ed on to the Path of Holiness, he lives
in heaven while remaining on earth, coming into conscious possession and
use of this heavenly body. And inasmuch as heaven is not far away from
us, but surrounds us on every side, and we are only shut out from it by
our incapacity to feel its vibrations, not by their absence; inasmuch as
those vibrations are playing upon us at every moment of our lives; all
that is needed to be in Heaven is to become conscious of those
vibrations. We become conscious of them with the vitalising, the
organising, the evolution of this heavenly body, which, being builded
out of the heavenly materials, answers to the vibrations of the matter
of the heavenly world. Hence the "Son of man" is ever in heaven. But we
know that the "Son of man" is a term applied to the Initiate, not to
the Christ risen and glorified but to the Son while he is yet "being
made perfect."[250]

During the stages of evolution that lead up to and include the
Probationary Path, the first division of the spiritual body--the Causal
Body--develops rapidly, and enables the man, after death, to rise into
the second heaven. After the Second Birth, the birth of the Christ in
man, begins the building of the Bliss Body "in the heavens." This is the
body of the Christ, developing during the days of His service on earth,
and, as it develops, the consciousness of the "Son of God" becomes more
and more marked, and the coming union with the Father illuminates the
unfolding Spirit.

In the Christian Mysteries--as in the ancient Egyptian, Chaldean, and
others--there was an outer symbolism which expressed the stages through
which the man was passing. He was brought into the chamber of
Initiation, and was stretched on the ground with his arms extended,
sometimes on a cross of wood, sometimes merely on the stone floor, in
the posture of a crucified man. He was then touched with the thyrsus on
the heart--the "spear" of the crucifixion--and, leaving the body, he
passed into the worlds beyond, the body falling into a deep trance, the
death of the crucified. The body was placed in a sarcophagus of stone,
and there left, carefully guarded. Meanwhile the man himself was
treading first the strange obscure regions called "the heart of the
earth," and thereafter the heavenly mount, where he put on the perfected
bliss body, now fully organised as a vehicle of consciousness. In that
he returned to the body of flesh, to re-animate it. The cross bearing
that b