The Rosicrucian Mysteries

To understand the case properly we must revert to the experiences of the dying in the death hour. We remember that the panorama of the past life is etched upon the desire body during a period varying from a few hours to three and one-half days, just subsequent [pg 177] to demise. We recall also, that upon the depth of this etching depends the clearness of the picture, and that the more vivid this panorama of life, the more intensely will the spirit suffer in purgatory and feel the joys of heaven; also, that the greater the suffering in purgatory the stronger the conscience in the next life.

It was explained how the horrors of death upon the battlefield, in an accident or other untoward circumstances would prevent the spirit from giving all its attention to the panorama of life with the result that there would be a light etching in the desire body, followed by a vague and insipid existence in purgatory and the first heaven. It was also stated that hysterical lamentations in the death chamber would produce the same effect.

A spirit which had thus escaped suffering proportionate to its misdeeds, and which had not experienced the pleasure commensurate with the good it had done, would not in a future life have as well developed a conscience as it ought to have, nor would it be as benevolent as it ought to be, and therefore the life, terminated under conditions over which the spirit had no control, would be partly wasted. The Great Leaders of humanity therefore [pg 178] take steps to counteract such a calamity and prevent an injustice. The spirit is brought to birth, caused to die in childhood, it re-enters the Desire World and in the first heaven it is taught the lessons of which it was deprived previously.

As the first heaven is located in the Desire World,—which is the realm of light and color,—where matter is shaped most readily by thought, the little ones are given wonderful toys impossible of construction here. They are taught to play with colors which work upon their moral character in exactly the manner each child requires. Anyone who is at all sensitive is affected by the color of his clothing and surroundings. Some colors have a depressing effect, while others inspire us with energy, and others again soothe and comfort us. In the Desire World the effect of colors is much more intense, they are much more potent factors of good and evil there than here, and in this color play, the child imbibes unconsciously the qualities which it did not acquire on account of accident or lamentations of relatives. Often it also falls to the lot of such relatives to care for a child in the invisible world, or perhaps to give it birth and see it die. Thus they receive just retribution [pg 179] for the wrong committed. As wars cease, and man learns to be more careful of life, and also how to care for the dying, infant mortality, which now is so appalling, will decrease.

When both the good and evil of a life has been extracted, the spirit discards its desire body and ascends to the second heaven. The desire body then commences to disintegrate as the physical body and the vital body have done, but it is a peculiarity of desire stuff, that once it has been formed and inspired with life, it persists for a considerable time. Even after that life has fled it lives a semi-conscious, independent life. Sometimes it is drawn by magnetic attraction to relatives of the spirit whose clothing it was, and at spiritualistic seances these shells generally impersonate the departed spirit and deceive its relatives. As the panorama of the past life is etched into the shells they have a memory of incidents in connection with these relatives, which facilitates the deception. But as the intelligence has fled, they are of course unable to give any true counsel, and that accounts [pg 180] for the inane, goody-goody nonsense of which these things deliver themselves.

When passing from the first to the second heaven, the spirit experiences the condition known and described previously as “The Great Silence,” where it stands utterly alone conscious only of its divinity. When that silence is broken there floats in upon the spirit celestial harmonies of the world of tone where the second heaven is located. It seems then to lave in an ocean of sound and to experience a joy beyond all description and words, as it nears its heavenly home—for this is the first of the truly spiritual realms from which the spirit has been exiled during its earth life and the subsequent post-mortem existence. In the Desire World its work was corrective, but in the World of Thought the human spirit becomes one with the nature forces and its creative activity begins.

Under the law of causation we reap exactly what we sow, and it would be wrong to place one spirit in an environment where there is a scarcity of the necessities of life, where a scorching sun burns the crop and millions die from famine, or where the raging flood sweeps away primitive habitations not built to withstand its ravages, and to bring another [pg 181] spirit to birth in a land of plenty, with a fertile soil which yields a maximum of increase with a minimum of labor, where the earth is rich in minerals that may be used in industry to facilitate transportation of products of the soil from one point to another. If we were thus placed without action or acquiescence upon our part, there would be no justice, but as our post-mortem existence in purgatory and the first heaven is based upon our moral attitude in this life so our activities in the second heaven are determined by our mental aspirations and they produce our future physical environment, for in the second heaven, the spirit becomes part of the nature forces which work upon the earth and change its climate, flora and fauna. A spirit of an indolent nature, who indulges in day dreams and metaphysical speculations here, is not transformed by death respecting its mental attitude any more than regarding its moral propensities. It will dream away time in heaven, glorying in its sights and sounds. Thus it will neglect to work upon its future country and return to a barren and arid land.

