The
Rosicrucian Mysteries
An Elementary Exposition of
Their Secret Teachings
By
Max Heindel
Author of: The Rosicrucian Cosmo
Conception, The Rosicrucian Philosophy in Questions and Answers, The
Rosicrucian Interpretation of Christianity, Rays from the Rose Cross,
etc.
Third Edition
Rosicrucian Fellowship
Oceanside, California
London
L. N. Fowler, 7 Imperial Arcade,
Ludgate Circus. E. C.
Contents
Chapter I: The Order of
Rosicrucians and the Rosicrucian Fellowship
Chapter II: The Problem of
Life and its Solution
Chapter III: The Visible and
The Invisible World
Chapter IV: The Constitution
of Man
Chapter V: Life and Death
Chapter I.
The Order of Rosicrucians and the Rosicrucian Fellowship
Our Message And Mission
A Sane Mind
A Soft Heart
A Sound Body
Before entering upon an explanation of the teachings of
the Rosicrucians, it may be well to say a word about them and about
the place they hold in the evolution of humanity.
For reasons to be given later these
teachings advocate the dualistic view; they hold that man is a spirit
enfolding all the powers of God as the seed enfolds the plant, and
that these powers are being slowly unfolded by a series of existences
in a gradually improving earthy body; also that this process of
development has been performed under the guidance of exalted beings
who are yet ordering our steps, though in a decreasing measure, as we
gradually acquire intellect and will. These exalted Beings, though
unseen to the physical eyes, are nevertheless potent factors in all
affairs of life, and give to the various groups of humanity lessons
which will most efficiently promote the growth of their spiritual
powers. In fact, the earth may be likened to a vast training school
in which there are pupils of varying age and ability as we find it in
one of our own schools. There are the savages, living and worshipping
under most primitive conditions, seeing in stick or stone a God.
Then, as man progresses onwards and upwards in the scale of
civilization, we find a higher and higher conception of Deity, which
has flowered here in our Western World in the beautiful Christian
religion that now furnishes our spiritual inspiration and incentive
to improve.
These various religions have been
given to each group of humanity by the exalted beings whom we know in
the Christian religion as the Recording Angels, whose wonderful
prevision enable them to view the trend of even so unstable a
quantity as the human mind, and thus they are enabled to determine
what steps are necessary to lead our enfoldment along the lines
congruous to the highest universal good.
When we study the history of the ancient nations we
shall find that at about six hundred years B. C. a great spiritual
wave had its inception on the Eastern shores of the Pacific Ocean
where the great Confucian Religion accelerated the progress of the
Chinese nation, then also the Religion of the Buddha commenced to win
its millions of adherents in India, and still further West we have
the lofty philosophy of Pythagoras. Each system was suited to the
needs of the particular people to whom it was sent. Then came the
period of the Sceptics, in Greece, and later, traveling westward the
same spiritual wave is manifested as the Christian religion of the
so-called “Dark Ages” when the dogma of a dominant church
compelled belief from the whole of Western Europe.
It is a law in the universe that a
wave of spiritual awakening is always followed by a period of
doubting materialism, each phase is necessary in order that the
spirit may receive equal development of heart and intellect without
being carried too far in either direction. The Great Beings
aforementioned, Who care for our progress, always take steps to
safeguard humanity against that danger, and when they foresaw the
wave of materialism which commenced in the sixteenth century with the
birth of our modern Science, they took steps to protect the West as
they had formerly safeguarded the East against the Sceptics who were
held in check by the Mystery schools.
In the thirteenth century there appeared in central
Europe a great spiritual teacher whose symbolical name was Christian
Rosenkreuz or Christian Rose Cross who founded the mysterious Order
of the Rosy Cross, concerning which so many speculations have been
made and so little has become known to the world at large, for it is
the Mystery school of the West and is only open to those who have
attained the stage of spiritual unfoldment necessary to be initiated
in its secrets concerning the Science of Life and Being.
There are seven colors in the
spectrum: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet. But
between the violet and the red there are still other five colors
which are invisible to the physical eye but reveal themselves to the
spiritual sight. In every Mystery Order there are also seven brothers
who at times go out into the world and there perform whatever work
may be necessary to advance the people among whom they serve, but
five are never seen outside the temple. They work with and teach
those alone who have passed through certain stages of spiritual
unfoldment and are able to visit the temple in their spiritual
bodies; a feat taught in the first initiation which usually takes
place outside the temple as it is not convenient for all to visit
that place physically.
Let not the reader imagine that this initiation makes
the pupil a Rosicrucian, it does not, any more than admission to a
High School makes a boy a member of the faculty. Nor does he become a
Rosicrucian even after having passed through all the nine degrees of
this or any other Mystery School. The Rosicrucians are Hierophants of
the lesser Mysteries, and beyond them there are still schools wherein
Greater Mysteries are taught. Those who have advanced through the
lesser Mysteries and have become pupils of the Greater Mysteries are
called Adepts, but even they have not reached the exalted standpoint
of the twelve Brothers of the Rosicrucian Order or the Hierophants of
any other lesser Mystery School any more than the freshman at college
has attained to the knowledge and position of a teacher in the High
school from which he has just graduated.
A later work will deal with
initiation, but we may say here that the door of a genuine Mystery
School is not unlocked by a golden key, but is only opened as a
reward for meritorious service to humanity and any one who advertises
himself as a Rosicrucian or makes a charge for tuition, by either of
those acts shows himself to be a charlatan. The true pupil of any
Mystery School is far too modest to advertise the fact, he will scorn
all titles or honors from men, he will have no regard for riches save
the riches of love given to him by those whom it becomes his
privilege to help and teach.
In the centuries that have gone by since the Rosicrucian
Order was first formed they have worked quietly and secretly, aiming
to mould the thought of Western Europe through the works of
Paracelsus, Boehme, Bacon, Shakespeare, Fludd and others. Each night
at midnight when the physical activities of the day are at their
lowest ebb, and the spiritual impulse at its highest flood tide, they
have sent out from their temple soul-stirring vibrations to
counteract materialism and to further the development of soul powers.
To their activities we owe the gradual spiritualization of our once
so materialistic science.
With the commencement of the
twentieth century a further step was taken. It was realized that
something must be done to make religion scientific as well as to make
science religious, in order that they may ultimately blend; for at
the present time heart and intellect are divorced. The heart
instinctively feels the truth of religious teachings concerning such
wonderful mysteries as the Immaculate Conception (the Mystic Birth),
the Crucifixion (the Mystic Death), the cleansing blood, the
atonement, and other doctrines of the Church, which the intellect
refuses to believe, as they are incapable of demonstration, and
seemingly at war with natural law. Material advancement may be
furthered when intellect is dominant and the longings of the heart
unsatisfied, but soul growth will be retarded until the heart also
receives satisfaction.
In order to give the world a teaching so blended that it
will satisfy both the mind and heart, a messenger must be found and
instructed. Certain unusual qualifications were necessary, and the
first one chosen failed to pass a certain test after several years
had been spent to prepare him for the work to be done.
It is well said that there is a time
to sow, and a time to reap, and that there are certain times for all
the works of life, and in accordance with this law of periodicity
each impulse in spiritual uplift must also be undertaken at an
appropriate time to be successful. The first and sixth decades of
each century are particularly propitious to commence the promulgation
of new spiritual teachings. Therefore the Rosicrucians were much
concerned at this failure, for only five years were left of the first
decade of the twentieth century.
Their second choice of a messenger
fell upon the present writer, though he knew it not at the time, and
by shaping circumstances about him they made it possible for him to
begin a period of preparation for the work they desired him to do.
Three years later, when he had gone to Germany, also because of
circumstances shaped by the invisible Brotherhood, and was on the
verge of despair at the discovery that the light which was the object
of his quest, was only a jack-o-lantern, the Brothers of the
Rosicrucian Order applied the test to see whether he would be a
faithful messenger and give the teachings they desired to entrust to
him, to the world. And when he had passed the trial they gave him the
monumental solution of the problem of existence first published in
“The Rosicrucian Cosmo Conception” in November,
1909, more than a year before the expiration of the first decade of
the twentieth century. This book marked a new era in so-called
“occult” literature, and the many editions which have since been
published, as well as the thousands of letters which continue to come
to the author, are speaking testimonies to the fact that people are
finding in this teaching a satisfaction they have long sought
elsewhere in vain.
The Rosicrucians teach that all great religions have
been given to the people among whom they are found, by Divine
Intelligences who designed each system of worship to suit the needs
of the race or nation to whom it was given. A primitive people cannot
respond to a lofty and sublime religion, and vice versa.
What helps one race would hinder another, and in pursuance of the
same policy there has been devised a system of soul-unfoldment suited
specially to the Western people, who are racially and temperamentally
unfit to undergo the discipline of the Eastern school, which was
designed for the more backward Hindoos.
The Rosicrucian Fellowship
Therein lies a great danger, for, obviously, anyone
endowed with such faculties may use them to the greatest detriment of
the world at large, unless restrained by a spirit of unselfishness
and an all-embracing altruism. Therefore religion is needed today as
never before, to foster love and fellow-feeling among humanity so
that it may be prepared to use the great gifts in store for it wisely
and well. This need of religion is specially felt in a certain class
where the ether is more loosely knit to the physical atoms than in
the majority, and on that account they are now beginning to sense the
Aquarian vibrations.
The other group does not care for knowledge, but feels an inner urge God-ward, and pursues the path of devotion to the high ideal set before them in Christ, doing the deeds that He did as far their flesh will permit, and this in time results in an interior illumination which brings with it all the knowledge obtained by the other class, and much more. This class we may describe as mystics.
Certain dangers confront each of the two groups. If the occultist obtains illumination and evolves within himself the latent spiritual faculties, he may use them for the furtherance of his personal objects, to the great detriment of his fellow-men. That is black magic, and the punishment which it calls down upon the head of the perpetrator is so awful that it is best to draw the veil over it. The mystic may also err because of ignorance, and fall into the meshes of nature's law, but being actuated by love, his mistakes will never be very serious, and as he grows in grace the soundless voice within his heart will speak more distinctly to teach him the way.
The Rosicrucian Fellowship endeavors to prepare the world in general, and the sensitives of the two groups in particular, for the awakening of the latent powers in man, so that all may be guided safely through the danger-zone and be as well fitted as possible to use these new faculties. Effort is made to blend the love without which Paul declared a knowledge of all mysteries worthless, with a mystic knowledge rooted and grounded in love, so that the pupils of this school may become living exponents of this blended soul-science of the Western Wisdom School, and gradually educate humanity at large in the virtues necessary to make the possession of higher powers safe.
Chapter II.
The Problem of Life and Its Solution
THE PROBLEM OF LIFE.
Among all the vicissitudes of life, which vary in each
individual's experience, there is one event which sooner or later
comes to everyone—Death! No matter what our station in life,
whether the life lived has been a laudable one or the reverse,
whether great achievements have marked our path among men, whether
health or sickness have been our lot, whether we have been famous and
surrounded by a host of admiring friends or have wandered unknown
through the years of our life, at some time there comes a moment when
we stand alone before the portal of death and are forced to take the
leap into the dark.
The thought of this leap and of what
lies beyond must inevitably force itself upon every thinking person.
In the years of youth and health, when the bark of our life sails
upon seas of prosperity, when all appears beautiful and bright, we
may put the thought behind us, but there will surely come a time in
the life of every thinking person when the problem of life and death
forces itself upon his consciousness and refuses to be set aside.
Neither will it help him to accept the ready made solution of anyone
else without thought and in blind belief, for this is a basic problem
which every one must solve for himself or herself in order to obtain
satisfaction.
Upon the Eastern edge of the Desert of Sahara there
stands the world-famous Sphinx with its inscrutable face turned
toward the East, ever greeting the sun as its rising rays herald the
newborn day. It was said in the Greek myth that it was the wont of
this monster to ask a riddle of each traveler. She devoured those who
could not answer, but when Oedipus solved the riddle she destroyed
herself.
The riddle which she asked of
men was the riddle of life and death, a query which is as relevant
today as ever, and which each one must answer or be devoured in the
jaws of death. But when once a person has found the solution to the
problem, it will appear that in reality there is no death, that what
appears so, is but a change from one state of existence
to another. Thus, for the man who finds the true solution to the
riddle of life, the sphinx of death has ceased to exist, and he can
lift his voice in the triumphant cry “Oh death where is thy sting,
oh grave where is thy victory.”
Various theories of life have been advocated to solve this problem of life. We may divide them into two classes, namely the monistic theory, which holds that all the facts of life can be explained by reference to this visible world wherein we live, and the dualistic theory, which refers part of the phenomenon of life to another world which is now invisible to us.
Raphael in his famous painting “the
School of Athens” has most aptly pictured to us the attitude of
these two schools of thought. We see upon that marvelous painting a
Greek Court such as those wherein philosophers were once wont to
congregate. Upon the various steps which lead into the building a
large number of men are engaged in deep conversation, but in the
center at the top of the steps stand two figures, supposedly of Plato
and Aristotle, one pointing upwards, the other towards the earth,
each looking the other in the face, mutely, but with deeply
concentrated will. Each seeking to convince the other that his
attitude is right for each bears the conviction in his heart. One
holds that he is of the earth earthy, that he has come from the dust
and that thereto he will return, the other firmly advocates the
position that there is a higher something which has always existed
and will continue regardless of whether the body wherein it now
dwells holds together or not.
The question who is right is still
an open one with the majority of mankind. Millions of tons of paper
and printer's ink have been used in futile attempts to settle it by
argument, but it will always remain open to all who have not solved
the riddle themselves, for it is a basic problem, a part of the life
experience of every human being to settle that question, and
therefore no one can give us the solution ready made for our
acceptance. All that can be done by those who have really solved the
problem, is to show to others the line along which they have found
the solution, and thus direct the inquirer how he also may arrive at
a conclusion.
That is the aim of this little book; not to offer a
solution to the problem of life to be taken blindly, on faith in the
author's ability of investigation. The teachings herein set forth are
those handed down by the Great Western Mystery School of the
Rosicrucian Order and are the result of the concurrent testimony of a
long line of trained Seers given to the author and supplemented by
his own independent investigation of the realms traversed by the
spirit in its cyclic path from the invisible world to this plane of
existence and back again.
We must learn to see in this world. The new-born babe has no conception of distance and will reach for things far, far beyond its grasp until it has learned to gauge its capacity. A blind man who acquires the faculty of sight, or has it restored by an operation, will at first be inclined to close his eyes when moving from place to place, and declare that it is easier to walk by feeling than by sight; that is because he has not learned to use his newly acquired faculty. Similarly the man whose spiritual vision has been newly opened requires to be trained, in fact he is in much greater need thereof than the babe and the blind man already mentioned. Denied that training he would be like a new-born babe placed in a nursery where the walls are lined with mirrors of different convex and concave curvatures, which would distort its own shape and the forms of its attendants. If allowed to grow up in such surroundings and unable to see the real shapes of itself and its nurses it would naturally believe that it saw many different and distorted shapes where in reality the mirrors were responsible for the illusion. Were the persons concerned in such an experiment and the child taken out of the illusory surroundings, it would be incapable of recognizing them until the matter had been properly explained. There are similar dangers of illusion to those who have developed spiritual sight, until they have been trained to discount the refraction and to view the life which is permanent and stable, disregarding the form which is evanescent and changeable. The danger of getting things out of focus always remains however and is so subtle that the writer feels an imperative duty to warn his readers to take all statements concerning the unseen world with the proverbial grain of salt, for he has no intention to deceive. He is therefore inclined rather to magnify than to minimize his limitations and would advise the student to accept nothing from the author's pen without reasoning it out for himself. Thus, if he is deceived, he will be self-deceived and the author is blameless.
Three Theories of Life.
Only three noteworthy theories have been offered as
solutions to the riddle of existence and in order that the reader may
be able to make the important choice between them, we will state
briefly what they are and give some of the arguments which lead us to
advocate the doctrine of Rebirth as the method which favors
soul-growth and the ultimate attainment of perfection, thus offering
the best solution to the problem of life.
1) The Materialistic Theory teaches
that life is but a short journey from the cradle to the grave, that
there is no higher intelligence in the universe than man; that his
mind is produced by certain correlations of matter and that therefore
death, and dissolution of the body terminate existence.
There was a day
when the arguments of Materialistic philosophers seemed convincing,
but as science advances it discovers more and more that there is a
spiritual side to the universe. That life and consciousness may exist
without being able to give us a sign, has been amply proven in the
cases where a person who was entranced and thought dead for days has
suddenly awakened and told all that had taken place around the body.
Such eminent scientists as Sir Oliver Lodge, Camille Flammarion,
Lombroso and other men of highest intelligence and scientific
training, have unequivocally stated as the result of their
investigations, that the intelligence which we call man survives
death of the body and lives on in our midst as independently of
whether we see them or not as light and color exist all about the
blind man regardless of the fact that he does not perceive them.
