The lectures here presented in book form were first written in twenty lectures and delivered during the month of November, 1908, in Columbus, Ohio, by Max Heindel. He also mimeographed them and distributed copies to all who attended his lectures in that city, and in other cities. After his lectures in Seattle, Washington, a friend, Mr. William M. Patterson, traveled with him to Chicago, Illinois, where he not only financed the publishing, but also assisted Mr. Heindel in proofreading both THE ROSICRUCIAN COSMO-CONCEPTION and these Twenty Lectures. The latter were then printed in paper-covered pamphlets while the COSMO-CONCEPTION was bound in cloth.

Max Heindel had spent the winter of 1907-1908 in Europe where he contacted the Elder Brothers of the Rosicrucian Order under whose tuition he received the contents of these lectures as well as the wonderful truths contained in THE ROSICRUCIAN COSMO-CONCEPTION. At the time he received this instruction he little realized the extent of the work given into his keeping with the command to disseminate the teachings to a soul-sick world.

Since the introduction of the Rosicrucian Philosophy and the opening of a World Headquarters in Oceanside, California, in 1911, books and pamphlets by max Heindel have been translated and printed in many languages. People from far and wide are calling for and becoming interested in these advanced Christian teachings, which are leading mankind back to the Bible and bringing to their understanding the satisfying truths contained in the Christian religion through the explanation of the mysteries hidden in the Bible.

This book of lectures gives in a very simple manner the truths of man’s own being, explaining the why and wherefore of mysteries which have driven millions of souls to materialism and caused them to repudiate the Bible.

The spiritual value of Astrology as a key to the soul is brought out in one lecture; in another the Astronomical Allegories of the Bible are clearly defined. The esoteric value of the Lord’s Prayer and the meaning of the Star of Bethlehem are clearly interpreted for the reader; also the Crucifixion of our Lord Jesus and its esoteric significance. Life Here and Hereafter, the Angels and their Work with Man, Parsifal and the Mysteries of the Holy Grail, the Science of Nutrition and Protracted Youth, and many other subjects are covered in an authentic manner by a Seer who was the chosen messenger of those great ones, the Elder Brothers of the Rosicrucian Order.

Mrs. Max Heindel

Mt. Ecclesia

October, 1939

1. The Riddle Of Life And Death

At every birth, what appears to be a new live comes into the world. Slowly the little form grows, it lives and moves among us, it becomes a factor in our lives; but at last there comers a time when the form ceases to move and decays. The love that came, whence we know not, has again passed to the invisible beyond. Then, in sorrow and perplexity we ask ourselves the three great questions concerning our existence: Whence have we come? Why are we here? Whither are we going?

Across every threshold the fearsome specter of Death throws his shadow. It visits alike the palace and the poorhouse. None are safe: old or young, well or ill, rich or poor. All alike must pass through this gloomy portal, and down the ages has sounded the piteous cry for a solution of the riddle of life, the riddle of death.

Unfortunately there has been much vague speculation by people who did not know, and it has therefore come to be the popularly accepted opinion that nothing definite can be known about the most important part of our existence: Life prior to its manifestation through the gate of birth and beyond the portal of death.

That idea is erroneous. Definite firsthand knowledge may be had by anyone who will take the trouble to cultivate the “sixth sense” which is latent in all. When it is acquired it opens our spiritual eves so that we perceive the Spirits who are about to enter physical live by birth, and those who have just re-entered the beyond after death. We see them as clearly and definitely as we cognize physical beings by our ordinary sight. Nor is firsthand information about the inner worlds indispensable to satisfy the inquiring mind any more than it is necessary to visit China to learn about conditions there. We learn about foreign countries through the reports of returned travelers There is as much knowledge concerning the world beyond as about the interior or Africa, Australia, or China.

The solution of the problem of Life and Being advocated in the following pages is based upon the concurrent testimony of many who have cultivated the above-mentioned faculty and are qualified to investigate the superphysical realms in a scientific manner. It is in harmony with scientific facts, an eternal truth in Nature which governs human progress, as the law of gravity serves to keep the stars unchangeably in their orbits about the Sun.

Three theories have been brought forward to solve the riddle of life and death, and it seems to be universally agreed that a fourth is an impossible conception. If so, one of the three theories must be the true solution, or it remains insoluble; at least by man.

The riddle of life and death is a basic problem; everyone must solve it at some time, and it is of the utmost importance to each individual human being which of these theories he accepts; for his choice will color his whole life. In order that we may make an intelligent choice, it is necessary to know them all, to analyze, compare, and weigh them, holding the mind open and free from the bias of preconceived ideas, ready to accept or reject each theory upon its merits. Let us first state the three theories and then let us see how they agree with established facts of life and how far they are in harmony with other known laws of Nature, as we should reasonably expect them to be, if true, for discord in Nature is impossible.

1. THE MATERIALISTIC THEORY holds that life is a journey form the womb to the tomb; that mind is the product of matter; that man is the highest intelligence in the cosmos; and that intelligence perishes when the body dissolves at death.

2. THE THEORY OF THEOLOGY asserts that at each birth a newly-created soul enters the arena of life fresh from God; that at the end of one short span of life in the material world it passes through the gate of death into invisible beyond, there to remain; and that its happiness or misery there is determined for all eternity by its belief just prior to death.

3. THE THEORY OF REBIRTH teaches that each soul is an integral part of God; that it enfolds all divine possibilities, as a seed enfolds the plant; that by means of repeated existences in a gradually improving earthly body those latent powers are being slowly unfolded into dynamic energy; that none are lost, but that all Egos will ultimately attain the goal of perfection and reunion with God, bringing with them the cumulative experience which is the fruitage of their pilgrimage through matter.

Comparing the materialistic theory with the known laws of Nature, we find that it is contrary to such well-established laws as those which declare matter and force indestructible. According to those laws mind cannot be destroyed at death as the materialistic theory asserts, for when nothing can be destroyed mind must be included.

Moreover, mind evidently is superior to matter, for it molds the face so that it mirrors the mind; also, we know that the particles of our bodies are constantly changing; that an entire change takes place at least once in seven years. If the materialistic theory were true, our consciousness ought also to undergo an entire change, with no memory of what preceded; so that now one could remember an event more than seven years.

We know that is not the case. We remember our whole life; the smallest incident, though forgotten in ordinary life, is vividly remembered by a drowning person; also in the trance state. Materialism takes no account of these states of subconsciousness or superconsciousness; it cannot explain them, so it ignores them, but in the face of scientific investigations which have established the verity of psychic phenomena beyond cavil, the policy of ignoring rather than disproving these alleged facts is a fatal defect in a theory which lays claim to solve the greatest problem of life: Life itself.

The materialistic theory has many more defects which render it unworthy of our acceptance; but sufficient has been said to justify us in casting it aside and turning to the other two.

One of the greatest difficulties in the doctrine of the theologians is its entire and confessed inadequacy. According to their theory that a new soul is created at each birth, myriads of souls have been created since the beginning of existence (even if that beginning goes back only 6,000 years). According to certain sects, only 144,000 are to be saved; the rest are to be tortured forever. And that is called “God’s plan of salvation”; extolled as proof of God’s wonderful love.

Let us suppose a wireless message is received at New York, stating that a large transatlantic liner is sinking just outside Sandy Hook; that 3,000 people are in danger of drowning. Would we hail it as a glorious plan of salvation of a small, fast motorboat were sent to their relief, and succeeded in rescuing two or three people? Certainly not. Only when some adequate means was provided to save the great majority at least would it be hailed as a plan of salvation.”

The “plan of salvation” which the theologians are offering is worse than sending a motorboat to save the people on Atlantic liner, for tow or three are a larger proportion saved out of a total of 3,000 than 144,000 of all the myriads of souls created on the plan of theology. If God had really evolved that plan, it would seem to the logical mind that He cannot be good. If He cannot help Himself, He is not all-powerful. In neither case can He therefore be God. Such suppositions are, however, unthinkable as actualities, for that cannot be God’s plan, and it is a gross libel to attribute it to Him.

If we turn to the doctrine of reincarnation (rebirth in human bodies) which postulates a slow process of development carried on with unwavering persistence through repeated embodiment in human forms of increasing efficiency, whereby all beings are in time brought to a height of spirituality inconceivable to our present limed understanding, we can readily perceive its harmony with nature’s methods. EVERYWHERE IN NATURE IS FOUND THIS SLOW AND PERSISTENT STRIVING FOR PERFECTION; AND NOWHERE IS FOUND A SUDDEN PROCESS OF EITHER CREATION OR DESTRUCTION ANALOGOUS TO THE PLAN WHICH THE THEOLOGIANS AND MATERIALISTS WOULD HAVE US BELIEVE.

Science recognizes the process of evolution as Nature’s method of development alike for the star and the starfish, the microbe and the man. It is the progression of spirit in time, and as we look about and note evolution in our three-dimensional universe, we cannot escape the obvious fact that its path is also three-dimensional, a spiral; each loop of the spiral is a cycle, and cycle follows cycle in unbroken progression, as the loops of the spiral succeed each other, each cycle being the improved product of the preceding and the basis of progress in the succeeding cycles.

A straight line is but the extension of a point, and analogous to the theories of the materialistic and the theologians. The materialistic line of existence goes from birth to death the theologian commences the lines at a point just previous to birth and carries it into the invisible beyond at death.

There is no return. Existence thus lived would extract but a minimum of the experience from the school of life, such as might be had by one-dimensional beings incapable of broadening out or rising to sublime heights of attainment.

A two-dimensional zigzag path for the evolving life would be no better, a circle would mean a never-ending round of the same experiences. Everything in Nature has a purpose, the third dimension included. In order that we may live up to the opportunities of a three dimensional universe, the path of evolution must be a spiral. So it is. Everywhere in heaven and on earth all things are going onward, upward forever.

The modest little plant in the garden and the giant redwood of California with its forty-foot diameter alike show the spiral in the arrangement of their branches, twigs, and leaves. If we study the great vaulted arch of heaven and examine the spiral nebulae, which are worlds in the making, or the path of the solar systems, the spiral is evidently the way of progression.

We find another illustration of spiral progression in the yearly course of our planet. In the spring she emerges from her period of rest, her wintry sleep. We see the life budding everywhere. All the activities of Nature are exerted to bring forth. Time passes; the corn and the grape are ripened and harvested, and again the silence and inactivity of winter take the place of the activity of the summer; again the snowy coverlet wraps the Earth. But she will not sleep forever; she will wake again to the song of a new spring, and will then be a little farther progressed along the pathway of time.

Is it possible that a law, universal in all other realms of Nature, should be abrogated in the case of man? Shall the Earth wake each year form its wintry slumber; shall the tree and the flower live again, and man die? No, that is impossible in a universe governed by immutable law. The same law that wakes the life in the plant to new growth must wake the human being to further progress toward the goal of perfection. Therefore the doctrine of rebirth, or repeated human embodiment in gradually improving vehicles, is in perfect accord with evolution and the phenomena of Nature, when it states that birth and death follow each other in succession. It is in full harmony with the Law of Alternation Cycles which decrees that activity and rest, ebb and flood, summer and winter, must follow each other in unbroken sequence. It is also in perfect accord with the spiral phase of the Law of Evolution when it states that each time the Spirit returns to a new birth it takes on a better body, and as man progresses in mental, moral, and spiritual attainment in consequence of the accumulated experiences of past lives he comes into an improved environment.

When we seek to solve the riddle of life and death; to find an answer that shall satisfy both head and heart as to the difference in the endowment of human beings, and give a reason for the existence of sorrow and pain; when we ask why one is reared in the lap of luxury while another receives more kicks than crusts; why one obtains a moral education, but another is taught to steal and lie; why one has the face and figure of a Venus, while another has the head of a Medusa; why one has perfect health and another never knows a moment’s rest form pain; why one has the intellect of a Socrates, and another can only count “one, two, many,” as do the Australian aborigines, we receive no satisfaction from the materialist or the theologian. Materialism gives the law of heredity as the reason for sickness, and in regard to economic conditions a Spencer tells us that in the animal world the law of existence is “eat, or be eaten”; in civilized society it is “cheat, or be cheated.”

Heredity accounts partly for the PHYSICAL constitution. Like begets like, so for as the FORM is concerned, but heredity does not account for the moral proclivities and mental trend, which differ in each human being. Heredity is a fact in the lower kingdoms where all the animals of a certain species look nearly alike, eat the same kind of food, and act similarly in similar circumstances, because they have no individual will, but are dominated by a common Group Spirit. In the human kingdom it is different. Each man acts differently form others. Each requires a different diet. As the years of infancy and youth pass the indwelling Ego molds its instrument so that it reflects itself in the features. Thus no two look exactly alike. Even twins who could not be distinguished in childhood grow to look different as the features of each express the thought of the Ego within.

On the moral plane a like condition prevails. Police records show that though the children of habitual criminals generally possess criminal tendencies, they invariably keep out of the courts, and in the “rogues’ galleries” of Europe and America it is impossible to find both father and son. Thus criminals are the sons of honest people, and so heredity is unable to account for moral proclivities.

When we come to a consideration of the higher intellectual and artistic faculties we find that the children of a genius are mediocre and often even idiots. Cuvier’s brain was the greatest brain ever weighed and analyzed by science. His five children died of paresis. The brother of Alexander the Great was an idiot, and so cases could be cited ad lib. to show that heredity only partially accounts for similarity of Form, and not at all for mental and moral conditions. The Law of Attraction, which causes musicians to congregate in concert halls, and brings about meetings of literary people because of similarity of tastes; and the Law of Consequence, which draws one who has developed criminal tendencies into association with criminals, that he may learn to do good by beholding the trouble incident to wrong-doing, account more logically than heredity for the facts of associations and character.

The theologian explains that all conditions are made by the will of God, who in His inscrutable wisdom has seen fit to make some rich and poor; some clever and others dull, etc.; that He sends trouble and trials to all, much to the many and little to a favored few, and they say we must accept our lot without murmur. But it is hard to look with love to the skies when one realizes that thence, according to divine caprice, comes all our misery, be it little or much, and the benevolent human mind revolts at the thought of a father who lavishes love, comfort, and luxury upon a few, and sends sorrow, suffering, and misery to millions. Surely there must be another solution to the problems of life than this. Is it not more reasonable to think that the theologians may have misinterpreted the Bible than to saddle such monstrous conduct upon God?

The Law of Rebirth offers a reasonable solution to all the inequalities of life, its sorrow and pains, when coupled with its companion law--the Law of Consequence--besides showing the road to emancipation.

The Law of Consequence is Nature’s law of justice. It decrees that whatever a man sows, he reaps. What we are, what we have, all our good qualities are the result of our labor in the past, thence our talents. What we lack in physical, moral, or mental accomplishments is due to neglect of opportunities in the past or to lack of them, but sometime, somewhere, we shall have other chances, and retrieve the loss. As to our obligations to others or their debts to us, the Law of Consequence also takes care of that. What cannot be liquidated in one life holds over to future lives. Death does not cancel our obligations any more than moving to another city pays our debts here. The Law of Rebirth provides a new environment, but in it are our old friends, and our old enemies. We know them, too, for when we meet a person for the first time, yet feel as if we had known him all our lives, that is but the recognition of the Ego who pierces the veil of flesh and recognizes an old friend. When we meet a person who at once inspires us with fear or repugnance, it is again a message from the Ego, warning us of our old-time enemy.

The occult teaching regarding life, which bases its solution upon the twin Laws of Consequence and Rebirth, is simply that the world about us is a school of experience; that even as we send a child to school day after day and year after year in order that it may learn more and more as it advances through the different grades from kindergarten to college, so the Ego in man, as a child of the Father, goes to the school of life, day after day. But in that larger life of the Ego, each day at school is a life on earth and the night which intervenes between two days at the child’s school corresponds to the sleep of death in the larger life of the human Ego (the Spirit in man).

In a school there are many grades. The older children who have attended school many times have very different lessons from the tots in the kindergarten. So in the school of life, those in high positions, endowed with great faculties, are our Elder Brothers, and the savages are but entering the lowest class. What they are we have been, and all will in time reach a point where they will be wiser than the wisest we know. Nor should it surprise the philosopher that the powerful crush the weak; the elder children are cruel to their younger brothers at a certain stage of their growth because they have not at that time evolved the true sense of right, but as they grow they learn to protect weakness. So will the children of the larger life. Altruism is flowering more and more everywhere, and the day will come when all men will be as good and benevolent as are the greatest saints.

There is but one sin--Ignorance; and but one salvation--Applied Knowledge. All sorrow, suffering and pain are traceable to ignorance of how to act, and the school of life is as necessary to bring out our latent capabilities as is the daily school which evokes those of the child.

When we realize that this is so, life will at once take on an altogether different aspect. It does not matter then what the conditions are in which we find ourselves, the knowledge the WE have made them helps us to bear them in patience; and, best of all, the glorious feeling that we are masters of our destiny and can make the FUTURE what we will, is of itself a power. It rests with us to develop what we lack. Of course we still have the past to reckon with, and perhaps much misfortune may yet accrue from wrong deeds, but if we will cease to do evil we may look with joy to every affliction as liquidating an old score and bringing the day nearer when we shall have a clear record. It is no valid objection, that often the most upright suffer the greatest. The great intelligences who apportion to each man the amount of his past score which is to be liquidated in each life always help the man who pays the debts of his past without adding new delinquencies, by giving him as much as he can bear, to hasten the day of emancipation; and in that sense it is strictly true that “whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth.”

The doctrine of rebirth is sometimes confounded with the theory of transmigration, which teaches that a human soul may incarnate in an animal. That has no foundation in Nature. Each species of animal is the emanation from a Group Spirit, which governs them FROM THE OUTSIDE, by suggestion. It functions in the Desire World; and as distance does not exist there, it can thus influence its members, not matter where located. The human Spirit, the Ego, on the other hand, enters right into a dense body; there is an individual Spirit in each person, dwelling in its instrument and guiding it FROM WITHIN. These are two entirely different stages of evolution, and it is as impossible for man to incarnate in a animal in an animal body as for a Group Spirit to take human shape.

The question, “Why do we not remember our past existences?” is another apparent difficulty. But if we realize that we have an entirely new brain at each birth, and that the human Spirit is weak and engrossed in its new environment, so that if fails to make a full impression on the brain in the days of childhood, when it is most sensitive, it is not so surprising after all. Some children do remember the past, especially in the earliest years, and it is one of the most pathetic phases of childhood that they are so thoroughly misunderstood by their elders. When they speak of the past, they are ridiculed, and even punished for being “imaginary.” If children speak of their invisible playmates, and of “seeing things,” for many children are clairvoyant, they met the same harsh treatment, and the inevitable result is that the little ones learn to keep still until they lose the faculty. Sometimes it happens, however, that the prattle of a child is listened to and results in some wonderful revelations. The writer heard of such a case a few years ago on the Pacific Coast.

A little child in Santa Barbara ran up to a gentleman by the name of Roberts on the street and called him papa, resisting that she had lived with him and another mama in a little house by a brook, and that one morning he had left the cabin and never returned. She and her mother had both died of starvation and the little one finished quaintly, “But I didn’t die; I came here.” The story was not told at once, or succinctly, but in the course of an afternoon, by intermittent questioning it came out. Mr. Roberts’ story of an early elopement, marriage and emigration from England to Australia, of the building of a cabin by a stream with no other houses near, of leaving his wife and baby, of being arrested, denied permission to notify his wife because the officers feared a trap, of being driven to the coast at the point of a gun, of being taken to England and tried for a bank robbery committed the night he sailed for Australia, of proving his innocence; of how only then notice was taken of his persistent ravings about a wife and child who must starve to death, of the telegram sent, the search party organized and the answer that they had found but the skeletons of a woman and a child. All these things corroborated the story of the little three-year-old tot; and being shown some photographs in a casual way, she picked out the pictures of Mr. Roberts and his wife, though Mr. Roberts had altered much in the eighteen years which intervened between the tragedy and the Santa Barbara incident.

It must not be supposed, however, that all who pass through the gate of death reenter as quickly as that. Such a short interim would give the Ego no chance to do the important work of assimilating experiences and preparation for a new Earth-life. But a three year old child has had no experience to speak of, so it seeks a new embodiment quickly, often incarnation in the same family as before. Children often die because a change in the parents’ habits has frustrated the working out of their past acts. It is then necessary to seek another chance, or they are born and die to teach the parents a needed lesson. In one case an Ego incarnated eight times in the same family for that purpose before the lesson was learned. Then it incarnated elsewhere. It was a friend of the family who acquired great merit by thus helping them.

The Law of Rebirth, where it is not modified by the Law of Consequence to such an extent as in the above cases, works according to the movement of the Sun known as the precession of the equinoxes, by which the Sun goes backward through the twelve signs of the zodiac in the so-called sidereal or world-year comprising 25,868 of our ordinary solar years.

As the passage of the Earth in her orbit around the Sun makes the climatic changes which alter our conditions according to seasons and change our activities, so the passage of the Sun through the great world-year makes still greater changes in climate and topographical conditions, in respect to civilization, and it is necessary that the Ego should learn to cope with it all.

Therefore the Ego incarnates twice in the time it takes the Sun to go through each one of the signs of the zodiac, which is about 2,100 years. There are thus normally about 1,000 years between two incarnations and, while the experiences of a man are widely different from those of a woman, the conditions are not materially different in a thousand years, so the Spirit usually incarnates alternately as a man and a woman. But that is not a hard and fast rule; it is subject to modification when such is required by the Law of Consequence.

Thus occult science resolves the riddle of life into the Ego’s quest for experience, all conditions having that purpose in view, and all being automatically determined by desert; it robs death of its terror and its sting, by placing it where it belongs, as an incident in a larger life, similar to the removal to another city for a time; it makes the parting from loved ones easier by assuring us that the very love we feel will be the means of re-uniting us, and it gives us the grandest hope in life that some day we shall all obtain the knowledge which illumines all problems, links all our lives, and best of all, as taught by occult science ,we have it in our own power, by application, to hasten that glorious day when faith shall be swallowed up in knowledge. Then we shall realize in a higher sense the beauty of Sir Edwin Arnold’s poetic statement of the doctrine of rebirth:

Never the Spirit was born!

The Spirit shall cease to be never!

