Levi H. Dowling - The Aquarian Gospel of Jesus the Christ

11. The lower self breeds hatred, slander, lewdness, murders, theft, and everything that harms; the higher self is mother of the virtues and the harmonies of life.

12. The lower self is rich in promises, but poor in blessedness and peace; it offers pleasure, joy and satisfying gains; but gives unrest and misery and death.

13. It gives men apples that are lovely to the eye and pleasant to the smell; their cores are full of bitterness and gall.

14. If you would ask me what to study I would say, yourselves; and when you will have studied them, and then would ask me what to study next, I would reply, yourselves.

15. He who knows well his lower self, knows the illusions of the world, knows of the things that pass away; and he who knows his higher self, know God; knows well the things that cannot pass away.

16. Thrice blessed is the man who has made purity and love his very own; he has been ransomed from the perils of the lower self and is himself his higher self.

17. Men seek salvation from an evil that they deem a living monster of the nether world; and they have gods that are but demons in disguise; all powerful, yet full of jealousy and hate and lust;

18. Whose favours must be bought with costly sacrifice of fruits, and of the lives of birds, and animals, and human kind.

19. And yet these gods possess no ears to hear, no eyes to see, no heart to sympathise, no power to save.

20. This evil is myth; these gods are made of air, clothed with shadows of a thought.

21. The only devil from which men must be redeemed is self, the lower self. If man would find his devil he must look within; his name is self.

22. If man would find his saviour he must look within; and when the demon self has been dethroned the saviour, Love, will be exulted to the throne of power.

23. The David of the light is Purity, who slays the strong Goliath of the dark, and seats the saviour, Love, upon the throne.

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1. Salome taught the lesson of the day. She said, All times are not alike. Today the words of man may have the greatest power; to-morrow women teaches best.

2. In all the ways of life the man and woman should walk hand in hand; the one without the other is but half; each has a work to do.

3. But all things teach; each has a time and a season for its own. The sun, the moon have lessons of their own for men; but each one teaches at the appointed time.

4. The lessons of the sun fall down on human hearts like withered leaves upon a stream, if given in the season of the moon and all the stars.

5. To-day one walks in gloom, downhearted and oppressed; tomorrow that same one is filled with joy.

6. To-day the heavens seem full of blessedness and hope; tomorrow hope has fled, and every plan and purpose comes to naught.

7. To-day one wants to curse the very ground on which he treads; tomorrow he is full of love and praise.

8. To-day one hates and scorns and envies and is jealous of the child he loves; tomorrow he has risen above his carnal self, and breathes forth gladness and good-will.

9. A thousand times men wonder why these heights and depths, these light hearts and these sad, are found in every life.

10. They do not know that there are teachers everywhere, each busy with a God- appointed task, and driving home to human hearts the truth.

11. But this is true, and every one receives the lessons that he needs.

12. And Mary said, To-day I am in exultation great; my thoughts and all my life seem lifted up; why am I thus inspired?

13. Salome replied, This is a day of exultation; day of worship and of praise; a day when, in a measure, we may comprehend our Father-God.

14. Then let us study God, the One, the Three, the Seven.

15. Before the worlds were formed all things were One; just Spirit, Universal Breath.

16. And Spirit breathed, and that which was not manifest became the Fire and Thought of Heaven, the Father-God, the Mother-God.

17. And when the Fire and Thought of heaven in union breathed, their son, their only son, was born. This son is Love whom men have called the Christ.

18. Men call the Thought of heaven the Holy Breath.

19. And when the Triune God breathed forth, lo, seven Spirits stood before the throne. These are Elohim, creative spirits of the universe.

20. And these are they who said, Let us make man; and in their image man was made.

21. In early ages of the world the dwellers in the farther East said, Tao is the name of Universal Breath; and in the ancient books we read,

22. No manifesting form has Tao Great, and yet he made and keeps the heavens and earth.

23. No passion has our Tao Great, and yet he causes sun and moon and all the stars to rise and set.

24. No name has Tao Great, and yet he makes all things to grow; he brings in season both the seed time and the harvest time.

25. And Tao Great was One; the One became the Two; the Two became the Three, the Three evolved the Seven, which filled the universe with manifests.

26. And Tao Great gives unto all, the evil and the good, the rain, the dew, the sunshine and the flowers; from his rich stores he feeds them all.

27. And in the same old book we read of man: He has a spirit knit to Tao Great; a soul which lives within the seven Breaths of Tao Great; a body of desires that springs up from the soil of flesh.

28. Now spirit loves the pure, the good, the true; the body of desires extols the selfish self; the soul becomes the battle ground between the two.

29. And blessed is the man whose spirit is triumphant and whose lower self is purified; whose soul is cleansed, becoming fit to be the council chamber of the manifests of Tao Great.

30. Thus closed the lesson of Salome.

Table of Contents

1. Elihu taught; he said, In ancient times a people in the East were worshippers of God, the One, whom they called Brahm.

2. Their laws were just; they lived in peace; they saw the light within; they walked in wisdom's ways.

3. But priests with carnal aims arose, who changed the laws to suit the carnal mind; bound heavy burdens on the poor, and scorned the rules of right; and so the Brahms became corrupt.

4. But in the darkness of the age a few great masters stood unmoved; they loved the name of Brahm; they were great beacon lights before the world.

5. And they preserved inviolate the wisdom of their holy Brahm, and you may read this wisdom in their sacred books.

6. And in Chaldea, Brahm was known. A pious Brahm named Terah lived in Ur; his son was so devoted to the Brahmic faith that he was called A-Brahm; and he was set apart to be the father of the Hebrew race.

7. Now, Terah took his wife and sons and all his flocks and herds to Haran in the West; here Terah died.

8. And Abram took the flocks and herds, and with his kindred journeyed farther west;

9. And when he reached the Oaks of Morah in the land of Canaan, he pitched his tents and there abode.

10. A famine swept the land and Abram took his kindred and his flocks and herds and came to Egypt, and in these fertile plains of Zoan pitched his tent, and here abode.

11. And men still mark the place where Abrahm lived-across the plain.

12. You ask why Abram came to Egypt land? This is the cradle-land of the initiate; all secret things belong to Egypt land; and this is why the masters come.

13. In Zoan Abram taught his science of the stars, and in that sacred temple over there he learned the wisdom of the wise.

14. And when his lessons all were learned, he took his kindred and his flocks and herds and journeyed back to Canaan, and in the plains of Mamre pitched his tent, and there he lived, and there he died.

15. And records of his life and works and of his sons, and of the tribes of Israel, are well preserved in Jewish sacred books.