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Rays From The Rose Cross
Magazine Archives
(Continued)

Here you will find many articles from
Rays from the Rose Cross Magazine issues
published between 1913 and 2004.

Articles Sections:


The Rosicrucian Philosophy in Questions and Answers:

    "Question: Why do children die? (Vol. I, #51)

    Answer: There are many causes for the death of children. We will give a few of the principal ones. In the first place, when an Ego returns to Earth life, it is drawn to a certain family because it can there get the environment which is calculated to further its progress, and where it may liquidate a certain amount of the fate generated by itself in previous existences. Then when parents make such radical changes in their lives that the Ego would not be able to get that experience, or liquidate that fate, the Ego is usually withdrawn and sent to another place where it may get the right conditions for its growth at that time. Or it may be withdrawn for a few years and reborn in the same family when it is seen that the conditions can be obtained there at that late time. But there is a cause that is responsible for infant mortality which lies much farther back, namely, in previous lives, and to understand this cause it is necessary to know something about what takes place at death and immediately after.

    "When a spirit is passing out of the body, it takes with it the desire body, the mind and the vital body, and the vital body is at that time the storehouse for the pictures of the past life. These are then etched into the desire body during the three and one-half days immediately following death. Then the desire body becomes the arbiter of man's destiny in Purgatory and the First Heaven. The pains caused by expurgation of evil and the joy caused by the contemplation of the good in life are carried over to the next life as conscience to deter man from perpetuating the mistakes of past lives and to entice him to do that which caused him joy in the former life more abundantly.

    "When those next of kin to a dying person who are present in the death chamber burst into hysterical lamentations at the time the spirit passes out, and keep that up for the next few days, the spirit which is at that time in exceedingly close touch with the Physical World will be much moved by the grief of the dear ones, and will not be able to focus its attention closely upon the contemplation of its past life, and thus the etching made in the desire body will not be as deep as it would if the passing spirit were left in peace and undisturbed. Consequently the sufferings in Purgatory will not be as keen nor will the pleasures in the First Heaven be as great as otherwise and therefore, when the Ego returns to Earth life, it will have lost a certain part of the experience from the previous life. That is to say, the voice of conscience will not speak with the same emphasis as would have been the case had the Ego been left undisturbed by lamentations.

    "In order to compensate for this lack, the Ego is then usually brought to birth among the same friends who lamented over it, and it is then taken away from them while yet in the years of childhood. Then it enters the Desire World, but, of course, a little child has not committed any sins that need to be expurgated and so its desire body and mind remain intact; it then goes directly into the First Heaven to wait until a new embodiment offers, but this waiting time is used to school it directly in the effect of the different emotions, both good and evil. And often a relative meets it and takes it in charge, having the task of teaching it that which it had lost through the lamentation that person indulged in, or else it is taught by others. At any rate, the loss is more than made up, so that when the child returns to the second birth it will have as full a moral growth as it would have had under ordinary circumstances, had there been no lamentation at the time when it passed out." ...MORE »

Healing:

    "The Rosicrucian work of healing is carried on by the Elder Brothers of The Rosicrucian Order through a band of Invisible Helpers whom they are instructing.

    "The work is conducted according to the commands of Christ Jesus, namely, "Preach the gospel and heal the sick."

    "The Elder Brothers: These are high spiritual Beings through whom the Christ Spirit is working for the benefit of humanity.

    "The Invisible Helpers: The Invisible Helpers are those who live a worthy life of helpfulness during the daytime while in their physical bodies, and whose evolutionary development is such as to earn the privilege of being helpful through the instrumentality of the Elder Brothers at night while functioning in the etheric bodies. This is indicated in the words of the Rosicrucian Fellowship Evening Service: "Tonight while our physical bodies are peacefully resting in sleep, may we as Invisible Helpers be found faithfully working in the vineyard of Christ." These Invisible Helpers are gathered together in bands according to their temperaments and their abilities. They are instructed by other Helpers who are physicians, and all of them work under the guidance of the Elder Brothers, who naturally are the moving Spirits of the whole work.

