6. The Riches of Virginity
A Course of Lessons for Advancement in the Spiritual Life
Especially dedicated to those who desire to go All the Way with Jesus Christ
THERE is a scientific basis for the doctrine of the state called “Ever-virgin.” It is the state of completeness-in-itself, as demonstrated in the lives of Mary and of Jesus, a work of complete union with God, unbroken and untouched by the hand of mortal, yet with bodies capable of fulfilling all the functions possible to the human form.
The account of Jesus’ virgin-birth has not been considered by certain Christians as at all important. But, as the first work of the introduction of spiritual laws into physical matters, it holds the Key to absolute faith in all his other works or miracles. And as an aid to the attainment of translation, it is invaluable.
The rejection of this first miracle in the life of Jesus Christ has resulted, in many instances, in the rejection of all the works for which the Christian could not account in a rational and sense-satisfying way.
The denial of the virgin-birth of Jesus stultifies all the records of his wonder-works, for the same arguments by which this first part of Jesus’ history may be rejected, will throw out all the other records, leaving thereby only the bare bones of doctrine and much of that also refused.
But the rationale of the process satisfies those who accept the truth that “every good gift cometh from the Father” (James 1:17) who introduces them independently of time, space or any other limitation of mortals’ knowledge of cause and effect. Divine order is not set aside nor any laws violated by the introduction of higher laws and processes. These very flesh bodies of ours would remain subject to the law of inertia, i.e., inability to move voluntarily from a still state or, when being moved, to stop at will, if it were not for the law of mind, life and Spirit. When man shall realize that all advancement of nature and humanity is by the coming in of Spirit and its laws they will no longer seek for “the missing link”—it will be known to be spirit.
Many unborn souls need to realize that they can come to birth through parents of high ideals, independently of the cohabiting of these parents and so, as “eunuchs which were so born from their mother’s womb” (Matt. 19:12) realize it possible not to fall into generation themselves. And any mind among us that can conceive of the rationale and the freedom of that mode of birth may belong itself to those who came that way, and therefore can see what has already been declared, that we all come to this earth by the fiat of God and are of the seed of our heavenly Father, just the same as Jesus—the only difference being that he demonstrated it.
There is a beautiful story told of the Virgin Mary that in her girlhood she was brought up in the Temple, and while there she consecrated all of her generative powers to God, making a vow that she would never “know” man; that is, that she would never be married but to the one Husband, God.
As a vestal virgin in the Hebrew service she, with others, made the beautiful hangings and embroideries for the Temple, but when she neared the age of physical maturity, being liable to that state which was called unclean by the Hebrews, which would therefore make her unfit to remain in the Temple, arrangements were made to espouse her to a good man who would honor her vow.
She was taken from the Temple to the home of Joseph, but before the period came around “when the custom of woman would be upon her,” she was overshadowed by the power of the Most High, and conceived the blessed Master, not by the ordinary law of the flesh, but by a new law of spirit or mind, for spiritual laws are ever being introduced into the world and lifting it up toward heaven’s manifestation.
Mary remained virgin all her life. The so-called brothers and sisters of Jesus, described in the New Testament, are said to have been the children of Joseph by a former wife, but Mary never knew man, giving herself absolutely to the regeneration. Her experience was a prophecy of what we may expect in the coming years when women will receive their children from God, not as the result of an animal law, but because of the overshadowing of the Spirit. Such babes as Jesus Christ will come to married couples who consecrate their generative organs to the Most High and seek not to be fathers and mothers of children of the flesh, but to do the will of God.
This thought of God-born human beings is not uncommon. It has threaded the history of almost every great country, and while it has been accepted as tradition in most countries, it is accepted as actual fact by millions of people who call themselves Christians today, and who need only to realize that Jesus fulfilled a law in order to know that the experience was not exceptional, nor contrary to what is possible even today.
The virgin conception and birth never come to those who are not under the protection of marriage, for the Great Ones who come to such mothers, hold them in tenderness and perfect protection, and will not let their good name be harmed by their coming.
