The Rosicrucian Mysteries

Among all the vicissitudes of life, which vary in each individual's experience, there is one event which sooner or later comes to everyone—Death! No matter what our station in life, whether the life lived has been a laudable one or the reverse, whether great achievements have marked our path among men, whether health or sickness have been our lot, whether we have been famous and surrounded by a host of admiring friends or have wandered unknown through the years of our life, at some time there comes a moment when we stand alone before the portal of death and are forced to take the leap into the dark.

The thought of this leap and of what lies beyond must inevitably force itself upon [pg 028] every thinking person. In the years of youth and health, when the bark of our life sails upon seas of prosperity, when all appears beautiful and bright, we may put the thought behind us, but there will surely come a time in the life of every thinking person when the problem of life and death forces itself upon his consciousness and refuses to be set aside. Neither will it help him to accept the ready made solution of anyone else without thought and in blind belief, for this is a basic problem which every one must solve for himself or herself in order to obtain satisfaction.

Upon the Eastern edge of the Desert of Sahara there stands the world-famous Sphinx with its inscrutable face turned toward the East, ever greeting the sun as its rising rays herald the newborn day. It was said in the Greek myth that it was the wont of this monster to ask a riddle of each traveler. She devoured those who could not answer, but when Oedipus solved the riddle she destroyed herself.

The riddle which she asked of men was the riddle of life and death, a query which is as relevant today as ever, and which each one must answer or be devoured in the jaws [pg 029] of death. But when once a person has found the solution to the problem, it will appear that in reality there is no death, that what appears so, is but a change from one state of existence to another. Thus, for the man who finds the true solution to the riddle of life, the sphinx of death has ceased to exist, and he can lift his voice in the triumphant cry “Oh death where is thy sting, oh grave where is thy victory.”

Various theories of life have been advocated to solve this problem of life. We may divide them into two classes, namely the monistic theory, which holds that all the facts of life can be explained by reference to this visible world wherein we live, and the dualistic theory, which refers part of the phenomenon of life to another world which is now invisible to us.

Raphael in his famous painting “the School of Athens” has most aptly pictured to us the attitude of these two schools of thought. We see upon that marvelous painting a Greek Court such as those wherein philosophers were once wont to congregate. Upon the various steps which lead into the building a large number of men are engaged in deep conversation, but in the [pg 030] center at the top of the steps stand two figures, supposedly of Plato and Aristotle, one pointing upwards, the other towards the earth, each looking the other in the face, mutely, but with deeply concentrated will. Each seeking to convince the other that his attitude is right for each bears the conviction in his heart. One holds that he is of the earth earthy, that he has come from the dust and that thereto he will return, the other firmly advocates the position that there is a higher something which has always existed and will continue regardless of whether the body wherein it now dwells holds together or not.

The question who is right is still an open one with the majority of mankind. Millions of tons of paper and printer's ink have been used in futile attempts to settle it by argument, but it will always remain open to all who have not solved the riddle themselves, for it is a basic problem, a part of the life experience of every human being to settle that question, and therefore no one can give us the solution ready made for our acceptance. All that can be done by those who have really solved the problem, is to show to others the line along which they [pg 031] have found the solution, and thus direct the inquirer how he also may arrive at a conclusion.

That is the aim of this little book; not to offer a solution to the problem of life to be taken blindly, on faith in the author's ability of investigation. The teachings herein set forth are those handed down by the Great Western Mystery School of the Rosicrucian Order and are the result of the concurrent testimony of a long line of trained Seers given to the author and supplemented by his own independent investigation of the realms traversed by the spirit in its cyclic path from the invisible world to this plane of existence and back again.

Nevertheless, the student is warned that the writer may have misunderstood some of the teachings and that despite the greatest care he may have taken a wrong view of that which he believes to have seen in the invisible world where the possibilities of making a mistake are legion. Here in the world which we view about us the forms are stable and do not easily change, but in the world around us which is perceptible only by the spiritual sight, we may say that there is in reality no form, but that all is life. At least the [pg 032] forms are so changeable that the metamorphosis recounted in fairy stories is discounted there 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 which is evanescent, because they are incapable of viewing the life that is the permanent basis of that form.

We must learn to see in this world. The new-born babe has no conception of distance and will reach for things far, far beyond its grasp until it has learned to gauge its capacity. A blind man who acquires the faculty of sight, or has it restored by an operation, will at first be inclined to close his eyes when moving from place to place, and declare that it is easier to walk by feeling than by sight; that is because he has not learned to use his newly acquired faculty. Similarly the man whose spiritual vision has been newly opened requires to be trained, in fact he is in much greater need thereof than the babe and the blind man already mentioned. Denied that training he would be like a new-born babe placed in a nursery where the walls are lined with mirrors of different [pg 033] convex and concave curvatures, which would distort its own shape and the forms of its attendants. If allowed to grow up in such surroundings and unable to see the real shapes of itself and its nurses it would naturally believe that it saw many different and distorted shapes where in reality the mirrors were responsible for the illusion. Were the persons concerned in such an experiment and the child taken out of the illusory surroundings, it would be incapable of recognizing them until the matter had been properly explained. There are similar dangers of illusion to those who have developed spiritual sight, until they have been trained to discount the refraction and to view the life which is permanent and stable, disregarding the form which is evanescent and changeable.