Never was time it was not,

End and beginning are dreams.

Birthless and deathless remaineth the spirit forever.

Death has not touched it at all,

Dead though the house of it seems.

Nay! but as one layeth

A worn-out robe away.

And taking another sayeth:

This will I wear today,

So putteth by the spirit

Lightly its garment of flesh

And passeth on the inherit

A residence afresh.

2. Where Are The Dead?

A little thought will soon make it apparent to any investigator that we live in a world of EFFECT which is the result of INVISIBLE CAUSES. MATTER and FORM we see, but the FORCE which molds the matter into form and quickens it is invisible to us. Life can not be cognized directly by the senses; it is invisible and self-existent, independent of the varied forms we see as its manifestations.

Electricity, magnetism, and steam are names given to forces never seen with physical eyes, though, by conforming to certain laws discovered by experiment, we have made them our most valuable servants. We see their manifestations in moving streetcars, in railways and steamships; they light our path at night and carry our message around he globe with a speed that annihilate space, bringing the antipodes to our very doors in seconds of time. They are at our beck and call at any and all hours, tireless and faithful in the performance of innumerable tasks, yet, as said, we have never seen these, our most faithful and valuable servants.

These Nature Forces are neither blind nor unintelligent s we mistakenly think; there are many classes of them and they work along different avenues of life. Perhaps an illustration will make clear their status in relation to us. Let us suppose a carpenter is making a fence and a dog is standing by watching him. The dog sees both the carpenter and his work, though it does not fully comprehend what he is doing. If the carpenter were invisible to the dog it would see the fence being slowly built, it would see every nail driven, it would perceive the manifestation but not the cause, and it would then be in the some relation to the carpenter as we are to the Nature Forces which manifest about us as gravity, electricity, and magnetism.

During the past few centuries, but particularly in the last sixty years, science has made giant strides in the investigation of the world in which we live, and the result has been to reveal in all directions a hitherto invisible world. With telescopes of increasing power the astronomers have been reaching out into space, discovering more and more worlds; with admirable ingenuity they have attached the camera to the telescope, and have thus been able to photograph suns at such enormous distances from us that their rays make no impression on our eyes, and can only be caught by hours of exposure of a sensitize photographic plate.

In the direction of the minutely small, the increasing perfection of the microscope has achieved similar results; a world that was hitherto invisible to us has been discovered, containing an exceeding activity of LIFE and marked by a diversity of form scarcely less complex than the world we behold through our unaided senses.

The effort of making such investigations through the eyepiece of a microscope is a severe one, causing intense strain on the eyes; but here also the camera lends its aid to man. With proper mechanical attachments and lightning speed it can make permanent records of microscopic phenomena at the rate of perhaps seventy negatives per second. These may then be magnified and projected upon a screen as moving pictures; they may be seen by hundreds of people at the same time in comfort and ease.

We may see how the sap slowly circulates through the veins of a leaf, or watch the way the blood races like a millstream through the semitransparent veins of a frog’s leg. Maggots in cheese appear as large as gray crabs meandering hither and thither in search of prey. A drop of water contains many dark colored balls which grow and burst, throwing out numerous tiny globes which in their turn expand and fling out offspring. Dr. Bastian of London has even seen how a little black spot on the spine of a cyclop (of which there are many in a drop of water) developed into a parasite which fed on the cyclop.

By means of the X-ray science has been able to invade the innermost recesses of the dense body of the living human, photographing the skeleton and any foreign substance which may have become located there by accident.

Thus in many directions a hitherto invisible world has presented itself to the gaze of the persistent investigators. Who shall say the end has been reached; that there are no other worlds in space beyond those now photographed by astronomers; no life dwelling in forms more minute than those discovered by the best microscopes of today? Tomorrow an instrument may be designed that will reach beyond all previous devices and show much of what is hidden today. The infinitude of space, of the great and of the small seems to be beyond question and independent of our cognition.

In looking over the marvelous achievements of physical science, there is one characteristic particularly worth while to note; namely, that each new discovery has been made through the invention of new or the improvement of previously existing devices to aid the senses; and for that reason the investigations of science have been limited to the world of sense the dense Physical World. Scientists have dealt with the chemical elements: solids, liquids, and gases; but beyond that they have no instruments capable of reaching, although forced to postulate a still finer matter they call “ether,” because without this finer medium they find it impossible to account for light, electricity, etc. Thus we see that physical science inductively recognizes the existence of an invisible world as a necessity in the economy of Nature.

Both physical and occult science are therefore agreed on that point and both reach into the invisible world for solutions to problems. They differ as to the method of investigation and the credence to be given evidence thus obtained. Material science seeks only for explanation to problems insoluble on a purely physical basis, such as the passage of light waves through a vacuum or the resemblance of the flowers of the present season to those of past summers. In such cases science readily postulates an invisible, intangible something like ether or heredity and prides itself on its acumen and the ingenuity of its explanations.

Occult science asserts that THERE IS AN INVISIBLE CAUSE AT THE ROOT OF ALL VISIBLE PHENOMENA, which when known will afford a more thorough knowledge of the facts of life than a mechanical concept, and that the most comprehensive idea of life is obtained by the study of BOTH phenomena of the visible and the noumena or underlying causes of the invisible world. It therefore investigates the invisible worlds and offers a more thorough and reasonable solution to the problems of life than mere facts of science derived only through observation of the physical phenomena.

Material science postulates ether and heredity as solutions to the above problems, though unable to offer actual proof of the truth of its hypotheses except their seeming reasonableness. Yet when occult science employs similar methods and declares the existence of the Spirit, its immorality, its pre-existence to birth, and persistence after death, its independence of the body, etc., physical science sneers and inconsistently speaks of superstition and ignorance. It demands proof, though the evidence offered is at least as good as the scientific evidence of the existence of ether, heredity, and numerous other ideas advanced by science, implicitly believed in by the multitude that admiringly bows its head in the dust before any dictum supported by the magic word Science.

No one can demonstrate the truth of a proposition in geometry to a person unacquainted with the principles of mathematics. For similar reasons the facts of the inner worlds cannot be proved to the material scientist. If the person devoid of mathematical knowledge studies that science he will be easily satisfied as to the solution of the problem. When the physical scientist has fitted himself for the apprehension of superphysical facts he will have the proof and be compelled to uphold the very theories he now combats as superstition.

Occult science commences its investigations at the point where material science leaves off, at the door to the superphysical realms, mistakenly called supernatural. There is nothing “SUPERnatural” or “UNnatural”; nothing whatever can be outside Nature, although it may easily be superphysical, for the Physical World is the smallest part of the Earth. Unlike the material scientist, however, the occult scientist does not pursue his investigations by means of mechanical instruments, but by IMPROVING HIMSELF; by cultivating faculties of perception latent in every human being and capable of being awakened by proper training. The words of Christ, “Seek and ye shall find,” were particularly applied to spiritual qualities, and directed to “whosoever will.” All depends upon oneself; there is none to hinder and many to help the earnest seeker after knowledge. The discussion of the means and ways are, however, outside the present topic, and must be left for elucidation in future essays. (Nos. 3 and 11.)

“But,” someone will say, “what is the use of troubling about an invisible world? We are placed here in this workaday material world; what have we to do with an invisible world? And even though it may be true that we go there after death, why not take one world at a time? ‘Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof’; why borrow more?”

Surely such a view is a most shortsighted one. In the first place, a knowledge of the after-death state would take away the fear of death which haunts so many people even while they are in the most vigorous health. In the most careless life there are times when the thought of the leap in the dark which must some time be taken dulls the sense of joy in life; and any explanation offering definite, reliable knowledge upon this important subject surely ought to be eagerly welcomed.

Besides, as we look about us in the world, we see there is one law that must be apparent even to the most callous: the law of causation. Each day our work and condition depend upon what we did or did not do the day before; it is absolutely impossible for us to tear ourselves away from our past; to “start afresh.” We cannot perform an act that is not connected in some way with our previous acts, limited and hedged about by former conditions; and it must surely appear as reasonable to suppose that, whatever may be the mode of expression of life in the invisible world, it will be in some way determined by our present mode of life. It would be logical, also, to declare that if reliable information about this invisible world were available it would be wise to prepare oneself with it for the same reason that when we wish to travel in a foreign country we acquaint ourselves with its geography, laws, customs, language, or other necessary information. We do this because we know that the more thoroughly we are primed with this knowledge the more we shall profit by our travel and the less will be the annoyances due to changed conditions. The same must logically hold as regards the post-mortem state.

Again some objector will say: “Ah, but that is just the rub! Whatever the condition after death may be no one knows for certain. Those who profess to know all differ from each other in their stories, many of which are unreasonable, impossible--”

In the first place, no man has a moral right to assert that NO ONE knows, except he himself is omniscient and knows the extent of the knowledge of ALL who live; and it is the height of arrogance to attempt to judge the mental capacity of all others by the exceedingly narrow ideas which wiseacres who make such statements generally have. The wise man will always have an ear open for new evidence, he will be willing and eager to investigate; and even though there were but one man who professed knowledge of the invisible worlds, that would not necessarily prove him mistaken. Did not Galileo stand alone in asserting his theory concerning the movement of the heavenly bodies, to which the whole western world has since become converted?

As to the difference of the stories told by those who profess to know about the invisible worlds, this is not only to be expected but is a valuable feature, as an illustration from daily life will show.

Supposing San Francisco had been entirely rebuilt on an imposing scale with all the latest and most modern improvements, and had decided to celebrate the occasion by a grand festival. Many thousands would flock to the Golden Gate to rejoice in the new Phoenix which had arisen from the ashes of that beautiful city, so suddenly swept from the face of the earth in a fiery death. Among others would probably come a considerable number of newspaper men, reporters from different parts of the country, for the purpose of sending reports to their respective publications. It is a foregone conclusion that although reporters are trained observers, no two reports would be alike. Some might have certain points in general. Some would be unlike the others in every respect, for the simple reason that every reporter saw the city from his own particular viewpoint and noted only what appealed to him. Thus, instead of the diversity of reports being an argument against their accuracy it will readily be seen that they would all be valuable as different phases of the one whole; and it is safe to say that a man who read all the different reports would have a vastly more comprehensive idea of San Francisco than if he had read only one report subscribed to by all the reporters.

The same principle holds good concerning the different stories describing the invisible worlds; they are not necessarily untrue because varying, but form collectively a more complete narrative.

As to the “impossible” stories, let us suppose that one of our San Francisco reporters instead of observing had spent the time enjoying himself, and sent in an imaginary report; surely that would not invalidate the honest reports. Or let us suppose that one was wearing a pair of yellow spectacles put on him without his knowledge and he sent a report that the houses and streets were of gold; that would only show HIS ignorance in not knowing that the glasses were that color and not the city; and his report should not reflect on the sanity and veracity of the others. Lastly, let us remember that even though some things are at present beyond OUR reasoning power that does not prove that they are unreasonable. The fact that a baby cannot understand square root constitutes no valid argument against mathematics. In short, no reasonable argument can be made by the materialist to prove that there is no invisible world any more than the man born blind can successfully debate against the existence of light and color in the world about him. If his sight is obtained he will see them. So no argument from those blind to the invisible world can convince the seer of the nonexistence of what he sees, and if the proper sense is awakened in such people they too will perceive a world to which they have previously been insensible, though it was all about them, as light and color pervade the sense-world, whether perceived or not.

Passing onward from this negative testimony to the existence of the superphysical realms, to more positive evidence, an everyday illustration will show how matter is constantly changing from denser to finer states in Nature. If we take a block of ice we have a “solid”; by applying heat to it we raise the vibrations of the atoms which compose it, and it becomes a “liquid”--”water.” If we apply more heat we raise the vibrations of the atoms in the water to such a rate that it becomes invisible to the eye; then we have a “gas” which we call “steam.” The same matter which was visible in the ice and in the water has passed from our sight but not out of existence; for by the application of cold it will be condensed into water, and then may again be frozen into ice.

Though matter may pass beyond the range of our perception it still persists. So does consciousness continue though it may be unable to give to me the slightest sign of existence. That has been proven in cases where a person has seemingly died, where not the faintest flutter of the heart or the slightest respiratory movement could be perceived, and perhaps at the last moment before interment, the supposedly dead would come to life, repeat every word and describe every action of those who had been around him while entranced.

Therefore, when matter, which is indestructible, is known to exist in states invisible and intangible, and when consciousness is as alert, or even keener when the dense body is entranced than in ordinary waking life, is it not reasonable to suppose that this consciousness may mold the matter invisible to us and function in it when excarnate (as it shapes during earth- life the matter of this world), thus bringing into existence another world of form and consciousness as real to the excarnate Spirit as this world is to the eyes dwelling in fleshly bodies?

Even during life in the dense body we know and deal with the invisible world at every moment of our existence, and the life which we live there is the most important part of our being--the basis of our life in the dense world.

We all have an inner life where we live amidst our thoughts and feelings in scenes and under conditions unknown to our outside environment. There the mind shapes our ideas into thought pictures which we afterwards externalize. All everything we see about us and contact with our senses and call real, is but the evanescent shadow of the intangible, invisible world. The visible world has consolidated from the invisible realms in essentially the same manner that the hard and flinty house of the snail has crystallized from the juices of its soft body. Moreover, as the house of the snail is inert and would remain motionless did not the snail move it about, so the bodies of plant, animal, and man are but inert emanations from the Spirit which dwells in the invisible world, and except this indwelling life galvanizes the form into action it is incapable of movement. These bodies are preserved only so long as they serve the purpose of the Spirit; when that leaves there is nothing to hold the form together, so it decays.

Furthermore, all that we see about us, as houses, streetcars, steamboats, telephones, in short, all objects that have been fashioned by the hand of man are crystallized IMAGINATIONS which had their origin in the invisible world. If Graham Bell had not been able to imagine the telephone it would never have come into existence. It was Fulton’s “inner life” that first witnessed the birth of the steamboat, long before it became the visible “Clermont.”

As to the reality and permanence of the objects in the invisible world, they are far more so than the visible conditions which we mistakenly think of as the acme of “reality.” We regard our mental pictures and imaginations as less real than a mirage and speak of them in a slighting manner as a “mere thought” or “just an idea,” when in truth they are the underlying realities of all that we see in the world about us. An illustration will further emphasize the point:

When an architect wishes to build a house he does not order lumber and other material sent to the building site, hire workmen and tell them to go ahead and build! He formulates an idea, thinks it out, first building the house “in his mind” with as much detail as possible, and from this mental model the house might be built if it could be seen by the workmen, but it is yet in the invisible world; and although the architect perceives it plainly, “the veil of flesh” prevents others seeing it. Thus it becomes necessary to bring it within the sense world and make a visible plan which the workmen may follow. This is the first consolidation of the thought picture of the architect and when the house is built we see in wood and stone what was first an idea in the architect’s mind and invisible to us.

As the relative stability of the idea and building; it is plain that the house may be destroyed by dynamite or some other powerful element of destruction, but the “idea” in the architect’s mind even he cannot destroy; and from that “idea” a similar house may be built at any time while the architect lives. Even after his death the idea may be found in the Memory of Nature (of which more will be explained in the next essay), by anyone qualified for this research; for no matter how long ago the impression was formed it is never lost or destroyed.

While we may thus inductively “infer” the existence of an invisible world this is not the only means of proof. There is an abundance of direct testimony to show that there is such a world, testimony from men and women of unquestioned integrity whose truth and accuracy are never questioned regarding other matters, who state that this invisible world is inhabited by those whom we call dead, who are living there in full possession of all their mental and emotional faculties, living under conditions which make their life as real and profitable as ours, perhaps more so. It is further capable of proof that at least some of them take considerable interest in the affairs of the Physical World. Suffice it to take two instances of world-wide fame.

There is first the testimony of Jeanne D’Arc, the “maid of Orleans,” to hearing “voices which spoke to and directed her.” Let us consider the story of her life and see if it does not bear the stamp of truth. Here we have a simple, pure, and unsophisticated peasant girl, scarcely more than a child, who had never been outside her native village before going upon her “mission.” She was extremely timid, afraid of disobeying her father, yet the imperious “voices” drove her to brave his displeasure and she set out to find the King of France. After much trouble but constantly guided by voices, she was finally granted an audience by the King. When she entered the King stood in the midst of his courtiers, a puppet was seated on the throne, and everyone expected to see her discomfited, for she had never seen the King, but, guided by the faithful voices, Jean unhesitatingly walked up to him and saluted. She convinced him of the truth of her mission by whispering in his ear an exceedingly weighty secret known only to himself.

In consequence of this proof the command of the French army was taken out of the hands of the experienced generals, who had been defeated by the English at every turn, and placed in the hands of this child who knew nothing of warcraft herself, yet, taught by her invisible prompters, led the French troops to victory. Her knowledge of military tactics was the constant wonder of her associates, and in itself a proof of the guidance she claimed.

Next we see her imprisoned, subjected for years to threats or cajolery, as the mood of her cruel persecutors prompted, to induce her to acknowledge that there had been no voices, but the records of the proceedings of her different trials show in her answers a singleness of mind, an innocence and a straightforwardness unequalled in the annals of history, which confounded her judges at every turn. Not even death at the stake could make her abjure the truth as she knew it, and to this day her testimony to the guiding voices from the invisible world stands unshaken, sealed with her life blood. This martyr to truth has lately been canonized a saint by the church which slew her.

“Ah, but,” some one may say, “while she was no doubt honest, she was but a simple peasant girl, unaware that she was suffering from hallucinations!” Strange hallucinations which enabled her to unhesitatingly pick out the King she had never seen and tell him a secret unknown to any other person, to accurately describe battles while they were being fought many miles away, as afterwards verified by participants.

But let us pass on to our second witness, who is by no means of the “simple minded.” In that respect Socrates is an absolute contrast to Jeanne d’Arc, for his was the keenest intellect, the greatest mind we know, unexcelled to the present day. He also sealed his testimony to the voice of guidance from the invisible world with his life blood, and we may take it as a self-evident fact that it must have been an exceedingly intelligent voice or it would never have been able to counsel so great a sage as Socrates.

To hold that he was insane or suffering from hallucinations will hardly meet the case, for a man who, like Socrates, would weigh all other matters with such nicety, is above suspicion in that respect, and the more reasonable course it to acknowledge that “there are more things in heaven and earth” than we know individually or collectively, and then start to investigate.

That is indeed what the most advanced people are doing in our day and age, realizing that it is just as foolish to be too skeptical to investigate as to be overcredulous and take for gospel truth everything we hear. Only by properly informing ourselves is it possible for us to arrive at a conclusion worth of our manhood or womanhood, no matter whether we decide one way or the other.

Recognizing this principle, and the signal importance of the subject, the Society for Physical Research was formed more than a quarter of a century ago and numbers among its members some of the brightest minds of our time. They have spared no pains to sift truth from error in the many thousands of cases brought to their attention, and as a result we find that one of the most prominent scientists of our time, Sir Oliver Lodge, as president of the society, gave to the world several years ago the statement that “the existence of an invisible world, inhabited by the so-called dead, and their power to communicate with this world, had been established beyond peradventure in such an abundance of cases as to leave no room for doubt.”

Coming as that statement does, from one of the greatest of modern scientists, one who has brought to his psychic studies a mind sharpened by science, who was well protected against being duped in any way, such testimony should command the highest respect among all who are seeking for truth.

Having thus submitted inductive, deductive, and direct evidence, we may add that the existence of another world, intangible to the five senses but readily investigated by means of a “sixth sense,” is a fact in Nature, whether we recognize it or not, as light and color exist around “blind” and “seeing” alike. It is the blind man’s loss that he cannot see the light and color all about him. It is ours if we are “blind” to the superphysical realms; but to all who will take the trouble to awaken their latent faculties, the opening of the proper sense is but a matter of time. When that time comes we shall see that the so-called “dead” are all about us, and that in fact “there is no death,” as John McCreery says in the following beautiful poem:

There is no death. The stars go down

To rise upon another shore,

And bright in heaven’s jeweled crown

They shine for evermore.

There is no death. The forest leaves

Convert to life the viewless air;

The rocks disorganize to feed

The hungry moss they bear.

There is no death. The dust we tread

Shall change beneath the summer showers

To golden grain or mellow fruit,

Or rainbow-tinted flowers.

There is no death. The leaves may fall,

The flowers may fade and pass away—

They only wait through wintry hours

The warm, sweet breath of May.

There is no death, although we grieve

When beautiful familiar forms

That we have learned to love are torn

From our embracing arms.

Although with bowed and breaking heart.

With sable garb and silent tread

We bear their senseless dust to rest

And say that they are dead—

They are not dead. They have but passed

Beyond the mists that blind us here

Into the new and larger life

Of that serener sphere.

They have but dropped their robe of clay

To put a shining raiment on;

They have not wandered far away,

They are not “lost” or “gone.”

Thou unseen to the mortal eye,

They still are here and love us yet;

The dear ones they have left behind

They never do forget.

Sometimes upon our fevered brow

We feel their touch, a breath of balm;

Our spirit sees them, and our hearts

Grow comforted and calm.

Yes, ever near us, though unseen,

Our dear, immortal spirits tread—

For all God’s boundless Universe

Is Life--there are no dead.

3. Spiritual Sight And The Spiritual Worlds

In the first lecture we saw that the only theory of life which will bear the searchlight of reason is the theory That the human Ego is immortal, That Earth-life is a school and that the Ego returns to that school life after life to learn its lessons under the twin laws of Nature: the Laws of Consequence and Rebirth, thus progressing steadily towards the goal of Perfection.

The foregoing solution to the riddle of life naturally elicits the question: But if those whom we call dead are really alive, why do we not see them and where are They? That question was answered in the second lecture where it was shown inductively, deductively, and by direct incontrovertible testimony that there is an invisible world about us inhabited by the so-called dead who are living there in full possession of their every faculty, and that the only reason why we do not ordinarily perceive them is because we lack the necessary sense. The blind fail to observe light and color because they lack physical sight. We are blind to the spiritual worlds because we lack spiritual sight. All have this “sixth” sense latent and it is capable of being awakened in all without exception by proper methods, as shown in Lecture No. 11 of this series.

In the present lecture we are to investigate the inner worlds and it may not be out of place to give a general idea of how the clairvoyant knows about the invisible worlds and to show the scope and limitations of clairvoyance.

