Quest Magazine

By Joy Mills

Originally printed in the Winter 2009 issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation: Mills, Joy. "On Fohat." Quest  97. 1 (Fall 2009): 17-19, 29.

The central principle of Theosophy is the fundamental oneness and wholeness of the universe. The ways in which the multiplicity of beings, with their almost infinite variety of expression and experience, arise out of this oneness constitute the metaphysics of Theosophy, and upon that depends in turn the inner consistency of its worldview. All the grand ideas, the wealth of fascinating detail, the rich symbolic imagery, the varying terminologies, and the enormous sweep of historical vision that we find expressed in Theosophical literature need to be ordered in terms of that inner consistency.

Much of the ordering has been done during the past century in terms of the mode or system that seemed best suited to the occasion or teacher. This is perfectly understandable, for the task is not an easy one, partly because the development of the One into the Many is at once subtle, complicated, and ambiguous, partly because there are many different ways of viewing the process, and partly because there are so many critical gaps in our knowledge. Nevertheless, we have one very important advantage: the world today is much more receptive to Theosophical metaphysics, which is certainly gaining support on many fronts, most importantly, science. Whether it is recognized as such or not is irrelevant.

Nonetheless, our task would be simpler if we could identify some of the really big questions that we must put to the literature in order to discover what we may call the "essence of Theosophy." One of the documents that I have found most significant for this purpose is called "Cosmological Notes," which is attributed to the Mahatma Morya and first appeared as an appendix to The Letters of H. P. Blavatsky to A. P. Sinnett. In it, Sinnett and his friend A. O. Hume pose some critical questions: What are the two kinds of knowledge? What is real knowledge? Who possesses it? What is primal?

In response, the Mahatma makes several statements that to my mind clearly identify the basic metaphysics. The first is this: "Everything in the occult universe, which embraces all the primal causes, is based upon two principles—Kosmic energy (Fohat or breath of wisdom) and Kosmic ideation." In this one sentence, the Mahatma establishes both the primacy of consciousness ("Kosmic ideation") and its principle of action ("Fohat").

The next question follows immediately: What is the one eternal thing in the universe that is independent of every other thing? To this the answer is space. But what is space, so conceived? While the writer of the notes does not expatiate, it is made clear elsewhere in the literature that not only is space the universal field of both existence (plenum) and nonexistence (void), but that it is equated with universal consciousness, which is thus the absolute condition of being. In Letter 119 of The Mahatma Letters (chronological edition), for instance, the Mahatma Koot Hoomi writes: "Space is infinity itself. It is formless, immutable and absolute. Like the human mind, which is the exhaustless generator of ideas, the Universal Mind or Space has its ideation which is projected into objectivity at the appointed time; but space itself is not affected thereby."

This is the root of what is known as the Logos Doctrine. Space is thus the ultimate, universal, unified field. Lama Anagarika Govinda points out that in the Indian tradition space is called akasha, that through which things step into visible appearance, i.e.,through which they possess extension or corporeality. Akasha comprises all possibilities of movement, not only physical but also spiritual, and also comprises infinite dimensions; it is called "the space of consciousness" (Foundations of Tibetan Mysticism, 137). In the Western theosophical tradition, the Neoplatonic philosopher Plotinus held that motion or movement derived from space.

I may seem to have devoted too much attention to space, but if one is to understand the nature of Fohat, it seems necessary to consider its mode or power of objectivity. This indicates the cosmological sequence which the Mahatma Morya affirms in his answer to the next question in the "Cosmological Notes": "What things are co-existent with space?" The reply is: (1) duration; (2) matter; (3) motion. The Mahatma explains by continuing, "for this is the imperishable life (conscious or unconscious as the case may be) of matter, even during the pralaya, or night of mind." What a lot in a very few words! Thus it is that from the eternal imperceptible rhythmic motion of space, Fohat, cosmic energy, springs into being, electrifying primordial matter into life.

Before we continue with our discussion of this universal force and its implications, it may be useful to reach a consensus regarding terminology on philosophical as well as on practical grounds. In science, the term "energy" is usually restricted to what is considered the measurable conserved quantity of thermodynamics. Therefore it could seem to be inappropriate to use the term when referring to "higher" or "nonmaterial" energies. But if we accept the broad definition of energy as the measurement of activity (which is a form of motion), we can reasonably defend the use of the term to define the measurement of activity at any and all levels, both universal and particular—whether it be vital, emotional, or psychodynamic, mental, or cosmic. Besides, we have no satisfactory substitute if we are to try to work with what the literature postulates about Fohat: that there is but one fundamental energy in the universe, whose varying manifestations lie along a spectrum that comprehends all known forms of energy (including the biological and the psychological) as well as a great many yet unknown.

