The questions contained in this book have been asked of the writer
after lectures delivered by him in various cities, and, in most cases, the
questions reveal a certain knowledge of the subject on the part of the
inquirer.
For the benefit of those who are not familiar with The
Rosicrucian Cosmo-Conception, it may be well to give the following
information concerning the philosophy and the terms used. With that key, it
will be easy for anyone to understand the answer to the questions. It may
also be in place to state at this point that each question has been answered
regardless of what has been said in answer to any other question, so that
each answer is complete in itself. This has occasioned repetition of some
things said in answer to one questions when replying to another which is
similar, but it will be found that in all cases where there is such
repetition it presents a new aspect of the subject, so that the writer has no
apology to make, for he considers the method used of greater value than a
reference to some other answer which perhaps the inquirer might not have
time to look up.
The Rosicrucian Philosophy teaches that man is a complex being who possesses:
(1) A Dense Body, which is the visible instrument he uses here in this
world to fetch and carry; the body we ordinarily think of as the whole man.
(2) A Vital Body, which is made of Ether and pervades the visible body
as ether permeates all other forms, except that human beings specialize a
greater amount of the universal ether than other forms. That ethereal body
is our instrument for specializing the vital energy of the Sun.
(3) A Desire Body, which is our emotional nature. This finer vehicle
pervades both the vital and dense bodies. It is seen by clairvoyant vision
to extend about 16 inches outside our visible body, which is located in the
center of this ovoid cloud as the yolk is in the center of an egg.
(4) The Mind, which is a mirror, reflecting the outer world and
enabling the Ego to transmit its commands as thought and word, also to compel
action.
The Ego is the threefold spirit which uses these vehicles to gather
experience in the school of life.
Section I
Questions Dealing With
Life On Earth
If we were pure spirit and a part of an all-knowing God, why was it
necessary for us to take this long pilgrimage of sin and sorrow through
matter?
Answer: In the beginning of manifestation, God differentiated within
Himself a multitude of potential spiritual intelligences as sparks are emitted
by a fire. These spiritual intelligences were thus potential flames or
fires, but they were not yet fires, for, though endowed with the
all-consciousness of God, they lacked self-consciousness; being potentially
omnipotent as God, they lacked dynamic power available for use at any moment
according to their will; and in order that these qualities might be evolved
it was imperative that they should go through matter. Therefore, during
involution each Divine Spark was encased in various vehicles of sufficient
density to shut off the outer world from its consciousness. Then the spirit
within, no longer able to contact the without, turns and finds itself. With
wakening self-consciousness comes the spirit's struggle to free itself from
its prison, and during evolution the various vehicles which the spirit
possess will be spiritualized into soul, so that, at the end of
manifestation, the spirit will not only have gained self-consciousness but also soul-power.
There is a tendency upon the part of most people to believe that all that
is is the result of something else, leaving no place for any original new
building. Those who study life usually speak only of involution and
evolution; those who study the form, namely, the modern scientists, are
concerned with evolution only, but the most advanced among them are now
beginning to find another factor, which they have called epigenesis. Already,
in 1757, Caspar Wolff issued his Theorea Generations, wherein he showed that
in the development of the ovum, there are a series of new buildings not at
all foreshown by what has gone before, and Haeckel, endorsing this work,
says that nowadays were are no longer justified in called epigenesis a
theory. For it is a fact which we may demonstrate, in the case of the lower
forms where the changes are rapid, under a microscope. Since the mind was
given to man, it is this original creative impulse, epigenesis, which has been
the cause of all our development. Truly do we build upon that which has
been already created, but there is also something new due to the activity of
the spirit and thus it is that we become creators, for if we only imitated
that which had already been laid out for us by God or Angel, it would never
be possible for us to become creative intelligences; we would simply be
imitators. And even though we make mistakes, it may be said that we often
learn much more by our mistakes than by our successes. The sin and the
suffering which the inquirer speaks about are merely the result of the
mistakes we make, and their impression upon our consciousness causes us to
be active along other lines which are found to be good — that is to say,
in harmony with nature. Thus this world is a training school and not a vale
of tears wherein we have been placed by a capricious God. (See Question No. 9)
If
"God made man a little lower than the Angels," how is it possible that
man is ultimately to become their superior in the spiritual world?
Answer: This question reveals a misapprehension upon the part of the
inquirer. It has never been so stated in the Rosicrucian teachings, but
something has been said which may have been so misconstrued. The fact of
the matter is that evolution moves in a spiral and there is never a
repetition of the same condition. Angels are an earlier stream of evolution
who were human in a previous incarnation of the earth, called the Moon
Period among Rosicrucians. The Archangels were the humanity of the Sun Period and the Lords of Mind, called by Paul the "Powers of Darkness," were the humanity of the dark Saturn Period. We are the humanity of the fourth period of the present scheme of manifestation, the Earth Period. As all beings in the universe are progressing, the humanity of the previous periods have also progressed so that they are now at a higher
stage than they were when they were human-they are superhuman. Therefore,
it is perfectly true that God made man a little lower than the Angels. But
as everything is in a state of spiral progression, it is also true that our
present humanity is a higher and more evolved humanity than the Angels
were; and that the Angels were a higher order of humanity than the
Archangels were when they were human. In the next step we shall attain
something like the stage of the Angels at the present time, but we shall be
superior to what they are now.
Why should it be necessary for us to come into this physical existence?
Could we not have learned the same lessons without being imprisoned and limited by the dense conditions of the material world?
Answer: The New Testament was written in Greek originally, and the word
logos means both word and the thought which precedes the word, so that when
John tells us in the first chapter of his Gospel that "In the beginning was
the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God," we may also
translate the verse: In the beginning was the thought, and the word was
with God, and God was the word. Everything exists by virtue of that fact. (the word). In that is "life."
Everything that exists in the universe was first a thought, that thought
then manifesting as a word, a sound, with build all forms and itself
manifested as the life within those forms. that is the process of creation,
and man, who was made in the image of God, creates in the same way to a
certain extent. He has the capability of thinking; he may voice his
thoughts and in that way, where he is not capable of carrying out his ideas
alone, he may secure the help of others to realize them. But a time is coming
when he will create directly by the word of his mouth, so that when in time
he becomes able to use his word to create directly he will know how. That
training is absolutely necessary. At the present time he would make many
mistakes. Besides, he is not yet good — he would bring into being
demoniac creations.
In the earliest dawn of man's endeavor, he used the solids; muscular
force was his only means of performing work, and from bones and stones which
he picked up from the ground, he shaped his first crude instruments to be
wielded by his arm. Then came a time when in a rude dug-out he first
trusted himself to the waters; a liquid and the water wheel was the first
machinery. The liquid is already much stronger than the solid. A wave will
raze the decks of a ship, tear out masts and twist the stoutest iron bar as
it it were a thin wire; but water power is a stationary force and therefore
limited to work in its immediate vicinity. When man learned to use the
still more subtle force which we call air, it became possible for him to
erect windmills in any place to do his work and sailing vessels brought the
whole world into communication. Thus, man's next step in unfoldment was
achieved by the use of a force still subtler than water and more universally
applicable than that element. But wind was fickle and not to be depended
upon; therefore, the advancement in human civilization achieved by its use
paled into insignificance when man discovered how to utilize the still more
subtle gas which is called steam, for that can be made anywhere and
everywhere, and the progress of the world has been enormous since its
advent. There is, however, the drawback to its utility that steam-power
requires cumbersome transmission machinery. This drawback is practically
eliminated by using a still subtler force, more readily transmissible;
electricity, which is altogether invisible and intangible.
Thus, we see that the progress of man in the past has depended upon the
utilization of forces of increasing subtlety, each force in the scale being
more readily capable of transmission than the ones previously available, and
we can readily realize that further progress depends upon the discovery of
still finer forces transmissible with still greater facility. We know that
that which we call wireless telegraphy is accomplished without even the use
of wires, but even that system is not ideal, for it depends upon energy
generated in a central plant, which is stationary. It involves the use
of costly machinery and is, therefore, out of reach of the majority. The
ideal force would be a power which man could generate from himself at any
moment without machinery.