Spirits, on the other hand, whose material aspirations lead them to desire so-called solid comforts of hearth and home, who aim to [pg 182] promote great industries and whose mind is concerned in trade and commerce, will build in heaven a land that will suit their purpose: fertile, immineralized, with navigable rivers and sheltered harbors. They will return in time to enjoy upon earth the fruits of their labors in the second heaven, as they reap the result of their life upon earth in purgatory and the first heaven.

In the third heaven most people have very little consciousness for reasons explained in connection with the Region of Abstract Thought, for there the third heaven is located. It is therefore more of a place of waiting where the spirit rests between the time when its labors in the second heaven have been completed and the time when it again experiences the desire for rebirth. But from this realm inventors bring down their original ideas; there the philanthropist obtains the clearest vision of how to realize his utopian dreams and the spiritual aspirations of the saintly minded are given renewed impetus.

In time the desires of the spirit for further experiences draws it back to rebirth, and the [pg 183] Great Celestial Beings who are known in the Christian Religion as Recording Angels, assist the spirit to come to birth in the place best suited to give it the experience necessary to further unfold its powers and possibilities.

We have all been here many times and in different families, we have had relations of varying nature with many different people and usually there are several families among whom we may seek re-embodiment to work out our self-generated destiny and reap what we have sown in former life. If there are no special reasons why we should take birth in any particular family among certain friends or foes, the spirit is allowed to choose its own place of birth. Thus it may be said that most of us are in our present places by our own prenatal choice.

In order to assist us in making that choice the Recording Angels call up before the spirit's vision a panorama in general outlines of each of the offered lives. This panorama will show what part of our past debts we are to pay, and what fruits we may be expected to reap in the coming life.

The spirit is left free to choose between the several lives offered. But once a choice has [pg 184] been made no evasion is possible during life. We have free will with regard to the future, but the past “mature” destiny we cannot escape, as shown by the incident recorded in The Rosicrucian Cosmo Conception, where the writer warned a well known Los Angeles lecturer 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 heed our warning. Nevertheless he went to Sierra Madre to lecture upon the fateful day. He was injured in the places stated by a collision and later explained: “I thought the twenty-eighth was the twenty-ninth.”

When the spirit has made its choice, it descends into the second heaven where it is instructed by the Angels and Archangels how to build an archetype of the body which it will later inhabit upon earth. Also here we note the operation of the great law of justice which decrees that we reap what we sow. If our tastes are coarse and sensual, we shall build an archetype which will express these qualities; if we are refined and of aesthetic taste, we shall build an archetype correspondingly refined, but no one can obtain a better body than he can build. Then, as the [pg 185] architect who builds a house in which he afterwards lives, will suffer discomfort if he neglects to properly ventilate it, so also the spirit feels disease in a poorly constructed body, and as the architect learns to avoid mistakes and remedy the short-comings of one house when building another, so also the spirit which suffers from defects in its body, learns in time to build better and better vehicles.

In the Region of Concrete Thought, the spirit also draws to itself materials for a new mind. As a magnet draws iron filings but leaves other substances alone, so also each spirit draws only the kind of mind-stuff which it used in its former life, plus that which it has learned to use in its present post-mortem state. Then it descends into the Desire World where it gathers material for a new desire body such as will express appropriately its moral characteristics, and later it attracts a certain amount of ether which is built into the mold of the archetype constructed in the second heaven and acts as cement between the solids, liquids and gaseous material from the bodies of parents which forms the dense physical body of a child, and in due time the latter is brought to birth.

It must not be imagined, however, that when the little body of a child has been born, the process of birth is completed. The dense physical body has had the longest evolution, and as a shoemaker who has worked at his trade for a number of years is more expert than an apprentice and can make better shoes and quicker, so also the spirit which has built many physical bodies produces them quickly, but the vital body is a later acquisition of the human being. Therefore we are not so expert in building that vehicle. Consequently it takes longer to construct that from the materials not used up in making the lining of the archetype, and the vital body is not born until the seventh year. Then the period of rapid growth commences. The desire body is a still later addition of composite man, and is not brought to birth until the fourteenth year when the desire nature expresses itself most strongly during so-called “hot” youth, and the mind, which makes man man, does not come to birth until the twenty-first year. In law that age is recognized as the earliest time he is fitted to exercise a franchise.

This knowledge is of the utmost importance to parents, as a proper understanding of the development which should take place in each of the septenary epochs enables the educator to work intelligently with nature and thus fulfill more thoroughly the trust of a parent than those who are ignorant of the Rosicrucian Mystery Teaching. We shall therefore devote the remaining pages to an elucidation of this matter and of the importance of the knowledge of astrology upon the part of the parent.