To return to our theme, Theosophical metaphysics postulates one unified, universal field—space/consciousness—and one universal force or energy—Fohat—acting within that field. Theosophical doctrine holds that the original Fohatic energy is a tremendous power, vast enough to have caused the primal explosion that gave birth to the universe. The nature of such a formidable power is wholly beyond our experience, although it is certainly not beyond the limits of the scientific imagination. Of it the Mahatma Koot Hoomi says: "There is a force as limitless as thought, as potent as boundless will, as subtle as the essence of life, so inconceivably awful in its rending force as to convulse the universe to its centre, were it but used as a lever" (Mahatma Letter 90). The Secret Doctrine also reiterates that all the forms of energy known to science are but different expressions of the same original Fohatic power. Motion, sound, light, color, heat, cohesion, electricity, and magnetism are specifically mentioned; nuclear energy had, of course, not been discovered at the time HPB wrote. Just as all other fields are held to be manifestations of the one universal field of space/consciousness, so all the energies which activate the different fields (planes of nature) lie along one continuous Fohatic spectrum. Or, to put it differently, they constitute aspects of one basic, universal energy exhibiting itself under specific guises within given fields.

Many of these fields and energies are described in metaphorical terms in the literature, since they have hitherto lain outside the range of scientific observation. Today the phenomenon of life is coming within that range. Fohat is called the "animating principle electrifying every atom into life," thus establishing the basic Theosophical position that there is no such thing as inert or totally lifeless matter. Fohat is identified with prana or life energy in the Mahatma M.'s first statement, when he calls it the "breath of wisdom." It is not merely the vital or negentropic force in all living creatures, the push of sexual energy, and the mysterious "nerve force" of kundalini, but the fundamental cosmic "breath" which vivifies all of nature. And, as Lama Govinda has observed, "prana is not only subject to constant transformation, but is able at the same time to make use of various mediums of movement without interrupting its course" (FTM, 147).

The Secret Doctrine also stresses that Fohat is not a mechanical but an intellectual force—thus the breath of wisdom. This may be difficult for us to comprehend unless we see it as the dynamic link between cosmic mind and cosmic matter, created by their polar relationship and partaking of the character of both. Without this link, both would be incapable of activity or of being acted upon, so Fohat is itself the multidimensional, many-faceted measure of that activity. By means of Fohat, divine thought is directed outward, impressing itself on matter, which it thus shapes, electrifies, and organizes in the direction of order—which is characteristic of cosmic mind. Quite obviously, therefore, this cosmic energy is at every level associated with mind in the universal sense, and with minds and mental energy in particular. The implication is that all thought can be seen in terms of mental energy; that is, as the modification of mind— the measurement of its internal motion or activity vis- -vis the world external to individual consciousness.

Another implication stems from another fundamental of Theosophical metaphysics: the natural unfoldment of the One into the Many occurs hierarchically according to the harmonic principle whereby one becomes two and then three, eventuating in a sevenfold order unfolding itself from within without. "As above, so below," is the statement, although it is often misread. To be consistent with this view, those energies which lie closest to their divine source are "purest," i.e., less adulterated or constricted by their confinement in dense matter, and they are therefore at once freer and more potent. This hierarchical principle, it seems, could furnish the rationale whereby the so-called higher energies impress themselves upon, and thus transform or vivify, the lower energies associated with physical matter. (It is thus, for example, that yogis control their biological energies.) And it is the release of such higher energies that accomplishes the process of healing the body on the physical level as well as transforming the personality on the psychological level. What are the divine powers or siddhis but these higher energies brought under conscious control and used for the transformation of the self and the realization of oneness? Since this mysterious force acts upon all forms of matters, transformation must take place at every level, which is, of course, the fundamental purpose of true yoga.

The study of Fohat has other far-reaching implications. It cannot be considered purely as an impersonal force, even in its role as the "transcendental binding unity" of the cosmos. Significantly, The Secret Doctrine also equates it with eros, the power of love, the child of Chaos and the third person in the primeval trinity of Chaos, Gaea, Eros, in which Chaos is space, the void (akasha) without points of intensification or objectification, and Gaea is nature (primordial matter; see The Secret Doctrine I, 109; II, 65). It must be understood, however, that in this context eros is not merely the sensual, personal emotion it is usually conceived to be, although this too is an aspect of its power. It is rather love in its primitive sense of divine will, the awakening in space/consciousness (chaos) of the desire to manifest itself through visible creation, which is cosmos. Hence Fohat as eros becomes on earth the great power or spirit of "life-giving," with all that this implies. It is the fundamental creative power in the universe at all levels, in the sense that creation is the miraculous act of self-offering and self-bestowing, the compelling impulse to give expression to that which lies in the depths of consciousness (space), whether it be a philosophical or scientific truth, a work of art, a religious insight, or simply the gift of one's heart to others. It is the binding force of opposites that creates our polar universe—the inherent dynamism of the yang-yin and also the binding force within the atom. It is the power that makes spirit incarnate in flesh; it is also the rush of compassionate feeling that surrenders personal desire for the benefit of others. Its association with kundalini and the creative power of sexual energy scarcely needs be mentioned. We are inclined to think of love merely in physical and emotional terms, but The Secret Doctrine makes it quite clear that Fohat as eros is not only love for the world that Divine Mind has created through its action, but also agape,the spiritual hunger for union with the Divine Source that dissolves all separateness, impels toward oneness and, finally, unifies the worlds into one cosmic whole. It is the inspiration that makes possible insight into truth, of which the Buddha spoke when he said that love is the illumination of the mind: light without shadow. And on the highest level, it is the transformative power of spiritual aspiration, the ultimate longing for union with the Divine, or the supreme tapas, which Lama Govinda described as:

