Note 138 — Part I.—Ralph’s Story. (continued 2)

Nor shall I dispute this statement in general. But this does not invalidate in one iota my claim. The temple priests assumed the names of the gods they served, and this is as well known a fact, as that the defunct Egyptian became an “Osiris”—was “osirified”—after his death. Yet Osiris was assuredly neither “man nor an Initiate,” but a being hardly recognised as such by the Royal Society of materialistic science. Why, then, could not an “Initiate,” who had succeeded in merging his spiritual being into the Christos state, be regarded as a Christos after his last and supreme initiation, just as he was called Chrestos before that? Neither Plotinus, Porphyry nor Apollonius were Christians, yet, according to esoteric teaching, Plotinus realized this sublime state (of becoming or uniting himself with his Christos) six times, Apollonius of Tyana four times, while Porphyry reached the exalted state only once, when over sixty years of age. The Gnostics called the “Word” “Abraxas” and “Christos” indiscriminately, and by whatever name we may call it, whether Ma-Kheru, or Christos or Abraxas, it is all one. That mystic state which gives to our inner being the impulse that attracts “the soul toward its origin and centre, the Eternal good,” as Plotinus teaches, and makes of man a god, the Christos or the unknown made manifest, is a preeminently theosophical condition. It belonged to the temple mysteries, and the teachings of the Neo-Platonists.—[H.P.B.]