“God is Light,” says the Bible, and we are unable to conceive of a grander simile of His Omnipresence, or the mode of His manifestation. Even the greatest telescopes have failed to reach the boundaries of light, though they reveal to us stars millions of miles from the earth, and we may well ask ourselves, as did the Psalmist of old: Whither shall I flee from Thy Presence? If I ascend into heaven Thou art there, If I make my bed in the grave (the Hebrew word sheol means grave and not hell), Thou art there, If I take the wings [pg 188] of morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there shall thy hand lead me.

When, in the dawn of Being, God the Father enunciated The Word, and The Holy Spirit moved upon the sea of homogeneous Virgin Matter, primeval Darkness was turned to Light. That is therefore the prime manifestation of Deity, and a study of the principles of Light will reveal to the mystic intuition a wonderful source of spiritual inspiration. As it would take us too far afield from our subject we shall not enter into an elucidation of that theme here, except so far as to give an elementary idea of how divine Life energizes the human frame and stimulates to action.

Truly, God is ONE and undivided, He enfolds within His Being all that is, as the white light embraces all colors. But He appears three-fold in manifestation, as the white light is refracted in three primary colors: Blue, Yellow and Red. Wherever we see these colors they are emblematical of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. These three primary rays of divine Life are diffused or radiated through the sun and produce Life, Consciousness and Form upon each of the seven light-bearers, the planets, which are called “the [pg 189] Seven Spirits before the Throne.” Their names are: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn and Uranus. Bode's law proves that Neptune does not belong to our solar system and the reader is referred to “Simplified Scientific Astrology” by the present writer, for mathematical demonstration of this contention.

Each of the seven planets receives the light of the sun in a different measure, according to its proximity to the central orb and the constitution of its atmosphere, and the beings upon each, according to their stage of development, have affinity for some of the solar rays. They absorb the color or colors congruous to them, and reflect the remainder upon the other planets. This reflected ray bears with it an impulse of the nature of the beings with which it has been in contact.

Thus the divine Light and Life comes to each planet, either directly from the sun, or reflected from its six sister planets, and as the summer breeze which has been wafted over blooming fields carries upon its silent invisible wings the blended fragrance of a multitude of flowers, so also the subtle influences from the garden of God bring to us the commingled impulses of all the Spirits and [pg 190] in that varicolored light we live and move and have our being.

But as each planet can only absorb a certain quantity of one or more colors according to the general stage of evolution there, so each being upon earth: mineral, plant, animal and man can only absorb and thrive upon a certain quantity of the various rays projected upon the earth. The remainder do not affect it or produce sensation, any more than the blind are conscious of light and color which exist everywhere around them. Therefore each being is differently affected by the stellar rays and the science of Astrology a fundamental truth in nature, of enormous benefit in the attainment of spiritual growth.

From a horoscopic figure in mystic script we may learn our own strength and weakness, with the path best suited to our development, or we may see the tendencies of those friends who come to us as children, and what traits [pg 191] are dormant in them. Thus we shall know clearly how to discharge our duty as parents, by repressing evil before it comes to birth and fostering good, so that it may bring forth most abundantly the spiritual potencies of the soul committed to our care.

As we have already said, man returns to earth to reap that which he has sown in previous lives and to sow anew the seeds which make for future experience. The stars are the heavenly time keepers which measure the year, the moon indicates the month when time will be propitious to harvest or to sow.

The child is a mystery to us all, we can only know its propensities as they slowly develop into characteristics, but it is usually too late to check when evil habits have been formed and the youth is upon the downward grade. A horoscope cast for the time of birth in a scientific manner shows the tendencies to good or evil in the child, and if a parent will take time and trouble necessary to study the science of the stars, he or she may do the child intrusted to his or her care an inestimable service by fostering tendencies to good and repressing the evil bent of a child ere it has crystallized into habit. Do not imagine that a superior mathematical knowledge is [pg 192] necessary to erect a horoscope. Many construct a horoscope in such an involved manner, so “fearfully and wonderfully made” that it is unreadable to themselves or others, while a simple figure easy of reading may be constructed by anyone who knows how to add and subtract. This method has been thoroughly elucidated in Simplified Scientific Astrology which is a complete text book, though small and inexpensive, and parents who have the welfare of their children thoroughly at heart should endeavor to learn for themselves, for even though their ability may not compare with that of a professional astrologer, their intimate knowledge of the child and their deep interest will more than compensate for such lack and enable them to see most deeply into the child's character by means of its horoscope.