These scientists have reached their conclusion after years of careful
investigation. They have found that the so-called dead can, and under
certain circumstances do, communicate with us in such a manner that
mistake is out of the question. We maintain that their testimony is
worth more than the argument of materialism to the contrary, for it
is based upon years of careful investigation, it is in harmony with
such well established laws as the law of conservation of matter
and the law of conservation of energy. Mind is a form
of energy, and immune from destruction as claimed by the materialist.
Therefore we disbar the materialistic theory as unsound, because out
of harmony with the laws of nature and with well established facts.
2) The Theory of Theology claims
that just prior to each birth a soul is created by God and enters
into the world where it lives for a time varying from a few minutes
to a few score of years; that at the end of this short span of life
it returns through the portal of death to the invisible beyond, where
it remains forever in a condition of happiness or misery according to
the deeds done in the body during the few years it lived here.
Plato insisted upon the necessity of a clear definition
of terms as a basis of argument and we contend that that is as
necessary in discussing the problem of life from the Bible point of
view as in arguments from the platonic standpoint. According to the
Bible man is a composite being consisting of body, soul and spirit.
The two latter are usually taken to be synonymous, but we insist that
they are not interchangeable and present the following to support our
dictum.
All things are in a state of
vibration. Vibrations from objects in our surroundings are constantly
impinging upon us and carry to our senses a cognition of the external
world. The vibrations in the ether act upon our eyes so that we see,
and vibrations in the air transmit sounds to the ear.
That is a scientific proposition. Science does not
explain what becomes of these vibrations however, but according to
the Rosicrucian Mystery teaching they are transmitted to the blood,
and then etched upon a little atom in the heart as automatically as a
moving picture is imprinted upon the sensitized film, and a record of
sounds is engraven upon the phonographic disc. This breath-record
starts with the first breath of the newborn babe and ends only with
the last gasp of the dying man, and “soul” is a product of the
breath. Genesis also shows the connection between breath and soul in
the words: “And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground,
and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a
living soul” (The same word: nephesh, is translated
breath and soul in the above quotation.)
The record of our evil acts is also derived from our breath in the moments when they were committed. The pain and suffering they bring cause the spirit to expel the breath-record from its being in Purgatory. As that cannot exist independently of the life-giving spirit, the breath-record of our sins disintegrates upon expurgation, and thus we see that “the soul that sinneth, it shall die.” The memory of the suffering incidental to expurgation however, remains with the spirit as conscience, to deter from repetition of the same evil in later lives.
Thus both our good and evil acts are recorded through
the agency of the breath, which is therefore the basis of the soul,
but while the breath-record of good acts amalgamates with the spirit
and lives on forever as an immortal soul, the breath-record of evil
deeds is disintegrated; it is the soul that sinneth and dies.
While the Bible teaches that immortality of the soul is
conditional upon well-doing, it makes no distinction in respect of
the spirit. The statement is clear and emphatic that when ... “The
silver cord be loosed ... then shall the dust return to the earth as
it was and the spirit shall return to God who gave it.”
Thus the Bible teaches that the body is made of dust and
returns thereto, that a part of the soul generated in the breath is
perishable, but that the spirit survives bodily death and persists
forever. Therefore a “lost soul” in the common acceptance of that
term is not a Bible teaching, for the spirit is uncreate and eternal
as God Himself, and therefore the orthodox theory cannot be true.
3) The Theory of Rebirths which
teaches that each spirit is an integral part of God, that it enfolds
all divine possibilities as the acorn enfolds the oak; that by means
of many existences in an earthy body of gradually improving texture
its latent powers are being slowly unfolded and become available as
dynamic energy; that none can be lost but that all will ultimately
attain to perfection and reunion with God, each bringing with it the
accumulated experience which is the fruitage of its pilgrimage
through matter.
Or, as we may poetically express it:
WE ARE ETERNAL.
On whistling
stormcloud; on Zephyrus wing,
The Spirit-choir
loud the World-anthems sing
Hark! Lis't to
their voice “we have passed through death's door
There's no Death;
rejoice! life lives evermore.”
We are, have
always been, will ever be.
We are a portion
of Eternity
Older than
Creation, a part of One Great Whole,
Is each Individual
and immortal Soul.
On Time's whirring
loom our garments we've wrought
Eternally weave we
on network of Thought,
Our kin and our
country, by Mind brought to birth,
Were patterned in
heaven ere molded on earth.
We have shone in
the Jewel and danced on the Wave,
We have sparkled
in Fire defying the grave;
Through shapes
everchanging, in size, kind and name
Our individual
essence still is the same.
And when we have
reached to the highest of all,
The gradations of
growth our minds shall recall
So that link by
link we may join them together
And trace step by
step the way we reached thither.
Thus in time we
shall know, if only we do
What lifts,
ennobles, is right and true.
With kindness to
all; with malice to none,
That in and
through us God's will may be done.
We venture to make the assertion that there is but one
sin: Ignorance and but one salvation: Applied
Knowledge. Even the wisest among us know but little of what
may be learned, however, and no one has attained to perfection, or
can attain in one single short life, but we note that everywhere in
nature slow persistent unfoldment makes for higher and higher
development of every thing and we call this process evolution.
One of the chief characteristics of evolution lies in
the fact that it manifests in alternating periods of activity and
rest. The busy summer, when all things upon earth are exerting
themselves to bring forth, is followed by the rest and inactivity of
winter. The busy day alternates with the quiet of night. The ebb of
the ocean is succeeded by the flood-tide. Thus, as all other things
move in cycles, the life that expresses itself here upon earth for a
few years is not to be thought of as ended when death has been
reached, but as surely as the sun rises in the morning after having
set at night, will the life that was ended by the death of one body
be taken up again in a new vehicle and in a different environment.
This earth may in fact be likened to a school to which
we return life after life to learn new lessons, as our children go to
school day after day to increase their knowledge. The child sleeps
through the night which intervenes between two days at school and the
spirit also has its rest from active life between death and a new
birth. There are also different classes in this world-school which
correspond to the various grades from kindergarten to college. In the
lower classes we find spirits who have gone to the school of life but
a few times, they are savages now, but in time they will become wiser
and better than we are, and we ourselves shall progress in future
lives to spiritual heights of which we cannot even conceive at the
present. If we apply ourselves to learn the lessons of life, we shall
of course advance much faster in the school of life than if we
dilly-dally and idle our time away. This, on the same principle which
governs in one of our own institutions of learning.
We are not here then, by the caprice of God. He has not
placed one in clover and another in a desert nor has He given one a
healthy body so that he may live at ease from pain and sickness,
while He placed another in poor circumstances with never a rest from
pain. But what we are, we are, on account of our own diligence or
negligence, and what we shall be in the future depends upon what we
will to be and not upon Divine caprice or upon inexorable fate. No
matter what the circumstances, it lies with us to master them, or to
be mastered, as we will. Sir Edwin Arnold puts the teaching most
beautifully in his “Light of Asia.”
“The Books
say well, my Brothers! each man's life
The outcome of his
former living is;
The bygone wrongs
bring forth sorrows and woes
The bygone right
breeds bliss.
Each has such
lordship as the loftiest ones
Nay for with
powers around, above, below
As with all flesh
and whatsoever lives
Act
maketh joy or woe.
Who toiled a slave
may come anew a prince
For gentle
worthiness and merit won;
Who ruled a king
may wander earth in rags
For things done or
undone.”
Or, as an unknown poet says:
“One ship
sails East and another sails West
With the self same
winds that blow.
'Tis the set of
the sail, and not the gale,
Which determines
the way they go.
As the winds of
the sea are the ways of fate
As we voyage along
through life.
'Tis the act of
the soul, which determines the goal
And not the calm or the strife.”
When we wish to engage someone to undertake a certain
mission we choose some one whom we think particularly fitted to
fulfill the requirements and we must suppose that a Divine Being
would use at least as much common sense, and not choose anyone to go
his errand who was not fitted therefor. So when we read in the Bible
that Samson was foreordained to be the slayer of the Philistines and
that Jeremiah was predestined to be a prophet, it is but logical to
suppose that they must have been particularly suited to such
occupation. John the Baptist also, was born to be a herald of the
coming Savior and to preach the kingdom of God which is to take the
place of the kingdom of men.
Had these people had no previous training, how could
they have developed such a fitness to fulfill their various missions,
and if they had been fitted, how else could they have received their
training if not in earlier lives?
The Jews believed in the Doctrine of Rebirth or they
would not have asked John the Baptist if he were Elijah, as recorded
in the first chapter of John. The Apostles of Christ also held the
belief as we may see from the incident recorded in the sixteenth
chapter of Matthew where the Christ asked them the question: “Whom
do men say that I the Son of Man am?” The Apostles replied: “Some
say that Thou art John the Baptist; some, Elias; and others Jeremias
or one of the Prophets.” Upon this occasion the Christ tacitly
assented to the teaching of Rebirth because He did not correct the
disciples as would have been His plain duty in His capacity as
teacher, when the pupils entertained a mistaken idea.
Thus we maintain that the Doctrine of Rebirth offers the
only solution to the problem of life which is in harmony with the
laws of nature, which answers the ethical requirements of the case
and permits us to love God without blinding our reason to the
inequalities of life and the varying circumstances which give to a
few the ease and comfort, the health and wealth, which are denied to
the many.
The law of Rebirth coupled with its companion law, the
law of Causation does that. When we die after one life, we return to
earth later, under circumstances determined by the manner in which we
lived before. The gambler is drawn to pool parlors and race tracks to
associate with others of like taste, the musician is attracted to the
concert halls and music studios, by congenial spirits, and the
returning Ego also carries with it its likes and dislikes which cause
it to seek parents among the class to which it belongs.
But then someone will point to cases
where we find people of entirely opposite tastes living lives of
torture, because grouped in the same family, and forced by
circumstances to stay there contrary to their wills. But that does
not vitiate the law in the slightest, in each life we contract
certain obligations which cannot then be fulfilled. Perhaps we have
run away from a duty such as the care of an invalid relative and have
met death without coming to a realization of our mistake. That
relative upon the other hand may have suffered severely from our
neglect, and have stored up a bitterness against us before death
terminates the suffering. Death and the subsequent removal to another
environment does not pay our debts in this life, any more than the
removal from the city where we now live to another place will pay the
debts we have contracted prior to our removal. It is therefore quite
possible that the two who have injured each other as described, may
find themselves members of the same family. Then, whether they
remember the past grudge or not, the old enmity will assert itself
and cause them to hate anew until the consequent discomfort forces
them to tolerate each other, and perhaps later they may learn to love
where they hated.
The question also arises in the mind
of inquirers: If we have been here before why do we not remember? And
the answer is, that while most people are not aware of how their
previous existences were spent, there are others who have a very
distinct recollection of previous lives. A friend of the writer's for
instance, when living in France, one day started to read to her son
about a certain city where they were then going upon a bicycle tour,
and the boy exclaimed: you do not need to tell me about that mother.
I know that city, I lived there and was killed! He then commenced to
describe the city and also a certain bridge. Later he took his mother
to that bridge and showed her the spot where he had met death
centuries before. Another friend travelling in Ireland saw a scene
which she recognized and she also described to the party the scene
around the bend of the road which she had never seen in this life, so
it must have been a memory from a previous life. Numerous other
instances could be given where such minor flashes of memory reveal to
us glimpses from a past life. The verified case in which a little
three year old girl in Santa Barbara described her life and death has
been given in the Rosicrucian Cosmo Conception. It is perhaps the
most conclusive evidence as it hinges on the veracity of a child too
young to have learned deception.
This theory of life does not rest upon speculation
however, it is one of the first facts of life demonstrated to the
pupil of a Mystery school. He is taught to watch a child in the act
of dying, also, to watch it in the invisible world from day to day,
until it comes to a new birth a year or two later. Then he knows with
absolute certainty that we return to earth to reap in a future life
what we now sow.
The reason for taking a child to
watch in preference to an adult, is, that the child is reborn very
quickly, for its short life on earth has borne but few fruits and
these are soon assimilated, while the adult who has lived a long
life, and had much experience remains in the invisible worlds for
centuries, so that the pupil could not watch him from death to
rebirth. The cause of infant mortality will be explained later, here
we merely desire to emphasize the fact that it is within the range of
possibilities of every one without exception to become able to know
at first hand that which is here taught.
The average interval between two earth-lives is about a
thousand years. It is determined by the movement of the sun known to
astronomers as precession of the equinox, by which the
sun moves through one of the signs of the Zodiac in about 2100 years.
During that time the conditions upon earth have changed so much that
the spirit will find entirely new experiences here, and therefore it
returns.
The Great Leaders of evolution
always obtain the maximum benefit from each condition designed by
them, and as the experiences in the same social conditions are very
different in the case of a man from what they are for a woman, the
human spirit takes birth twice during the 2100 years measured by the
precession of the equinox as already explained, it is born once as a
man and another time as a woman. Such is the rule, but it is subject
to whatever modifications may be necessary to facilitate reaping what
the spirit has sown, as required under the law of Causation which
works hand in hand with the law of Rebirth. Thus, at times a spirit
may be brought to birth long ere the thousand years have expired, in
order to fulfill a certain mission, or it may be detained in the
invisible worlds after the time when it should have come to birth
according to the strict requirements of a blind law. The laws of
nature are not that however. They are Great Intelligences who always
subordinate minor considerations to higher ends, and under their
beneficent guidance we are constantly progressing from life to life
under conditions exactly suited to each individual, until in time we
shall attain to a higher evolution and become Supermen.
Oliver Wendell Holmes has so beautifully voiced that
aspiration and its consummation in the lines:
“Build
thee more stately mansions Oh! my soul,
As the swift
seasons roll,
Leave thy
low-vaulted past;
Let each new
temple, nobler than the last,
Shut thee from
heaven with a dome more vast.
Till thou at
length art free,
Leaving thy
outgrown shell by life's unresting sea.”
Chapter III.
The Visible and the Invisible World
The Chemical Region.
If one who is capable of consciously
using his spiritual body with the same facility that we now use our
physical vehicles should glide away from the earth into
interplanetary space, the earth and the various other planets of our
solar system would appear to him to be composed of three kinds of
matter, roughly speaking. The densest matter, which is our visible
earth, would appear to him as being the center of the ball as the
yolk is in the center of an egg. Around that nucleus he would observe
a finer grade of matter similarly disposed in relation to the central
mass, as the white of the egg is disposed outside the yolk. Upon a
little closer investigation he would also discover that this second
kind of substance permeates the solid earth to the very center, even
as the blood percolates through the more solid parts of our flesh.
Outside both of these mingling layers of matter he would observe a
still finer, third layer corresponding to the shell of the egg,
except that this third layer is the finest most subtile of the three
grades of matter, and that it inter-penetrates both of the two inner
layers.
As already said, the central mass, spiritually seen, is
our visible world, composed of solids, liquids and gases. They
constitute the earth, its atmosphere, and also the ether, of which
physical science speaks hypothetically as permeating the atomic
substance of all chemical elements. The second layer of matter is
called the Desire World and the outermost layer is called the World
of Thought.
All forms are impelled into motion by desire:—the bird and the animal roam land and air in their desire to secure food and shelter, or for the purpose of breeding, man is also moved by these desires, but has in addition other and higher incentives to spur him to effort, among them is desire for rapidity of motion which led him to construct the steam engine and other devices that move in obedience to his desire.
If there were no iron in the mountains man could not build machines. If there were no clay in the soil, the bony structure of the skeleton would be an impossibility, and if there were no Physical World at all, with its solids, liquids and gases, this dense body of ours could never have come into existence. Reasoning along similar lines it must be at once apparent that if there were no Desire World composed of desire-stuff, we should have no way of forming feelings, emotions and desires. A planet composed of the materials we perceive with our physical eyes and of no other substances, might be the home of plants which grow unconsciously, but have no desires to cause them to move. The human and animal kingdoms however, would be impossibilities.
Furthermore, there is in the world a vast number of things, from the simplest and most crude instruments, to the most intricate and cunning devices which have been constructed by the hand of man. These reveal the fact of man's thought and ingenuity. Thought must have a source as well as form and feeling. We saw that it was necessary to have the requisite material in order to build a steam engine or a body and we reasoned from the fact that in order to obtain material to express desire there must also be a world composed of desire stuff. Carrying our argument to its logical conclusion, we also hold that unless a World of Thought provides a reservoir of mind stuff upon which we may draw, it would be impossible for us to think and invent the things which we see in even the lowest civilization.
Thus it will be clear that the division of a planet into worlds is not based on fanciful metaphysical speculation, but is logically necessary in the economy of nature. Therefore it must be taken into consideration by any one who would study and aim to understand the inner nature of things. When we see the street cars moving along our streets, it does not explain to say that the motor is driven by electricity of so many amperes at so many volts. These names only add to our confusion until we have thoroughly studied the science of electricity and then we shall find that the mystery deepens, for while the street car belongs to the world of inert form perceptible to our vision, the electric current which moves it is indigenous to the realm of force, the invisible Desire World, and the thought which created and guides it, comes from the still more subtile World of Thought which is the home world of the human spirit, the Ego.
