The Rended Veil — 3

Nevertheless when it shall turn to the Lord, the vail shall be taken away.
2 Corinthians 3:16

"Therefore leaving the principles of the doctrine of Christ, let us go on unto perfection" (St Paul, Hebrews 6:1). What are we to make of this verse, in fact this chapter? Is not perfection to be found in the doctrine itself? To the Apostle of Tarsus, no. There needs be more, and that more was revealed in Christ Jesus, and that more became the entire focus of St Paul's ecclesiology as he plunged ever deeper into the mystery of God.

The domain of principle, and the regimen of its concordant doctrine, comprises the whole world that lay between these two veils, the paroketh and the masak. The spiritual life is a journey from one veil to the other, from ignorance to illumination, from illusion to truth. When observed from this perspective these two veils represent the esoteric and the exoteric dimension respectively, but not exclusively, for the perspective of each changes as the journey progresses. Simply said at the start everything is esoteric, at the end, nothing is hidden. To repeat, the word 'esoteric' itself simply means 'more interior' and whereas the exoteric view of something is its external face, the esoteric is therefore a more interior view, a more perceptive or penetrative view of the same thing, and not, as is commonly understood, a view of something else entirely. It is all a matter of degree that is dependent upon the quality of perception, not the perceived. While on this subject it is perhaps worthwhile to divert, for a paragraph or two, from the main course of this inquiry to investigate a particularly modern phenomena with regard to the proper comprehension of this terminology.

While it is widely acknowledged and understood that an exotericism, being the formal and necessarily doctrinal expression of the truth of revelation, comprises the 'letter of the law' and draws its essence from an esotericism that is its cause and life-engendering source, and which thus comprises the 'spirit of the law' so to speak, the two are, although not equal, nevertheless mutually dependent upon each other. Whilst in principle the esoteric stands above the exoteric as essence over form or spirit over matter, in this wise the esoteric is of itself impervious to any violation of the exoteric, whereas the exoteric is entirely and continuously dependent upon the esoteric for its sustenance, in practice the esoteric requires an exoteric counterpart as its anchor and containment, that is its embodiment and its practice in fact, else the essence 'runs away' like water poured over sand. The two are like a heart and its beat, as it were, and whereas is is easy to see that a heart with no beat is empty and dead, it is harder but no less obvious that the essence that manifests itself as 'beat' can have no life outside of itself without a heart.

It is a common and perniciously erroneous belief of the current age that it is possible to 'abstract' the esoteric from its exoteric and traditional framework; stripped of its formal expression revealed truth is replaced by an entirely subjective and essentially counterfeit ideology that in satiating the sentimental poses as a spiritual life that is determined by neither God nor nature but the wish and whimsey of the moment.

Another no less common (in its own domain) but perhaps a more permissable, or at least understandable error, with regard to Christianity, is the assumption that whilst the esoteric and exoteric dimensions coexist within a given tradition, there is in the esoteric a separate and discrete (by which is meant secret) institutional and sacramental order the grace and gifts of which lie beyond the scope of the common stock. The two then, the esoteric and exoteric, are entirely and necessarily distinct, and the journey then from outer to inner is not one of degree is by invitation and a necessary initiation, whereas the whole message of Christ and the ministry of Jesus (to voice a much-spoken separation between spirit and body) was and is one and the same — Christianity is a religion of conversion, not of initiation, which brings us back on course, after an aparent but nonetheless valid and meaningful excursion, to our main investigation, which is the nature of the veil, and particularly with reference to the passage from the exterior world of the flesh into the interior world of the spirit.

From the superficial image of the manifest world that is woven into the masak, with all its dazzling allure as Josephus testifies, the believer moves along the path of purgation, purification and illumination, toward the subtle treasures of the paroketh. Beyond that inner veil, only the high priest may enter, at the dates and times accorded to him. Within the Holy of Holies, devoid of all decoration, he stands naked before God, for it is a rule that he must divest himself of all his clothes. The place is the void of God in His Infinitude, and before Him the man stands, having shed every vestige of his mortal self to walk in the Presence of Divine Selfhood, stripped to his primordial purity, naked yet unabashed as was his distant ancestor before the Fall.

His nakedness then is a sign, not only of the shedding of his clothes, but in a sense the shedding of all that which lay before this veil, the formal and outward expression of his tradition, in its rites and rituals and regalia, its comforts and its consolations. In effect he has passed beyond the veil of form, of sign, of symbol, and the temple now shines with the 'metaphysical transparency' of his illumination. His eyes are opened and he sees everything made new. That inner veil represents the last form of the world of forms, and the grace of God pours through him and so he sees the essential reality of everything on which he turns his gaze. The outer veil is the veil of the exoteric, it is the surface that is opaque and stops the profane eye. The inner veil is the esoteric, the path to the interior. The two veils represent the letter and the spirit, form and the essence, in effect they are the same veil.