and the law) and cleave unto his wife to make them one flesh. This is also why Jesus stated that in the beginning (before the fall in the garden), God meant for man to be ONE FLESH. 

Please don’t misunderstand. I am not dividing genders like the dead letter of the law would have us believe. Each man and woman has an intellect and emotional nature within them. 

Those who think of a very mature married couple can see how this plays out on our physical plane of life, which REFLECTS a higher spiritual truth about the MIND. When a man leads in a LOVING way, not sacrificing his own intellectual convictions, the woman’s desire naturally is to her husband (Genesis 3:16). Most women respect an intelligent man that leads and governs his own life with self control, inwardly being a rock, but expressing this firmness outwardly in a gentle, kind, and loving manner. Again, in the esoteric aspect, we are speaking spiritually about the MIND. But even in it’s exoteric expression, one can see the truth in this concept in some instances. 

The process of marriage counseling is another good analogy to grasp the esoteric concept of Paul’s thinking process. When the mind becomes focused inward, it becomes meditative, and then through this inward self reflection process self awareness can trace its emotional-thought patterns which cause reaction to situations based on desire or raw passion, leading to conflict. The marriage counselor of couples therapy serves as a mediator to get the other spouse to perceive mentally where their own fault lies so that they can change and allow the relationship to heal. But man, as an individual, must have his or her own mediator, the Christ within, which is a process of rationalization at first, that grows into an intuition of truth as the higher emotion of love and unity, or reconciliation, happens within the mind. Slowly but surely, when meditation is done correctly in the church, the mind can begin a healing process, whereby its own internal conflict can be exposed, and the limited personality comes out of the dark and into the light of Christ. In this mental process, of defeating mental giants in the land (the mind or soul), that the process of losing one’s own life (the limited personality) for the sake of Christ’s life, that Christ as the head of the church rises within the mind. Jesus stated, a man must lose his own life in order to gain life (Matthew 10:39). Man’s personality is simply a cut-off entity from the supreme wisdom of God. It is a false entity that is at enmity with God. It is the Cain within, as Cain represents the personality, but the process of going within enables the Abel within to offer correct sacrifice that is pleasing to God – and these are the aspirations towards a higher truth. 

A few more thoughts. It has been said that the intellect without intuition is blind, but intuition without the intellect is empty. This is a crucial concept which the philosopher Immauel Kant reintroduced into an intellectual stream of society born of reason. I say “reintroduced,” because nothing is new under the sun, and it was a foundational tenant, though expressed in complicated esoteric terms, from ages past. But the point is this: both intellect and intuition must be brought together in union, each part of the whole united to function properly which brings the light of wisdom into the soul or mind. This is the function of Christ as head of the church. Christ is in the entire process, and becomes the resurrected Christ when that inner power and united faculties of the mind is risen back to paradise, or a state of heavenly union. 

Just as Christ is an emblem of Divine Wisdom (a feminine function relating to intuition reaped from the womb / matrix / body / Christ IN flesh), the serpent in the Garden of Eden is also a divine emblem. And it can be properly understood esoterically only in its relation to the Logos in the grand unfoldment of its function. Jesus stated, “As Moses raised the serpent in the wilderness (the battleground of defeating mental giants), so must the son of man (mind) be lifted up” (John 3:14). The serpent caused the fall of mind, but allegorically it is really no fall. It illustrates the truth that the mind was no longer united with God because the desire of the flesh (the serpent mind which crawls on the ground, earth, lower soul) put the intellect and emotional nature in conflict with one another, resulting in the “lower mind” which is that which is operating through the body and its animal passions and desire nature. The higher mind, or the church, must be built. When one’s personal desires are sacrificed, the serpent mind can be “lifted,”  or transformed / regenerated back up to its proper place. The esoteric interpretation of Mark 16:18 is the key: one of the signs that shall follow a believer is that he or she will “lift” up serpents. The original Greek word there implies a raising of the desire-mind to its original condition of purity before the fall. It is the serpent mind (or personal desires based on conflicting thought and emotion / personal desire) which is “cursed” to crawl on the ground. This means a mind operating in the body, or lower soul of man, where it is cursed to die because it is imprisoned by its captivating carnality. And now we can also truly understand the depth and meaning of Buddha’s second noble truth, which is the same as the Bible’s New Testament: “All suffering comes from personal selfish desire.”

The LOGOS of John chapter one I believe reveals this to us: the sacrificial Lamb that came down from heaven to oversee the rational order of creation by becoming involved in it, even in it’s separated and sinful condition. This is the real meaning of Jesus being sacrificed since the foundation of creation, and visiting the depths of hell, the body, or the grave, sheol. This is also the esoteric interpretation of that scripture in Acts which states that the body of Jesus did not endure corruption because he fulfilled the spiritual law which frees all bodies from corruption. Remember, that through the LOGOS everything was made in heaven and earth. What we see as evil or good, God sees differently. God made both evil and good it states in Isaiah. Evil is not some entity called the devil, but it is the tool God uses through karmic results to bring man to the knowledge of the Christ when he or she CHOOSES life. It is the same schoolmaster which God used to reveal to Job the truth of God’s nature. Before Job was tempted, he only knew God through the hearing of the ear, or lower mind knowledge. But after Satan is used, Job goes through the process of evil to come to a more full and complete knowledge of God by the end of the book. The three friends who accused him esoterically symbolize the three bodies of the lower mental, astral, and physical nature. When one understands this deep esoteric teaching, many of the seemingly contradictions of the dead letter of scripture will be cleared up for you. For the immortal thinker that you truly are is not the body, astral / emotional mind of desire, incubated in a physical body – Job’s three friends. But it is Job, the individuality itself! As is Noah and Daniel of scripture, which explains this one great spiritual revelation:

“Though these three men, Noah, Daniel, and Job, were in it [physical life], they should deliver their own souls BY THEIR RIGHTEOUSNESS, saith the LORD GOD” (Ezekiel 14:14). By understanding the esoteric nature of this scripture of Ezekiel, one may understand the entire Bible from beginning to end in the bigger picture, and the risen Christ within, which must be birthed within you through travail (the karma of spiritual law / TORAH). For you are the immortal thinker, the I AM THAT I AM, trapped in a physical, emotional, and lower analytical mind. 

Blessings!