It may be objected that this line of argument makes a
simple matter exceedingly intricate, but a little reflection will
soon show the fallacy of such a contention. Viewed superficially any
of the sciences seem extremely simple; anatomically we may divide the
body into flesh and bone, chemically we may make the simple divisions
between solid, liquid and gas, but to thoroughly master the science
of anatomy it is necessary to spend years in close application and
learn to know all the little nerves, the ligaments which bind
articulations between various parts of the bony structure, to study
the several kinds of tissue and their disposition in our system where
they form the bones, muscles, glands, etc., which in the aggregate we
know as the human body. To properly understand the science of
chemistry we must study the valence of the atom which determines the
power of combination of the various elements, together with other
niceties, such as atomic weight, density, etc. New wonders are
constantly opening up to the most experienced chemist, who
understands best the immensity of his chosen science.
The youngest lawyer, fresh from law school knows more
about the most intricate cases, in his own estimation, than the
judges upon the Supreme Court bench who spend long hours, weeks and
months, seriously deliberating over their decisions. But those who,
without having studied, think they understand and are fitted to
discourse upon the greatest of all sciences, the science of Life and
Being, make a greater mistake. After years of patient study, of holy
life spent in close application, a man is oftentimes perplexed at the
immensity of the subject he studies. He finds it to be so vast in
both the direction of the great and small that it baffles
description, that language fails, and that the tongue must remain
mute. Therefore we hold, (and we speak from knowledge gained through
years of close study and investigation), that the finer distinctions
which we have made, and shall make, are not at all arbitrary, but
absolutely necessary as are divisions and distinctions made in
anatomy or chemistry.
No form in the physical world has feeling in the
true sense of that word. It is the indwelling life which feels, as we
may readily see from the fact that a body which responded to the
slightest touch while instinct with life, exhibits no sensation
whatever even when cut to pieces after the life has fled.Demonstrations have been made by scientists, particularly by Professor Bose of Calcutta, to show that there is feeling in dead animal tissue and even in tin and other metal, but we maintain that the diagrams which seem to support his contentions in reality demonstrate only a response to impacts similar to the rebound of a rubber ball, and that must not be confused with such feelings as love, hate, sympathy and aversion. Goethe also, in his novel “Elective Affinities,” (Wahlverwandtschaft), brings out some beautiful illustrations wherein he makes it seem as if atoms loved and hated, from the fact that some elements combine readily while other substances refuse to amalgamate, a phenomenon produced by the different rates of speed at which various elements vibrate and an unequal inclination of their axes. Only where there is sentient life can there be feelings of pleasure and pain, sorrow or joy.
The Etheric Region.
In addition to the solids, liquids
and gases which compose the Chemical Region of the
Physical World there is also a finer grade of matter called Ether,
which permeates the atomic structure of the earth and its atmosphere
substantially as science teaches. Scientists have never seen, nor
have they weighed, measured or analyzed this substance, but they
infer that it must exist in order to account for transmission of
light and various other phenomena. If it were possible for us to live
in a room from which the air had been exhausted we might speak at the
top of our voices, we might ring the largest bell or we might even
discharge a cannon close to our ear and we should hear no sound, for
air is the medium which transmits sound vibrations to the tympanum of
our ear, and that would be lacking. But if an electric light were
lighted, we should at once perceive its rays; it would illumine the
room despite the lack of air. Hence there must be a substance,
capable of being set into vibration, between the electric light and
our eyes. That medium scientists call ether, but it is so subtile
that no instrument has been devised whereby it may be measured or
analyzed and therefore the scientists are without much information
concerning it, though forced to postulate its existence.
These investigations are as thorough and as reliable as
researches by material scientists, but not as easily demonstrable to
the general public. Spiritual powers lie dormant within every human
being, and when awakened, they compensate for both telescope and
microscope, they enable their possessor to investigate, instanter,
things beyond the veil of matter, but they are only developed by a
patient application and continuance in well doing extended over
years, and few are they who have faith to start upon the path to
attainment or perseverance to go through with the ordeal. Therefore
the occultist's assertions are not generally credited.
We can readily see that long
probation must precede attainment, for a person equipped with
spiritual sight is able to penetrate walls of houses as easily as we
walk through the atmosphere, able to read at will the innermost
thoughts of those about him; if not actuated by the most pure and
unselfish motives, he would be a scourge to humanity. Therefore that
power is safeguarded as we would withhold the dynamite bomb from an
anarchist and from the well-intentioned but ignorant person, or, as
we withhold match and powder barrel from a child.
In the hands of an experienced engineer the dynamite
bomb may be used to open a highway of commerce, and an intelligent
farmer may use gunpowder to good account in clearing his field of
tree-stumps, but in the hands of an ill-intentioned criminal or
ignorant child an explosive may wreck much property and end many
lives. The force is the same, but used differently, according to the
ability or intention of the user, it may produce results of a
diametrically opposite nature. So it is also with spiritual powers,
there is a time-lock upon them, as upon a bank safe, which keeps out
all until they have earned the privilege and the time is ripe for its
exercise.
The reason is, that as ether is physical matter, etheric
sight depends upon the sensitiveness of the optic nerve while
spiritual sight is acquired by developing latent vibratory powers in
two little organs situated in the brain: the Pituitary body and the
Pineal gland. Nearsighted people even, may have etheric vision.
Though unable to read the print in a book, they may be able to “see
through a wall,” owing to the fact that their optic nerve responds
more rapidly to fine than to coarse vibrations.
When anyone views an object with etheric sight he
sees through
that object in a manner similar to the way an x-ray penetrates opaque
substances. If he looks at a sewing machine, he will perceive, first
an outer casing; then, the works within, and behind both, the casing
furthest away from him.
If he has developed the grade of
spiritual vision which opens the Desire World to him and he looks at
the same object, he will see it both inside and out. If he looks
closely, he will perceive every little atom spinning upon its axis
and no part or particle will be excluded from his perception.
But if his spiritual sight has been developed in such a
measure that he is capable of viewing the sewing machine with the
vision peculiar to the World of Thought, he will behold a cavity
where he had previously seen the form.
Because of the relative proximity or distance of these worlds, a statue, a form, withstands the ravages of time for millenniums, but the colors upon a painting fade in far shorter time, for they come from the Desire World, and music which is native to the World furthest removed from us, the World of Thought, is like a will-o-the-wisp which none may catch or hold, it is gone again as soon as it has made its appearance. But there is in color and music a compensation for this increasing evanescence.
The statue is cold and dead as the mineral of which it is composed and has attractions for but few though its form is a tangible reality.
The forms upon a painting are illusory yet they express life, on account of the color which has come from a region where nothing is inert and lifeless. Therefore the painting is enjoyed by many.
Music is intangible and ephemeral, but it comes from the home world of the spirit and though so fleeting it is recognized by the spirit as a soul-speech fresh from the celestial realms, an echo from the home whence we are now exiled, and therefore it touches a cord in our being, regardless of whether we realize the true cause or not.
Thus we see that there are various grades of spiritual
sight, each suited to the superphysical realm which it opens to our
perception: Etheric vision, color vision and tonal vision.
The occult investigator finds that ether is of four
kinds, or grades of density:
The Chemical Ether,
The Life Ether,
The Light Ether,
The Reflecting Ether.
The Life Ether,
The Light Ether,
The Reflecting Ether.
The Chemical Ether is the avenue of
expression for forces promoting assimilation, growth and the
maintenance of form.
The Life Ether is the vantage ground of
forces active in propagation, or the building of new forms.
The Reflecting Ether
receives an impression of all that is, lives and moves. It also
records each change, in a similar manner as the film upon a moving
picture machine. In this record mediums and psychometrists may read
the past, upon the same principle as, under proper conditions, moving
pictures are reproduced time and again.
In the Middle Ages, when many people were still endowed with a remnant of negative clairvoyance, they spoke of Gnomes and Elves or Fairies, which roamed about the mountains and forests. These were the earth spirits. They also told of the Undine or water-sprite, which inhabited rivers and streams, of Sylphs which were said to dwell in the mists above moat and moor, as air spirits, but not much was said of the Salamanders, as they are, fire spirits, and therefore not so easily detected, or so readily accessible to the majority of people.
The old folk stories are now regarded as superstitions,
but as a matter of fact, one endowed with etheric vision may yet
perceive the little gnomes building green chlorophyll into the leaves
of plants and giving to flowers the multiplicity of delicate tints
which delight our eyes.
Also the salamanders are found everywhere and no fire is
lighted without their help, but they are mostly active underground.
They are responsible for explosions and volcanic eruptions.
The classes of beings which we have mentioned are still
sub-human, but will all at some time reach a stage in evolution
corresponding to the human, though under different circumstances from
those under which we evolve. But at present the wonderful
intelligences we speak of as the laws of nature, marshall the armies
of less evolved entities mentioned.
Let us now suppose that the dog were able to see the materials which slowly change their shape, assemble and become an engine but that it is unable to perceive the workman and to see the work he does. The dog would then be in the same relation to the mechanic as we are to the great intelligences we call laws of nature, and their assistants, the nature spirits, for we behold the manifestations of their work as force moving matter in various ways but always under immutable conditions.
In the ether we may also observe the angels, whose densest body is made of that material, as our dense body is formed of gases, liquids and solids. These beings are one step beyond the human stage, as we are a degree in advance of the animal evolution. We have never been animals like our present fauna, however, but at a previous stage in the development of our planet we had an animal-like constitution. Then the angels were human, though they have never possessed a dense body such as ours, nor ever functioned in any material denser than ether. At some time, in a future condition, the earth will again become ethereal. Then man will be like the angels. Therefore the Bible tells us that man was made a little while lower than the angels (Paul's letter to the Hebrews, second chapter, seventh verse; see marginal reading.)
As ether is the avenue of vital, creative forces, and as angels are such expert builders of ether, we may readily understand that they are eminently fitted to be warders of the propagative forces in plant, animal and man. All through the Bible we find them thus engaged: Two angels came to Abraham and announced the birth of Isaac, they promised a child to the man who had obeyed God. Later these same angels destroyed Sodom for abuse of the creative force. Angels foretold to the parents of Samuel and Samson, the birth of these giants of brain and brawn. To Elizabeth came the angel (not archangel) Gabriel and announced the birth of John, later he appeared also to Mary with the message that she was chosen to bear Jesus.
The Desire World.
When spiritual sight is
developed so that it becomes possible to behold the Desire World,
many wonders confront the newcomer, for conditions are so widely
different from what they are here, that a description must sound
quite as incredible as a fairy tale to anyone who has not himself
seen them. Many cannot even believe that such a world exists, and
that other people can see that which is invisible to them, yet some
people are blind to the beauties of this world which we see. A man
who was born blind, may say to us: I know that this world exists, I
can hear, I can smell, I can taste and above all I can feel but when
you speak of light and of color, they are nonexistent to me. You say
that you see
these things, I cannot believe it for I cannot see
myself. You say that light and color are all about me, but none of
the senses at my command reveal them to me and I do not believe that
the sense you call sight
exists. I think you suffer from hallucinations. We might sympathize
very sincerely with the poor man who is thus afflicted, but his
scepticism, reasonings and objections and sneers notwithstanding we
would be obliged to maintain that we perceive light and color.
The man whose spiritual sight has been awakened is in a similar position with respect to those who do not perceive the Desire World of which he speaks. If the blind man acquires the faculty of sight by an operation, his eyes are opened and he will be compelled to assert the existence of light and color which he formerly denied, and when spiritual sight is acquired by anyone, he also perceives for himself the facts related by others. Neither is it an argument against the existence of spiritual realms that seers are at variance in their descriptions of conditions in the invisible world. We need but to look into books on travel, and compare stories brought home by explorers of China, India or Africa and we shall find them differing widely and often contradictory, because each traveler saw things from his own standpoint, under other conditions than those met by his brother authors, and we maintain that the man who has read most widely these varying tales concerning a certain Country and wrestled with the contradictions of narrators, will have a more comprehensive idea of the country or people of whom he has read, than the man who has only read one story assented to by all the authors. Similarly, the varying stories of visitors to the Desire World are of value, because giving a fuller view, and more rounded, than if all had seen things from the same angle.
In this world matter and force are widely different. The chief characteristic of matter here is inertia: the tendency to remain at rest until acted upon by a force which sets it in motion. In the Desire World, on the contrary, force and matter are almost indistinguishable one from the other. We might almost describe desire-stuff as force-matter, for it is in incessant motion, responsive to the slightest feeling of a vast multitude of beings which populate this wonderful world in nature. We often speak of the “teeming millions” of China and India, even of our vast cities, London, New York, Paris or Chicago, we consider them overcrowded in the extreme, yet even the densest population of any spot upon earth is sparsely inhabited compared with the crowded conditions of the Desire World. No inconvenience is felt by any of the denizens of that realm, however, for, while in this world two things cannot occupy the same space at the same time, it is different there. A number of people and things may exist in the same place at the same time and be engaged in most diverse activities, regardless of what others are doing, such is the wonderful elasticity of desire stuff. As an illustration we may mention a case where the writer while attending religious service, plainly perceived at the altar certain beings interested in furthering that service and working to achieve that end. At the same time there drifted through the room and the altar, a table at which four persons were engaged in playing cards. They were as oblivious to the existence of the beings engaged in furthering our religious service, as though these did not exist.
The Desire World is the abode of those who have died,
for some time subsequent to that event, and we may mention in the
above connection that the so-called “dead” very often stay for a
long while among their still living friends. Unseen by their
relatives they go about the familiar rooms. At first they are often
unaware of the condition mentioned: “that two persons may be in the
same place at the same time,” and when they seat themselves in a
chair or at the table, a living relative may take the supposedly
vacant seat. The man we mistakenly call dead will at first hurry out
of his seat to escape being sat upon, but he soon learns that being
sat upon does not hurt him in his altered condition, and that he may
remain in his chair regardless of the fact that his living relative
is also sitting there.
Among the entities who are, so to speak, “native” to that realm of nature, none are perhaps better known to the Christian world than the Archangels. These exalted Beings were human at a time in the earth's history when we were yet plant-like. Since then we have advanced two steps: through the animal and to the human stage of development. The present Archangels have also made two steps in progression; one, in which they were similar to what the angels are now, and another step which made them what we call Archangels.
Their densest body, though differing from ours in shape, and made of desire stuff, is used by them as a vehicle of consciousness in the same manner that we use our body. They are expert manipulators of forces in the Desire World, and these forces, as we shall see, move all the world to action. Therefore the Archangels work with humanity industrially and politically as arbitrators of the destiny of peoples and nations. The Angels may be said to be family-spirits whose mission is to unite a few spirits as members of a family, and cement them with ties of blood and love of kin, while the Archangels may be called race and national spirits, as they unite whole nations by patriotism or love of home and country. They are responsible for the rise and fall of nations, they give war or peace, victory or defeat as it serves the best interests of the people they rule. This we may see, for instance, from the book of Daniel, where the Archangel Michael (not to be confounded with the Michael, who is ambassador from the sun to the earth), is called the prince of the children of Israel. Another Archangel tells Daniel, (in the tenth chapter) that he intends to fight the prince of Persia by means of the Greeks.
There are varying grades of intelligence among human
beings, some are qualified to hold high and lofty positions entirely
beyond the ability of others. So it is also among higher beings, not
all Archangels are fitted to govern a nation and rule the destiny of
a race, people or tribe, some are not fitted to rule human beings at
all, but as the animals also have a desire nature these lower grades
of Archangels govern the animals as group-spirits and evolve to
higher capacity thereby.
The work of the race spirits is
readily observable in the people it governs. The lower in the scale
of evolution the people, the more they show a certain racial
likeness. That is due to the work of the race spirit. One national
spirit is responsible for the swarthy complexion common to Italians,
for instance, while another causes the Scandinavians to be blond. In
the more advanced types of humanity there is a wider divergence from
the common type, due to the individualized Ego, which thus expresses
in form and feature its own particular idiosyncrasies. Among the
lower types of humanity such as Mongolians, native African Negroes
and South Sea Islanders, the resemblance of individuals in each tribe
makes it almost impossible for civilized Westerners to distinguish
between them. Among animals, where the separate spirit is not
individualized and self-conscious, the resemblance is not only much
more marked physically but extends even to traits and
characteristics. We may write the biography of a man, for the
experiences of each varies from that of others and his acts are
different, but we cannot write the biography of an animal for members
of each tribe all act alike under similar circumstances. If we desire
to know the facts about Edward VII, it would profit us nothing to
study the life of the Prince-Consort, his father, or of George V, his
son, as both would be entirely different from Edward. In order to
find out what manner of man he was, we must study his own individual
life. If, on the other hand, we wish to know the characteristics of
beavers, we may observe any individual of the tribe, and when we have
studied its idiosyncrasies, we shall know the traits of the whole
tribe of beavers. What we call “instinct,” is in reality the
dictates of group-spirits which govern separate individuals of its
tribe telepathically, as it were.