“Clairvoyant” is the name given to persons who see objects invisible to ordinary humanity. The name means simply “clear-sighted,” and contrary to the generally accepted idea, there are different KINDS of clairvoyants. Some are like a prisoner behind a barred window, who can see everything within his limited range of vision, and according to whether his window chances of face upon a narrow prison-yard or upon a wide expanse of country, will be his scope of vision. If his view is further hampered by a shutter which he cannot control, which opens and shuts independently of his will, we shall understand That his observation is of little value to himself or others. Some clairvoyants are like this prisoner. When the shutter is opened They have a view of whatever happens to be going on in That part of the inner world which They chance to see at a given time and place. They cannot help seeing whether the vision pleases them or not; They must endure it until it passes away of itself. Such people are called negative, involuntary clairvoyants.

Others again, while limited in the scope of their vision, have control of the shutter, which They open and shut at will, seeing anything which comes within range. They are also negative, but are able to see “at will” and are called voluntary clairvoyants.

Then again others have a faculty which may be likened to the state of a prisoner whose prison is a glass house situated upon a hill and supplied with telescopes of the highest magnitude, shaded by blinds of such a construction that they would open as soon as he looked at them, and close as soon as he turned away. Thus he would have perfect control over his vision, being able to see or not and to turn his gaze to any subject he desired to investigate and would therefore be a voluntary, TRAINED clairvoyant.

There is a higher stage where the prison doors are opened, and the man is able to leave the dense body at will, go into the invisible worlds and investigate at close range the things he wishes to know about, which the last named class could view only from a distance. Leaving the dense body at will is of course the ideal method--then the man is not only a clairvoyant; he is a citizen of two or more worlds. That stage is not generally reached by a mere investigator, but by such as have taken a vow to dedicate their lives to the service of humanity. They are then called INVISIBLE HELPERS, and work under the guidance of the great Leaders of Humanity--our Elder Brothers.

While many people make the mistake of being incredulous of the existence of supersensuous worlds, there are also people who go to the other extreme--when they have become convinced of the verity of the invisible world--and think that when anyone can “see” clairvoyantly all truth is open to his vision and he at once “knows all about” those higher worlds.

That is a great mistake--the fallacy of such an idea is readily understood by comparison with everyday affairs. We do not consider That because a man who was born blind has been made to see, he at once “knows all about” everything in the Physical World; nay, more, we know that even those of us who have had our eyesight all our lives are far from having a universal knowledge of the things about us. Logic and analogy are violated by applying such a supposition to the inner worlds. In fact, no clairvoyant, however accomplished, has a knowledge of everything there, BUT ONLY KNOWS WHAT HE HAS INVESTIGATED. A blind person who has obtained sight must learn to use his eyes to gauge distance, etc.; so must the infant; and so the clairvoyant must be trained before his faculty becomes of value, and it is invariably the case that the more proficient people become the more modest They are in their statements and the more willing to defer to the versions of others, knowing how much is unknown and realizing how few of the many sides of a subject the single investigator can cover.

Besides, in the Physical World forms are stable and do not easily change, but in the inner worlds everything is in the most intense motion. Forms change in a way and with a faculty that is but dimly pictured in our fairy tales. The wonder is not that involuntary or untrained clairvoyants often sadly mix things, but rather that they ever see anything right. The training consists in teaching the neophyte how to LOOK BEYOND THE FORM which is evanescent and illusory TO THE LIFE which is the same no matter what “form” it may take. For only when the “life” can be seen is there safety from glamour.

Before proceeding to the investigation of the invisible worlds, we must first state the Rosicrucian conception of the Physical World, as it differs somewhat from the generally accepted views.

THE CHEMICAL REGION OF THE PHYSICAL WORLD

In everyday life we distinguish between solids, liquids, and gases. These are grouped by science into about seventy inorganic elements, such as hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen and carbon. From these elements all FORMS are built.

We also discriminate four kingdoms: mineral, plant, animal, and human, but that distinction has reference to four streams of evolving Spirits at various states of development, manifesting as LIFE, which molds the chemical elements into the multitudinous FORMS we see about us.

This fourfold stream of life is more or less firmly enmeshed in the forms it has build according to the stage of development reached by the various streams of Spirits.

The Spirits which compose the Mineral Life-Stream are so feeble, and hence so closely allied with the matter they shape into inorganic crystals, that they seem inseparable from it. This life-stream is known as chemical force.

The Spirits in the Plant Life-Stream assimilate the crystallized chemical elements and modify the crystals into crystalloids when building their more complex bodies.

These plant-forms, when taken in turn by the Animal and Human Life-Streams, are grouped as cells and organs which collectively compose the more intricate vehicles of the two higher kingdoms.

While the three more evolved streams of life are working with the chemical matter, the mineral-life imbedded therein becomes inert, or, in a certain sense, it dies; but the moment the plant-life, animal-life, or human-life has departed from a FORM, which we then call “dead,” the mineral-life native to the chemical matter is once more free to assert itself and manifest as the chemical forces which make for decay and resolve the form into its original constituents.

Some scientists attribute feeling to minerals, to “dead” plants and “dead” animal tissue. The observations of science are correct, but it is a serious misnomer to call That “FEELING” which is merely a RESPONSE TO IMPACTS of the mineral-life which ensouls the form when not appropriated to the use of one of the higher life-streams. The mineral life-stream embodied in the tissue which the scientific experimenters use merely registers an impression; it is incapable of true feeling, such as pleasure and pain. These are soul qualities and predicate an “inner” consciousness capable of “working over” the impressions made upon it. This is as yet beyond the mineral-life, and therefore all forms AS SUCH are as devoid of feeling as the chemical elements of which they are composed. Science recognizes this when it states That there is no feeling in a finger which is hurt, but inconsistently relegates the feeling of pain to the brain. The occult scientist holds that ALL FORM, brain, brawn, or bone, equally lack feeling, for FEELING IS A LIFE-PROCESS neither inherent in the solids, liquids, or gases, nor acquired by them during the time They are appropriated by the evolving life-streams to furnish the substance for the various forms through which these life-streams express themselves in the dense visible Physical World.

Thus, if man possessed no more than the dense body he would be as incapable of manifesting life as are the chemical substance of which That body is composed, and if there were only this VISIBLE Physical World, there could never have been any other forms than the inert crystals. Plants, animals, and man would have been impossible achievements in Nature.

THE ETHERIC REGION OF THE PHYSICAL WORLD

The Rosicrucians, in harmony with other occult schools, divide each world into seven “regions” or states of matter. Our visible world comprises but three such regions, viz.: Solid, Liquid, and Gaseous. The invisible ether occupies the four remaining regions, and it is with the investigation of this fourfold ether that the research of occult science begins.

These four states of ether are called the Etheric Region. Either is the medium through which the solar energy flows into the dense bodies of plant, animal, and man, and thus it forms a basis for the manifestation of life and vitality. The names and specific functions of these four states of ether, counting from below, are as follows:

(1) The Chemical Ether is the medium of manifestation for the chemical forces which cause the formation of crystals, manifesting as the loves and hates of the atoms, the “elective affinity” spoken of by Goethe whereby alcohol and water readily mix, but oil and water refuse to commingle. Other forces manifest in this ether to promote assimilation, growth, and excretion as seen in the higher kingdoms of plant, animal, and man. The chemical ether alone is active in the mineral chemical elements in their native state.

(2) The Life Ether. A fish can live and move in water; animal and man cannot. They live in air which suffocates the fish. So each realm of Nature is the medium of manifestation for intelligences of diverse constitution, at varying stages of development and having different missions in the economy of Nature. While the forces operating in the chemical ether are solely concerned with the maintenance of the separate form, the life ether is the vantage ground for the propagative forces which have for their object the perpetuation of the species or race. It is thus active in plant, animal, and man.

(3) The Light Ether is the medium of manifestation of the forces which produce heat, motion, and the circulation of the blood in animal and man and of the sap in plants. Through it the green chlorophyll is deposited on the leaves, and so is the coloring on flowers, animal, and man. It is the avenue of ingress for the solar force which builds the eye and is the avenue of sight. The forces in this ether are only partially operative in the plant, fully in animal and man.

(4) The Reflecting Ether is the substance of the highest region of the Physical World, and the images or records of all that is or ever has been in the Physical World can be found there. Therefore we say That it contains “the Memory of Nature.” Here the architect’s idea for a building spoken of in the second essay is recoverable at any time, whether he is dead or living. But the Reflecting Ether deserves its name in more than one way, for the images found there, though reproducing objects found in the Physical World, are nevertheless but reflections of images in a much higher world, where the records are permanent, much clearer, and more definite. The record in the reflecting ether is only read by involuntary clairvoyants and psychometrists who have no choice, even though they may have heard of the existence of the higher records. Sometimes the occult pupil also reads the record in the reflecting ether when he first starts to investigate the invisible realms, but he is instructed as to its scope and does not deceive himself into thinking that it is the ultimate of perfection, and in time learns to use the higher record.

This ether is a most important realm in Nature; it is the avenue of ingress whereby the Ego manipulates the brain and the nervous system and controls its dense body; and in the reflecting ether the Ego in man makes the record of its experiences which we call memory.

Science teaches that alike in the densest solid and in the rarest gas no two atoms touch, but all float, as it were, in a sea of ether. That is true, but it is only part of the story; if that were all, it would be impossible to explain logically the difference between the four kingdoms.

We know that in order to function in the visible world it is necessary to have a dense body. Without such a body we would be “ghosts,” invisible to other physical beings.

The same is true of the other worlds. In order to function in them or express their peculiar qualities, we must first have a vehicle made of their materials; and as it is necessary to have a dense body before we can act in the Physical World, so we must have a vital body before we can show life, assimilate, grow, or propagate. The mineral stream of life at present embodied in the matter of the Chemical Region, has no separate vital body. The plant, animal, and man have vital bodies, but they are as differently constructed as their respective dense bodies, varying as to the quality, quantity, and organization of their component etheric matter.

Yet even the possession of a dense body and a vital body is not sufficient to account for all the facts of life. If there were no other realms in Nature, movable animal and human bodies would be impossibilities; and even if such had been created, having the POWER to move, the incentive to motion and action would be lacking. The occult scientist finds action has its inception in

THE DESIRE WORLD

Like the Physical World, this realm of Nature is also composed of seven regions which divide the matter according to relative density and other qualities.

When we speak of matter there, it is something very different from that of the Physical world. The difference is very hard to describe, because all our terms are coined with reference to the sense world, and the best That can be done is to give some faint idea of what it is or is not like.

In the first place, though desire matter is one degree less dense than physical matter, desire stuff is not by any means “finer” physical matter. It is true That the ultimate atom of all physical forms is the same; That the mountain, the mayflower, the mouse and the man are all built of the same kind of atoms; yet we do not say that the mouse is a “finer” degree of mountain. A similar difference is embodied in the statement of the relative density of the two kinds of matter, which makes one amenable to law inoperative in the other.

Desire matter is particularly characterized by the ease with which it is molded into different forms and is capable of changing from one form to another. Plasticity is far too poor a name for this quality; besides, desire matter is also an embodiment of light and color of such luminosity, such scintillating, iridescent hues as make our brightest colors and our most glorious sunsets seem dull and dead by comparison. It was this dazzling luminosity which caused the mediaeval alchemists to designate it “astral,” “starry,” though it has nothing to do with the stars. A faint conception of what it is like may be had by taking an abalone shell and watching the changing play of colors while moving it to and fro in the sunshine.

To obtain a reasonable understanding of the Desire World, we must realize That it is the world of feeling, desire, wishes, and emotions. As our bones, blood, and flesh are formed of chemical matter, so our desires and emotions are formed of the matter of the Desire World; and as our dense bodies are subject to gravity and other physical laws, so our desires, etc., are dominated by Attraction and Repulsion, the two great forces in the Desire World.

Repulsion is the predominant force in the three lower or denser regions. Attraction alone holds sway in the three upper regions where matter is rarest, but is also present to some degree in the three lower regions, where it opposes the force of Repulsion.

The central region is the region of “Feeling.” Here “INTEREST IN” or “INDIFFERENCE TO” an object or idea sways the balance in favor of one or the other of the two forces, attraction or repulsion, thereby relegating the object or idea which engendered the feeling to the three higher or the three lower regions, or, as the case may be, expelling it from our lives. An illustration will show the principle and show how these “twin feelings” are the mainsprings that move the world by means of the “twin forces.”

Both animals and man have a desire body and are swayed by the twin feelings and the twin forces. A tigress in the jungle will pass a loaf of bread with indifference, but she will feel interested in the owner. Her interest will rouse the force of attraction, yet she will endeavor to kill him. The destructive act is not the end and the aim, however, but only a necessary step towards assimilation. If she spies another beast of prey having designs on what she considers her booty, that also will cause her to feel interest. But in that case the feeling of interest will arouse the force of repulsion, and if a fight ensues, destruction of her adversary will be an end in itself. In the above case and in cases where the animal desires of man are factors, the twin forces and twin feelings operate alike, but there is a difference in the composition of the desire body of man and animal.

The desire body of an animal is composed solely of matter from the four lower regions of the Desire World. Hence it is incapable of feeling any but the animal desires for food, shelter, and the like. A saint would feel the keenest remorse if he had inadvertently spoken a hasty word; the tigress remains undisturbed by any sense of wrong, though she kill daily. The reason is that man’s desire body is composed of the matter of all the seven regions of the Desire World, so that he is capable of feeling in a higher sense than the animal. Another illustration will make the point clear:

Three men are walking along a road. They see a sick dog, covered with sores, evidently suffering intense pain, and famishing.

This much is evident to all three men; it is the testimony of their senses. Now comes the “feeling.” One feels “indifferent” to the animal and passes on without another look, leaving the dog to its fate. Not so the others. They are both interested and remain; but this feeling of interest manifests differently in the two men.

The interest of one man is of a sympathetic, helpful nature, impelling him to care for the poor beast, to endeavor to assuage its pain and nurse it back to health. In him the “feeling” of “interest” has aroused the “force” of attraction.”

The other man’s interest is of an opposite nature. He sees only a loathsome object, which offends his esthetic sense, and he wishes to rid himself and the world of such a pest as quickly as possible; he is in favor of killing the animal outright, and burying it. In him the “feeling” of interest has generated the destructive “force”: repulsion.

Thus we see that all action or refrainment from action (which is negative action) is due to the twin feelings: Interest, which starts the twin forces of Attraction and Repulsion; and Indifference, that simply cuts us off from the object or idea it is directed against. If our interest in an object or idea generates repulsion, that, of course, also causes us to endeavor to expurgate it from our lives, but, as shown by the illustrations, there is a great difference in the action of the force of repulsion and the feeling of indifference.

Thus we see that a dense body formed of the inert substance of the Chemical Region, quickened and vitalized by the vital body composed of the ethers of the Etheric Region, receives the incentive to action from the desire body, an incentive which the animals follow absolutely, but which in man is checked by another factor--reason, which sometimes causes him to act contrary to desire. Were there no other realms in Nature but the Physical World and the Desire World, That factor would be non-existent. We could have mineral, plant, and animal, but man, a thinking, reasoning being, would be an impossibility in Nature.

THE WORLD OF THOUGHT...

must be taken into consideration to account for man. For from its substance the mind is formed to act as a brake upon the impulses of the desire body, dictating action contrary to the urge of the twin feelings because of wider viewpoint arrived at by reason.

The World of Thought also consists of seven regions in which the matter is classified according to density and quality; besides, it is divided into two main sections: “The Region of ‘Concrete’ Thought” and “the Region of ‘Abstract’ Thought.”

In the three lowest divisions of the Region of Concrete Thought are the archetypes of everything we see in the Physical World, as mineral, plant, animal, and man, of the continents, rivers and oceans; and here the trained clairvoyant whose faculty enables him to reach these high realms sees also the universal ocean of flowing life, in which all forms are immersed, sees the same vital impulse moving from form to form in rhythmic cycles, sustaining the form specialized by the Ego of man or the animal and plant Group Spirit.

These archetypes are not merely models in the sense we generally speak of models, as a thing in miniature, or in a finer material; they are creative archetypes, molding all the visible FORMS, such as we see in the world, in their own likeness, or rather likenesses, for often many of the archetypes work together to form a certain species, each archetype giving part of itself to build the required form. They are marshaled and directed by “The Archetypal Forces” which are found in the fourth division. From the substance of the four lower divisions our mind is formed, enabling man to also form thoughts and make images which he may afterwards reproduce in iron, stone, or wood, so that by means of the mind which he obtains from this world man becomes a creator in the Physical World like the archetypal forces.

But what is that which directs the mind as the Archetypal Forces guide the operations of the archetypes? It is the Ego, and it gathers its clothing or garment from the three highest sections, which are called the Region of Abstract Thought and Ideas.

Thus we see that man is a very complex being, and a citizen of three worlds to which he is correlated by an unbroken chain of five vehicles, thereby giving him a full waking consciousness which enables him to see objects in space outside himself in clear and sharp contours.

The animal has no “individual” Spirit yet, but has a so-called “Group Spirit,” which informs all the members of a species. The separate animals have three bodies--a dense, a vital, and a desire body--but lack one link in the chain: Mind. Hence animals do not ordinarily think, but as we “induce” electricity in a wire by bringing it close to another which is charged, so in a similar way by contact with man a semblance of thought has been “induced” in the higher domestic animals, such as the dog, horse, and elephant. The other animals obey the prompting (which we call instinct) of the animal Group Spirit. They do not see objects in such clear outlines as does man; in the lower species the animal consciousness resolves itself more and more into an internal “picture-consciousness,” resembling man’s dream state, except that their pictures are not confused, but convey perfectly to the animal the promptings of the Group Spirit.

The plants have a dense body and a vital body; hence they can neither feel nor think. They lack desire body and mind, and therefore a greater gap exists between the plant and its Group Spirit than between the animal and its Group Spirit; hence the consciousness of the plants is correspondingly dimmer, resembling our state of dreamless sleep.

The mineral has only a dense body. It lacks three links to connect it with its Group Spirit. It therefore is inert and its unconsciousness resembles That of the dense human body in the “trance” state when the human Spirit, the Ego, has passed correspondingly beyond it.

In conclusion, let us note that the three worlds in which we live are not separated by space. They are all about us, as light and color, imbedded in the physical matter; as lines of cleavage in the mineral. If we let a dish of water freeze, and examine it under a microscope, we shall see the ice crystals divided off from one another by lines. These were present though unseen in the water as lines of force, invisible until the proper condition brought them out. So one world lies imbedded in the next above, unseen to us until we provide the proper conditions; but when we have fitted ourselves, Nature, who is every ready to unfold to us her wonders, expresses ardent joy over everyone who as a helper in evolution thus attains to citizenship in the invisible realms.

4. Sleep, Dreams, Trance, Hypnotism, Mediumship And Insanity

We have seen that man is a very complex organism, consisting of:

(1) The Dense Body, which is his tool in action.

(2) The Vital Body, a medium of “vitality” which makes action possible.

(3) The Desire Body whence comes desire and compels action.

(4) The Mind, a brake on impulse, giving purpose to action.

(5) The Ego, which acts and gathers experience from action.

The purpose of life is to transforms the powers latent in the Ego into dynamic energy, whereby it may perfectly control its different vehicles and act as IT pleases. We know that it does not have full sway now, or there would be no warfare in our breasts, as we say, between the Spirit and the flesh, but in reality, as we should say, between the Spirit and the flesh, but in reality, as we should say, between the Spirit and the desire body. It is this warfare that develops the spiritual muscle, as wrestling builds the physical muscle. It is easy to bid others do this and that, but to enforce obedience from ONESELF is the hardest task in the world, and it has been truly said that “the man who conquers himself is greater than he who takes a city.” Goethe, the great initiate poet, gives us the reason why in the lines:

From every pow’r that holds the world in chains,

Man frees himself when self-control he gains.

Such a man is above all laws, whether made by man or God--not that he would break them, far from it--but for just the opposite reason, that his perfect obedience to them renders ALL laws as superfluous in respect to him as the law “thou shalt not steal” is to one who has learned to respect the property rights of others.

Sin or action contrary to the will of God, or the laws of Nature, was before all Law, and St. Paul well appreciates its beneficent action when he says that “the law is a taskmaster to bring us to Christ, for without ‘Law’ we had not known sin.”

Whenever we break one of Nature’s laws, that transgression, as a cause, brings as effect a corresponding retribution. If we overeat, or eat improperly, indigestion may result, or perhaps, if the disturbance we have caused is serious, it may be necessary for Nature to burn it out on the physical plane of action by means of a fever. If we sin against the laws of morality, social ostracism follows, and thus wrong on the moral plane brings retribution. But the man who uses his mental powers unworthily is the worst as well as the most dangerous, for the gourmand may be an otherwise exceedingly respectable and lovable person, practically injuring no one but himself. The immoral person, the common brawl and the gossip are cancers on society, dangerous to all. They can, however, be shunned and avoided, and thus the dangers incident to contact with them may at least be minimized. They may and sometimes do repent and reform, but the most insidious of all wrong is that done upon the mental plane of action, where a man under the guise of perfect respectability, often under the cloak of benevolence, can blight the lives of others, bend their wills to his own ends, yet seemingly remain irreproachable himself, and even be looked upon as a friend and benefactor by his victims.

Thus, without danger of detection he gains his end, whether that be gold or aggrandizement.

His transgression is seldom punished in the same life in which committed, but often in later lives finds its expiation in congenital idiocy, without the chance of repentance or forgiveness, such as, for instance, a realization of wrong to another may bring in ordinary cases, when repentance is accompanied by reform. The crime of the determined hypnotist is in fact a phase of what the Bible describes as “sin against the Holy Spirit,” spiritual evil, the greatest danger to society.

The Holy Spirit is the creative principle in nature and the creative force in man is its direct expression. The same force expresses itself through the generative organs to create a new body and through the brain to create new thoughts, which are afterwards crystallized to “things.”

When anyone is victimized by a hypnotist he ceases to be his own master and loses his faculty for independent thought under the spell of the HYPNOTIST’S SUGGESTIONS--which ARE IN FACT COMMANDS, because the victim has no choice, but MUST obey.