A few decades ago Jules Verne thrilled us with delight when he conjured
up before our imagination the submarine boat, the trip around the earth in
eighty days, etc. Today the things he pictured have become facts surpassing
even his imagination, and the day ill come when we shall have available for
use a power plant such as spoken of above. Bulwer Lytton, in his "Coming
Race," has pictured to us a force called "Vril," which certain imaginary
beings are possessed of and which they can use to propel themselves over land,
through the air and in various other ways. Such a force is latent within
every one of us, and we speak of it sometimes as emotion. We feel its
far-reaching power at times as temper when it is unleashed, and say "a man
has lost control of himself." No amount of work can so tire the physical
body and wreck it as when the enormous energy of the desire body is let
loose in a fit of temper. Usually, at the present time, this enormous force
sleeps, and it is well that it should be so until e have learned to use it
by means of thought, which is a still more subtle force. This world is a
school to teach us how to use these two subtle forces — the power of thought
and the power of emotion.
An illustration will make clear how this world serves that purpose. An
inventor gets an idea. The idea is not yet a thought, it is but as it were a
flash which has not yet taken shape, but gradually he visualizes it in mind
stuff. He forms in his thought a machine, and before his mental vision that
machine appears with the wheels revolving this way and that, as necessary to
accomplish the required work. Then he commences to draw the plans for the
machine, and even at that stage of concretion it will most certainly appear
that modification are necessary. Thus we see that already the physical
conditions show the inventor where his thought was not correct. When he
builds the machine in appropriate material for the accomplishment of the work,
there are usually more modifications necessary. Perhaps, he may be obliged
to throw the first machine away, entirely rearrange his conception and
build a new machine. Thus the concrete physical conditions have enabled him
to detect the flaw in his reasoning; they force him to make the necessary
modifications in his original thought to bring out a machine that will do the
work. Had there been only a World of Thought, he would not have know that he
had made a mistake, but the concrete physical conditions show him where his
thought was wrong.
The Physical World teaches the inventor to think aright, and his successful
machines are the embodiments of right thought.
In the mercantile, social or philanthropic endeavors, the same principle
holds good. If our ideas concerning the various matters in life are wrong,
they are corrected when brought into so-called practical uses and thus this
world is an absolute necessity to teach us how to wield the power of thought and desire,
these forces being held in leach to a great extent at the present time
by our material conditions. But as time goes on and we learn to think
aright more and more, we shall at last obtain such a power of thought
and we shall be able to think the right thought at once in every case
without experimenting, and then we shall also be able to speak our thought into actual being, as a thing. There was a time, in the far, far
past, when man was yet a spiritual being and when the conditions of earth
were more plastic. Then he was taught directly by the Gods to use the word
as a means of creation and he worked thus formatively on the animals and the
plants. We are told in the Bible that God brought the animals to man and He named them. this naming was not simply calling a lion a lion, but it was a
formative process that gave man a power over the thing he named, and it was
only when selfishness, cruelty and unbridled anger unfitted him for the
mastership that the word of power spoken of by the masons was lost. When
holiness shall have again taken the place of profanity, the word will be
found again and will be the creative power of the divine man in a future age.
If
this earth life is so important and really the basis of all our soul
growth, the latter resulting from the experiences we gain here, why is
our earth life so short in comparison with the life in the inner
worlds, approximating a thousand years between two earth lives?
Answer: All that is in this world which has been made by the hand of man
is crystallized thought; the chairs upon which we sit, the houses in which
we live, the various conveniences, such as telephone, steamship, locomotive,
etc. were once a thought in the mind of man. If it had not been for that
thought, the thing would never have appeared. In similar manner, the trees,
the flowers, the mountain and the seas are crystallized thought forms of the
nature forces. Man, when he leaves this body after death and enters the
Second Heaven, becomes one with those nature forces he works under the
direction of the creative hierarchies, making for himself the environment
which is necessary for his next step in unfoldment. There he builds in "mind
stuff" the archetypes of the land and the sea; he works upon the flora and
the fauna; he creates everything in his environment as thought forms, as he
changes the conditions, so they appear when he is reborn.
But working things out in mind stuff is very different from working
thinks out in the concrete. At the present time we are very poor thinkers,
and therefore it takes an enormous period of time for us to shape the
thought forms in the second heaven; then, also, we must wait a considerable
time before these thought forms have crystallized into the actual dense
physical environment to which we are to come back. Therefore, it is
necessary that we should stay in the Heaven World for a much longer time than
we remain in the earth life. When we have learned to think aright, we shall
be able to create things here in the Physical World in a much shorter time
than it now takes to laboriously form them. Neither will it be necessary then
to stay our of earth life as long as the present time.
How long will it be before we can do without the physical bodies, and function altogether in the spiritual worlds again?
Answer: This question reveals a state of mind which is all too common
among people who have become acquainted with the fact that we possess
spiritual bodies in which we may move through space with lightning rapidity,
bodies which do not need the material raiment and, therefore, will require
no care on the part of their owners. These people long then for the time
when they may grown such figurative wings and shed this "low and vile mortal
coil" altogether.
Such a state of mind is extremely unfortunate. We should be very
thankful for the material instrument which we have, for that is the most
valuable of all our vehicles. While it is perfectly true that our physical
body is the lowest of all our vehicles, it is also a fact that this vehicle
is the most finished of our instruments, and without that the other vehicles
would be of little use to us at this time. For while this splendidly
organized instrument enables us to meet the thousand and one conditions
here, our higher vehicles are practically unorganized. The vital body is
formed organ for organ as our dense physical body, but until it has been
trained by esoteric exercises it is not a fit instrument to function in alone.
The desire body has only a number of sense centers which are not even active
in the great majority of people, and as for the mind, it is an unformed
cloud with the great majority. We should aim today to spiritualize the
physical instrument, and we should realize that we must train our higher
vehicles before they can be of use. For the great mass of people that will
take a long, long time. Therefore, it is best to do the duty that is close
to our hands, then we hasten the day when we shall be able to use the higher
vehicles, for that day depends upon ourselves.
Does the spirit enter the body at the time of conception or at the time of birth?
Answer:
It has been ascertained by clairvoyant investigation that at the time
of death the spirit takes with it the forces of one little atom located
in the left ventricle of the heart, which is called the seed atom, for
it is the nucleus or seed around which all the material in the body
gathers, and every atom on the body must be capable of vibrating in
unison with that seek atom. Therefore, that atom is deposited in the
semen of the father some time previous to conception, and later placed
in the womb of the mother. But conception is not at all identical with
the time of sexual union of the parents. The impregnated spermatozoa is
sometimes not embedded in the ovum until fourteen days after the union
of the parents. It is this impregnation of the ovum that may be called
the time of conception, for from the moment when the impregnated ovum
leaves the Fallopian tube the period of gestation commences. During the
first eighteen to twenty-one days, all the work is done by the mother,
but at that time the reincarnating Ego, clothed in a bell-shaped cloud
of desire and mind stuff, enters the womb of the mother and the
bell-shaped cloud closes at the bottom so that it is then ovoid, or
egg-shaped . Then the spirit is definitely enmeshed in the flesh and
cannot escape any more, but must stay with the mother until liberated
by birth. In the present stage of our unfoldment, the spirit does very
little conscious
work upon its coming vehicle, but it is present all the time and helps
unconsciously in the task of providing its instrument. This is not more
remarkable than that we are able to digest our food and work our respiratory
organs without being conscious of the process.
What was the purpose in the division of the sexes?
Answer: The division of the sexes was brought about at a very early
stage of man's evolution, when he had as yet no brain or larynx. One-half
of the creative force was then turned upward in order that these two organs
might be built. The brain was made for the evolution of thought whereby man
creates in the Physical World. Houses, cities, steamships, railways,
everything made by the hand is crystallized human thought. The larynx was
also made by the creative sex-force in order that man might express his
thoughts. The connection between those organs will be evident when we
remember that the boy who possesses the positive creative force changes his
voice at the time of puberty, when he is first able to procreate his kind;
also that the man who abuses his sex-force becomes an idiot, while the
profound thinker who uses nearly all his creative force in thought will
have little or no inclination for amorous practices.