    "Not infrequently, patients are aware of the presence of the Invisible Helpers." ...MORE »

Health & Nutrition:

    "Most people feel that a meal without meat is incomplete, for from time immemorial it has been regarded as an axiom that meat is the most strengthening food we have. All other foodstuffs have been looked upon as mere accessories to the one or more kinds of flesh on the menu. Nothing could be more erroneous; science has proven by experiments that invariably the nourishment obtained from vegetables has a greater sustaining power, and the reason is easy to see when we look at the matter from the occult side.

    "The Law of Assimilation is that "no particle of food may be built into the body by the forces whose task that is until it has overcome by the indwelling Spirit." The Ego must be absolute and undisputed ruler in the body, governing the cells as an autocrat, or they would all go their own ways as they do in decay when the Ego has fled.

    "The level of the consciousness of the cell determines its power as a unit. The lower its consciousness, the easier it is for the Ego to act as the governing head of the bodily functions. Cells taken into the body also have their individual and collective consciousness. Therefore, the level of their spiritual attainment is a factor to be considered when food is to be used by the organism. The different kingdoms have different vehicles and consequently a different consciousness. The mineral has only its dense body and a consciousness like the deepest trance. It would, therefore, be easiest to subject foods taken directly from the mineral kingdom. Mineral food would remain with us the longest, obviating the necessity of eating so often; but unfortunately we find that the human organism vibrates so rapidly that it is incapable of assimilating the inert mineral directly. Salt and like substances are passed out of the system at once without having been assimilated at all. The air is full of nitrogen which we need to repair waste; we breathe it into our system, yet cannot assimilate it, or any other mineral, till it has first been transmuted in Nature's laboratory and built into the plants.

    "The plants have a dense and a vital body, which enables them to do this work. Their consciousness is as a deep, dreamless sleep. Thus it is easy for the Ego to overpower the vegetable cells and keep them in subjection for a long time, hence the great sustaining power of the vegetable.

    "In animal food the cells have already become more individualized, and as the animal has a desire body giving it a passional nature, it is easily understood that when we eat meat it is harder to overcome these cells which have animal consciousness resembling the dream state, and also that such particles will not stay long in subjection. Hence a meat diet requires larger quantities and more frequent meals than the vegetable or fruit diet. If we should go one step farther and eat the flesh of carnivorous animals, we should find ourselves hungry all the time, for there the cells have become exceedingly individualized and will, therefore, seek their freedom and gain it so much the quicker. An excess of meat is burned up, but leaves poisonous uric acid, and it is being more and more recognized that the less meat we eat, the better for our wellbeing." ...MORE »

Religion and Art:

    "The Perfection at which the awakened soul gazes is a magnet, drawing him toward itself. It means effort, faithfulness, courage, and sometimes grim encounters if he is to respond to that attraction and move towards it along the narrow track which leads up and out from the dark valleys of the mind.

    "I think as I write this of Durer's wonderful drawing of the Knight, Death, and the Devil: the Knight of the Spirit on his strong and well kept horse- human nature, treated as it ought to be, and used as it ought to be-riding up a dark rocky defile. Beside him travels Death, a horrible, doddering figure of decay, saying, "All things perish — time is passing — we are all getting older-is this effort really worth while?" On his flank is a yet more hideous fellow-pilgrim: the ugly, perverse, violent element of our mixed human nature, all our animal part, our evil impulses, nagging at him too.

    "In one way or another, we all hear those two voices from time to time; with their discouragements and sneers, their unworthy invitations, their cynical comments and vile suggestions. "Don't forget me, I am your future," says Death. "Don't forget me," says animal man, "I am your undying past." But the Knight of the Spirit does not look at them. He has had his hand-to-hand struggle farther back; and on his lance is impaled the horrid creature, his own special devil, which he has slain.

    "Now he is absorbed in the contemplation of something beyond the picture, something far more real than the nightmarish landscape through which he must travel; and because of that, he rides steadily forth from that lower world and its fantasies to the Eternal World and its realities. He looks at that which he loves, not at that which he hates, and so he goes safely out of the defile into the open; where he will join the great army of God.