Therefore, as the hypnotist interferes with the expression of the creative faculty of thought in his victim, which faculty is a direct expression of the Holy Spirit, he is committing a sin against the Holy Spirit.

To give point and force to the descriptions of such abnormal conditions as exist in dreams, trance, hypnotism, mediumship, obsession, and insanity we will begin with an explanation of the condition of man in the normal state of waking and sleep, as viewed from the standpoint of occult science.

THE WAKING STATE.--In the waking state all the vehicles of man are confined within the same space. As the bones, the flesh, and the various juices of the body are confined within the skin, so all the bodies of man are gathered within an egg-shaped cloud that reaches above the head, below the feet and all around the visible body. No matter what position the dense body may take, it is always in the center of this aura, as the yolk is in the center of an egg. The aura surrounds man’s dense body as the white of the egg surrounds the yolk. But that is not all, for this aura composed of man’s finer vehicles not only surrounds the dense body, but permeates its every particle as well, in a manner similar to the way in which the blood pervades the whole dense body.

Thus we see that these bodies are nearer than hands and feet, and, though as invisible as our breath, they are not less real or less necessary. During life man cannot ordinarily separate them; and unless they are all together he cannot move and act as he does in ordinary daily life.

During the waking state there is a constant war between the vital body and the desire body. The desires and impulses from the desire body are constantly impinging upon the dense body, impelling it to action, regardless of any damage resulting to the latter instrument, so that desire is gratified. It is the desire vehicle that urges the drunkard to fill his system with liquor, so that the chemical combustion of spirit may raise the vibrations of the dense body to such a pitch as to make it the willing tool of every mad impulse, wasting its stored energy with reckless prodigality.

The vital body, on the other hand, has no other interest than the preservation of the dense vehicle. By way of the spleen it specializes the colorless solar energy with pervades space, and by some strange chemical process transforms it into a vital fluid of a beautiful pale rose color, sending it along every nerve and fiber of the body. The vital body ever aims to husband the energy it has stored in the dense body. It is constantly concerned in rebuilding the tissues when they are broken down and destroyed by the powerful onslaughts of the rampant desire body.

This “vital fluid” has a function similar to that of electricity in a telegraph system, for even when such a system is built with wires connecting different stations, and operators at their keys, the system will be dead until electricity speeds along the lines and carries the messages. So is the dense body useless unless the nerves are traversed by this vital fluid. When that fails in whole or in part, we say that the body is paralyzed to that extent. We note the effect, but do not see the cause in the material world.

We have in our body two nervous systems, the VOLUNTARY and the INVOLUNTARY. The first named is operated directly by the DESIRE BODY, and controls the movements of the body, tends to break down and destroy, only partially restrained in its ruthless task by the mind. The involuntary system has its particular vantage ground in the vital body; it governs the digestive and respiratory organs, which rebuild and restore the dense body.

It is this war between the vital body and the desire body which produces consciousness in the physical world, but did not the mind act as a brake on the desire body, our waking hours would be very short, and so would our lives, for the vital body would soon be overridden in its beneficent offices by the reckless desire body, as evidenced in the exhaustion which follows a fit of temper, for temper is a condition where the man has “lost control” and the desire body rules unchecked.

SLEEP AND NATURAL TRANCE.--In spite of all its efforts, however the vital body slowly loses ground as the day goes along, the poisons of decaying tissue accumulate and impede the flow of the vital fluid, its motion becomes more and more sluggish. In consequence the visible body shows signs of exhaustion. At last the vital body, so to say, collapses; the vital fluid ceases to flow along the nerves in sufficient quantity to maintain the poise of the dense body, and that renders it unconscious and therefore unfit for the use of the Spirit. That is sleep.

It is the idea of many people that sleep is a passive or negative state. Nothing could be more erroneous, and if that were the case, the body would awake as tired as when it went to sleep, or rather, it would never wake; for it was its inability to receive the vital fluid (caused by being clogged with poisons of decay) which sent it to sleep, and if the only effect of that state were a negative cessation of waste and energy, the conditions would remain in STATUS QUO, and the body would sleep on. Sometimes such a conditions exists, lasting perhaps weeks or even months. The sleeper is then said to be in a “trance.” To keep up that state for any length of time, and not have it result in death, functions of the vital body must not be entirely suspended; it must take care of a limited amount of digestion.

What, then, is it that makes sleep a restorative state? In the very term “restorative” there is implied an activity. If a building is to be restored, it is necessary that the tenants move out, and that destruction, wear and tear cease. But that is not enough. Workmen must be brought in to repair the damage incident to the use of the building. Only when that work has been done is restoration complete and the building ready for reoccupancy by the tenants.

So also with the temple of the Ego, our dense body, when that has been exhausted. It is then necessary that the Ego, mind, and desire body vacate and give the vital body full sway, that it may restore the tone of the dense body; and thus, when the dense body goes to sleep, there is a separation. The Ego and the mind, clothed in the desire body, draw out from the vital body and the dense body, the two latter remaining on the bed, while the higher vehicles hover above or near the sleeping body.

The process of restoration now begins. In a fight in the Physical World the injuries are never all on one side; the winner always has some lesions. The fiercer the fight, and the more evenly the combatants are matched, the more lesions go to each. So with the combating vital and desire bodies, the desire body wins every time, yet its victory is always a defeat, for it is then forced to leave the battlefield and the prize, the dense body, in the hands of the vanquished vital body and withdraw to repair its own shattered harmony.

When it withdraws from the sleeping body it enters that sea of force and harmony called the Desire World. Here it lives over the scenes of the day, but in REVERSE ORDER, from effects to causes, straightening out the tangles of the day, forming true pictures to replace the wrong impressions due to the limitations of the life in the dense body, and as the harmonies of the Desire World pervade it, and wisdom and truth replace error, it regains its rhythm and its tone, the time required to restore it varying according to how illusive, impulsive and strenuous had been the life of the day.

Then, and then only, does the work of restoring the vehicles left on the bed commence, and the restored desire body starts to revive the vital body, pumping rhythmic energy into it, and that in turn starts to work upon the dense body, eliminating the projects of decay, principally by means of the sympathetic nervous system, with the result that the dense body is restored and overflowing with life when the desire body, mind, and Ego enter in the morning and cause it to wake.

DREAMS.--It sometimes happens, however, that we have become so absorbed and interested in the affairs of our mundane existence that even after the vital body has collapsed and rendered the dense body unconscious we cannot make up our minds to leave it and commence the works of restoration; the desire body will cling like grim death, is perhaps only dragged half out by the Ego, and starts to ruminate over the happenings of the day in that position.

It is evident that this is an abnormal condition. The proper connection between the different vehicles is ruptured in the first place by the collapse of the vital body, and further disarranged by the unusual relative positions of the higher vehicles, which has partially disconnected the sense centers of the former from the latter, and the inevitable result is those confused dreams where the sounds and sights of the Desire World are mixed with the happenings of daily life in the most grotesque and impossible way.

At times, when something in daily life has particularly agitated the desire body, it happens that when it has severed connection with the lower vehicles and is engaged in the work of restoration by the above mentioned review, that when a trying incident of the day appears, and the desire body sees the solution, it will rush back into the dense body in order to impress the ideas on the brain, thereby causing the dense body to wake with a start. It is only in the fewest cases that it is able to bring back the solution that was so clear in the Desire World. Even if it does succeed in impressing the solution on the brain, it is usually forgotten in the morning.

The knowledge of this fact has caused many people to keep paper, pencil, and a light by the bedside, and often they are rewarded by finding solutions to their problems written in the morning, without having even a recollection of writing. It is a good idea to follow.

Under such a condition, where there is no complete separation of the vehicles, it is evident that waste is still going on and that restoration is impeded, the dense body tossing on the bed in extreme cases, and in consequence there is a tired feeling left in the morning, due to the imperfect separation of the vehicles, which causes dreams and makes the sleep restless.

Not all dreams are confused, however; those, for instance, which bring logical solutions to problems of life or prophetically warn of impending trouble, often enable us to avoid or avert disaster. Such dreams generally occur just before waking, and only when there has been a complete separation of the vehicles previous to the awakening, for only then is it possible for a dream to be logical, and in that case it is merely that the knowledge of impending disaster seen by the Ego in the Desire World is successfully transmitted to the brain. It is a great help in furthering such impressions in the coming night if we hold the thought to the last on going to sleep: “I want to know about so and so, and I AM GOING TO REMEMBER IT IN THE MORNING.” If this is the last thought on going to sleep, it will bring the memory of the solution arrived at.

To take up the time giving instances to prove the value of dreams would be a waste of time in a lecture. The daily press teems with instances of providential escapes attributable to warning dreams. The records of the Society for Physical Research give voluminous evidence, and anyone in search of evidence will have no trouble in finding it.

HYPNOTISM.--It is characteristic of the invisible bodies of man that they are acted upon by WILL. Every impulse to action that comes from WITHIN originates in the will of the man himself, while incentives to action arising from OUTSIDE sources, commonly called “circumstances” ORIGINATE IN THE WILL OF OTHERS, and the difference between the man of STRONG CHARACTER, good or bad, and the WEAK MAN, is that the former is impelled by HIS OWN WILL, acting from within, which enables him, regardless of circumstances, to make his way as he determines.

On the other hand, the weakling who has not will is the helpless sport of the billows of circumstance, dominated by the will of others, driftwood on the shoreless sea of life.

To control others by the exercise of will power is mental assault, and is even more reprehensible than assault on the physical plane of action. It is this mental assault which is called “hypnotism,” and it is graded in its effect just as physical assault is. A strong man may administer a playful slap to get another to do his bidding, or he may beat him to unconsciousness. The hypnotist salesman administers just enough force to make the customer buy something he does not want or cannot afford, and then deludes himself by calling it legitimate business.

Bad and widespread as this is, it is at least not attended by any of the after-effects incident to the practice of putting “subjects” into hypnotic sleep. The enormity of this crime can only be appreciated when the effect upon the invisible bodies of the subject is noted.

No strong-willed person can be dominated by a hypnotist to the extent of being put to sleep, and not one who keeps a positive mental attitude can be dominated, hence the unsuspecting victim is first told to be perfectly negative and willing to be put to sleep. The passes of the hypnotist are not directed to the head and impinge upon the head of the vital body, squeezing it through the physical head, so that it lies around the neck in thick rolls, something like the collar of a sweater.

Thus the connection between the Ego and the dense body is severed, as in sleep, and the higher vehicles withdrawn. But there is now a different condition than in the sleep state. The head of the vital body is not in its proper place, enveloping and permeating the dense physical head of the victim. That is not pervaded by ether from the vital body of the hypnotist, and thus he obtains power over his victim.

If we know what “wire-tapping” means we have the key to the relation between the hypnotist and his victim, at least in a measure. If a man has a private telephone connection from his home to his office, and someone makes a connection in between, he will be able to intercept messages, impersonate the business man, issue orders, etc. The hypnotist does something like that. He taps the line of communication between the Ego and body of his victim by interposing part of himself in the line, and by virtue of that hold he may force the Ego to go out in the invisible world and get whatever information he desires, as far as it is possible; or he may make the dense body do foolish or criminal acts according to his pleasure.

But even this is not the worst about hypnotism. By far the gravest danger to the victim arises from the fact that, once a part of the hypnotist’s vital body has been introduced into his own, it cannot be entirely withdrawn at the awakening. A small part remains and forms a nucleus by which the hypnotist may gain ingress and subdue his victim more easily the next time, and each succeeding time something is added to this nucleus, so that by degrees the poor victim becomes perfectly helpless, amenable to the will of his master independent of the distance until the death of one or the other breaks the connection.

This remnant of the hypnotist’s vital body is also the storehouse for commands to be carried out at a future time, involving the performance of a certain act, on a certain day, at a certain hour. When the time arrives the impulse is released like the spring of an alarm clock, and the victim must carry out the command even to murder, yet has no idea that he is influenced by someone else. Therefore, hypnotism is the greatest crime on earth and the greatest danger to society.

It is sometimes contended that hypnotism may be used benevolently for the cure of drunkenness and other vices, and it is readily admitted that, viewed solely from the material standpoint, that appears to be true. But from the viewpoint of occult science it is far otherwise. Like all other desires, the craving for liquor is in the desire body, and it is the duty of the Ego to master it by will power. That is why he is in the school of experience called life, and no man can do his moral growing for him, any more than he can digest another’s dinner for him. Nature is not to be cheated; each must solve his own problems, overcome his own faults by his own will. If, therefore, a hypnotist overpowers the desire body of a drunkard, the Ego in the drunkard will have to learn its lesson in a future life, if he dies before the hypnotist. But if the hypnotist dies first the man will inevitably turn to drink again, for then the part of the hypnotist’s vital body which held the evil desire in check gravitates back to its source, and the cure is nil. The only way PERMANENTLY to master a vice is by one’s own will.

At the death of a hypnotist all his victims are released, and no suggestion for a subsequent date will compel them.

MEDIUMSHIP.--To understand mediumship it is necessary to know that at death the same separation takes place as in sleep, but it is permanent. The so called DEAD have Ego, mind, and desire body, and are often conscious of the world they have left for some time after. Some cling to the earth life, and cannot set their minds to learn the new lessons; we call them “Earth-bound Spirits.” They cannot function in the visible world without a body, however, and so they take advantage of the fact that all Spirits are not confined with equal rigor to the prison of the dense body. Those who are most closely bound are the rank materialists; those whose cords do not bind them so tightly are “impressionists,” capable of answering in some measure to spiritual vibrations. Persons of positive character thus constituted, if they develop, do so BY THEIR OWN WILL, and become trained occultists. Those of weak will can only develop by the aid of others, and in a negative way. They are the prey of Earth-bound Spirits who constitute themselves “Spirit guides” and develop their victims as “trance mediums,” or, if the connection between the victim’s dense and vital bodies be particularly lax, into “materializing mediums.”

These Earth-bound Spirit controls are in every respect like the hypnotist, except that they are invisible to their victims and have more power over them, because looked up to as “higher beings,” “angels” devoid of evil, and unselfishly aiming to diffuse happiness or wisdom.

As a matter of fact, there is no transforming power in death. The sinner does not become a saint nor the ignoramus a Solomon because of it, and it is a pathetic sight to the trained clairvoyant who sees the imposition practiced by unprincipled Spirit controls upon their unsuspecting victims, who are so thoroughly unsophisticated that they fail to distinguish the true character of the impostors and accept their inane, goody-goody phrases as sublime wisdom. They have done some good in proving the reality of a life after death, but much harm to mediums.

The modus operandi of the invisible manipulator is simply to push the higher vehicles out of the lower bodies of the unresisting medium, step in himself and take control. When he leaves, he also takes part of the medium’s vital body to use as a key or lever next time.

In some cases he is not satisfied to borrow a body, but steals one, and keeps the owner out permanently. We see the same body, but there is another soul within, which shows different habits and tastes altogether. That is called “OBSESSION,” and can be detected by the fact that the iris neither responds to light nor distance by contraction or expansion, for the eye is the window of the soul and only the owner can truly manipulate it; hence the eyes of mediums under control are always closed, or have a glassy stare.

There are certain means of getting rid of an obsessing Spirit and restoring the body to the owner, but that cannot be given publicly.

We have seen that in the waking state the dense body and the vital body are surrounded and interpenetrated by an egg-shaped cloud comprising the desire body and the mind. These vehicles are all CONCENTRIC, and form so many links in a chain. It is the interpolation of one into the other, so that the sense centers in one are in proper alignment with the sense centers of the other, which enables the Ego to manipulate the complex organism and perform in an ordered manner the life processes which we call reason, speech, and action. If there is a maladjustment anywhere the Ego will be correspondingly hampered in its expression. This perfect balance is health, the opposite is disease.

Disease takes many forms; one is insanity, and that also is of different kinds. Where the connection between the sense centers of the dense body and the vital body is askew, where sometimes the head of the vital body towers above the dense head instead of being concentric with it, the vital body is out of adjustment with both the higher vehicles and the dense body. Then we have the docile idiot. Where the dense and vital bodies are in adjustment but the break is between the vital body and the desire body, a similar condition obtains; but when the break is between the desire body and the mind we have the raving maniac, who is more ungovernable than a wild animal, for that is checked by the Group Spirit. In that case all the animal propensities are followed blindly.

When the break is between the Ego and the mind, the latter takes charge of the three vehicles, and we have the consummate cunning which characterizes a certain class of insane. Such an one will successfully hide his baneful designs and outwit all to attain revenge for fancied wrong or other low desire until the victim is within his power. Then the brute nature of the desire body will spend itself in some horrible outrage, or the mind may even then dominate the desire body and exert its diabolical cunning in slow torture before the desire body breaks away and ends the sufferings of the victim, perhaps brutally, but far more mercifully than continued torture.

The object lesson to be learned from a knowledge of these matters is that we must remain our own masters and never under any pretext allow ourselves to be hypnotized or controlled by an outside agency; also that self-mastery is our goal, and not mastery over others.

5. Death: And Life In Purgatory

Amid all the uncertainties which are the characteristics of the world, there is but one certainty--Death. At one time or another, after a short or a long life, comes this termination to the material phrase of our existence which is a birth into a new world, as that which we term “birth” is, in the beautiful words of Wordsworth, a forgetting past.

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:

The Soul that rises with us, our life’s Star,

Hath had elsewhere its setting,

And cometh from afar:

Not in entire forgetfulness,

And not in utter nakedness,

But trailing clouds of glory do we come

From God, who is our home:

Heaven lies about us in our infancy!

Shades of the prison-house begin to close

Upon the growing Boy,

But he beholds the light, and whence it flows,

He sees it in his joy;

The Youth, who daily farther from the east

Must travel, still is Nature’s priest,

And by the vision splendid

Is on his way attended;

At length the Man perceives it die away,

And fade into the light of common day.

Birth and death may therefore be regarded as the shifting of man’s activity from one world to another, and it depends upon our own position whether we designate such a change birth or death. If a man enters the world in which we live, we call it birth, if he leaves our plane of existence to enter another world, we call it death; but to the individual concerned the passage from one world to another is but as the removal to another city here; he LIVES, unchanged; only his exterior surroundings and condition are changed.

The passage from one world to another is often attended by more or less unconsciousness, like sleep as Wordsworth says, and for that reason our consciousness may be fixed upon the world we have left. In infancy heaven lies about us in actual fact; children are all clairvoyant for a longer or shorter time after birth, and whoever passes out at death still beholds the material world for some time. If we pass out in the full vigor of physical manhood or womanhood, with strong ties of family, friends, or other interests, the dense world will continue to attract our attention for a much longer time than if death occurred at a “ripe old age,” when the earthly ties have been severed before the change we call death. This is on the same principle that the seed clings to the flesh of unripe fruit, while it is easily and cleanly detached from the ripe fruit. Therefore it is easier to die at an advanced age than in youth.

The unconsciousness which usually attends the change of the incoming spirit at birth, and the outgoing spirit at death is due to our inability to adjust our focus instantly, and is similar to the difficulty we experience when passing from a darkened room to the street on a light, sunny day, or vice versa. Under those conditions some time elapses before we can distinguish objects about us; so with the newly born and to the newly dead, both have to readjust their viewpoint to their new condition.

When the moment arrives which marks the completion of life in the physical world, the usefulness of the dense body has ended, and the Ego withdraws from it by way of the head, taking with it the mind and the desire body, as it does every night during sleep, but now the vital body is useless, so that too is withdrawn, and when the “silver cord” which united the higher to the lower vehicles snaps, it can never be repaired.

We remember that the vital body is composed of ether, superimposed upon the dense bodies of plant, animal, and man during life. Ether is physical matter, and has therefore weight. The only reason why the scientists cannot weigh it is because they are unable to gather a quantity and put it upon a scale. But when it leaves the dense body at death a diminution in weight will take place in every instance, showing that something having weight, yet invisible, leaves the dense body at that time.

In 1906 Dr. McDougall, of Boston, weighed a number of dying persons by putting their beds upon scales, which he balanced. It was noted that the platform bearing the weights came down with startling suddenness at the moment when the last breath was drawn. The news was flashed all over the Union that the soul had been weighed, an achievement that can never be accomplished, for the soul is not amenable to physical laws. Later Professor Twining, of Los Angeles, supposedly weighed the soul of a mouse, but what the scientists really did was to weigh the vital body as it leaves the dense body at death.

A word should be spoken in regard to the treatment of dying persons, who suffer unspeakable agony in many cases through the mistaken kindness of friends. More suffering is caused by administering stimulants to the dying than perhaps in any other way. It is not hard to pass out of the body, but stimulants have the effect of throwing the departing Ego back into its body with the force of a catapult, to experience anew the sufferings from which it was just escaping. Departed souls have often complained to investigators, and one such person said that he had not suffered as much in all his life as he did while kept from dying for many hours. The only rational way is to leave Nature to take it course when it is seen that the end is inevitable.

Another and more far-reaching sin against the passing Spirit is to give vent to loud crying or lamentation in or near the death chamber. Just subsequent to its release and from a few hours to a few days afterwards, the Ego is engaged upon a matter of the utmost importance; a great deal of the value of the past life depends upon the attention given to it by the passing spirit. If distracted by the sobs and lamentations of loved ones, it will lose much, as we shall see, but if strengthened by prayer and helped by silence, much future sorrow to all concerned may be avoided. We are never so much our brother’s keeper as when he is passing through Gethsemane, and it is one of our greatest opportunities for serving him and laying up heavenly treasure for ourselves.

We have studied the phenomenon of birth, and have evolved a SCIENCE OF BIRTH. We have qualified obstetricians and trained nurses to minister in the best possible manner to both mother and child to make them comfortable, but we are sadly, very sadly, in need of a SCIENCE OF DEATH. When a child is coming into the world we bustle about in intelligent endeavor; when a lifelong friend is about to leave us we stand helplessly about, ignorant of how to aid, or worse, worse than all, we bungle, and cause suffering instead of helping.

Physical science knows that whatever the power which moves the heart, it does not come from without, but is inside the heart. The occult scientist sees a chamber in the left ventricle, near the apex, where a little atom swims in a sea of the highest ether. The force in that atom, like the forces in all other atoms is THE UNDIFFERENTIATED LIFE OF GOD; without that force the mineral could not form matter into crystals, the plant, animal, and human kingdoms would be unable to form their bodies. The deeper we go the plainer it becomes to us how fundamentally true it is that in God we live, move, and have our being.