The fire or spiritual integration which fuses all polarities—which arouses man from the slumber of worldly contentment. It is creative as well as liberating; in its lowest form it is at the bottom of desire for sensual love; in its highest, inspiration, the desire for Truth—the self-surrender which in religious life becomes ecstasy, trance, absorption, vision (FTM, 161-62).

Fohat is all this, and much more. In some utterly mysterious way, logos and eros are not only polar and opposing universal forces (like positive and negative electromagnetism), but also identical in their creative power to act upon and within nature. It is as though the very idea of a bud or a fish or a man or a god could never come into being except through the rush of love and longing for that which is other than the divine so that the mysterious Selfhood of the divine may be realized.

If logos (as the ordering principle) can be thought of as the creative power of nous, the Divine Mind, so Fohat/eros is the creative ability of nature to receive and absorb that power, to embrace it and to become pregnant with it, to become one with it. The yinis just as potent a force as the yangin this relationship. So the interaction of the divine ideation upon matter is not merely a one-way process, a pure outflowing; it is a true act of love in that the giver is itself miraculously enriched and transformed thereby. It seems that the myth of Chaos, Gaea, Eros may hold a clue to the oft-posed question: Is it possible that the long struggle of the individual soul toward perfection could contribute anything to that perfection? In this context, the answer would be inevitably a resounding yes.

References
Barker, A. Trevor, ed. The Letters of H .P. Blavatsky to A. P. Sinnett. Pasadena, Calif.: Theosophical University Press, 1973.
Blavatsky, H. P. The Secret Doctrine. Three volumes. Adyar: Theosophical Publishing House, 1979.
Chin, Vicente Hao. The Mahatma Letters to A. P. Sinnett in Chronological Sequence. Adyar: Theosophical Publishing House, 1998.
Govinda, Lama Anagarika. Foundations of Tibetan Mysticism. London: Rider, 1959.

Joy Mills has studied Theosophy for over sixty years. She has served as president of the American and Australian Sections of the Theosophical Society, international vice-president of the TS, director of the School of Wisdom in Adyar, and director of the Krotona School of Theosophy. A collection of her essays, The One True Adventure: Theosophy and the Quest for Meaning, was published by Quest Books in 2008.

By Ihla Nation

Originally printed in the Winter 2009 issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation: Nation, Ihia. "Thinking Aloud: Stray Lessons." Quest  97. 1 (Fall 2009): 30-31.

He looked like a black-and-white Buddha. A peaceful face with chubby round cheeks rested on a pyramid-shaped body. The spiritual lessons he taught me built an ethereal bridge from the Chinese proverb about saving a life and forever being responsible for that life to the Beatles' "instant karma's going to get you." Patience, compassion, unconditional love, letting go, and forgiveness all pressed into my soul by this stray Buddha cat suffering from posttraumatic stress disorder.

The life of a stray felt all too familiar to me. Divorced, both parents dead, estranged from siblings, I was on my own, seeking food and shelter for my son. Somehow I thought that if I could make the life of a stray cat better, perhaps the universe would repay me with asylum from the vicissitudes of life. Rescuing strays became spiritual service. I rescued twelve stray cats in two years. Sometimes I did it right. I found them homes or took them to the Humane Society. Sometimes I didn't—for example, the stray I gave to a kind lady without checking out her background. A year later I was horrified when the woman was on the nightly news because the county authorities had rescued eighty cats from her house.

When I moved to my new condo, I left no forwarding address for felines. Trying to relieve the suffering of every stray that crossed my path was too painful.

For three years none found me. But word gets around in the cat world and somehow they began to reappear. From my deck I could see a mama, daddy, and four kittens left to suffer any weather on the patio of the condo across from me. With little knowledge of the great cosmic lessons about to befall me, the cat social worker kicked into gear.

I stuck my head over the waist-high fence. Dried bread and spaghetti thrown on the cement were the only nourishment I saw. The kittens were nursing from their emaciated mother. So each day I sneaked over and put food and water outside the fence for her. I watched as the kittens got bigger and bigger and bigger, and wilder and wilder and wilder. I made several attempts to get the owner to do something before they were old enough to scramble over the fence. She took action. She moved out and left all but the mama on the patio.

