ody, or the entranced and rigid body, if no cross had been used,
was lifted out of the sarcophagus and placed on a sloping surface,
facing the east, ready for the rising of the sun on the third day. At
the moment that the rays of the sun touched the face, the Christ, the
perfected Initiate or Master, re-entered the body, glorifying it by the
bliss body He was wearing, changing the body of flesh by contact with
the body of bliss, giving it new properties, new powers, new capacities,
transmuting it into His own likeness. That was the Resurrection of the
Christ, and thereafter the body of flesh itself was changed, and took on
a new nature.

This is why the sun has ever been taken as the symbol of the rising
Christ, and why, in Easter hymns, there is constant reference to the
rising of the Sun of Righteousness. So also is it written of the
triumphant Christ: "I am He that liveth and was dead; and behold, I am
alive for evermore, Amen; and have the keys of hell and of death."[251]
All the powers of the lower worlds have been taken under the dominion of
the Son, who has triumphed gloriously; over Him death no more has power,
"He holdeth life and death in His strong hand."[252] He is the risen
Christ, the Christ triumphant.

The Ascension of the Christ was the Mystery of the third part of the
spiritual body, the putting on of the Vesture of Glory, preparatory to
the union of the Son with the Father, of man with God, when the Spirit
re-entered the glory it had "before the world was."[253] Then the triple
Spirit becomes one, knows itself eternal, and the Hidden God is found.
That is imaged in the doctrine of the Ascension, so far as the
individual is concerned.

The Ascension for humanity is when the whole race has attained the
Christ condition, the state of the Son, and that Son becomes one with
the Father, and God is all in all. That is the goal, prefigured in the
triumph of the Initiate, but reached only when the human race is
perfected, and when "the great orphan Humanity" is no longer an orphan,
but consciously recognises itself as the Son of God.

Thus studying the doctrines of the Atonement, the Resurrection, and the
Ascension, we reach the truths unfolded concerning them in the Lesser
Mysteries, and we begin to understand the full truth of the apostolic
teaching that Christ was not a unique personality, but "the first
fruits of them that slept,"[254] and that every man was to become a
Christ. Not then was the Christ