Why I Am a Rosicrucian - Forgotten Books

Why IAmARosicrucian

BY MA" HEINDEL

R osicrucian

Oceanside, California .

P r inted in U. S. A.

T H E

R o s ic ru c ian My s teries

An Elementary Ex po sition of

Their Secret Teachings

MA" HEINDEL

Author o f: The R osicruc ian Cosmo Concept ion .The R osic rucianPhilosophy in Questions and Answers . The R osicru

c ian Interpreta t ion o f Christ ianity . R ay s

from the R ose Cross , etc .

PR ICE75 CENTS Nep

ROSICRUCIAN FELLOWSHIP

Mount Ecc l es ia .

OCEANSIDE, CALIFORNIA.

Copyrlg'

ht. 19"

By

m ed but perm“udxng°

lotion.

given “Po.inclmmlue

uwarill be readily

All rights.ato copy

CHAPTER I.

THE ORDER OF R OSIORUOIANS AND THEROSICRUCIAN FELLOWSHIPA NewStepMount Eccles ia

CHAPTER II.

THE P R OBLEM OF LIFE AND ITS SOLUTION 27Three Theories of Life 34

We Are Eternal. (Poem by the

Author )

CHAPTER III .

THE V ISIBLE AND THE INVISIBLE WORLD 54The Chemical R egi on 54

The Etheric R egion 61

The Desire World 74

The World of Thought 95

Creed or Christ. (Poem by theAuthor )

CHAPTER IV.

THE CONSTITUTION OF MANThe Vital BodyThe Des ire BodyThe Mind

CHAPTER V .

LIFE AND DEATHInvisible Helpers and Mediums

Death

The P anorama of P ast Life

TheF irs tHeaven

The Second Heaven

The Third Heaven

Birth and Child-LifeThe Mystery of Light, Color and

Consciousness

Education of Children

CHAPTER I.

Ellie Gbrhrr nf EnzirmrianaAND THE

R OSICRUCIAN FELLOWSHIP

OUR MESSAG E AND MISSION

A Sa ne M ind

A Soft H ea r t

A Sound Body

Before entering upon an explanation ofthe teachings of the Rosicrucians

,it may be

well to say a word about them and about theplace they hold in the evolution of humanity.

For reasons to be given later these teachings advocate the dualistic view ; they holdthat man is a spirit enfolding all the powersof G od as the seed enfolds the plant, andthat these powers are being Slowly unfoldedby a series of existences in a gradually improving earthy body ; also that this processof development has been performed underthe guidance of exalted beings who are yetordering our steps , though in a decreasing

5

6 THE ROSICRUCIAN MYSTERIES

measure,as we gradually acquire intellect

and will . These exalted Beings , though nu

seen to the physical eyes, are neverthelesspotent factors in all affairs of life, and giveto the various groups of humanity lessonswhi ch will most efficiently promote thegrowth of their spiritual powers . In fact,the earth may be likened to a vast trainingschool in whi ch there are pupils of varyingage and ability as we find it in one of ourown schools . There are the savages , livingand worshipping under most primitive conditions , seeing in stick or stone a God . Then,as man progresses onwards and upwards inthe scale of civilization

,we find a higher and

higher conception of Deity,which has dow

ered here in our Western World in the beantiful Christian religion that now furnishesour spiritual inspiration and incentive toimprove .These various religions have been given

to each group of humanity by the exaltedbeings 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 a s the

human mind, and thus they are enabled todetermine what steps are necessary to lead

THE ORDER OF R OSIORUOIANS 7

our enfoldment along the lines congruous tothe highest universal good .

-When we study the hi story of the ancientnations we shall find that at about six hundred years B . C. a great spiritual wave hadits inception on the Eastern shores of thePacific Ocean wherethe great Confucian R eligion accelerated the progress of the Chinese nation, then also the Religion of theBuddh a commenced to win its millions of

adherents in India,and still further West

we have the lofty phi losophy of Pythagoras .

Each system was suited to the needs of theparticular people to whom it was sent . Thencame the period of the Sceptics, in Greece,and later

,traveling westward the same spir

itual wave is manifested as the Christianreligion of the so-called “Dark Ages” whenthe dogma of a dominant church compelledbelief from the whole of Western Europe .It is a law in the universe that a wave of

spiritual awakening is always followed bya period of doubting materialism, each

phase is necessary in order that the spirit

may receive equal development of heart and

intellect W ithout being carried too far ineither direction . The Great Beings aforementioned, Who care for our progress, al


ways take steps to safeguard humanityagainst that danger, and when they foresaw the wave of materialism whi ch com

menced in the sixteenth century with thebirth of our modern Science, they tooksteps to protect the West as they had formerly safeguarded the East against theSceptics who were held in check by the Mystery schools .In the thirteenth century there appearedin central Europe a great spiritual teacherwhose symbolical name was

Christi an Rosenkreuz .or

Christian Rose Cross .who founded the mysterious Order of theR osy Cross , concerning which so many speculations have been made and so little hasbecome known to the world at large, for itis the Mystery school of the West and isonly open to those who have attained thestage of spiritual unfoldment necessary tobe initiated in its secrets concerning theScience of Life and Being.

If we are so far developed that we areable to leave our dense physical body andtake a soul flight into interplanetary spacewe shall find that the ultimate physical atom

THE ORDER OF ROSICRUCIANS 9

is spherical in Shape like our earth ; it is aball . When we take a number of balls ofeven size and group them around one, it willtake just twelve balls to hide a thirteenthwithin . Thus the twelve vi sible and the onehidden are numbers revealing a cosmic re

lationship and as all Mystery Orders arebased upon cosmic lines

,they are composed

of twelve members gathered around a thirteenth who is the invisible head .

There are seven colors in the spectrumred, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and

violet. But between the violet and the redthere are still another five colors which are

invisible to the physical eye but revealthemselves to the spiritual sight . In everyMystery Order there are also seven brotherswho at times go out into the world and thereperform whatever work may be necessary toadvance the people among whom they serve,but five are never seen outside the templeThey work with and teach those alone whohave passed through certain stages of spiritual unfoldment and are able to visit the

temple in their spiritual bodies a feattaught in the first initiation which usuallytakes place outs ide the temple a s it is not

1 0 THE ‘ROSICRUCIAN MYSTERIES

convenient for all to visit that place physically.

Let not the reader imagine that this initiation makes the pupil a Rosicrucian, it doesnot, any more than admiss ion to a HighSchool makes a boy a member of the faculty.

Nor does he become a Rosicrucian even af

ter having passed through all the nine de~

grees of thi s or any other Mystery School .The Rosicrucians are Hierophants of thelesser Mysteries , and beyond them there arestill schools wherein Greater Mysteries aretaught . Those who have advanced throughthe lesser Mysteries and have become pupilsof the Greater Mysteries are called Adepts ,but even they have not reached the exaltedstandpoint of the twelve Brothers of the R osicrucian Order or the Hierophants of any

other lesser Mystery School any more thanthe freshman at college ha s attained to theknowledge and position of a teacher in theHigh school from which he has just graduated .

A later work will deal with initiation,but

we may say here that the door of a genuineMystery School is not unlocked by a goldenkey, but is only opened as a reward for meritorious service to humanity and any one

THE ORDER or R OSICRUCIANS

who advertises himself as a R osicrucian ormakes a charge for tuition

,by either of

those acts shows himself to be a charlatan .

The true pupil of any Mystery School is fartoo modest to advertise the fact

,he will

scorn all titles or honors from men,he will

have no regard for riches save the riches oflove given to him by those whom it becomeshis privilege to help and teach .

In the centuries that have gone by sincethe Rosicrucian Order was first formed theyhave worked quietly and secretly, aiming tomould the thought of Western Europethrough the works of Paracelsus, Boehme,Bacon

,Shakespeare, F ludd and others . Each

night at midnight when the physical netivities of the day are at their lowest ebb, andthe spiritual impulse at its highest floodtide

,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 ma

terialistic science .With the commencement of the twentieth

century a further step was taken . It was realized that something must be done to make

1 2 THE ROSICRUCIAN MYSTERIES

religion scientific as well as to makescience religions , in order that they may ul

timately blend for at the present time heartand intellect are divorced . The heart instinctively feels the truth Of religious teachings concerning such wonderful mysteriesas the Immaculate Conception ( the Mysterybirth ) , the Crucifixion , (The Mystic Death) ,the cleansing blood and the atonement andother doctrines of the Church, all of

which the intellect refuses to believe as theyare incapable of demonstration, and seemingly at war with natural law Materialadvancement may be furthered when in

tellect is dominant and the longings of theheart unsatisfied, but soul growth will beretarded until the heart also receives satisfaction .

In order to furnish to the world a teachingwhich shall satisfy head and heart alike theRosicrucian F ellowship wa s started— not toproselyte, but rather to make the ChristianReligion a living factor in the land by en

couraging people to remain with theirchurches whi le giving them the explanationswhich creeds may have obscured . To sucha s have already severed their connectionswith the church it offers a temporary eu

THE ORDER OF ROSICRUCIANS 1 3

chorege until they have become aroused

anew to the beauty of the Christian teaching.

People of various denominations enter educational institutions such as Harvard or

Yale, and study Mythology, Psychology andComparative R eligion there, without prejudice to their religious affiliation . Studentsmay enroll with the Rosicrucian Fellowship

on the very same basis . Anyone is eligible

who is not a Hypnotist, P rofessional Me

diam, P almist or Astrologer.

These higher teachings are never given

for a monetary consideration . Peter in old

en days , severely rebuked Simon, the Sorcerer who wanted to buy spiritual powerthat he might prostitute it for material gain,and the Elder Brothers also refuse to openthe door to those who prostitute the spiritual sciences by casting horoscopes, readingpalms or giving clairvoyant readings pro

fessionally , for money. The RosicrucianF ellowship advocates the study of Palmistryand Astrology by all its members, and fur

textbooks at

nominal 11 may acquireability

,instead of remaining the dupes of

1 4 TH E ROSICRUCIAN MYSTERIES

profess ionals who are often mere pretend

ers .During the past few years since we first

commenced to disseminate the Rosicrucian

teachings,they have spread like wild-fire

over the civilized world . They are studied

with avidity from the Cape of Good Hope tothe Arctic Circle and beyond, they havefound responce in the hearts of all classes

of people . Among the snow-clad huts ofAlaskan miners and in Government Houseswhere a tropical wind unfurls the BritishLion . In the capitals of Turkish Autocracyand American Democracy alike, our adher

ents may be found in Government Institutions as well as in the humblest walks of life,all in lively correspondence and close touchwith our movement and working for promul

gation of the deeper truths concerning Lifethe Offices of spiritual and medical adviserand Being which are helping them.

Application for enrollment a s Student

may be made to General Secretary Rosiorucian Fellowship,w ,

Ocean“ inCalifornia . We exact neither Initiation feenor dues . Our ex pences are met by freewillofferings from Students .

https://www.forgottenbooks.com/join


itual powers will enable us to help or harmour weaker brothers . It is only justifiablewhen efficiency in Service of Humanity isthe object .The Rosicrucian method of attainmentdiffers from other Systems in one especialparticular : It aims

,even at the very start,

to emancipate the pupil from dependence upon others , to make him SELF -RELIANTin the very highest degree

, so that he maybe able to stand alone under all circumstances and cope with all conditions . Only onewho is thus strongly poised can help theweak .

When a number of people meet in a classor circle for self-development along NEGATIVE lines

,results are usually achi eved in

a short time on the principle that it is easierto drift with the tide than to breast the current . The medium is not master of his ac

tions , however, but the slave of a spirit control . Hence such gatherings must be shunned by Probationers .Even classes whi ch meet in positive attitude of mind are not advised by the ElderBrothers , because the latent powers of all

members are massed and visions of the innerworlds obtained by anyone there

,are partly


due to the faculties of others . The heat ofcoal in the center Of a fire is enhanced by

surrounding coals, and the clairvoyant produced in a circle, be it ever so positive, is a

hot-house plant, too dependent himself to betrusted with the care of others .Therefore each Probationer in the Rosicrucian F ellowship performs his exercisesin the seclusion and privacy Of his room .

Results may be obtained more slowly by thissystem , but when they appear, they will bemanifest as powers cultivated by himself,useable independently of all others . Be

sides , the Rosicrucian methods build character at the same time as they develop spiritual faculties and thus safeguard the pupilagainst yielding to temptation to prostitutedivine powers for worldly prestige .The term of probation depends upon thediligence of the aspirant

,but is at least a

year . At the end of that period he maysend a written request for individual in

struction by the Elder Brothers . This willbe given if possible, and the Probationerwill then be advanced to Discipleship .

A FURTHER STEP .

Having thus inaugurated a new School of


Thought we are now contemplating a further step .

It is a trite saying that man is of fewdays and full of trouble,

” but among all vicissitudes of life none affect us more thanloss of health . We may lose fortune or

friends with comparative equanimity, butwhen health fails and death threatens , thestrongest falter

, and realizing human im

potence we are more ready to turn to divinepower for succor than at other times .Therefore the oflice of spiritual adviser

has always been closely associated withhealing . Among savages the priest was also ‘medicine-man

,

’ in ancient Greece Aesculspins was particularly sought by those inneed of healing . Christ healed the s ick and

the early Church followed in His steps . Certain Catholic Orders have continued the eudeavor to assuage pain during the Cen

turies which have intervened between thatday and the present . In times of sicknessthe ‘ good father ’ came as a representativeof our F ather in Heaven , and what he lacked in skill was made up by love and sympathy— If he was indeed a true and holy priest—and by the faith engendered in the patientby the priestly ofiice. His care of the pa


tient did not commence at the sickbed norwas it terminated at recovery. The gratitude of the patient towards the physician

,

and the tie closer than ever possible whereare divorced .

It is not denied that the double Office gavethe incumbents a most dangerous powerover the people , and that that power wasat times abused . It is also patent that theart of medicine has reached a stage of effi

ciency which could not have been attainedsave by devotion to that one particular endand aim. The safeguards of sanitary laws ,the extinction of insect carriers of diseaseand the consequent immunity are monumental testimonies to the value of modernscientific methods . Thus it may seem a s ifall were well and no need of further effort,but in reality

,until humanity as a whole en

joys perfect health,there is no issue more

important than the question : Howmay weattain and maintain health"In addition to the regular School of Surgery and Medicine which depends exclusively upon physical means for the cure of dis

ease,other systems have sprung up which

depend entirely on mental healing. It is thecustom of organizations which advocate


‘mind cure, nature cure,’ and other like

methods , to hold experience meetings , andpublish journals wi th testimonials fromthousands of grateful supporters who havebenefited by their ‘ treatments ,

’

and if physicians of the regular school did likewise therewould be no lack of similar testimonials totheir efficiency.

The opinion of thousands is of greatvalue

,but it does not prove anything, for

thousands may hold an opposite view, occasionally a Single man may be right and therest of the world wrong, as when G allileomaintained that the earth moves . Todaythe whole world ha s been converted to theopinion for which he suffered torture

,

and we assert that, as man is a compos ite

being , cures a re successful in proportion as

they remedy defects on the phys ical, moral

and mental planes of Being . We also maintain that results may be obtained more easily at certain times when stellar rays arepropitious to healing of a particular disease, or by treatment with remedies previously prepared under auspicious conditions .

It is well known to modern physicians thatthe condi tion of the blood— and therefore of


the whole body— changes in sympathy withthe state of the mind

,and the more they use

suggestion as an adjunct to medicine,the

more successful they are . Fewperhaps wouldcredit the further fact that both our mentaland physical condition is influenced by planetary rays which change as the planetsmove, and yet— in these days since the principle of radio-activity has been establishedwe know that every body projects into spacenumberless little particles . Wireless tele

graphy has taught us etheric waves travelswiftly and surely through trackless spaceand operate a key according to our will .

We also know that the rays of the sun affectus difierently in the morning when theystrike us horizontally and at noon when theyare perpendicular . If the light rays fromthe swift moving sun produce physical and

mental changes , may not the persistent rayof Slower planets also have an effect" Ifthey have

,they are factors in health not to

be overlooked by a thoroughly scientifichealer .Disease is a manifestation of Ignorance,

the only sin ,and Healing is a demonstration

of applied knowledge which is the only sal

22 THE R OSICBUCIAN MYSTERIES

vation . Christ is an embodiment of the Wisdom principle

,and in proportion as the

Christ is formed in us, we attain to health .

Therefore the healer must be spiritual,and

endeavor to imbue his patient with high

ideals so that he may eventually learn to

conform to God ’s Laws which govern the universe and thus attain permanent health infuture lives as well as now .

But faith without works is dead . If we

persist in living under unsanitary conditions faith will not save us from typhoid

,

and when we apply preventatives of properkind or remedies in Sickness , we are reallyshowing our faith by works .

Like other Mystery Orders the Rosiorucians have also aimed to help humanity in

the attainment of bodily health and it ha sbeen written in various works that the members of the Order took a vow to heal othersfree of charge . Like all other previous so

called ‘ revelations ’ this statement is somewhat garbled . The laybrothers take a vow

to minister to all according to the best of

their ability free of cha rge. That vow in

cluded healing of course, for such men a s



MOUNT ECCLESIA.

At this writing we have just bought fortyacres in the town of Oceanside , 83 miles southof Los Angeles . It is one of the sightliestspots of beautiful Southern Californi a , situated upon the promontory of a high tableland

,and overlooking the surrounding coun

try in a radius of forty or more miles . SantaAna Mountains shelter it from the cold NorthWind . Eastwards we see the lovely San LuisRey Valley with its historic old Mission and

the river like a silver band winding its waytowards the Ocean . Farther East the San"acinto Mountain rears its snow-cappedpeak . The promontory of La "olla with itswonderful caves hides from view the pro

gressive city of San Diego in the very Southwesterly corner Of Uncle Sam ’s spaciousrealm. Towards the setting sun is SantaCatalina Island, with its remarkable subma

rine Gardens, glistening like a jewel uponthe bosom of the Pacific Ocean

,while a gor

geons sunset, a carnival of color,inspires

love and devotion to the Master Artist Whodes igned all this beautiful World .

Surf-bathing is in vogue the year round,

the climate is frostless, fresh fruits and veg


etables are plentiful in all seasons . Thebalmy air is in itself an elixir Of life

,excess

ive heat is unknown . Conditions are altogether conducive to attainment Of health andhealing power, as in no other place we haveever seen in our world-wide travels .

We named this beauty-spot of natureMount Eccles ia .

”

Ecclesia— is a Greek word translatedchurch” or congregation” in the Bible .It is derived from “

ekkaleoo — I call outand really means an assembly of the called .

As soon as funds become available we willerect suitable buildings for Headquarters, the

School of Healing, Dormitory, Sanitariumand last, but not least, a place of worship,an Ecclesia— where the Spiritual Panaceamay be prepared .

There also Healing Services may bringsuccor Of the highest potency to afflictedones

,who seek this avenue to Obtain relief

from the Great Physician : Our Father in

Heaven . He is the Great Healer Who performs all cures, no matter who is His instru

ment, or what that messenger calls himself.