Prior to this division man was, like some plants today, a complete
creative unit capable of perpetuating his kind without the help of
another. The faculties of thought and speech have been bought at the loss
of this creative power; but now that half of the creative force which is
expressed through brain and larynx may be used to create things in the world — houses, ships, etc.
Is the soul of a woman masculine and the soul of a man feminine?
Answer: Speaking generally, we might say "yes," the vital body which is
eventually transformed, transmuted and spiritualized into soul is of the
opposite sex. It is formed organ for organ exactly like the dense physical
body with this one exception, and this elucidates many facts otherwise
unexplainable. The faculties inherent in the vital body are growth,
propagation, assimilation and memory. The woman having the positive vital
body is matured earlier than the male, the parts which remain plant-like,
such as, for instance, the hair, grows longer and more luxuriant, and
naturally a positive vital body will generate more blood than the negative
vital body possessed by the masculine, hence we have in woman a greater blood
pressure, which it is necessary to relieve by the periodical flow, and
when that ceases at the climacteric period there is a second growth in
woman, particularly well expressed in the saying "fat and forty."
The impulses of the desire body drive the blood through the system at
varying rates of speed, according to the strength of the emotions. Woman,
having an excess of blood, works under much higher pressure than man, and
while this pressure is relieved by the periodical flow, there are times when
it is necessary to have an extra outlet; then the tears of woman, which are
white bleeding, act as a safety valve to remove the excessive fluid. Men,
although they may have as strong emotions as women, are not given to tears
because they have no more blood than they can comfortably use.
Being positively polarized in the Etheric Region of the Physical World,
the sphere of woman has been the home and the church where she is surrounded
by love and peace, while man fights the battle of the strong for the
survival of the fittest, without quarter in the dense Physical World, where
he is positive.
Do we keep the same temperament through all our lives?
Answer: The Ego may be likened unto a precious stone, a diamond in the
rough. When it is taken out of the earth the stone is far from beautiful; a
rough coating hides the splendor within, and before the rough diamond
becomes a gem, it must be polished upon the hard grindstone. Each application
to the stone removes a part of the rough coat and grinds a facet through
which the light enters and is refracted at a different angle from the light
thrown back by the other facets.
So it is with the Ego. A diamond in the rough, it enters the school of
experience, the pilgrimage through matter, and each life is as an
application of the gem to the stone. Each life in the school of experience
removes part of the roughness of the Ego and admits the light of intelligence
at a new angle, giving a different experience, and thus as the angels of
light vary in the many facets of the diamond, so the temperament of the Ego
differs in each life. In each life we can show forth only a small part of
our spiritual natures, we can realize only a small part of the splendor of
our divine possibilities, but every life tends to make us more rounded and
our temperaments become more even. In fact, it is the work upon the
temperament that is the principal part of our lesson, for self-mastery is the
goal. As Goethe says,
"From every power which all the world enchains,
Man liberates himself when self-control he gains."
Is the desire body subject to sickness and does it need nutrition and replenishment?
Answer: In a certain sense it is, during earth life; that is to say,
sickness shows itself first in the desire body and in the vital body, which
become thinner in texture and do not specialize the vital fluid in the same
proportion as usual during health. Then the dense physical body becomes
sick. When recovery takes place the higher vehicles show improvement before the manifestation of health is apparent in the physical world.
But if the inquirer means to ask concerning conditions after death, the
matter is different. Although a person may be sick here, perhaps bedridden
for years and unable to move about, when death has taken place, and he feels
himself without the dense body, there is at once a sense of relief, a feeling
of gladness and lightness which is unusual to him, and he suddenly wakes up to
the fact that he has no pain and is able to move about. If he understands
conditions, he will also know that it is unnecessary for him to take
nourishment, for the desire vehicle needs no replenishment. Many people,
however, are not aware of the fact and therefore we find in the lower
regions of the Desire World that sometimes they will go through all the
motions of ordinary house keeping. Hence the stories of some spiritualistic
investigators, who have found these conditions in the Invisible World; and
this also accounts for a great deal of that which George du Maurier has told
of the life of Peter Ibbetson and the Countess of Towers, in his novel bearing
the hero's name. This novel is recommended to the reader as giving a fine
illustration of the operation of the subconscious memory where the hero deals
with his child-life, and of actual conditions in the lower regions of the
Invisible World, where his experiences with the countess are concerned.
How
is it that one atones for all sin in purgatory, then at rebirth must
again suffer through the law of cause and effect for sins of a former
life?
Answer: There are two distinct activities in Purgatory. First, there is
the eradication of bad habits. For instance, the drunkard craves drink just
as much as he did before death, but now he has no stomach and alimentary canal
go around to the various saloons, although he may even get inside the
whiskey casks and steep himself in the liquor, he obtains no satisfaction,
for there are no fumes as when chemical combustion takes place in a stomach.
Thus he suffers all the tortures of Tantalus — "Water, water everywhere, and
not a drop to drink."
But, as desire in this world burns out when we realize that is cannot be
gratified, so in time the drunkard is cured of his desire for drink, because
he can obtain no liquor, and he is born innocent of evil so far as that
particular vice is concerned. However, he must overcome that vice
consciously, and so at a certain time temptation will come in his way. When
he has grown up a companion may ask him to "come and have a drink." Then it
depends upon whether he yields or not. If he does, he sins anew and must be
purged anew, till at last the cumulative pains of repeated purgatorial
existence will cause him to have a disgust for drink. Then he will have
consciously overcome temptation and there will be no more suffering from that
source.
As to the evil that we have done to others, for instance, where we have
dealt cruelly with a child placed under our care, where we have beaten and
starved it or otherwise maltreated it, the scenes where we have thus done
wrong will have impressed themselves upon the atom in the heart; later on,
the etching will have been transferred to the desire body and the panorama
of life, which unrolls backward, will again bring these scenes before our
consciousness. We shall then ourselves feel as the child felt who was our
victim; we shall feel the stripes that we inflicted just as the child felt
them; we shall feel the mental anguish and mortification, we shall suffer
pang for pang, and then, when we are reborn, we shall meet our victim and
have the opportunity to do good to the victim instead of doing evil. If we
do so, well and good; if our old enmity asserts itself as before, then
further stripes in the next Purgatory will at last cause us to see that
we ought to be merciful to those under our care. So we do not suffer anew
for sins of a former life; we are born innocent through the blessed
ministrations of Purgatory, and at least every evil act we commit is an act of free will. But temptations are placed before us in order to ascertain
whether the purging has been sufficient to teach us the needed lessons, and
it is our privilege either to yield or to stand strong and firm for the good.
Is conscience the voice of God or of our Guardian Angel?
Answer: When the spirit passes out of the body at death, the panorama of
its past life passes before it during the first three and one-half days after
its release from the body. These pictures are etched into the desire body
and form the basis of life in Purgatory and the First Heaven, which are
located in the Desire World. The past life is reproduced in pictures
shifting backward so that the scenes which happened just previous to death
are first gone over; then follows the life toward childhood and infancy. In
Purgatory only the scenes where the soul did wrong are reenacted, and the
soul sees itself as being the one whom it wronged and suffers as those
suffered whom it wronged in earth life. The record of these sufferings is
indelibly engraved upon the seed atom, which is the only part of the dense
body the soul takes with it and keeps permanently from life to life. This
is, in a way, the "book" of the "Recording Angel," and as the suffering
caused by a certain act has been engraved upon this seed atom in Purgatory,
it is evident that when in a new life similar circumstances arise and the
old temptations come before us, the suffering which we experienced because
of that wrong deed is present in the seed atom to warn us that such and such a
course of action is wrong. That is the "voice of conscience," and if the
suffering entailed in Purgatory was sufficiently intense, we shall have the
power to resist whatever temptation comes before us. If, on the other hand,
from certain different causes, the suffering was not keen enough, we may
yield permanently or temporarily in another life to the same temptations
that cost suffering in previous lives; we may yield even against the small
murmurings of conscience. But when we are released from our bodies and pass
into Purgatory the next time, we shall there have the added suffering caused
by our yielding to temptation, and the cumulative effects of this suffering
will at last be sufficient to restrain us from the course which caused us
pain.
When a temptation has come before us in an earth life and has been put
aside consciously, we have learned the lesson and conscience has
accomplished its purpose.
