The Occult Teachings tell us that Jesus, after His final disappearance from before the eyes of His apostles, passed on to the higher planes of the Astral World where He rapidly discarded all of His astral and mental vehicles which the soul had used in its manifestation.  The Astral Body and its corresponding higher sheaths were cast off and discarded.  That is, all except the very highest of all.  Had He discarded every vestige of individual soul-existence His spirit would have immediately merged itself with the One Spirit—­the Absolute—­from which it had originally proceeded and Jesus, as an entity, would have disappeared entirely within the Ocean of the One Spirit. This highest state of all He had deliberately resigned until the passage of ages, in order that He might accomplish His work as the World-Savior.

He retained the highest vehicle—­the Spiritual Mind in its highest shade of expression—­in order that as an entity He might labor for the race.  And so, He exists at this time—­one in substance with the Father, but yet maintaining an apparently separate entity-existence.  But this must be remembered, that Jesus, as Jesus the son of Mary and Joseph, no longer exists.  When He cast off the lower vehicles of His personality, His personality disappeared.  But His individuality persisted—­that is, He is still HE, although His personality has disappeared, leaving Him—­the real Him—­existing as the CHRIST PRINCIPLE.

By the above statement, we mean that when a soul reaches the highest spiritual stage short of absolute absorption into the One Spirit, it is no longer a person, but exists as a principle.  But that principle is not an inanimate mechanical force—­it is a living, knowing, acting principle of life.  This occult fact cannot be explained in the words of men, for no terms have been coined by which men can speak of it.  It is only indirectly that we can hope to have even the advanced student grasp the fact.

Jesus exists today, as the Christ Principle which actually lives and acts, but which is not confined in a body of any kind, using the word “body” in its accustomed sense.  As the Christ Principle or “The Christ” He is mingled with the life of the human race, and may be found immanent in the mind of every man, woman and child that has ever existed, does now exist, or will exist so long as Man is Man.  Not only is this true of those who have lived since His passage from the physical body, but it is equally true of those who lived before His birth.  This apparently paradoxical statement may be understood when we remember that these souls did not “die,” but only “passed on” to the Astral Plane, from whence they re-incarnated in due time.  The Christ (for so we shall speak of the present-state of Jesus) even entered into, and still abides in, the Astral Plane, as well as upon the Material Plane, for wherever the souls of men abide—­or whatever place their residence may be—­there is found The Christ, ever working for the salvation and redemption of the race.