Even Christ testified “I can of mine own

26 THE R OSIORUOIAN MYSTEBIES

self do nothing,” and gave the Glory to the

F ather . SO shall we also content ourselvesto fervently praise G od for the privilege ofbeing one of the channels for His HealingPower.

Meantime we will seek out prospectivehelpers in the work who can give their timeand talents

,and it is our intention to build

a small cottage in a corner of the groundsfor temporary occupancy. This work willprobably be completed before the end of thepresent year

, and so , after January 1 , 1 91 2,all communications of whatever natureshould be addressed to

THE R OSICRUCIAN FELLOWSHIP

Mount Ecclesia

OCEANSIDE, CALI FORNIA .

CHAPTER II.

61h» firnhlrmnf ifiifr aah

Ilia Solution

THE PR OBLEM OF LIFE.

Among all the vicissitudes Of life,which

vary in each individual ’s experience,there

is one event whi ch sooner or later comesto everyone— Death " No matter what our

Station in life,whether the life lived has

been a laudable one or the reverse, whethergreat achi evements have marked our path

among men ; whether health or Sickness havebeen our lot

,whether we have been famous

and surrounded by a host of admi ring friendsor have wandered unknown through the yearsof our life

,at some time there comes a mo

ment when we stand alone before the portalof death and are forced to take the leap intothe dark.

The thought of this leap and of what lies

beyond must inevitably force itself upon27

28 THER OSIORUOIAN MYSTERIES

every thinking person . In the years of

youth and health, when the bark Of our lifesails upon seas of prosperity, when all appears beautiful and bright, we may put thethought 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 hi s consciousness and re

fuses to be set aside . Neither will it helphim to accept the ready made solution ofanyone else without thought and in blind belief, for thi s is a basic problem which everyone must solve for himself or herself in or

der to Obtain satisfaction .

Upon the Eastern edge of the Desert of

Sahara there stands the world-famousSphinx with its inscrutable face turned toward the East, ever greeting the sun as itsrising rays herald the newborn day. It wassaid in the Greek myth that it was the wontof this monster to ask a riddle of each traveler . She devoured those who could not an

swer, but when Oedipus solved the riddle shedestroyed herself.The riddle which she asked of men was

the riddle Of life and death,a query which

is a s relevant today a s ever , and wh ich eachone must answer or be devoured in the jaws

THE PROBLEM OF LIFE AND ITS SOLUTION 29

Of death . But when once a person has foundthe solution to the problem

,it will appear

that in reality there is nO death , that whatappears SO, is but a change from one stateOf ex is tence to another . Thus , for the manwho 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 trium

phant cry “Oh death where is thy sting, Ohgrave 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 referenceto this vis ible world wherein we live

,and the

dualis tic theory , which refers part Of the

phenomenon Of life to another world whi chis now invisible to us .R aphael in his famous painting “the

School of Athens ” has most aptly picturedto us the attitude of these two schools Ofthought . We see upon that marvelouspainting a Greek Court such as those wherein philosophers were once wont to congregate . Upon the various steps which lead into the bui lding a large number Of men areengaged in deep conversation, but in the

30 THE R OSICRUOIAN MYSTERIES

center at the top Of the steps stand twofigures , supposedly Of Plato and Aristotle ,one pointing upwards , the other towards theearth

,each looking the other in the face ,

mutely, but with deeply concentrated will .Each seeking to convince the other that hi sattitude is right for each bears the conviotion in hi s 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 thatthere is a higher someth ing which has al

ways existed and will continue regardless Ofwhether the body wherein it now dwellsholds 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 havebeen used in futile attempts to settle it byargument

,but it will always remain open to

all who have not solved the riddle themselves , for it is a basic problem, a part of thelife experience Of every human being tosettle that question, and therefore no one

can give us the solution ready made for ouracceptance . All that can be done by thosewho have really solved the problem, is toShow to others the line a ng whi ch they



forms are so changeable that the metamor

phosis recounted in fairy stories is discountedthere to an amazing degree

,and therefore we

have the surprising revelations Of mediums

and other untrained clairvoyants who ,though they may be perfectly honest, are deceived by illusions Of form whi ch is evanescent, because they are incapable Of viewingthe life that is the permanent basis Of thatform.

We must learn to see in this world . Thenew-born bab e ha s no conception Of distanceand will reach for things far, far beyond itsgrasp until it ha s learned to gauge its ca

pa city . 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 thanby sight

,that is because he has not learned

to use hi s newly acquired faculty. Similarly the man whose spiritual vision ha s beennewly opened requires to be trained

,in fact

he is in much greater need thereof than thebabe and the b l ind man already mentioned .

Denied that train ing he would be like a newborn babe placed in a nursery where thewalls are lined with mirrors Of different


convex and concave curvatures,which

would distort its own shape and the formsOf its attendants . If allowed to grow up insuch surroundings and unable to see the realshapes Of itself and its nurses it would naturally believe that it sawmany different anddistorted shapes where in reality the mirrorswere responsible for the illusion . Were thepersons concerned in such an experimentand the child taken out Of the illusory surroundings , it would be incapable Of recogn iz ing them until the matter had beenproperly explained . There are Similardangers of illusion to those who have developed spiritual s ight, until they have beentrained to discount the refraction and toview the life which is permanent and staple,disregarding the form which is evanescentand changeable . The danger Of gettingthings out Of focus always remains howeverand Is so subtle that the writer feels an im

perative duty to warn his readers to take allstatements concerning the unseen world

elined rather to magnify than to minimize

his limitations and would advise the student to accept nothing from the author ’s pen

34 THE R OSIORUOIAN MYSTERIES

without reasoning it out for himself. Thus ,if he is deceived

,he wi ll be self-deceived and

the author is blameless .Three Theories of Life.

Only three noteworthy theories have beenOffered as solutions to the riddle Of ex istence and in order that the reader may beable to make the important choice betweenthem

,we will state briefly what they are and

give some of the arguments which lead usto advocate the doctrine Of Rebirth as themethod which favors soul-growth and the ul

timate attainment Of perfection,thus Offer

ing the best solution to the problem Of life .

1 ) THE MATER IALISTIO THEORY teaches tha tlife is but a short j ourney from the cradle to

the grave, tha t there is no higher intelli

gence in the universe than man ; tha t his

mind is produced by certa in correlations ofma tter and tha t therefore dea th and d is olu

tion of the body termina te ex is tence.

There wa s a day when the arguments Of

Materialistic phi losophers seemed conv in

cing, but a s science advances it discoversmore and more that there is a spiritual sideto the universe . That life and consciousnessmay exist without being able to give us aSign, has been amply proven in the cas es


Where a person who was entranced andthought dead for days has suddenly awakened and told all tha t had taken place aroundthe body. Such eminent scientists as SirOliver Lodge

, Camille F lammarion, LambroSO and other men Of highest intelligence andscientific training, have unequivocally stateda s the result of their investigations, that theintelligence which we call man survivesdeath Of the body and lives on in our midstas independently Of whether we see them or

not as light and color exist all about theblind man regardless Of the fact that hedoes not perceive them. These scientistshave reached their conclusion after years Ofcareful investigation . They have found thatthe SO-called dead can

,and under certain cir

cumstances 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 con

s erva tion ofma tter and the lawof conserva

tion of energy . Mind is a form of energy,and immune from destruction as claimed bythe materialist . Therefore we disbar the


materialistic theory as unsound, because outof harmony with the laws Of nature and withwell established facts .

2 ) THE THEORY of THEOLOG Y cla ims tha t

just prior to each birth a soul is crea ted by

G od and enters into the world where i t lives

for a time varying from a fewminutes to a

few score of years ; -tha t a t the end of this

short span of life it returns through the portal of death to the invis ible beyond, whereit rema ins forever in a condition of happi

ness or misery according to the deeds done

in the body during thefewyears it lived here.

Plato insisted upon the necessity Of aclear defini tion Of terms as a basis Of argument and we contend that that is a s

necessary in discussing the problem of lifefrom the Bible point of view as in arguments from the platonic standpoint . According to the Bible man is a composite beingcons isting Of body, soul and spirit . The twolatter are usually taken to be synonymous ,but we insist that they are not interchangeable and present the following to supportour dictum.

All things are in a state of vibration . V i

brations from Objects in our surroundingsare constantly impinging upon us and carry


to our senses a cogni tion Of the externalworld . The vibrations in the ether act uponour eyes SO that we see, and vibrations in theair transmit sounds to the ear .We also breathe the air and ether whi ch isthus charged with pictures Of our surroundings and the sounds in our environment, sothat by means Of the breath we receive ateach moment of our life, internally an ac

curate picture Of our external surroundings .

That is a scientific proposition . Sciencedoes not explain what becomes Of these vibrations however

,but according to the Rosi

crucian Mystery teaching they are transmitted to the blood

,and then etched upon a

little atom in the heart as automatically asa moving picture is imprinted upon the sens itized film

, and a record Of sounds is eugraven upon the phonographi c disc. Thisbreath-record starts with the first breath Ofthe newborn babe and ends only with thelast gasp Of the dying man

, and soul” is aproduct of the breath . Genesis also showsthe connection between breath and soul in thewords : “And the Lord G od formed man Ofthe dust Of the ground

,and breathed into his

nostrils the breath of life ; and man becamea living soul” (The same word : nephesh, is


translated breath and soul in the above quotation . )In the post mortem existence the breathrecord is disposed Of. The good acts Of lifeproduce feelings Of pleasure and the intens ity Of attraction incorporates them into thespirit as soul-power. Thus the brea th-rec

ords of our good a cts a re the soul which issaved, for by the union with the spirit theybecome immortal . AS they accumulate lifeafter life

,we become more soulful and they

are thus also the basis Of soulgrowth .

The record Of our evil acts is also derived from our breath in the moments whenthey were committed . The pain and suffering they bring cause the spirit to expel thebreath -record from its being in Purgatory.

AS that cannot exist independently Of thelife-giving spirit

,the breath-record of our

Sins disintegrates upon expurgation ,and

thus we see that “ the soul that s inneth , itShall die .

” The memory Of the sufferingincidental to expurgation however

,remains

with the spirit as conscience, to deter fromrepetition of the same evil in later lives .

Thus both our good and evil acts are re

corded through the agency Of the breath,

whi ch is therefore the basis Of the soul, but



nally improving tewture its latent powersa re being slowly unfolded and become ava il

a ble a s dynamic energy ; that none can be

los t but that allwill ultima tely a ttain to per

fection and reunion with G od , each b ringingwith it the accumula ted ex perience which isthe fruitage of its pilgrimage through ma tter .

Or, as we may poetically ex press it

WE ARE ETERNAL .

On whistling stormcloud ; on "ephyrus wmg,The Spirit-choir loud the World-anthems

smgHark "Lis ’t to their voice we have passedthrough death ’

s doorThere ’s no Death ; rejoice "life lives evermore .

”

We are,have always been, will ever be .

We are a portion Of EternityOlder than Creation, a part Of One GreatWhole,

Is each Individual and immortal Soul.


On Time ’s whirring loom our garmentswe ’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 onthe Wave,

We have sparkled in F ire defying the grave ;Through shapes everchanging, in Size, kindand name

Our individual essence still is the same .

An d when we have reached to the highest Ofall

,

The gradations Of growth our minds shallrecall

SO that link by link we may join them to

getherAnd trace step by step the way we reachedthither .

Thus in time we shall know, if only we doWhat lifts

,ennobles

,is right and true .

With kindness to all ; with malice to none,That in and through us God ’s will may bedone .


We venture to make the assertion thatthere is but one sin : Ignorance and but onesalvation : Applied "nowledge. 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 forhigher and higher development Of everything and we call this process evolution .

One Of the chief characteristics Of evolu

tion lies in the fact that it manifests in alternating periods Of activity and rest . Thebusy summer

,when all things upon earth are

exerting themselves to bring forth,is follow

ed by the rest and inactivity Of winter . Thebusy day alternates with the quiet of night .The ebb Of the ocean is succeeded by the

flood-tide . Thus , a s all other things move incycles, the life that expresses itself here up

on earth for a few years is not to be thoughtOf a s ended when death has been reached

,

but as surely as the sun rises in the morningafter having set at night, will the life thatwas ended by the death Of one body be takenup again in a new vehi cle and in a differentenvironment.


Thi s earth may in fact be likened to aschool to whi ch we return life after life tolearn new lessons, as our children go toschool day after day to increase their knowledge . The ch ild Sleeps through the nightwhich intervenes between two days at schooland the spirit also has its rest from activelife between death and a new birth . Thereare also different classes in thi s worldschool which correspond to the variousgrades from kindergarten to college . In thelower classes we find spirits who have goneto the school Of life but a few times, theyare savages now,

but in time they will become wiser and better than we are, and weourselves Shall progress in future lives tospiritual heights Of which we cannot even con

ceive at the present . If we apply ourselves tolearn the lessons Of life, we shall Ofcourse advance much faster in the school of

life than if we dilly-dally and idle our timeaway

.This

,on the same principle which gov

erns in one Of our own institutions Of learning.

We are not here then , by the caprice of

G od . He has not placed one in clover andanother in a desert nor has He given

one ahealthy body SO that he may lIve at ease


from pain and sickness,while He placed an

other in poor circumstances with never arest from pain . But what we are, we are, onaccount Of our own diligence or negligence,and what we shall be in the future dependsupon what we will to be and not upon Divinecaprice or upon inexorable fate . NO matterwhat the circumstances , it lies with us tomaster them

, or to be mastered, as we will .Sir Edwin Arnold puts the teaching mostbeautifully in hi s “Light of Asia .

”

The Books say well, my Brothers " eachman ’s life

The outcome Of his former living is ;The bygone wrongs bring forth sorrows andwoes

The bygone right breeds bliss .i i " O O O

Each has such lordship as the loftiest onesNay for with powers around , above, belowAs with all flesh and whatsoever livesAct maketh joy or woe.

t t it Q

Who toiled, a slave may come anew a princeF or gentle worthiness and merit wonWho ruled , a king may wander earth in ragsFor things done or undone . ”


Or, as an unknown poet says

One ship sails East and another sails WestWith the self same winds that blow.

’Tis the set Of the sail,and not the gale

,

Which determines th e way they go .

As the winds Of the sea are the ways Of fateAs we voyage along through li fe .’Tis the act Of the soul, which determinesthe goal

And not the calm or the strife .

When we wish to engage someone to nudertake a certain mission we choose some onewhom we think particularly fitted to fulfillthe requirements and we must suppose thata Divine Being would use at least as muchcommon sense

,and not choose anyone to go

his errand who was not fitted therefor . SO

when we read in the Bible that Samson wasforeordained to be the slayer Of the Philis f

tines and that Jeremiah was predestined to

be a prophet,it is but logical to suppose that

they must have been particularly suited tosuch occupation . John the Baptist also, wasborn to be a herald of the coming Savior andto preach the kingdom Of G od which is totake 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 mis sions , andif they had been fitted

,how else could they

have received their training if not in earlierlives"The Jews believed in the Doctrine Of R e

birth or they would not have asked John theBaptist if he were Elijah , a s recorded in thcfiI st chapter Of John . The Apostles of

Christ also held the belief a s we may seefrom the incident recorded in the sixteenthchapter Of Mathew where the Christ askedthem the question : “Whom do men say thatI the Son Of Man am"” The Apostles re

plied : “Some say that Thou art John theBaptist ; some, Elias ; and others Jeremias orone of the Prophets .

” Upon this occasionthe Christ tacitly assented to the teachingOf Rebirth because He did not correct the disciples as would have been His plain duty inHis capacity as teacher, when the pupils cn

terta ined a mistaken idea .

But to Nicodemus He said unequivocallyExcept a man be born again

,he cannot see

the kingdom Of G od ” and in the eleventhchapter of Mathew, the fourteenth verse, He

said,speaking of John the Baptist “

this



Europe there is no case where both fatherand son are represented . Thus the sons ofcriminals, though they have the tendenciesto crime, keep out Of the clutches Of the law .

Neither wi ll Heredity hold good upon theplane Of the intellect

,for many cases may

be cited where a genius and an idiot springfrom the same stock . The great Cuvier,whose brain was Of about the same weight,as Daniel Webster ’s

,and whose intellect was

as great,had five children who all died Of

paresis,the brother Of Alexander the Great

was an idiot,and thus we hold that another

solution must be found to account for thefacts of life .

The law Of R ebirth 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 wh ich we lived before . Thegambler is drawn to pOOl parlors and racetracks to associate with others Of like taste,the musician is attracted to the concert hallsand music studi os , by congenial spirits , andthe returning Ego also carries with it itslikes and dislikes which cause it to seek parents among the class to which it belongs .


But then someone will point to cases wherewe find people Of entirely oppos ite tastes living lives Of torture

,because grouped in the

same family, and forced by circumstances tostay there contrary to their wills . But thatdoes not vitiate the law in the slightest, ineach life we contract certain Obligationswhich cannot then be fulfilled . Perhaps wehave ran away from a duty such as the careOf an invalid relative and have met deathwithout coming to a realization of our mistake . That relative upon the other hand may

have suffered severely from our neglect, andhave stored up a bitterness against us beforedeath terminates the sufi ering . Death andthe subsequent removal to another environment does not pay our debts from this life,any more than the removal from the citywhere we now live to another place will paythe debts we have contracted prior to our re

moval . It is therefore quite possible thatthe two who have injured each other as described

, may find themselves members Ofthe same family. Then

,whether they re

member the past grudge or not, the Old eu

mity will assert itself and cause them to

hate anew until the consequent discomfortforces them to tolerate each other, and per

THE R OSIORUOIAN MYSTERIES

haps later they may learn to love where theyhated .

The question also arises in the mind Of in

quirers : If we have been here before why dowe not remember" And the answer is , thatwhile most people are not aware Of howtheirprevious existences were spent, there areothers who have a very distinct recollectionof previous lives . A friend of the writer ’sfor instance , when living in F rance, one daystarted to read to her son about a certaincity where they were then going upon a bicycle tour

,and the boy ex cla imcd : you do

not need to tell me about that mother . Iknow that city

,I lived there and wa s killed "

He then commenced to describe the city andalso a certain bridge . Later he took his

mother to that bridge and showed her thespot where he had met death centuries before . Another friend travelling in Irelandsaw a scene wh ich she recognized and she al

so described to the party the scene aroundthe bend Of the road which she had neverseen in this life , so it must have been a mem

cry from a previous life . Numerous otherinstances could be given where such minorflashes Of memory reveal to us glimpses froma past life . The verified case in whi ch a lit


tle three year Old girl in Santa Barbara described her life and death has been given inthe Rosicrucian Cosmo Conception . It is perhaps the most conclusive evidence as ithinges on the veracity Of a chi ld too youngto have learned deception .