After unsuccessful endeavors to get animal control to trap the cats, I borrowed their equipment to do it myself. I wanted to take them to the Humane Society, where they had a chance of getting a good home. I didn't feed them for twelve hours, so they were hungry and easily caught. All except the black one, the daddy. He sneaked into the trap, ate, and escaped.  After the third try, I was convinced he didn't deserve incarceration and possible capital punishment for having the misfortune to end up without an owner. The trap went back to the police department.

The Buddha cat kept coming back to the scene of the kidnapping, looking for his family. The new tenants chased him away. I felt terrible. I put food outside the patio. Over several months, I moved the dish to the bottom of my steps, then inched it up to the first landing, and finally, right in front of my door. I put a box out with a blanket so he could be warm. All the comforts of home except security.

The slightest move or unexpected noise sent him frantically scurrying away. If I opened the door when he came to the landing to eat, he took off like a dart shot from a gun. So I stood at the screen door talking to him in a soft, easy voice, "Hey, guy." I loved that cat who never had a proper name.

He maintained dignity in spite of the insecurities of his life. He kept himself clean and neat. Other cats were treated nobly when they came to eat out of his dish, and he only fought back if he was attacked.

One day he disappeared. After several weeks, I was sure the coyotes had gotten him and tears splashed in his dish as I put it away. One morning I woke to loud meowing at my front door. There he was, thin and gaunt, but deprivation and suffering apparently made him realize I wasn't so bad. If I got down on my hands and knees and slowly pushed open the screen door, he wouldn't run away. Finally, he let me reach out and pet him.

But it had to be done his way—holding the screen door open with one hand, leaving an escape route in case he got spooked, and kneeling down to his eye level. Eventually he stepped inside my door for a dose of love. I never saw a cat who wanted love as much as that one. One night I coughed, and he ran out so fast the door dropped on his tail. Instant karma got me. For two weeks he wouldn't come near me.

He loved my cats and wanted to be friends with them, but they, being from a higher caste in the cat realm—good parenting, never-missed meals, and no suffering—would come sniffingly over. When he tried to rub against them, all he got for his goodness was a whap on the side of the head and a view of their snooty tails as they ran away.

I began to worry about what would happen to the black Buddha when I had to move. My landlord sold my condo and I was moving a block away. Maybe I could get him to come with me. On the last day when he showed up to eat, I opened the door to let him in. When he saw the place was empty, he bellowed and frantically opened the door. I picked him up thinking I could get him in my car, but he leapt out of my arms and flew several steps down the landing.  My heart dropped, cracking like an egg on the kitchen floor
.
I went back several evenings hoping to see him. I left a trail of dry cat food all the way from my old place down the street and around the corner to my new place. But he didn't follow it.

Let go, the universe whispered. Why is life so unfair, I demanded? Why didn't this wonderful cat who wanted a home more than anything get to have one? Let go echoed in my head. Finally I did, praying he was warm, dry, and fed. Once or twice I thought I saw him around the old neighborhood, but when I asked the neighbors, they said they never saw him again.

Now I live in a new home, but I still wonder about the Buddha guy. He taught me acceptance, compassion, letting go, and dignity in harsh circumstances. He taught me forgiveness for the original owner who unconsciously discarded five living beings and for myself for abandoning him a second time. And he taught me that every living being deserves patience, love, and kindness.

Ihla Nation is a freelance writer who lives in Boulder, Colorado, where she has been designated primary caretaker by her housemate's cat. She has an M. A. in religious studies and a B. A. in social work.

Originally printed in the Winter 2009 issue of Quest magazine.
Citation: Smoley, Richard. "From the Executive Editor - Winter 2009." Quest 97. 1 (Fall 2009): 2.

Few of you need to be told about the financial upheavals that have been taking place over the past few months. I would like to be able to tell you that the Theosophical Society is immune to these, but unfortunately we are not (at least from a materialistic point of view). The rapid drop in the stock market in the fall of 2008 has hit both our endowment and our grants funding quite heavily, and it seems that, like much of the nation, the Society is in for a time of austerity.

While this should only have a minimal effect on programs, it does mean one change for members: You will be finding Quest in your mailbox a bit less often than you once did. Financial necessity requires us to cut back our frequency of issues from bimonthly (that is, six times a year) to quarterly. From now on, you will be receiving Quest four times a year, in the beginning of January, April, July, and October. For nonmembers who are subscribing, don't worry: your subscription will be extended so that you will receive the number of issues that you have paid for.

This decision is not ideal, but it is a necessity. On the brighter side, I'm determined that it won't lead to a decline in quality, and in fact we have been working to include a wider range of contributors and ideas in the magazine—a change that should be particularly apparent in the Spring 2009 issue.