The ancient Egyptians knew of these
animal group spirits and sketched many of them, in a crude way, upon
their temples and tombs. Such figures with a human body and an animal
head actually live in the desire world. They may be spoken to, and
will be found much more intelligent than the average human being.
That statement brings up another peculiarity of
conditions in the Desire World in respect of language. Here in this
World human speech is so diversified that there are countries where
people who live only a few miles apart speak a dialect so different
that they understand each other with great difficulty, and each
nation has its own language that varies altogether from the speech of
other peoples.
In the lower Regions of the Desire World, there is the
same diversity of tongues as on earth, and the so-called “dead”
of one nation find it impossible to converse with those who lived in
another country. Hence linguistic accomplishments are of great value
to the “Invisible Helpers”, of whom we shall hear later, as their
sphere of usefulness is enormously extended by that ability.
Even apart from difference of
language our mode of speech is exceedingly productive of
misunderstandings. The same words often convey most opposite ideas to
different minds. If we speak of a “body of water”, one person may
think we mean a lake of small dimensions, the thoughts of another may
be directed to the great American Lakes and a third person's thoughts
may be turned towards the Atlantic or Pacific Oceans. If we speak of
a “light”, one may think of a gas-light, another of an electric
Arc-lamp, or if we say “red”, one person may think we mean a
delicate shade of pink and another gets the idea of crimson. The
misunderstandings of what words mean goes even farther, as
illustrated in the following.
The writer once opened a reading room in a large city
where he lectured, and invited his audience to make use thereof.
Among those who availed themselves of the opportunity was a gentleman
who had for many years been a veritable “metaphysical tramp,”
roaming from lecture to lecture, hearing the teachings of everybody
and practicing nothing. Like the Athenians on Mars' Hill, he was
always looking for something “new,” particularly in the line of
phenomena, and his mind was in that seething chaotic state which is
one of the most prominent symptoms of “mental indigestion.”
In the higher Regions of the Desire World the confusion
of tongues gives place to a universal mode of expression which
absolutely prevents misunderstandings of our meaning. There each of
our thoughts takes a definite form and color perceptible to all, and
this thought-symbol emits a certain tone, which is not a word, but it
conveys our meaning to the one we address no matter what language he
spoke on earth.
To arrive at an understanding of how
such a universal language becomes possible and is at once
comprehended by all, without preparation, we may take as an
illustration the manner in which a musician reads music. A German or
a Polish composer may write an opera. Each has his own peculiar
terminology and expresses it in his own language. When that opera is
to be played by an Italian band master, or by a Spanish or American
musician, it need not be translated, the notes and symbols upon the
page are a universally understood language of symbols which is
intelligible to musicians of no matter what nationality. Similarly
with figures, the German counts: ein, zwei, drei; the Frenchman says:
un, deux, trois, and in English we use the words: one, two, three,
but the figures: 1, 2, 3, though differently spoken, are intelligible
to all and mean the same. There is no possibility of misunderstanding
in the cases of either music or figures. Thus it is also with the
universal language peculiar to the higher Regions of the Desire World
and the still more subtile realms in nature, it is intelligible to
all, an exact mode of expression.
The Ameshaspends, however, do not
inhabit the lower Regions of the Desire World but influence the
Izzards. According to the old Persian legend these beings are
divisible into one group of twenty-eight classes, and another group
of three classes. Each of these classes has dominion over, or takes
the lead of all the other classes on one certain day of the month.
They regulate the weather conditions on that day and work with animal
and man in particular. At least the twenty-eight classes do that, the
other group of three classes has nothing to do with animals, because
they have only twenty-eight pair of spinal nerves, while human beings
have thirty-one. Thus animals are attuned to the lunar month of
twenty-eight days, while man is correlated to the solar month of
thirty or thirty-one days. The ancient Persians were astronomers but
not physiologists, they had no means of knowing the different nervous
constitution of animal and man, but they saw clairvoyantly these
superphysical beings, they noted and recorded their work with animal
and men and our own anatomical investigations may show us the reason
for these divisions of the classes of Izzards recorded in that
ancient system of philosophy.
Still another class of beings should
be mentioned: those who have entered the Desire World through the
gate of death and are now hidden from our physical vision. These
so-called “dead” are in fact much more alive than any of us, who
are tied to a dense body and subject to all its limitations, who are
forced to slowly drag this clog along with us at the rate of a few
miles an hour, who must expend such an enormous amount of energy upon
propelling that vehicle that we are easily and quickly tired, even
when in the best of health and who are often confined to a bed,
sometimes for years, by the indisposition of this heavy mortal coil.
But when that is once shed and the freed spirit can again function
in its spiritual body, sickness is an unknown condition and distance
is annihilated, or at least practically so, for though it was
necessary for the Savior to liken the freed spirit to the wind which
blows where it listeth, that simile gives but a poor description of
what actually takes place in soul flights. Time is nonexistent there,
as we shall presently explain, so the writer has never been able to
time himself, but has on several occasions timed others when he was
in the physical body and they speeding through space upon a certain
errand. Distances such as from the Pacific Coast to Europe, the
delivery of a short message there and the return to the body has been
accomplished in slightly less than one minute. Therefore our
assertion, that those whom we call dead are in reality much more
alive than we, is well founded in facts.
We spoke of the dense body in which
we now live, as a “clog” and a “fetter.” It must not be
inferred, however, that we sympathize with the attitude of certain
people who, when they have learned with what ease soul-flights are
accomplished, go about bemoaning the fact that they are now
imprisoned. They are constantly thinking of, and longing for, the day
when they shall be able to leave this mortal coil behind and fly away
in their spiritual body. Such an attitude of mind is decidedly
mistaken, the great and wise beings who are invisible leaders of our
evolution have not placed us here to no purpose. Valuable lessons are
to be learned in this visible world wherein we dwell, that cannot be
learned in any other realm of nature, and the very conditions of
density and inertia whereof such people complain, are factors which
make it possible to acquire the knowledge this world is designed to
give. This fact was so amply illustrated in a recent experience of
the writer:—A friend had been studying occultism for a number of
years but had not studied astrology.
Upon one of many occasions when she visited the writer
subsequent to her release from the body, she deplored the fact that
it seemed so difficult to make headway in her study of astrology. The
writer advised continued attendance at the classes, and suggested
that she could surely get someone “on the other side” to help her
study.
At this she exclaimed impatiently: “Oh yes! of course
I attend the classes, I have done so right along; I have also found a
friend who helps me here. But you cannot imagine how difficult it is
to concentrate here upon mathematical calculations and the judgment
of a horoscope or in fact upon any subject here, where every little
thought-current takes you miles away from your study. I used to think
it difficult to concentrate when I had a physical body, but it is not
a circumstance to the obstacles which face the student here.”
The physical body was an anchor to her, and it is that
to all of us. Being dense, it is also to a great extent impervious to
disturbing influences from which the more subtle spiritual bodies do
not shield us. It enables us to bring our ideas to a logical
conclusion with far less effort at concentration than is necessary in
that realm where all is in such incessant and turbulent motion. Thus
we are gradually developing the faculty of holding our thoughts to a
center by existence in this world, and we should value our
opportunities here, rather than deplore the limitations which help in
one direction more than they fetter in another. In fact, we should
never deplore any condition, each has its lesson. If we try to learn
what that lesson is and to assimilate the experience which may be
extracted therefrom, we are wiser than those who waste time in vain
regrets.
We said there is no time in the Desire World, and the
reader will readily understand that such must be the case from the
fact, already mentioned, that nothing there is opaque.
In this world
the rotation of the opaque earth upon its axis is responsible for the
alternating conditions of day and night. We call it Day—when the
spot where we live is turned towards the sun and its rays illumine
our environment, but when our home is turned away from the sun and
its rays obstructed by the opaque earth we term the resulting
darkness: Night. The passage of the earth in its orbit around the sun
produces the seasons and the year, which are our divisions of time.
But in the Desire World where all is light there is but one long day.
The spirit is not there fettered by a heavy physical body, so it does
not need sleep and existence is unbroken. Spiritual substances are
not subject to contraction and expansion such as arise here from heat
and cold, hence summer and winter are also non-existent. Thus there
is nothing to differentiate one moment from another in respect of the
conditions of light and darkness, summer and winter, which mark time
for us. Therefore, while the so-called “dead” may have a very
accurate memory of time as regards the life they lived here in the
body, they are usually unable to tell anything about the
chronological relation of events which have happened to them in the
Desire World, and it is a very common thing to find that they do not
even know how many years have elapsed since they passed out from this
plane of existence. Only students of the Stellar Science are able to
calculate the passage of time after their demise.
The World of Thought.
When we have attained the spiritual development
necessary to consciously enter the World of Thought and leave the
Desire World, which is the realm of light and color, we pass through
a condition which the occult investigator calls The Great Silence.
There are two main divisions in the Physical World: the
Chemical Region and the Etheric Region. The World of Thought also has
two great subdivisions: The Region of concrete Thought and the Region
of abstract Thought.
As we specialize the material of the Physical World and
shape into a dense body, and as we form the force-matter of the
Desire World into a desire body, so do we appropriate a certain
amount of mindstuff from the Region of concrete Thought; but we, as
spirits, clothe ourselves in spirit-substance from the Region of
abstract Thought and thereby we become individual, separate Egos.
The Region of Concrete Thought.
The Region of concrete Thought is neither shadowy nor
illusory. It is the acme of reality and this world which we
mistakenly regard as the only verity, is but an evanescent replica of
that Region.
A little reflection will show the
reasonableness of this statement and prove our contention that all we
see here is really crystallized thought. Our houses, our machinery,
our chairs and tables, all that has been made by the hand of man is
the embodiment of a thought. As the juices in the soft body of the
snail gradually crystallize into the hard and flinty shell which it
carries upon its back and which hides it, so everything used in our
civilization is a concretion of invisible, intangible mind-stuff. The
thought of James Watt in time congealed into a steam engine and
revolutionized the world. Edison's thought was condensed into an
electric generator which has turned night to day, and had it not been
for the thought of Morse and Marconi, the telegraph would not have
annihilated distance as it does today. An earthquake may wreck a city
and demolish the lighting plant and telegraph station, but the
thoughts of Watt, Edison and Morse remain, and upon the basis of
their indestructible ideas new machinery may be constructed and
operations resumed. Thus thoughts are more permanent than things.
Sound from a vacuum cannot be heard in the Physical World, but the harmony which proceeds from the vacuous cavity of a celestial archetype is “the voice of the silence,” and it becomes audible when all earthly sounds have ceased. Elijah heard it not while the storm was raging; nor was it in evidence during the turbulence of the earthquake, nor in the crackling and roaring fire, but when the destructive and inharmonious sounds of this world had melted into silence, “the still small voice” issued its commands to save Elijah's life.
That “keynote” is a direct manifestation of the
Higher Self which uses it to impress and govern the Personality it
has created. But alas, part of its life has been infused into the
material side of its being, which has thus obtained a certain will of
its own and only too often are the two sides of our nature at war.
At last there comes a time when the spirit is too weary
to strive with the recalcitrant flesh, when “the voice of the
silence” ceases.
The earthly nourishment we may seek
to give, will not avail to sustain a form when this harmonious sound,
this “word from heaven” no longer reverberates through the empty
void of the celestial archetype, for “man lives not by bread
alone,” but by the WORD, and the last sound-vibration of the
“keynote” is the death-knell of the physical body.
In this world we are compelled to investigate and to
study a thing before we know about it, and although the facilities
for gaining information are in some respects much greater in the
Desire World, a certain amount of investigation is necessary
nevertheless to acquire knowledge. In the World of Thought, on the
contrary, it is different. When we wish to know about any certain
thing there, and we turn our attention thereto, then that thing
speaks to us, as it were. The sound it emits at once gives us a most
luminous comprehension of every phase of its nature. We attain to a
realization of its past history; the whole story of its unfoldment is
laid bare and we seem to have lived through all of those experiences
together with the thing we are investigating.
Were it not for one enormous
difficulty, the story thus obtained would be exceedingly valuable.
But all this information, this life-picture, flows in upon us with an
enormous rapidity in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, so that it
has neither beginning nor end, for, as said, in the World of Thought,
all is one great NOW, Time does not exist.
Therefore, when we want to use the archetypal
information in the Physical World, we must disentangle and arrange it
in chronological order with beginning and ending before it becomes
intelligible to beings living in a realm where Time is a prime
factor. That rearrangement is a most difficult task as all words are
coined with relation to the three dimensions of space and the
evanescent unit of time, the fleeting moment, hence much of that
information remains unavailable.
Among the denizens of this Region of concrete Thought we
may note particularly two classes. One is called the powers of
darkness by Paul and the mystic investigator of the Western World
knows them as Lords of Mind. They were human at the time when the
earth was in a condition of darkness such as worlds in the making go
through before they become luminous and reach the firemist-stage. At
that time we were in our mineral evolution. That is to say: The Human
Spirit which has now awakened was encrusted in the ball of mindstuff,
which was then the earth. At that time the present Human Spirits were
as much asleep as is the life which ensouls our minerals of today,
and as we are working with the mineral chemical constituents of the
earth, molding them into houses, railways, steam-boats, chairs, etc,
etc., so those beings, who are now Lords of Mind, worked with us when
we were mineral-like. They have since advanced three steps, through
stages similar to that of the Angels and Archangels, before they
attained their present position and became creative intelligences.
They are expert builders of mind stuff, as we are builders of the
present mineral substances and therefore they have given us necessary
help to acquire a mind which is the highest development of the human
being.
According to the foregoing
explanation it seems to be an anomaly when Paul speaks of them as
evil and exhorts us to withstand them. The difficulty disappears,
however, when we understand that good and evil are but relative
qualities. An illustration will make the point clear:—Let us
suppose that an expert organ builder has constructed a wonderful
organ, a masterpiece. Then he has followed his vocation in the proper
manner, and is therefore to be commended for the good which he has
done. But if he is not satisfied to leave well enough alone, if he
refuses to give up his product to the musician who understands how to
play upon the instrument; if he intrudes his presence into the
concert hall, he is out of place and to be censured as evil.
Similarly the Lords of Mind did the greatest possible service to
humanity when they helped us to acquire our mind, but many subtle
thought influences come from them, and are to be resisted, as Paul
very properly emphasizes.
The other class of beings which must
be mentioned are called Archetypal Forces by the Western School of
occultism. They direct the energies of the creative Archetypes native
to this realm. They are a composite class of beings of many different
grades of intelligences, and there is one stage in the cyclic journey
of the Human Spirit when that also labors in, and is part of, that
great host of beings. For the Human Spirit is also destined to become
a great creative intelligence at some future time, and if there were
no school wherein it could gradually learn to create, it would not be
able to advance, for nothing in nature is done suddenly. An acorn
planted in the soil does not become a majestic oak over night, but
many years of slow, persistent growth are required before it attains
to the stature of a giant of the forest. A man does not become an
Angel by the mere fact of dying and entering a new world any more
than an animal advances to be a man by the same process. But in time
all that lives, mounts the ladder of Being from the clod to the God.
There is no limitation possible to the spirit, and so at various
stages in its unfoldment the Human Spirit works with the other nature
forces, according to the stage of intelligence which it has attained.
It creates, changes and remodels the earth upon which it is to live.
Thus, under the great law of cause and effect, which we observe in
every realm of nature, it reaps upon earth what it has sown in
heaven, and vice versa. It grows slowly but persistently and advances
continually.
The Region of Abstract Thought.
Various religious systems have been given to humanity at
different times, each suited to meet the spiritual needs of the
people among whom it was promulgated, and, coming from the same
divine source:—God, all religions exhibit similar fundamentals or
first principles.
The Greeks called that condition of homogeneity Chaos,
and the state of orderly segregation which we now see; the marching
orbs which illumine the vaulted canopy of heaven, the stately
procession of planets around a central light, the majestic sun; the
unbroken sequence of the seasons and the unvarying alternation of
tidal ebb and flow;—all this aggregate of systematic order, was
called Cosmos, and was supposed to have proceeded from
Chaos.
The Christian Mystic obtains a deeper comprehension when
he opens his Bible and ponders the first five verses of that
brightest gem of all spiritual lore: the Gospel of St. John.
As he reverently opens his aspiring
heart to acquire understanding of those sublime mystical teachings he
transcends the form-side of nature, comprising various realms of
which we have been speaking, and finds himself “in the spirit,”
as did the prophets in olden times. He is then in the Region of
abstract Thought and sees the eternal verities which also Paul beheld
in this, the third, heaven.
