The Rosicrucian Mysteries

The Jews believed in the Doctrine of Rebirth or they would not have asked John the Baptist if he were Elijah, as recorded in the first chapter of John. The Apostles of Christ also held the belief as we may see from the incident recorded in the sixteenth chapter of Matthew where the Christ asked them the question: “Whom do men say that I the Son of Man am?” The Apostles replied: “Some say that Thou art John the Baptist; some, Elias; and others Jeremias or one of the Prophets.” Upon this occasion the Christ tacitly assented to the teaching of Rebirth because He did not correct the disciples as would have been His plain duty in His capacity as teacher, when the pupils entertained a mistaken idea.

But to Nicodemus He said unequivocally: “Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God” and in the eleventh chapter of Matthew, the fourteenth verse, He said, speaking of John the Baptist: “this [pg 047] is Elijah,” in the seventeenth chapter of Matthew, the twelfth verse, He said: “Elijah has come already and they knew him not, but have done to him whatsoever they listed, ... then the disciples understood that he spoke to them of John the Baptist.”

Thus we maintain that the Doctrine of Rebirth offers the only solution to the problem of life which is in harmony with the laws of nature, which answers the ethical requirements of the case and permits us to love God without blinding our reason to the inequalities of life and the varying circumstances which give to a few the ease and comfort, the health and wealth, which are denied to the many.

The theory of Heredity advanced by Materialists applies only to the form, for as a carpenter uses material from a certain pile of lumber to build a house in which he afterwards lives, so does the spirit take the substance wherewith to build its house from the parents. The carpenter cannot build a house of hard wood from spruce lumber and the spirit also must build a body which is like those from which the material was taken, but the theory of Heredity does not apply upon the moral plane, for it is a notorious fact, that in the rogues galleries of America and [pg 048] Europe there is no case where both father and son are represented. Thus the sons of criminals, though they have the tendencies to crime, keep out of the clutches of the law. Neither will Heredity hold good upon the plane of the intellect, for many cases may be cited where a genius and an idiot spring from 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 the facts of life.

The law of Rebirth coupled with its companion law, the law of Causation does that. When we die after one life, we return to earth later, under circumstances determined by the manner in which we lived before. The gambler is drawn to pool parlors and race tracks to associate with others of like taste, the musician is attracted to the concert halls and music studios, by congenial spirits, and the returning Ego also carries with it its likes and dislikes which cause it to seek parents among the class to which it belongs.

But then someone will point to cases where we find people of entirely opposite tastes living lives of torture, because grouped in the same family, and forced by circumstances to stay there contrary to their wills. But that does not vitiate the law in the slightest, in each life we contract certain obligations which cannot then be fulfilled. Perhaps we have run away from a duty such as the care of an invalid relative and have met death without coming to a realization of our mistake. That relative upon the other hand may have suffered severely from our neglect, and have stored up a bitterness against us before death terminates the suffering. Death and the subsequent removal to another environment does not pay our debts in this life, any more than the removal from the city where we now live to another place will pay the debts we have contracted prior to our removal. It is therefore quite possible that the two who have injured each other as described, may find themselves members of the same family. Then, whether they remember the past grudge or not, the old enmity will assert itself and cause them to hate anew until the consequent discomfort forces them to tolerate each other, and perhaps [pg 050] later they may learn to love where they hated.

The question also arises in the mind of inquirers: If we have been here before why do we not remember? And the answer is, that while most people are not aware of how their previous existences were spent, there are others who have a very distinct recollection of previous lives. A friend of the writer's for instance, when living in France, one day started to read to her son about a certain city where they were then going upon a bicycle tour, and the boy exclaimed: you do not need to tell me about that mother. I know that city, I lived there and was killed! He then commenced to describe the city and also a certain bridge. Later he took his mother to that bridge and showed her the spot where he had met death centuries before. Another friend travelling in Ireland saw a scene which she recognized and she also described to the party the scene around the bend of the road which she had never seen in this life, so it must have been a memory from a previous life. Numerous other instances could be given where such minor flashes of memory reveal to us glimpses from a past life. The verified case in which a little [pg 051] three year old girl in Santa Barbara described her life and death has been given in the Rosicrucian Cosmo Conception. It is perhaps the most conclusive evidence as it hinges on the veracity of a child too young to have learned deception.

This theory of life does not rest upon speculation however, it is one of the first facts of life demonstrated to the pupil of a Mystery school. He is taught to watch a child in the act of dying, also, to watch it in the invisible world from day to day, until it comes to a new birth a year or two later. Then he knows with absolute certainty that we return to earth to reap in a future life what we now sow.

The reason for taking a child to watch in preference to an adult, is, that the child is reborn very quickly, for its short life on earth has borne but few fruits and these are soon assimilated, while the adult who has lived a long life, and had much experience remains in the invisible worlds for centuries, so that the pupil could not watch him from death to rebirth. The cause of infant mortality will be explained later, here we merely desire to emphasize the fact that it is within the range of possibilities of every one without exception [pg 052] to become able to know at first hand that which is here taught.

The average interval between two earth-lives is about a thousand years. It is determined by the movement of the sun known to astronomers as precession of the equinox, by which the sun moves through one of the signs of the Zodiac in about 2100 years. During that time the conditions upon earth have changed so much that the spirit will find entirely new experiences here, and therefore it returns.

The Great Leaders of evolution always obtain the maximum benefit from each condition designed by them, and as the experiences in the same social conditions are very different in the case of a man from what they are for a woman, the human spirit takes birth twice during the 2100 years measured by the precession of the equinox as already explained, it is born once as a man and another time as a woman. Such is the rule, but it is subject to whatever modifications may be necessary to facilitate reaping what the spirit has sown, as required under the law of Causation which works hand in hand with the law of Rebirth. Thus, at times a spirit may be brought to birth long ere the thousand [pg 053] years have expired, in order to fulfill a certain mission, or it may be detained in the invisible worlds after the time when it should have come to birth according to the strict requirements of a blind law. The laws of nature are not that however. They are Great Intelligences who always subordinate minor considerations to higher ends, and under their beneficent guidance we are constantly progressing from life to life under conditions exactly suited to each individual, until in time we shall attain to a higher evolution and become Supermen.