Thi s theory Of life does not rest upon speculation however, it is one Of the first facts oflife demonstrated to the pupil Of a Mysteryschool . He is taught to watch a chi ld in theact Of dying, also, to watch it in the invisibleworld from day to day

,until it comes to a

new birth a year or two later . Then heknows with absolute certainty that we returnto earth to reap : in a future life what we nowsow.

The reason for taking a child to watch inpreference to an adult

,is , that the child is re

born very quickly,for its short life on earth

has borne but few fruits and these are soonassimilated

,while the adult who has lived a

long life,and had much experience remains in

the invis ible worlds for centuries , so that thepupil could not watch him from death to re

birth . The cause Of infant mortality will beexplained later

,here we merely desire to em

phasize the fact that it is within the rangeof possibilities Of every one without ex cep


tion to become able to kn ow at first handthat which is here taught .The average interval b etween two earthlives is about a thousand years . It is determined by the movement of the sun knownto astronomers a s precess ion of the equinox ,

by which the sun moves through one Of thesigns of the "odi ac in about 2 1 00 years . During that time the conditions upon earth havechanged so much that the spirit will find en

tirely new experiences here, and therefore itreturns .The Great Leaders of evolution always Ohtain the maximum benefit from each condition designed by them,

and a s the ex perien

ces in the same social conditions are verydifierent in the case Of a man from whatthey are for a woman, the human spirit takesbirth twice during the 2 1 00 years measuredby the precession Of the equinox as alreadyexplained , it is born once as a man and an

other time as a woman . Such is the rule, but

it is subject to whatever modifications may

be necessary to facilitate reaping what theSpirit has sown , as required under the law Of

Causation wh ich works hand in hand with thelaw Of Rebirth . Thus , at times a spirit may

be brought to birth long ere the thousand


years have expired, in order to fulfill a cer

tain mission, or it may be detained in the in

vis ible worlds after the time when it shouldhave come to birth according to the Strict re

quirements Of a blind law. The laws Of nature are not that however. They are GreatIntelligences who always subordinate minorconsiderations 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 timewe shall attain to a higher evolution and become Supermen .

Oliver Wendell Holmes has so beautifullyvoiced that aspiration and its consummationin the lin es

Build thee more Stately mansions Oh "mysoul,

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 morevast .

Till at length thou art free,Leaving thy outgrown shell by hfe ’

s unresting sea .

’

CHAPTER III.

(”

the h is ihhr sail theEnnis ihlr

Worm

THE CHEMICAL REG ION.

If one who is capable Of consciously usinghis spiritual body with the same facility thatwe now use our phys ical vehicles shouldglide away from the earth into interplanetaryspace, the earth and the various other planets Of our solar system would appear to himto be composed Of three kinds Of matter

,

roughly speaking . The densest matter,which is our visible earth, would appear tohim as being the center Of the ball as theyolk is in the center of an egg. Around thatneucleus he would Observe a finer grade Ofmatter similarly disposed in relation to thecentral mass , as the whi te Of the egg is disposed outside the yolk . Upon a little closerinvestigation he would also di scover that thissecond kind Of substance permeates the solid

54


56 THE R OSIORUOIAN MYSTER IES

engine rotates under the impetus Of an invisible ga s called steam. Before steam filledits cylinder, the engine stood still, and whenthe impelling force is shut Off its motionagain ceases . The dynamo rotates underthe still more subtile influence Of an electriccurrent whi ch may also cause the click Of atelegraph instrument or the ring Of an electric hell, but the dynamo ceases its swiftwhirl and the persistent ring of the electricbell becomes mute when the invis ible electricity is switched Off. The form Of the birdthe animal and the human being also ceasetheir motion when the inner force which wecall life has winged its invisible way .

All forms are impelled into motion by desire — the bird and the animal roam landand 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 additionother and higher incentives to spur him toeffort

,among them is desire for rapidity Of

motion which led him to construct the steamengine 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 wereno clay in the soil, the bony structure Of the

THE VISIBLE AND THE INVISIBLE WORLD 57

skeleton would be an impossibility,and if

there were no Physical World at all,with its

solids, liqui ds and gases, thi s dense body Ofours could never have come into existence .

Reasoning along similar lines it must be atonce apparent that if there were nO DesireWorld composed Of desire-stuff, we shouldhave no way Of forming feelings , emotionsand desires . A planet composed Of the materials we perceive with our physical eyesand of no other substances, might be thehome of plants which grow unconsciously,but have no des ires to cause them to move .The human and animal kingdoms however,would be impossibilities .Furthermore , there is in the world a vastnumber Of things

,from the simplest and

most crude instruments, to the most intricateand cunning devices which have been con

structed by the hand Of man . These revealthe fact Of man ’s thought and ingenuity.

Thought must have a source as well as formand feeling . We saw that it was necessaryto have the requisite material in order to

build a steam engine or a body and we reasoned from the fact that in order to Obtainmaterial to express des ire there must also bea world composed Of desire stuff. Carrying

58 THE R OSIORUCIAN MYSTERIES

our argument to its logical conclusion, we also hold that unles s a World Of Th ought provides a reservoir of mind stufi upon whichwe may draw, it would be impossible for us tothink and invent the things which we see ineven the lowest civilization .

Thus it will be clear that the division Of aplanet into worlds is not based on fancifulmetaphys ical speculation, but is logicallynecessary in the economy Of nature . Therefore it must be taken into consideration byany one who would study and aim to understand the inner nature Of things . When wesee the street cars moving along our streets ,it does not explain to say that the motor isdriven by electricity Of so many amperes atso many volts . These names only add to ourconfus ion until we have thoroughly studi edthe science Of electricity and then we shallfind that the mystery deepens

,for while the

street car belongs to the world Of inert formperceptible to our vision , the electric current which moves it is indigenous to the realmOf force, the invisible Desire World , and thethought whi ch created and guides it

,comes

from the sti ll more subtile World Of Thoughtwhich is the home world Of the human spirit,the Ego .


It may be objected that thi s line Of argument makes a simple matter exceedingly intricate, but a little reflection will soon showthe fallacy Of such a contention . Viewedsuperficially any Of the sciences seem extremely simple ; anatomically we may dividethe body into flesh and bone

,chemically we

may make the s imple divisions between solid,liquid and gas , but to thoroughly master thescience Of anatomy it is necessary to spendyears in close application and learn to knowall the little nerves

,the ligaments which

form articulations between various parts of

the bony structure,to study the several

kinds Of tissue and their di sposition 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 muststudy the valence Of the atom whi ch determines the power Of combination Of thevarious elements

,together with other nice

ties,such as atomic weight, density, etc .

New wonders are constantly opening up tothe most experienced chemist, who understands best the immensity Of his chosenscience .


The youngest lawyer,fresh from law

school knows more about the most intricatecases

,in his own estimation

,than the judges

upon the Supreme Court bench who spendlong hours , weeks and months, seriously deliberating over their decisions . But thosewho

,without having studied

,think they un

derstand and are fitted to discourse uponthe greatest of all sciences , the science of

Life and Being, make a greater mistake.After years Of patient study, of holy lifespent in close application, a man is Oftentimes perplexed at the immensity Of the sub

ject he studies . He finds it to be SO vast inboth the direction Of the great and smallthat it baffles description, that languagefails

,and that the tongue must remain mute .

Therefore we hold, ( and we speak fromknowledge gained through years Of closestudy and investigation) , that the finer distinctions whi ch we have made, and shallmake

,are not at all arbitrary

,but absolutely

necessary as are divisions and distinctionsmade in anatomy or chemistry.

NO form in the physical world has feelingin the true sense Of that word . It is the indwelling life which feels , as we may readi lysee from the fact that a body which respond


ed to the slightest touch whi le instinct withlife, exhibits no sensation whatever evenwhen out 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 animaltissue and even in tin and other metal, butwe maintain that the di agrams whi ch seem‘ to support hi s contentions in reality demonstrate only a response to impacts similar tothe rebound Of a rubber ball, and that mustnot be confused with such feelings as love,ha te, sympa thy and avers ion . Goethe also,in hi s novel “Elective Alfinities ,

”(Wahl

verwandtschaft) , brings out some beautifulillustrations wherein he makes it seem as ifatoms loved and hated, from the

'

fact thatsome elements combine readi while othersubstances refuse to amalgamate, a phenomenon produced by the difi erent rates Ofspeed at which various elements Vibrate andan unequal inclination Of their axes . Onlywhere there is sentient life can there be feelings Of pleasure and pain , sorrow or joy.

The Etherio R egion .

In addition to the solids , liquids and gaseswhich compose the Chemical R egion Of the


Physical World there is,also a finer grade Of

matter called Ether,which permeates the

atomic structure Of the earth and its atmos

phere substantially as science teaches . Scientists have never seen, nor have theyweighed

,measured or analyzed this sub

stance,but they infer that it must exist in

order to account for transmission Of lightand various other phenomena . If it werepossible for us to live in a room from whi chthe air had been exhausted we might speakat the top Of our voices , we might ring thelargest bell or we might even discharge a ;cannon close to our ear and we should hearno sound, for air is the medium which transmits sound vibrations to the tympanum Of

our ear, and that would be lacking. But itan electric light were lighted

,we should at

once perceive its rays ; it would illumine theroom despite the lack Of air . Hence theremust be a substance, capable Of being set into vibration , between the electric light andour eyes . That medium scientists call ether,but it is so subtile that no instrument hasbeen devised whereby it may be measuredor analyzed and therefore the scientists arewithout much information concerning it,though forced to postulate its existence .



These investigations are as thorough andas reliable as researches by materialscientists , but not as easily demonstrable tothe general public . Spiritual powers liedormant within every human being

,and

when awakened , they compensate for bothtelescope 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 uponthe path to attainment or perseverance to gothrough with the ordeal . Therefore the oc~

cultist ’s assertions are not generally credited .

We can readily see that long probation mustprecede attainment, for a person equippedwith spiritual sight is able to penetratewalls Of houses as easily as we walk throughthe atmosphere

,able to read at will the in

nermost thoughts , Of those about him , if notactuated by the most pure and unselfish mo

tives , would become a scourge to humanity.

Therefore that power is safeguarded as wewould withhold the dyn amite bomb from an

anarchi st and from the well-intentioned but

THE VISIBLE AND TH E INVISIBLE WORLD 65

ignorant person, or, as we withhold matchand powder barrel from a child .

In the hands Of an experienced engineerthe dynamite bomb may be used to open ahighway Of commerce, and an intelligentfarmer may use gunpowder to good accountin clearing his field Of tree-stumps , but inthe hands Of an illintentioned criminal or ignorant chi ld an explosive may wreck muchproperty and end many lives . The force isthe same

,but used differently

,according to

the ability or intention of the user, it may

produce results Of a diametrically oppositenature . 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 forits exercise .

As already said, the ether is physical matter and responsive to the same laws whichgovern other physical substances upon thisplane of existence . Therefore it requiresbut a slight extension Of physical sight tosee ether

, (which is disposed in four gradesOf density ) , the blue haze seen in mountaincanyons is in fact ether Of the kind knownto occult investigators a s

‘chemical ether .

’

Many people who see this ether, are nu


aware that they are possessed Of a facultynot enjoyed by all . Others

, who have developed spiritual sight are not endowedwith etheric vision

,a fact which seems an

anomaly until the subject Of clairvoyance isthoroughly understood .

The reason is , that as ether is physical matter, etheric s ight depends upon the sensitiveness Of the optic nerve while spiritual s ightis acquired by developing latent Vibratorypowers in two little organs situated in thebrain : the Pituitary body and the Pinealgland . Nearsighted people even , may haveetheric vision . Though unable to read theprint in a book, they may be able to seethrough a wall ,

” owing to the fact that theiroptic nerve responds more rapidly to finethan to coarse Vibrations .When anyone Views an Object with ethericsight he sees through that Object in a manner similar to the way an x -ray penetratesopaque substances . If he lOOks at a sewingmachine

,he will perceive ; first an outer

casing ; then , the works within , and behindboth

,the casing furthest away from him.

If he has developed the grade Of spiritualvision 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 particlewill be excluded from his perception .

But if his spiritual sight has been developed in s uch a measure that he is capable Ofviewing the sewing machine with the Visionpeculiar to the World Of Thought

,he will be

hold a cavity where he had previously seenthe form.

Things seen with etheric vision are verymuch alike in color, they are nearly reddishblue

,purple or violet, according to the den

s ity Of the ether, but when we view any Oh

jcet with the spiritual sight pertaining tothe Desire World , it scintillates and cowscates in a thousand ever changing colors soindescribably beautiful that they can onlybe compared to living fire

,and the writer

therefore calls this grade Of vision color

s ight, but when the spiritual vision of theWorld Of Thought is the medium Of perception, the seer finds that in addi tion to stillmore beautiful colors , there issues from thecavity described a constant flow Of a certainharmonious tone. Thus this world whereinwe now consciously live and which we perceive by means Of our physical senses is pre


eminently the world Of form, the DesireWorld is particularly the world Of color andthe World of Thought is the realm Of tone.

Because Of the relative proximity or di stance Of these worlds , a statue , a form, withstands the ravages Of time for millenniums ,but the colors upon a painting fade in farshorter time, for they come from the DesireWorld , and music which is native to theWorld furthest removed from us , the WorldOf Thought, is like a will-O-the-wisp whichnone may catch or hold, it is gone again assoon a s it has made its appearance . Butthere is in color and music a compensationfor this increasing evanescence .The statue is cold and dead a s the minera lOf which it is composed and has attractionsfor but few though its form is a tangiblereality .

The forms upon a painting are illusoryyet they express life, on account Of the colorwhich has come from a region where nothingis inert and lifeless . Therefore the paintingis enjoyed by many.

Music is intangible and ephemeral,but it

comes from the home world Of the spirit andthough so fleeting it is recognized by the spirit as a s oul-speech fresh from the celestial


realms , an echo from the home whence weare now exiled

,and therefore it touches a

cord in our being, regardless Of whether werealize the true cause or not.

Thus we see that there are various gradesOf spiritual sight

,each suited to the super

physical realm which it opens to our perception : Etheric vision, color Vision and

tonal vision .

The occult investigator finds that ether isOf four kinds , or grades Of density :

The Chemical 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 formThe Life Ether is the vantage ground Of

forces active in propagation, or the building

Of new forms .The Light Ether transmits the motivepower Of the sun along the various nerves Of

living bodies and makes motion possible .

The R eflecting 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 . Inthis record mediums and psychometristsmay read the past

,upon the same principle

as , under proper condi tions , moving picturesare reproduced time and again .

We have been speaking of ether as anavenue of forces , a word which conveys nomeaning to the average mind

,because force

is invisible . But to an occult investigatorthe forces are not merely names such assteam, electricity, etc . He finds them to be intelligent beings Of varying grades , both sub

and superhuman . What we call “ laws Of nature,

” are great intelligences which guidemore elemental beings in accordance withcertain rules designed to further their evolution .

In the Middle Ages,when many people

were still endowed with a remnant Of negative clairvoyance, they spoke Of Gnomes and

Elves or F airies , which roamed about themountains and forests . These were the

earth spirits . They also told of the Undineor watersprite, which inhabited rivers and

streams , of Sylphs which were said to dwellin the mists above moat and moor, a s airspirits

,but not much was said Of the Sala


72 THE R OSICRUOIAN MYSTER IES

help,but they are mostly active under

ground . They are responsible for ex plo

sions and volcanic eruptions .The classes Of beings which we have men

tioned are still sub-human,but will all at sometime reach a stage in evolution corresponding to the human

,though under different

circumstances from those under which weevolve . But at present the wonderful intelligences we speak Of as the laws of nature,marshall the armies Of less evolved entitiesmentioned .

TO arrive at a better understanding Of

what these various beings are , and their relation to us , we may take an illustrationLet us suppose that a mechani c is makingan engine, and meanwhile a dog is watchinghim. It sees the man at his labor

,and how

he uses various tOOls to shape his materials,also how, from the crude iron

,steel

,brass

and other metals the engine slowly takesshape . The dog is a being from a lower eVolution and does not comprehend the purpose Of the mechanic but it sees both theworkman, his labor and the result thereof,which manifests a s an engine .

Let us now suppose that the dog were onlyable to see the materials which Slowly


change their shape, assemble and become anengine but that it is unable to perceive theworkman and to see the work he does . Thedog would then be ‘ in the same relation to themechanic as we are to the great intelligenceswe call laws Of nature

, and their assistants ,the nature spirits , for we behold the manifestations of their work as force movingmatter in various ways but always underimmutable conditions .In the ether we may also Observe theangels

,whose densest body is made Of that

material,as our dense body is formed of

gases , liquids and solids . These beings areone step beyond the human stage, as we area degree in advance Of the animal evolution .

We have never been animals like our present fauna, however, but at a previous stagein the development Of our planet we had ananimal-like constitution . Then the angelswere human

,though they have never pos

sessed a dense body such a s ours, nor everfunctioned 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, creativeforces , and as angels are such expert builders Of ether, we may readily understand thatthey are eminently fitted to be warders Ofthe propagative forces in plant, animal andman . All through the Bible we find themthus engaged : TWO angels came to Abrahamand announced the birth of Isaac, they promised a child to the man who had obeyed God .

Later these s ame angels destroyed Sodomfor abus e of the crea tive force. Angels foretold to the pa rents 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 DesireWorld .

When spiritual sight is developed sothat it becomes possible to behold the DesireWorld

,many wonders confront the newcom

er,for conditions are so wi dely different

from what they are here, that a descriptionmust sound quite as incredible a s a fairytale to anyonewho has not himself seen them.


Many cannot even believe that such aworld exists , and that other people can seethat which is invisible to them

,yet some peo

ple are blind to the beauties Of thi s worldwhich 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 andabove all I can feel but when you speak Of

light and Of color, they are nonexistent tome . You say that you see these things , Icannot believe it for I cannot see myself.You say that light and color are all aboutme

,but none Of the senses at my command

reveal them to me and I do not believe thatthe sense you call sight exists . I think yousuffer from hallucinations . We might sym

pathize very sincerely with the poor man

who is thus afflicted,but his scepticism, rea

s onings and Objections and sneers notwith

standing we would be obliged to maintain

that we perceive light and color .The man whose spiritual Sight has beenawakened is in a similar position with re

spect to those who do not perceive the Des ire World Of which he speaks . If the blindman acquires the faculty Of sight by an op

eration ,his eyes are opened and he will be

compelled to assert the existence Of light and


color whi ch he formerly deni ed, and whenspiritual sight is acquired by anyone, he also perceives for himself the facts related byothers . Neither is it an argument againstthe existence Of spiritual realms that seersare at variance in their descriptions Of conditions in the invisible world . We need but tolook into books on travel

,and compare sto

ries brought home by explorers Of China, India or Africa and we shall find them difier

ing 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 thesevarying tales concerning a certain Countryand wrestled with the contradictions of narra tors , will have a more comprehensive ideaOf the country or people Of whom he hasread

,than the man who has only read one

story assented to by all the authors . Similarly , the varying stories Of Visitors to theDesire World are Of value , because giving afuller 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 matterhere is inertia : the tendency to remain at


rest until acted upon by a force which sets itin motion . In the Desire World

, on the con

trary , force and matter are almost indistin

gui shable 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 worldin nature . We Often speak of the “teemingmillions ” of China and India, even of our

vast cities,London

,New York

,Paris or Chi

cago,we consider them overcrowded in the

extreme,yet even the densest population of

any spot upon earth is sparsely inhabitedcompared with the crowded conditions of theDes ire World . No inconvenience is felt byany of the denizens of that realm, however,for

,wh ile in this world two things cannot

occupy the same space at the same time, it isdifi erent there . A number Of people and

th ings may exist in the s ame place a t the

s ame time and be engaged in most diverseactivities

,regardless of what others are do

ing,such is the wonderful elasticity of desire

stuff. As an illustration we may mention acase where the writer while attending re ligious service, plainly perceived at the altarcertain beings interested in furthering that


service and working to achieve that end . Atthe same time there drifted through the roomand the altar, a table at which four personswere engaged in playing cards . They were asoblivious to the existence of the beings en

gaged in furthering our religious service,as

though these did not exist .