For those among us who are unable to obtain knowledge
save by reasoning upon the matter, however, it will be necessary to
examine the fundamental meaning of words used by St. John to clothe
his wonderful teaching, which was originally given in the Greek
language, a much simpler matter than is commonly supposed, for Greek
words have been freely introduced into our modern languages,
particularly in scientific terms, and we shall show how this ancient
teaching is supported by the latest discoveries of modern science.
It is an axiomatic truth that “out of nothing, nothing comes,” and it has often been asserted by scoffers that the Bible teaches generation “from nothing.” We readily agree that translations into the modern languages promulgate this erroneous doctrine, but we have shown in The Rosicrucian Cosmo Conception (chapter on “the Occult Analysis of Genesis”), that the Hebrew text speaks of an ever-existing essence, as the basis whence all forms, the earth and the heavenly lights included, were first created, and John also gives the same teaching.
The Greek word arche,
in the opening sentence of the gospel of St. John has been translated
the beginning, and it may be said to have that meaning,
but it also has other valid interpretations, vastly more significant
of the idea John wished to convey. It means:—an elementary
condition,—a chief source,—a first principle,—primordial
matter.
There was a time when science
insisted that the elements were immutable, that is to say, that an
atom of iron had been an atom of iron since the earth was formed and
would so remain to the end of time. The Alchemists were sneered at as
fanciful dreamers or madmen, but since Professor J. J. Thomson's
discovery of the electron, the atomic theory of matter, is no longer
tenable. The principle of radio-activity has later vindicated the
Alchemists. Science and the Bible agree in teaching, that all that
is, has been formed from one homogeneous substance.
It is that basic principle which John called
arche:—primordial
matter,—and the dictionary defines Archeology as: “the science of
the origin (arche) of
things.” Masons style God the “Grand Architect,” for the Greek
word tektos means builder, and God is the Chief Builder (tektos)
of arche: the primordial
virgin matter which is also the chief source of all things.
Thus we see that when the opening sentence of St. John's
gospel is properly translated, our Christian Religion teaches that
once a virgin substance enfolded the divine Thinker:—God.
That is the identical condition which the earlier Greeks
called Chaos. A little thought will make it evident that we are not
arbitrary in finding fault with the translation of the gospel, for it
is self-evident that a word cannot be the beginning, a thought must
precede the word, and a thinker must originate thought before it can
be expressed as a word.
When properly translated the teaching of John fully
embodies that idea, for the Greek term logos
means both the reasonable thought,—(we also say Logic),—and the
word which expresses this (logical) thought.
1) In the primordial substance was thought, and
the thought was with God And God was the word,
2) that, [The Word], also was with God in
the primal state. Later the divine WORD; the Creative Fiat, reverberates
through space and segregates the homogeneous virgin substance into
separate forms.
3) Every thing has come into existence because of
that prime fact, [The Word of God], and no thing exists
apart from that fact.
4) In that was Life.
In the alphabet we have a few elementary sounds from
which words may be constructed. They are basic elements of
expression, as bricks, iron and lumber are raw materials of
architecture, or as a few notes are component parts of music.
But a heap of bricks, iron and lumber, is not a house,
neither is a jumbled mass of notes music, nor can we call a haphazard
arrangement of alphabetical sounds a word.
These raw materials are prime necessities in
construction of architecture, music, literature or poetry, but the
contour of the finished product and the purpose it will serve depends
upon the arrangement of the raw materials, which is subject to the
constructor's design. Building materials may be formed to prison or
palace; notes may be arranged as fanfare or funeral dirge; words may
be indited to inspire passion or peace, all according to the will of
the designer. So also the majestic rhythm of the Word of God has
wrought the primal substance: arche,
into the multitudinous forms which comprise the phenomenal world,
according to His will.
Did the reader ever stop to consider
the wonderful power of a human word. Coming to us in the sweet
accents of love, it may lure us from paths of rectitude to shameful
ignominy and wreck our life with sorrow and remorse, or it may spur
us on in noblest efforts to acquire glory and honor, here or
hereafter. According to the inflection of the voice a word may strike
terror into the bravest heart or lull a timid child to peaceful
slumber. The word of an agitator may rouse the passions of a mob and
impel it to awful bloodshed, as in the French Revolution, where
dictatorial mandates of mob-rule killed and exiled at pleasure, or,
the strain of “Home, Sweet Home” may cement the setting of a
family-circle beyond possibility of rupture.
Right words are true and therefore free, they are never
bound or fettered by time or space, they go to the farthest corners
of the earth, and when the lips that spoke them first have long since
mouldered in the grave, other voices take up with unwearying
enthusiasm their message of life and love, as for instance the
mystical “Come unto me” which has sounded from unnumbered tongues
and brought oceans of balm to troubled hearts.
Words of Peace have been victorious, where war would
have meant defeat, and no talent is more to be desired than ability
to always say the right word at the auspicious time.
According to the general idea Chaos and Cosmos are
superlative antitheses of each other. Chaos being regarded as a past
condition of confusion and disorder which has long since been
entirely superseded by cosmic order which now prevails.
As a matter of fact, Chaos is the
seed-ground of Cosmos, the basis of all progress, for thence come all
IDEAS which later materialize as Railways, Steamboats, Telephones,
etc.
Thus we see that ideas are embryonic thoughts, nuclei of
spirit-substance from the Region of abstract Thought. Improperly
conceived in a diseased mind they become vagaries and delusions, but
when gestated in a sound mind and formed into rational thoughts they
are the basis of all material, moral and mental progress, and the
closer our touch with Chaos, the better will be our Cosmos, for in
that realm of abstract realities truth is not obscured by matter, it
is self-evident.
“The truth shall set you free,” said Christ, and the more we turn our aspirations from material acquisitiveness and seek to lay up treasure above, the more we aim to rise, the oftener we “get in the spirit,” the more readily we “shall know truth” and reach liberation from the fetter of flesh which binds us to a limited environment, and attain to a sphere of greater usefulness.
Study of philosophy and science has a tendency to
further perception of truth, and as science has progressed it has
gradually receded from its erstwhile crude materialism. The day is
not far off when it will be more reverently religious than the church
itself. Mathematics is said to be “dry,” for it doesn't stir the
emotions. When it is taught that “the sum of the angles of a
triangle is 180 degrees,” the dictum is at once accepted, because
its truth is self-evident and no feeling is involved in the matter.
But when a doctrine such as the Immaculate Conception is promulgated
and our emotions are stirred, bloody war, or heated argument, may
result, and still leave the matter in doubt. Pythagoras demanded that
his pupils study mathematics, because he knew the elevating effect of
raising their minds above the sphere of feeling, where it is subject
to delusion, and elevating it towards the Region of abstract Thought
which is the prime reality.
In this place we are dealing with
worlds in particular, and will therefore defer comment upon the
remainder of the first 5 verses of St. John's gospel:
“And
Life became Light in man,
5) and Light shines in Darkness.”
Some will ask: is there then no hell?—No! The mercy of God tends as greatly towards the principle of GOOD as “the inhumanity of man” towards cruelty, so that he would consign his brother men to flames of hell during eternity for the puerile mistakes committed during a few years, or perhaps for a slight difference in belief. The writer has heard of a minister who wished to impress his “flock” with the reality of an eternity of hell flames, and to demonstrate the fallacy of a heretical notion entertained by some of his parishioners that when sinners come to hell they burn to ashes and that is the end.
He took with him an alcohol lamp and some asbestos into the pulpit and told his audience that God would turn their souls into a substance resembling asbestos. He showed them that though the asbestos were heated red hot it did not decompose into ashes. Fortunately the day of the hell preacher has gone by, and if we believe the Bible which says that “in God we live and move and have our being,” we can readily understand that a lost soul would be an impossibility, for were one single soul lost, then logically a part of God Himself would be lost. No matter what our color, our race or our creed, we are all equally the children of God and in our various ways we shall obtain satisfaction. Let us therefore rather look to Christ and forget Creed.
Creed or Christ?
No man loves God
who hates his kind,
Who tramples on
his Brother's heart and soul.
Who seeks to
shackle, cloud or fog the mind
By fears of Hell
has not perceived our goal.
God-sent are all
religions blest;
And Christ, the
Way, the Truth and Life,
To give the
heavy-laden rest,
And peace from
Sorrow, Sin and Strife.
At his request the
Universal Spirit came
To
all the churches, not to one
alone.
On Pentecostal
morn a tongue of flame
Round each
apostle as a halo shone.
Since then, as
vultures ravenous with greed,
We oft have
battled for an empty name,
And sought by
Dogma, Edict, Creed,
To send each other
to the flame.
Is Christ then
divided? Was Cephas or Paul
Nailed to the
deathly tree?
If not—then why
these divisions at all?
Christ's love doth
embrace you and me.
His pure sweet
love is not confined
By creeds which
segregate and raise a wall;
His love
enfolds, embraces Humankind
No matter what
ourselves or Him we call.
Then why not take
Him at His word?
Why hold to creeds
which tear apart?
But one thing
matters, be it heard,
That brother-love
fill every heart.
There is but one
thing that the world has need to know;
There is but one
balm for all our human woe
There is but one
way that leads to heaven above;
That way is
human sympathy and love.
Chapter IV.
The Constitution of Man
Our chapter head, “the constitution of man,” may
surprise a reader who has not previously studied the Mystery
teachings, or he may imagine that we intend to give an anatomical
dissertation, but such is not our intention. We have spoken of the
earth upon which we live as being composed of several invisible
realms in addition to the world we perceive by means of our senses.
We have also spoken of man as being correlated to these various
divisions in nature, and a little thought upon the subject will
quickly convince us that in order to function upon the various planes
of existence described, it is necessary that a man should have a body
composed of their substance, or at least have specialized for his own
use, some of the material of each of these worlds.
We have said that finer matter, called desire stuff and
mind stuff, permeates our atmosphere and the solid earth, even as
blood percolates through all parts of our flesh. But that is not a
sufficient explanation to account for all facts of life. If that were
all, then minerals, which are interpenetrated by the world of thought
and the world of desire, would have thoughts and desires as well as
man. This is not the case, so something more than mere
interpenetration must be requisite to acquire the faculties of
thought and feeling.
We know that in order to function in
this world, to live as a physical being among other like beings, we
must have a physical body all our own, built of the chemical
constituents of this visible world. When we lose it at death, it
profits us nothing that the world is full of just the very chemicals
needed to build such a body. We cannot then specialize them, and
therefore we are invisible to all others. Similarly, if we did not
possess a special body made of ether, we should be unable to grow and
to propagate. That is the case with the mineral. Had we no separate
individual desire body, we should be unable to feel desires and
emotions, there would be no incentive to move from one place to
another. We should then be stationary as plants, and did we not
possess a mind, we should be incapable of thought, and act upon
impulse and instinct as animals.
Paul, in his writings, also mentions the natural body and the spiritual body while the man himself is a spirit inhabiting those vehicles. We will briefly note the constitution of the various bodies of man invisible to the physical sight but as objective to spiritual sight as the dense body to ordinary vision.
The Vital Body.
That body of ours which is
composed of ether is called the “vital
body” in Western Mystery
Schools, for, as we have already seen, ether is the avenue of ingress
for vital force from the sun and the field of agencies in nature
which promote such vital activities as assimilation, growth and
propagation.
This vehicle is an exact counterpart of our visible
body, molecule for molecule, and organ for organ, with one exception,
which we shall note later. But it is slightly larger, extending about
one and one-half inches beyond the periphery of our dense vehicle.
The spleen is the entrance gate of forces which vitalize
the body. In the etheric counterpart of that organ solar energy is
transmuted to vital fluid of a pale rose color. From thence it
spreads all over the nervous system, and after having been used in
the body it radiates in streams, much as bristles protrude from a
porcupine.
The rays of the sun are transmitted
either directly, or reflected by way of the planets and the moon. The
rays directly from the sun give spiritual illumination, the rays
received by way of the planets produce intelligence, morality, and
soul growth, but the rays reflected by way of the moon make for
physical growth, as seen in the case of plants which grow differently
when planted in the light of the moon from what is the case when they
are planted when the moon is dark. There is also a difference in
plants sown when the moon is in barren and fruitful signs of the
Zodiac.
The solar ray is absorbed by the human spirit which has
its seat in the center of the forehead, the stellar ray is absorbed
by the brain and spinal cord, and the lunar ray enters our system
through the spleen.
The solar, stellar and lunar rays are three-colored, and
in the lunar ray which supplies our vital force, the blue beam is the
life of The Father, which causes germination, the yellow beam is the
life of The Son, which is the active principle in nutrition and
growth, and the red beam is the life of the Holy Spirit, which
stimulates to action, dissipating the energy stored by the yellow
force. This principle is particularly active in generation.
The various kingdoms absorb this
life-force differently, according to their constitution. Animals have
only 28 pairs of spinal nerves. They are keyed to the lunar month of
28 days and therefore dependent upon a Groupspirit for an infusion of
stellar rays necessary to produce consciousness. They are altogether
incapable of absorbing the direct ray of the sun.
Man is in a transition stage, he has 31 pairs of spinal
nerves which keys him to the solar month, but the nerves in the
so-called cauda-equina—literally horse-tail—, at the end of our
spinal cord, are still too undeveloped to act as avenues for the
spiritual ray of the sun. In proportion as we draw our creative force
upward by spiritual thought we develop these nerves and awaken
dormant faculties of the spirit. But it is dangerous to attempt that
development except under guidance of a qualified teacher, and the
reader is earnestly warned not to use any method published in books,
or sold, for their practice usually leads to dementia. The safe
method is never sold for money or any earthly consideration however
large or small; it is always freely given as a reward of merit. “Ask
and ye shall receive, seek and ye shall find, knock and it shall be
opened”, said the Christ. If our life is a prayer for illumination,
the search will not be uncertain, nor the knock without response.
When solar energy has been
transmuted in the spleen it traverses the whole nervous system of the
body glowing with a most beautiful color of a delicate rosy hue. It
answers the same purpose as electricity in a telegraph system. We may
string wires between cities, erect telegraph stations, install
receivers and transmitters. We may even have operators ready at the
keys, but until electric fluid is turned into our wires, the
telegraph keys will refuse to click. So also in the body, the human
spirit is operator, and from the central station of the brain, nerves
ramify, go through the whole body to all the different muscles. When
this vitalizing fluid of which we are speaking traverses the nervous
system, the Ego may send his commands to the muscles and cause them
to move but if the vital fluid for any reason does not flow into a
certain part of the body such as an arm or a limb, then the spirit is
powerless to move that part of the body and we say that it is
paralyzed.
When we are in health, we specialize
solar energy in such great quantities that we cannot use it all in
the body and therefore it radiates through the pores of our skin in
straight streams and serves a similar purpose as an exhaust fan. That
machine drives the foul air out of a room or building and keeps the
atmosphere within pure and sweet. The excessive vital force which
radiates from the body drives out poisonous gases, deleterious
microbes and effete matter thus tending to preserve a healthy
condition. It also prevents armies of disease germs, which swarm
about in the atmosphere, from entering; upon the same principle that
a fly cannot wing its way into a building through the exhaust fan.
Thus it serves a most beneficent purpose even after it has been
utilized in our body and is returning to the free state.
It is a curious and most astounding sight when one first
observes how, from exposed parts of the body such as hands and face,
there suddenly commences to flow a stream of stars, cubes, pyramids
and a variety of other geometrical forms. The writer has more than
once rubbed his eyes when he first perceived the phenomenon, for it
seemed that he must be suffering from hallucinations. The forms
observed are chemical atoms however, which have served their purpose
in the body and are expelled through the pores.
When one has eaten a meal, vital
fluid is consumed by the body in great quantities, for it is the
cement whereby nature's forces build our food into the body.
Therefore the radiations are weakest during the period of digestion.
If the meal has been heavy, the outflow is very perceptibly
diminished, and does not then cleanse our body as thoroughly as when
the food has been digested, nor is it as potent in keeping out
inimical germs. Therefore one is most liable to catch cold or other
disease by overeating, a fault which should be avoided by all who
wish to keep in good health.
During ill health the vital body specializes but little
solar energy. Then, for a time, the visible body seems to feed upon
the vital body as it were, so that the vehicle becomes more
transparent and attenuated at the same rate as the visible body
exhibits a state of emaciation. The cleansing odic radiations are
almost entirely absent during sickness, therefore complications set
in so easily.
Though science has not directly
observed this vital body of man, it has upon several occasions
postulated the existence of such a vehicle as necessary to account
for facts in life and the radiations have been observed by a number
of scientists at different times and under varying conditions.
