Joseph [Hebrew] -- who Jeho­vah will add to; Jehovah shall increase; he shall increase progressively [i.e. - from perfection unto perfection].

 

...The state of consciousness in which we increase in character along all lines; we not only grow into a broader understanding, but there is an increase of vitality and substance. Joseph is especially representative of the realm of forms. He was clothed with a coat of many colors; he was a dreamer and in­terpreter of dreams; the phenomenal was his field of action. Among the primal faculties of the mind Joseph represents imagination. This faculty has the power to throw onto the screen of visibility in substance and life forms every idea that the mind may conceive. While the imag­ination is a very necessary faculty and is powerful and productive, it is belittled and often derided and scorned by the other faculties of the mind while they are not awakened spiritually [i.e. - while they are functioning in intellectual con­sciousness instead of true spiritual un­derstanding [Joseph's brothers perse­cuted him]].

 

Joseph in Egypt symbolizes the word of the imagination in subconsciousness or the involution of a high spiritual idea.  Joseph in Egypt could be said to also repre­sent our highest perception of Truth dealing with the realm of forms and bringing it into a more orderly state.  Joseph, our high ideal of Truth, comes down into the Egyptian darkness of sense consciousness, and under the law will finally raise it into spiritual Light.  In the process, Joseph seems to die, but his "bones" remain. Truth is an abiding presence, though its form may be lost to sight.

 

How often we hear people say that they do not now seem to realize such uplift as came to them when they first began to understand Truth!  Then, they were so enthusiastic that they could think and talk of nothing else.  They say that they even demonstrated for themselves and for others more easily than they demonstrate now.  They think that they have somehow lost their grasp of Truth, because carnality seems so real to them.  They are right in the place that was occupied by the Israelites after Joseph died.  Truth, as a thing apart, a personality named Joseph, has disap­peared, but it lives in his progeny in the land of Egypt; and these descendants are oppressed by Egyptians. We might say that the ideas that make up the statements of Truth that you have re­ceived have percolated through your mind, but the sense consciousness is ruling in you; and these "children of Israel" are oppressed.  Instead of sid­ing with Spirit in every thought, you side with the carnal, and you build up a ruling state of thought that remem­bers not the inspiring Truth. "Now there arose a new king over Egypt, who knew not Joseph" [Exodus 1:8].

 

But Truth cannot be destroyed, nor can true words and true thoughts ever be effaced from the mind that has willingly received them.  The Children of Israel multiplied in the land of Egypt in spite of oppression; their power became a great source of concern to the Egyptians, who "made their lives bitter with hard service in mortar and in brick" [ma­terial ways].

 

The several visits of Joseph's brothers to Egypt for corn, the bringing of Jacob and all the brothers of Joseph with their families and flocks down into Egypt and the final reconciliation are a symbolical representation of the manner in which we make connection with the obscured vitality within the organism and bring all our faculties into conjunction with it.  This symbolism depicts also the unifica­tion of the IAM [Jacob] with all the faculties of the mind, with the life energies, and with the substance of the whole man.  They dwelt in the "land of Goshen" [unity]. See Genesis 46 and 47.

 

Joseph and Mary, the parents of Jesus, represent wisdom and love, which have been ideas in mind, but are now to bring forth a manifestation in substance [Luke 2:4, 5].  Joseph might also be said to represent the Son of man and Mary the divine motherhood [Luke 2:40-52].

 

Joseph was merely betrothed to Mary, yet she was "great with child"; so Joseph "was minded to put her away privately."  This means that we do not, in the first stages of the birth of Christ in us, understand the process and sometimes we are moved to put it away from us.  The soul is heavily charged with divine life and so full that it cannot express itself intelligently because no union has yet taken place between it and the under­standing [Joseph].

 

Joseph of Arimathea signifies the imaging faculty functioning on a very high plane of consciousness [Arimathea means a height].