of Jesus. Formerly the Logos had
only been seen in different degrees of human perfection. The delicate,
subtle differences in the spiritual life of personalities could be
observed, and the manner and degree in which the Logos became living
within those seeking initiation. A higher degree of maturity was to be
interpreted as a higher stage of evolution of spiritual life. The
preparatory steps had to be sought in a spiritual life already passed
through, and the present life was to be regarded as the preparatory
stage for future degrees of spiritual evolution. The conservation of
the spiritual power of the soul and the eternity of that force might
be stated in the words of the Jewish occult teaching in the book of
Sohar, "Nothing in the world is lost, nothing falls into the void, not
even the words and voice of man: everything has its place and
purport." Personality was but a metamorphosis of the soul, which
develops from one personality to another. The single life of the
personality was only considered as a link in the chain of development
stretching backwards and forwards.

This Logos metamorphosing itself in the many separate human
personalities has through Christianity been directed away from these
to the one unique personality of Jesus. What had previously been
distributed throughout the world was now united in a single
personality. Jesus became the unique God-Man. In Jesus something was
present once which must appear to man as the greatest of ideals, and
with which, in the course of man's repeated earthly lives, he ought
to be more and more united. Jesus took upon Himself the divinisation
of the whole of humanity. In Him was sought what formerly could only
be sought in a man's own particular soul. One did not any more behold
the divine and eternal within the personality of a man; all that was
now beheld in Jesus. It is not the eternal part of the soul that
conquers death and is raised through its own power as divine, but it
is that which was in Jesus, the one God that will appear and raise the
souls.

It follows from this that an entirely new meaning was given to
personality. The eternal, immortal part had been taken from it. Only
the personality, as such, was left. If immortality be not denied, it
has to be admitted as pertaining to the personality itself. Out of the
belief in the soul's eternal metamorphosis came the belief in personal
immortality. The personality acquired infinite importance, because it
was th