In the culture at large, it seems, the current malaise extends far beyond the realm of banks and corporations and stock markets. In science, Darwinism has frozen into a stale orthodoxy at which even the younger biologists are starting to chafe, while the mind-blowing theories of quantum physics are now quite old; many of them were devised in the 1920s, a time that is already slipping out of living memory. Attempts to update or supersede them, however fascinating, have made our picture of the universe even more confusing and less coherent than it had been. Religion and philosophy are regressing to where they were when the Theosophical Society was founded in 1875, with a ridiculous biblical literalism pitted against an equally ridiculous materialistic skepticism. On the political and economic situation I reserve comment, if only because I suspect you are as sick of hearing about it as I am. Even the New Age movement is starting to look more than a little shopworn.

One common response to a situation like this is simply fear. Certainly there is enough of it to go around. It sometimes seems as if there is a belt of fear that dwells in the collective unconscious like an enormous underground aquifer into which the mind can tap at any time and for any reason. It is, perhaps, natural for many people to fall into this trap. But as esotericists we ought to demand a little more from ourselves.

In these times, I believe, we need to remember that no matter how good or bad the world situation is, there is always work for us to do. Some of this work is internal, the constant striving for illumination and self-perfection that will never cease for as long as we are alive on this planet and quite possibly for long after. Another part of this work is external. It is oriented toward the world. Whether you conceive of this in terms of the Theosophical ideal of service, of G. I. Gurdjieff's "work for the work's sake," or of what A Course in Miracles calls your "special function" hardly matters. There is a work, a task, large or small, that you and only you can do. It may take you onto the grand stage of history, or it may leave you in obscurity for your entire life. It does not matter.

This work is yours and no one else's. For this reason, no one else can tell you what it is. Because it is so intrinsically connected with your innermost being, to discover it is to discover yourself. It can be revealed by still, small voices or by visions on the road to Damascus, but also in a career aptitude test or by answering an ad in the classifieds. It may remain steadfastly the same, a ridgepole on which your entire life depends, or it may shift and change over time. In any event, it has one central feature: it gives you the unshakable sense that this function, whatever it is, is why you exist, is what you were created to do in this lifetime.

To have this sense of your function is not a magic recipe for peace of mind in every moment. It may even prove unsettling. As William Butler Yeats wrote in "Under Ben Bulben," one of his last poems:

Even the wisest man grows tense
With some sort of violence
Before he can accomplish fate,
Know his work or choose his mate.

All this said, knowing your function, knowing where you best can serve, does promote peace of mind at a deeper level. It provides a sense of inner security that the Gospels symbolize as building your house on rock rather than on the shifting sands of circumstance. It means that you know you have this task to do regardless of what the news reports say, who is elected, or what magnificent institution collapses. Such work requires us to face our destiny stoically and unflinchingly, with a spirit of sacrifice, but it is not only a matter of sacrifice; often when we most expect to give up something, we find gifts and joys given to us unexpectedly. Even when this does not happen, the work fosters in us the long, slow growth of knowledge in the truest sense, which may be the only thing of any real value in this world. To cite the Gospels again, "The labourer is worthy of his hire" (Luke 10:7).

Richard Smoley

By John White

Originally printed in the Winter 2009 issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation: White, John. "Resurrection and the Body of Light." Quest  97. 1 (Fall 2009): 11-15.

Enlightenment or God-realization is the highest aspect of our human potential for growth in body, mind, and spirit. According to many esoteric traditions, as we awaken to our oneness with God, bodily changes occur, most dramatically in the higher phases of enlightenment. In the final phase, the body is alchemically changed from flesh into light, becoming immortal. Enlightenment becomes a literal fact through the transubstantiation of flesh and blood into an immortal body of light. Various traditions have different names for this transubstantiated form, including the light body, the resurrection body, the solar body, and the diamond body.

In this article, we will look at this phenomenon from a cross-cultural and evolutionary perspective. We will also consider questions such as; what is the relationship between death and resurrection? What is meant by the terms "ascended masters" and "illuminati"? We will look at Christianity as a Western enlightenment tradition whose purpose is to enable people to develop psychophysically through resurrection to become Christed god-men and god-women. Toward the end, we will look the Shroud of Turin as evidence of bodily transubstantiation and the perfection of the human race.

From Transfiguration to Transubstantiation

The model of human consciousness I will be using is essentially drawn from the ancient yogic chakra model of consciousness, which posits seven stages of development that correspond to each of the chakras. Enlightenment is the highest. The American spiritual teacher Sapta Na Adi Da Samraj (formerly known as Adi Da and Da Free John, among other names; born Franklin A. Jones) divides this phase into three substages: transfiguration, transformation, and translation. With transfiguration, the body-mind is pervaded by what he calls Divine Radiance as the person abides in God-realization. Transformation is characterized by the manifestation of extraordinary powers and faculties (sometimes called siddhis), such as psychic healing capacities, genius, and longevity, as spontaneous expressions of further permeation of the body-mind by Divine Radiance. Translation removes the individual from space-time altogether and returns him to what I call the Preluminous Void, the unmanifest state of existence before God said "Let there be light."

