The Theosophical Forum – January 1947

A SERMON FROM MOUNT MERU — Marion O. French

Now, in this Sacred Season, let us make one wish to guide us through the New Year, for we are entering a crucial cycle of the Kali-Yuga. That Wish should be a prayer from the heart to follow the Golden Rule. It would be well to repeat it until the words run like a song from our lips. "'Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them; for this is the law and the prophets."

Thus spoke the sainted Syrian Sage, Avatara and Messiah, known to men as Jesus of Nazareth. For us He came as the embodied Christos to enlighten the Dark Age. His "Sermon on the Mount" fills Chapters 5, 6, and 7 of The Gospel according to St. Matthew. It embraces the whole essence of Christianity in the pristine purity and glory of that Faith. It contains the Lord's Prayer and the Rule of Gold that is the Law by which we shall be measured. Therein is the Doctrine enunciated by the first Divine Instructors of mankind. It holds within it the esoteric ethics that have been repeated in exoteric terms adapted to the age by every Saviour that links us to Divinity with an unbroken Messianic chain.

This sacrosanct preachment may, properly, be construed in perpetuity as The Sermon from Mount Meru. It begins, "and seeing the multitudes, He went up into a mountain"; and having therefrom commenced to preach "as one having authority, and not in the manner of the scribes," as a risen Helper of Humanity, Jesus spoke to the "multitudes" upon the plain below. Wandering and wondering, these people on the lower plane looked up to listen. They knew not whither they were going, nor why, for they were enmeshed in the toils of two-dimensional time that seemed to run in endless circles from an unknown past into the terrors of an unseen future. It tied them to the surface of that plane whereon their vision was confined within a close and encompassing horizon. What lay beyond they knew not. Many, climbing upon and crushing their brethren beneath them strove in vain to see a little further.

Compassion moved the Heart of Him who stood upon the Mount and saw their suffering, "and He opened His mouth and taught them." To Him, from that coign of vantage, the paths that lay ahead of men in all directions were clearly open to view. He saw too well that "broad is the way that leadeth to destruction," and "narrow is the way which leadeth unto life." He saw "many" following the broad paved highways that ended in abysmal depths, and "few" that found the "strait gate" leading ever onward and upward. There, below Him, His fellow men faced the divergent paths of life. They lacked the psychological perspective that could see in an eternal Now the culmination of all paths and what lay in wait along those that led downward in the "easiest way."

There is a wealth of meaning in that psychological perspective of ancient Chinese art. It portrays in disproportionate size those forms in the background that are beyond the eyesight of figures in the foreground, but that are of vital import for their future. Those figures have freedom of choice, but what awaits them as reward or punishment lies ahead in the future in the form of Fate, of self-generated Karman.

From The Secret Doctrine we may know that Mount Meru is called Sveta-Dvipa in Puranic literature, and is the "land of the 'Gods' under their chiefs the 'Spirits of this Planet.' " (1) "As Meru is the high abode of the Gods, these were said to ascend and descend periodically; by which (astronomically) the Zodiacal gods were meant, the passing of the original North Pole of the Earth to the South Pole of the heaven." (2) "It is the north pole, the country of 'Meru,' which is the seventh division, as it answers to the Seventh principle (or fourth metaphysically), of the occult calculations for it represents the region of Atma, of pure soul, and Spirituality." (3) Also, "astronomically and metaphorically the celestial pole, with its pole star in heaven, is Meru, or the seat of Brahma, the throne of Jupiter, etc." (4) Thus, in Christianity with its numerous sects, as in all the other religions that have arisen from the revelations of the Buddhas of Compassion, the Sermon is one and the same. Always, it is Brotherhood and the Golden Rule that Their lips utter. That "is the law," and "the prophets" always preach it. There is but One, the incognizable totality of Deity, the Center that is everywhere in the Circumference that is nowhere, now and forever. The Psyche seeing through the Eye of Siva with psychological perspective may envision all. That Vision, though, as The Voice of the Silence tells us, is granted only to those who seek to see solely for the sake of others. There we read: "Would'st thou thus dam the waters born on Sumeru? [Mount Meru] Shalt thou divert the stream for thine own sake, or send it back to its prime source along the crests of cycles?"

So, let us renew our faith in the recurrent rebirth of the Christos, under whatsoever religious Name we know Him. With Him, we may find at-one-ment only through love for our fellowmen, and Today is the Time in which to reassert that high resolution.

FOOTNOTES:

1. S D., II, 6. (return to text)

2. S. D., II, 357. (return to text)

3. S. D., II, 403. (return to text)

4. S D, II, 785. (return to text)



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