The Desire World is the abode of those whohave died, for some time subsequent to thatevent

,and we may mention in the above con

nection that the so-called ‘ dead ’ very Oftenstay for a long whi le among their still livingfriends . Unseen by their relatives they go

about the familiar rooms . At first they areoften unaware of the condition mentioned :“ that two persons may be in the same placeat 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 firsthurry out Of his seat to escape being sat upon,but he soon learns that being sat upon doesnot hurt him in his altered condition ,

and thathe may remain in hi s chair regardless of the

fact that his living relative is also sittingthere .

In the lower regions of the Desire Worldthewhole body of each being may be seen, but



are expert manipulators of forces in the Desire World

,and these forces

,as we shall see,

move all the world to action . Therefore theArchangels work with humanity indus triallyand politica lly as arbitrators of the destinyof peoples and nations . The Angels may besaid to be family -spirits whose mission is tounite a few spirits as members Of afamily, and cement them with ties ofblood and love of kin , whi le the Archangelsmay be called race and national spirits , asthey unite whole nations by patriotism or loveOf home and country . They are responsiblefor the rise and fall of nations , they give waror peace , victory or defeat as it serves thebest interests Of the people they rule . Thiswe may see

,for instance, from the book of

Daniel,where the Archangel Michael (not to

be confounded with the Michael,who is um

ba ssador from the sun to the earth ) , is calledthe prince of the children of Israel . AnotherArchangel tells Daniel, ( in the tenth chapter )that he intends to fight the prince Of Persiaby means of the Greeks .

There are varying grades of intelligenceamong human beings

,some are qualified to

hold high and lofty positions entirely beyondthe 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 rulehuman beings at all

,but a s the animals also

have a desire nature these lower grades Of

Archangels govern the animals as groupspirits and evolve to higher capacity thereby.

The work of the race spirits is readily Oh

servable in the people it governs . The lowerin the scale of evolution the people, the morethey show a certain racial likeness . That isdue to the work of the race spirit . One

national spirit is responsible for the swarthycomplexion common to Italians , for instance,while another causes the Scandinavians to beblond . In the more advanced types of hu

manity,there is a wider divergence from the

common type,due to the individualized Ego ,

which thus expresses in form and feature itsown particular idiosyncrasies . Among the

lower types Of humanity such a s Mongolians ,native African Negroes and South SeaIslanders

,the resemblance Of individuals in

each tribemakes it almost impossible for civilized Westerners to distinguish between

them. Among animals , where the separatespirit is not individualized and self-conscious ,the resemblance in not only much more

82 TH E R OSICRUOIAN MYSTERIES

marked physica lly but extends even to traitsand characteristics . We may write the b iography Of a man , for the experiences of eachvaries from that of others and his acts aredifferent, but we cannot write the biographyof an animal for members of each tribe all actalike under similar circumstances . If we desire to know the facts about Edward VII, itwould profit us nothing to study the life ofthe Prince-Consort , his father, or of GeorgeIII

,his son , as both would be entirely differ

ent from Edward . In order to find out whatmanner of man he was , we must study hisown 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 idiosyn

cra sies , we shall know the traits of the wholetribe of beavers . What we call ‘ instinct,

’ is

in reality the dictates of group-spirits whi chgovern separate individuals of its tribetelepathically

,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 andan animal head actually live in the desireworld . They may be spoken to, and will be


found much more intelligent than the average human being .

That statement brings up another peculia rity of conditions in the Desire World in respect of language . Here in thi s World human speech is so diversified that there arecountries where people who live only a fewmiles apart speak a dialect so different thatthey 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 R egions Of the Desire World,there is the same diversity Of tongues a s on

earth,and the SO-called ‘ dead ’

of one nationfind it impossible to converse with those wholived in another country. Hence linguisticaccomplishments are of great value to the‘ Invisible Helpers ’, of whom we shall hearlater

, a s their sphere Of usefulness is enorm

ously extended by that ability.

Even apart from difference of languageour mode of speech is exceedingly productive

of misunderstandings . The same words Of

ten convey most opposite ideas to difierent

minds . If we speak of a “body of water”,

one personmay think we mean a lake of smalldimensions , the thoughts of another may be


directed to the great American Lakes and athird person ’s thoughts may be turned towards the Atlantic or Pacific Oceans . If wespeak of a “light”

, one may think of a gaslight, another Of an electric Arc~lamp, or ifwe say

“red ” , one person may think we meana delicate Shade of pink and another gets theidea of crimson . The misunderstandings ofwhat words mean goes even farther, as illustrated in the following.

The writer once opened a reading room in alarge city where he lectured

,and invited hi s

audience to make use thereof. Among thosewho availed themselves of the opportunitywas a gentleman who had for many yearsbeen a veritable “metaphysical tramp,

”

roaming from lecture to lecture,hearing the

teachings Of everybody and practicing nothing. Like the Athenians on Mars ’ Hill, hewa s always looking for something “new,

”

particularly in the line of phenomena , and hismind was in that seething chaotic state whichis one of the most prominent symptoms of‘mental indigestion .

Having attended a number of our lectureshe knew from the program that : “The lecturer does not give readings , or cast horoscopes for pay . But seeing on the door of


the newly opened reading room,the legend

“F ree Reading Room,

” his erratic mind atonce jumped to the conclusion that althoughwe were opposed to telling fortunes for pay

,

wa s much disappointed that we did not intendto tell fortunes , either gratis or for a considoration , and we changed our Sign to

“FreeLibrary” in order to obviate a repetition of

the error .

In the higher R egions of the DesireWorldthe confusion of tongues gives place to a universal mode of expression which absolutelyprevents misunderstandings of our meaning.

There each Of our thoughts takes a definiteform and color perceptible to all

,and this

thought-Symbol emits a certain tone, whi ch isnot a word

,but it conveys our meaning to the

one we addres s no matter what language hespoke on earth .

To arrive at an understanding of howsucha universal language becomes possib le and isat once comprehended by all, without preparation

,we may take a s an illustration the

manner in which a musician reads music . AGerman or a Polish composer may write anopera . Each has his own peculiar termmol


ogy and expresses it in his own language .

When that opera is to be playéd by an Italianband master, or by a Spanish or Americanmusician, it need not he translated, the notesand symbols upon the page are a universallyunderstood language of symbols which is intelligible to musicians of no matter what nationality . Similarly with figures , theGermancounts : ein , zwei, drei ; the Frenchman says :nu , deux, trois, and in English we use thewords : 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 eithermusic or figures . Thus it is also with the universal language peculiar to the higher R egions of the Desire World and the still moresubtile realms in nature , it is intelligible toall

,an exact mode of expression .

R eturning to our description of the entitiescommonly met with in the lower DesireWorld, we may note that Other systems of religion than the Egyptian , already mentioned,has spoken of various classes of beings nativeOf these realms . The "oroastrian Religion,for instance

,mentions Seven Ameshaspends

and the Izzards as having dominion over certain days in the month and certain months in



twenty-eight days , while man is correlated tothe solar month of thirty or thirty-one days .The ancient Persians were astronomers butnot physiologists , they had no means of knowing the different nervous constitution of ani

mal and man , but they saw clairvoyantlythese superphysical beings , they noted andrecorded their work with animal and menand our own anatomical investigations mayshow us the reason for these divisions Of theclasses of Izzards recorded in that ancientsystem of phi losophy.

Still another class of beings Should bementioned : those who have entered the Desire World through the gate Of death and arenow hidden from our phys ical vision . Theseso-called ‘ dead ’ are in fact much more alivethan any of us, who are tied to a dense bodyand subject to all its limitations

,who are

forced to slowly drag this clog along with usat the rate of a few miles an hour

,who

must expend such an enormous amount of

energy upon propelling that vehicle that weare easily and quickly tired

,even when in

the best of health and who are Often con

fined to a bed,sometimes for years

,by the

indisposition of this heavy mortal coil . Butwhen that is once shed and the freed spirit


can again function in its spiritual body,Sick

ness is an unknown condition and distanceis annihi lated, or at least practically SO, for

though it was necessary for the Savior toliken the freed spirit to the wind whi ch blowswhere it listeth, that Simile gives but a poordescription of what actually takes place insoul flights . Time is nonexistent there, as

we shall presently explain, SO the writer hasnever been able to time himself, but has on

several occas ions timed others when he wasin the phys ical body and they speedingthrough space upon a certain errand . Dis

tances such as from the Pacific Coast to Europe

, the delivery Of a short message thereand the return to the body has been aecom

plished in s lightly less than one minute .Therefore our assertion, that those whom wecall dead are in reali ty much more alive than

we,is well founded in facts .We spoke of the dense body in which we

nowlive, as a“clog and a “fetter. ” It must

not be inferred, however, that we sympathizewith the attitude Of certain peoplewho, 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 longingfor,thedaV


when they shall be able‘

to leave this mortalcoil behind and fly away in their spiritualbody. Such an attitude of mind is decidedlymistaken, the great and wise beings who areinvisible leaders of our evolution have notplaced us here to no purpose . Valuable less ons are to be learned in thi s visible worldwherein we dwell

,that cannot be learned in

any other realm Of nature,and the very con

ditions of dens ity and inertia whereof suchpeople complain, are factors whi ch make itpossible to acquire the knowledge this worldis designed to give . Thi s fact wa s so amplyillustrated in a recent experience Of the writer z— A friend had been studying occultism for a number of years but had not studied astrology.

Last year she became aroused to the importance of thi s branch of study as a key toself knowledge and a means Of understanding the natures of others , also of developingthe compassion for their errors , so necessaryin the cultivation of love of one

’s neighbor .

Love of our neighbor the Savior enjoinedupon us as the Supreme Commandmentwhich is the fulfillment of all laws , and asAstrology teaches us to bear and forbea r, ithelps as noth ing else can, in the development


of the supreme virtue. She therefore j oInedone of the classes started in Los Angeles bythe writer, but a sudden illness quickly endedin death and thus terminated her Study of

the subject in the physical body,

~

ere it waswell began .

Upon one of many occasions when she visited the writer subsequent to her releasefrom the body, she deplored the fact that itseemed so difficult to make headway in herstudy of astrology. The writer advised continned attendance at the classes, and suggested that She could surely get someone ‘ Onthe other s ide ’ to help her study.

At this she exclaimed impatiently Ohyes "of course I attend the classes,

“I havedone so right along ;

“I have a lso found afriend who helps me here . “But you cannotimagine howdifficult it is to concentrate hereupon mathematical calculations and the judgment of a horoscope or in fact upon any sub

ject here, where every little thought-current

takes you miles away from your study“I

used to think it difficult to concentrate whenI had a phys ical body, but it is not a circum

stance to the obstacles which face the student


The physical body was an anchor to her,

and it is that to all Of us . Being dense. it isalso to a great extent impervious to di sturb.

ing influences from which the more subtlespiritual bodi es do not shield us . It enablesus to bring our ideas to a logical conclusionwith far less effort at concentration than isnecessary in that realm where all is in suchincessant and turbulent motion . Thus we aregradually developing the faculty of holdingour thoughts to a center by existence in th isworld

,and we should value our opportunities

here,rather than deplore the limi tations

whi ch help in one direction more than theyfetter in another . In fact, we should neverdeplore any condition , each ha s its lesson . Ifwe try to learn what that lesson is and toassimilate 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 DesireWorld

,and the reader will readily under

stand that such must be the case from thefact

,already mentioned, that nothing there

is opaque .

In this world the rotation of the opaqueearth upon its axis is responsible for the alternating conditions of day and night . We

turned towards the sun and its rays illumineour environment, but when our home is

turned away from the sun and its rays Oh

structed by the opaque earth we term the resulting darkness : Night . The passage of theearth in its orbit around the sun producesthe seasons and the year

,which are our di

vis ions of time . But in the Desire Worldwhere all is light there is but one long day.

The spirit is not there fettered by a heavyphysical body, so it does not need sleep and

existence is unbroken . Spiritual substancesare not subject to contraction and expansionsuch 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 con

ditions of light and darkness, summer and

winter,whi ch mark time for us . Therefore,

whi le the so-called ‘ dead ’ may have a veryaccurate memory of time as regards the lifethey lived here in the body, they are usuallyunable to tell anything about the chronologlcal relation Of events which have happenedto them in the Desire World, and it is a verycommon thing to find that they do not even

know how many years have alapsed Since


they passed out from this plane of existence .

Only students of the Stellar Science are ableto calculate the passage of time after theirdemise .When the occult investigator wishes tostudy an event in the past history of man , hemay most readily call up the picture fromthememory of na ture, but if he desires to fixthe time of the incident, he will be obliged tocount backwards by the motion Of the b eavenly bodies . For that purpose he generallyuses the measure provided by the sun ’s precession : Each year the sun crosses the earth ’sequator about the twenty-first ofMarch . Thenday and night are of even length , thereforethis is called the Vernal equinox . But on ac

count Of a certain wabbling motion of theearth ’s axis , the sun does not cross over atthe same place in the "odiac

,it reaches the

equator a little too early, it precedes , year byyear it moves backwa rds a little . At the timeof the birth of Christ, for instance, the Vernal Equinox was in about seven degrees ofthe "odi acal sign Aries . During the twothousand years which intervene betweenthat event and the present time , the sun hasmoved backwards about twenty-seven de

grees, so that it is now in about ten degrees



one eternal NOW. There seems to be neitherpleasure nor pain and yet there is no absenceof feeling but it all seems to center in the oneidea — “

I am”/ —The human Ego, stands

face to face with itself as it were , and for thetime being all else is shut out. Thi s is the ex

perience of anyone who passes that breachbetween the Desire World and the World of

Thought, whether involuntarily, in the

course of an ordinary cyclic pilgrimage of

the soul,which we shall later elucidate when

speaking Of the post-mortem existence,or by

an act of the will,a s in the case Of the trained

occult investigator, all have the same ex perience in transition .

There are two main divisions in the Physical World : the Chemical Region and theEtheric Region . TheWorld Of Thought alsohas two great subdivisions : The Region of

concrete Thought and the Region of abstractThought .AS we specialize the material of the Physical World and shape it a dense body, and aswe form the force-matter of the DesireWorld a desire body, so also do we appropriate a certain amount of mindstuff from theRegion of concrete Thought ; but we, as spir


its, clothe ourselves in spirit-substance fromthe Region of abstract Thought and therebywe become individual

,separate Egos .

The R egion ofConcreteThought.

The R egion of concrete Thought is neithershadowy nor illusory. It is the acme of reality and this world whi ch we mistakenly re

gard as the only verity,is but an evanescent

repli ca of that Region .

A little reflection will Show the reasonableness of thi s statement and prove our conten

tion that all we see here is really crystallizedthought . Our houses , our machinery, our

chairs and tables,all that has been made by

the”

hand of man is the embodiment of athought . As the juices in the soft body of

the snail gradually crystallize into the hardand flinty shell which it carries upon its backand which hides it, so everything used in ourcivilization is a concretion of invisible, intangible mind-stufi . The thought of JamesWatt in time congealed into a steam engineand revolutionized the world . Edison ’sthought was condensed into an electric generator whi ch has turned night to day, and hadit not been for the thought Of Morse and Mar

coni,the telegraph would not have annihi l


ated distance as it does today. An earthquake may wreck a city and demolish thelighting plant and telegraph station, but thethoughts ofWatt, Edison and Morse remain,and upon the basis Of their indestructibleideas new machinery may be constructed andoperations resumed . Thus thoughts are

more permanent than things .

The sensitive ear Of the musician detects acertain musical note in every city whi ch isdifferent from that of another city. He bears

in each little brook a new melody, and to himthe sound of wind in the treetops of di fferentforests give a varying sound . In the DesireWorld we noted the existence of forms similar to the shapes of things here

,also that

seemingly sound proceeds from form,but in

the Region of concrete Thought it is difierent, for while each form occupies and oh

scures a certain space here,form is nonex

istent when viewed from the standpoint ofthe Region of concrete Thought . Where theform was , a transparent, vacuous space is observable . F rom tha t empty void comes a

s ound whi ch is the ‘ keynote ’ that crea tes andmaintains the form whence it appears tocome

,as the almost invisible core of a gas

flame is the source Of the light we perceive.


1 00 THE R OSIORUOIAN MYSTERIES

type,for ‘man lives not by bread alone,

” butby the WORD

,and the last sound-vibration

“

of the ‘ keynote ’ is the death-knell of the phy

sical body.

In this world we are compelled to investigate and to study a thing before we knowabout it, and although the facilities for gaining information are in some respects muchgreater in the Desire World, a certainamount of investigation is necessary nevertheless to acquire knowledge . In the Worldof Thought, on the contrary, it is different .When we wish to know about any certainthing there

,and we turn our attention there

to , then that thing speaks to us , as it were .The sound it emits at once giv es us a mostluminous 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 livedthrough all of those experiences togetherwith the thing we are investigating .

Were it not for one enormous difficulty, thestory thus Obtained would be exceedinglyvaluable : But all thi s information , this lifepicture

,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,

THE VISIBLE AND THE INVISIBLE WORLD 1 01

for, as said , in the World of Thought

,all is

one great NOW, Time does not exist .Therefore, when we want to use the arche

typal information in the Physical World,we

must disentangle and arrange it in chronological order with beginning and ending b efore it becomes intelligible to beings living ina realm where Time is a prime factor . Thatrearrangement is a most difficult task a s allwords are coined with relation to the threedimensions of space and the evanescent unitof time

,the fleeting moment, hence much Of

that information remains unavailable .

Among the denizens Of this Region of con

crete Thought we may note particularly twoclasses . One is called the powers of darknessby 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 suchas worlds in the making go through beforethey become luminous and reach the firemlst

stage.At that time we were in our mmeral

the ball Of mindstuff, which was then the

earth.At that time the present Human Spin

its were as much asleep as is the lIfe whlch

1 02 THE R OSICRUOIAN MYSTERIES

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 . , sothose 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 Angelsand Archangels

,before they attain ed their

present position and became creative intelli

gences . They are expert builders of mindstuff

,as we are builders of the present min

eral substances and therefore they have givenus necessary help to acquire a mind which isthe highest development of the human being.

