In previous chapters we saw how infant humanity was cared for by superhuman guardians, provided with appropriate food, led out of danger’s way, and sheltered in all respects until grown to human stature and fit to enter the school of experience to learn the lessons of life in the phenomenal world. We saw also how the rainbow points to natural laws peculiar to the present age, how man was given free will under these laws, and how the spirit of wine was given to cheer and to stimulate his own timid, fearful spirit, to nerve it for the war of the world.
In an analogous manner the irresponsible little child who has been brought under the waters of baptism by its natural guardians is cared for through the years of childhood while its various vehicles are being organized. When the parental blood stored in the thymus gland has been exhausted and the child thus emancipated from the parents, it awakes to individuality, to the feeling of “I AM.” It has then been pre86pared with a knowledge of good and evil with which to fight the battle of life; and at that time the youth is taken to the church and given the bread and wine to nerve and nourish him spiritually, also as a symbol that henceforth he is a free agent, only responsible to the laws of God. A blessing or a curse, this freedom, according to the way it is used.
In early Atlantis mankind was a universal brotherhood of submissive children with no incentive to war or strife. Later they were segregated into nations, and wars inculcated loyalty to kin and country. Each sovereign was an absolute autocrat with power over life and limb of his subjects, who were numbered in hundreds of millions, and who yielded ungrudging and slavish submission, an attitude maintained to the present day among the millions of Asiatics, who are vegetarians and consequently need no alcohol.
As flesh eating came into vogue, wine became a more and more common beverage. In consequence of flesh eating much material progress was made immediately preceding the advent of Christ, and because of the practice of drinking wine an increasing number of men asserted themselves as leaders, with the result that instead of a few large nations such as people Asia, many small nations were formed in the southwestern portion of Europe and Asia Minor.
But though the great mass of people who formed these various nations were ahead of their Asiatic brethren as craftsmen, they continued submissive to87 their rulers and lived as much in their traditions as did the latter. Christ upbraided them because they gloried in being Abraham’s seed. He told them that “before Abraham was, I AM,” that is, the ego has always existed.
It is His mission to emancipate humanity from Law and lead it to LOVE, to destroy “the kingdoms of men” with all their antagonism to one another, and to build upon their ruins “the kingdom of God.” An illustration will make the method clear:
If we have a number of brick buildings and desire to amalgamate them into one large structure, it is necessary to break them down first and free each brick from the mortar which binds it. Likewise each human being must be freed from the fetters of family, hence Christ taught “Unless a man leave father and mother he cannot be my disciple.” He must outgrow religious partisanship and patriotism and learn to say with the much misunderstood and maligned Thomas Paine: “The world is my country, and to do good is my religion.”
Christ did not mean that we are to forsake those who have a claim upon our help and support, but that we are not to permit the suppression of our individuality out of deference to family traditions and beliefs.
Consequently He came “not to bring peace, but a sword;” and whereas the eastern religions discourage the use of wine, Christ’s first miracle was to change water to wine. The sword and the wine cup are88 signatures of the Christian religion, for by them nations have been broken to pieces and the individual emancipated. Government by the people, for the people, is a fact in northwestern Europe, the rulers being that principally in name only.
But the fostering of the martial spirit such as prevails in Europe was only a means to an end. The segregation which it has caused must give place to a regime of brotherhood such as professed by Paine. A new step was necessary to bring this about; a new food must be found which would act upon the spirit in such a way as to foster individuality through assertion of self without oppression of others and without loss of self-respect. We have enunciated it as a law that only spirit can act upon spirit, and therefore that food must be a spirit but differing in other respects from intoxicants.
Before describing this let us see what flesh has done for the evolution of the world.
We have noted previously that during the Polarian Epoch man had only a dense body; he was like the present minerals in this respect, and by nature he was as inert and passive.
By absorbing the crystalloids prepared by plants he evolved a vital body during the Hyperborean Epoch and became plantlike both in constitution and by nature, for he lived without exertion and as unconsciously as the plants.
Later he extracted milk from the then stationary89 animals. Desire for this more readily digestible food spurred him on to exertion, and gradually his desire nature was evolved during the Lemurian Epoch. Thus he became constituted like the present day Herbivora. Though possessed of a passional nature, he was docile and could not be induced to fight save to defend himself, his mate, and family. Hunger alone had the power to make him aggressive.
Therefore, when animals began to move and sought to elude this ruthless parasite, increasing difficulty of obtaining the coveted food aroused his craving to such an extent that when he had hunted and caught an animal, he was no longer content to suck its udders dry but commenced to feed upon its blood and flesh. Thus he became as ferocious as our present day Carnivora.
Digestion of flesh food requires much more powerful chemical action ............