The Dead Sea Scrolls and The New Testament
The Dead Sea Scrolls and the New Testament
A Verbal Garment as Sacred Science
As we approach the tremendous avalanche of material called the Dead Sea Scrolls, we ask what is the real meaning of this Hermetic corpus, this treasury of ancient knowledge? The clear intentions of the writings of the Dead Sea Scrolls are to quicken the life force within the individual believer so that he or she can participate in the actual ascent into the existence known as the primordial Divine Creation, which has been set aside for the human.
In looking at these scrolls one is overwhelmed by the vastness of their dealing with the Spirit of Truth, which is connected with the God of Knowledge who is behind the completion of everything that is. And everything that is derived by the Godhead is the Spirit of Truth originating in the habitation of light and connected with the great gifts of mighty wisdom: the Spirit of Knowledge, the Zeal for Right Judgment, the Power of Purity, the Walking with Humility, and the Concealing of the Truth of the Mysteries. All these gifts are placed in opposition to the Spirit of Perversity originating in a Spring of Darkness, or what is called in the New Testament, the Power of the Adversary and those hierarchies that are aligned against the Son of Man.
At first glance, there appears to be a cosmic dualism in the Dead Sea Scrolls. Yet, when we look deeper, we realize that the Spirit of Perversity and Darkness is the spirit that, according to the Dead Sea Scrolls, indwells within each believer who must struggle to overcome it so that the Light will shine and he or she may thus begin the higher ascent through the unification of the internal aspects of man’s soul with the externalization of the Divine Crowns of Creation.
In essence, there is no longer a cosmic dualism but a sense of great unity that emerges in both the Qumran Scrolls and The New Testament. This unity is not one with dogma or traditional theology of a static anthropology, rather it is with the Divine Self or the Archetypal Man called by the Hebrew philosophers Adam Kadmon. He is the unique and divine essence that is part of the Divine Birthright that has come down into our earthly existence. The teachings of the Dead Sea Scrolls and the New Testament actively prepare the believer, in a meditative sense, to enter into Divine dialogue and, in a paraphysical way, experience what the Torah says: “And God blew into his nostrils a Soul of Life” (Genesis 2:7). Let us think of this as the activation of the five levels of the Soul or the five inner bodies of which the Keys of Enoch® speak.
The word soul or Nephesh comes from the root word in Hebrew nafash, which means to rest. But on the seventh day of creation, even though the divine rested (nafash), as we read in Exodus 31:17, the on-going competition of the Soul continued. Hence, we are still living in the creation of the seventh day in preparing that Soul for unity with the Divine Hierarchy that surrounds it in the higher worlds of splendor.
The next level deals with Ruach which is often translated as “spirit” and what is found to carry the connotations of wind, air, or direction. [Ruach Ha Kodesh being the Spirit of the Divine.] In the deeper sense of the Qumran text, it is the spirit force, or the energy field, connected with the Spirit of Truth that is important in order to elevate the soul to see beyond the eschatology the events of the end of the planetary drama into the higher worlds of Light. So that it may continually be taught about the Torah, the soul is to be understood as always at the disposal of a higher dwelling of Light whose disposition of truth is beyond the reach of human psychological connotations, and which exists within the true presence of the Divine Spirit.
The next higher level is to see the elevation of the soul in terms of Neshamah, or the breath that is the combination of the natural soul and Spirit of God. A higher soul synthesis of discernment and the beginning of participation in the worlds of Light is created by maintaining the breath of the Divine Dialogue that streams from the Divine Voice. Neshamah comes from the Hebrew word neshimah, meaning breath, but in a deeper sense it means the ability to breathe both within the inner dimension of the human creation while at the same time without, in the higher external creation of the Sons of Light, thereby sharing the same element of Life.