Blondlot and Charpentier have called them N-rays after the city of
Nantes where the radiations were observed by these scientists, others
have named them “The Odic fluid”. Scientific investigators who
have conducted researches into psychic phenomena have even
photographed it when it has been extracted through the spleen by
materializing spirits. Dr. Hotz for instance obtained two photographs
of a materialization through the German medium, Minna-Demmler. On one
a cloud of ether is seen oozing out through the left side of the
medium, shapeless and without form. The second picture, taken a few
moments later, shows the materialized spirit standing at the medium's
side. Other photographs obtained by scientists from the Italian
medium Eusapio Palladino show a luminous cloud over-hanging her left
side.
We said in the beginning of this description that the
vital body is an exact counterpart of the dense body with one
exception: it is of the opposite sex or perhaps we should rather say
polarity. As the vital body nourishes the dense vehicle, we may
readily understand that blood is its highest visible expression, and
also that a positively polarized vital body would generate more blood
than a negative one. Woman who is physically negative has a positive
vital body, hence she generates a surplus of blood which is relieved
by the periodical flow. She is also more prone to tears, which are
white bleeding, than man, whose negative vital body does not generate
more blood than he can comfortably take care of. Therefore it is not
necessary for him to have the outlets which relieve excess of blood
in woman.
The Desire Body.
In addition to the visible body and the vital body we
also have a body made of desire stuff from which we form our feelings
and emotions. This vehicle also impels us to seek sense
gratification. But while the two instruments of which we have already
spoken, are well organized, the desire body appears to spiritual
sight as an ovoid cloud extending from sixteen to twenty inches
beyond the physical body. It is above the head and below the feet so
that our dense body sits in the center of this egg-shaped cloud as
the yolk is in the center of an egg.
The reason for the rudimentary state
of this vehicle is, that it has been added to the human constitution
more recently than the bodies previously mentioned. Evolution of form
may be likened to the manner in which the juices in the snail first
condense into flesh and later become a hard shell. When our present
visible body first germinated in the spirit, it was a thought-form,
but gradually it has become denser and more concrete until it is now
a chemical crystallization. The vital body was next emanated by the
spirit as a thought-form and is in the third stage of concretion
which is etheric. The desire body is a still later acquisition. That
also was a thought form at its inception, but has now condensed to
desire stuff, and the mind, which we have only recently received, is
still but a mere cloudy thought form.
Arms and limbs, ears and eyes are not necessary to use
the desire body, for it can glide through space more swiftly than
wind without such means of locomotion as we require in this visible
world.
When viewed by spiritual sight, it
appears that there are in this desire body a number of whirling
vortices. We have already explained that it is a characteristic of
desire stuff to be in constant motion, and from the main vortex in
the region of the liver there is a constant outwelling flow which
radiates towards the periphery of this egg-shaped body and returns to
the center through a number of other vortices. The desire body
exhibits all the colors and shades which we know and a vast number of
others which are indescribable in earthly language. Those colors vary
in every person according to his characteristics and temperament and
they also vary from moment to moment as passing moods, fancies or
emotions are experienced by him. There is however in each one a
certain basic color dependent upon the ruling star at the moment of
his birth. The man in whose horoscope Mars is peculiarly strong
usually has a crimson tint in his aura, where Jupiter is the
strongest planet the prevailing tint seems to be a bluish tone, and
so on with the other planets.
In the desire body every particle is sensitive to
vibrations similar to those which we call sight, sounds and feelings
and every particle is in incessant motion rapidly swirling about so
that in the same instant it may be at the top and bottom of the
desire body and impart at all points to all the other particles a
sensation of that which it has experienced thus every particle of
desire stuff in this vehicle of ours will instantly feel any
sensation experienced by any single particle. Therefore the desire
body is of an exceedingly sensitive nature, capable of most intense
feelings and emotions.
The Mind.
This is the latest acquisition of
the human spirit, and in most people who have not yet accustomed
themselves to orderly, consecutive thought, it is a mere inchoate
cloud disposed particularly in the region of the head. When looking
at a person clairvoyantly there appears to be an empty space in the
center of the forehead just above and between the eyebrows. It looks
like the blue part of a gas flame. That is mind stuff which veils the
human spirit, or Ego, and the writer has been told that not even the
most gifted seer can penetrate that veil which is said to have been
spoken of in ancient Egypt as “the veil of Isis”
which none may lift and live, for behind that veil is the Holy of
Holies, the temple of our body, where the spirit is to be left secure
from all intrusion.
To those who have not previously studied the deeper
philosophies the question may occur: But why all these divisions;
even the Bible speaks only of soul and body, for most people believe
soul and spirit to be synonymous terms. We can only answer that this
division is not arbitrary but necessary, and founded upon facts in
nature. Neither is it correct to regard the soul and the spirit as
synonymous. Paul himself speaks of the natural body
which is composed of physical substances: solids, liquids, gases and
ethers; he mentions a spiritual body, which is the
vehicle of the spirit composed of the mind and desire body, and the
spirit itself, which is called Ego in Latin or “I”
in English.
Thus we see that the constitution of man is more complex than appears upon the surface, and we will now proceed to note the effect upon this multiplex being of various conditions of life.
Chapter V.
Life and Death
Invisible Helpers and Mediums.
There are two classes of people in the world. In
one class the vital and dense bodies are so firmly cemented that the
ethers cannot be extracted under any circumstances but remain with
the dense body at all times and under all conditions from birth to
death. Those people are insensible to any supersensuous sights or
sounds. They are therefore usually exceedingly sceptic, and believe
nothing exists but what they
can see.
There is another class of people in whom the connection
between the dense and the vital bodies is more or less loose, so that
the ether of their vital bodies vibrates at a higher rate than in the
first class mentioned. These people are therefore more or less
sensitive to the spiritual world.
The other class of sensitives are strong positive characters, who act only from within, according to their own will. They may develop into trained clairvoyants, and be their own masters instead of slaves of a disembodied spirit. In some sensitives of both classes it is possible to extract part of the ether which forms the vital body. When a disembodied spirit obtains a subject of that nature, it develops the sensitive as a materializing medium. The man who is capable of extracting his own vital body by an act of will, becomes a citizen of two worlds, independent and free. Such are usually known as Invisible Helpers. There are certain other abnormal conditions where the vital body and the dense body are separated totally or in part, for instance if we place our limb in an uncomfortable position so that circulation of the blood ceases. Then we may see the etheric limb hanging down below the visible limb as a stocking. When we restore circulation and the etheric limb seeks to enter into place, an intense prickly sensation is felt, due to the fact that the little streams of force, which radiate all through the ether, seek to permeate the molecules of the limb and stir them into renewed vibration. When a person is drowning, the vital body also separates from the dense vehicle and the intense prickly pain incident to resuscitation is also due to the cause mentioned.
While we are awake and going about our work in the
Physical World, the desire body and mind both permeate the dense and
the vital bodies, and there is a constant war between the desire
nature and the vital body. The vital body is continually engaged in
building up the human organism, while the impulses of the desire body
tend to tire and to break down tissue. Gradually, in the course of
the day, the vital body loses ground before the onslaughts of the
desire body, poisons of decay slowly accumulate and the flow of vital
fluid becomes more and more sluggish, until at length it is incapable
of moving the muscles. The body then feels heavy and drowsy. At last
the vital body collapses, as it were, the little streams of force
which permeate each atom seem to shrivel up, and the Ego is forced to
abandon its body to the restorative powers of sleep.
Then the process of restoration commences and lasts for
a longer or a shorter time according to circumstances.
At times however, the grip of the
desire body upon our denser vehicles is so strong that it refuses to
let go. When it has become so interested in the proceedings of the
day, it continues to ruminate over them after the collapse of the
physical body, and is perhaps only half extracted from that vehicle.
Then it may transmit sights and sounds of the desire world to the
brain. But as the connections are necessarily askew under such
conditions, the most confused dreams result. Furthermore, as the
desire body compels motion, the body is very apt to toss about when
the desire body is not fully extracted, hence the restless sleep
which usually accompanies dreams of a confused nature.
It also happens that the spirit goes
upon a soul flight and omits to perform its part of the work of
restoration, then the body will not be fit to re-enter in the
morning, so it sleeps on. The spirit may thus roam afield for a
number of days, or even weeks, before it again enters its physical
body and assumes the normal routine of alternating waking and sleep.
This condition is called trance, and the spirit may
remember upon its return what it has seen and heard in the
super-physical realm, or it may have forgotten, according to the
stage of its development and the depth of the trance condition. When
the trance is very light, the spirit is usually present in the room
where its body lies all the time, and upon its return to the body it
will be able to recount to relatives all they said and did while its
body lay unconscious. Where the trance is deeper, the returning
spirit will usually be unconscious of what happened around its body,
but may recount experiences from the invisible world.
A few years ago a little girl by the name of Florence
Bennett in Kankakee, Illinois, fell into such a trance. She returned
to the body every few days, but stayed within only a few hours each
time, and the whole trance lasted three weeks, more or less. During
the returns to her body she told relatives that in her absence she
seemed to be in a place inhabited by all the people who died. But she
stated that none of them spoke about dying and no one among them
seemed to realize that they were dead. Among those she had seen was a
locomotive engineer who had been accidentally killed. His body was
mangled in the accident which caused death. The little girl perceived
him there walking about minus arms, and with lesions upon his head,
all of which is in line with facts usually seen by mystic
investigators.
Persons who have been hurt in accidents go about thus,
until they learn that a mere wish to have their body made whole will
supply a new arm or limb, for desire stuff is most quickly and
readily molded by thought.
Death.
After a longer or shorter time there comes in each life
a point where the experiences which a spirit can gain from its
present environment have been exhausted, and life terminates in
death.
Death may be sudden and seemingly
unexpected, as for instance by earthquake, upon the battle-field, or
by accident, as we call it, but in reality, death is never accidental
or unforeseen by Higher Powers. Not a sparrow falls to the ground
without divine Will. There are along life's path partings of the way,
as it were; on one side the main line of life continues onward, the
other path leads into what we might call a blind alley. If the man
takes that path, it soon ends in death. We are here in life for the
sake of gaining experience and each life has a certain harvest to
reap. If we order our life in such a manner that we gain the
knowledge it is intended we should acquire, we continue in life, and
opportunities of different kinds constantly come our way. But if we
neglect them, and the life goes into paths which are not congruous to
our individual development it would be a waste of time to let us stay
in such environment. Therefore the Great and Wise Beings, Who are
behind the scene of evolution, terminate our life, that we may have a
fresh start in a different sphere of influence. The law of
conservation of energy is not confined to the Physical World, but
operates in the spiritual realms also. There is nothing in life that
has not its purpose. We do wrong to rail against circumstances, no
matter how disagreeable, we should rather endeavor to learn the
lessons which are contained therein, that we may live a long and
useful life. Some one may object, and say: You are inconsistent in
your teachings. You say there is really no death, that we go into a
brighter existence, and that we have to learn other lessons there in
a different sphere of usefulness! Why then aim to live a long life
here?
The difference between those who pass out at a ripe old
age, and one who leaves this earth in the prime of life, may be
illustrated by the manner in which the seed clings to a fruit in an
unripe state. A great deal of force is necessary to tear the stone
from a green peach; it has such a tenacious hold upon the fruit that
shreds of pulp adhere to it when forcibly removed, so also the spirit
clings to the flesh in middle life and a certain part of its material
interest remain and bind it to earth after death. On the other hand,
when a life has been lived to the full, when the spirit has had time
to realize its ambitions or to find out their futility, when the
duties of life have been performed and satisfaction rests upon the
brow of an aged man or woman; or when the life has been misspent and
the pangs of conscience have worked upon the man and shown him his
mistakes; when, in fact, the spirit has learned the lessons of life,
as it must have to come to old age; then it may be likened to the
seed of the ripe fruit which falls out clean, without a vestige of
flesh clinging thereto, at the moment the encasing pulp is opened.
Therefore we say, as before, that though there is a brighter
existence in store for those who have lived well, it is nevertheless
best to live a long life and to live it to the fullest extent
possible.
There are also cases where a person lives such a full
and good life of such vast benefit to humanity and to himself, that
his days are lengthened beyond the ultimate, as they are shortened by
neglect, but such cases are of course too few to allow of their being
dwelt upon at length.
Where death is not sudden as in the case of accidents,
but occurs at home after an illness, quietly and peacefully, dying
persons usually experience a falling upon them as of a pall of great
darkness shortly before termination of life. Many pass out from the
body under that condition, and do not see the light again until they
have entered the super-physical realms. There are many other cases
however, where the darkness lifts before the final release from the
body. Then the dying person views both worlds at once, and is
cognizant of the presence of both dead and living friends. Under such
circumstances it very often happens that a mother sees some of her
children who have gone before, and she will exclaim joyously: Oh,
there is Johnny standing at the foot of my bed; my but hasn't he
grown! The living relatives may feel shocked and uneasy, thinking the
mother suffering from hallucinations, while in reality she is more
clear-sighted than they; she perceives those who have passed beyond
the veil who have come to greet and help her to make herself at home
in the new world she is entering.
Each human being is an individual, separate and apart
from all others, and as experiences in the life of each differ from
those of all others in the interval from the cradle to the grave, so
we may also reasonably infer that the experiences of each spirit vary
from those of every other spirit when it passes through the gates of
birth and death. We print what purports to be a spirit message
communicated by the late Professor James of Harvard at the Boston
spirit temple, and in which he describes sensations which he felt
when passing through the gate of death. We do not vouch for its
authenticity as we have not investigated the matter personally.
Professor James had promised to communicate after death
with his friends in this life, and the whole world of psychic
research was and still is on watch for a word from him. Several
mediums have claimed that Professor James has communicated through
them, but the most remarkable are those given through the Boston
spirit temple as follows:
“I only know that I experienced a great shock through my entire system, as if some mighty bond had been rent asunder. For a moment I was dazed and lost consciousness. When I awakened I found myself standing beside the old body which had served me faithfully and well. To say that I was surprised would only inadequately express the sensation that thrilled my very being, and I realized that some wonderful change had taken place. Suddenly I became conscious that my body was surrounded by many of my friends, and an uncontrollable desire took possession of me to speak and touch them that they might know that I still lived. Drawing a little nearer to that which was so like and yet unlike myself, I stretched forth my hand and touched them, but they heeded me not.”
“Then it was that the full significance of the great change that had taken place flashed upon my newly awakened senses; then it was that I realized that an impenetrable barrier separated me from my loved ones on earth, and that this great change which had taken place was indeed death. A sense of weariness and longing for rest took possession of me. I seemed to be transported through space, and I lost consciousness, to awaken in a land so different and yet so similar to the one which I had lately left. It was not possible for me to describe my sensations when I again regained consciousness and realized that, though dead, I was still alive.
“When I first became conscious of my new environment I was resting in a beautiful grove, and was realizing as never before what it was to be at peace with myself and all the world.”
“I know that only with the greatest difficulty shall I be enabled to express to you my sensations when I fully realized that I had awakened to a new life. All was still, no sound broke the silence. Darkness had surrounded me. In fact, I seemed to be enveloped in a heavy mist, beyond which my gaze could not penetrate. Soon in the distance I discerned a faint glimmer of light, which slowly approached me, and then, to my wonder and joy, I beheld the face of her who had been my guiding star in the early days of my earth life.”
One of the saddest sights witnessed by the seer at a
death-bed is the tortures to which we often subject our dying friends
on account of ignorance of how to care for them in that condition. We
have a science of birth; obstetricians who have been trained for
years in their profession and have developed a wonderful skill,
assist the little stranger into this world. We have also trained
nurses attendant upon mother and child, the ingenuity of brilliant
minds is focused upon the problem of how to make maternity easier,
neither pains nor money are spared in these beneficent efforts for
one whom we have never seen, but when the friend of a lifetime, the
man who has served his kind well and nobly in profession, state, or
church, is to leave the scene of his labors for a new field of
activity, when the woman—who has labored to no less good purpose in
bringing up a family to take its part in the world's work—has to
leave that home and family, when one whom we have loved all our lives
is about to bid us the final farewell, we stand by utterly at a loss
how to help; perhaps we even do the very things most detrimental to
the comfort and welfare of the departing one.
Post-mortem examinations, embalming
and cremation during the period mentioned, not only disturb the
passing spirit mentally, but are productive of a certain amount of
pain, for there is still a slight connection with the discarded
vehicle. If sanitary laws require us to prevent decomposition while
thus keeping the body for cremation, it may be packed in ice till the
three and one-half days have passed. After that time the spirit will
not suffer, no matter what happens to the body.
The Panorama of a Past Life.
No matter how long we may keep the spirit from passing
out however, at last there will come a time when no stimulant can
hold it and the last breath is drawn. Then the silver cord, of which
the Bible speaks, and which holds the higher and the lower vehicles
together, snaps in the heart and causes that organ to stop. That
rupture releases the vital body, and that with the desire body and
mind float above the visible body for from one to three and one-half
days while the spirit is engaged in reviewing the past life, an
exceedingly important part of its post-mortem experience. Upon that
review depends its whole existence from death to a new birth.