The truth is that every child that is born into the world is conceived by one father, our heavenly Father, God. So imbedded in the mind of flesh is the thought that the animal law must be fulfilled for the manifestation of the children of the flesh, it is seldom that this great fact is demonstrated to our senses. But there have been mothers in the flesh who have been surprised, and have pondered in their hearts the strange fact that they have conceived a child when to their certain knowledge there was no law fulfilled after the flesh.
Once, after a lecture upon the scientific nature of the conception manifested through the Virgin Mary, a lady came to the writer with her youngest son, a boy about six years old, to show him as an instance of virgin conception—a beautiful child, pure, bright, yet natural—and one that had never given his mother the slightest cause for worriment or fear.
This lady had had from her girlhood, unusual ideas concerning men and women and generation. As an only daughter with seven brothers who were her boon companions, she had a large acquaintance with young men, but never desired to marry, refusing many fine offers, only such a man, a Major in the army, could finally win her, as understood her nature; a man who seldom claimed his privileges as her husband.
Some months before this boy was conceived, the Major was away upon his army duties, and returned on a furlough late one evening, very tired and exhausted, only to find by a telegram that he must leave early the following morning. So completely exhausted was he that he fell asleep very quickly after lying down upon his bed, having no sexual relations with his wife. But she remained awake, and as she lay by his side, suddenly the ceiling of the room grew transparent and a star shot from the heavenly arch down into her breast, and that moment she knew that she had conceived a son, and at the same time without calculation, knew the very hour at which he would be born.
She shook her husband and awakened him out of his sound sleep, and demanded that he should get up and write this message which she gave him, that nine months from that hour her boy would be born. He tried to put her off by saying that it was a dream, but she would not be refused. So he wrote the letter and posted it to himself the next morning. She kept it, sealed, until the day her boy was born, handing it to her husband then, who read his own words describing the occasion and giving the prophecy of the birth, which was exactly the time she had declared. She had had no intercourse with her husband for months before the conception, nor during the time of gestation. She had always believed in this law and that it was not exceptional in the case of the Virgin Mary, but that other women could bring forth children by the same process.
God is our real Mother as well as Father. Woman may lend her body to nourish the newcomer, but she is not the source of it and should never claim it as her own.
Virginity, like purity, is a state of mind and of heart, and may exist even when the body has been violated. And though there have been sexual mistakes and people have lived in sexual indulgence for years, yet if the mind is pure and there is a complete turning away from the old life, the desire of one’s heart and the determined training of the mind out of the old lustful thinking, will result in that virginity of mind and heart which is one with the original purity of the Divine Self.
The old belief, which gave such power to external things, made the claim that one was out of the virgin life as soon as any sexual commerce had taken place, and that it was impossible to make the great attainment if once the body had been used upon the plane of generation. But the Truth which places all causation in the thought and feeling nature, sets the candidate free from that suggestion that heaven cannot be obtained by those who have lost their first innocence.
It is a fact that those who have had great sexual experiences and are trusting in the riches of the sex-life, may find the way harder than those who have never entered into such experiences. “How hardly do they that trust in riches enter into the Kingdom of Heaven.” These words of Jesus apply to other states besides those of the possession of things and money. “With men, it is impossible,” Jesus added, “but with God all things are possible.” With the mortal or carnal mind, this attainment could not be made, but the Master knew that it was possible for one to abandon the sex life as completely as that young man (Matt. 19:16 to 22), may have abandoned all his riches and given them to the poor in order to enter into the regenerate life. It may be like cutting off the right hand in order to give up sexual relationships, but if one is in earnest the deed will be done, and he will become “a eunuch for the Kingdom of Heaven’s sake.”