That atom is called the “seed-atom.” The force within it moves the heart and keeps the organism alive. All the other atoms in the whole body must vibrate in tune with this atom. The forces of the seed-atom have been immanent in every dense body ever possessed by the particular Ego to whom it is attached, and upon its plastic tablet are inscribed all the experiences of that particular Ego in all its lives. When we return to God, when we shall all have become one in God once more, that record, which is peculiarly God’s record, will still remain, and thus we shall retain our individuality. Our experiences we transmute, as will be described, into faculties; the evil is transmuted into good and the good we retain as power for higher good, but THE RECORD of the experiences is OF God, and IN God, in the most intimate sense.

The “silver cord” which unites the higher and lower vehicles terminates at the seed-atom in the heart. When material life comes to an end in the natural manner the forces in the seed-atom disengage themselves, pass outward along the pneumogastric nerve, the back of the head and along the silver cord together with the higher vehicles. It is this rupture in the heart which marks physical death, but the connecting silver cord is not broken at once, in some cases not for several days.

The vital body is the vehicle of sense-perception. As that remains with the body of feeling and the etheric cord connects them with the discarded dense body, it will be evident that until the cord is severed there must be a certain amount of feeling experienced by the Ego when its dense body is molested. Thus, it causes pain when the blood is extracted and embalming fluid injected, when the body is opened for post-mortem examination, and when the body is cremated.

A case was told the writer where a surgeon amputated three toes from a (living) person under anesthetics. He threw the severed toes into a bright coal fire, and immediately the patient commenced to scream, for the rapid disintegration of the material toes caused an equally rapid disintegration of the etheric toes, which were connected with the higher vehicles. In like manner molestations affect the discarnate Spirit from a few hours to three and one-half days after death. Then all connection is severed, and the body begins to decay.

Therefore great care should be taken not to cause the passing Spirit discomfort by such measures. If laws or other circumstances prevent keeping the body quietly in the room where death took place for a few days, it can at least be interred for that length of time and then treated in any desired way. Quiet and prayer are of enormous benefit at that time, and if we love the departed Spirit wisely we shall be able to earn its lasting gratitude by following the above instructions.

In Lecture No. 3 we saw that the vital body is the storehouse of both the conscious and subconscious memory; upon the vital body is branded indelibly every act and experience of the past life, as the scenery upon an exposed photographic plate. When the Ego has withdrawn it from the dense body, the whole life, as registered by the subconscious memory, is laid open to the eye of mind. It is the partial loosening of the vital body which causes a drowning person to see his whole past life, but then it is only like a flash, preceding unconsciousness; the silver cord remains intact, or there could be no resuscitation. In the case of a Spirit passing out at death, the movement is slower; the man stands as a spectator while the pictures succeed one another in the order from death to birth, so that he sees first the happenings just prior to death, then the years of manhood or womanhood unroll themselves; youth, childhood and infancy follow, until it terminates at birth. The man, however, has no feeling about them at that time, the object is merely to etch the panorama into the desire body, which is the seat of feeling, and from that impress the feeling will be realized when the Ego enters the Desire World, but we may note here that the INTENSITY OF FEELING REALIZED DEPENDS UPON THE LENGTH OF TIME CONSUMED IN THE PROCESS OF ETCHING, AND THE ATTENTION GIVEN THERETO BY THE MAN. IF HE WAS UNDISTURBED FOR A LONG PERIOD, BY NOISE AND HYSTERIA, A DEEP, CLEAR-CUT IMPRESS WILL BE MADE UPON THE DESIRE BODY. HE WILL FEEL THE WRONG HE DID MORE KEENLY IN PURGATORY, AND BE MORE ABUNDANTLY STRENGTHENED IN HIS GOOD QUALITIES IN HEAVEN, and though the experience will be lost in a future life, THE FEELINGS WILL REMAIN, as the “still, small voice.” Where the feelings have been strongly indented upon the desire body of an Ego, this voice will speak in no vague and uncertain terms. It will impel him beyond gainsaying, forcing him to desist from that which caused pain in the life before, and compel him to yield to that which is good. Therefore the panorama passes BACKWARDS, so that the Ego sees first the effects, and then the underlying causes.

As to what determines the length of the panorama, we remember that it was the collapse of the vital body which forced the higher vehicles to withdraw; so after death, when the vital body collapses, the Ego has to withdraw, and thus the panorama comes to an end. The duration of the panorama depends, therefore, upon the time the person could remain awake if necessary. Some people can remain awake only a few hours, others can endure for a few days, depending upon the strength of their vital body.

When the Ego has left the vital body, the latter gravitates back to the dense body, remaining hovering above the grave, decaying as the dense body does, and it is indeed a noisome sight to the clairvoyant to pass through a cemetery and behold all those vital bodies whose state of decay clearly indicates the state of decomposition of the remains in the grave. If there were more clairvoyants, incineration would soon be adopted as a measure of protection to our feelings, if not for sanitary reasons.

When the Ego has freed itself from the vital body, its last tie with the physical world is broken, and it enters the Desire World. The ovoid form of the desire body now changes its form, assuming the likeness of the discarded dense body. There is, however, a peculiar arrangement of the materials out of which it is formed, that has great significance in regard to the kind of life the departed will lead there.

The desire body of man is composed of matter from all the seven regions of the Desire World, as a dense body is build of the solids, liquids, and gases of this world. But the quantity of matter from each region in the desire body of a man depends upon the nature of the desires which he cherishes. Coarse desires are built of the coarsest desire stuff, which belongs to the lowest region of the Desire World. If a man has such, he is building a coarse desire body, where the matter from the lowest regions predominates. If he persistently puts coarse desires away from himself, yielding only to the pure and the good, his desire body will be formed of the materials of the higher regions.

At present no man is wholly evil, and none wholly good; we are all mixtures of both; but there may be and is a difference in our make-up. In the desire bodies of some there is a preponderance of coarse and in others of fine desire stuff; and that makes all the difference in the environment and status of the man when he enters the Desire World after death, for then the matter of his desire body, while taking on the likeness of the discarded dense body, at the same time arranges itself so that the subtlest matter which belongs to the higher regions of the Desire World forms the center of the vehicle, and the matter from the three densest regions is on the outside. When the Ego’s earth life is ended it exerts centrifugal force to free itself from its vehicles. Following out the same law which causes a planet to throw that part of itself which is most dense and crystallized out into space, it first discards its dense body. When it enters the Desire World this centrifugal force also acts so as to throw the coarsest matter in the desire body outwards, and thus man is forced to stay in the lower regions until he has been purged of the coarser desires which were embodied in he densest desire matter. The coarsest desire matter is therefore always on the outside of his desire body while he is passing through Purgatory, and is gradually eliminated by the purging centrifugal force; the force of Repulsion, which tears the evil out of man and the allows him to pass upwards into the First Heaven in the upper part of the Desire World, where the Force of Attraction alone holds sway and builds the good of the past life into the Ego as soul power. The discarded part of the desire body is left as an empty “shell.”

When the Ego has left its dense body, that dies QUICKLY. Physical matter becomes inert the moment it is deprived of the quickening, life-giving energy; it dissolves as a form. Not so with the matter of the Desire World; once life has been communicated to it, that energy will subsist for a considerable time after the influx of life has ceased, varying as to the strength of the impulse. The result is that after the Ego has left them these “shells” subsist for a longer or a shorter time. They live an independent life, and if that Ego to which they belonged was very much given to worldly desires, perhaps cut off in the prime of life, with strong and unsatisfied ambitions, this soul-less shell will often make the most desperate efforts to get back to the Physical World, and much of the phenomena of spiritualistic seances are due to the actions of these shells. The fact that the communications received from many of these so-called “Spirits” are utterly devoid of sense is easily accounted for when we realize that they are not Spirits at all, but only a soul-less part of the garment of the departed Spirit, and therefore without intelligence. They have a memory of the past life, owing to the panorama which was etched after death, which often enables them to impose upon relatives by stating incidents not known to others, but the fact remains that they are but the cast-off garment of the Ego, endowed with an independent life for the time being.

It is not always, however, that these shells remain soul-less, for there are different classes of beings in the Desire World, whose evolution naturally belongs there. They are good and bad, as are human beings. Generally they are classed under one heading as “elementals,” although differing vastly in appearance, intelligence and characteristics. We will only deal with them so far as their influence touches the postmortem state of man.

It sometimes happens, especially where a man has been in the habit of invoking Spirits, that these beings take possession of his dense body in earth life and make him an irresponsible medium. They generally lure him at first with seemingly high teachings, but by degrees lead to gross immorality, and worst of all, they may take possession of his desire body after he has left it and ascended into heaven. As the impulses contained in the desire body are the basis of the life in heaven, and also the springs of action which cause man to reincarnate for renewed growth, this is indeed a very serious matter, for the whole evolution of a man may be stopped for ages, before the elemental releases his desire body.

It is these elements who are the originators of many of the spiritualistic phenomena where more intelligence is displayed than can be accounted for by the action of soul-less shells, particularly at materializations, at least. Though shells may take part, phenomena are always directed by a being with intelligence. The difference between a materializing medium and an ordinary person is that the connection between the dense body can be withdrawn, and also some of the gases and even liquids of the medium’s dense body may be used to form the bodies of apparitions. This withdrawal and the process of clothing the shells is generally performed by the elemental who extracts the vital body of the medium out through the spleen. As a rule, the body of the medium shrinks horribly in consequence. When the dense body is thus deprived of its vital principle, it becomes terribly exhausted and unfortunately the medium often seeks to restore the equilibrium by strong drink, becoming a confirmed drunkard.

In Lecture No. 4 it was pointed out how dangerous it is to allow a hypnotist to dominate our will and deprive us of our liberty, but in that case the victim can at least see, and may form an opinion of the hypnotist who controls him. In the case of the medium the danger is multiplied a thousandfold, for the dominating influence cannot be seen. The death of the hypnotist releases his victims, but the gravest danger to the medium is after death. Therefore, a negative state in which the whole body or even the hand of a person is used automatically, apart from the individual’s own volition, is hazardous. It is not denied that sometimes there are genuine communications from a departed Spirit, or that there are cases of benevolent communications from beings outside our volition, but our purpose is to point out the dangers to those who meddle with that they know not. Philanthropists do not grow on every bush in the Desire World any more than here. They are positively not great and good beings, angels, who enjoy knocking a man’s hat over his ears, spilling water down his neck, or doing any other of the foolish tricks exhibited at the ordinary spiritualistic seance; those are emphatically either the soul-less shells of scapegraces, or elementals on a prank.

When a man wakes up in the Desire World he is with one exception the very same man in every respect as before death. Anyone seeing him there would know him if they had known him here. There is no transforming power in death; the man’s character has not changed, the vicious man and the drunkard are vicious and dissipated still, the miser is a miser still, the thief is as dishonest as ever, but there is one great and important change in them all--they have all lost their dense body, and THAT MAKES ALL THE DIFFERENCE IN REGARD TO THE GRATIFICATION OF THEIR VARIOUS DESIRES.

The drunkard cannot drink; he lacks the stomach, and though he may and at first often does, get into the whiskey casks of the saloons, it is no satisfaction to him, for whiskey in a cask does not give out fumes as it does during chemical combustion in the alimentary canal. He then tries the effect of getting into the dense body of drunkards on earth. He succeeds easily for the desire body is so constituted that it is no inconvenience to occupy the same space with another person. “Dead” people, at first, are often annoyed when their friends sit down in the chair they are occupying, but after a while they learn that it is not necessary to hurry out of their seat because a friend yet in earth life is approaching to sit down. It does not hurt the desire body “to be sat on”; both persons can occupy the same chair without inconveniencing each other’s movements. So the drunkard enters into the body of people who are drinking, but even there he receives no real satisfaction, and in consequence he suffers the tortures of Tantalus, until at last the desire burns itself out for want of gratification, as all desires do, even in physical life.

This is “PURGATORY,” and we note that it is not an avenging deity who measures out the suffering, or a devil who executes the judgment, but the evil desires cultivated in earth life, incapable of gratification in the Desire World, that cause the suffering, until in time they burn out. Thus the suffering is strictly proportionate to the strength of the evil habit. Take the case of the miser; he loves gold as dearly after death as before, but cannot gather any more; he has no physical hand wherewith to grasp, and worst of all, cannot protect what he had. He may sit watching in front of his safe, but the heirs may come and put their hands right through him, take away his cherished gold, perhaps laughing at the “stingy old fool” while he is nearly in a spasm with rage and mortification. He suffers terribly because unable to check them. At last, however, he learns to content himself; he is automatically purges of grasping, as was the drunkard of drink, by the Law of Consequence, which eradicates from each person his faults IN AN IMPERSONAL WAY. There is in truth no punishment, all suffering is entirely due to our self-acquired habits, is strictly proportionate to them. Benevolently it rids us of our faults, so that in consequence of purgation we are born innocent and may more easily acquire virtue when tempted anew, by listening to the voice that warns. Each evil act, at least, is therefore an act of free will.

While our EVIL HABITS are dealt with in this general way, our SPECIFIC EVIL ACTIONS in the past life are dealt with in the same automatic manner by means of the life panorama which was etched into the desire body. That panorama begins to unfold BACKWARDS from death to birth, upon our entrance into the Desire World. It unfolds backwards at the rate of about three times the speed of the physical life, so that a man who was 60 years of age at the time of death would live over his past life in the Desire World in about twenty years.

We remember that when viewing this panorama just after death he had not feeling at all about it, standing there merely AS A SPECTATOR, looking at the pictures as they unrolled. Not so when they appear in his consciousness in Purgatory. There the good makes no impression, but all the evil reacts upon him in such a way that in the scenes where he had made another suffer he himself feels as the injured one. He suffers all the pain and anguish his victim felt in life, and as the speed of the life is tripled, so is the suffering. It is even more acute, for the dense body is so slow of vibration that it dulls even suffering, but in the Desire World, where we are minus physical vehicles, suffering is more acute, and THE MORE CLEAR-CUT THE PANORAMIC IMPRESSION OF THE PAST LIFE WAS ETCHED INTO THE DESIRE BODY AT THE TIME OF DEATH THE MORE THE MAN SUFFERS AND THE MORE CLEARLY HE WILL FEEL IN AFTER LIVES THAT TRANSGRESSION IS TO BE AVOIDED.

There is a peculiar phase of this suffering, which also adds to its disagreeable character. If in life a man had injured two men AT THE SAME TIME, and one is living in Maine, the other in California, at the time when their tormentor is undergoing his purgatorial realization of the sufferings he caused them, HE WILL FEEL HIMSELF AS PRESENT WITH BOTH at the same time, as if one part were in Maine and the other in California. It gives him a peculiar but indescribable feeling of being torn to pieces.

There are two classes of people for whom the purgative process does not commence at once, namely, the suicide and victim of murder. In the case of the suicide it does not commence until the time when the body would have died in the course of natural events, but in the meantime he suffers for his act in a way that is as dreadful as it is peculiar. He has a feeling of being hollowed out, as it were, and of inhabiting an aching void, due to the continued activity of the archetype of his form in the region of Concrete Thought. In the case of people, young or old, who die naturally or by accident, archetypal activity ceases; the higher vehicles undergo a modification at death, so that the loss of the dense body in itself gives no feeling of discomfort; but the suicide experiences no such change until the archetype of his body ceases to work, at the time when death would have naturally occurred. The space where his dense body ought to have been is empty, because the archetype is hollow, and it hurts indescribably. Thus he also learns that it is not possible to play truant from the school of life without bringing about unpleasant consequences, and in later lives when the way seems hard he will remember in his soul that the cowardly attempt to escape by suicide only brings added suffering.

There are people who commit suicide for unselfish reasons, to rid others of a burden, and they of course have their reward in another way, but do not escape the suffering of the suicide, any more than the man who enters a burning building to save others is immune from burns.

The victim of murder escapes this suffering because he is in a comatose state as a rule, until the time when natural death should have occurred, and is taken care of in that respect, like the victims of so-called accidents, but the latter are always conscious at once or shortly after death. If the murderer is executed between the time of the murder and the time when his victim would naturally have died, the comatose desire body of the latter floats to its slayer by magnetic attraction following him wherever he goes, without a moment’s respite. The picture of the murder is always before him, causing him to feel the suffering and anguish which must inevitably accompany this incessant reenactment of his crime in all its horrible details. This goes on for a time corresponding to the period of life of which he deprived his victim. If the murderer escaped hanging, so that his victim has passed beyond Purgatory before he dies, the “shell” of his victim remains to act the part of Nemesis in the drama of reenactment of the crime.

Thus the Ego is purged of evil of every kind, by the impersonal action of the Law of Consequence, made fit to enter heaven and become strengthened in good, as it has been discouraged in evil.

6. Life And Activity In Heaven

We saw in the last lecture how the evil acts of life and our undesirable habits are dealt with by the impersonal law of consequence, and make for good in future lives, and to illustrate we noted its operation in such cases as those of the murderer, suicide, drunkard, and miser. These are extreme cases, however, and there are many people who have lived good moral lives, tainted more by petty selfishness, which is the besetting sin of our age, than by actual pronounced evil, and for them the stay in the purgatorial regions of the Desire World is of course correspondingly shortened and the suffering incidental is lightened. Thus in time all pass to the upper regions of the Desire World where the First Heaven is located.

This is the “Summerland” of the Spiritualists. Of the matter of this region the thoughts and fancies of people during life build the actual forms they see in their imagination. It is a characteristic of the inner worlds that the matter in them is readily molded by thought and will, and all these fantastic forms created by people go about, ensouled by elementals and enduring as long as the thought or desire which formed them endures. Around Christmas time, for instance, Santa Claus actually lives and rides around in his sleigh. There are all sorts of variety of him, and he remains in vigorous health for a month or more until the desires of the children who created him cease to flow in that direction, then he fades away till he is recreated next year. The New Jerusalem, with its pearly streets and sea of glass, and all the other pious and moral fancies of the church people are there also. Purgatory has its thought-form devil, with horns and cloven hoof, created by the thoughts of people, but in this upper part of the Desire World we find only that which is good and desirable in human aspirations. Here the student revels in libraries and is able to pursue his studies in a much more effective way than while confined to the dense body. If he desires a book, presto, it is there. The artist by his imagination shapes his models perfectly, he paints with living fiery colors instead of with the dead and dull pigments of earth, which are the physical artist’s despair, for here in Earth-life it is impossible for him to reproduce the tints he sees with his inner vision, but the Desire World is the world of color par excellence, and therefore he obtains his heart’s desire in the First Heaven, and receives inspiration and power to continue his work in future lives.

The sculptor likewise finds this part of the postmortem state a joy and an upliftment; he shapes with facility the plastic materials of this world into the statues he dreamt of in Earth-life. The musician is also benefited, but he is not yet in the true world of tone. That ocean of harmony, where the heavenly “music of the spheres” is heard, is in the part of the Region of Concrete Thought which, in the esoteric Christian religion, we call the second heaven; and so the musician only hears the echoes of the celestial strains; yet they are sweeter than any he ever heard on Earth, and his soul revels in their exquisite harmony, the earnest of better things to come.

Here we also find all the little children, who go directly to this place after passing out, and if their friends could see the, there would be no mourning, for theirs is rather an enviable life. They are always met by some relative or friend who has previously passed out, and are taken care of in every respect. There are people who lay up a great deal of treasure for themselves by giving much of their time to the invention of plays and toys for the little ones, and thus life in this First Heaven is spent in the most beautiful way by the children, nor is their instruction neglected. They are brought together in classes, not only according to age and capability, but according to temperament, and are particularly instructed in the effects of desires and emotions, which can so easily be done in a world where those things can be objectively demonstrated. Thus they are taught by object-lessons the benefit of cultivating good and altruistic desires, and many a soul who lives a moral life now, owes it to such a cause as the death in infancy and fifteen or twenty years in the First Heaven before a new incarnation was entered upon. It is often asked why children die. There are many causes, one is death under the dreadful strain of accident, by fire, or on the battlefield in a previous life, for under such circumstances the departing Ego could not properly concentrate upon the panoramic view of its past life. This is also the case where loud lamentations of relatives hinder. The result is of course a weak imprint of the life-experiences upon the desire body, with an insipid purgatorial and First Heaven life.

In such cases the Ego does not reap what it has sown, and so it might commit the same follies or sins life after life. To prevent such a contingency the new desire body which the Ego gathers before its next birth must be impressed with the needed lesson. The Ego is always unconscious on its way to rebirth, blinded by the matter it draws around itself, as we are blinded when we enter a house on a sunny day. Only after birth does the consciousness return in a measure. Then, when by death it passes into the First Heaven it is taught objectively in a different way the lesson it should have learned on its outward passage in the former life. When that lesson has been mastered and impressed upon the still unborn desire body the Ego is reborn on Earth and goes on in the ordinary manner.

Children who die before the seventh year have only been born so far as the dense and vital bodies are concerned and are not responsible to the Law of Consequence. Even up to twelve of fourteen years the desire body is in process of gestation, as will be more fully explained in the next lecture, and as that which has not been quickened cannot die, the dense and vital bodies alone go to decay when a child dies. It retains its desire body and mind to the next birth. Therefore it does not go around the whole path which the Ego usually traverses in a life cycle, but only ascends to the First Heaven to learn needed lessons, and after a wait of from one to twenty years it is reborn, often in the same family as a younger child.

It is a mistake to think that heaven is a place of unalloyed happiness for all. No one can reap any more happiness than what he sowed on Earth. The measure of our joy there will be the good deeds we did in Earth- life. The panorama of life etched into our desire-bodies just after death forms the basis of our enjoyment in heaven, as it was the decreer of our suffering in purgatory.