The question may arise in the
student's mind: How can we review our past life from the cradle to
the grave when we do not even remember what we did a month ago, and
to form a proper basis for our future life, this record ought to be
very accurate, but even the best memory is faulty? When we understand
the difference between the conscious and sub-conscious memory and the
manner in which the latter operates, the difficulty vanishes. This
difference and the manner in which the sub-conscious memory keeps an
accurate record of our life experiences may be best understood by an
illustration, as follows: When we go into a field and view the
surrounding landscape, vibrations in the ether carry to us a picture
of everything within the range of our vision. It is as sad as it is
true however, that “we have eyes and see not,” as the Savior
said. These vibrations impinge upon the retina of our eyes, even to
the very smallest details, but they usually do not penetrate to our
consciousness, and therefore are not remembered. Even the most
powerful impressions fade in course of time so that we cannot call
them back at will when they are stored in our conscious memory.
From the first breath which we draw after birth to our last dying gasp, we inspire air which is charged with pictures of our surroundings, and the same ether which carries that picture to the retina of our eye, is inhaled into our lungs where it enters the blood. Thus it reaches the heart in due time. In the left ventricle of that organ, near the apex, there is one little atom which is particularly sensitized, and which remains in the body all through life. It differs in this respect from all other atoms which come and go, for it is the particular property of God, and of a certain spirit. This atom may be called the book of the Recording Angel, for as the blood passes through the heart, cycle after cycle, the pictures of our good and evil acts are inscribed thereon to the minutest detail. This record may be called the sub-conscious memory. It forms the basis of our future life when reproduced as a panorama just subsequent to death. By removal of the seed atom—which corresponds to the sensitized plate in a camera,—the reflecting ether of the vital body serves as a focus, and as the life unrolls slowly backwards from death to birth the pictures thereof are etched into the desire body which will be our vehicle during our sojourn in purgatory and the first heaven where evil is eradicated and good assimilated, so that in a future life the former may serve as conscience to withhold the man from repeating mistakes of the past, and the latter will spur us to greater good.
A phenomenon similar to the panorama of life usually takes place when a person is drowning. People who have been resuscitated speak of having seen their whole life in a flash. That is because under such conditions the vital body also leaves the dense body. Of course there is no rupture of the silver cord, or life could not be restored. Unconsciousness follows quickly in drowning, while in the usual post-mortem review the consciousness continues until the vital body collapses in the same manner that it does when we go to sleep. Then consciousness ceases for a while and the panorama is terminated. Therefore also the time occupied by the panorama varies with different persons, according to whether the vital body was strong and healthy, or had become thin and emaciated by protracted illness. The longer the time spent in review, and the more quiet and peaceful the surroundings, the deeper will be the etching which is made in the desire body. As already said, that has a most important and far reaching effect, for then the sufferings which the spirit will realize in purgatory on account of bad habits and misdeeds will be much more keen than if there is only a slight impression, and in a future life the still small voice of conscience will warn so much more insistently against mistakes which caused sufferings in the past.
When conditions are such at the time
of death that the spirit is disturbed by outside conditions, for
instance the din and turmoil of a battle, the harrowing conditions of
an accident or the hysterical wailings of relatives, the distraction
prevents it from realizing an appropriate depth in the etching upon
the desire body. Consequently its post-mortem existence becomes vague
and insipid, the spirit does not harvest fruits of experience as it
should have done had it passed out of the body in peace and under
normal conditions. It would therefore lack incentive to good in a
future life, and miss the warning against evil which a deep etching
of the panorama of life would have given. Thus its growth would be
retarded in a very marked degree, but the beneficent powers in charge
of evolution take certain steps to compensate for our ignorant
treatment of the dying and other untoward circumstances mentioned.
What these steps are, we shall discuss when considering the life of
children in heaven, for the present let it be sufficient to say that
in God's kingdom every evil is always transmuted to a greater good
though the process may not be at once apparent.
Purgatory.
During life the collapse of the vital body at night
terminates our view of the world about us, and causes us to lose
ourselves in unconsciousness of sleep. When the vital body collapses
just subsequent to death, and the panorama of life is terminated, we
also lose consciousness for a time which varies according to the
individual. A darkness seems to fall upon the spirit, then after a
while it wakes up and begins dimly to perceive the light of the other
world, but is only gradually accustomed to the altered conditions. It
is an experience similar to that which we have when coming out of a
darkened room into sunlight, which blinds us by its brilliancy, until
the pupils of our eyes have contracted so that they admit a quantity
of light bearable to our organism.
If under such a condition we turn
momentarily from the bright sunlight and look back into the darkened
room, objects there will be much more plain to our vision than things
outside which are illumined by the powerful rays of the sun. So it is
also with the spirit, when it has first been released from the body
it perceives sights, scenes and sounds of the material world, which
it has just left, much more readily than it observes the sights of
the world it is entering. Wordsworth in his Ode to Immortality noted
a similar condition in the case of new-born children, who are all
clairvoyant and much more awake to the spiritual world than to this
present plane of existence. Some lose the spiritual sight very early,
others retain it for a number of years and a few keep it all through
life, but as the birth of a child is a death in the spiritual world
and it retains the spiritual sight for a time, so also death here is
a birth upon the spiritual plane, and the newly dead retain a
consciousness of this world for some time subsequent to demise.
When one awakes in the Desire World
after having passed through aforementioned experiences, the general
feeling seems to be one of relief from a heavy burden, a feeling
perhaps akin to that of a diver encased in a heavy rubber suit, a
weighty brass helmet upon his head, leaden soles under his feet and
heavy weights of lead upon his breast and back, confined in his
operations on the bottom of the ocean by a short length of air tube,
and able only to move clumsily with difficulty. When after the day's
work such a man is hauled to the surface, and divests himself of his
heavy garments and he moves about with the facility we enjoy here, he
must surely experience a feeling of great relief. Something like that
is felt by the spirit when it has been divested of the mortal coil,
and is able to roam all over the globe instead of being confined to
the narrow environment which bound it upon earth.
When a fiery nebula has been formed
in the sky and commences to revolve, a little matter in the center
where motion is slowest commences to crystallize. When it has reached
a certain density it is caught in the swirl, and whirled nearer and
nearer to the outward extremity of what has, by that time, become the
equator of a revolving globe. Then it is hurled into space and
discarded from the economy of the revolving sun.
This process is not accomplished automatically as
scientists would have us believe,—an assertion which has been
proven in The Rosicrucian Cosmo Conception and other
places in our literature. Herbert Spencer also rejected the nebular
theory because it required a First Cause, which he denied, though
unable to form a better hypothesis of the formation of solar
systems,—but it is accomplished through the activity of a Great
Spirit, which we may call God or by any other name we choose. As
above, so below, says the Hermetic axiom. Man, who is a lesser
spirit, also gathers about himself spirit-substance, which
crystallizes into matter and becomes the visible body which the
spiritual sight reveals as placed inside an aura of finer vehicles.
The latter are in constant motion. When the dense body is born as a
child it is extremely soft and flexible.
Childhood, youth, maturity and old age are but so many
different stages of crystallization, which goes on until at last a
point is reached where the spirit can no longer move the hardened
body and it is thrown out from the spirit as the planet is expelled
from the sun. That is death!—the commencement of a disrobing
process which continues in purgatory. The low evil passions and
desires we cultivated during life have crystallized the desire stuff
in such a manner that that also must be expelled. Thus the spirit is
purged of evil under the same law that a sun is purged of the matter
which later forms a planet. If the life lived has been a reasonably
decent one, the process of purgation will not be very strenuous nor
will the evil desires thus expurgated persist for a long time after
having been freed, but they quickly disintegrate. If, on the other
hand, an extremely vile life has been led, the part of the expurgated
desire nature may persist even to the time when the spirit returns to
a new birth for further experience. It will then be attracted to him
and haunt him as a demon, inciting him to evil deeds which he himself
abhors. The story of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is not a mere fanciful
idea of Robert Louis Stevenson, but is founded upon facts well known
to spiritual investigators. Such cases are extremes of course, but
they are nevertheless possible and we have unfortunately laws which
convert such possibilities to probabilities in the case of a certain
class of so-called criminals. We refer to laws which decree capital
punishment as penalty of murder.
When a man is dangerous he should of course be
restrained, but even apart from the question of the moral right of a
community to take the life of anyone—which we deny—society by its
very act of retaliatory murder defeats the very end it would serve,
for if the vicious murderer is restrained under whatever discipline
is necessary in a prison for a number of years until his natural
death, he will have forgotten his bitterness against his victim and
against society, and when he stands as a free spirit in the Desire
World, he may even by prayer have obtained forgiveness and have
become a good Christian. He will then go on his way rejoicing, and
will in the future life seek to help those whom he hurt here.
When society retaliates and puts him to a violent death
shortly after he has committed the crime, he is most likely to feel
himself as having been greatly injured, and not without cause. Then
such a character will usually seek to “get even” as he calls it,
he will go about for a long time inciting others to commit murder and
other crimes. Then we have an epidemic of murders in a community, a
condition not infrequent.
When a person enters purgatory he is exactly the same person as before he died. He has just the same appetites, likes and dislikes, sympathies and antipathies, as before. There is one important difference, however, namely, that he has no dense body wherewith to gratify his appetites. The drunkard craves drink, in fact, far more than he did in this life, but has no stomach which can contain liquor and cause chemical combustion necessary to bring about the state of intoxication in which he delights. He may and does enter saloons, where he interpolates his body into the body of a physical drunkard, so that he may obtain his desires at second hand as it were, he will incite his victim to drink more and more. Yet there is no true satisfaction. He sees the full glass upon the counter but his spirit hand is unable to lift it. He suffers tortures of Tantalus until in time he realizes the impossibility of gratifying his base desire. Then he is free to go on so far as that vice is concerned. He has been purged from that evil without intervention of an angry deity or a conventional devil with hell's flames and pitchfork to administer punishment, but under the immutable law that as we sow so shall we reap, he has suffered exactly according to his vice. If his craving for drink was of a mild nature, he would scarcely miss the liquor which he cannot there obtain. If his desires were strong and he simply lived for drink, he would suffer veritable tortures of hell without need of actual flames. Thus the pain experienced in eradication of his vice would be exactly commensurate with the energy he had expended upon contracting the habit, as the force wherewith a falling stone strikes the earth is proportionate to the energy expended in hurling it upwards into the air.
Yet it is not the aim of God to “get even;” love is higher than law and in His wonderful mercy and solicitude for our welfare He has opened the way of repentance and reform whereby we may obtain forgiveness of sin, as taught by the Lord of Love: the Christ. Not indeed contrary to law, for His laws are immutable, but by application of a higher law, whereby we accomplish here that which would otherwise be delayed until death had forced the day of reckoning. The method is as follows:
In our explanation concerning the sub-conscious memory we noted that a record of every act, thought and word is transmitted by air and ether into our lungs, thence to the blood, and finally inscribed upon the tablet of the heart:—a certain little seed atom, which is thus the book of Recording Angels. It was later explained how this panorama of life is etched into the desire body and forms the basis of retribution after death. When we have committed a wrong and our conscience accuses us in consequence, and this accusation is productive of sincere repentance accompanied by reform, the picture of that wrong act will gradually fade from the record of our life, so that when we pass out at death it will not stand accusingly against us. We noted that the panorama of life unwinds backwards just after death. Later, in the purgatorial life it again passes before the spiritual vision of the man, who then experiences the exact feeling of those whom he has wronged. He seems to lose his own identity for the time being, and assumes the condition of his one time victim, he experiences all the mental and physical suffering himself which he inflicted upon others. Thus he learns to be merciful instead of cruel, and to do right instead of wrong in a future life. But if he awakens to a thorough realization of a wrong previous to his death, then, as said, the feeling of sorrow for his victim and the restitution or redress which he gives of his own free will, make the suffering after death unnecessary, hence—“his sin is forgiven.”
The Rosicrucian Mystery teaching gives a scientific method whereby an aspirant to higher life may purge himself continually, and thus be able to entirely avoid existence in purgatory. Each night after retiring the pupil reviews his life during the past day in reverse order. He starts to visualize as clearly as possible the scene which took place just before retiring. He then endeavors to impartially view his actions in that scene examining them to see whether he did right or wrong. If the latter, he endeavors to feel and realize as vividly as possible that wrong. For instance, if he spoke harshly to someone, and upon later consideration finds it was not merited, he will endeavor to feel exactly as that one felt whom he wronged and at the very earliest opportunity to apologize for the hasty expression. Then he will call up the next scene in backward succession which may perhaps be the supper table. In respect of that scene he will examine himself as to whether he ate to live, sparingly and of foods prepared without suffering to other creatures of God, (such as flesh foods that cannot be obtained without taking life). If he finds that he allowed his appetite to run away with him and that he ate gluttonously, he will endeavor to overcome these habits, for to live a clean life we must have a clean body and no one can live to his highest possibilities while making his stomach a graveyard for the decaying corpses of murdered animals. In this respect there occurs to the writer a little poem by Ella Wheeler Wilcox:
“I am the
voice of the voiceless;
Through me the
dumb shall speak,
Till a deaf
world's ear
Shall be made to
hear
The wrongs of the
wordless weak.
The same force
formed the sparrow
That fashioned man
the king;
The God of the
whole
Gave a spark of
soul
To furred and
feathered thing.
And I am my
brother's keeper
And I will fight
his fight,
And speak the word
For beast and bird
Till the world shall set things right.
This evening exercise and another, for the morning, if
persistently performed day by day, will in time awaken the spiritual
vision as they improve life. This matter has, however, been so
thoroughly treated in number 11 of the lecture series: “Spiritual
Sight and Insight; its safe culture and control,” that it
is unnecessary to dwell upon the matter further in this place.
The First Heaven.
In the first heaven, which is located in the
higher regions of the Desire World, the panorama of life again
unrolls and reveals every scene where we aimed to help or benefit
others. They were not felt at the time the spirit was in the lower
regions, for higher desires cannot express themselves in the coarse
matter composing the lower regions of the Desire World, but when the
spirit ascends to the first heaven it reaps from each scene all the
good which it expressed in life. It will feel the gratitude poured
out by those whom it helped; if it comes to a scene where itself
received a favor from others and was
grateful, it will experience the
gratitude anew. The sum of all these feelings is there amalgamated
into the spirit to serve in a future life as incentives to good.
Thus, the soul is purged from evil in purgatory, and strengthened in good in the first heaven. In one region the extract of sufferings become conscience to deter us from doing wrong, in the other region the quintessence of good is transmuted to benevolence and altruism which are the basis of all true progress. Moreover, purgatory is far from being a place of punishment, it is perhaps the most beneficent realm in nature, for because of purgation we are born innocent life after life. The tendencies to commit the same evil for which we suffered remain with us and temptations to commit the same wrongs will be placed in our path until we have consciously overcome the evil here; temptation is not sin, however, the sin is in yielding.
Among the inhabitants of the invisible world there is
one class which lives a particularly painful life, sometimes for a
great many years, namely, the suicide who tried to play truant from
the school of life. Yet it is not an angry God or a malevolent devil
who administers punishment, but an immutable law which proportions
the sufferings differently to each individual suicide.
We learned previously, when considering the World of
Thought, that each form in this visible world has its archetype
there,—a vibrating hollow mold which emits a certain harmonious
sound; that sound attracts and forms physical matter into the shape
we behold, much in the same manner as when we place a little sand
upon a glass plate and rub the edge with a violin bow, the sand is
shaped into different geometrical figures which change as the sound
changes.
The little atom in the heart is the sample and the
center around which the atoms in our body gather. When that is
removed at death, the center is lacking, and although the archetype
keeps on vibrating until the limit of the life has been reached—as
also previously explained,—no matter can be drawn into the hollow
shape of the archetype and therefore the suicide feels a dreadful
gnawing pain as if he were hollowed out, a torture which can only be
likened to the pangs of hunger. In his case, the intense suffering
will continue for exactly as many years as he should have lived in
the body. At the expiration of that time, the archetype collapses as
it does when death comes naturally. Then the pain of the suicide
ceases, and he commences his period of purgation as do those who die
a natural death. But the memory of sufferings experienced in
consequence of the act of suicide will remain with him in future
lives and deter him from a similar mistake.
In the first heaven there is a class who have not had
any purgatorial existence and who lead a particularly joyous life:
the children. Our homes may be saddened almost beyond endurance when
the little flower is broken and the sunshine it brought has gone. But
could we see the beautiful existence which these little ones lead,
and did we understand the great benefits which accrue to a child from
its limited stay there, our sorrow would be at least ameliorated in a
great measure, and the wound upon our heart would heal more quickly.
Besides, as nothing else in the world happens without a cause, so
there is also a much deeper cause for infant mortality than we are
usually aware of, and as we awake to the facts of the case, we shall
be able to avoid in future the sorrow incident to loss of our little
ones.