In order to understand the language of the mystics, one must take the words “virgin” and “eunuch” out of their old false association, and find that virgin signified a certain degree of attainment, and does not mean one who lacks, or is incomplete or immature. The Egyptian priests always referred to the queen, Isis, the heavenly spouse of Osiris, as ever virgin, and her symbol, the sistrum, was crossed and intercrossed with open bars to signify her inviolate nature. Yet, she, like the Virgin Mary, was a mother who bore a son called Horus. Her virginity, therefore, refers to her faithfulness to God. Whoever acknowledges but one source, but one love, and with true fidelity is the chaste companion of God alone is virgin, whether male or female. Such a one ceases all external acts of cohabiting and thereupon becomes “sealed unto the Lord,” and the body returns to the state it was in before marriage.
The word virgin applies to men in the Book of Revelation, described in the fourteenth chapter, as “those which were not defiled with women, for they are virgin.” They are described as following the Christ in every way, and having a special revelation as to harmony, called “A New Song.”
This is the next step in evolution, that the men and women will consecrate their creative energies to the Spirit, and give revelations to the world as to the way that hidden powers of creation in man can be developed, through the feeling and the thinking nature and the very devices, ways and means, that were once used in order to accomplish the fulfillment of one’s sensual desires. When these are deliberately turned away from the old generating, they will enter into the avenues of art, music, painting, poetry, drama, oratory, science, literature, and the thousand other forms of creation which are yet undeveloped because not approached from the consciousness of the power of virginity. The great paintings, sculptures and architecture, and the development of the fine arts, and the promulgation of the finer industries that belonged to the Middle Ages have their foundations laid in consecrated virginity.
The works of Michael Angelo and other great masters were always connected with prayer and devotion to the Spirit, which included the duty that, when they were in these great cathedrals, adorning their walls and approaching the symbols of the sacred offices and the instruments of worship, they should “at least keep themselves from women.” We remember that David and his young men were not allowed to take the showbread from the altar, unless it could be said that they had “kept themselves from women.” They assured the priest that they had been kept for three days.
Great mathematicians and astronomers and other scientific men have always done their best work when they have forgotten their sexual appetite and not indulged it while working out their problems. The exceptions to this rule of continence relate to such expressions of art as are temporary, like oratory, or acting, singing, or certain feats of prowess that may be at their best after a satisfactory indulgence of sex desire. Then the impetus which comes from gratification of that appetite is the same as that which comes from drink, and the artist who looks for such inspiration, or rather the means of inspiration, is upon the road of degeneracy and nearing the end of his career. The art or inspiration that requires a stimulant ever holds a questionable place in the halls of fame.
The question may rise, how is it that so many great men who have left a mark in history have also been highly charged with sex-consciousness, indulging themselves to a remarkable degree in this appetite? These are not stars of the first magnitude. They never made the attainments that they might have made, had they used all their sexual powers along the lines of creation with which they were talented.
They came into the world endowed with mighty creative energy, the result of previous existence, wherein they conserved their sex powers. Many men and women, like monks and nuns, conserve these sex energies for just one end, to make attainment after they have passed from this earth. Some of them are disappointed. They find they do not make the attainment by that step alone, especially when they were continent with an object in view. Not receiving the high reward when they pass into the invisible, but being obliged to incarnate again, they come with their minds charged with resistance toward the continent life, as an ineffectual and unnecessary factor in suecess. Then they scatter their rich substance in foolish self-indulgence and make but a mediocre mark in the race when they might have stood in the highest rank. If the lives of such men will be fairly considered, it will be found that there were more failures than successes in them, and while a Napoleonic flight may dazzle the eyes, there is a heaviness and sadness about such a life that is the best repudiation of their methods. They “sell their birthright for a mess of pottage.”