Replying definitely to the question, we may therefore say that conscience
is the spirit's memory of past sufferings occasioned by the mistakes in
previous lives.
What is genius?
Answer: From the ordinary standpoint, genius seems to be an accident.
The theory of heredity will not account for it, for sometimes the most
commonplace people bring a child into the world which is a genius, and the
most highly educated and intellectual people have idiots for their children.
At other times we find both idiots and geniuses in the same family. In
fact, insanity and genius may be said to be the two extremes where the
mental qualities of humanity meet.
If we try to account for genius by heredity, we cannot help asking
ourselves why there is not a long line of mechanical ancestors before
Thomas Edison, who might then be regarded as the flower of a family. But we
find that in all cases the appearance of genius is not possible of deduction
to any law when viewed from the mere material standpoint.
When we bring the law of causation and its companion law, the law of
rebirth, to bear upon the problem, the matter is very different. This theory
asserts that earth life is a school of experience; that at each new birth we
are born with the accumulated experiences of all our past lives as our stock
in trade, our capital; that some of us have attended this school of
experience during many lives, and have gathered much store. Perhaps we have
developed one particular faculty more than others, so that we have become
extremely expert in one special line of endeavor. That is genius.
In order to express some of our faculties, for instance, music, it is
necessary that we should have certain physical characteristics such as long
and slender fingers, a delicate nervous system, and, particularly, the ear
should be specially developed in order that we may express ourselves as
musicians. Material required for that expression cannot be found anywhere,
but the law of association would naturally draw a musician to other
musicians, and there he will find ready to his hand the materials wherewith
to build himself a body such as is required for the expression of his
talent. Therefore, it sometimes seems as if musicians are born in families;
for instance, twenty-nine musicians were born in the Bach family in two
hundred and fifty years.
Is a
soul that is born as a woman always a woman in its after lives, and can
it never become a man? And what is the time between incarnations?
Answer: No, the spirit is double-sexed and usually expresses itself in
its successive lives alternately as man and woman. There are, however,
sometimes cases where, according to the Law of Consequences, it is
preferable that a spirit should appear for several successive lives in a
certain sex.
The law is this:
As the sun moves backward among the twelve constellations by the movement
which we call the precession of the equinoxes, the climate of the earth, the
flora and fauna are slowly changed, thus making a different environment for
the human race in each successive age. It takes the sun about two thousand
years to go through one of the signs by precession, and in that time the
spirit is usually born twice, once as a man and once as a woman. The
changes which take place in the thousand years between incarnations are not
so great but that the spirit will be able to extract the experiences of that
environment from the standpoint of both man and woman.
However, there may sometimes be cases where the time is also changed.
None of these laws are inflexible as the laws of the Medes and the Persians,
but are administered by Great Intelligences for the benefit of mankind, so
that conditions may be changed in order to fit the exigencies of individual
cases. For instance, in the case of a musician. He cannot find the
material wherewith to build his body everywhere. He needs particular help
to build the three semi-circular canals of his ear in such a manner that
they will point as nearly as possible in the three directions of space; he
also needs special help to build the delicate fibers of Corti, for his ability
to distinguish shades of tone depends upon these features.
In such a case, when a family of musicians with whom he has connection is
in a position to give birth to a child, he may be brought there, though his
stay in the Heaven World should not ordinarily terminate for another hundred
years, for perhaps another opportunity might not offer for two or three
hundred years after he should be born if the law were adhered to. Then, of
course, such a man is ahead of his time, and not appreciated by the
generation among which he lives. He is misunderstood, but even that is
better than if he had been born later than he should have been, for then he
would have been behind the times.
Thus it is that we so often see geniuses unappreciated by their
contemporaries, though highly valued by succeeding generations who can
understand their viewpoint.
When a man pays his debts, cares for his family and lives a moral life here, will he not be all right hereafter?
Answer: No, there is something more required, and there are many people
of just that belief who have a rather unenviable time in the Desire World
after death. They are, of course, to be looked up to from the standpoint of
this life only, but at the present time we are required to at least
cultivate some altruistic tendencies in order to progress beyond our present
evolutionary status.
We find the people who have neglected the higher duties in the fourth
region of the Desire World after death. There is the business man who paid
a hundred cents on the dollar, who dealt honestly by everyone; who worked
for the material improvement of his city and country as a good citizen, paid
his employees fair wages, treated his wife and family with consideration,
gave them all possible advantages, etc. He may even through them have built a
church, or at least given very liberally to it, or he may have built
libraries or founded institutes, etc. But he did not give himself. He only
took interest in the church for the sake of his family or for the sake of
respectability; he had not heart in it, all his heart was in his business,
in making money or attaining a worldly position.
When he enters the Desire World after death he is too good to go to
Purgatory and not good enough to go to heaven. He has dealt justly with
everyone and wronged nobody. Therefore, he has nothing to expiate. But
neither has he done any good that could give him a life in the First Heaven
where the good of his past life is assimilated. Therefore, he is in the
fourth region — between Heaven and Hell, as it were. The fourth region is
the center of the Desire World and the feeling there is most intense; the
man still feels a keen desire for business, but there he can neither buy
nor sell, and so his life is a most dreadful monotony.
All that he gave to the churches, institutes, etc., counts as nothing
because of his lack of heart. Only when we give for love will the gift avail to bring happiness hereafter. It is not the amount that we give, but the
spirit that accompanies the gift, which matters; therefore, it is within the
power of everyone to give and thus benefit himself and others.
Indiscriminate money giving, however, often causes people to become
thriftless and indigent, but by giving heartfelt sympathy; by helping people
to believe in themselves and start in life with fresh ardor when they have
fallen by the wayside; by giving ourselves in services rendered humanity, we
lay up treasure in heaven and give more than gold. Christ said: "The
poor are with us always." We may not be able to bring them from poverty to
riches and that may not be best for them, but we can encourage them to
learn th lesson that is to be learned in poverty; we can help them to a
better view of life, and unless the man who is in the position designated
by the inquirer does that also, he will not be "all right" when he passes
out; he will suffer that dreadful monotony in order to teach him that he
must fill his life with something of real value, and thus in a succeeding
life his conscience will spur him on to do something better than to grind
out dollars, though he will not neglect his material duties, for that is as
bad as to spurn spiritual endeavor.
It
is sometimes contended that we have a right to think what we will and
are not responsible for our thoughts. Is that so from an esoteric point
of view?
Answer: No, indeed; it is very much the reverse, and we do not need to
go as far as what is usually called esotericism; we find that idea expressed
by Christ in the sermon on the mount, where he tells us that "The man who
has looked upon a woman with desire has, in fact, already committed
adultery," and when we realize that as a man thinketh in his heart, so is he,
we shall have a much clearer conception of life if we only take into
consideration the acts of men, for every act is the outcome of a previous
thought but these thoughts are not always our own.
When we strike a tuning fork, another tuning fork of the same pitch being
near, not only the one which is struck will ring, but the other will also
commence to sing in sympathy. Likewise, when we think a thought and another
person in our environment has been thinking along the same line, our
thoughts coalesce with his and strengthen him for good or evil according to
the nature of the thought. It is no mere fancy when in the play called "The
Witching Hour," the hero aims to help a scoundrel escape from the State of
Kentucky, where the latter is about to be arrested for murder of the
Governor. The hero, a man of considerable thought power feels that he may
have prompted the criminal. He tells his sister that previous to the time of
the murder he had thought that the murder could be committed just in the manner in which it was actually done. He is under the impression that his
thought may have been caught by the brain of the murderer and have shown him
the way to commit the murder.
When we go into a jury box and we see before ourselves the criminal, we
behold only his act; we have no cognizance of the thought which prompted
him. If we have been in the habit of thinking evil, malicious thoughts
against one person or another, these thoughts may have been attractive to
that criminal, and on the principle that when we have before ourselves a
saturated solution of salt it will only take a single crystal to make that
salt solution solidify, so also if a man has saturated his brains with
thoughts of murder, the thought that we sent out may be the last straw
breaking the back of the camel, destroying the last barrier which would have
held him from committing the act.