The next level of the Soul is what is called the Chayah, or the living essence. This term is derived from the ancient word chayut, or life force. It is the preparation of Divine liberation to go beyond the world of historic entrapment into the Light Body of Divine Service. It is in this context that we must understand the relevance of the Dead Sea Scrolls and the New Testament, as going beyond dualism and preparing the Light Body of the believer for Life in the Divine Heavenly Kingdoms of Light. The Qumran texts and the New Testament thus continue the tradition of an early extraordinary literature and consciousness cosmology which, according to the Keys of Enoch®, are rooted in the experience of Melchizedek’s Blessing of Abraham. This, in turn, thus prepared his seed to participate in the higher worlds, not simply in the flesh but in the Body of Light.
Finally, the fifth level that is important in the higher unity with the Archetypal Man, or the Overself, is called Yechidah. This term comes from the words echad and yichud, meaning oneness and unity. That is to say: oneness with the unique essence that is the primordial archetypal man and woman; unity with the eternal image of the self that survives history and participates in the many Divine Worlds; and finally, unity with the Godhead directly, beyond doctrinal authority and through direct experience of the Spirit of Truth. It is thus important for us to recognize that in the tradition of Qumran, as well as in the New Testament, there are major aspects of spiritual development that must be approached very carefully in terms of supernatural activity.
The Keys of Enoch® confirm the interconnectedness of these two great libraries of teachings as affirming an astrophysical Israel or Messiahship that is based not on human tradition but rather on the use of Sacred Language, terminology, and direct experience.
At Qumran scholars found substantial amounts of literature connected with the Enochian strata of history tradition and work with the angelic hierarchies. The angelic names from the First Book of Enoch (125-135 BCE) has been seen as very important by noted linguist and Catholic scholar, Professor. Milik He argues that the extra-biblical Enoch material is so important that it even influencing the motif of the angelic marriages with the “daughters of man” in the later re-editing writing of the Book of Genesis, chapter 6. The importance of ‘female themes’ connected with genetics and wisdom that appears in the Wisdom Literature of biblical and pre-biblical texts of the ancient Near East was later echoed in the Pistis Sophia literature (120-300 CE) which shows a dominant thread of feminine teachings from the mouth of the female narrator, Sophia (“Wisdom”), in both Hebrew and Greek languages.
Yet, the very notion of “spirit,” in a broader sense, is related as well to the idea of the Paraclete, or Comforter. This is that aspect of the Divine Spirit which dwells in close harmony with the believer’s consciousness and spirit. The Paraclete occupies such an important role that in the New Testament it is said that one cannot affirm the name Christ without the use of the Paraclete. In this context, the Comforter becomes the initiator of the completed vessel of Light. The Paraclete, the Greek equivalent of the Shekinah or the Shekinah Presence, activates the life force within the realm of the human so that the human, on its most basic physical level, receives the blessings from the Godhead as a constant stream of internal and external energy that occupies the thoughts. The Paraclete bears witness to one’s soul that one is a son or daughter of God, thus activating a trinitized state of awareness that allows the soul to rise to still higher levels of connection and experience with the Divine Way.
Secondly, the Paraclete surrounds the believer and activates the energy field of what the Keys call the “force of similitude” so that one becomes conscious of higher levels of spirituality. At these higher levels, one experiences the Ruach Ha Kodesh, the true force of the Holy Spirit as an actual trinitized vehicle that can leave the body of man and ascend to higher worlds where the person is completely elevated and transformed by God’s Spirit.
Finally on the highest of levels the Paraclete is merged with the Neshamah, or the synthesized Soul-Spirit of man or woman, so that their vessel can receive and hold the original nature that was intended for that soul prior to its incarnation upon the earth. On this level, one becomes a miracle worker capable of great activity in the use of the gifts of the Holy Spirit. Hence the level of Neshamah, interconnected with the Paraclete, is the opening of a threshold through which the person obtains to the level of a very close intimacy with God, feeling and experiencing the Divine in all directions at a intensity of spiritual energy that cannot be put into words.