According to the foregoing explanation itseems to be an anomaly when Paul speaks of

them as evil and exhorts us to withstandthem . The difficulty disappears , however,when we understand that good and evil arebut relative quantities . An illustration willmake the point clear — Let us suppose thatan expert organ builder has constructed awonderful organ, a masterpiece . Then he hasfollowed his vocation in the proper mann er,and is therefore to be commended for thegood which he has done . But if he is not satisfied to leave well enough alone, if he refuses


1 04 THE R OSIORUOIAN MYSTERIES

fore it attains to the stature Of a giant Of theforest . A man does not become an Angel bythe mere fact of dying and entering a newworld any more than an animal advances tobe a man by the same process . But in timeall that lives , mounts the ladder of Beingfrom the clod to the G od . There is no limitation possible to the spirit

,and so at various

stages in its unfoldment the Human Spiritworks with the other nature forces

,accord

ing to the stage of intelligence whi ch it hasattained . It creates , changes and remodelsthe earth upon which it is to live . Thus , nuder the great law Of cause and effect

,which

we observe in every realm of nature, it reapsupon earth what it has sown in heaven , andvice versa . It grows slowly but persistentlyand advances continually.

The R egion ofAbs tract Thought.Various religious systems have been given

to humanity at different times , each suited tomeet the spiritual needs Of the people amongwhom it was promulgated, and, coming fromthe same divine source — G od , all religionsexhibit Similar fundamentals or first principles .All systems teach that there was a timewhen da rkness reigned supreme . Everything


which we now perceive was then non-existent . Earth, sky and the heavenly bodieswere uncreate, so were the multitudinousforms which live and move upon the variousplanets — All, all, was yet in a fluidic condition and the Universal Spirit brooded quiescent in limi tless Space as the One Existence .The Greeks called that condi tion Of homo

geneity Chaos , and the state Of orderly segre

gation which we now see ; the marching orbswhi ch illumine the vaulted canopy of heaven,the stately procession Of planets around acentral light

,the majestic sun ; the unbroken

sequence of the seasons and the unvaryingalternation of tidal ebb and flow —all thisaggregate of systematic order

,was called

Cosmos , and was supposed to have proceededfrom Chaos .

The Christian Mystic obtains a deeper comprehension when he opens his Bib le 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 heartto acquire understanding of those sublimemystical teachings he transcends the formside of nature, comprising various realms of

whi ch we have been speaking, and finds him

1 06 TIIE R OSICRUCIAN MYSTERIES

self “ in the spirit,” as did the prophets In

olden times . He is then in the R egion of ahstract Thought and sees the eternal verities

which also Paul beheld in this,the thi rd

,

heaven .

For those among us who are unable to ohtain knowledge save by reasoning upon thematter, however, it will be necessary to examine the fundamental meaning of wordsused by St. John to clothe his wonderfulteaching

,which was originally given in the

Greek language,a much s impler matter than

is commonly supposed,for Greek words have

been freely introduced into our modern languages , particularly in scientific terms , andwe sha ll show how thi s ancient teaching issupported by the latest discoveries of modern science .

The Opening verse of the gospel of St . Johnis as follows “In the beginn ing was theWord , and the Word was with G od, and theWord was G od .

” We will examine thewords : ‘ beginning,

’ ‘Word ’ and ‘ G od .

’ Wemay also note that in the Greek version theconcluding sentence reads : ‘ and God was theWord,

” a difference which makes a greatdistinction .


1 08 THE R OSICRUCIAN MYSTERIES

covery of the electron, the atomic theory of

matter,is no longer tenable . The principle

Of radio-activity ha s later vindicated the AIchemists . Science and the Bible agree inteaching, that all that is , has been formedfrom one homogeneous substance.

It is that basic principle which John calleda rche — primordial matter

,— and the diction

ary defines Archeology as :“the science of

the origin ( arche) Of th ings . Masons styleGod the “Grand Architect

,

” for the Greekword ; tektos means builder, and God is theChief Builder ( tektos ) , of arche : the primordial virgin matter whi ch is also the chi efsource of all things .

Thus we see that when the opening sentence of St. John ’

s gospel is properly translated, our Christian Religion teaches thatonce a virgin substance enfolded the divineThinker z— G od .

That is the identical condi tion which theearlier Greeks called Chaos . A little thoughtwill make it evident that we are not arbitraryin finding fault with the translation of thegospel, for it is self-evident that a word cannot be the beginning

,a thought must precede

the word, and a thinker must originatethought before it can be expressed as a word .


When properly translated the teaching ofJohn fully embodies that idea

, for the Greekterm logos means both the reasonablethought , — (we also say Logic) , —and theword which expresses thi s ( logical ) thought.

1 ) In the primordial subs tancewas thought,and the thought was with G odAnd G od was the word

,

2 ) THAT, "The Word", also was with G od inthe primal s tate.

Later the divine WORD ; the Creative F iat,reverberates through space and segegrates

the homogeneous Virgin substance into separate forms .

3 ) Every thing has come into ex istence because of that prime fact, "The Word o f

G od", and no thing ex ists apart from that

fac t.4) In that was Life.

In the alphabet we have a few elementarysounds from which words may be constructed . They are basic elements of expression,a s bricks

,iron and lumber are raw materials

of architecture,or as a few notes are compo

nent 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 ar

rangement of alphabetical sounds : a word.

1 1 0 T R OSICRUCIAN MYSTERIES

These raw materials are prime necessities inconstruction of architecture, music, literatureor poetry, but the contour of the fin ished product and the purpose it will serve dependsupon the arrangement of the raw materials ,whi ch is subject to the constructor ’s design .

Bui lding materials may be formed to prisonor palace : notes may be arranged as fanfareor funeral dirge ; words may be indited to lnspire pass ion or peace, all according to thewill of the designer . So also the majesti crhythm of the Word of G od has wrought theprimal substance : a rche, into the multitudinous forms which comprise the phenomenalworld

,according to Hi s will .

Did the reader ever stop to consider thewonderful power of a human word . Comingto us in the sweet accents of love , it may lureus from paths of rectitude to shameful ignominy and wreck our life with sorrow and re

morse,or it may spur us on in noblest efforts

to acquire glory and honor , here or hereafter .According to the infl ection of the voice aword may strike terror into the bravest heartor lull a timid chi ld to peaceful slumber . The

word of an agitator may rouse . the passionsof a mob and impel it to awful bloodshed, asin the F rench R evolution, where dictatorial


1 1 2 THE R OSIOBUCIAN MYSTERIES

to sustain the marching orbs and impel them

onwards in their circle paths,the Creative

Word continues to produce forms Of gradually increasing emciency, as medi a expressinglife and consciousness . The harmoni ousenunciation of consecutive syllables in theDivine Creative Word mark successive stagesin evolution of the world and man . When thelast syllable has been spoken and the com

pleteword has sounded , we shall have reachedperfection as human beings . Then Time willbe at an end, and with the last vibration of

the Word Of God , the worlds will be resolvedinto their original elements . Our life willthen be ‘ hid with Christ in God , till the Cosmic Night — Chaos,— is over, and we wake todo “greater things ” in a “new heaven and anew earth .

”

According to the general idea Chaos andCosmos are superlative antitheses of one another . Chaos being regarded as a past condition of confusion and di sorder whi ch has longsince been entirely superseded by cosmic or.

der which now prevails .

As a matter of fact, Chaos is the seedground of Cosmos , the basis of all progres s ,for thence come all IDEAS which later ma

THE VISIBLE AND THE INVISIBLE WOBLD 1 1 3

terialize as Railways, Steamboats, Telephones

,etc .

We speak of “thoughts as being conceivedby the mind,

” but as both father and mother

are necessary in the generation of a chi ld, so

also there must be both idea and mind before

a thought can be conceived . As semen germinated in the positive male organ is projectedinto the negative uterus at conception , soideas are generated by a positive Human Egoin the spirit-substance of the Region of ab

stract Thought . This idea is projected upon

the receptive mind, and a conception takes

place . Then,as the spermatozoic nucleus

draws upon the maternal body for materialto shape a body appropriate to its individualexpres sion , so does each idea clothe itself ina peculiar form of mindstufi . It is then athought

,as visible to the inner vision of com

posite man , as a child is to its parent.

Thus we see that ideas are embryonicthoughts , nuclei of spirit-substance from

the

Region of abstract Thought. Improperly

conceived in a diseased mind they become va

garies and delusions, but when.

gestated in asound mind and formed into ratlonal thoughtsthey are the basis of all material, moral and

1 1 4 THE R OSICRUOIAN MYSTERIES

mental progress , and the closer our touchwith Chaos , the better will be our Cosmos ,for in that realm of abstract realities truth isnot obscured by matter

,it is self-evident .

Pilate wa s asked “what is Truth,

” but noanswer is recorded . We are incapable of

cognizing truth in the abstract while we livein the phenomenal world

, for the inherent nature of matter is illus ion and delusion

,and

we are constantly ma king allowances and corrections whether we are conscious of the factor not. The sunbeam which proceeds for 90millions of miles in a straight line

,is refract

ed or bent, as soon as it strikes our dense atmosphere, and according to the angle of itsrefraction , it appea rs to have one color or euother . The straightest stick appears crookedwhen partly immersed in water

,and the

truths which are so self-evident in the Higherworlds are likewise obscured, refracted ortwisted out of all semblance under the illusory conditions of this material world .

“The truth shall set you free ,”said Christ,

and the more we turn our aspirations frommaterial acquisitiveness and seek to lay uptreasure above

,the more we aim to rise , the

oftener we “get in the spirit,

” the more readily we “shall know truth” and reach libera


1 1 6 THE R OSIOBUCIAN MYSTERIES

upon the remainder of the 5 first verses of St .John ’s gospel

“And Life became Light in man,

5) and Light shines in Darkness .

”

We have now seen that the earth is composed of three worlds whi ch interpenetrateone another so that it is perfectly true whenChrist said that “heaven is within vou” or

,

the translation should rather have been ;among yon. We have also seen that of thesethree realms two are subdivided . It has alsobeen explained that each division serves agreat purpose in the unfoldment of variousforms of life which dwell in each of theseworlds

,and we may note in conclusion

,that

the lower regions of the Desire World constitutewhat the Catholi c religion calls P nrga~

torg , a place where the evil of a past life istransmuted to good, us able by the spirit asconscience in later lives . The higher regionsof the Desire World are the firs t Heaven

where all the good a man has done , is assimilated by the spirit as sonlpower . The Regionof concrete Thought is the second Heaven ,

where,as already said , the spirit prepares

its future environment on earth,and the R e

gion of abstract Thought is the third Heav

THE VISIBLE AND THE INVISIBLE WORLD 1 1 7

en, but as Paul said, it is scarcely lawful tospeak about that.

Some will ask : is there then no hell ‘l— No "The mercy of G od tends as greatly towardsthe principle of GOOD as “ the inhumanityof 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 as light difference in belief. The writer hasheard of a min ister who wished to impresshis “flock” with the reality of an eternity ofhell flames , and to demonstrate the fallacy ofa heretical notion entertained by some of his

parisioners : that when sinners came to hellthey burn to ashes and that is the end.

He took with him an alcohol lamp andsome asbestos into the pulpit and told hisaudience that G od would turn their soulsinto a substance resembling asbestos . He

showed them that though the asbestos wereheated red hot it did not decompose into

ashes . F ortunately the day of the hellpreacher has gone by , and if we believe

'

the

Bible which says that “in G od we live and

move and have our being,” we can readIly

understand that a lost s oulwould be an im

possibility , for were one single soul lost, then

1 1 8 THE R OSIOBUOIAN MYSTERIES

logically a part of God Himself would be

lost. No matter what our color, our race orour creed, we are all equally the children of

God and in our various ways we shall obtainsatisfaction . Let us therefore rather lookto Christ and forget Creed .

Creed or Chris t"

NO man loves God who hates hi s kind ;Who tramples on his Brother ’s heart andsoul .

Who seeks to shackle ; cloud or fog the mind ;By fears of Hell has nor 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 for Sorrow,

Sin and Strife .

At his request the Universal Spirit came ;To a ll the churches ; not to one alone,

On Pentecostal morn a tongue of flame ;Round each apostle as a halo shone .

S ince 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 .


CHAPTER IV .

an,» a nstttufinn ofMatt

Our chapter head , the constitutionof man, may surprise a reader whoha s not previously studied the Mystery teach ings , or he may imagine thatwe intend to give an anatomical dissertation,but such is not our intention . We have spoken of the earth upon whi ch we live as beingcomposed of several invisible realms in ad

dition to the world we perceive by means ofour senses . We have also spoken of man asbeing correlated to these various divisions innature

,and a little thought upon the subject

will quickly convince us that in order tofunction upon the various planes of existence described , it is necessary that a manshould have a body composed of their substance, or at least have specialized for hisown use, some of the material of each of

these worlds .We have said that finer matter

,called de

sire stuff and mind stufl’,permeates our at

1 20

THE CONSTITUTION OF MAN 1 21

mosphere and the solid earth, even as bloodpercolates through all parts of our flesh .

But that is not a sufficient explanation to ao

count for all facts of life . If that were all,

then minerals, which are interpenetrated bythe world of thought and the world of desire,would have thoughts and desires as well asman . This is not the case, so somethingmore than mere interpenetration must be re

quisite to acquire the faculties of thoughtand feeling.

We know that in order to function in thisworld

,to live as a physical being among oth

er,like

,beings

,we must have a physical body

all our own ; built of the chemcial constitu

ents of this Visible world . When we lose itat death

,it profits us nothing that the world

is full of just the very chemicals needed tobuild such a body. We cannot then specialize them

,and therefore we are invisible to

all others . Similarly, if we did not possessa special body made of ether, we should beunable to grow and to propagate That isthe case with the mineral . Had we no separate individual desire body, we Should beunable to feel desires and emotions , therewould be no incentive to move from one

place to another . We Should then be station

1 22 THE R OSIOBUOIAN MYSTERIES

ary as plants , and did we not possess a mind,we should be incapable of thought

,and act

upon impulse and instinct as animals .Some one may of course Object to thi s laststatement, and contend that animals dothink . SO far as our domesticated animalsare concerned that is partially true

,but it

is not quite in the same way that we thinkand reason . The difference may perhapsbest be understood if we take an illustrati onfrom the electrical field . When an electriccurrent of high voltage is passed through acoiled copper wire , and another wire is placed in the center of the coils , that wire wi llbecome charged with electricity of a lowervoltage so also the animal , when broughtwithin the sphere of human thoughts, evolvesa mental activity of a lower order.Paul

,in his writings , also mentions the

natural body and the spiritual body whi le theman himself is a spirit inhabiting those vehiclcs . We will briefly note the constitutionof the various bodies of man invisible to thephysical sight but as objective to spiritualsight as the dense body to ordinary v ision.

The Vital Body .

That body of ours which is composed of

ether is called the “vital body” in Western



light of the moon from what is the case whenthey are planted when the moon is dark.

There is also a difference in plants sownwhen the moon is in barren and fruitful signsof the "odiac .

The solar ray is absorbed by the humanspirit which has its seat in the center of theforehead

,the stellar ray is absorbed by the

brain and spinal cord, and the lunar ray enters our system through the spleen .

Both solar,stellar and lunar rays are

three-colored,and in the lunar ray which

supplies our vital force , the blue beam is thelife of The F ather

,which causes germination,

the yellow beam is the life of The Son , whichis the active principle in nutrition andgrowth

,and the red beam is the life of the

Holy Spirit,which stimulates to action, dissi

pating the energy stored by the yellow force .This principle is particularly active in generation .

The various kingdoms absorb thi s lifeforce differently, according to their constitution . An imals have only 28 pairs of spinalnerves . They are keyed to the lunar monthof 28 days and therefore dependent upon aG roupspirit for an infusion of stellar raysnecessary to produce consciousness . They


are altogether incapable of absorbing thedirect ray of the sun .

Man is in a transition stage,he has 31 pairs

of spinal nerves which keys him to the solarmonth, but the nerves in the so-called caudaequina— literally : horse-tail at the end of

our spinal cord,are still too undeveloped to

act as avenues for the Spiritual ray of thet sun . In proportion as we draw our creativeforce upward by spiritual thought we developthese nerves and awaken dormant faculties ofthe spirit . But it is dangerous to attemptthat development except under guidance of

a qualified teacher,and the reader is earnest

ly warned not to use any method publishedin books

,or sold, for their practice usually

leads to dementia . The safe method is neversold for money or any earthly considerationhowever large or small ; it is always freelygiven as a reward of merit. “Ask and yeshall receive, seek and ye shall find, knockand it Shall be opened”, said the Christ . Ifour life is a prayer for illumination, the

search will not be uncertain, nor the knockwithout response .

When solar energy has been transmutedin the spleen it traverses the whole nervoussystem of the body glowing with a most

1 26 THE R OSIOBUOIAN MYSTEBIES

beautiful color of a deli cate rosy hue . Itanswers the same purpose as electricity in atelegraph system. We may string wires between cities , erect telegraph stations , installreceivers and transmitters . We may evenhave operators ready at the keys , but untilelectric fluid is turned into our wires , thetelegraph keys will refuse to click. So alsoin the body

,the human spirit is operator, and

from the central station of the brain,nerves

ramify, go through the whole body to all thedifferent muscles . When this Vitalizing fluidof which we are speaking traverses the nervous system , the Ego may send his commandsto the muscles and cause them to move but ifthe vital fluid for any reason does not flowinto a certain part of the body such as an

arm or a limb , then the spirit is powerlessto move that part of the body and we say thatit is paralyzed .

When we are in health , we specialize solarenergy in such great quantities that we cannot use it all in the body and therefore itradiates through the pores of our skin instraight streams and serves a simi lar purpose as an exhaust fan . That machine drivesthe foul air out of a room or building andkeeps the atmosphere within pure and sweet.



digestion . If the meal has been heavy,the ‘

outflow is very perceptibly dimini shed, anddoes not then cleanse our body as thoroughlyas when the food has been digested, nor arethey as potent in keeping out inimical germs .Therefore one is most liable to catch coldor other disease by overeating, a fault whichshould be avoided by all who wish to keepin 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 vitalbody as it were, so that the vehicle becomesmore transparent and attenuated at the samerate as the vis ible body exhibits a state ofemaciation . The cleansing odic radiationsare almost entirely absent during s ickness ,therefore complications set in so easily.

Though science has not directly Observedthis vital body of man, it has upon severaloccasions postulated the existence of such avehicle as necessary to account for facts inlife and the radiations have been Observedby a number of scientists at difi erent timesand under varying conditions . Blondlot andCharpentier have called them N-rays afterthe city of Nantes where the radi ations wereobserved by these scientists

,others have


named them “The Odic fluid Scientificinvestigators who have conducted researchesinto psychi c phenomena have even photographed it when it has been extractedthrough the spleen by materializing spirits .