Therefore, our thoughts are of vastly more importance than our acts, for
if we will only think right, we shall always act right. No man can think
love to his fellowmen; can scheme in his mind how to aid and help them,
spiritually, mentally or physically, without acting out these thoughts at
some time in his life, and if we will only cultivate such thoughts, we shall
soon find sunshine spreading around us; we shall find that people will meet
us in that some spirit that we send out, and if we could realize that the
desire body (which surrounds each of us and extends about sixteen to
eighteen inches beyond the periphery of the physical body) contains all
these feelings and emotions, then we would meet people differently, for we
would understand that everything we see is viewed through the atmosphere which
we have created around ourselves which colors all we behold in others.
If, then, we see meanness and smallness in the people whom we meet, it
would be well to look within to ascertain if it is not the atmosphere we are
looking through which colors them thus. Let us see if we have not within
ourselves those undesirable qualities, and then being to remedy the defect
within ourselves. The man who is mean and small will appear mean to him for he will call out from others the very qualities which he manifests, on the
principle that the vibration of a tuning fork of a certain pitch, when
struck, will cause another of identical pitch to vibrate. On the other
hand, if we cultivate a serene attitude, an attitude that is free from
covetousness and is frankly honest and helpful, we shall call out the best
in other people. Therefore let us realize that it is not until we have cultivated the better qualities in ourselves that we can expect to find them in others. We are thus in very truth responsible for our thoughts, we are
indeed the keepers of our brothers, for as we think when we meet them, so do
we appear to them, and they reflect our attitude. Applying the foregoing
principle, if we want to obtain help to cultivate those better qualities,
let us seek the company of people who are already good, for their attitude
of mind will be of immense help to us to call forth in us the finer
qualities.
If a
person is constantly bothered by evil thoughts which keep coming into
his mind, although he is constantly fighting them, is there any way in
which he can cleanse his mind so that he will think only pure and good
thoughts?
Answer: Yes, there is, and a very easy way at that. The inquirer has
himself suggested the chief difficulty in his question, when he says that he
is constantly fighting these thoughts. If we take an illustration we shall
see the point.
Supposing we have a particular dislike for a certain person whom we meet
every day upon the street, perhaps a number of times. If we stop each time
we meet that person and berate him for walking upon the street, for not
keeping out of our sight, we are each time adding fuel to the fire of our
enmity, we are stirring him up, and for pure spite he may seek to waylay us
so much the more. Both like and dislike have a tendency to attract a
thought or an idea to us, and the added thought force which we send out to
fight evil thoughts will keep them alive and bring them to our mind the
oftener, in the same way that quarreling will cause the person we dislike to
waylay us for spite. But if, instead of fighting him, we adopt the tactics
of indifference. If we turn our heads the other way when we meet him upon
the street, he will soon grow tired of follow us; and, on the same
principle, when thoughts of evil come into our minds. If we will but turn
away with indifference and apply our minds to something that is good and
ideal, we shall find in a short time that we are rid of their companionship
and have only the good thoughts we desire to entertain.
If
woman is an emanation from man,as per the rib story, will she be in the
final return to unity be reabsorbed, losing her individuality in the
masculine divinity?
Answer: The "rib story" is one of those instances of gross ignorance
upon the part of the Bible translators — who possessed no esoteric
knowledge — in dealing with the language of the Hebrews, which in writing was
not divided into words and had no vowel points. By inserting vowels at
different points and dividing words differently, various meanings to the
same text may be obtained in many places. This is one case where a word
pointed in one way reads "tsad" and in another way "tsela." The Bible
translators read the story that the God had taken something from Adam's side
("tsela"), and they were puzzled as to what it was and so, perhaps, they
thought it would have done him the least harm to take a rib ("tsad"), hence
the foolish story.
The fact was that man had first been like the Gods, "made in their
image," male and female, a hermaphrodite, and later one side was taken away
so that he became divided into two sexes. It may be further said that the
first organ which was developed as it is now was the female organ, the
feminine side having always existed in everything before the masculine,
which came later, and, according to the law in evolution, that "the first
shall be the last," the feminine will remain a distinct sex longer than the
masculine, and, therefore, the inquirer is altogether wrong in the
supposition. It is the masculine that will be absorbed in the feminine.
Even now it is seen that the masculine organ is gradually contracting at its
base and will finally cease to be.
As for losing her individuality, such a thing is impossible, it is just
the purpose of evolution that we should become individuals, self-conscious
and separate during evolution, self-conscious and united during the
interludes between manifestations.
Why
has woman been cursed by inequality, assumed inferiority and injustice
since the beginning of human existence upon this plane?
Answer: In the first place, we must remember that the spirit is neither
male nor female, but manifests in that way alternately, as a rule. We have
all been men and we have all been women. Therefore there can be no question
of inequality if we look at life from the larger point of view. Certain
lessons must be learned by the spirit in each age which can only be learned
from the standpoint of a woman, and there are other lessons only to be
learned by incarnation in a male body. Therefore, of a necessity, there
must be the change in sex. It sometimes happens, of course, that for
reasons a person must appear as a male for several incarnations and then, of
course, when he takes upon himself the female garb, it may jar considerably.
In that case we have a very masculine woman, perhaps a suffragette of a
militant nature. On the other hand, a spirit may sometimes have been embodied
for several incarnations in a female garb and then may appear as a man of a
very effeminate nature, a regular "sissy." But even upon the hypothesis of
alternating incarnations, many of us probably were incarnated in Rome in
the opposite sex, and taking the law of causation into consideration, the
treatment of women by the men of that time was not such as to cause these
Roman women when incarnated now as men to give any great concessions to their
former masters.
Why
was the suffering of Marguerite so extreme and out of proportion to
that of Faust, even to imprisonment and the death penalty, while his
life liberty and pursuit of happiness was unmolested?
Answer: This question has reference to one of the myths which have come
down through the ages, and contrary to the popularly accepted opinion a myth
is not a story made out of whole cloth, but is veiled truth, revealing in
symbol great spiritual principles. These myths were given to infant
humanity for the same reason that we give our children ethical teachings in
nursery stories and picture books, which impress themselves upon the infant
mind in a way intellectual teaching would be incapable of doing.
Goethe, who was an initiate, has treated this Faust myth in a way that is
wonderfully illuminative, and the key to the problem is found in the
prologue, which is laid in Heaven, much in the same way as we find in the
opening of the Book of Job. The Sons of God appear before the Throne an
the Devil among them, for he is also one of the Sons of God. He is given
permission to try to seduce Faust in order that the spiritual activities may
be called forth and virtue developed. It is one of our great mistakes to
regard innocence and virtue as synonymous; every one among us is born
innocent, he comes here without any evil, that has all been purged away, but
he has certain tendencies which may develop into vice and, therefore, he
must be tried in every life to see whether he will yield to temptation and
embrace vice, or whether he will stand firm and develop virtue. Faust is
tempted, he falls, but afterwards he sincerely repents and transmutes the
evil forces to good, so that at last he is saved. Repentance and reform
before death has wrought his salvation, the impure passion he felt for
Marguerite gave place to his pure love for Helen. Marguerite also yields to
the temptation, she repents and is saved by means of the forgiveness of
sins. Thus in the case of one it is salvation by acts. By his energy,
which dominates the evil forces, he builds a new land, a land where a free
people may live under better conditions; he is seeking to lift humanity to a
higher plane, and by that act, by his unselfish work for others, he is
redeemed from the powers of evil. In Marguerite's case, salvation results
from prayer and repentance. Thus we have in that drama, as represented by
Goethe, a perfect symbol of the Western teaching that there is both the
forgiveness of sins and the expiration of a wrong act by a corresponding
right act. Death is something that comes to all and the suffering which was
incident to the wrong act in each case is surely none the less in the case
of Faust, where it was prolonged over a long period of years, than in the
case of Marguerite, where the life is ended in a much shorter time. The
only difference is that Faust has overcome consciously and will in future life
be immune to temptation, while the case of Marguerite is problematical. In
a future earth life she will yet have to meet temptation in order that it may
be made manifest whether or not she has developed the strength of character
requisite to withstand the wrong and adhere to the right.
Is
there any place, either in the Old or New Testament, wherein men were
told to marry and then live as brother and sister at any time or under
any condition? And if not in the Bible, why do you teach it?