To understand the case properly we must revert to the
experiences of the dying in the death hour. We remember that the
panorama of the past life is etched upon the desire body during a
period varying from a few hours to three and one-half days, just
subsequent to demise. We recall also, that upon the depth of this
etching depends the clearness of the picture, and that the more vivid
this panorama of life, the more intensely will the spirit suffer in
purgatory and feel the joys of heaven; also, that the greater the
suffering in purgatory the stronger the conscience in the next life.
It was explained how the horrors of death upon the
battlefield, in an accident or other untoward circumstances would
prevent the spirit from giving all its attention to the panorama of
life with the result that there would be a light etching in the
desire body, followed by a vague and insipid existence in purgatory
and the first heaven. It was also stated that hysterical lamentations
in the death chamber would produce the same effect.
A spirit which had thus escaped
suffering proportionate to its misdeeds, and which had not
experienced the pleasure commensurate with the good it had done,
would not in a future life have as well developed a conscience as it
ought to have, nor would it be as benevolent as it ought to be, and
therefore the life, terminated under conditions over which the spirit
had no control, would be partly wasted. The Great Leaders of humanity
therefore take steps to counteract such a calamity and prevent an
injustice. The spirit is brought to birth, caused to die in
childhood, it re-enters the Desire World and in the first heaven it
is taught the lessons of which it was deprived previously.
The Second Heaven.
When both the good and evil of a life has been
extracted, the spirit discards its desire body and ascends to the
second heaven. The desire body then commences to disintegrate as the
physical body and the vital body have done, but it is a peculiarity
of desire stuff, that once it has been formed and inspired with life,
it persists for a considerable time. Even after that life has fled it
lives a semi-conscious, independent life. Sometimes it is drawn by
magnetic attraction to relatives of the spirit whose clothing it was,
and at spiritualistic seances these shells generally
impersonate the departed spirit and deceive its relatives. As the
panorama of the past life is etched into the shells they have a
memory of incidents in connection with these relatives, which
facilitates the deception. But as the intelligence has fled, they are
of course unable to give any true counsel, and that accounts for the
inane, goody-goody nonsense of which these things deliver themselves.
Under the law of causation we reap exactly what we sow, and it would be wrong to place one spirit in an environment where there is a scarcity of the necessities of life, where a scorching sun burns the crop and millions die from famine, or where the raging flood sweeps away primitive habitations not built to withstand its ravages, and to bring another spirit to birth in a land of plenty, with a fertile soil which yields a maximum of increase with a minimum of labor, where the earth is rich in minerals that may be used in industry to facilitate transportation of products of the soil from one point to another. If we were thus placed without action or acquiescence upon our part, there would be no justice, but as our post-mortem existence in purgatory and the first heaven is based upon our moral attitude in this life so our activities in the second heaven are determined by our mental aspirations and they produce our future physical environment, for in the second heaven, the spirit becomes part of the nature forces which work upon the earth and change its climate, flora and fauna. A spirit of an indolent nature, who indulges in day dreams and metaphysical speculations here, is not transformed by death respecting its mental attitude any more than regarding its moral propensities. It will dream away time in heaven, glorying in its sights and sounds. Thus it will neglect to work upon its future country and return to a barren and arid land. Spirits, on the other hand, whose material aspirations lead them to desire so-called solid comforts of hearth and home, who aim to promote great industries and whose mind is concerned in trade and commerce, will build in heaven a land that will suit their purpose: fertile, immineralized, with navigable rivers and sheltered harbors. They will return in time to enjoy upon earth the fruits of their labors in the second heaven, as they reap the result of their life upon earth in purgatory and the first heaven.
The Third Heaven.
In the third heaven most people have very little
consciousness for reasons explained in connection with the Region of
Abstract Thought, for there the third heaven is located. It is
therefore more of a place of waiting where the spirit rests between
the time when its labors in the second heaven have been completed and
the time when it again experiences the desire for rebirth. But from
this realm inventors bring down their original ideas; there the
philanthropist obtains the clearest vision of how to realize his
utopian dreams and the spiritual aspirations of the saintly minded
are given renewed impetus.
In time the desires of the spirit
for further experiences draws it back to rebirth, and the Great
Celestial Beings who are known in the Christian Religion as Recording
Angels, assist the spirit to come to birth in the place best suited
to give it the experience necessary to further unfold its powers and
possibilities.
We have all been here many times and in different
families, we have had relations of varying nature with many different
people and usually there are several families among whom we may seek
re-embodiment to work out our self-generated destiny and reap what we
have sown in former life. If there are no special reasons why we
should take birth in any particular family among certain friends or
foes, the spirit is allowed to choose its own place of birth. Thus it
may be said that most of us are in our present places by our own
prenatal choice.
In order to assist us in making that choice the
Recording Angels call up before the spirit's vision a panorama in
general outlines of each of the offered lives. This panorama will
show what part of our past debts we are to pay, and what fruits we
may be expected to reap in the coming life.
When the spirit has made its choice,
it descends into the second heaven where it is instructed by the
Angels and Archangels how to build an archetype of the body which it
will later inhabit upon earth. Also here we note the operation of the
great law of justice which decrees that we reap what we sow. If our
tastes are coarse and sensual, we shall build an archetype which will
express these qualities; if we are refined and of aesthetic taste, we
shall build an archetype correspondingly refined, but no one can
obtain a better body than he can build. Then, as the architect who
builds a house in which he afterwards lives, will suffer discomfort
if he neglects to properly ventilate it, so also the spirit feels
disease in a poorly constructed body, and as the architect learns to
avoid mistakes and remedy the short-comings of one house when
building another, so also the spirit which suffers from defects in
its body, learns in time to build better and better vehicles.
In the Region of Concrete Thought, the spirit also draws
to itself materials for a new mind. As a magnet draws iron filings
but leaves other substances alone, so also each spirit draws only the
kind of mind-stuff which it used in its former life, plus that which
it has learned to use in its present post-mortem state. Then it
descends into the Desire World where it gathers material for a new
desire body such as will express appropriately its moral
characteristics, and later it attracts a certain amount of ether
which is built into the mold of the archetype constructed in the
second heaven and acts as cement between the solids, liquids and
gaseous material from the bodies of parents which forms the dense
physical body of a child, and in due time the latter is brought to
birth.
Birth and Child Life.
It must not be imagined, however, that when the
little body of a child has been born, the process of birth is
completed. The dense physical body has had the longest evolution, and
as a shoemaker who has worked at his trade for a number of years is
more expert than an apprentice and can make better shoes and quicker,
so also the spirit which has built many physical bodies produces them
quickly, but the vital body is a later acquisition of the human
being. Therefore we are not so expert in building that vehicle.
Consequently it takes longer to construct that from the materials not
used up in making the lining of the archetype, and the vital body is
not born until the seventh year. Then the period of rapid growth
commences. The desire body is a still later addition of composite
man, and is not brought to birth until the fourteenth year when the
desire nature expresses itself most strongly during so-called “hot”
youth, and the mind, which makes man man, does not come to birth
until the twenty-first year. In law that age is recognized as the
earliest time he is fitted to exercise a franchise.
This knowledge is of the utmost importance to parents,
as a proper understanding of the development which should take place
in each of the septenary epochs enables the educator to work
intelligently with nature and thus fulfill more thoroughly the trust
of a parent than those who are ignorant of the Rosicrucian Mystery
Teaching. We shall therefore devote the remaining pages to an
elucidation of this matter and of the importance of the knowledge of
astrology upon the part of the parent.
The Mystery of Light, Color and Consciousness.
“God is Light,” says the Bible, and we are
unable to conceive of a grander simile of His Omnipresence, or the
mode of His manifestation. Even the greatest telescopes have failed
to reach the boundaries of light, though they reveal to us stars
millions of miles from the earth, and we may well ask ourselves, as
did the Psalmist of old: Whither shall I flee from Thy Presence? If I
ascend into heaven Thou art there, If I make my bed in the grave (the
Hebrew word sheol
means grave
and not hell), Thou art there, If I take the wings of morning and
dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there shall thy hand
lead me.
When, in the dawn of Being, God the Father
enunciated The Word, and The Holy Spirit
moved upon the sea of homogeneous Virgin Matter,
primeval Darkness was turned to Light.
That is therefore the prime manifestation of Deity, and a study of
the principles of Light will reveal to the mystic intuition a
wonderful source of spiritual inspiration. As it would take us too
far afield from our subject we shall not enter into an elucidation of
that theme here, except so far as to give an elementary idea of how
divine Life energizes the human frame and stimulates to action.
Truly, God is ONE and undivided, He
enfolds within His Being all that is, as the white light embraces all
colors. But He appears three-fold in manifestation, as the white
light is refracted in three primary colors: Blue, Yellow and Red.
Wherever we see these colors they are emblematical of the Father, Son
and Holy Spirit. These three primary rays of divine Life are diffused
or radiated through the sun and produce Life,
Consciousness and Form upon each of
the seven light-bearers, the planets, which are called “the Seven
Spirits before the Throne.” Their names are: Mercury, Venus, Earth,
Mars, Jupiter, Saturn and Uranus. Bode's law proves that Neptune does
not belong to our solar system and the reader is referred to
“Simplified Scientific Astrology” by the present writer, for
mathematical demonstration of this contention.
Each of the seven planets receives the light of the sun
in a different measure, according to its proximity to the central orb
and the constitution of its atmosphere, and the beings upon each,
according to their stage of development, have affinity for some of
the solar rays. They absorb the color or colors congruous to them,
and reflect the remainder upon the other planets. This reflected ray
bears with it an impulse of the nature of the beings with which it
has been in contact.
Thus the divine Light and Life comes
to each planet, either directly from the sun, or reflected from its
six sister planets, and as the summer breeze which has been wafted
over blooming fields carries upon its silent invisible wings the
blended fragrance of a multitude of flowers, so also the subtle
influences from the garden of God bring to us the commingled impulses
of all the Spirits and in that varicolored light we live and move and
have our being.
The rays which come directly from the sun are productive
of spiritual illumination, the reflected rays from other planets make
for added consciousness and moral development and the rays reflected
by way of the moon give physical growth.
But as each planet can only absorb a certain quantity of
one or more colors according to the general stage of evolution there,
so each being upon earth: mineral, plant, animal and man can only
absorb and thrive upon a certain quantity of the various rays
projected upon the earth. The remainder do not affect it or produce
sensation, any more than the blind are conscious of light and color
which exist everywhere around them. Therefore each being is
differently affected by the stellar rays and the science of Astrology
a fundamental truth in nature, of enormous benefit in the attainment
of spiritual growth.
From a horoscopic figure in mystic
script we may learn our own strength and weakness, with the path best
suited to our development, or we may see the tendencies of those
friends who come to us as children, and what traits are dormant in
them. Thus we shall know clearly how to discharge our duty as
parents, by repressing evil before it comes to birth and fostering
good, so that it may bring forth most abundantly the spiritual
potencies of the soul committed to our care.
As we have already said, man returns to earth to reap
that which he has sown in previous lives and to sow anew the seeds
which make for future experience. The stars are the heavenly time
keepers which measure the year, the moon indicates the month when
time will be propitious to harvest or to sow.
The child is a mystery to us all, we
can only know its propensities as they slowly develop into
characteristics, but it is usually too late to check when evil habits
have been formed and the youth is upon the downward grade. A
horoscope cast for the time of birth in a scientific manner shows the
tendencies to good or evil in the child, and if a parent will take
time and trouble necessary to study the science of the stars, he or
she may do the child intrusted to his or her care an inestimable
service by fostering tendencies to good and repressing the evil bent
of a child ere it has crystallized into habit. Do not imagine that a
superior mathematical knowledge is necessary to erect a horoscope.
Many construct a horoscope in such an involved manner, so “fearfully
and wonderfully made” that it is unreadable to themselves or
others, while a simple figure easy of reading may be constructed by
anyone who knows how to add and subtract. This method has been
thoroughly elucidated in Simplified Scientific Astrology which is a
complete text book, though small and inexpensive, and parents who
have the welfare of their children thoroughly at heart should
endeavor to learn for themselves, for even though their ability may
not compare with that of a professional astrologer, their intimate
knowledge of the child and their deep interest will more than
compensate for such lack and enable them to see most deeply into the
child's character by means of its horoscope.
Education of Children.
Respecting the
birth of the various vehicles and the influence which that has upon
life, we may say that during the time from birth to the seventh year
the lines of growth of the physical body are determined, and as it
has been noted that sound is builder both in the great and small, we
may well imagine that rhythm must have an enormous influence upon the
growing and sensitive little child's organism. The apostle John in
the first chapter of his gospel expresses this idea mystically in the
beautiful words: “In the beginning was the WORD ... and without it
was not anything made that was made ... and the word became flesh;”
the word is a rhythmic sound, which issued from the Creator,
reverberated through the universe and marshaled countless millions of
atoms into the multiplex variety of shapes and forms which we see
about us. The mountain, the mayflower, the mouse and the man are all
embodiments of that great Cosmic Word which is still sounding through
the universe and which is still building and ever building though
unheard by our insensitive ears. But though we do not hear that
wonderful celestial sound, we may work upon the little child's body
by terrestrial music, and though the nursery rhymes are without
sense, they are nevertheless bearers of a wonderful rhythm, and the
more a child is taught to say, sing and repeat them, to dance and to
march to them, the more music is incorporated into a child's daily
life, the stronger and healthier will be its body in future years.
There are two mottoes which apply during this period,
one to the child and the other to the parent: Example
and Imitation. No creature under heaven is more
imitative than a little child, and its conduct in after years will
depend largely upon the example set by its parents during its early
life. It is no use to tell the child “not to mind,” it has no
mind wherewith to discriminate, but follows its natural tendency, as
water flows down a hill, when it imitates. Therefore it behooves
every parent to remember from morning till night that watchful eyes
are upon him all the time waiting but for him to act in order to
follow his example.
It is of the utmost importance that the child's clothing
should be very loose, particularly the clothing of little boys, as
chafing garments often produce vices which follow a man through life.
When the vital body is born at the age of seven a period of growth begins and a new motto, or relation rather, is established between parent and child. This may be expressed in the two words Authority and Discipleship. In this period the child is taught certain lessons which it takes upon faith in the authority of its teachers, whether at home or at school, and as memory is a faculty of the vital body it can now memorize what is learned. It is therefore eminently teachable; particularly because it is unbiased by pre-conceived opinions which prevent most of us from accepting new views. At the end of this second period: from about twelve to fourteen, the vital body has been so far developed that puberty is reached. At the age of fourteen we have the birth of the desire body, which marks the commencement of self-assertion. In earlier years the child regards itself more as belonging to a family and subordinate to the wishes of its parents than after the fourteenth year. The reason is this: In the throat of the fÅ“tus and the young child there is a gland called the thymus gland, which is largest before birth, then gradually diminishes through the years of childhood and finally disappears at ages which vary according to the characteristics of the child. Anatomists have been puzzled as to the function of this organ and have not yet come to any settled conclusion, but it has been suggested that before development of the red marrow bones, the child is not able to manufacture its own blood, and that therefore the thymus gland contains an essence, supplied by the parents, upon which the child may draw during infancy and childhood, till able to manufacture its own blood. That theory is approximately true, and as the family blood flows in the child, it looks upon itself as part of the family and not as an Ego. But the moment it commences to manufacture its own blood, the Ego asserts itself, it is no longer Papa's girl or Mamma's boy, it has an “I”-dentity of its own. Then comes the critical age when parents reap what they have sown. The mind has not yet been born, nothing holds the desire nature in check, and much, very much, depends upon how the child has been taught in earlier years and what example the parents have set. At this point in life self-assertion, the feeling “I am myself”, is stronger than at any other time and therefore authority should give place to Advice; the parent should practice the utmost tolerance, for at no time in life is a human being as much in need of sympathy as during the seven years from fourteen to twenty-one when the desire nature is rampant and unchecked.
It is a crime to inflict corporal punishment upon a
child at any age. Might is never right, and as the stronger, parents
should always have compassion for the weaker. But there is one
feature of corporal punishment which makes it particularly dangerous
to apply it to the youth: namely, that it wakens the passional nature
which is already perhaps beyond the control of a growing boy.
If we whip a dog, we shall soon
break its spirit and transform it into a cringing cur, and it is
deplorable that some parents seem to regard it as their mission in
life to break the spirit of their children with the rule of the rod.
If there is one universal lack among the human race which is more
apparent than any other, it is lack of will, and as parents we may
remedy the evil in a large measure by guiding the wills of our
children along such lines as dictated by our own more mature reason,
so that we help them to grow a backbone instead of a wishbone with
which unfortunately most of us are afflicted. Therefore, never whip a
child; when punishment is necessary, correct by withholding favors or
withdrawing privileges.
At the twenty-first year the birth of the mind
transforms the youth into a man or a woman fully equipped to commence
his own life in the school of experience.
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