Respecting the birth of the various vehicles and the influence which that has upon life, we may say that during the time from birth to the seventh year the lines of growth of the physical body are determined, and as it has been noted that sound is builder both [pg 193] in the great and small, we may well imagine that rhythm must have an enormous influence upon the growing and sensitive little child's organism. The apostle John in the first chapter of his gospel expresses this idea mystically in the beautiful words: “In the beginning was the WORD ... and without it was not anything made that was made ... and the word became flesh;” the word is a rhythmic sound, which issued from the Creator, reverberated through the universe and marshaled countless millions of atoms into the multiplex variety of shapes and forms which we see about us. The mountain, the mayflower, the mouse and the man are all embodiments of that great Cosmic Word which is still sounding through the universe and which is still building and ever building though unheard by our insensitive ears. But though we do not hear that wonderful celestial sound, we may work upon the little child's body by terrestrial music, and though the nursery rhymes are without sense, they are nevertheless bearers of a wonderful rhythm, and the more a child is taught to say, sing and repeat them, to dance and to march to them, the more music is incorporated into a child's daily life, the stronger [pg 194] and healthier will be its body in future years.

There are two mottoes which apply during this period, one to the child and the other to the parent: Example and Imitation. No creature under heaven is more imitative than a little child, and its conduct in after years will depend largely upon the example set by its parents during its early life. It is no use to tell the child “not to mind,” it has no mind wherewith to discriminate, but follows its natural tendency, as water flows down a hill, when it imitates. Therefore it behooves every parent to remember from morning till night that watchful eyes are upon him all the time waiting but for him to act in order to follow his example.

If anyone should attempt to forcibly extract a babe from the protecting womb of its mother, the outrage would result in death, because the babe has not yet arrived at a maturity sufficient to endure impacts of the Physical World. In the three septenary periods which follow birth, the invisible vehicles [pg 195] are still in the womb of mother nature. If we teach a child of tender years to memorize, or to think, or if we arouse its feelings and emotions, we are in fact opening the protecting womb of nature and the results are equally as disastrous in other respects as a forced premature birth. Child prodigies usually become men and women of less than ordinary intelligence. We should not hinder the child from learning or thinking of his own volition, but we should not goad them on as parents often do to nourish their own pride.

When the vital body is born at the age of seven a period of growth begins and a new motto, or relation rather, is established between parent and child. This may be expressed in the two words Authority and Discipleship. In this period the child is taught certain lessons which it takes upon faith in the authority of its teachers, whether at home or at school, and as memory is a faculty of the vital body it can now memorize what is learned. It is therefore eminently teachable; particularly because it is unbiased by pre-conceived opinions which prevent most of us from accepting new views. At the end of this second period: from about twelve to fourteen, the vital body has been so far developed [pg 196] that puberty is reached. At the age of fourteen we have the birth of the desire body, which marks the commencement of self-assertion. In earlier years the child regards itself more as belonging to a family and subordinate to the wishes of its parents than after the fourteenth year. The reason is this: In the throat of the fœtus and the young child there is a gland called the thymus gland, which is largest before birth, then gradually diminishes through the years of childhood and finally disappears at ages which vary according to the characteristics of the child.

Anatomists have been puzzled as to the function of this organ and have not yet come to any settled conclusion, but it has been suggested that before development of the red marrow bones, the child is not able to manufacture its own blood, and that therefore the thymus gland contains an essence, supplied by the parents, upon which the child may draw during infancy and childhood, till able to manufacture its own blood. That theory is approximately true, and as the family blood flows in the child, it looks upon itself as part of the family and not as an Ego. But the moment it commences to manufacture its own blood, the Ego asserts itself, it is no [pg 197] longer Papa's girl or Mamma's boy, it has an “I”-dentity of its own. Then comes the critical age when parents reap what they have sown. The mind has not yet been born, nothing holds the desire nature in check, and much, very much, depends upon how the child has been taught in earlier years and what example the parents have set. At this point in life self-assertion, the feeling “I am myself”, is stronger than at any other time and therefore authority should give place to Advice; the parent should practice the utmost tolerance, for at no time in life is a human being as much in need of sympathy as during the seven years from fourteen to twenty-one when the desire nature is rampant and unchecked.

It is a crime to inflict corporal punishment upon a child at any age. Might is never right, and as the stronger, parents should always have compassion for the weaker. But there is one feature of corporal punishment which makes it particularly dangerous to apply it to the youth: namely, that it wakens the passional nature which is already perhaps beyond the control of a growing boy.

If we whip a dog, we shall soon break its spirit and transform it into a cringing cur, [pg 198] and it is deplorable that some parents seem to regard it as their mission in life to break the spirit of their children with the rule of the rod. If there is one universal lack among the human race which is more apparent than any other, it is lack of will, and as parents we may remedy the evil in a large measure by guiding the wills of our children along such lines as dictated by our own more mature reason, so that we help them to grow a backbone instead of a wishbone with which unfortunately most of us are afflicted. Therefore, never whip a child; when punishment is necessary, correct by withholding favors or withdrawing privileges.