Answer: The Original Semites were the fifth of the Atlantean races.
They came out of the drowning Atlantis as told variously in the stories of
Noah and Moses. They were to go into a Promised Land, not little
insignificant Palestine, but the whole earth as it is now constituted. It
was promised because the earth was undergoing the changes usual when a new
race is to take possession. Floods had destroyed the Atlantean civilization
and in the wilderness of Gobi, in Central Asia, wandered the nucleus of
the present Fifth races.
At the time when such a nucleus was to become a world peopling race,
naturally, the begetting of children was a prime consideration. Therefore,
it was looked upon as the duty of everyone to beget numerous children and be
exceedingly fruitful. But we are not living in those times now; the world
is well peopled and the re-incarnating Egos are taken care of without
special endeavors at generation. We have never advocated generally
celibacy, or that people should marry and then live at all times as brother
and sister; but we have taught that married people, according to their
circumstances, should help to perpetuate the race. That is to say, if both
husband and wife are physically, morally and mentally able; when they
are possessed of a home, wherein an incarnating Ego may obtain the chance of
embodiment and experience, they should offer themselves as a living sacrifice
upon the altar of humanity and give of the substance of their bodies to
furnish an Ego with a vehicle, inviting it into their home as they would
invite a dear guest, thankful that they may be able to do for it what others
have done for them. But when the act of impregnation has been accomplished,
they should refrain from further intercourse, until again they feel
sufficiently fitted to generate the body for another child. Such is the
teaching of the Rosicrucians concerning the ideal relation between husband
and wife. They hold that creative function should not be used for sensual
purposes, but for the perpetuation of the race for which it has been,
naturally, designed. This is an ideal condition and may be beyond most
people at the present time, like the injunction to love our enemies; but
if we do not have high ideals we shall make no progress.
Is
there a soul-mate belonging to every soul through all eternity? If so,
would it not be better to remain unmarried a thousand years than to
marry the wrong mate?
Answer: As the light is refracted into the seven colors of the spectrum
when passing through our atmosphere, so also the spirits which are
differentiated within God are refracted into seven great rays. Each class is
under the direct guidance and domination of one of the Seven Spirits before
the Throne, which are the planetary genii, the Star Angels. All the
Virgin spirits in their successive incarnations are continually
intermingling in order that they may gain the most varied experiences;
nevertheless, those who have emanated from the same Star Angel are always
sister or twin souls, and when they seek the higher life, they must enter the
path of initiation through a lodge composed of members of the same ray
from which they originally came, thence to return to their primal source.
Therefore, all esoteric schools are divisible into seven, one for each class
of spirits. That was the reason Jesus said to his disciples "Your father and
mine" — None could have come into as close touch with him as these disciples
were, except those belonging to the same ray.
Like all other mysteries, this beautiful doctrine has been degraded to a
physical or material idea such as embodied in the popular conception of twin
souls or affinities; that one is male and the other female, and very often
each is somebody else's wife or husband. In such cases the doctrine of twin
souls is often made an excuse for elopement and adultery. This is an
abominable perversion. Each spirit is complete in itself, it takes upon
itself a male or a female body at different times in order to learn the
lessons of life, and it is only during the present stage if its
development that there is such a feature as sex at all. The Ego was before
sex, and will persist after that phase of its manifestation has passed away.
Is it wrong for first, second or third cousins to marry, and if so, why?
Answer: The purpose of marriage is the perpetuation of the race, and
according to the physical nature of the parents, plus their environment, will
the child be. We find, for instance, that the emigrants who come to our
shores are different from the children they beget, and that the children
that they beget here in America are different from the children begotten in
Europe. For instance, the longheaded Sicilians beget children who have a
more rounded head, and the round-headed Jews beget children who have a more
oval shaped head, thus showing in all races a tendency to amalgamate and
bring into birth a new American race.
These changes are not at all brought about by accident. The great leaders
of humanity always aim to bring about certain conditions in order to
produce certain types. For only in that way can the faculties be evolved
that are necessary to the progress of the spirit and there was a time when
it was necessary to the evolution of the Ego that they should marry in the
family. At that time humanity was not so evolved and individualized as they
are now. They were ruled by a family spirit which entered into the blood by
means of the air they inspired to help the Ego control its instrument. Then
humanity had what is known as second sight, and that second sight is yet
found among people who have persisted largely in marrying inside the family,
such, for instance, as the Scotch Highlanders and the Gypsies.
But is was necessary that we should forget the Spiritual World for a time
and remember no life but the present. In order to bring this change in
consciousness about, the great leaders took certain steps, one of them
being the prohibition of marriages in the family. When we read in the fifth
chapter of Genesis that Adam lived for 900 years and all the patriarchs
lived for centuries, it does not really mean that the persons named lived
themselves during that length of time, but the blood which coursed in
their veins was transmitted directly to their descendants and this blood
contained the pictures of our individual family as it now contains the
pictures of our individual lives, for the blood is the storehouse of all
experiences. Thus the descendants of the patriarchal families saw
themselves as Adam, Methusaleh, etc. Of course, during the centuries,
these pictures gradually became faint and when the memory of Adam faded out
from the blood of his direct descendants it was said that Adam ceased to live.
As man became more individualized, he was to learn to stand upon his own
legs without the help of the family spirit. Then international marriages
were permitted, or even commanded, and marrying inside the family was no
longer allowed. That killed clairvoyance. Science has demonstrated that
when the blood of one animal is inoculated into the veins of another animal,
haemolysis, or the destruction of blood, takes place, so that the lower
animal is killed. But the introduction of strange blood, in whatever way
accomplished, always kills something, if not the form at least a faculty,
and the strange blood introduced by marriage killed the clairvoyance
possessed by primitive man. That this statement is true about strange
blood being destructive can be noted in the case of hybrids. Where, for
instance, a horse and a donkey are mated the progeny is a mule, but that mule
is minus the propagative faculty, for it is neither under the group spirit
of the horses nor under the dominion of the group spirit of the donkeys, and
if it should propagate, the result would be a species not under the dominion
of any group spirit. The mule is not so far evolved, however, that it
can guide its instrument without the assistance of a group spirit, and so
the propagative faculty is denied the group spirit withholding the
fructifying seed atom. With humanity it was different, however. When they
had come to the stage where international marriages were commanded, they had
arrived at the point in evolution of self-consciousness where they were able
to steer their own bark and where they must cease to be God-guided automatons
and become self-governing individuals. The greater the mixture of blood, the
less the indwelling spirit can be influenced by any of the race or family
spirits which influenced our ancestors. Thus greater scope is afforded the
incoming Egos when we marry strangers than when we seek a cousin for a mate.
Would
it be wise for two people of the same temperament to marry if they were
both born under the same sign of the zodiac in August, for instance?
Answer: It is said that a person is born every second of the day; thus
there would be 3,600 born in an hour, 86,400 in a day of 24 hours, and about
two millions and a half in a month. If they were supposed to have the same
temperament and the same fate in life, we should only have twelve kinds of
people, and yet we know that there are not two people exactly alike, so that
it is foolish to say that people have the same temperament because they are
born under the same sign of the zodiac, as determined by the month.
To cast a horoscope scientifically, it if necessary to take into
consideration the day and the year when a person was born, for the planets do
not arrive at the same relative positions more than once in twenty-five
thousand, eight hundred and sixty-eight years. We must further take into
consideration the hour of the birth and if possible try to get the minute,
on account of the swiftly changing position of the moon. If we also take
into consideration the place, we can calculate the rising sign, which gives
the form of the body. Then we have an absolutely individual horoscope, for
the degree of the zodiac rising on the eastern horizon changes every four
minutes, so that even in the case of twins there would be a difference.
In order, then, that the astrologer may say whether the marriage of two
people will be harmonious or otherwise, it is necessary for him to cast the
horoscope of the two persons and endeavor to find out if they will be
physically, morally, and mentally congenial. He judges by comparing the
ascendants, or rising signs, which show the physical affinity. The positions
of Mars and Venus will show whether they are morally of the same caliber,
and the Sun and Moon show their mental characteristics. Thus he has an
accurate gauge as to whether their natures will blend, but predictions based
upon anything short of such a calculation are worthless.
