Church – Phil Morimitsu
It was rather cold out tonight, and I hadn't even worn my coat. When I left the house this morning, it was sunny and warm. But with the quickly changing fall temperatures and the dark clouds covering the setting sun, the temperature must have dropped about thirty degrees since noon. It was probably near freezing now, and the wind was whipping up fearfully. I had only a couple of blocks to go to my home, but I had to stop somewhere for a minute or two to get warm.
I was on a long block, and there weren't any stores or anything nearby, except the old cathedral that I had never paid much attention to. It was so massive, with its dark gray stone, Gothic architecture, and forbidding black iron gates surrounding the lawns. It was hard to miss, but somehow, twice a day going to and from my job, I never really noticed it. The great front doors were open for those wishing to stop in and pray. I'd always had a creepy feeling about churches like this and never would have thought of going into one. Except now I had an inner urge to go in for a moment.
"Well, my feet and hands sure are frozen — and it would get me warm enough for the last two blocks home, so why not?" I said to myself, trying to justify the inner urge to go in that went against all my mental chidings.
Trotting up the long flight of stairs, I felt as if I were being swallowed up by a huge monster with gaping jaws. A heaviness came over me, and a cold, clammy loneliness bit into my insides to match the chill of my physical body. I hoped no one would come up and ask what I was doing there or if I'd like to confess anything. Once my eyes adjusted to the dank darkness of the place, I was relieved to see that I was the only one inside. Candles were burning at the end of the altar, and as I looked to the ceiling in the cavernous heights, I noticed life sized statues lining the sides of the cathedral. I took a seat in one of the pews near the back, so I could make a quick getaway in case of an embarrassing situation. Then I started to get used to the solitude and peace of the place. It was like the peace of the dead.
"Know the name of this place?" a familiar voice came to me from the row of pews in back of me. It was Wah Z.
"Uh, St. Something-or-other's —St. John's, St. Paul's?" I said, guessing.
"St. Paul's Cathedral," he said. He waited a moment for the implications to sink in.
"St. Paul. Hmmm," I said to myself, trying to make the connection. "I've got it. He was a member of the Vairagi ECK Masters." I'd never thought too much about it, and I surely never made the connection when I walked past the big gray, hulking building that was named after him. I wondered what he and this church could have had in common.
Wah Z continued, "St. Paul was a contemporary of Jesus of Nazareth. In fact, Maybe just a few years younger in age. He was raised as a Jew in Tarsus, now southern Turkey. He came from a family of Pharisees, which meant he practiced strict obedience to the laws of that religion. Well-educated, he was being groomed for a seat on the Sanhedrin, the council of seventy-one that acted as the ruling body of the Jews. On his way to this highly prestigious position, he began persecuting those Jews who had turned to the teachings of Jesus after his crucifixion. With a vengeance, he brought many of them to dungeons and had others whipped to renounce the teachings, as they were in direct contradiction to the strict laws of the Jews. Paul saw the followers of Jesus as a threat to the power structure in which he was thoroughly enmeshed, so he took it upon himself to stamp them out with personal zeal. This was also the vehicle that would land him a seat on the Sanhedrin."
I leaned back in the pew to listen better, while Wah Z continued. "He was by birth, a Roman citizen, which in those days, carried a lot of clout. His Hebrew name was Saul. Later he took the Roman name Paulus, meaning little. He was on one of his missions to Damascus to persecute some Jewish followers of Christ, when he was struck by the Light and Sound of God — so forcefully, that It knocked him off his donkey and left him sightless and pretty much out of it for three days. This was his first glimpse of Self-Realization, the first taste of the God Worlds that would drive him in his quest for SUGMAD until he would reach Mastership. He was thirty-one years old at the time. In an instant, he gained an enlightenment and understanding that surpassed even the inner meaning of the Christ consciousness. It wasn't the personality or the man Jesus that was important, it was the awakening of Soul in man that Paul was given the vision to see for the first time. It was this consciousness that Christ was pointing to, not himself. Paul immediately began making preparations to give this message to the world, forsaking his past, his position in life as a Pharisee on his way to power and prestige as a Sanhedrin. Nothing mattered but his mission.