We remember, that as the panorama of the past life unrolled in Purgatory, only the scenes in which we had injured people operated to produce suffering. In the First Heaven only the good desires and unselfish acts are productive of feeling. When we behold a scene where we helped some one, soothing their sorrow and alleviating their suffering, we not only feel the most intense personal satisfaction, but in addition we feel all that the recipient of our favor felt in ease of body, of mental relief and gratitude to the helper. It does not matter whether he knew who helped him or not, the feeling he poured out to us when we helped him will be realized there, independent of other circumstances. On the other hand, if we have ourselves been grateful to our benefactors, we will feel the same feeling of relief from distress and gratitude for the help over again. As all these feelings and desires are built into the Ego by the spiritual alchemical forces generated when they are being realized there, and as they undergo a transmutation into faculties, usable in future incarnations, it is easily seen HOW IMPORTANT IT IS TO OUR OWN SOUL-GROWTH THAT WE SHOULD FEEL AND EXPRESS OUR GRATITUDE FOR FAVORS SHOWN US, for thus we lay the foundation for the receipt of new favors both in this and future lives. It is said that the Lord loves a cheerful giver; it is equally true that the “Law” (of Consequence) loves an appreciative heart.

When “GIVING” is under consideration let us beware of the fallacious idea that only the moneyed man can give. Indiscriminate gifts of money are a curse to both the giver and the recipient. Only when the giver bestows thought and heart also may gold be of value. But what is gold carelessly given compared to sympathy? Expression of faith in a man may give him the courage to go in and win; stirring his ambition we help him to help himself, where financial aid would render him helplessly dependent on our bounty. When we give, let us give OURSELVES first.

The ethics of giving, with the effect on the giver as a spiritual lesson, are most beautifully shown in Lowell’s THE VISION OF SIR LAUNFAL. The young and ambitious knight, Sir Launfal, clad in shining armor and astride a splendid charger, is setting out from his castle to seek The Holy Grail. On his shield gleams the cross, the symbol of the benignity and tenderness of Our Savior, the meek and lowly One, but the knight’s heart is filled with pride and haughty disdain for the poor and needy. He meets a leper asking alms and with a contemptuous frown throws him a coin, as one might cast a bone to a hungry cur, but—

The leper raised not the gold from the dust:

“Better to me the poor man’s crust,

Better the blessing of the poor,

Though I turn me empty from his door;

That is no true alms which the hand can hold;

He gives nothing but worthless gold

Who gives from a sense of duty;

But he who gives but a slender mite,

And gives to that which is out of sight,

That thread of the all-sustaining Beauty

Which runs through all and doth all unite—

The hand cannot clasp the whole of his alms,

The heart outstretches its eager palms,

For a god goes with it and makes it store

To the soul that was starving in darkness before.”

On his return Sir Launfal finds another in possession of his castle, and is driven from the gate.

An old, bent man, worn out and frail,

He came back from seeking the Holy Grail;

Little he recked of his earldom’s loss,

No more on his surcoat was blazoned the cross,

But deep in his soul the sign he wore,

The badge of the suffering and the poor.

Again he meets the leper, who again asks alms. This time the knight responds differently.

And Sir Launfal said, “I behold in thee

An image of Him who dies on the tree;

Thou also hast had thy crown of thorns,--

Thou also hast had the world’s buffets and scorns,--

And to thy life were not denied

The wounds in the hands and feet and side;

Mild Mary’s Son, acknowledge me;

Behold, through him, I give to Thee!”

A look in the leper’s eye brings remembrance and recognition, and

The heart within him was ashes and dust;

He parted in twin his single crust,

He broke the ice on the streamlet’s brink,

And gave the leper to eat and drink.

A transformation takes place:

The leper no longer crouched at his side,

But stood before him glorified,

. . . . . . . . . . . .

And the Voice that was calmer than silence said,

“Lo it is I, be not afraid!

In many climes, without avail,

Thou hast spent thy life for the Holy Grail;

Behold, it is here,--this cup which thou

Didst fill at the streamlet for me but now;

This crust is my body broken for thee,

This water His blood that died on the tree;

The Holy Supper is kept, indeed,

In whatso we share with another’s need;

Not what we give, but what we share—

For the gift without the giver is bare;

Who gives himself with his alms feeds three—

Himself, his hungering neighbor, and Me.”

There are two classes for whom post-mortem existence is particularly blank and monotonous: the materialist and the man who was so absorbed in his material business that he never gave a thought to the spiritual worlds. The reason is not far to seek. They led good, moral lives as a rule, indulged in none of the vices of the lower Desire World, but neither have they done any good such as would find its fruition in feelings of joy in the First Heaven. To have given even large sums of money for the building of churches, libraries, or parks will help nothing there, unless the giver took particular interest in his gift, and thus gave himself with the money. Merely to give money will bring affluence in a future life, but to give ONESELF is more than money, it is soul-growth. The materialistic business man therefore goes to the fourth region, which is a sort of Borderland between Purgatory and the First Heaven. He is too good to suffer in Purgatory and not good enough to have a First Heaven life. He has still a keen longing for business. With no interests, save desires that cannot be gratified there, his life is an unenviable monotony, though he suffers in no other way.

The out-and-out materialist, who denies God and has the idea that death is annihilation, is in the worst of straits. He sees his mistake, yet having so dissociated himself from spiritual ideas, he often cannot believe but that this is a prelude to annihilation. The dreadful suspense wears terribly on such people, and it is not an uncommon sight to see them going about murmuring to themselves: Is it not soon the end? And, worst of all, if anyone who is instructed tries to inform them they will deny the existence of spirit there as much as they did in Earth-life, calling him visionary for thinking that there is anything beyond.

The natural tendency of the desire body is to harden and consolidate all it comes into contact with. Materialistic thought accentuates this tendency to such an extent that it very often results, in succeeding lives, in that dread disease, consumption, which is a hardening of the lungs. These should remain soft and elastic. It also sometimes happens that the desire body crushes the vital body in the next life, so that it fails altogether to counteract the hardening process, and then we have quick consumption. In some cases materialism makes the desire body brittle, as it were; then it cannot perform its proper hardening work on the dense body, and as a result we have “rachitis,” where the bones soften. So we see what dangers we run by entertaining materialistic tendencies: either HARDENING of the soft parts of the body, as in CONSUMPTION, or SOFTENING of the hard bony parts, as in RACHITIS. Of course not every case of consumption shows that the sufferer was a materialist in a former life, but it is the teaching of occult science that such a result often follows materialism. There is another cause for the prevalence of this dread disease back in the Middle Ages.

In the course of time every man makes ready to ascend into the Second Heaven, which is located in the Region of Concrete Thought. All good aspirations and desires of the past life are etched into and branded upon the mind, which then contains all that is of permanent value. The Ego withdraws from the desire body, which is then but an empty shell, and clothed only in the mind, it ascends into the Second Heaven.

We remember, that after the termination of the panorama, just subsequent to death, when the Ego withdrew from the vital body, it went through a period of unconsciousness before it awoke in the Desire World. There is also an interval between the withdrawal from the desire body in the First Heaven to the awakening in the Second Heaven. But this time there is no unconsciousness; every faculty is keenly on the alert, there is a state of hyperconsciousness, as the Spirit passes through this interval, which is called “The Great Silence.” No matter how materialistic a man may have been on Earth, that state of mind has now vanished, and the man KNOWS that he is inherently divine when he reaches this Great Silence which is the portal to his heavenly home. It is as when one awakens after a dreadful dream, and draws a deep sigh of relief at finding that the occurrences of the dream were not realities. So the Ego, when it enters this Great Silence, awakes from the delusions and illusions of Earth-life with a sense of infinite relief, is filled with a feeling of impregnable security, feels anew the restful repose of being in the everlasting arms of the Great Universal Spirit.

Presently there break upon the Ego’s ear the indescribable harmonies of celestial music which fills this Region incessantly. It is no figment of the fancy when celestial music is spoken of, although it is untrue that the dead people who had little or no sense for music during Earth-life have suddenly developed a passion for and the faculty of expressing music at death. The fact of the matter is, that the World of Thought, where the Second Heaven is located, is also the realm of tone, as the Desire World is the world of light and color, and the Physical World is the world of form. The artist gets his color-schemes and his light-effects from the Desire World, but the musician must draw upon the more subtle World of Thought for his inspirations, and in this fact we have the reason why music is the highest art we possess. The painter draws upon a world closer at hand, and is therefore able to fix his creation once for all upon canvas, there to be seen by all who have eyes at any time. Music cannot be thus fixed; it is more elusive, it must be recreated each time, and at once vanishes into silence. In return, however, it has so much greater power to speak to us than even the greatest painting, for it comes directly from the heaven world, fresh and fragrant with echoes from the home of the Ego, awakening memories of and putting us in touch with that which we so often forget in our material existence. Therefore music, above all other human arts, alone has power to still the savage breast and affect us in a way that nothing else can.

Goethe was an initiate, and in his “Faust” emphasizes twice the fact that in the heavenly realms all things are reducible to terms of sound. The opening scene is laid in heaven, and the Archangel Raphael is represented as saying:

“The sun intones his ancient SONG,

‘Mid rival CHANT of brother-spheres.

His prescribed course he speeds along,

In thunderous way throughout the years.”

Again, in the second part:

“SOUND unto the spirit-ear

Proclaims the coming day is near.

Rocky gates are creaking, rattling,

Phoebus’ wheels are rolling, singing—

What intense SOUND the light is bringing.”

Pythagoras’ “music of the spheres” is a fact in the Second Heaven, and to some musicians this is not at all a far-fetched idea, for they know that every city, every lake and forest has its own peculiar tone. The babbling brook and the summer zephyr which stirs the young leaves in the wood speak the language of the Universal Soul. The true musician hears its grand, majestic voice in the mountain torrent and in the storm upon the great deep. No mere intellectual conception of God, life and superphysical things can every reach the sublime heights achieved by him, for he knows.

In Purgatory the evil habits and acts of life produced suffering which was transmuted into RIGHT FEELING in the First Heaven. The good in the past life was extracted in the First Heaven, and when the Ego enters the Second Heaven it broods over the good in such a way as to transmute it into RIGHT THOUGHT to act as a guide in future lives on Earth. Thus at every new birth the Ego brings with it, as capital, the accumulated wisdom derived from the experiences of all its past lives, which is its capital or stock in trade. The experience in each new life is interest, which in the Second Heaven is added to the capital.

Man there is also preparing himself for his next dip into matter, qualifying himself for the new battle with ignorance in the coming life-day in God’s great school. If any worthy ambitions had failed of realization, he sees where the fault lay, and learns to carry out next time his designs on improved lines. The musician takes with him grander melodies when he returns, to gladden the heart of man in his exile to Earth conditions. The painter brings new aspirations, for it must not be supposed that the Second Heaven is devoid of color because it was called the region of tone. Both color and form are there, just as in the Physical World, but TONE is the predominating feature of the World of Thought. COLOR is most accentuated in the Desire World and FORM in the Physical World, although it is also true that the colors and forms of the Second Heaven are much more beautiful than in either of the two other worlds.

We have spoken of this process of brooding and assimilation of the good and lasting part extracted from the experiences of the past life as if it were a negative process, and many students have the idea that existence in the Second Heaven is a dreamy, illusory experience. Nothing could be more erroneous, for the actual activities of life in heaven are manifold. Man not only reviews or lives his past, but he is also actively preparing his future.

We are wont to speak of evolution, but do we ever analyze what it is that makes evolution, why it does not stop in stagnation? If we do, we must realize that there are forces back of the visible which make the alteration in the flora and fauna, the climatic and topographical changes which are constantly going on; and it is then but a natural question, What or who are the forces or agents in evolution?

Of course, we are well aware that scientists give certain mechanical explanations. They deserve great credit; they have accomplished much, when we take into consideration that science is but an infant and has only five senses and ingenious instruments at its command. Its deductions are marvelously true, but that does not say that there may not be underlying causes which it cannot, as yet, perceive, but which give a more thorough understanding of the matter than the mere mechanical explanation affords. An illustration will elucidate the point.

Two men are conversing, when suddenly one knocks the other down. There we have an occurrence, a fact, and we may explain it in a mechanical way by saying: “I saw one man contract the muscles of his arm, direct a blow at the other, and knock him down.” That is a true version, so far as it goes, but the occult scientist would see also the angry thought which inspired the blow, and would be giving a more complete version if he said that the man was knocked down by a thought, for the clenched fist was but the irresponsible instrument of aggression. Failing the impelling force of the angry thought, the hand would have remained inert and the blow would never have been struck.

Thus the occult scientist refers all causes to the Region of Concrete Thought, and tells how they are generated there by human and superhuman Spirits.

Remembering that the creative archetypes of everything we see in the visible world are in the World of Thought, which is the realm of tone, we are prepared to understand that the archetypal forces are constantly playing through these archetypes which then emit a certain tone, or, where a number of them have massed to create a species of plant, animal, or human FORMS, the different sounds blend into one grand chord. That single tone or chord, as the case may be, is then the keynote of the form thus created, and as long as it sounds, the form or the species endures; when it ceases the single form dies or the species dies out.

A jumble of sound is not music any more than words massed together haphazardly are a sentence, but ORDERLY RHYTHMIC SOUND is the builder of all that is, as John says in the first verses of his gospel, “In the beginning was the WORD, . . . and without it was not anything made”; also “the Word was made flesh.”

Thus we see that sound is the creator and sustainer of all form, and in the Second Heaven the Ego becomes one with the nature forces. With them he works upon the archetypes of land and sea, on flora and fauna, to bring about the changes which gradually alter the appearance and condition of the Earth, and thus afford a new environment, MADE BY HIMSELF, in which he may reap new experience.

He is directed in his work by great teachers belonging to the Creative Hierarchies, which are called Angels, Archangels, and other names, who are God’s ministers. They instruct him then consciously in the divine art of creation, both as to the world and the objects in it. They teach him how to build a FORM for himself, giving him the so-called “nature-spirits” as helpers, and thus man is serving his apprenticeship to become a creator each time he goes to the Second Heaven. There he builds the archetype of the form which he later externalizes at birth.

In Lecture No. 3 we spoke about the four ethers, and we said the forces of assimilation work in the chemical ether. The Egos in the heaven world are those forces and thus the very people whom we call dead are the ones who build our bodies and help us to live. We may also note that no one can have a better dense body than he can build. If they make mistakes in heaven, they find it out when they come to use such a defective body on Earth, and thereby learn to correct the fault next time.

This brings to mind an interesting phase of the Law of Consequence, as in the case of Egos who require a body of peculiar construction, like musicians, where not only the hand, but also the ear has to be specially adjusted, so that the three semicircular canals point as accurately as possible to the three dimensions of space, and the fibres of Corti have to be unusually delicate; such an instrument cannot be formed out of raw materials, and therefore such an Ego must be born in a family where others have build along similar lines, and that is not always to be found.

Supposing, then, that an occasion offers 100 years before the time such an Ego should be normally reborn, and that the Recording Angels who have charge of the administrations of the Law of Consequence, see that another opportunity will not occur for perhaps 300 years, that Ego may then be brought into birth 100 years ahead of time, and the loss of time in heaven made up at another time. Thus we see that the living and the so-called dead are constantly acting and reacting upon each other while traveling onwards along the path of evolution.

Having thus progressed through the Second Heaven, the Ego at last withdraws from the sheath of mind, which was its garment there, and thus entirely free and untrammeled enters the Third Heaven, which is the highest point attainable by man at his present stage of development. Thither we will follow him in the next lecture.

7. Birth: A Fourfold Event

When we left the Ego in its pilgrimage through the invisible worlds, we had reached the point where it entered the Third Heaven after having discarded the dense body at death, the vital body shortly afterwards, the desire body upon leaving Purgatory and the First Heaven, and finally before leaving the Second Heaven it also left the sheath of mind behind, and Then entered the Third Heaven absolutely free of any encumbrance. All the discarded vehicles decay, only the Spirit persists, laving for a while in the great spiritual reservoir of force which we call the Third Heaven, in order to fortify itself for the next rebirth into Earth-life.

Sir Edwin Arnold has put this idea so poignantly and beautifully in his “Song Celestial,” where he says:

Never the Spirit was born

The Spirit shall cease to be never;

Never was time it was not,

End and beginning are dreams;

Birthless and deathless the spirit remaineth forever,

Death has not touched it at all,

Dead though the HOUSE of it seems.

Nay but as one layeth

His worn-out robe away,

And taking another sayeth:

This will I wear today,

So putteth by the Spirit

Lightly its garment of flesh;

And passeth on to inherit

A residence afresh.

The Law of Consequence determines our existence after death in accord with the life we have lived here. If in Earth-life we were mostly given to low desires and passions our purgatorial existence is the most vivid part of our post-mortem state; the existence in the various heavens will be insipid. If we lived in the higher emotions, life in the First Heaven will be the richest of the different stages. Did we love to plan improvements and was our mind constructive in Earth-life? Then we shall have great benefit from our stay in the Second Heaven, where concrete thought is the basis of concrete things on Earth, but in order to have a conscious existence in the Third Heaven we must have given time and effort to abstract thought which had no relation to time or space.

Most of us are incapable of thinking abstractly and therefore we lack consciousness in the Third Heaven. If we think of “Love” we associate it with some person. We dislike mathematics because it is dry, unemotional and abstract. There is no feeling connected with the statement that twice two is four, but it is this very fact which is of value, for WHEN WE RISE ABOVE FEELING WE LEAVE BIAS BEHIND AND TRUTH IS AT ONCE APPARENT. No one would say that twice two is five, or quarrel over the proposition that the squares of the hypotenuse equals the sum of the squares of the other sides of a triangle. That was the reason why Pythagoras and other occult teachers demanded that applicants for tuition should first have a knowledge of mathematics. A mind used to grappling with mathematics is trained in sequential thought, capable of testing truth apart from bias, and only such a mind can safely be given occult training.

The great majority of people are not yet past the stage where they properly progress along what is called “practical lines,” and for them the Third Heaven is simply a waiting place where they are unconscious, as in sleep, until the time is ripe for a new birth. The man, for instance, who had lived a low life of sense-gratification, who had been utterly destructive, would have a painful existence in Purgatory, as he had been very bad. He would rapidly and unconsciously pass through the First Heaven because he had done no good. His destructiveness would render his life in the Second Heaven almost unconscious and he would have absolutely no existence in the Third Heaven, where advanced Egos evolve ORIGINAL IDEAS which later manifest as GENIUS in Earth-life. Hence such a backward Ego would remain asleep until the time for a new birth would awaken it to another day in Life’s School, another chance of improvement.

We often hear people say, upon first hearing this doctrine: “Oh, but I don’t want to come back.” That is the cry of the weary and tired body, the consequence of a hard life; but as soon as the experience of that life has been assimilated in heaven, the Law of Consequence and desire for more knowledge draws the Ego back to Earth, as a magnet draws a needle, and it begins to contemplate a re-embodiment.

Here again the Law of Consequence is the determining factor, the new birth is conditioned by our past lives. Having lived many times it is evident, of course, that we have met many different persons and had varying relations with them, affecting them for good or ill, or we have been thus acted upon by them. Causes were thus generated between them and us, and many were left fallow, as it were, unable to produce their sequential effect, for one reason or another.

The invariableness of Law requires that these causes should find their consummation some time, and so the Recording Angels who are the Great Intelligences in charge of the law of adjustment, look up the past of each man, at the time he is ready for a new birth, and find out who among the friends or foes are living at that time, and where they are. As we have made an enormous number of such relations in our past, there are generally several groups of such people in Earth-life, and if there are no special reasons why one of them in particular should then be taken, the Recording Angel gives the Ego its choice of the opportunities offered. They select in each case the amount of ripe causation that the Ego is thus to work out, and show to the Ego in a series of pictures a panorama of what the coming life will be in each of the proposed lives, any of which the Ego may then choose. These panoramas run from the cradle to the grave, and give the great outline of the life, but leave room for the Ego to fill in the details by new or free-will action.

Thus, the Ego has a certain latitude as to the place of birth, and it may therefore be said that in the great majority of cases we are where we are by our own choice; it matters not that we do not know it in our brain, the Ego is yet weak, and not able to freely penetrate the veil of flesh, is largely dependent even upon the lower personality to help it grow, and the more we determine in our brain-mind to live for the higher self, the sooner the day will come when the Ego will shine through, and we shall know.

When the Ego has made its choice, it is bound by that choice to go through with the adjustment of debts contracted in former lives and now ripe for liquidation. That then forms the destiny, or the hard and fast conditions of life, which cannot possibly be changed. Any attempt to do so will surely be frustrated, but LET NO ONE FALL INTO THE DELUSION THAT HIS DESTINY COMPELS HIM TO DO WRONG AT ANY TIME. The law works only for good, and as we have seen, the evil in any life is the first thing purged after death, and only the TENDENCY to do this particular wrong remains, with the feeling of aversion, generated by the suffering experienced in the process of expurgation. When the temptation to commit a similar evil act comes in a later life, this feeling of past pain, which we call conscience, warns and repels us from yielding to the temptation. If we fall in spite of this warning voice, the suffering we experience in Purgatory will add to and strengthen the previous feeling, until our conscience develops the necessary stability to resist the particular evil involved, and from that moment it ceases to be a temptation to us.

Thus we see that no man is ever FATED to do wrong, that at least EVERY EVIL ACT IS AN ACT OF FREE-WILL, committed even against the resistance of whatever amount of conscience we have previously developed regarding that particular phase of evil.

The question as to the coming rebirth having been decided, the Ego descends first into the Region of Concrete Thought, and begins to draw to itself the MATERIALS for a new mind.

As said previously, the man withdraws from his different bodies in the course of his post-mortem career, these bodies go to decay, but there is an atom saved from each, one from the mind also, and it is those so- called “seed-atoms” which are the nuclei of the new vestures in which the Spirit will appear in its coming life.

When now, the Ego descends into the Region of Concrete Thought, the latent forces in the seed-atom of the mind of its previous lives are aroused into activity, and it begins to draw to itself the materials for a new mind, as a magnet draws iron filings around its poles. If we hold a magnet over a heap of shavings of brass, iron, gold, lead, silver, wood, etc., we shall find that it will only take the iron filings, and also that it will take only a certain quantity, according to its strength. Its attractive power is limited to a certain quantity of a particular kind. So with the seed-atom, it can attract in each region only such materials as it has affinity for, and only a certain definite quantity. This material then forms itself into a great bell-shaped thing, open at the bottom and with the seed-atom at the top.

This may be likened to a diving-bell, diving into a sea of gradually increasing density. The materials taken from each realm and woven into the bell add to its weight, so as to make it sink farther and farther until it reaches the bottom.