    "There we see the spiritual life as humanity is called to live it; based on the deep conviction that the Good, the Holy, is the Real, and the only thing that matters, fed and supported by the steadfast contemplation of the Holy and the Real—which is also the Beautiful and the Sane—and expressed in deliberate willed movements towards it, a sturdy faithful refusal to look at that which distracts us from it. Always looking the same way, and always moving the same way: in spite of obstacles, discouragements, mockery and fatigue. "Thou hast made us for thyself, and our hearts find no rest save in thee." But we must be willing to undertake the journey, whatever it may cost." ...MORE »

News Perspectives:

    "One principle that today's intellectuals most passionately disseminate is vulgar relativism, "nihilism with a happy face." For them it is certain that there is no truth, only opinion: my opinion, your opinion. They abandon the defense of intellect. There being no purchase of intellect upon reality, nothing else is left but preference, and will is everything. They retreat to the romance of will.

    "Vulgar relativism is an invisible gas, odorless, deadly, that is now polluting every free society on earth. It is a gas that attacks the central nervous system of moral striving. The most perilous threat to the free society today is, therefore, neither political nor economic. It is the poisonous, corrupting culture of relativism.

    "Freedom cannot grow — it cannot even survive — in every atmosphere or clime. In the wearying journey of human history, free societies have been astonishingly rare. The ecology of liberty is more fragile than the biosphere of Earth. Freedom needs clean and healthful habits, sound families, common decencies, and the unafraid respect of one human for another. Freedom needs entire rainforests of little acts of virtue, tangled loyalties, fierce loves, undying commitments. Freedom needs particular institutions and these, in turn, need peoples of particular habits of the heart.

    "Consider this. There are two types of liberty: one precritical, emotive, whimsical, proper to children; the other critical, sober, deliberate, responsible, proper to adults. Alexis de Tocqueville called attention to this alternative early in Democracy in America, and at Cambridge, Lord Acton put it this way: Liberty is not the freedom to do what you wish; it is the freedom to do what you ought. Human beings are the only creatures on earth that do not blindly obey the laws of their nature, by instinct, but are free to choose to obey them with a loving will. Only humans enjoy the liberty to do — or not to do — what we ought to do.

    "It is this second kind of liberty — critical, adult liberty — that lies at the living core of the free society. It is the liberty of self-command, a mastery over one's own passions, bigotry, ignorance, and self-deceit. It is the the liberty of self-government in one's own personal life. For how, James Madison once asked, can a people incapable of government in private life be capable of it in public? If they cannot practice self-government over their private passions, how will they practice it over the institutions of the Republic?

    "There cannot be a free society among citizens who habitually lie, who malinger, who cheat, who do not meet their responsibilities, who cannot be counted on, who shirk difficulties, who flout the law — or who prefer to live as serfs or slaves, content in their dependency, so long as they are fed and entertained.

    "Freedom requires the exercise of conscience; it requires the practice of those virtues that, as Winston Churchill noted in his wartime speeches to the Commons, have long been practiced in these Isles: dutiful stout arms, ready hearts, courage, courtesy, ingenuity, respect for individual choice, a patient regard for hearing evidence on both sides of the story." ...MORE »

Book Reviews:

    "Surely a classic, though, curiously, unfamiliar to many people who aspire to live a spiritual life, 'The Spiritual Life' (Morehouse Publishing, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania) is a small book which originally appeared as a series of four broadcast talks delivered by Evelyn Underhill prior to World War II. Underhill has an extraordinarily broad and deep appreciation of the histories, literatures, and theologies of many religious movements. She wrote several masterful studies, including Worship and Mysticism, which are exhaustive in scope and judiciously balanced in objectivity.

    "In this compact work, the English author's object "was to present some of the great truths concerning man's spiritual life in simple language; treating it, not as an intense form of other-worldliness remote from the common ways and incompatible with the common life, but rather as the heart of all real religion and therefore of vital concern to ordinary men and women." In this reviewer's estimation, Underhill has admirably and eloquently achieved her objective.