Dr . Hotz for instance obtained two photographs Of a materialization

,through the

German medium, Minna-Demmler . On one acloud of ether is seen oozing out through theleft side Of the medium, shapeless and without form. The second picture, taken a fewmoments later

, shows the materialized spiritstanding 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 shouldrather say polarity. AS the vital body nourishes the dense vehicle, we may readi ly un

derstand that blood is its highest visible ex

pression, and also that a positively polarizedvital body would generate more blood than anegative one. Woman who is physically negative has a positive vital body, hence she gen

erates a surplus of blood which Is reheved by


the periodical flow. She is also more proneto tears

,whi ch are white bleeding, than man ,

whose negative vital body does not generatemore blood than he can comfortably take careof. Therefore it is not necessary for him to

have the outlets whi ch relieve excess of bloodin woman .

The Des ire Body .

In addition to the visible body and thevital body we also have a body made of des ire stuff from which we form our feelingsand emotions . This vehicle also impels us toseek sense gratification . But whi le the twoinstruments of which we have already spoken

,are well organized

,the desire body ap

pears to spiritual sight as an ovoid cloudextending from sixteen to twenty inches beyond the physical body. It is above thehead and below the feet so that our densebody sits in the center of thi s egg-shapedcloud as the yolk is in the center of an egg.

The reason for the rudimentary state of

thi s vehi cle is , that it has been added to thehuman constitution more recently than thebodi es previously mentioned . Evolution of

form may be likened to the manner in whi ch



number of other vortices . The desire bodyexhibits all the colors and shades which weknow and a vast number of others which areindescribable in earthly language . Thosecolors vary in every person according to hi scharacteristics and temperament and theyalso vary from moment to moment as passit g moods , fancies or emotions are ex peri

enced by him . There is however in eachone a certain basic color dependent uponthe ruling star at the moment of his birth .

The man in whose horoscope, Mars is peculiarly strong usually has a crimson tint inhis aura

,where Jupiter is the strongest

planet the prevailing tint seems to be a bluishtone

,and so on with the other planets .

There was a time in the earth ’s past hi story when incrustation was not yet complete,and human beings of that time lived uponislands here and there , amid boiling seas .They had not yet evolved eyes or ears , buta little organ : the pineal gland

,whi ch anato

mists have called the third eye, protrudedthrough the back of the head and was a localized organ of feeling . which warned the manwhen he came too near a volcanic crater andthus enabled him to escape destruction . Sincethen the cerebral hemi spheres have covered


the pineal gland,and instead of a single or

gan of feeling, the whole body inside and out

is sensitive to impacts, which of course isa much higher state of development .

In the desire body every particle is sensitive to vibrations similar to those which wecall s ight, sounds and feelings and every particle is in incessant motion rapidly swirlingabout SO that in the same instant it may be atthe top and bottom of the desire body and impart at all points to all the other particles asensation of that which it has experiencedthus every particle of desire stufi in thisvehicle of ours will instantly feel any sensation experienced by any single particle .Therefore the desire body is of an exceedingly sens itive nature, capable ofmost intensefeelings and emotions .

The Mind .

This is the latest acquisition of the humanspirit

,and in most people who have not yet

accustomed themselves to orderly, consecu

tive thought, it is a mere inchoate cloud d1 s

posed 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

1 34 THE ROSICRUCIAN MYSTEBIES

eyebrows . It looks like the blue part of a gasflame . That is mind stuff whi ch veils the human spirit, or Ego, and the writer has beentold that not even the most gifted seer canpenetrate that veil which is said to have beenspoken of in ancient Egypt as “ the veil ofIs is

” which none may lift and live,for be

hind that veil is the Holy of Holies,the tem

ple of our body, where the spirit is to be leftsecure from all intrusion .

To those who have not previously studiedthe deeper philosophies the question may occur : But why all these divis ions ; even theBible speaks only of soul and body, for mostpeople believe soul and spirit to be synonymous terms . We can only answer that thisdivision is not arbitrary but necessary, andfounded upon facts in nature . Neither is itcorrect to regard the soul and the spirit assysnonymous . Paul himself speaks of thena tural body which is composed of physicalsubstances : solids , liquids , gases and ethers ;he mentions a spiritual body , which is thevehicle of the spirt composed of themind anddesire body, and the spirit itself, whi ch iscalled Ego in Greek or

“ I” in English .

That term “I” is an appelation which canonly be made by the human spirit of itself.


CHAPTER V .

Eifr aah l32t

Invisible Helpers and Mediums.

There are two classes Of people in theworld . In one class the vital and densebodies are so firmly cemented that the etherscannot be extracted under any circumstancesbut remains with the dense body at all timesand under all conditions from birth to death .

Those people are insens ible to any supersen

suons s ights or sounds . They are thereforeusually exceedingly sceptic , and believe nothing exists but what they can see .

There is another class of people in whomthe connection between the dense and thevital bodies is more or less loose, so thatthe ether of their vital bodies vibrates at ahigher rate than in the first class mentioned .

These people are therefore more or less sensitive to the spiritual world .

This class of sensitives may again be divided . Some are weak characters , dominat

1 36

LIFE AND DEATH 1 37

ed by the will of others in a negativemanner,as mediums, who are the prey of disembodiedspirits des irous of obtaining a physical bodywhen they have lost their own by death .

The other class of sensitives are strong

positive characters , who act only from within , according to their own will . They maydevelop into trained clairvoyants , and betheir own masters instead of slaves of a disembodied spirit . In some sensitives of bothclasses it is possible to extract part of theether whi ch forms the Vital body. When adisembodied spirit obtains a subject of thatnature

,it develops the sensitive as a ma te

ria lizing medium. The man who is capableof extracting hi s own vital body by an actof will, becomes a citizen of two worlds , independent and free . These are usually knownas Invis ibleHelpers . There are certain otherabnormal conditions where the vital body andthe dense body are separated total ly or in

part , for instance if we place our limb in anuncomfortable position so that circulation of

the blood ceases . Then we may see the ethericlimb hanging down below the visible limb as

a stocking. When we restore circulation and

the etheric limb seeks to enter into place, anintense 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 theminto renewed vibration . When a person isdrowning, the vital body also separates fromthe dense vehicle and the intense prickly painincident to resuscitation is also due to thecause mentioned .

While we are awake and going about ourwork in the Physical World

,the desire body

and mind , both permeate the dense and thevital bodies, and there is a constant war between the desire nature and the vital body .

The Vital body is continuallyengaged in building up the human organism,

while the impulseS of the desire body tend to tire and to breakdown tissue . Gradually, in the course of theday

,the vital body loses ground before the

onslaughts of the desire body,poisons of de

cay slowly accumulate and the flow of vitalfluid becomes more and more sluggish , untilat 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 whi ch permeateeach atom seem to shrivel up

,and the Ego

is forced to abandon its body to the restorative powers of sleep .



the desire body is not fully extracted , hencethe restles s s leep whi ch usually accompani esdreams of a confused nature .

There are times of course , when dreamsare prophetic and come true, but such dreamsresult only after complete extraction of thedesire body. Under circumstances where thespirit has seen some danger perhaps , whi chmay befall , and then impresses the fact uponthe brain a t the moment of awakening .

It also happens that the spirit goes upon asoul flight and omits to perform its part ofthe work Of restoration , then the body willnot be fit to re-enter in the morning, so itsleeps on . The spirit may thus roam afieldfor a number Of days

,or even weeks

,before

it again enters its phys ical body and assumesthe normal routine of alternating waking andsleep . Thi s condition is called trance, andthe spirit may remember upon its returnwhat it has seen and heard in the super-physical realm, or it may have forgotten, according to the stage Of its development and thedepth of the trance condition . When thetrance is very light, the spirit is usuallypresent in the room where its body lies allthe time

,and upon its return to the body it

will be able to recount to relatives all they

LIFE AND DEATH 1 41

said and did while its body lay unconscious .Where the trance is deeper

, the returningspirit will usually be unconscious of whathappened around its body

,but may recount

experiences from the invisible world.

A few years ago a little girl by the nameof F lorence Benn ett in " ankakee

,Illinois

,

fell into such a trance . She returned to thebody every few days

,but stayed within only

a few hours each time, and the whole trancelasted three weeks , more or less . During thereturns to her body she told relatives

,that

in her absence she seemed to be in a placeinhabited by all the people who di ed . Butshe stated that none of them spoke about dying and no one among them seemed to rea lizethat they were dead . Among those she hadseen wa s a locomotive engineer who had beenaccidentally killed . His body was mangledin the accident whi ch caused death . The lit

tle girl perceived him there walking ab outminus arms , and with lesions upon his head ,

by mystic investigators . Persons who havebeen hurt in accidents go about thus , untilthey learn that a mere wish to have theirbody made whole

,will supply a new arm or


limb ; for desire stuff is most quickly andreadily molded by thought .

Dea th .

After a longer or shorter time there comesin each life a po int

,when the experiences

which a spirit can gain from its present euvironment, have been exhausted, and lifeterminates in death .

Death may be sudden and seemingly nnex

pected , as for instance by earthquake , uponthe battle-field , or by accident, a s we call it,but in reality, death is never accidental orunforeseen 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 lineof life continues onward

,the other path leads

into what we might call a blind alley. If theman takes that path , it soon ends in death .

We are here in life for the sake of gainingexperience and each life has a certain harvestto reap . If we order our life in such a manner that we gain the knowledge , it is intendedwe should acquire, we continue in life , andopportun ities of different kinds constantlycome our way . But if we neglect them, and

the life goes into paths whi ch are not con



impulsive youth,to the ripeness of manhood

or womanhood , before it becomes of truespiritual use The longer we live after maturity has been attained ; when we have com

menced to look upon the serious side of li fe,and started to truly learn lessons which makefor soulgrowth , the more experience we shallgather and the richer our harvest will be .

Then,in a later existence, we shall be so much

more advanced , and capable of taking uptasks that would be impossible with lesslength of life and breadth of activity. Be

sides,it is hard to die for the man in the

prime of life with a wife and growing family;whom he loves ; with ambitions of greatnessunfulfilled ; with hosts of friends about him,

and with interests all centered upon the ma ‘

terial plane of existence . It is sad for thewoman whose heart is bound up in home andthe little ones she has reared , to leave them,

perhaps without anyone to care for them ; toknow that they have to fight their way alonethrough the early years when her tender careis needed

,and perhaps to see those little ones

abused,and she unable to lift a hand , though

her heart may bleed a s freely as it would inearth life . All these things are sad, andthey bind the spirit to ea rth for a much long

LIFE AND DEATH 1 45

er time than ordinarily,they hinder it from

reaping the experiences it should reap uponthe other side of death

,and they make it

desirable along with other reasons alreadymentioned, to live a long life before passingonwards .

The difference between those who pass outat a ripe old age

,and one who leaves this

earth in the prime of life, may be illustratedby the manner in whi ch the seed clings to afruit in an unripe state . A great deal offorce is necessary to tear the stone from agreen peach ; it has such a tenacious holdupon the fru it that shreds of pulp adhere toit when forcibly removed, so also the spiritclings to the flesh in middle life and a certain part of its material interest remain and

bind it to earth after death . On the otherhand

,when a life has been lived to the full,

when the spirit has had time to realize itsambitions 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 ha s beenmis spent and the pangs of conscience haveworked upon the man , and Shown him hIs

mistakes ; when, in fact, the spirit ha s learned the lessons of life, as it must have to come


to old age ; then it may be likened to the seedof the ripe fruit whi ch falls out clean , without a vestige of flesh clinging thereto , at themoment the encasing pulp is opened. Therefore we say, as before, that though there isa brighter existence in store for those whohave lived well , it is nevertheless best to livea long life and to live it to the fullest extentpossible .

We also maintain,that no matter what may

be the circumstances of a man ’s death, it isnot accidenta l ; it has either been broughtabout by his own neglect to embrace opportunities of growth, or else life has been livedto the ultimate poss ible . There is one ex ception to that rule , and that is due to man

’sexercise of his divine prerogative of interference . If we lived according to schedule,if we all assimi lated the experiences design g

ed for our growth by the Creative Powers ,we Should live to the ultimate length , butwe ourselves usually shorten our lives by nottaking advantage of opportunities

,and it also

happens that other men may shorten ourlives and cut them off as suddenly as the socalled accident whereby the divine rulersterminate our life here . In other words , murder, or fatal accidents brought about by hu


THE R OSIOBUOIAN MYSTERIES

final release from the body. Then the dying

person views both worlds at once,and is cog

ni zant of the presence of both dead and living friends . Under such circumstances itvery Often happens that a mother sees someof her children who have gone before, and shewill exclaim joyously : “Oh , there is Johnnystanding at the foot of my bed ; my but hasn

’the grown " The living relatives may feelshocked and uneasy, thinking the mother suffering from hallucinations , while in realityshe is more clear-sighted than they

,she per

ceives those who have passed beyond the veil,

who have come to greet and ass ist her to findherself at home in the new world she is eutering .

Each human being is an individual, separate and apart from all others , and as ex periences in the life Of each differ from those Ofall others in the interval from the cradle tothe grave

, so we may also reasonably inferthat the experiences of each spirit vary fromthose of every other spirit, when it passesthrough the gates of birth and death . Weprint what purports to be a spirit message

communicated by the late professor James ofHarvard at the Boston spirit temple, and inwhich he describes sensations which he felt

LIFE AND DEATH 1 49

when passing through the gate of death . Wedo not vouch for its authenticity as we havenot investigated the matter personally.

Professor James had promised to com

municate after death with his friends in thislife

,and the whole world of psychic research

was and still is on watch for a word fromhim . Several mediums have claimed thatProfessor James has communicated throughthem,

but the most remarkable are thosegiven through the Boston spirit temple asfollows

“And this is death, only to fall asleep, only to

awaken in the morning and to know that all is well .I am not dead, only arisen.

an: a: a

I only know that I experienced a great shockthrough my entire system,

a s if some mighty bondhad been rent asunder. For a moment I wa s dazedand lost consc iousness . When I awakened I foundmyself standing beside the old body which had

served me fa ithfully and well . To say that I was

surprised would only inadequately express the sen

sation that thrilled my very being, and I real izedthat some wonderful change had taken place . Sud

denly I became conscious that my body was sur

rounded by many o i my friends, and an uncontro llable desire took po ssession of me to speak and

touch them that they might know that I Stlll l ived .

Drawing a l ittle nearer to that wh ich was so l ike


and yet unlike myself, I stretched forth my handand touched them,

but they heeded me not.”

a: t s a: as i t

Then it was that the ful l significance o f the

great change that had taken place fla shed upon mynewly awakened senses ; then it was that I rea l izedthat an impenetrable barrier separated me from myloved ones on earth , and that this great changewh ich had taken place was indeed dea th . A senseof weariness and longing for rest took possessiono f me. I seemed to be transported through space ,and I lost consciousness , to awaken in a land so

d ifferent and yet so similar to the one wh ich I had

lately left. It was not possible for me to describemy sensations when I aga in rega ined consciousnessand real ized that, though dead , I was still a l ive.

“When I first became conscious o f my new en

v ironment I was resting in a beautiful grove , andwas rea l izing as never before what it was to be atpeace with myself and all the world .

”

t it it i

I know that only with the greatest difficultysha ll I be enabled to express to you my sensationswhen I ful ly rea lized that I had awakened to a newl ife . Allwas still , no sound broke the silence . Da rkness had surrounded me. In fact

,I seemed to be

enveloped in a heavy mist, beyond wh ich my gazecould not penetrate . Soon in the distance I dis

cerned a fa int gl immer of l ight, wh ich slowly ap

proached me, and then, to my wonder and joy ,I

beheld the face o f her who had been my gu idingstar in the early days of my earth life.

”



Probably there is no form of torture morecommonly inflicted upon the dying

,than that

which is caused by administering stimulants .Such potions have the effect of drawing a departing spirit into its body with the force ofa catapult, to remain and to suffer for sometime longer . Investigators of conditions beyond have heard many complaints of suchtreatment. When it is seen that death mustinevitably ensue

,let not selfish desire to keep

a departing spirit a little longer prompt usto inflict such tortures upon them . The deathchamber should be a place of the utmostquiet, a place of peace and of prayer, for atthat time , and for three and one-half daysafter the las t brea th, the spirit is passingthrough a Gethsemane and needs all the assistance that can be given . The value of thelife that has just been passed depends greatlyupon conditions which then prevail about thebody ; yes even the conditions of its futurelife are influenced by our attitude duringthat time, so that if ever we were our brother ’s keeper in life, we are a thousand timesmore so at death .

Post-mortem examinations,embalming and

cremation during the period mentioned , notonly disturbs the passing spirit mentally, but

LIFE AND DEATH 1 53

is even productive of a certain amount ofpain, for there is still a slight connection withthe discarded vehi cle . If sanitary laws require us to prevent decomposition while thuskeeping the body for cremation

,it may be

packed in ice till the three and one-half dayshave passed . After that time the spirit willnot suffer , no matter what happens to thebody.

The P anorama of a P ast Life.

No matter howlong we may keep the spiritfrom pass ing out however, at last there willcome a time when no stimulant can hold itand the last breath is drawn . Then the silvercord

, of which the Bible speaks, and whichholds the higher and the lower vehicles together

,snaps in the heart and causes that or

gan to stop . That rupture releases the vitalbody

,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 postmortem experience . Upon that review depends its whole existence from death to a

new birth .


the cradle to the grave, when we do not evenremember what we did a month ago

,and to

form a proper basis for our future life,this

record ought to be very accurate, but eventhe best memory is faulty" When we understand the difference between the consciousand sub-conscious memory and the mannerin whi ch the latter operates , the difficultyvanishes . Thi s difference and the manner inwhich the sub-conscious memory keeps anaccurate record of our life experiences maybe best understood by an illustration

,as fol

lows : When we go into a field and view thesurrounding landscape

,vibrations in the

ether carries to us a picture of everythingwithin the range of our v i s i on . It is as sadas it is true however

,that “we have eyes and

see not,” as the Savior said . These vibra

tions impinge upon the retina of our eyes ,even to the very smallest details , but theyusually do not penetrate to our consciousness ,and therefore are not remembered . Eventhe most powerful impressions fade incourse of time so that we cannot call themback at will , when they are stored in our conscious memory.

When a photographer goes afield with hiscamera the results which he obtains are dif


1 56 THE R osrcnuorAN MYSTERIES

as the blood passes through the heart,cycle

after cycle, the pictures of our good and evilacts 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 justsubsequent to death . By removal of the seedatom— which corresponds to the sensitizedplate 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 veh icle during oursojourn in purgatory and the first heavenwhere evil is eradicated and good assimilated,so that in a future life the former may serveas conscience to withhold the man from re

peating mistakes of the past, and the latterwill spur us to greater good .

A phenomenon s imilar to the panorama oflife usually takes place where a person isdrowning. People who have been resusci

tated speak of having seen their whole lifein a fla sh . That is because under such cond itions the vital body also leaves the densebody. Of course there is no rupture of thesilver cord

, or life could not be restored .