Thus the returning Ego sinks through the Region of Concrete Thought and in the passage the seed-atom gathers the materials for the new mind.

The descent continues. The Ego, clothed in its bell-shaped garment of mind-stuff, sinks into the Desire World; the forces of the seed-atom saved from its former desire body are awakened, and placed inside a top of the bell. Thence it draws to itself the kind and quantity of the MATERIALS needed to furnish the returning Ego with a new desire body appropriate to its particular needs, so that when the densest region of the Desire World has been reached there are two layers in the bell, the sheath of mind-stuff on the outside and the materials for the desire body inside.

The next step downwards brings the spirit into the Etheric Region, where the materials for the new vital body are gathered, and from a part of that material the agents of the Recording Angels fashion a mold or matrix, which is placed in the womb of the mother, to give appropriate form to the new dense body, while the seed-atom is placed in the semen of the father. Without the presence of these two factors no union of the sexes will bring results, and when a marriage is barren, though both partners are healthy and desirous of children, it means simply that no incoming Ego is attracted to them.

As soon as the vital body has been placed the returning Ego, clothed in its bell-shaped covering, hovers constantly near the future mother. She alone does the work upon the new dense body in the first eighteen to twenty-one days after fertilization, Then the Ego enters the mother’s body, drawing the bell-shaped covering down over the fetus, the opening at the bottom closes, and the Ego is once more incarcerated in the prison-house of the dense body.

The moment of entrance into the womb is one of great importance in life, for when the incoming Ego first contacts the before-mentioned matrix vital body it sees there again the panorama of the coming life which has been impressed upon the matrix by the Recording Angels in order to give it the tendencies required to work out the ripe causation due to be liquidated in the coming life.

At this time the Ego is already so much blinded by the veil of matter that it does not recognize the good end in view in the same unbiased manner as when making its choice in the Region of Abstract Thought, and when a particularly hard life reveals itself to the vision of the returning Ego at the moment of entering the womb, it sometimes happens that the Ego is so startled and frightened that it seeks to rush out again. The connection cannot be severed, however, but may be strained, so that instead of the vital body being concentric with the dense body, the head of the vital body maybe above the head of the dense body. Then we have a congenital idiot.

Under the most favorable conditions it is a great strain for the Ego to go through the womb, and everything should be done by the parents not to make it more aggravated than necessary; we never can tell where the breaking point is; inharmonious relationship between the parents at the critical periods of gestation, particularly the first, may sometimes prove the last straw.

Before the event we term birth, the coming man is enclosed in another body (the mother’s), and thus unable to directly contact the sense- world. This seclusion is necessary to bring the organism to the proper point of maturity, where it is fit to receive these impressions itself. When that point is reached, the protective covering of the womb opens and the new human being enters the arena of the world.

As we have seen, man is a great deal more than the mere dense body, and it must not be imagined that all his vehicles are equally mature when he is born into the Physical World. As a matter of fact they are not; the vital body grows and ripens inside its covering of ether until the seventh year, or the changing of the teeth. The desire body requires protection from the onslaughts of the Desire World until about the fourteenth year it is born at the time we call puberty; and the mind is not sufficiently ripe to be released from its protective cover until the man reaches his majority at about twenty-one. These periods are only approximately correct, for each person differs from all others in regard to exact time periods, but those given are near enough.

The reason for this slow unfoldment of the higher vehicles lies in the fact that they are comparatively recent additions to the economy of the Ego, while the dense body has had much the longest evolution, and is by far the most perfect and valuable instrument we possess. When people who have sometimes but recently come to a knowledge of the existence of higher vehicles are constantly talking and thinking of how nice it would be to fly off in the desire body and leave the “low” and “vile” physical, it shows that they have not yet learned to appreciate the difference between “higher” and “perfect.” The dense body is a marvel of perfection, with its strong articulated skeleton, its delicate sense organs, its coordinating mechanism of nerve and brain, which makes it superior to any other mechanism in the world. Looked at in detail, take for instance the large bone of the thigh, the femur, and examine the thick ends. If we split it open we shall see that only a thin outside shell is made of compact bone. This is stiffened by beams and cross-beams of thin cancellated bone, making it of prodigious strength, coupled with a lightness as far beyond the skill of the greatest living structural engineer as differential calculus is beyond an ant.

Therefore, though we realize that some day in the distant future our higher vehicles will attain a perfection far, far beyond that of our dense body, we must remember that at present they are more or less unorganized, and are of little value when detached from the perfect physical organism, and we should in all things give thanks to the exalted Beings who helped us to evolve this splendid instrument whereby we are now functioning in the world as self-conscious human beings and working out our destiny, life after life, becoming each time a little more like our Father in Heaven.

Thus we see that birth is a fourfold event, and in order to do our full duty as educators, it is absolutely necessary that we should know this and the facts that follow from it. We cannot easily tear the unborn babe out of the womb and expose it to the impacts of the outside world--to do so would kill it. It is equally dangerous to break through the wombs of the unseen bodies and expose the immature child to the impacts of the moral and mental world, and though such a proceeding does not always kill the dense body it invariably stunts its capacity, for what hurts one body is detrimental to the other vehicles. To educate the child properly, it is therefore necessary to have a knowledge of the effect of training upon the different vehicles, and the right methods to employ, bearing in mind constantly, however, that general rules do not always apply in individual cases.

We saw that when the Ego had finished its day in the school of life the centrifugal force of Repulsion caused it to throw off its dense vehicle at death, Then the vital body, which is the next coarsest. Next in purgatory the coarsest desire stuff accumulated by the Ego as embodiment for its lowest desires was purged by this centrifugal force. In the higher realms only the force of Attraction holds sway and keeps the goody by centripetal action, which tends to draw everything from the periphery to the center.

This centripetal force of Attraction also governs when the Ego is coming to rebirth. We know that we can throw a stone farther than we can throw a feather. Therefore the coarsest matter was thrown OUTWARDS after death by the force of Repulsion, and for the same reason the coarsest material wherein the returning Ego embodies the tendency to evil is whirled INWARDS to the center by the centripetal force of Attraction, with the result that WHEN A CHILD IS BORN ALL THAT IS BEST AND PUREST APPEARS ON THE OUTSIDE. The latent evil does not usually manifest until after the desire body is born at about the age of fourteen, and the currents in that vehicle commence to well OUTWARDS from the LIVER. At that time the Ego commences to “LIVE” its individual life and show what is within.

The stars are the CLOCK OF DESTINY; they show the hidden tendencies, and while astrologers are fallible in prediction of events, a good and careful astrologer will be able to reveal the character of a person accurately in 99 per cent of all cases. Thus parents may obtain a guide to the hidden side of a child’s nature. But it requires very little ability to cast a horoscope, and it is always better for the parents to learn than to employ a stranger. They will then get a much deeper insight into the character of their child.

With the physical birth the dense body begins to feel the impacts of the outside world, which act upon it as the forces of the mother’s body previously did. What these did during ante-natal life, the impacts of the elements continue all through physical life. Up to the time of the seventh year, or change of teeth, there is one particular activity going on, which is widely different from the activities of the succeeding epochs of life. The sense organs take certain definite forms which give them their basic structural tendencies and determine their line of development in one direction or another. Later they grow, but all growth follows the lines laid down in those first seven years, and the mistakes or neglect of opportunities during this period can seldom be retrieved in after life. If the limbs and organs have taken the proper forms, the whole after growth will be harmonious; but if malformation takes place then, the little body will be more or less misshapen. It is the duty of the educator to give the proper environment to the little child in this period, as nature does before birth, for only that can give the sensitive organism the right direction and tendency of growth.

There are two magic words which denote the manner in which the child comes into contact with the formative influences of its environment-- EXAMPLE and IMITATION. There is under the whole heaven no creature so imitative as a little child, and in this imitation we have the force which gives tendency and direction to the little organism. Everything in a child’s environment leaves its impress for good or evil, and we should realize that our slightest action may do incalculable harm or good in the life of our children, and that WE OUGHT NEVER TO DO ANYTHING IN THE PRESENCE OF THE CHILD WHICH WE WOULD NOT BE PERFECTLY WILLING TO HAVE IT IMITATE.

It is no use to teach it to mind, or to moralize at this period; EXAMPLE is the only teacher the child needs or heeds. It cannot help imitating any more than water can help running down hill, for that is its only method of growth in this epoch. Teaching of morals and reason comes later; to apply them now is like taking a child out of the womb prematurely; all that the child is to acquire of thoughts, ideas, and imagination must COME OF ITSELF in the same way that the eyes and ears develop before the birth of the dense body.

The child should be a given playthings on which it may exercise its imitative faculty--something with life, or a doll, jointed, so that it can be put in different positions, and let the child dress it herself; in that way she exercises her formative force in the right manner. Give the boys tools and patterns, or molds and clay. NEVER GIVE THEM ANYTHING FINISHED, where they have nothing to do but look at it. That leaves the brain no chance for development, and it must ever be the care and aim of the educator at this time to furnish the means of developing the physical organs harmoniously.

In regard to food, great care must be taken in this period, for a healthy or diseased appetite in after life will depend upon how it is fostered in the first septenary epoch. Here also example is the great teacher. Highly seasoned dishes spoil the organism; the plainer the food and the more it is conducive to thorough mastication, the more it promotes a healthy appetite that will guide the man through life and give him the health of body and ease of mind that is unknown to the gourmand. Let us not have one dish for ourselves, however, and another for our child. In that way we may keep it from eating it at home, but we generate a hankering that will seek satisfaction when it gets old enough to have a will of its own. The imitative faculty will then assert itself.

In regard to clothing, let us always be sure that a child’s apparel is of full size, and is replaced before it becomes so small that it irritates. Many an immoral nature that has spoilt a life was first wakened by the chafing of a too small garment, particularly in the case of boys. Immorality is one of the worst and most tenacious plague-spots on our civilization. To save our child, let us attend to this point, and seek in every way to keep it unconscious of its sex-organ before the seventh year. CORPOREAL PUNISHMENT IS ALSO AN EXCEEDINGLY FRUITFUL FACTOR IN FORCING THE SEX-NATURE, and cannot be sufficiently deprecated.

In regard to the education of the temperament it will be found that colors are of the greatest significance, although the matter involves not only a knowledge of the effect of colors, but particularly of the COMPLEMENTARY COLORS, for it is the latter that do the work in the organism of the child. If we have to deal with a boisterous, hot-tempered nature, it is soothed and softened by an environment of red. Rooms, furniture and clothing of red will produce in the child the cooling green effect and calm its nerves. One who is of a melancholy and lethargic nature will be roused to action and life by an environment of blue or blue-green, which creates in the child’s organs the warm, rousing red or orange.

Nursery-rhymes are of the greatest importance in this period. It does not matter so much about the sense they have, as about the RHYTHM--that is of supreme importance and builds the organs in a harmony not realized by any of the other aids; therefore, this, and a CHEERFUL ATMOSPHERE are the greatest of all means of education, and will even make up to a great extent for the lack of others.

By the seventh year the vital body of the child has reached a perfection sufficient to allow it to receive impacts from the outside world. It sheds its protective covering of ether, and commences its free life. An now the time begins in which the educator may work on the vital body and help it in the formation of MEMORY, CONSCIENCE, GOOD HABITS and a HARMONIOUS TEMPERAMENT. AUTHORITY and DISCIPLESHIP are the watchwords of this epoch, when the child is to learn the MEANING of things. In the first epoch it learns that things are, but must not be bothered about their meaning, except what it picks up of its own accord, but in the second epoch from seven to fourteen years, it is essential that the child should learn the meaning of them, but should learn to take things on the authority of parents and teachers, memorizing their explanations, rather than reasoning for itself, for reason belongs to a later development, and though he may do so of his own accord, with profit, it is harmful at this period to force him to think.

In order that the growing child should derive the proper benefit from the instruction of parents and teachers, it is of course necessary that he should have the greatest veneration for them, and admiration for their wisdom, and it behooves us to comport ourselves so that he may always retain it, for if he sees in us frivolity, hears light talk and observes a generally loose conduct, we deprive him of the greatest staff of strength in life, FAITH AND TRUST IN OTHERS. It is in this age that cynics and skeptics are made. We are responsible to God for the lives committed to our care, and will have to answer to the Law of Consequence if we neglect, through slothful conduct, the great opportunity for guiding the early steps of a fellow-being in the right path, and example is always better than precept.

There is little use of warnings. Let us show the child living examples of the effects of virtue and vice, paint before his youthful fantasy a picture of the drunkard and thief, and others of the saint, that will affect his vital body in such a way that there will be an abhorrence of the one and an ardent purpose to emulate the other.

In this period the child should also be instructed in the origin of his being, so that he may be well prepared for the storm time of passion which makes adolescence so dangerous; that information should also be given in mental picture and examples from nature, but in such a way as to thoroughly impress the child with the sanctity of the function. It is the bounden duty of the educator to properly enlighten the child. Not to do this is like putting him blindfolded among innumerable pitfalls, with the admonition not to stumble. Tear the bandage away at least; he will be handicapped sufficiently without that.

Let the instructor take a flower, which is the generative organ of the plant, and teach from that, for one who understands the process of generation in the plant will understand it in animal and man also. Let us avoid the mistake of giving the child many names to grapple with, such as “stamen” and “anthers,” or “pistilate” and “staminate” flowers. That would frustrate our object by making the children tired of the study. They like fairy tales, and the skillful instructor can make the story of the flower more fascinating than any fairy tale known, and in addition may throw a halo of beauty and sanctity over the generative act which will hover over the child all through life to protect it in temptation and trial when the fires of passion surge around it.

We know that the stamen and pollen are male, the pistil and ovule female, also that some flowers have only one kind, others another kind and still others have both stamen and pistil. We also know that the bees have pollen baskets on their legs and carry pollen to the pistils of other flowers. There the pollen works its way to the ovule which then is fertilized and capable of growing into a new plant and flowers.

With these data and some flowers, let us gather the children, let us tell them and show them how flowers are like families. In some (the staminate) there are only boys, in others (the pistilate), there are only girls, and in some there are both boys and girls. The flower boys (pollen) are as adventuresome as human boys, they ride away into the wide world on winged steeds (bees) as the old-time knights did and search for the princess immured in her magic castle (the ovule in the pistil); the little flower-boy-knight dismounts from his steed (the bee), and works his way into the secret chamber where the princess (ovule) is. Then they are married and have lots of little flower boys and girls.

This narrative may be varied and embellished to suit the fancy of the educator, and can later be supplemented with stories of birds and animals. It will awaken in the child an understanding of the genesis of its own body that will invest the love story of papa and mama with all the romance of the flower boys and girls and obviate the slightest thought of odium connected with birth in the mind of the child.

The desire-body is born about the 14th year, at the time of puberty. That is the time the feelings and passions are beginning to exercise their power upon the young man or woman, as the womb of desire-stuff which formerly protected the nascent desire body is removed. This is in most cases a trying time, and it is well for the youth who has learned reverently to look to parents or teachers, for they will be to him an anchor of strength against the inrush of the feelings. If he has been accustomed to take the statements of his elders on trust, and they have given him wise teaching, he will by now have developed an inherent sense of truth that will be a sure guide, but just in the measure that he has failed to do so will he be liable to go adrift.

It is now the time that he should be taught to investigate things for himself, and thus to form individual opinions. Let us always impress upon him the necessity of careful investigation before he judges, and also that THE MORE FLUIDIC HE CAN KEEP HIS OPINIONS, THE BETTER HE WILL BE ABLE TO EXAMINE NEW FACTS AND ACQUIRE NEW KNOWLEDGE. In this way he will reach his majority at 21, when the mind is also fully free, and will be able to take his place in the world as a full-fledged citizen, a credit to those whose loving care shielded him in his years of development, a thoroughbred man or woman.

8. The Science Of Nutrition, Health, And Protracted Youth

In the previous lectures we have constantly tried to emphasize the value of the dense body; it is the most priceless of all our material possessions, and strange to say, it is the one we neglect most of all. To protect worthless property we will risk life and limb, throwing away the wheat to save the tares. But it is not our worse crime that we do that upon occasion; the greatest trouble arises from the neglect and disregard which we practice daily, from before birth, to the moment of death.

In the case of our cattle and horses we are very careful regarding breeding; we see that the animals are in perfect health and seek out the mate for them which our common sense and experience tell us will bring forth best strain; we inquire carefully into the pedigree of a dog or a stallion before we allow it to become the sire of our stock, but our prospective children get not a thought. We marry for wealth, a home, social standing, etc., and not to secure a partner mentally, morally, and physically fit to be a progenitor of a more advanced generation, and worst of all, marriage is generally regarded as a license to unlimited coition which is in many cases carried on uninterrupted through the whole period of gestation. What wonder that passion rules the child from infancy! Marriage and propagation are social duties for persons in good health and of sufficient means; but excess is a crime, a cancer which gnaws at the vitals of society as the vulture at Prometheus’ liver, and cannot be too strongly condemned.

Thus our forefathers have brought us into the world with many a serious handicap in life, and we are hampering our children in the same way on account of lack of thought and self-restraint, yet wondering why there is sickness and pain. If we would take half the care in the selection of mothers and fathers for our children that we do in the case of our animals there would be a great improvement, PARTICULARLY IF THE MOTHER WERE LEFT UNMOLESTED DURING THE PERIOD OF GESTATION.

But it is not enough that we bring our children thus handicapped into the world; from earliest childhood we ignorantly implant habits in them which are deleterious to health and well-being, particularly by giving them wrong food; teaching them to live to eat, instead of eating to live; to look more to the things that please the eye than wholesomeness, inculcating a taste for highly seasoned dishes which arouse the passional nature most potently. Suppose a builder should try to erect a house from old rags, tin cans, offal and refuse of every kind, and live in it. Would we be surprised if it fell down and hurt him? No! we should be surprised if it did not, and when the catastrophe occurred, we should say that he had himself to blame for flying the fact of Nature. So with ourselves, when we employ analogous methods and build our body from any kind of materials without regard to their fitness, we alone are to blame for the ills resulting. Sickness, decrepitude, and infirmity are all effects from causes which may be in a great measure avoided by a tithe of the thought and care we give to the thousand and one things of minor importance. Let us try to outline the underlying causes which produce disastrous effects.

There is no “faith once for all delivered” in any department of knowledge; truth is many-sided, and new phases are constantly opening to the investigator. Yet there are certain basic laws and facts which are ever true, and it is with such facts that we will deal, because they apply to all without exception, and will be found to be conducive to health in all, though health is a strictly individual matter, independent of looks only conditioned by whether the Ego feels “at ease” in the body. If the Ego feels DISEASED, the body is ill, no matter if it looks what we call “the picture of health.”

When the antenatal life of a human being commences as an embryo it is a small pulpy globule composed of albumen (white of egg). Then a change occurs: there appear various particles of more solid substance within it, which grow larger, firmer, and finally touch each other. At points of contact they form “joints” and gradually the skeleton is formed. At the same time the pulpy matter becomes more organized and we have the “fetus,” a child in the womb.

The growth continues and birth reveals the child as a soft little body, yet immensely more dense and solid than the embryo. Infancy, childhood, and youth bring increased consolidation and in time the acme of solidity is reached in old age, and ended by death.

In each of these epochs of human life the body is hardened beyond what it was previously, the flesh and the bones, the tendons and the ligaments, every part alike becomes hard and inflexible. The fluids also thicken. The joints no longer are oiled by the synovial fluid, because it gets too thick to flow, and the joints become stiff and begin to creak, the blood which in infancy and youth flowed unimpeded through the arteries, veins, and the minute capillaries, which in early life are all as elastic as rubber tubes, flows slowly and stagnates in the contracted, indurated, and inflexible arteries of old age. In consequence the body bends, the flesh shrinks for want of nutrition, the hair falls out, and last the tired heart can drive the blood no longer, so the body dies. The whole course from the womb to the tomb is one uninterrupted process of consolidation, and infancy, childhood, youth, maturity, and old age are but so many stages of the way.

The only difference between the body of youth and age is, that one is soft and elastic, the other hard and rigid, and the vital question is: What is the cause of this ossification, an it be controlled or at least minimized so as to prolong the halcyon days of youth?

To the latter part of the question it may be answered without qualification, that it is possible by knowledge to minimize the consolidating process and to live our appointed time to greater advantage than if we live unthinkingly as most people unfortunately do.

In regard to the cause of ossification which hardens the tissue of our bodies, chemical analysis has proved that any part of tendon, flesh, blood, urine, perspiration, saliva, and, in fact, any part of the body we examine, contains an immense amount of calcareous or chalky matter not present in childhood, so that while, for instance, the bones of a child are composed of three parts of gelatin and one part of phosphate of lime or bone matter, in old age the proportion is exactly reversed so that there is only one part of gelatin to three parts of bone matter, which is the reason why an old man’s bones will not knit when broken. A child’s bones knit readily because there is plenty of the cementing material in its bones, and very little of the phosphate of lime or bony matter, sulphate of lime or plaster of Paris, and carbonate of lime or common chalk, which are the choking substances principally causing rigidity and old age.

The question now arises: What is the source? whence do we get this calcareous choking matter. It seems to be beyond dispute that all the solids of the body are built by the blood, which nourishes every part of the system, and that all that the body contains must first have been in the blood. The blood is renewed from the chyle, the chyle from the chyme and ultimately from the food and drink. Food and drink then, which nourish our bodies must therefore at the same time be the source of the earthy deposits which choke our bodies and produce old age and decrepitude.

Chemical analysis also bears out this inference, for it has shown that the arterial blood which comes fresh from the heart, pure and red, is heavier with earthy matter than the venous blood which contains the impurities of the system. Thus it is proven that the life-giving stream which flows through every part of the body to renew and build, at the same time is the bringer of death, for in every cycle it leaves behind a fresh accumulation of choking lime compounds to harden the tissues.

This is the Waterloo upon which all “perpetual life” theories meet their doom, for it is necessary to eat to live, yet every morsel of food has in it both life and death.