The riches of virginity are not only expressed in one’s new genius and in new industries and discoveries, but there is a richness in the body of health and strength and a power of resistance toward disease which mark the man who contains himself. The features are clean-cut, the movements graceful, the head clear, and the muscles strong. Like Sir Galahad, the virgin knight who achieved the Holy Grail, “My strength is as the strength of ten, because my heart is pure.” With such the physical body can be easily reconstructed and made to have unusual powers of resistance to dissolution. It has been observed that among men of sex-nugacity, certain weaknesses are common—tendency to being bald-headed, great sensitiveness to cold and to pain, irritability, and a common and mediocre look and bearing. One reason why women have more delicate senses, and better endurance of cold and pain than men, is because fewer of them indulge their sex desires and lose that precious defense and protection of the conserved seed.
There is a kind of spiritual aristocracy about virgins who are such because of self-control, and the friends that they make and the many who trust them, the confidences and the open doors to them into the secret places of heart and mind, bear witness to the desirability of this state in advancing the kingdom of heaven.
Especially would I dwell upon the financial advantage of virginity in this commercial age that describes its successes in dollars and cents. The substance that lies back of the human seed is the same substance that is back of the gold and silver in the earth. The reason why so many men are poverty-stricken is because they have thrown away this seed in what has been called “the poor man’s joy.” Many a man is grinding away at work and is kept fast in his place, earning his bread by much sweat of his brow, because he spends his rich seed in sensuality.
It is a well known fact that where communities have practiced continence, they have been prospered, until, as in the instance of the Shakers and the Quakers, they are among the richest in the religious bodies. Men have reasoned in a circle, saying they have to work hard because they are so poor, and, on the other hand, they are poor because they have to work so hard. Both of these can be traced to ignorance, and wasteful use of their sex energies. The rich men who are throwing their seed away, as the miser’s foolish monkey threw his master’s wealth into the street, will presently find themselves “poor and needy indeed,” looking the earth over for their health, seeking satisfaction and peace and never finding them, and in the end filling a grave mourned by few, and hated by many.
No one should enter into the virgin life with the thought of reward. In that way lies great disappointment. But, having taken this stand in the virginity of one’s soul, and realizing that it is the true state, and abiding in it because of Principle, one should know that riches must follow, that they do belong to that true life.
All of the joys of generation belong to the spiritual virgin and none of the hardships and sorrows. The ecstasies that are won in the old state after much labor and are followed by satiety and disgust and the pain and burden of child-bearing, come in the heavenly state with none of these shadows.
The ecstasy of the angels was symbolized among the early Christians by what they called a holy kiss—the kiss of lovers whose minds are wholly innocent of carnal desire or commerce.
This kiss was known to be of a certain character by the interior senses, and it was jealously guarded from any descent into the realm of sex-hunger. An ancient saying was quoted by the Christian Fathers: “For the Logos again says to us—‘If anyone kiss a second time because it has given him pleasure, he sins,’ adding, ‘Therefore, the kiss, or rather the salutation, should be given with the greatest care, since if there is mixed with it the least defilement of thought it excludes us from eternal life.’ ”1
It has been claimed that virginity is necessary on the part of anyone whose body is raised from the dead, that all those whom Jesus raised were virgin. Lazarus was unmarried, also the Nain widow’s son, and Jairus’ daughter.
The goal of immortality in the flesh is attained by those only who cease to function in generation, and become virgin again.
There are many strange teachings given forth these days upon the Way of Regeneration, and most of them include certain sexual practices. For the most part failure marks the career of such teachers. Poverty, insanity, and death dog their steps. In the many years I have had an opportunity to observe the effect of these teachings in the lives of the teachers and their students, I have seen a number die, some go insane, others dogged by poverty and disease, and in the case of one well-known teacher, the drink habit undermined her.
One Teacher proved that he was the Way and the Truth and the Life by his mastery over every enemy of mankind. Jesus Christ is the only safe teacher to follow, and his lessons are plain and unmistakable to the fearless, unprejudiced and honest inquirer.
“I, Jesus, have sent mine angel to testify unto you these things.”
“And the Spirit and the Bride say, Come. And let him that heareth say, Come.”—Rev. 22:16, 17.
I HAVE HEARD AND I SAY, COME.