    "Although admitting that the "spiritual life" is a dangerously ambiguous term, Underhill makes short work of disposing of that ambiguity. It is not "the life of my own inside," nor necessarily something very holy, difficult and peculiar-"a sort of honors course in personal religion." The essence of the spiritual life, seen through the "wide-angle lens of disinterested worship," is being in Being. The author observes, "We mostly spend our lives conjugating three verbs: to want, to have, and to do-craving, clutching and fussing," thus keeping us in a state of perpetual unrest and dissatisfaction. But released from our self-referential context, our personal ups and downs, our desires, grasping, and agitation are seen as small transitory facts within a vast, abiding spiritual world lit by a steady spiritual light.

    "The spiritual life becomes a conscious fact for us when we realize that the tendency of all life is to seek God, Who made it for Himself; that ultimate security is secured only by gaining a hold on the eternal; and that there is in each of us that which is also unchanging and which finds its true home and goal in God.

    "The spiritual life is not something specialized and intense, "a fenced-off devotional patch rather difficult to cultivate and needing to be sheltered from the cold winds of the outer world...On the contrary, it is the very source of that quality and purpose that makes my practical life worth while." The spiritual life does not consist in mere individual betterment, or in assiduous attention to one's own soul, but in "a free and unconditional response to that (Holy) Spirit's pressure and call, whatever the cost may be." And that call transcends the question "What is best for my soul?" and even the question "What is most useful to humanity?" It addresses the ultimate question, "What function must this life fulfill in the great and secret economy of God?" God comes first, we are His creatures, His instruments. He is the controlling factor of every situation, religious or secular. It is only for His glory and creative purpose that we exist.

    "A spiritual life, then, is one in which all we do comes from the center where we are anchored in God and self-given to the great movement of His will. 'Our spiritual life is His affair...It consists in being drawn, at His pace and in His way, to the place where He wants us to be, not the place we fancied for ourselves.'" ...MORE »

For Children:

  •     "Aurea was the youngest member of the Angel choir, and this was to be her first visit to the planet Earth. She wasn't at all sure she wanted to go. "I don't think I will be happy around human beings," she said. "I've heard that they say nasty things to each other and fight each other and that they're mean and cross."

        "That's only sometimes," said Lunea, who had been in the Angel choir for two years and knew a lot of things about a lot of planets. "Sometimes they can be very nice. Most human beings deep down inside want to be good. But they have to work so hard at being good that they don't always do it."

        "But it's easy to be good," protested Aurea. "It is for us," agreed Lunea, "but not for humans. Each human being has a side that wants to be naughty. Being good won't be easy for them till they learn to listen just to the side that wants to be good. Then they'll be more like us."

        "I still don't want to go down there," said Aurea. "I'd rather wait till they stop listening to their naughty sides."

        "Their naughty sides won't show so much now," Lunea assured her.

        "They're usually pretty good around Easter." "Easter?" asked Aurea.

        "What's Easter?" "You'll see," said Lunea, who refused to say another word on the subject. And so the Angel choir rehearsed and rehearsed, and finally the day came for the trip to Earth. Aurea still didn't want to go, but there was nothing she could do about it. Lunea told her she had to go, and the choir director himself told her she had to go. The choir director was a mighty angel, indeed, who could be very stern when he had to be, and Aurea knew it would not be a good idea to argue with him.

        "There were so many, many singers in the Angel choir that, when they reached the Earth's atmosphere, they spread out in all directions around the planet. Aurea and Lunea were with a group that took positions above the ancient city of Jerusalem.

        "Many things were written in the air around Jerusalem about what had happened there during its long history. Much was written about wars and wicked and powerful people. But much, too, was written about good people who worshiped God and tried to live according to His laws.

        "Especially, it was written that the mighty Archangel, the Christ, had once lived in that country in the form of a human being and had then entered into the Earth to be the great Spirit of the Earth. It was written that every year since then, Christ had come back into the Earth to give it life, and that every year, in spring, He left the Earth to go home for a while to God the Father." ...MORE »

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    Contemporary Mystic Christianity



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