I believe this model, though valuable, is incomplete. Therefore I would like to suggest adding a next-to-last stage before translation: transubstantiation, or attaining the light body. This is the culmination of the entire evolutionary process of higher human development. It results in a deathless body of light, the perfection of the human body-mind, and it is the subject of this article.

The True Nature of Resurrection

Sacred traditions and metaphysical schools of thought generally agree that reality is multileveled and that each level of reality is composed of different energies or of matter with different degrees of vibration and density. In their totality, these energies and forms of matter constitute a spectrum of substance. At one end of the spectrum is purely physical matter; at the other end is pure spirit prior to its manifestation as matter and energy. This spectrum of substance is one of the two primal forms of God constituting the cosmos. The other is the spectrum of consciousness. Together, they are the inner and outer aspects of reality, the subjective and objective, the intention and extension of God.

Through our body-mind, we humans partake of all levels of reality, although we are generally unaware of the higher ones. Nonetheless, we retain the potential to awaken to the full spectrum of our being as consciousness and substance. Furthermore, we have a form or container or vehicle for our consciousness on each of those levels—a vehicle that is composed from the substance of that level. Collectively these are called energy bodies. They can be seen as nested one within the other, and all are resident within the physical body, although their energies may extend beyond it. Our physical body of flesh, blood, and bone is merely the container through which we function at the level of reality we know as ordinary space-time. At death, as the physical body decomposes, the other bodies withdraw from it, and the consciousness continues to function in other levels of reality. Those energy bodies have been given various names by various traditions. In one tradition they are termed the gross, the subtle, and the causal levels and bodies. In another they are the physical, the vital, the emotional, the mental, and the spiritual levels and bodies. In yet another they are termed koshas or "sheaths" of finer and finer substance enfolding the physical body. Still more names could be given from still other metaphysical systems. Here are some of the names given to the "highest" or "final" energy body in various traditions:

• In the Christian tradition it is called "the resurrection body" or "the glorified body." St. Paul called it "the celestial body" or "spiritual body."
• In Sufism it is called "the most sacred body" (wujud al-aqdas).
• In Taoism it is called "the diamond body," and those who have attained it are called "the immortals" and "the cloudwalkers."
• In Tibetan Buddhism it is called "the light body."
• In some mystery schools it is called "the solar body."
• In Rosicrucianism it is called "the diamond body of the temple of God."
• In Tantrism and yoga it is called the "the vajra body," "the adamantine body" and "the divine body."
• In Vedanta it is called "the superconductive body."
• In Kriya yoga it is called "the body of bliss."
• In Gnosticism and Neoplatonism it is called "the radiant body."
• In the alchemical tradition, it is called "the glory of the whole universe" or the "golden body."
• In the Hermetic Corpus it is called "the immortal body" (soma athanaton).
• In ancient Egypt it was called the akh.
• In Old Persia it was called "the indwelling divine potential" (fravashi or fravarti).
• In the Mithraic liturgy it was called "the perfect body" (soma teleion).
• In the philosophy of Sri Aurobindo it is called "the Divine Body," composed of supramental substance.

As I see it, these are different terms for the same ultimate stage of human development. If I understand these terms correctly, they refer to the condition in which a human being, by a combination of personal effort and divine grace, attains a deathless state through the transubstantiation or alchemical transmutation of his or her ordinary fleshly body. The traditions speak of the process in different ways. Is the immortal body created or released, attained or manifested? Is it preexistent within the individual, so that the gross matter of the body and the other energy bodies are simply "burned" away? Or is the gross matter of the body altered through a process not yet recognized by physical science that changes the atoms of flesh into something unnamed on the periodic table of elements? Is there more than one route to the perfected human body-mind?

These are provocative questions, but I have no definitive answers to offer here. I am seeking answers, and I welcome whatever information readers may have to share.

Attaining Immortality

Whatever the process may be, it enables the transubstantiated individual to operate within ordinary space-time through an immortal vehicle of consciousness. Unlike biological flesh, that deathless body is no longer carbon-based. Rather it is composed of a finer, more ethereal form of energy substance unknown to conventional physics but long known to metaphysics. For a human individual, this condition is the most exalted phase of higher human development. The person has become fully manifested as what he or she inherently is: a form of God. Such people have been recognized throughout history as "god-men" and "god-women."

The most ancient Egyptian teachings were concerned with an occult science—now lost and as yet far beyond the reach of our technology—whereby while still in this life, the carbon-based body, by suitable extradimensional radiation, could be transformed into the new type of energy-substance and form the imperishable, radiant body. In this manner, the initiate so treated could enter into a higher dimensional objective world...without the trauma of physical death.