He dropped out of sight for ten years, gaining the necessary strength and experience in the inner worlds before embarking on his mission. He met the Living ECK Master of the times, Sri Zadok, the Essene, who trained and tempered him. As did many students of Spirit in those days, he retired to a cave for a short period of time; mainly because it was one of the few places to have shelter and solitude. At any rate, it was there that he was given the experience of God-Realization in which Sri Zadok escorted him to the Anami Lok. When he exited from the cave, he was ready to deliver his message to the world.
"The idea of free speech wasn't as pervasive as it is in this country today. For his words, he was constantly chased and sometimes caught, imprisoned, and flogged severely. The fact that he was a Roman citizen saved his life on more than one occasion. Even so, he suffered greatly."
Wah Z became silent. I waited for more, but there was none. I had the urge to walk about the cathedral. I rose from the pew and made my way to the row of statues on one side. They were perched high in little alcoves about six feet above ground and painted bright colors. They all had candles burning at their feet, which illuminated their faces with little yellowish flickers. At the front, near the altar, was a slightly larger statue of a balding man, lean-faced and dark-bearded. I read the inscription. It was St. Paul of Tarsus, the man the church was named after. I looked up at the statue and wondered about the man. Such a complete turnabout — from totally persecuting the followers of a religion, to becoming the man who, in essence, was responsible for its founding.
As I was absorbed in looking at the statue, I hardly noticed a man walking toward me. He approached so silently, so quickly, but seemingly without haste, that it caught me off guard, and I saw I wasn't going to be allowed to make a graceful escape. I was going to have to talk to him.
He was wearing a dark blue navy robe, belted at the waist, and nearly floor length. He was about five feet seven or eight inches in height, lean, maybe fifty or so in age, and balding, with a dark beard about three or four inches in length. He had a long pointed nose and sharp, penetrating, dark eyes. After my initial surprise and defensive reaction, a comfortable feeling came over me. I silently wondered if this man were St. Paul. He looked like the statue in the alcove, but one never knew where the statue makers got their information as to what men looked like almost two thousand years ago.
"Good evening. The night is cold, is it not?" he said in an impeccably smooth voice.
"Yeah. To tell the truth, I came in to get warm on my way home from work," I confessed, a little glad to get truth out right off the bat. He just smiled and looked at the statue with me. We stood in silence for a moment, then I noticed the inscription on the base of the statue's pedestal. I moved a little closer to read it, as it was darkened by the light of the place. It was the thirteenth chapter of St. Paul's first letter to the Corinthians. I read it to myself silently:
If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.
Love is patient and kind; love is not jealous or boastful; it is not arrogant or rude. Love does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrong, but rejoices in the right. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Love never ends; as for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. For our knowledge is imperfect; but when the perfect comes, the imperfect will pass away. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became a man, I gave up childish ways. For now we see a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall understand fully even as I have been fully understood. So faith, hope, love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.
I'd forgotten he'd written that. It was beautiful. I knew I'd read it before, but somehow, I never understood its meaning until now. I stepped back from the inscription and looked up at the statue with more reverence. The man in the blue robe began to speak to me.
"The study of St. Paul was one of my favorites during my early training for the priesthood," he said. "There are many different interpretations of what he said and wrote. Some say he was preaching that Christ was God's only son. There are other theories that he was teaching not the worship of Jesus as the only son of God, but of the things he was trying to convey. There is a difference you know."
I looked at him and nodded in agreement.
He went on. "The main thing St. Paul was concerned about in his mission was to make sure the Light of the words of God were kept pure, and I personally believe that he wanted to also ensure that the followers didn't fall into the worship of personality. He lived his life as a constant example — always reminding others that the God force was only using him as a vehicle through which It could deliver Its message to the world, and that his own will didn't matter. If one were to read through the scriptures of St. Paul in the Bible and replace the words Jesus Christ with Holy Spirit, the message he was presenting would make sense. He lived the life of the impersonal messenger of the truth of God, which is Itself impersonal."
I looked at the priest with more interest. It was unusual to hear one speak of the scriptures, saints, and Christ in this manner, but he made sense.
"It's interesting that St. Paul spent so many days in various prisons, as the authorities shunned the truth he spoke wherever he went. He suffered whippings and beatings, but these meant nothing to him. It was symbolic of life on earth at the time, for he believed the world was a prison, and Soul could only experience freedom when It was able to leave the body and travel to the heavens. Several references were made to these journeys to heaven, if one is willing to read the scriptures carefully."