In
the case of death by violent means, is the next life, when the person
dies as a child, lived in a body of the same sex as before or the
opposite; that is, will a soldier killed on the battle field be reborn
as a boy or a girl, or does sex play little part when the life is a
very short one?
Answer: So far as the writer has been able to investigate there does not
seem to be any attention paid to this matter in the succeeding life. The
Ego takes the opportunity for rebirth wherever it can be found. All that is
necessary is that the material for the new vehicles shall be gathered so
that the moral impression may be made on the desire body during the heaven
life which follows death as a child.
This matter of sex seems on the whole to be very elastic, at least in the
cases of those who have been living what we call "the higher life," because
this has a tendency to make the vital body more permanently positive, and
the seed atom, located in the solar plexus, therefore automatically attracts
to itself an increasingly large quantity of positively polarized ether, so
that whether the physical body is male or female, the constituents of the
vital body remain positive. Therefore in the case of so-called "advanced
people" sex becomes a matter of less importance than ordinarily, being in
many cases left to the choice of the Ego which is seeking rebirth.
Has the Rosicrucian Philosophy any specific teaching concerning the training of children?
Answer: There is perhaps no subject of greater importance than that. In
the first place, wise parents who are desirous of giving the child all
advantages, commence before the birth of the child, even before the
conception, to prayerfully turn their thoughts toward the task they are
undertaking, and are careful to see that the union which is to bring
about the germination takes place under the proper stellar influences, when
the moon is passing through signs which are appropriate to the building of a
strong and healthy body, having, of course, their own bodies in the best
possible physical, moral and mental condition.
Then during the period of gestation they hold before their mind's eye
constantly the ideal of a strong, useful life for the incoming entity, and
as soon as possible after birth has taken place they cast the horoscope of
the child, for the ideal parent is also an astrologer. If the parents have
not the ability to cast the horoscope themselves they can at least study the
stellar signs that will enable them to intelligently understand what the
astrologer tells them; but under no circumstances will they consult a
professional astrologer to help them, one who prostitutes the science for
gold, but will seek the aid of a spiritual astrologer, though they may have
to seek some time. From the child's natal chart the strength and weaknesses
of its character can be readily seen. The parents will then be in the best
position possible to foster the good and take appropriate means to repress
the evil before the tendencies work themselves out into actualities, and
thus they may in a large measure help the incoming entity to overcome his
faults.
Next, the parent must realize that that which we term birth is only the
birth of the visible, physical body, which is born and comes to its present
high stage of efficiency in a shorter time than the invisible vehicles of
man, because it has had the longest evolution. As the fetus is shielded
from the impacts of the visible world by being encased in the protecting
womb of the mother during the period of gestation, so are also the subtler
vehicles encased in envelopes of ether and desire stuff which protects them
until they have sufficiently matured, and are able to withstand the
conditions of the outer world.
Thus the vital body is born at about the age of seven, or the time when
the child cuts its second teeth, and the desire body is born at about
fourteen, or the time of puberty. The mind comes to birth at about twenty-
one, when we say a man has reached majority.
There are certain important matters which can be taken care of only during
the appropriate period of growth, and the parent should know what these are.
Though the organs have been formed by the time the child comes to birth,
the lines of growth are determined during the first seven years, and if they
are not properly outlined during that time, an otherwise healthy child may
become a sickly man or woman.
In the first chapter of St. John, we read that "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, and sound is the great
cosmic builder, therefore during the first septenary epoch of its life the
child should be surrounded by music of the right kind, by musical
language — the swing and rhythm of nursery rhymes being particularly
valuable. It does not matter about the sense at all; what matters is the
rhythm; the more the child has of that, the healthier it will grow.
There are two great watchwords which apply to this period of a child's
life. They are called imitation and example. There is no creature in the
world so imitative as a little child; it follows our example to the smallest
detail so far as it is able. Therefore, the parents who seek to bring up
their child well will ever be careful when in the presence of the little
one. It is no use to teach it not to mind; the child has no mind, it has no
reason, it can only imitate, and it cannot help imitating any more than water
can help running down hill. If we have one kind of food for ourselves which
is highly seasoned and cooked in French style, perhaps, and we give our
child another dish, telling it that what we eat is not good for it, the child
may not then be able to imitate us, but we implant the appetite for such
food in the little one. When it grows up and can gratify its taste it will
do so. Therefore, the careful parents should abstain from the foods and
liquors they do not wish their child to partake of.
Regarding the clothing, we may say that at that time the child should be
entirely unconscious of its sex organs, and therefore the clothing should be
particularly loose at all times. This is specially necessary with little
boys, for oftentimes a most seriously bad habit in later life may result
from the rubbing of too tight clothing.
There is also the question of punishment to be considered; that too is an
important factor at all times in awakening the sex nature and should be
carefully avoided. There is no child so refractory that it will not respond
to the method of reward for good deeds and the withholding of privileges as
retribution for disobedience. Besides, we recognize the fact that whipping
breaks the spirit of a dog, and we oftentimes complain that certain people
have cultivated a wishbone instead of a backbone — that they are lacking in
will. Much of that is due to whippings, mercilessly administered in
childhood. Let any parent look at this from the child's standpoint. How
would any of us now like to live with someone from whose authority we could
not escape, who was much bigger than we, and have to submit to whippings day
by day? Leave the whipping alone and much of the social evil will be done
away with in a generation.
When the vital body has been brought to birth at the seventh year, the
faculties of perception and memory are to be educated. The watchword for
this period should be authority and discipleship. We should not, if we have a
precocious child, seek to goad it into a course of study which requires an
enormous expenditure of thought. Child prodigies have usually become men
and women of less than ordinary mentality. The child should be allowed to
follow his own inclination in that respect. His faculties of observation
should be cultivated, he should be shown living examples. Let him see the
drunkard and what vice has led him to; show him also the good man, and set
before him high ideals. Teach him to take everything you say upon authority
and endeavor to be such that he may respect your authority as parents and
teachers. At this time he should also be prepared to husband the force
which is now being awakened in him, and which will enable him to generate
his kind at the end of the second period of seven years. He should not be
allowed to gather that knowledge from polluted sources, because the parents
shirk the responsibility of telling him from a mistaken sense of modesty. A
flower may be taken as an object lesson, whence all the children, from the
smallest to the biggest, may receive the most beautiful instruction in the
form of a fairy tale. They may be taught how flowers are like families
without bothering at all with botanical terms, so long as the parents have
studied in the slightest degree a little elementary botany. Show the
children some flowers. Tell them "Here is a flower family where there are
all boys (a staminate flower), and here is another flower where there are
only girls (a pistillate flower). Here is one where there are both boys and
girls (a flower where there are both stamen and pistils). Show them the
pollen in the anthers. Tell them that these little flower boys are just like
the boys in the human families; that they are adventuresome and want to go
out into the world to fight the battle of life, while the girls (the pistils)
stay at home. Show them the bees with the pollen baskets on their legs, and
tell them how the little flower boys bestride those winged steeds, like
the knights of old, and go out into the world to seek the princess immured
in the magic castle (the ovule hidden in the pistil); how the pollen,
the flower boy-knights, force their way through the pistil and enter the
ovule; then tell them how that signifies that the knight and the princess are
married, that they live happy ever afterward and become the parents of
many little flower boys and girls. When they have fully grasped that, they
will understand also the generation in the animal and human kingdom, for there
is no difference; one is just as pure and chaste and holy as the other.
And the little children brought up in that way will always have a reverence
for the creative function that can be instilled in no better way.
When a child has been thus equipped, it is well fortified for the birth
of the desire body at the time of puberty. When the desires and the
emotions are unleashed, it enters upon the most dangerous period of life,
the time of the hot youth from fourteen to twenty-one, for at that time the
desire body is rampant and the mind has not yet come to birth to act as a
brake. At this time it is well for the child that has been brought up as
here outlined, for its parents will then be a strength and an anchor to it
to tide it over that troublesome period until the time when it is full
born — the age of twenty-one , when the mind is born.
Why are children born in a family where they are not welcome?
