The doctrine of the resurrection of the flesh is an ancient one. In the Zoroastrian faith, after the final discomfiture of Ahriman, Ormuzd will re-assemble the scattered material atoms of every human body in the great all-inclusive resurrection still believed in by the faithful Parsees.

The Jews borrowed from the Persians certain beliefs concerning the resurrection. The Old Testament contains some references to the Jewish conception, thus Job: "though after my skin, worms destroy this body, yet in the flesh shall I see God." Both the Talmud and the Targums contain abundant evidence of faith in a fleshly resurrection.

Retaining many dogmas of its parent Judaism, primitive Christianity held literally to a bodily resurrection, as witness the church Fathers in its exposition and defence. Thus Justin Martyr, Tertullian, Chrysostom, Augustine, and even the Greek philosopher Athenagoras. To quote from Augustine: "every man's body however dispersed here, shall be restored perfect in the resurrection. Every body shall be complete in quantity and quality."

Into his composite doctrine, taken from several sources, Mohammed incorporated the Persio-Jewish doctrine of the resurrection. The theologians of the middle ages, and especially the Scholastics, speculated minutely on every imaginable detail of a gross physical resurrection. They defended their most absurd deductions with the argument that to Infinite Being all is possible. True the Manicheans of the first centuries, like the earlier Sadducees, had denied a bodily resurrection, but always such doubters and deniers were in the minority as afterward in the middle ages when, in matters of religion, faith and reason had little in common.

Notwithstanding the arguments of common sense, and the drastic criticism of modern Science, and also the fairly definite teachings of Paul who, as an Initiate of the Mysteries, surely knew the inner truth, and yet who, because an Initiate, could not wholly reveal that truth, the doctrine of corporeal resurrection has always been endorsed by the Papal, the Greek, and certain of the Protestant churches. Moreover, consistent theologians of these churches yet cling to this dogma as a mystery transcending human understanding. In fact they have at no time repudiated these words of Augustine: "the resurrection of the flesh was once regarded as incredible, but now we see the whole world believing that Christ's earthly body was borne into heaven."

Unquestioning acceptance of the doctrine of physical resurrection, or its rejection in toto, is an extreme which, down the Christian centuries, should have been avoided for a rational intermediate view, that of the thoughtful minority who hold that in the risen body of the Lord a profound change must have taken place, because he entered freely through closed doors. Moreover, a body of ponderable physical substance, however purified, could little adapt itself to realms wholly spiritual.

The permanent body described in preceding chapters, and there denominated "the orange physical," has no weight determinable by physical balances, however delicately they are constructed and poised. Therefore to move naturally on the dense and gravitative physical earth, such a body would take to itself weighable particles, the throwing off of which would result in its ascension.

Not necessarily having in mind the Jewish tradition of the indestructible bone Luz around which, in the fulness of time, the old flesh would gather, Paul the Initiate hides, under the symbol of a grain of wheat sowed, what we understand to be the truth concerning the Resurrection. That his symbol has been interpreted to signify that every human body contains a minute but indestructible nucleus or seed of flesh or bone which in the grave awaits germination, is not strange in the absence of knowledge concerning the seven-fold constitution of man.

As made known on page 122, "Special Teachings," and also in the chapter "The Secret of Prana," Occult Science teaches that during posthumous life, the permanent foundation atoms of the physical body exist in pralaya - seeming death - within that highest of man's bodies the auric envelope. At the culmination of man's progress, or possibly somewhat earlier, these atoms, having been wholly purified, are to expand into a body resembling that of the risen Master of physical life.

To Paul the Resurrection was the supreme event in the world, and naturally the central theme of his message to the Gentiles. Certainly the Resurrection was the unique event in human history and, as St. Augustine declared, a thing once regarded as unbelievable. Tradition it is true had given to both Enoch and Elijah a paradise whence in the physical body they would descend to earth in the last great day, but this was mere popular belief, nothing more.

In his brief epistle, Jude touches on a matter taken from an apocalyptial book: "The Ascension of Moses." This matter, bearing on our teaching as to the nature of the body of the resurrection, deals with the contention of Michael and the devil for the body of Moses. To one acquainted with Eastern methods of imparting truth, Michael there symbolizes a resurrection like that afterwards consummated by the Master. On the other hand, Satan symbolizes the death of the entire physical as a heritage which, according to the ancient Eastern Wisdom, was received from the first or deathless Adamic race when, having fallen from the pure orange physical into gross matter, they became the mortal second race.

If - as we have argued and expounded - the orange physical is to be the universal possession of the purified human race, and if - as generally conceded - that consummation had glorious beginning in the risen body of the Master, it is but reasonable to suppose that, prior to his day, some faint likeness of that glory was attained by the great forerunners of regenerate mankind.

Of all representatives of the race whereinto the Master incarnated at the beginning of the great cycle of Pisces, Moses was most capable of winning the immortal physical vesture as an indisputable possession. To one familiar with Eastern methods of teaching, it is evident that the dispute of those opposites Michael and Satan, signifies that Moses at best had attained only to an imperfect and perishable vehicle formed from the higher division of the physical.

In arguing for the Master a permanent physical vehicle, we relegate him to no remote and undiscoverable center of the astronomic universe, but locate him here in close touch with his younger brethren of the human family. Unsensed by the gross faculties of the lower nature, but known and proven to the higher man, he awaits our growing toward his own seven-fold perfection of body, soul, and spirit; that millennial condition of mankind on the renovated globe which is symbolized as the new Jerusalem, the Holy City that lieth four square, its corners resting in fact on Earth's cardinal points; the city of equal length and breadth and heighth; the cube whose interpretation is the world itself.

H. P. B.