Similarly, we should consider as well the relationship between Pneuma, the Paraclete, and the Holy Spirit . Pneuma, or Ruach as it is called in Hebrew, is part of the eternal greater spirit beyond all eternities and aeons, beyond all worlds of physical form or divine commission. Pneuma represents the on-going office of the Godhead working interdimensionally and subatomically in pluralistic worlds of creation that are both exclusively spiritual as well as combinations of the physical and spiritual. The Paraclete, on the other hand, represents the Office of the Trinitized Godhead, that aspect of God, absolute, supreme and ultimate, that has taken on the duty of activating that which is necessary for the salvation of that particular part of physical-spiritual creation which has fallen away from the endowments of the mind. The Paraclete is, thus, the Comforter for creations and soul-believers in the lower worlds where they need the energies of similitude, upliftment and creation for the retransmission of spiritual energy and for that synthesis which links the two – – the human self and the divine self – – into one divine unity.
In relationship to the Christ, the Paraclete represents that energy envelope of the eternal Creator Spirit which provides the Garment of Creation for the Christ image, or that of the Creator Son. As such it provides a certain consistency and intimacy with the Divine realm, not only in the physical universe but in the universe of Divine thought forms. The purpose thus of activating the Paraclete is to recognize within physical history a profound extension or emanation from the Office of the Spirit that is capable of giving a specific encoding of information to physical intelligence so it is no longer separated from the Divine but reconnected with the Melek-Ha-Olam, or King of the Universe.
The trinitized plan of God’s Supreme Ultimate Divine working through the various Master trinities provides a Master Plan of how the thought-forms of the Father’s Super Universe combine with the physical universe of the Creator Son in such a way to activate a synthesis of will, mind, thought, speech, and action through the Light Body of the Shekinah Universe, the inner dimensional universe, which collects all of the elements that are necessary for a given blueprint for a given Tree of Life or Tree of Evolution to be encoded according to the first thought of a Creator Son. In this process the trinitized work of Father, Son and Spirit allows for the evolution of Spiritual Sons and Daughters of Light to become the ultimate goal containing the twelve ineffable Sephirotic energies of climbing up the Tree of Life to higher worlds of existence.
When we speak of the Universes of the Divine thought forms, we are referring to a profound concept of the Godhead as a nonstatic, expanding and experiencing intelligence that is expressing itself in plentitude. The Ruach or the Spirit of God, according to the Keys of Enoch®, expresses the universe through which similitudes, or supporting force fields, which initiate and sustain everything being transmitted from thought form existence into physical creation, operate.
The Ruach thus is the hyperspace realm for the intention and the extension of the Godhead of the Elohim to operate, providing space/time unfoldment for the cause-effect relationships of the higher worlds while simultaneously providing for a unity between the pattern of the supernal universes and the physical universes that are continually being blueprinted, generated, and recreated for myriad forms of spiritual creative activity, originating in the world of the Divine Father/Ruach/Shekinah, or Divine Presence
According to the Keys of Enoch®, it is from these higher universes that worlds are created for the Creator Son who, in turn, then joins with the Spirit for the creation of experimental worlds and Peoplehoods of Light which occupy new worlds that are destined for experiential sonship and fatherhood in the process of going through the five-dimensional universe into the pathway of the Greater Creation. The Greater Creation occupies the physical universe’s 24 dimensions for the depth and time/space of Sovereignty, and depth and expanding time/space of Foundation, with the depth and inner dimensional interface with Empathy/Compassion, with the depth or mind-time/space of Dominance, with the depth or time/space of continuous Beauty, with the depth or time/space of Structure or Restraint, with the depth of time/space that is continuous of Love, the depth or time/space of Understanding, the depth or time/space of Wisdom, and with the depth or ultimate time/space of the Divine Thought-Form or Crown
All of these dimensional time/space relationships and continuum relationships are in turn placed within the operations of Michael, Metatron, and Melchizedek in the activation of Higher Sephiroth or an active Tree of Life beyond the conventional Tree of Life. This allows the Divine Presence, or Shekinah, to radiate Supernal Light through the dimensions of nothingness to the Selfhood and into the birthright of human creation that is destined for transforming the world into the Heavenly Malkuth, or Kingdom. Ultimately the inner relationship of the Ruach, the Godhead, takes place through the Virgin matrix, or the Shekinah matrix, as a female aspect of the Divine which is unlimited.