Jesus and the Body of Light

The best-known example of transubstantiation of the human body-mind is Jesus of Nazareth. I regard Christianity as an enlightenment tradition whose true purpose is to enable people to become Christed. That is, Christianity has (or had) both a theory and a practice for attaining enlightenment in the highest degree. But that understanding has been lost in the institutional forms and sects that have arisen over doctrinal and ritualistic differences that are not essential to the process of growth to Christhood. It is important for fundamentalists to realize this fact, but it is also important for transpersonalists, integralists, and secular spiritualists who dismiss certain inner truths about Christianity and thereby overlook the possibility of connecting with a Western enlightenment tradition whose roots extend at least to ancient Egypt.

Fundamentalist Christians often speak about the blood sacrifice of Jesus. They declare that his shedding of blood was a mighty act of salvation. A hymn asks, "Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?" It asks whether the listener is cleansed from sin and redeemed from eternal damnation by accepting the blood sacrifice of Jesus as the sign of his rulership of creation.

With all due respect, that view of Jesus and Christianity is naive, literalistic, and superficial. It is an exoteric understanding of a situation that actually requires an esoteric understanding. In other words, conventional Christianity has the teaching, but not the key that unlocks its meaning. I will explain. 

Contrary to what many Christian fundamentalists believe, I would like to suggest that the resurrection of Jesus did not involve reconstitution of his flesh, blood, and bone into a functioning biological organism. It was not the restoration of his physical body or the reanimation of a decomposing corpse.

Similar examples of this fallacious fundamentalism may be seen in ancient China and in Orthodox Judaism. In ancient China, I have read, it was common for men to save their cut hair and fingernails on a lifelong basis so that upon the person's death they could be placed in the grave or tomb in order to be ready for use in restoring that person's body to life. Likewise, in Orthodox Judaism it is believed that the Messiah will resurrect dead bodies upon his coming, so Orthodox Jews retain even amputated body parts for burial with the person.

No matter what form this literalism takes, it needs to be corrected with insight and understanding. There is no need to collect body parts. Doing that is an entirely superfluous and literal-minded view that misdirects one's energy and consciousness. Nor is there any need to be "washed in the blood of the Lamb." The important thing is, as the Bhagavad Gita puts it, to "fix your heart on God" and then invoke the Holy Spirit, the Shekhinah, the goddess Kundalini, or whatever devotional form your particular tradition may provide. Support that with moral behavior, contemplative practice, cultivation of the mind, works of social goodness and civic responsibility. In other words, live a life of integral practice so that your entire being—body, mind and spirit—is oriented to the attainment of enlightenment. God will take care of the rest.

However, "the rest," according to esoteric traditions, includes advanced practices that are for all intents and purposes unknown to the exoteric forms of those traditions—the churches, temples, mosques, etc., where conventional worship prevails and enlightenment-knowledge is generally regarded as craziness or heresy. It is not a matter of having all your body parts collected; dead flesh is dead flesh. It is a matter of enlivening your energy bodies so that, through spiritual refinement, the dross is removed and the "highest" body is developed to the point of complete self-mastery. Then you can cast off the flesh body through the death process, but without the trauma of dying. You release the light body from its fleshly cocoon. You put on the "robe of light." You no longer cast a shadow because you no longer have a shadow.

Evidence of the Shroud

When Jesus arose from the dead, he lived in a resurrection or glorified body. That is indicated by the Shroud of Turin, which, legend maintains, was the funeral shroud of Jesus when he was buried in the tomb after crucifixion.

Although a carbon-14 test in the 1980s purportedly showed that the Shroud was no older than the fourteenth century—and therefore was a hoax—it has now been shown that the results of this test were badly flawed by two major factors. First, the sample of the fabric tested was recently found to be part of a sixteenth-century patch or invisible repair of the original cloth, which had been damaged. (The repair was revealed by microscopic examination.) Second, microscopic biological material (mold microorganisms) was present on the piece of fabric tested. These factors led to a medieval date for the Shroud. New tests move the relic's age back to the first century. Moreover, other research has identified pollen grains on the Shroud that could only have come from the vicinity of Jerusalem during the months of March and April, when such localized vegetation is in bloom. Finally, the weave of the cloth has now been identified as specific to Palestine in the first century and not to medieval Europe. For these and other reasons, the Shroud is now clearly established as an authentic first-century relic.