Unconsciousness follows quickly in drowning,

LIFE AND DEATH 1 57

while in the usual post-mortem review theconsciousness continues until the vital bodycollapses in the same manner that it doeswhen we go to sleep . Then consciousnessceases for a while and the panorama is terminated . Therefore also the time occupiedby the panorama varies with different persons , according to whether the vital bodywasstrong and healthy

, or had become thin andemaciated by protracted illness . The longerthe time spent in review

,and the more quiet

and peaceful the surroundings , the deeperwill be the etching which is made in the desirebody . As already said, that has a most important and far reaching efi ect, for then thesufferings which the spirit will realize inpurgatory on account of bad habits and misdeeds will be much more keen , than if thereis only a slight impression, and in a futurelife the still small voice of conscience wi llwarn 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 outsideconditions , for instance the din and turmofl

of a battle , the harrowing conditions of an

accident or the hysterical wailings of relatives , the distraction prevents it from

reahz


ing an appropriate depth in the etching uponthe desire body. Consequently its post-mor

tem existence becomes vague and ins ipid , thespirit does not harvest fruits of experiencea s it should have done, had it passed out ofthe body in peace and under normal conditions . It would therefore lack incentive togood in a future life

,and miss the warning

against evil which a deep etching of the panorama of life would have given. Thus itsgrowth would be retarded in a very markeddegree , but the beneficent powers in charge ofevolution take certain steps to compensatefor our ignorant treatment of the dying andother untoward circumstances mentioned .

What these steps are , we shall discuss whenconsidering the life of children in heaven, forthe present let it be sufficient to say, that inGod ’s kingdom every evil is always transmuted to a greater good though the process maynot be at once apparent .

P urgatory .

During life the collapse of the vital bodyat night terminated our v iew of the worldabout us

,and caused us to lose ourselves in

unconsciousness of sleep . When the vital



spiritual world than to this present plane ofexistence . Some lose the spiritual sight veryearly

,others retain it for a number of years

and a few keep it all through life, but as thebirth of a child is a death in the spiritualworld and it retains the spiritual sight for atime, so also death here is a birth upon thespiritual plane

,and the newly dead retain a

consciousnes s of thi s world for some timesubsequent to demise .

When one awakes in the Desire World af

ter having passed through aforementionedexperiences , the general feeling seems to beone of relief from a heavy burden, a feelingperhaps akin to that of a diver encased in aheavy rubber suit, a weighty brass helmetupon his head

,leaden soles under hi s feet

and heavy weights of lead upon his breastand back

,confined in his operations on the

bottom of the ocean by a short length of airtube, and able only to move clumsily withdifficulty. When after the day

’s fwork such

a man is hauled to the surface, and divestshimself of his heavy garments and he movesabout with the facility we enjoy here , he mustsurely experience a feeling of great relief.Something like that is felt by the spirit whenit ha s been divested of the mortal coil, and is

LIFE AND DEATH 1 61

able to roam all over the globe instead of being confined to the narrow environment whi chbound it upon earth .

There is also a feeling of relief for thosewho have been ill . Sickness

,such as we know

it, does not exist there . Neither is it necessary to seek food and shelter

, for in thatworld there is neither heat nor cold . Nevertheless , there are many in the purgatorial regions who go to all bothers of housekeeping,eating and drinking just as we do here .George Du Maurier in his novel “Peter Ihbettson ” gives a very good idea of this condition

,in the life lived between the hero and

the Countess of Towers . This novel also illustrates splendidly what has been said of thesub-conscious memory, for Geo . Du Maurierhas somewhere, somehow discovered an easymethod which anyone may apply to do whathe calls “dreaming true . ” By taking a certain position in going to sleep, it is possible,after a little practice

,to compel the appear

ance,in a dream, of any scene in our past

life, which we desire to live over again . Thebook is well worth reading on that account .

When a fiery nebulae has been formed inthe sky and commences to revolve, a littlematter in the center where motion is slowest


commences to crystalize . When it has reacheda certain density it is caught in the swirl

,and

whirled nearer and nearer to the outwardextremity of what has , by that time , becomethe equator of a revolving globe . Then it ishurled into space and discarded from theeconomy of the revolving sun .

Thi s process is not accomplished automatically as scientists would have us believe,an assertion whi ch has been proven in TheR os icrucian Cosmo Conception and otherplaces in our literature . Herbert Spenceralso rejected the nebular theory because itrequired a F irst Cause, whi ch he denied,though unable to form a better hypothesis of

the formation of solar systems ,— but it isaccomplished through the activity of a GreatSpirit

,which we may call G od or by any

other name we choose . As above , so below,

says the Hermetic axiom . Man , who is alesser spirit

,also gathers about himself

spirit-substance,which crystallizes into mat

ter and becomes the visible body which thespiritual sight reveals as placed inside an

aura of finer vehicles . The latter are in constant motion . When the dense body is bornas a child it is extremely soft and flexible .



Robert Louis Stevenson, but is founded uponfacts well known to spiritual investigators .Such cases are extremes of course, but theyare nevertheless possible and we have nu

fortunately laws which convert such possibilities to probabilities in the case of a certainclass of so-called criminals . We refer to lawswhich decree capital punishment as penaltyof murder.

When a man is dangerous he should of

course be restrained , but even apart from the

question of the moral right of a communityto take the life of anyone —which we denys ociety by its very act of retaliatory murderd efeats the very end it would serve

,for if the

vicious murderer is restrained under whatever di scipline is necessary in a prison , for anumber of years until hi s natural death , hewill have forgotten his bitterness against hisvictim and against society, and when hestands as a free spirit in the Desire World

,

he may even by prayer have obtained for

giveness and have become a good Christian .

He will then go on his way rejoicing, andwill in the future life seek to help those whombe hurt here .

When society retaliates and puts him toa violent death shortly after he has commit

LIFE AND DEATH 1 65

ted the crime, he is most likely to feel himself as having been greatly injured

, and not

without cause . Then such a character willusually seek to ‘ get ey en ’

a s he calls it, hewill go about for a long time inciting othersto commi t murder and other crimes . Thenwe have an epidemic of murders in a community, a condition not infrequent .

The regicide in Servia shocked theWesternWorld by wiping out an entire royal house ina most shockingly bloody manner , and theMinister of the Interior was one of the chiefconspirators . Later he wrote his memoirs ,and therein he writes that whenever the con

spirators had tried to win anyone as a re

cruit, they always succeeded when they burned incense . He did not know why , but simply mentioned it as a curious coincidence.To the mystic investigator thematter is perfectly clear . We have shown the necessity ofhaving a vehicle made of thematerials of anyworld wherein we wish to function . We usually obtain a physical vehicle by goingthrough the womb, or perhaps in a fewspecial cases from a particularly good materializing medium,

but where it is only neces

sary to work upon the brain and influencesomeone else to act, we need but a vehIcle

1 66 THE R OSICEUCIAN MYSTERIES

made of such other as may be obtained fromfumes of many different substances . Eachkind attracts different classes of spirits

,and

there is no doubt that the incense burned atmeetings where the conspirators were suc~

cessful was of a low and sensual order andattracted spirits

'

who had a grudge againsthumanity in general and the " ing of Serviain particular . These malcontents were nu

able to injure the " ing himself, but used asubtle influence which helped the conspiratorsin their work . The released murderer whohas a grudge against society on account ofhis execution , may enter low gambling sa~

loons where the fumes of liquor and tobaccofurn ish ample opportunity for working uponthe class of people who congregate in suchplaces

,and the man whose spiritual sight has

been developed is often sadly impressed whenhe sees the subtle influences to which thosewho frequent such places are exposed . It is afact of course , that a man must be of a lowcaliber to be influenced by low thoughts , andthat it is as impossible to incite a person ofbenevolent character to do murder— unlesswe put him into a hypnotic s leep— as tomake a tuning fork which vibrates to C s ingby striking another attuned to the key of G,


1 68 THE R osroEUCIAN MYSTERIES

and more . Yet there is no true satisfaction .

He sees the full glass upon the counter buthis spirit hand is unable to lift it. He suffers tortures of Tantalus until in time herealizes the imposs ibility of gratifying hisbase desire . Then he is free to go on so

far as that vice is concerned . He has beenpurged from that evil without intervention ofan angry deity or a conventional devil withhell ’s flames and pitchfork to administerpunishment, but under the immutable law,

that as we sow so shall we reap, he has suf

fered exactly according to his vice . If hiscraving for drink was of a mild nature , hewould scarcely miss the liquor whi ch he cannot there obtain . If his desires were strongand he simply lived for drink, he would suf

fer veritable tortures of hell without needof actual flames . Thus the pain experiencedin eradication of his vice would be exactlycommensurate with the energy he had expended upon contracting the habit as theforce wherewith a falling stone strikes theearth 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 lawand in His wonderfulmercy and solicitude for our welfare He has

LIFE AND DEATH 1 69

opened the way of repentance and reformwhereby we may obtain forgiveness of sin , a s

taught by the Lord of Love : the Christ . Notindeed 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 hadforced the day of reckoning. The method isas follows

In our explanation concerning the sub-con

scious memory we noted that a record of

every act,thought and word is transmitted

by air and ether into our lungs , thence to theblood

,and finally inscribed upon the tablet of

the heart — a certain little seeda tom, which isthus the book of Recording Angels . It waslater explained how this panorama of life isetched into the desire body and forms the basis of retribution after death . When we havecommitted a wrong and our conscience ao

cuses us in consequence, and this accusationis productive of sincere repentance accom

panied 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 notedthat the panorama of life unwinds backwards

just after death. Later, in the purgatorial


life it again passes before the spiritual visionof the man , who then experiences the exactfeeling of those whom he h as 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 inflictedupon others . Thus he learns to be mercifulinstead of cruel , and to do right instead of

wrong in a future life . But if he awakens toa thorough realization of a wrong previous tohis death ; then , as said , the feeling of sorrowfor his victim and the restitution or redresswhich he gives of his own free will ,makes thesuffering after death unnecessary, hence‘ his sin is forgiven .

’

The R osicrucian Mystery teaching gives ascientificmethod wherebyan aspirant tohigher lifemaypurge himself continually, and thusbe 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 aspossible the scene which took place just before retiring. He then endeavors to impartial

ly view his actions in that scene examiningthem to see whether he did right or wrong. Ifthe latter

,he endeavors to feel and realize as



The same force formed the sparrowThat fashioned man the king ;The God of the wholeGave a spark of soulTo furred and feathered thing.

And I am my brother ’s keeperAnd I will fight his fight,And speak the wordFor beast and birdTill the world shall set things right .

Thus the pupil will continue to review eachscene in reverse order from night till morning

,and to feel rea lly sorry for whatever he

ha s done amiss . He will not neglect to feel

glad either when he comes to a scene wherehe has done well , and the more intensely he

can feel, the more thoroughly he will eradicate the record upon the tablet of the hea rtand sharpen his conscience, so that a s timegoes on from year to year, he will find lesscause for blame and enhance his soul powerenormously. Thus he will grow in a measureimpossible by any less systematic method,and there will be no necessity for hi s stay inpurgatory after death .

Thi s evening exercise and another , for themorning

,if persistently performed day by

LIFE AND DEATH 1 73

day, will in time awaken the spiritual visiona s they improve life . This matter has

, however, been so thoroughly treated in number1 1 of the lecture series : “

Spiritual Sight

and Ins ight; its safe culture and control,

that it is unnecessary to dwell upon the matter further in this place .

The F irst Heaven.

In the first heaven, which is located in thehigher regions of the Desire World

,the pan

orama of life again unrolls and reveals everyscene where we aimed to help or benefit others . They were not felt at the time the spiritwas in the lower regions

,for higher desires

cannot express themselves in the coarse matter composing the lower regions of the Des ire World, but when the spirit ascends tothe first heaven it reaps from each scene allthe good which it expressed in life . It willfeel the gratitude poured out by those whomit helped, if it comes to a scene where itselfreceived a favor from others and was grate

ful, it will experience the gratitude anew .

The sum of all these feelings is there amalgamated into the spirit to serve in a future lifeas incentives to good .


Thus,the soul is purged from evil in pur

gatory , and strengthened in good in the firstheaven . In one region the extract of sufi erings become conscience to deter us from doingwrong

,in the other region the quintessence

of good is transmuted to benevolence and al

truism which are the basis of all true progress . Moreover, purgatory is far from beinga place of punishment, it is perhaps the mostbeneficent realm in nature , for because of

purga tion we a re born innocent life after life .

The tendencies to commit the same evil forwhich we suffered remain with us and temptations to commit the same wrongs will beplaced in our path until we have consciouslyovercome the evi l here , temptation is not sin.

however,the sin is in yielding.

Among the inhabitants of the invisibleworld there is one class which lives a partieularly painful life , sometimes for a greatmany years , namely, the sui cide who tried toplay truant from the school of life . Yet it isnot an angry God or a malevolent devil whoadministers punishment, but an immutablelaw which proportions the sufferings differ~

ently to each individual suicide .

We learned previously,when considering

the World of Thought, that each form in this



enced in consequence of the act of suicide willremain with him in futur e lives and deter himfrom a similar mistake .In the first heaven there is a class who havenot had any purgatorial existence and wholead a particularly joyous life : the children .

Our homes may be saddened almos t beyondendurance, when the little flower is brokenand the sunshine it brought has gone . Butcould we see the beautiful existence whichthese little ones lead , and did we understandthe great benefitswhich accrue to a child fromits limited stay there , our sorrow would be atleast ameliorated in a great measure, and thewound upon our heart would heal morequickly. Besides , as nothing else in theworld happens without a cause, so there isalso a much deeper cause for infant mortality than we are usually aware of, and as we t

awake to the facts of the case, we shall beable to avoid in future the sorrow incident toloss of our little ones .To understand the case properly we mustrevert to the experiences of the dying in thedeath hour . We remember that the panorama of the past life is etched upon the desirebody during a period varying from a fewhours to three and one-half days, just sub se

LIFE AND DEATH 1 77

quent to demise . We recall also,that upon

the depth of this etching depends the clearness of the picture, and that the more vividthis panorama of life, the more intensely willthe spirit suffer in purgatory and feel thejoys 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 deathupon the battlefield

,in an accident or other

untoward circumstances would prevent thespirit from giving all its attention to the panorama of life with the result that there wouldbe a light etching in the desire body, followedby a vague and insipid existence in purgatoryand the first heaven . It was also stated thathysterical lamentations in the death chamberwould produce the same effect.A spirit which had thus escaped sufferingproportionate to its misdeeds , and which hadnot experienced the pleasure commensuratewith the good it had done, would not in a future life have as well developed a consciencea s it ought to have, nor would it be as benevolent as it ought to be, and therefore the life,terminated under conditions over whi ch thespirit had no control, would be partly wasted .

The Great Leaders of humanity therefore


take steps to counteract such a calamity andprevent an injustice . The spirit is broughtto birth , caused to die in childhood, it re-en

ters the Desire World and in the first heavenit is taught the lessons of which it was de

prived previously.

As the first heaven is located in the DesireWorld

,— which is the realm of light and col

or,— where matter is shaped most readily by

thought,the little ones are given wonderful

toys impossible of construction here . Theyare taught to play with colors which workupon their moral character in exactly the

manner each child requires . Anyone who isat all sensitive is affected by the color of hisclothing and surroundings . Some colors havea depressing effect, whi le others inspire uswith energy, and others again soothe andcomfort us . In the Desire World the effectof colors is much more intense . they are muchmore potent factors of good and evil therethan here

,and in thi s color play

,the child

imbibes unconsciously the qualities which itdid not acquire on account of accident or lamentations of relatives . Often it also falls tothe lot of such relatives to care for a child inthe invisible world , or perhaps to give it birthand see it die . Thus they receive just retri



counts for the inane,goody-goody nonsense

of which these things deliver themselves .

When passing from the first to the secondheaven , the spirit experiences the conditionknown and described previously as “TheGreat Silence ,

” where it stands utterly aloneconscious only of its divinity. When that silence is broken there floats in upon the spiritcelestial harmonics of the world of tone

where the second heaven is located . It seemsthen to lave in an ocean of sound and to ex

perience a joy beyond all description andwords

,as it nears its heavenly home— for thi s

is the first of the truly spiritual realms fromwhich the spirit has been exiled during itsearth life and the subsequent post-mortemexistence . In the Desire World its work wascorrective, but in the World of Thought thehuman spirit becomes one with the natureforces and its crea tive activity begins .

Under the law of causation we reap exactlywhat we sow, and it would be wrong to placeone spirit in an environment where there is ascarcity of the necessities of life , where ascorching sun burns the crop and mi llions diefrom famine

,or where the raging flood

sweeps away primitive habitations not bui ltto withstand its ravages , and to bring another

LIFE AND DEATH 1 81

spirit to birth in a land of plenty,with a fer

tile soil which yields a maximum of increasewith a minimum of labor, where the earth isrich in minerals that may be used in industrvto facilitate transportation of products of thesoil from one point to another . If we werethus placed without action or acquiescenceupon our part, there would be no justice, buta s our post-mortem existence in purgatoryand the first heaven is based upon our moralattitude in this life so our activities in thesecond heaven are determined by our mentalaspirations and they produce our futurephysical environment, for in the second b eaven

,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 dreamsand metaphysical speculations here, is not

transformed by death respecting its mentalattitude any more than regarding its moralpropensities .

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 materialaspirations lead them to desire so-called sol

id comforts of hearth and home ; who am to

1 82 THE R osrcnuoIAN MYSTERIES

promote great industries and whose mind isconcerned in trade and commerce

,will build

in heaven a land that will suit their purpose :fertile, immineralized , with navigable riversand sheltered harbors . They will return intime to enjoy upon earth the fruits of theirlabors in the second heaven

,as they reap the

result of their life upon earth in purgatoryand the first heaven .

The Third Heaven .

In the third heaven most people have verylittle consciousness for reasons explained inconnection with the Region of AbstractThought

,for there the third heaven is lo

cated . It is therefore more of a place of waiting where the spirit rests between the timewhen its labors in the secondheaven have beencompleted and the time when it again ex periences the desire for rebirth . But from thi srealm inventors bring down their originalideas ; there the philanthropist obtains theclearest vision of how to realize hi s utopiandreams and the spiritual aspirations of thesaintly minded are given renewed impetus .In time the desires of the spirit for furtherexperiences draws it back to rebirth, and the



been made no evasion is possible during life .

We have free will with regard to the future ,but the past ‘ ma ture

’ destiny we cannot oscape

,as shown by the incident recorded in

The R os icrucian Cosmo Conception,where

the writer Warned a well known Los Angeleslecturer that if he left his home upon a certain day, he would be injured by a conveyance

,in head , neck, breast and shoulders .