The priest paused for a moment. "Well, there are duties I must attend to. Feel welcome to stay as long as you would like. Please excuse me," he said politely; and smiling, he walked off into the dark recesses of one of the naves of the church.
By this time, my hands and feet were warm enough to withstand the final trek home. As I reached the great doors that led to the street, Wah Z was at my side again.
"You know, Wah Z, I have a sneaky feeling that fellow may have been Sri Paulus of Tarsus," I said.
He answered me indirectly. "Well, you know, in his letters St. Paul had the habit of referring to himself in the third person — often as another person outside of himself — as in his second letter to the Corinthians, where he mentions that he knew of a man who was caught up in the third heaven, whether in or out of the body. This was his experience in the cave where he eventually attained God-Realization."
"There's one question I have about him, though," I continued. "Why did he set up Christianity? Why didn't he just teach the Light and Sound of ECK?"
Wah Z answered, " At the time, materialism was at one of its oppressive heights. Roman rule stifled anything of a spiritually freeing nature. Jesus Christ had awakened the possibilities of a life based on something more than just materialism. It had been more than ten years from the time St. Paul received that blast of Light and Sound on the road to Damascus to the time he had his experiences in the cave and ventured out into the world. During this time, he had learned that the Light and Sound of ECK — Holy Spirit — had no name, had no face. And what the priest in the cathedral told you about how Paul was careful not to represent himself personally as God, but only as the vehicle for the Spirit to flow from, will bear this out. His mission, as with all the Masters of the Vairagi, was to gather those Souls desiring to rise to the higher worlds of Spirit. Those touched by Jesus were amongst many who were desiring this. It's an interesting fact that St. Paul never met Jesus in person. But there was no reason to. Their missions were different, even though St. Paul acted as a messenger for the words of Jesus, what he was offering was something of perhaps more value — that of spiritual freedom — to rely on the ECK, and not any one person, dead or alive. Here is the biggest difference in the two men. Jesus, whether he wished it or not, was set up as a savior of men, their sins and their conditions in earthly life. St. Paul was only a vehicle for Spirit and, of himself, did nothing but act as a servant for Spirit in pointing the way to the higher worlds. Remember his emphasis on the Holy Spirit."
As we stepped into the cold, I braced myself against the stiff wind that hit us when we went out into the street. I had to catch my breath as the cold air hit my lungs. As we walked, I listened to Wah Z, who wasn't suffering at all from the cold, as he was in his Light body.
"This will also bear out the importance of having a teacher who is living in the flesh. Once Jesus was gone from earth, he was unable to keep his message clear. Eventually, his followers lapsed into rituals instead of the randomity needed for the spiritual consciousness. When St. Paul went to different Christian communities, he enlivened them, but it was a different message, for he was delivering the message of the Light and Sound of God from his point of view as a vehicle. Once St. Paul left the arena of the physical plane, it was up to his students to teach the ways of Spirit. They could have their teacher , St. Paul, present in the Light body, as you do me. But this can only work as long as the teacher resides in the physical. Otherwise, if the teacher is gone, the physical-plane connection is broken and the student cannot verify the reality of the teachings from the Light body of the Master. This is where psychic misinterpretation enters. The student believes he is contacting his Master gone from the flesh, which he may very well be doing — but often the student is fabricating an Astral trait of himself. Without the ever upward prodding of the Living ECK Master, the student runs into introversion, a stoppage of unfoldment, seldom rising above the astral illusions he has of his Master. The Living ECK Master is needed to give and verify the inner relationship that deepens and leads the student to the very heart of SUGMAD."
The cold bit hard into my bones as we walked at a quick pace. When the weather is wicked, I can really identify with what St. Paul was saying about the world and the body being a prison for Soul. But that is okay — because there will always be the presence of the Inner Master to warm the heart no matter how cold it gets.
From the book, In the Company of ECK Masters © 1987 Phil Morimitsu
The Historical Description of Paul’s God-Realization Experience
http://www.gnosis.org/naghamm/ascp.html
The Apocalypse of Paul
Translated by George W. MacRae and William R. Murdock
The Apocalypse of Paul
Selection made from James M. Robinson, ed., The Nag Hammadi Library, revised edition. HarperCollins, San Francisco, 1990.