The disciples said to Jesus, “We know you will depart from us. Who is to be our leader?”
Jesus said to them, “Wherever you are, you are to go to James the righteous, for whose sake heaven and earth came into being.”
The Master chooses the one who is to succeed himself as the teacher and guide of the assembly of the elect. In this case, it is St. James the Lord chooses, along with St. Peter, as teacher and guide of the general assembly. Yet among the apostles, each is given a sacred task and mission according to the nature of teachings and initiations he or she has received. Among the apostles there are those who are ordained to impart the outer teachings and initiations, those who are ordained to impart the inner teachings and initiations, and those to whom are entrusted the inmost secret wisdom. Every disciple receives teachings and initiations according to their capacity to receive and according to the development of their soul. Every apostle, moreover, is given a sacred task and mission according to the level of their initiation and attainment. Tradition tells us that the outer assembly leadership was given to St. James and St. Peter, while leadership of the inner circle was given to St. John and Mother Mary. To St. Mary Magdalene was given the sacred trust of the inmost secret wisdom, she being the apostle of the apostles, the incarnation of Sophia, and consort of Logos.
Here we understand the perfect Master as tau of a Mystery school, the holy tzaddik of a mystical order, for the incarnation of the Messiah is not the institution of a new religion. Rather, it is the revelation of the keys of the mysteries and transmission of the Light-force of the supernal consciousness that the Messiah embodied. The Master is the initiator of a stream of the Light-transmission and founder of a mystical and esoteric order bearing the keys of the mysteries and the Light-transmission in the world. Hence, not only by faith, but also through actively engaging in the divine labor and through knowledge (gnosis), we are awakened and redeemed. Faith is the beginning of salvation; gnosis is the fruition of salvation. Faith is accounted as righteousness; gnosis seeks the aim of perfection.
According to the different ordinations of the apostles, the one Light-transmission in the Master becomes many rays, as though light passing through a prism. Thus, not only is there the holy threefold order of Melchizedek embodied by the Master, as we read of in the Epistle to the Hebrews, but several mystical orders under the guidance of one holy order. The Light is manifest in different forms and levels of intensity so that everyone ready and willing might receive something of that holy illumination. This, of course, reflects the function of the holy Sefirot that span the five universes, which elsewhere the Lord speaks of as the five trees in paradise reserved for the faithful and elect. All of this is alluded to in this verse.
One might inquire, “What does it mean when the Lord says ‘heaven and earth came into being for the sake of James the righteous’?” Let it be said that, in Genesis, there is no mention of God creating hell. It is written that God created only the heavens and the earth. God does not create hell; rather, dark and hostile forces and the evil inclination in humankind creates hell. While we might speak of ignorance and Darkness as a secret operation of the Holy Spirit, nevertheless, hell is the product of separation from the Lord our God, created not by God but by the delusions of ignorance and forgetfulness.
Here, the Master is not speaking of St. James alone, but of all the holy and righteous ones, all the tzaddikim and maggidim. The heavens and the earth and the whole of creation are the matrix through which souls or consciousness-being evolves. Thus, the Divine intention in evolution is the purpose of Creation, of the heavens and the earth—the development and evolution of the supernal and Divine human being. It was for this purpose that Creation came into being, Creation being the womb of God birthing the Spiritual Sun, the soul of the Messiah. Whoever embodies something of this Holy Spirit and heavenly soul, it is as though for their own sake heaven and earth came into being.