The danger of getting things out of focus always remains however and is so subtle that the writer feels an imperative duty to warn his readers to take all statements concerning the unseen world with the proverbial grain of salt, for he has no intention to deceive. He is therefore inclined rather to magnify than to minimize his limitations and would advise the student to accept nothing from the author's pen [pg 034] without reasoning it out for himself. Thus, if he is deceived, he will be self-deceived and the author is blameless.

Only three noteworthy theories have been offered as solutions to the riddle of existence and in order that the reader may be able to make the important choice between them, we will state briefly what they are and give some of the arguments which lead us to advocate the doctrine of Rebirth as the method which favors soul-growth and the ultimate attainment of perfection, thus offering the best solution to the problem of life.

1) The Materialistic Theory teaches that life is but a short journey from the cradle to the grave, that there is no higher intelligence in the universe than man; that his mind is produced by certain correlations of matter and that therefore death, and dissolution of the body terminate existence.

There was a day when the arguments of Materialistic philosophers seemed convincing, but as science advances it discovers more and more that there is a spiritual side to the universe. That life and consciousness may exist without being able to give us a sign, has been amply proven in the cases [pg 035] where a person who was entranced and thought dead for days has suddenly awakened and told all that had taken place around the body. Such eminent scientists as Sir Oliver Lodge, Camille Flammarion, Lombroso and other men of highest intelligence and scientific training, have unequivocally stated as the result of their investigations, that the intelligence which we call man survives death of the body and lives on in our midst as independently of whether we see them or not as light and color exist all about the blind man regardless of the fact that he does not perceive them. These scientists have reached their conclusion after years of careful investigation. They have found that the so-called dead can, and under certain circumstances do, communicate with us in such a manner that mistake is out of the question. We maintain that their testimony is worth more than the argument of materialism to the contrary, for it is based upon years of careful investigation, it is in harmony with such well established laws as the law of conservation of matter and the law of conservation of energy. Mind is a form of energy, and immune from destruction as claimed by the materialist.

2) The Theory of Theology claims that just prior to each birth a soul is created by God and enters into the world where it lives for a time varying from a few minutes to a few score of years; that at the end of this short span of life it returns through the portal of death to the invisible beyond, where it remains forever in a condition of happiness or misery according to the deeds done in the body during the few years it lived here.

Plato insisted upon the necessity of a clear definition of terms as a basis of argument and we contend that that is as necessary in discussing the problem of life from the Bible point of view as in arguments from the platonic standpoint. According to the Bible man is a composite being consisting of body, soul and spirit. The two latter are usually taken to be synonymous, but we insist that they are not interchangeable and present the following to support our dictum.

All things are in a state of vibration. Vibrations from objects in our surroundings are constantly impinging upon us and carry [pg 037] to our senses a cognition of the external world. The vibrations in the ether act upon our eyes so that we see, and vibrations in the air transmit sounds to the ear.

We also breathe the ether which is charged with pictures of our surroundings and the sounds in our environment, so that by means of the breath we receive at each moment of our life, internally an accurate picture of our external surroundings.

That is a scientific proposition. Science does not explain what becomes of these vibrations however, but according to the Rosicrucian Mystery teaching they are transmitted to the blood, and then etched upon a little atom in the heart as automatically as a moving picture is imprinted upon the sensitized film, and a record of sounds is engraven upon the phonographic disc. This breath-record starts with the first breath of the newborn babe and ends only with the last gasp of the dying man, and “soul” is a product of the breath. Genesis also shows the connection between breath and soul in the words: “And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul” (The same word: nephesh, is [pg 038] translated breath and soul in the above quotation.)

In the post mortem existence the breath-record is disposed of. The good acts of life produce feelings of pleasure and the intensity of attraction incorporates them into the spirit as soul-power. Thus the breath-records of our good acts are the soul which is saved, for by the union with the spirit they become immortal. As they accumulate life after 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 when they were committed. The pain and suffering they bring cause the spirit to expel the breath-record from its being in Purgatory. As that cannot exist independently of the life-giving spirit, the breath-record of our sins disintegrates upon expurgation, and thus we see that “the soul that sinneth, it shall die.” The memory of the suffering incidental to expurgation however, remains with the spirit as conscience, to deter from repetition of the same evil in later lives.

Thus both our good and evil acts are recorded through the agency of the breath, which is therefore the basis of the soul, but [pg 039] while the breath-record of good acts amalgamates with the spirit and lives on forever as an immortal soul, the breath-record of evil deeds is disintegrated; it is the soul that sinneth and dies.

While the Bible teaches that immortality of the soul is conditional upon well-doing, it makes no distinction in respect of the spirit. The statement is clear and emphatic that when ... “The silver cord be loosed ... then shall the dust return to the earth as it was and the spirit shall return to God who gave it.”

Thus the Bible teaches that the body is made of dust and returns thereto, that a part of the soul generated in the breath is perishable, but that the spirit survives bodily death and persists forever. Therefore a “lost soul” in the common acceptance of that term is not a Bible teaching, for the spirit is uncreate and eternal as God Himself, and therefore the orthodox theory cannot be true.

3) The Theory of Rebirths which teaches that each spirit is an integral part of God, that it enfolds all divine possibilities as the acorn enfolds the oak; that by means of many existences in an earthy body of gradually [pg 040] improving texture its latent powers are being slowly unfolded and become available as dynamic energy; that none can be lost but that all will ultimately attain to perfection and reunion with God, each bringing with it the accumulated experience which is the fruitage of its pilgrimage through matter.