Answer: It shows a sad state of society when a question such as this can
be relevant, as, unfortunately, it is. The primal purpose of marriage is
the perpetuation of the race and people who are not willing to become
parents have no right to marry. It should be the right of every child to
be well born, and welcome. But while we are careful to seek out the
best strain in the animals which we use for breeding purposes, in order that
we may get the hardiest and best stock, we usually do not think at all of
the physical, moral and mental fitness of the one we select to be the father
or mother of our children. In fact, it is usually considered indelicate if
not indecent to think of children at all, and when they come in spite
of preventatives, the parents are often distracted with grief. But the law
of cause and effect is not to be thwarted. The mills of the Gods grind
slowly but they are sure to grind very small, and though the centuries may
pass by, there will come a time when the one who is an unwilling parent must
himself seek an embodiment anew, and perhaps he will then be reborn into a
family where he is not welcome. Or perhaps the unwilling parents of one life
become childless in the next. Cases are know to the writer where such a
couple has been blessed with numerous children whom they desired and
passionately loved, but who died in childhood one after another to the
great grief of the parents.
When
children do not come to a man and wife who deeply long for them, is
there not some way to induce some soul in the unseen world to accept
their invitations to reincarnate where the conditions in the home are
most favorable, it would seem that among the many souls awaiting
incarnation one would find the conditions right.
Answer: This is undoubtedly one of the conditions where the would-be
parents have some time in a previous neglected their opportunity, or,
perhaps, have taken precautions to avoid begetting children. Or, if this is
not the case, it may be that at a later day their hopes will be fulfilled.
The writer has observed a case where a spirit seeking incarnation followed
the mother about, and he was told by someone else who had known the mother
that that Ego had been following her from before her marriage. The marriage
proved barren, however, and only recently came the news of the divorce. It
was plain that although this Ego evidently desired incarnation through the
mother, it refused the father. We sometimes hear of marriages which are
barren, and then when the marriage contract has been dissolved and the
partners have each remarried, both have become parents, showing that they
were perfectly able to become parents from the physical standpoint, and that
it was the incarnating Ego that was lacking. For this should be noted,
that unless there is an Ego seeking embodiment through a married couple,
their efforts will be fruitless. From the ordinary standpoint that would not
appear to be so, but it will be readily seen that as the chemical constituents
of the semen and the ova are at all times the same, there would be no reason
why a union of the sexes should be fruitful at one time and barren at
another if they were the only factors. We know that if we mix hydrogen and
oxygen in proper proportions we always get water; we know that water will
always flow down hill; and thus all the laws of nature are invariable, so
that unless there were another factor than the chemical mixture of semen and
ova there would always be issue. And this unknown and unseen factor is the
reincarnating Ego which goes only where it pleases and without which there
can be no issue.
If the inquirer will pray earnestly to the angel Gabriel, who is the
ambassador of the Regent of the Moon to the earth, and therefore a prime
factor in the generation of bodies (vide the Bible), it may possibly avail
to bring the desired result. The best time is Monday at sunrise, and from
the new Moon to the full.
How do you explain the fact that a child so often inherits the bad characteristics of the parents?
Answer: We explain by saying that it is not a fact. Unfortunately,
people seem to lay their bad traits to heredity, blaming their parents for
their faults, while taking to themselves all the credit for the good. The
very fact that we differentiate between that which is inherited and that
which is our own, shows that there are two sides to man's nature, the side
of the form and the life side.
The man, the thinker, comes here equipped with a mental and a moral
nature, which are entirely his own, taking from his parents only the material
for the physical body. We are drawn to certain people by the law of
causation, and the law of association. The same law which causes musicians
to seek the company of one another in concert halls, gamblers to congregate
at at the race tracks or in pool rooms, people of a studious nature to flock
to libraries, etc., also causes people of similar tendencies,
characteristics, and tastes to be born in the same family. Thus, when we
hear a person say, "Yes, I know I am thriftless, but then my people never were
used to work, we always had servants," it shows that similarity of tastes and
nothing more is needed to explain it. When another person says, "Oh, yes, I
know I am extravagant, but I just cannot help it, it runs in the family,"
it is again the law of association, and the sooner we recognize that instead
of making the law of heredity an excuse for our evil habits we should seek to
conquer them and cultivate virtues instead, the better for us. We would not
recognize it as a valid excuse if the drunkard should say, "No, I cannot
help drinking, all my associates drink." We would tell him to get away from
them as quickly as possible and assert his own individuality, and we would
advise people to cease shielding themselves behind their ancestors as an
excuse for bad habits.
Does not the child inherit its blood and nervous system from its parents?
If so, will it not inherit disease and nervous disorders also?
Answer: In the fetus, in the lower part of the throat just above the
sternum or breast bone, there is a gland called the thymus gland, which is
largest during the period of gestation and which gradually atrophies as the
child grows older and disappears entirely by or before the fourteenth year,
very often when the bones have been properly formed. Science has been very
much puzzled as to the use of this gland, and few theories have been
advanced to account for it. Among these theories one is that is supplies
the material for the manufacture of the red blood corpuscles until the bones
have been properly formed in the child so that it may manufacture its own
blood corpuscles. That theory is correct.
During the earliest years the Ego which owns the child-body is not in
full possession, and we recognize that the child is not responsible for its
doings, at any rate not before the seventh year, and later we have extended
it to the fourteenth year. During that time no legal liability for its
action attaches to the child, and that is as it should be, for the Ego being
in the blood can only function properly in blood of its own making, so that
where, as in the child-body, the stock of the blood is furnished by the
parents through the thymus gland, the child is not yet its own master or
mistress. Thus it is that children do not speak of themselves so much as
"I" in the earlier years, but identify themselves with the family; they
are Papa's girl and Mama's boy. The young child will say "Mary wants" this
or "Johnny wants that," but as soon as they have attained the age of
puberty and have begun to manufacture their own blood corpuscles, then we
hear the boy or girl say, "I" will do this or "I" will do that. From that
time they begin to assert their own identity, and to tear themselves loose
from the family.
Seeing, then, that the blood throughout the years of childhood, as well
as the body, is inherited from the parents, the tendencies to disease are
also carried over, not the disease itself but the tendency. After the
fourteenth year, when the indwelling Ego has commenced to manufacture its
own blood corpuscles, it depends a great deal upon itself whether or not
these tendencies shall become manifested actualities in its life.
Can a person be influenced in a natural sleep as he can in hypnotic sleep, or is there a difference?
Answer: Yes, there is a difference. In the natural sleep the Ego,
clothed in the mind and desire body, draws outside the physical body and
usually hovers over the body, or at any rate remains close to it, connected
by the silver cord, while the vital body and the dense body are resting upon
the bed.
It is then possible to influence the person by instilling into his brain
the thoughts and ideas we wish to communicate. Nevertheless, we cannot then
get him to do anything or to entertain any idea except that which is in line
with his natural proclivities. It is impossible to command him to do
anything and to enforce obedience, the same as it is when he has been
driven out by the passes of the hypnotist, for its is the brain which moves
the muscles, and during the natural sleep his brain is interpenetrated by
his own vital body and he is in perfect control himself, while during the
hypnotic sleep the passes of the hypnotist have driven the ether of which
his vital body is composed out of the brain, down to the shoulders of the
victim, where it lies around his neck and resembles the collar of a
sweater. The dense brain is then open to the ether from the hypnotist's vital
body, which displaces that of the proper owner. Thus in the hypnotic sleep the victim has no choice whatever as to the ideas he entertains or the movements he makes with his body, but in the ordinary sleep he is still a free agent. In fact, this method of suggestion during sleep is something which mothers will find extremely beneficial in treating refractory children, for if the mother will sit by the bed of the sleeping child, hold its hand, speak to it as she would speak when it is awake, instill into its brain ideas
of such a nature as she would wish it to entertain, she will find that in
the waking state many of these ideas will have taken root. Also in dealing
with a person who is sick or is addicted to drink, if the mother, nurse or
others use this method, they will find it possible to instill hope and
healing, materially furthering recovery or aiding self-mastery. This method
way of course be used for evil, but we cannot refrain from publishing it, as
we believe that the good which can be done in this way will much more than
offset the few cases where some misguided person may use it for the wrong
purpose.
Reference: The Rosicrucian Philosophy In Questions and Answers, Volume I, by Max Heindel (1865-1919)
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