As for the image of the man in the Shroud, research likewise indicates that it is no hoax. The blood stains are real (type AB) and contain human male DNA. Shroud researcher Frank Tribbe notes in his book Portrait of Jesus? that the closest science can come to explaining how the image of the man was imprinted on the Shroud is by comparing the situation to a controlled burst of high-intensity radiation similar to the Hiroshima bomb explosion, which "printed" images of disintegrated people on building walls. Shroud researcher Ray Rogers, a physical chemist from Los Alamos Laboratory, said, "I am forced to conclude that the image was formed by a burst of radiant energy—light if you like." In other words, the image is recorded on the cloth as if by a photoflash of brilliant light rising from the body of the man in the Shroud. Another Shroud researcher, Alan Adler of Western Connecticut State College, concluded that the image could have been created only by a form of energy that science cannot name. Apparently a self-induced nuclear "explosion" was the means by which Jesus transubstantiated.

This line of reasoning means that Jesus actually died, physically and biologically. While he may have been alive in a yogic swoon or a near-death condition when placed in the tomb, nevertheless at some point he underwent biological death in order to attain resurrection. But unlike the typical corpse, which undergoes decomposition into its elements, Jesus's physical body was altered into something more elemental—indeed, more fundamental, although it is not understood by fundamentalists.

From my point of view, Jesus called people to duplicate himself, to grow into "the stature and fullness of Christ," so that in our own bodies—our own flesh and blood—we perform the true and complete imitation of Christ. Institutional Christianity, from evangelical to mainstream churches, aims at producing Christians when it should aim at producing Christs. The kingdom of heaven to which Jesus called humanity is not an astrophysical location but a state of consciousness known as enlightenment. Jesus' life, death, and postmortem acts opened "the gates of heaven" for everyone, but mere belief in Jesus is not enough. No one will pass through the gates unless he or she lives a God-centered life resulting in God-realization. And in the final phase of God-realization, one literally becomes light.

Ascended Masters and the Illuminati

There may have been others before (and after) Jesus who attained the glorified body or resurrection body, as is implied in various ways in both biblical and extrabiblical literature. The pharaonic ceremonial tradition of ancient Egypt is primarily about the process of consciousness transference from the flesh body to the spirit body or akh. Knowledge of that process may have passed into Judaism through Moses, who, according to the Bible, became a member of the pharaoh's household when he was rescued as a baby by a pharaoh's daughter. From Moses, according to esoteric legends, the akh knowledge descended through the centuries as an underground stream in some branches or schools of Judaism, emerging publicly and most dramatically through the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. Legends and some esoteric documents also have the tradition continuing through some of the early Christians to the Cathars of southern France, and thence to the Knights Templar and modern Freemasonry as expounded by scholars such as Manly P. Hall and W. L. Wilmshurst.

Although Jesus is the primary Western exemplar of resurrection, there are others, both Eastern and Western, whom history and legend record as similarly transubstantiated. According to various esoteric traditions, a number of "ascended masters" have attained to that condition and are accessible to us when they choose to be. Among them are Melchizedek, Ezekiel, Count St. Germain, Boganathar, Kriya Babaji Nagaraj (also known as Mahavatar Babaji and Shiva Baba), Koot Hoomi, Morya, Djual Kool, Matsyendra Nathan, and Swami Ramalingam. Collectively, they are known as the White Brotherhood, the illumined ones or the true illuminati.

In a different but related situation—that of near-death research—are reports by the thousands of people who, while clinically dead, have found themselves in a nonterrestrial environment and have then become aware of the presence of a being of light. These light beings have been identified by the near-death experiencers as gods, angels, devas, saints, holy people, mythological personalities, and other figures associated with divinity. The reports imply a veritable society of such entities, operating in what seem to be vehicles of consciousness identical to the one Jesus had after his resurrection. That society resides at the top of the divine hierarchy of worlds extending from the lowest physical level to the highest of the metaphysical. The hierarchy has often been called the Great Chain of Being; it connects all life to God, from the lowest microorganisms, through humanity, to the forms native to the higher worlds, such as angels, devas, and archangels. At the highest level, the Logos—where creation itself begins—are those Christed ones of humanity who have ascended to the throne of God, that is, who have attained the condition of existence that is the seat of power for God's governing of the cosmos. Despite the apparently vast distance which separates them from us, they are simply "elder brothers and sisters" of ours who have traveled the evolutionary path before us.

They present themselves to us in ways that appeal to our deepest nature and that urge us to externalize that nature in every aspect of our own being, including relationships and social organization. They are models for human aspirations of spiritual growth. Thus Jesus, properly understood, is not a vehicle of salvation, as fundamentalists claim, but a model of perfection drawing us beyond ego to the transpersonal and the mystical.

From my perspective, someday in a distant evolutionary future we humans will wear the seamless robe of light. May all beings attain enlightenment!

John White, M.A.T., is an internationally known author and educator in the fields of consciousness research and higher human development. He has published fifteen books, including The Meeting of Science and Spirit, A Practical Guide to Death and Dying, and What Is Enlightenment? His books have been translated into ten languages. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, Reader's Digest, Omni, Esquire, Woman's Day, and various other publications.