The gentleman believed and intended to heedour warning. Nevertheless he went to SierraMadre to lecture upon the fateful day. He

was injured in the places stated by a collisionand later explained : “I thought the twentyeighth was the twenty-nint

When the spirit has made its choice,it de

scends into the second heaven where it is instructed by the Angels and Archangels howto build an archetype of the body which itwill later inhabit upon earth . Also here wenote the operation of the great law of justicewhich decrees that we reap what we sow. Ifour tastes are coarse and sensual , we shallbuild an archetype which will express thesequalities if we are refined and of aesthetictaste

,we shall build an archetype corre

spondingly refined , but no one can obtain abetter body than he can build . Then, as the

LIFE AND DEATH 1 85

architect who builds a house in which he afterwards lives, will suffer discomfort if heneglects to properly ventilate it

, so also thespirit feels disease in a poorly constructedbody, and as the architect learns to avoidmistakes and remedy the short-comings ofone 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 R egion of Concrete Thought, thespirit also draws to itselfmaterials for a newmind . As a magnet draws iron filings butleaves other substances alone, so also eachspirit draws only the kind ofmind-stuff whichit used in its former life, plus that which ithas learned to use in its present post-mortemstate . Then it descends into the DesireWorld where it gathers material for a newdesire body such as will express appropriately its moral characteristics , and later itattracts a certain amount of ether which isbuilt into the mold of the archetype con

structed in the second heaven and acts as cc

ment between the solids , liquids and gaseousmaterial from the bodies of parents which

forms the dense phys ical body of a child, andin 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 densephysical body has had the longest evolution

,

and as a shoemaker who has worked at histrade for a number of years is more expertthan an apprentice and can make better shoesand quicker, so also the spirit which has builtmany physical bodies produces them qui ckly,but the v ital bodv is a later acquisition of thehuman being. Therefore we are not so expertin building that vehicle . Consequently ittakes longer to construct that from the materials not used up in making the lining of the

archetype, and the vital body is not born untilthe seventh year . Then the period of rapid

growth commences . The desire body is astill later addition of composite man, and isnot brought to birth until the fourteenth yearwhen the desire nature expresses itself moststrongly during so-called ‘ hot ’ youth , and themind

,which makes man man

,does not come

to birth until the twenty-first year . In lawthat age is recognized as the earliest time heis fitted to exercise a franchi se .



of morning and dwell in the uttermost partsof the sea, even there shall thy hand leadme.

When , in the dawn of Being, G od the F a th

er enunciated TheWord, and TheHoly Spir

itmoved upon the sea of homogeneous Virg inMa tter, primeval Darkness was turned to

Light. That is therefore the prime manifes

tation of Deity, and a study of the principlesof Light will reveal to the mystic intuition awonderful source of spiritual inspiration . As

it would take us too far afield from our subjcet we shall not enter into an elucidation ofthat theme here, except so far a s to give anelementary idea of how divine Life energizesthe human frame

,and stimulates to action .

Truly,God is ONE and undivided , He en

folds withinHis Being all that is , as the whitelight embraces all colors . But He appearsthree-fold in manifestation , as the white lightis refracted in three primary colors : Blue ,Yellow and Red . Wherever we see these colors they are emblematical of the Father, Sonand Holy Spirit . These three primary raysof divine Life are diffused or radiatedthrough the sun and produce Life, Consciousness and F orm upon each of the seven lightbearers

,the planets , whi ch are called

“the

LIFE AND DEATH 1 89

Seven Spirits before the Throne . Theirnames are : Mercury

,Venus

, Earth, Mars,Jupiter, Saturn and Uranus . Bode ’s lawproves that Neptune does not belong to oursolar system and the reader is referred to“Simplified, Scientific Astrology” by thepresent writer, for mathematical demonstration of this contention .

Each of the seven planets receives the lightof the sun in a diffeernt measure, accordingto its proximity to the central orb and theconstitution of its atmosphere

,and the be

ings upon each, according to their stage of

development,have affinity for some of the

solar rays . They absorb the color or colorscongruous to them

,and reflect the remainder

upon the other planets . This reflected raybears with it an impulse of the nature of thebeings with whi ch it has been in contact.Thus the divine Light and Life comes toeach planet

,either directly from the sun, or

reflected from its six sister planets , and a s

the summer breeze which has been waftedover blooming fields carries upon its silentinvis ible wings the blended fragrance of amultitude of flowers , so also the subtle influ

ences from the garden of G od bring to us thecommingled impulses of all the Spirits and

1 90 THE R OSICRUCIAN MYSTEEIES

in that varicolored light we live and move andhave our being.

The rays whi ch come directly from the sunare productive of spiritual illumination

, the

reflected rays from other planets make foradded consciousness and moral developmentand the rays reflected by way of the moongive physical growth .

But as each planet can only absorb a certain quantity of one ormore colors accordingto the general stage of evolution there

, so

each being upon earth : mineral,plant

,animal

and man can only absorb and thrive upon acertain quantity of the various rays projected upon the earth . The remainder do not affeet it or produce sensation, any more thanthe blind are conscious of light and colorwhi ch exists everywhere around them.

Therefore each being is di fferently affectedby the stellar rays and the science of Astrology a fundamental truth in nature, of enormous benefit in the attainment of spiritualgrowth .

F rom a horoscopic figure in mystic scriptwe may learn our own strength and weakness,with the path best suited to our development,or we may see the tendencies of those friendswho come to us as chi ldren, and what traits



necessary to erect a horoscope . Many con

struct a horoscope in such an involved man

ner,so “fearfully and wonderfully made”

that it is unreadable to themselves or others,

while a simple figure, easy of reading may beconstructed by anyone who knows howto addand subtract. This method has been thoroughly elucidated in Simplified ScientificAstrology which is a complete text book ,though small and inexpensive, and any parent who has the welfare of his or her childrenthoroughly at heart should endeavor to learnfor themselves, for even though their abilitymay not compare with that of a professionalastrologer, their intimate knowledge of thechild and their deep interest wi ll more thancompensate for such lack and enable them to

see most deeply into the child ’s character bymeans of its horoscope .

Educa tion of Children .

Respecting the birth of the various vehicles and the influence which that has uponlife

,we may say : that during the time from

birth to the seventh year the lines of growt hof the physical body are determined

,and as

it has been noted that sound is builder both

LIFE "AND DEATH 1 93

in the great and small, we may well imaginethat rhythm must have an enormous influence upon the growing and sensitive litt lechild ’s organism. The apostle John in thefirst chapter of his gospel expresses thi s ideamystically in the beautiful words : “In thebeginning was the WORD andwithout it was not anything made that wasmade and the word became flesh”

the word is a rhythmic sound,whi ch issued

from the Creator, reverberated through theuniverse and marshaled countless millions ofatoms into the multiplex variety of shapesand 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 theuniverse and which is still building and everbuilding though unheard by our insensitiveears . But though we do not hear that won .

derful celestial sound, we may also work uponthe little child ’s body by terrestrial music,and though the nursery rhymes are withoutsense

,they are nevertheless bearers of awon

derful 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 incorpo

rated into a child ’s daily life, the stronger

1 94 THE R osrcauoIAN MYSTERIES

and healthier will be its body in future years .There are two mottoes which apply duringthis period, one to the child and the other tothe parent : Ex ample and Imita tion . No creature under heaven is more imitative than alittle child

,and its conduct in after years wi ll

depend largely upon the example set by itsparents during its early life . It is no use totell the child “not to mind,

” it has no mindwherewith to discriminate, but follows itsnatural tendency

,as water flows down a hill,

when it imitates . Therefore it behoovesevery parent to remember from morning tillnight that watchful eyes are upon him all thetime waiting but for him to act in order tofollow his example .

It is of the utmost importance that thechild ’s clothing should be very loose, partienlarly the clothing of little boys , as chafinggarments often produce vices which follow aman through life .If anyone should attempt to forcibly ex~

tract a babe from the protecting womb of itsmother

,the outrage would result in death ,

because the babe had not yet arrived at a maturity sufficient to endure impacts of the

Physical World . In the three septenary periods which follow birth, the invisible vehi



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 itselfmore as belonging to a family, and sub ordi

nate to the wishes of its parents than afterthe fourteenth year . The reason is thi s : Inthe throat of the fcetus and the young childthere is a gland called the thymus gland

,

which is largest before birth, then graduallydiminishes through the years of chi ldhoodand finally disappears at ages which vary aocording to the characteristics of the child.

Anatomists have been puzzled as to the function of this organ and have not yet come toany settled conclusion, but it has been suggested that before development of the redmarrow bones

,the child is not able to manu

facture its own blood , and that therefore thethymus gland contains an essence , suppliedby the parents , upon whi ch the chi ld maydraw during infancy and chi ldhood, till ableto manufacture its own blood . That theoryis approximately true, and as the familyblood flows in the chi ld , it looks upon itself aspart of the family and not as an Ego . But

the moment it commences to manufacture itsown blood, the Ego asserts itself, it is no

LIFE AND DEATH 1 97

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 havesown . The mind has not yet been born

,noth

ing 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 thispoint in life self-assertion, the feeling

‘I am

myself,’i s stronger than at any other time

and therefore authority should give place toAdv ice, the parent should practice the utmosttolerance , for at no time in life is a human being as much in need of sympathy as duringthe seven years from fourteen to twenty-onewhen the desire nature is rampant and nu

checked .

It is a crime to inflict corporeal punishment upon a child at any age . Might is neverright

, and as the stronger, parents should always have compassion for the weaker . Butthere is one feature of corporeal punishmentwhich makes it particularly dangerous to ap

ply it to the youth : namely, that it wakens thepass ional nature which is already perhaps beyond the control of a growing boy .

If we whip a dog, we shall soon break itsspirit and transform it into a cringing cur,

1 98 THE R OSICEUCIAN MYSTERIES

and it is deplorable that some parents seemto regard it as their mission in life to breakthe spirit of their children with the rule of

the rod . If there is one universal ’lack amongthe human race which is more apparent thanany other, it is lack of will , and as parents wemay remedy the evil in a large measure byguiding the wills of our chi ldren along suchlines as dictated by our own more maturereason , so that we help them to grow a backbone instead of a wishbone with which un

fortunately most of us are afflicted . Therefore

,never whip a child, when punishment is

necessary, correct by withholding favors orwithdrawing privileges .At the twenty-first year the birth of themind transforms the youth into a man or awoman fully equipped to commence hi s ownlife in the school of ex pen ence.

Thus we have followed the human spiritaround a life cycle from death to birth andmaturity

,we have seen how immutable law

governs his every step and how he is everencompassed by the loving care of the Greatand Glorious Beings who are the ministers ofG od . The method of his future developmentwill be explained in a later work which willdeal with “The Christian Mystic Initiation .


TH E R O SICR UC IAN

COSMO -CONCEPTION

MYSTIC CHR ISTIANITY

AN ELEMENTAR Y TR EATISE UP ON

MAN’S PAST EVOLUTION,

PRESENT CONSTITU

TION AND FUTURE DEVELOPMENT

BY

MA" HEINDEL

ITs MESSAG E AND MISSION.

A SANE MIND .

A SOFT HEART .

A SOUND BODY .

THIRD ED ITIONR evised , Enla rged and Index ed .

PRICE ONE DOLLAR AND FIFTY CENTS.

POST FREE .

THE R OSICRUCIAN COSMO CONCEPTION

Third Ed it ion .

The handsome symb oli cal cover des ign is stampedin red , bla ck and gold ,edges a lso g i lt . Price

This book now conta ins 602 pages 1 2-mo . and all

pages from p . 51 4 have been rewritten, the subject ofIn it iat ion has been much more thorough ly treatedthan in the earl i er ed itions and a number of pageshave been devo ted to an explanation of the Symbo l ismof the R ose Cross .

Las t , but no t l east , an index of about 60 pages hasbeen added , wh ich is so thorough that it might a lmostbe ca l l ed a Concordance .The Index is arrang ed with pa rticu lar view to faci l i

ta te topica l study , b ut at the same time a lphabetica lo rder ha s been adhered to a s nea rly as poss ib le . W e

add an a lphabetica l l ist of the wo rds indexed .

O ppo s ite each word in th is l ist wil l b e found a numb er, which refers to a page in the Index. On that pagethe wo rd is grouped with o thers perta ining to the

same topic .

The s tudent is particularly requested to note theconsecut ive arrangement of references . For instance,under the head ing ,

“V ita l Body,” the first reference

tel ls where tha t veh ic le had its first inception , the la std irects to a page wh ich treats of its fina l spiritualiz at ion , and the interven ing references po int in orderlysuccess ion to the places wh ere its gradua l unfo ldmentis described .

rf~;These references . in themselves , form an

excell ent syl labus of the vita l body .

By d i l igent and intel l igent use of this index the R o sicrucian Cosmo Conception wi l l b e found a most com

plete and exhaustive reference l ibrary ,and we recom

mend stud ents to study the index as much as the book .

The mere reading o f references wil l often c l ear com

prehension of a subject and revea l much that IS hld

den in a genera l read ing of the book .

lNFORMATlON

BUREAU

The R osicrucian fi bilusopbp

(hummus sub gunners432 pp. 1 2 mo.

, style and fini sh l ike this book : handsomesymbol ical cover stamped in red, black and gold . Edges

ful l gold, re-enforced and very durable binding. Price byma ilMany questions were asked the writer after his lectures

in various parts of the United States and Europe ; questionswhich dealt with and probed deeply into every phase of thesoul-l ife here and Hereafter. These questions he savedand later selected 1 89 of them,

which were of most universal interest for compilation into a book of occult information and ready reference .It is a book wh ich ought to be in the l ibrary of every

occult student, the handsome style of this publ ication will

make it much appreciated as a“gift-book

”and the merely

nominal price is an incentive to liberal ity.


I I

lawm anINTERPRETATION OF

I I I

«thrusttamtpANCIENT TRUTHS IN MODERN DRESS

The price of these lectures is 5 cents each plus 1 centpostage for each copy.

No . 1 .

“THE R IDDLE OF LIFE AND DEATH .

” Presenting a solution which is both scientific and rel igious.

No. 2 .

“WHERE ARE THE DEAD"”

No . 3 .

“SPIRITUAL SIGHT AND TH E SPIRITUAL

WORLDS.” Showing that we have a latent “sixth

sense,”and what it opens up to us when cu ltivated .

No . 4 . SLEEP, DREAMS, TRANCE HYPNOTISM, MEDIUMSH IP AND INSANITY .

”

No . 5.

“DEATH AND LIFE IN PURGATORY . Describ

ing the method of death and purgation, a lso how immutable law and not an avenging Deity transmutesthe evil acts of l ife to everlasting good .

No. 6.

“LIFE AND ACTIVITY IN HEAVEN. Showing

how the Human Spirit assimi lates the G ood of its

past l ife and creates its environment for a future rebirth, also how it prepares a new body .

No. 7.

“BIRTH A FOURPCLD EVENT .

”Describing the

antenata l preparations for birth, and the spiritua lchanges which inaugurate the period of excess ivephysica l growth in the 7th year, the cause of pubertyat 1 4 and maturity at 2 1 . This knowledge is abso

la tely essentia l to the right care of a chi ld .

No . 8 .

“THE SCIENCE OF NUTRITION,HEALTH AND

PROTRACTED YOUTH .

”Showing themateria l cause of

early death and the obvious prophylactic.

No . 9 .

“THE ASTRONOMICAL ALLECCRIEs OF THEBIBLE.

No . 1 0.

“ASTROLOG Y ; ITS SCOPE AND LIMITATIONS.

”

Showing the spiritua l side Of astrology, howit enablesthose who study it to help themselves and others.

NO. 1 1 . SPIRITUAL SIGHT AND INSIGHT Its culture, control and legitimate use, giving a definite andsafe method Of attainment.

NO . 1 2 .

“PARSIFAL.

” Wagner’s famous Mystic Music

Drama,a mine of inspiration to spiritual efiort.

NO . 1 3 .

“THE ANGELS AS FACTORS IN EVOLUTION.

Showing just what part the Angels, Archangels,Cherubim, Seraph im, etc.

,play in the Drama of Life.

NO . 1 4.

“LUCIEER

,TEMPTER OR BENEFACTOR Show

ing the origin and themission Of pain and sorrow.

NO . 1 5.

“THE MYSTERY OE G OLGOTHA AND THECLEANSING BLOOD.

”A rational explanation which

satisfies head and heart al ike .NO . 1 6.

“THE STAR OF BETHLEHEM ; A MYSTICFACT.

No . 1 7.

“THE MYSTERY OF THE HOLY G RAIL. The

way to attainment.NO. 1 8.

“THE LORD’S PRAYER. Showing the esotericside

,and howit appl ies to the seven-fold constitution

of man .

No . 1 9 . THE COMING FORCE ; VRIL OR WHAT"NO . 20 .

“FELLOWSHIP AND THE COMING RACE.

Showing why the B ible contains both the "ewish and

the Christian R el igions, and why both combined are

pecu l iarly adapted to the spiritua l needs of theWest

ern World and why "esus was born a "ew.

é u'

entitir gstrulogp

This is a complete book Of instruction. It has a to

set Of tables necessary to learn howto cast a horoscope inthoroughly scientific manner

, and the rules have beensimpl ified that abil ity to add and subtract is the onlymathmatieal knowledge required . Price 350 .

Th is booklet and the simpl ified method it conta inscasting a horoscope in a thoroughly sc ientific manner

publ ished in order to enable anyone who can add and SD

tract to do the work himself, instead Of relying on otherThus hewil l Obta in a deeper knowledge Of the causes whi tare Operative in his l ife than any professional astrologwho is a stranger can give.The astrologer who works in his own fami ly or amon

his neighbors and friends, and works for love, can do moto help them than the most accompl ished profession:astrologer who is, of course, unable to see as deeply inttheir conditions.

Seeing that such are the views Of thewriter, hewishes Istatemost emphatical ly that he does not cast horoscopes anwil l not consent to do so under any circumstances. E

teaches astrology free Of charge, as part of the spirituphi losophywh ich he has espoused, for the same reason thehe lectures on other phases of occult knowledge—to he"those who want to help themselves .


THE PLANETARY

HOUR DIALSHOW S AT A G LANCE the P lanets that ru l e eachhour o f the day , and the influence they exert .

A W ONDER FUL DEV ICE arranged in harmonywith laws d isco vered thousands o f years ago by Anc ient Cha ld ean and Egypt ian Astro logers , y et

c l ea red o f a ll mystery and put in shape tha t all mayread and understand .

INVALUABLE, for it tel ls how to make use of Nature ’s laws at Critica l Moments o f our l ives ; accurately and qu ickly , po inting out the ha rmo nies and

d isco rds ; the be st time to bring the various a ffa irsof l ife to a succes sfu l issue .

EVERY MOVE IN LIFE may be made in ha rmonywith nature ’s laws . Learn the l ines of l east res istance .

SIMPLE , INSTRUCT IVE, P R OF ITABLE . Anyo ne abl e to read can use and apply it to his owncase . It Marks Your Fortunate Hours .

W ILL LAST A LIFET IME

PRICE 50 CENTSPOSTPAID

TheSimplex Publishing Co .

Why I Am a Rosicrucian - Forgotten Books

Documents