While we, therefore, cannot escape taking death-dealing substances into our system, we may at least regulate our food so that we take as little of it as possible, for there is a great difference in the amount contained in different foods; powdered cocoa for instance is one of the most nourishing foods; but at the same time a most potent clogging agent, containing three or four times as much ash as the worst of all other foods. Chocolate on the other hand is still more nourishing than cocoa and contains no earthy matter at all. Anyone knows that as long as we can supply fuel to a fire and keep it free from ashes it will burn and heat: so with our body which is a chemical furnace, as long as we give it proper food and are able to eliminate the refuse by way of the kidneys, skin, and rectum, we can keep it in health and vigor. By taking only such foods as contain the smallest amount of earthy substance we may put off the evil day when rigidity and old age take the place of the elasticity of youth. It lies with ourselves to do so, and the tables of food-values sent out by the U.S. Government give the chemical constituents of the various foods.

Speaking broadly, and from the chemical standpoint, there are two classes of food (1) the carbonaceous, including the sugars and fats; and (2) the nitrogenous, including the proteins.

The carbonaceous foods are the fuel whence we derive heat and muscular power; they come from the starch and sugar in vegetables, also from butter, cream, milk, olive oil, nuts, fruits, and the yolk of eggs.

These foods contain very little earthy matter; many of them, particularly green, fresh vegetables and fruits are entirely free from it.

The proteins are the material we use to repair waste of the body incident to work and use. They may be obtained from lean meat, such vegetables as beans, peas, etc., from nuts, milk, and white of egg.

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 are looked upon as mere accessories to the one or more kinds of flesh on the menu. Nothing could be more erroneous; science has proved by experiments that invariably the nourishment obtained from vegetables has a greater sustaining power, and the reason is easy to see when we look into 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 (see Lecture No. 6) until it has been overcome by the indwelling Spirit,” because he must be absolute and undisputed ruler in the body, governing the cell-lives as an autocrat, or they would each go their own way as they do in decay when the Ego has fled.

It is evident that the dimmer the consciousness of a cell is, the easier it is to overpower it, and the longer it will remain in subjection. In Lecture No. 3 we saw that the different kingdoms had different vehicles and consequently a different consciousness. The mineral has only its dense body and a consciousness like the deepest trance state. It would therefore be easiest to subject food taken directly from the mineral kingdom, mineral food would remain with us the longest, obviating the necessity for eating so often; but unfortunately we find that the human organism vibrates so rapidly that it is incapable of assimilating the inert mineral directly. Sale and the 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.

As we saw in Lecture No. 3, the plants have a dense and a vital body, which enables them to do this work; their consciousness we also saw, was 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 vegetables.

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. That this is so is well illustrated in the case of the wolf, the vulture, and the cannibal which have become proverbs for hunger; and as the human liver is too small to take care of even the ordinary meat diet, it is evident that if the cannibal lived solely upon human flesh instead of using it as an occasional “tidbit” he would soon succumb, for while too much of the carbohydrates, sugars, starches, and fats do little if any harm to the system, being exhaled through the lungs as carbonic acid gas or passing as water by way of the kidneys and the skin, an excess of meat is also 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 physical well-being.

Looking at the matter of flesh-eating from the ethical side also it is against the higher conceptions to kill to eat. In olden times man went out to the chase as any beast of prey, rough and callous; now he does his hunting in the butcher shop, where none of the nauseating sights of the slaughter-house will sicken him. If each had to go into that bloody place where all the horrors described in Upton Sinclair’s books are enacted day after day to be able to satisfy an abnormal injurious habit which causes more sickness and suffering than even the liquor craving; if each had to wield the bloody knife and plunge it into the quivering flesh of his victim, how much meat would we eat? Very little. In order to escape doing this nauseating work ourselves on occasion, we force a fellow being to stand in that bloody pen day after day killing thousands of animals every day of the week; we brutalize him to such an extent that the law will not allow him to sit on a jury in a capital case because he has ceased to have any regard for life. When he gets into a fight as is often the case in the stockyard district of Chicago, and other slaughter cities, he always uses the knife and always unconsciously uses the peculiar twisting cut which makes his stab fatal.

It is no use to say he need not do it. When hunger drives, a man will refuse no means of livelihood; and we, society, who demand this food, force some fellow being to supply it and are therefore responsible for his degradation. We are our brother’s keeper both individually and collectively as society.

The animals which we kill also cry aloud against this murder; there is a cloud of gloom and hatred over the great slaughter-cities. The law protects cats and dogs against cruelty. We all rejoice to see the little squirrels in the city parks come and take food from our hands but as soon as there is money in the flesh or fur of an animal, man eases to have regard for its right to live, and becomes its most dangerous foe, feeding and breeding it for gain, imposing suffering and hardships upon a fellow being for the sake of gold. We have a heavy debt to pay to the lower creatures whose mentors we should be; whose murderers we are, and the good law which works ever to correct abuses will also in time relegate the habit of eating murdered animals to the scrap heap of obsolete practices as cannibalism is now.

We are not advocating a vegetarian diet for everyone. Long practice of flesh eating and particularly the temperamental peculiarities of many people make it unsuitable for them to do without meat, yet others, like the writer, find it no trouble to live and grow fat on two meals of meatless dishes. Eggs, fish, and other low forms are necessary to some, others can live months or years on fruit. Diet, like health, is determined individually and no general standard can be set up. At the same time it may be safely said that the less meat we can along with, the better our general health will be. But if we want to do without it altogether, it is absolutely essential that we should study a table of food values so that we get the necessary proteins from the vegetables we eat. No man can go to the ordinary table and get sufficient nourishment if he eats only the vegetables provided as accessories to the meat; he must have beans, peas, nuts, and the like foods which are rich in protein to take the place of the discarded flesh or he will starve. As a hint to brain workers it may be said that carrots contain about four times as much phosphoric acid as any other food. The leaves can be used as salad and they have three times as much phosphoric acid as the carrot itself.

More dangerous to man than any food as a clogging and hardening agent of the system is WATER. It does not matter how clear and pure it looks, there is an enormous amount of the lime compounds and magnesia in the best we have, and neither filtration nor boiling will take it out. The amount of mineral in the water is easily determined by the way our teakettle “furs up,” and it is a mistake to think that the deposit comes from the water that we pour out of the kettle to make tea or coffee with, for it is the solid remains of the water that has evaporated as steam, the water left is harder if anything. The only thing that enables us to live beyond childhood is the enormous eliminative power of the kidneys; were it not for them we should be old in infancy, and if we want to preserve health and youth in old age we must cease drinking and cooking with this death-dealing fluid, using for all internal purposes only distilled water which is absolutely free from the injurious lime-compounds.

The only solvents of a permanent beneficent nature which the writers knows are buttermilk and the juice of grapes, obtained preferably by eating the grape or the juice taken unfermented. A systemic course of treatment with grape juice or buttermilk will open up the closed capillaries and stimulate the blood, so that even aged persons whose flesh has dried up and shrunk will again fill out and take on the look of youth, provided they are not of a too worrying pessimistic nature, for nothing will avail against such a temperament. That, and fear and ignorance in the selection of food are in fact the most productive causes of sickness and the most obstinate foes of the physician.

There are two great aids to health which enable us to get so much more benefit from our food that all who desire to get health or to keep it, ought to employ them. Their names are “thorough mastication” and “enjoyment.” They will do more for the welfare of the body than all the drugs or doctors in the world, and like all other habits, they can be cultivated.

The “Quick Lunch Counter” is one of the greatest sins of our nation. A man runs post haste from his office to the high uncomfortable chair found in these places. In five minutes he swallows as many courses, rushes back to his office, and then wonders why he feels uncomfortable and drowsy. Perhaps he feels forced to employ alcoholic stimulants in order to “brace up.”

All that can be avoided by taking time to eat in comfort.

The question is not how much we eat, but HOW MUCH WE ASSIMILATE. When we swallow a large quantity of food nearly whole we get less nourishment than if we take the time necessary to masticate and enjoy our food. Not that we should make it a labored process, but that we should regard eating as the welcoming of a friend into our house, where we are gladly doing all in our power to make him comfortable. Our bodies are in fact comparable to large hotels where we are the hosts and the cells in our food are the guests. They come and go, staying a longer or a shorter time and are a profit or a loss to the proprietor according to whether he makes them feel at home or not.

Imagine two hotels, one run on the basis of cordiality and helpfulness, where the proprietor meets each guest at the door with a cordial shake of the hand and where an ideal, contented set of servants are anxious to anticipate the slightest wish of the guests. Of course things will go swimmingly in that hotel; the guests will feel satisfied and stay long because they will be loath to leave so kind a host. Similarly, if we meet our food with “the glad hand,” we shall find that it will fit in easily. If we masticate it in thorough enjoyment, we are making arrangements for its comfort, as the hotel proprietor does for his guest by having a bath and other necessaries in readiness. Enjoying the food, our mental attitude is even more important than mastication. The man who finds fault with his food is like a hotel proprietor who would meet his guests at the door with a scowling face and ask: “What do you want here? I don’t like you; I have to take in guest such as you in order to keep my hotel running, but I want you to know that I don’t like it.”

What wonder if travelers who were forced to enter such a hotel should get angry, cause trouble, and try too get away as soon as possible; what wonder that the man who sniffs and snorts at his food gets indigestion. Whose the fault for his condition but his own? Faultfinding and hate drive the good of our food away from us just as much as they estrange us from friends; enjoyment of food and friend will knit the ties with both closer. As the amount of work we may do in the world, both spiritual and material, depends upon the condition of our bodies, it is of the greatest importance that we cultivate health and prolong youth to the limit of our allotted stay here if it is possible. By following the general directions here given, it will soon be perceived that there is an improvement in the bodily condition which will give fuller and freer scope to the mental faculties.

9. The Astronomical Allegories Of The Bible

In the previous lectures we have been considering man as a unit, showing how man, a Spirit, has several bodies, or vehicles of consciousness besides the dense body, and how he uses these bodies in gathering experience as a workman uses tools; how experience is garnered in each life and assimilated between death and the next birth, so that in each new Earth-life, we have as faculty the sum of all our experience in our former lives; and how we are thus progressing towards the glorious goal of perfection, which all will eventually attain before we cease returning to this Earth, were each life in a dense body is as a day at school to a child. When we have learned all that is to be learned here, there are other and higher evolutions that we may enter, just as a child enters the grammar school after passing through kindergarten. Endless progress is before the Ego, limitations are unthinkable, for the human Spirit is a spark from the Infinite, enfolding all possibilities.

Man is not only a unit, a separate entity, however; at least, he is that only in a relative sense, for he is a member of a family, a community, a nation, one of the inhabitants of the Earth, and through that related to other worlds with their inhabitants, for they are all inhabited, as some astronomers, arguing from analogy, have asserted. Occult science also teaches that they are inhabited, and this teaching is founded on firsthand knowledge, gained and verified by means of faculties possessed by some, though as yet latent in the many.

This view of the Universe and our little Earth, though strange to most people, should not be nearly as hard to believe as the seven-day Creation Story, when taken literally, for if God created the Earth in that brief space of time, He must also have mixed in the fossil remains; twisted the strata, made the glacier-marks and the mark of erosion by water--all for His own glory, and to the eternal mystification of man. It is certainly more logical to hold that the different heavenly bodies are inhabitants for evolving life and form, than that they are merely lamps hung up in the firmament to light our little mite of Earth

This relation of the Sun, Moon, and planets is shown in every one of the different world religions, the Christian religion included, and the olden temples are monuments to the faith now nearly forgotten in the Western World; yet as relevant today as in the days of old.

The great Pyramid of Gizeh, which stands upon the edge of the vast desert of Sahara, at the head of the Delta of the Nile, is one of the oldest structures on the Earth and one of the witnesses to the knowledge of the ancients concerning the true cosmic relationship for they built these cosmic measurements into that monumental pile.

Many theories have been advanced regarding the age and object of this Pyramid. Astronomers have pointed out that in the year 2170 B.C., Alpha Draconis, the pole-star then, pointed directly down the slanted entrance-way on the north side of the Pyramid. Professor Proctor asserts that it was also in the required position 3350 B.C.; but Egyptologists say that this is far too late; and as the latter figure takes into consideration the relationship then existing between Alpha Draconis and Alcyone, which can occur only once in a sidereal year (25,868 solar years), and as the Dendera Zodiac shows that the ancient Egyptians had records of three sidereal years, the age of the pyramid may be 78,000 years or older. This age has at least as much claim to scientific belief as Professor Proctor’s date.

The occult investigations which are based upon the imperishable records found in the Memory of Nature fix the date of construction at about 250,000 B.C. when it was used as a temple of initiation into the Mysteries, and was the shrine in which a great talisman was kept.

H. P. Blavatsky in THE SECRET DOCTRINE tells us that the construction of the pyramids was based on the program of the Mysteries and of the series of Initiations...hence the Pyramids are the everlasting record on Earth of these Initiations “as the course of the stars are in heaven.” The cycle of Initiation was a reproduction in miniature of that great series of cosmic changes to which astronomers have given the name of...sidereal year (25,868 ordinary years).

“Just as, at the close of the cycle of the sidereal year (measured by the precession of the equinoxes round the circle of the zodiac), the heavenly bodies return to the same relative positions...so, at the close of the cycle of Initiation, the inner man has regained the pristine state of divine purity and knowledge” from which he departed to perform the pilgrimage through matter, but RICHER BY THE EXPERIENCES HE HAS GONE THROUGH.

Being a symbol, it must of course embody all, or at least a part of the most prominent features of the things symbolized; and thanks to the able, if somewhat narrow-minded works of Professors Piazzi Smith and Proctor, both astronomers of repute, but ranged on opposite sides in regard to the question concerning the use of the Pyramid--we have an overwhelming amount of proof of the relation of the measurements of the different parts of the Pyramid to terrestrial and cosmic cycles and distances.

Professor Proctor’s testimony is the most valuable, because he is a dissenter from the theory that the Pyramid was constructed by divine architects; and would do, and does do anything he can, in honor, to refute such a theory, attributing the numerous measurements which he works out, and their relation to cosmic measures to “mere coincidence”; a method which caused Mme. Blavatsky to vent her rare sarcasm upon him, as “the champion coincidentalist.” He admits that “all the theories concerning its origin leave unexplained the most striking features of the Great Pyramid, save the one wild (?) theory which attributes its construction to divine architects”...also that “the theory that it was used for astrological purposes is supported by all known evidence, and strong though that support is, it derives greater strength from the failure of all other admissible theories to sustain the weight against them.” In another place he admits that the only difficulty with the astrological theory arises from “our inability to understand how men ever had such fullness of faith in astrology as to devote many years of labor and enormous sums of money to the pursuit of astrological researches, even for their own interests.”

Proclus tells us that according to tradition the pyramid ended at one time in a platform, with the head of the grand gallery projecting upward from the center, and Professor Proctor grows enthusiastic over the possibilities of the Pyramid as an observatory when in that architecturally unfinished, but astronomically perfect state, closing his eulogy by saying that “given modern instruments” it might have remained the most important astronomical observatory in the world. He shows how the opening of the grand gallery points to the zodiac, so that as the Sun, Moon, and planets pass around their course in the heavens, they would throw a shadow into the grand gallery at a different angle for each day of the year or month and that thus their positions could be measured in a most efficient manner.

The most important measurements embodied in the pyramid are:

Each side measures 913.15 inches at the base; thus the sum of the 4 sides is 36,526 inches. Allowing 100 inches for each day in the year, gives us 365 1/4 days, or exactly the number of days in a year, even to the quarter day which we save up for four years and use in the leap year.

The length of one of the diagonals of the base is 12,934 inches, so the sum of them both is 25,868 inches or 1 inch for every year in the great sidereal or world-year.

As the base of the Pyramid measures the time it takes the Earth to revolve around the Sun in its yearly course, it would be a fair inference that the height of the Pyramid ought to measure the distance of the Earth from the Sun and it does.

The height of the pyramid is 5,819 inches. That multiplied by a thousand million inches equals 91,840,000 miles, which Professor Proctor admits is more likely the true distance of the Earth from the Sun, than any calculated by the astronomers. Therefore, “wild theory” or not, the evidence is all in favor of the supposition that divine architects built the pyramid, and that ought to convince us of this theory.

At a later period in its history, occult information tells us that the Pyramid was the temple of the mysteries which have now degenerated into “Masonry.” In one of the rites called “the gate of death,” the candidate was tied to a wooden cross and carried into a subterranean crypt, where he remained entranced for three and one-half days. During that time, while his dense body lay inert, the Ego, clothed in its finer vehicles, was consciously roaming the Desire World in the hierophant’s charge. He was put through the “trials by fire, Earth, air, and water.” That is, he was shown that when functioning in such a body none of the elements could harm him; that he could then pass through a mountain as easily as through air; that he could live in a roaring furnace or on the bottom of the Great Deep in perfect ease and comfort. At first the neophyte is usually afraid of the elements, therefore the initiator is present to help and give assurance to the neophyte.

At sunrise on the fourth day, he was carried to the platform of the Pyramid, where the rays of the rising Sun woke him from his sleep (during which he had been visiting Purgatory).

When awakened, he was given “the Word,” and was called “first-born.”

This rite lingers yet as the third degree in Masonry; the death and resurrection of Hiram Abiff, the “Widow’s son,” the Grand Architect of Solomon’s temple and hero of the Masonic legend. Dragon, the eminent French Masonic authority, says that the legend of Hiram is an astronomical allegory representing the Sun from the summer solstice downward. “During the summer the Sun calls forth songs of gratitude from all that breathes, hence Hiram who represents it, can give the Word, that is to say LIFE to all. Then the Sun enters the southern signs at the fall equinox, nature becomes mute, and Hiram, the Sun, can no longer give the sacred Word; he meets the three murderers: the zodiacal signs Libra, Scorpio, and Sagittarius, which the Sun goes through in October, November, and December. The first strikes him with a 24-inch rule emblematic of the 24 hours the Earth takes to revolve on its axis. The second strikes him with an iron square, symbolizing the four seasons, and at last the mortal blow is given by the third murderer with a mallet, which, being round, signifies that the Sun has completed its circle and dies to give room for the Sun of another year.”

The initiates of the temples in Egypt were called “phree messen” which means “children of light” because they had received the light of knowledge, and it is this which has been changed into “Free Mason.”

In the religion of Judaism we hear of a God making certain promises to a man by the name of Abraham. He promised that he would make Abraham’s seed as numerous as the sands upon the seashore; and we are told how he dealt with Abraham’s grandson, Jacob, who was the husband of four wives, by whom he had 12 sons and one daughter. These are looked upon as the forefathers of the Jewish nation.

This also is an astronomical allegory dealing with the migration of the heavenly bodies, as will be evident from a careful perusal of the 49th chapter of Genesis and the 33rd chapter of Deuteronomy, where the blessings of Jacob upon his sons show how they are identified with the 12 signs of the Zodiac; Simon and Levi sharing the sign of Gemini, the twins, and the feminine sign Virgo being allotted to Jacob’s only daughter, Dinah. The four wives are the four phases of the Moon and Jacob is the Sun.

This is similar to the teaching we find among the Greeks, where Gaia, the Earth, is the wife of Apollo, the Sun; and among the Egyptians, where heat and moisture, the Sun and the moon, were personified as Osiris and Isis. The sacred rivers Jordan and Ganges are also connected etymologically with the river Eridanus, which is one of the constellations. It means “source of descent,” and for agriculturists such as were these ancient people, these rivers were the source of the waters of life. Josephus tells us that the Jews carried the 12 signs of the Zodiac on their banners, and camped around the tabernacle which held the seven-branched candlestick representing the Sun and the heavenly bodies which move inside the circle formed by the 12 signs of the Zodiac.

The Jews located their temples so that the four corners pointed N.E., S.E., S.W., and N.W., and the sides directly North, East, South, and West, and like all solar temples the main entrance was in the East, so that the rising Sun might illumine its portal and herald each day the victory of light over the powers of darkness; this to bring to the nascent humanity the message that the contest of light and darkness on the material plane is but the counterpart of a similar contest in the moral and mental worlds where the human soul is groping its way towards the light, for the battle of light and darkness in the material world, like all other phenomena, is a suggestion of the realities in the invisible realms, and these truths were given to man as myths by divine leaders who led him until his growing intellect gave birth to arrogance which caused his benefactors to withdraw, and let him learn by the hard knocks of experience. Then he forgot them and has come to regard the ancient stories of gods and demi-gods as imaginary. Yet, even the early Christian church was imbued with this knowledge of the significance of the solar myth, for the Cathedral of St. Peter at Rome is built facing East, like all other solar temples, telling humanity of the “Great Light of the World” who is to come and dispel the spiritual darkness which as yet envelops us; the Light-bringer who shall bring peace on Earth and good will among men, causing the nations to beat their swords into plough-shares and their spears into pruning-hooks.

The Jews greeted the Sun with the Morning-sacrifice; and took leave of him at sunset in a similar manner by an evening oblation, offering up on their sabbath and additional sacrifice to the lunar “Race-god,” Jehovah. Him they also worshiped by sacrifice at the New Moon.

One great feast was Easter, when they celebrated the Passover; the time when the Sun “passes over” his “easter(n) node; leaving the southern hemisphere where he winters and commencing his northern journey in his chariot of fire, hailed with joy by men as their savior from hunger and cold which would inevitably result if he stayed in south declination always.

The last of the Jewish feasts and the most important is the feast of the Tabernacles, when the Sun crosses its western node in autumn, having yielded to man the “bread of life” wherewith to sustain his material being until the next return of the Sun to the northern heavens.

For the above reasons the six southern signs which the Sun occupies in winter are always called “Egypt,” the “land of the Philistines,” etc.-- a name for something that is bad for “God’s people”; whereas the northern signs in which the Sun is in the fruitful season are “heaven,” “the promised land,” which “flows with milk and honey.”

We see this in such passages as the one where the celebration of the Passover is enjoined “to remember the coming out of Egypt.” This feast is a rejoicing over the emergence of the Sun from the southern signs, also from the recorded fact that Jacob was with Joseph in Egypt when he died. At the winter solstice when the Sun of the past year has completed its journey and reached its lowest degree of south declination it is in the zodiacal sign Sagittarius. By reference to Genesis 49:24 where the dying Jacob speaks of the “bow” of Joseph, it is easy to identify him with the sign Sagittarius which represents a centaur in the act of drawing his bow, and thus the story of Jacob dying in Egypt with Joseph, is reenacted each year when the Sun dies in the sign Sagittarius at the winter solstice.

The story of Samson is another phase of the solar myth. As long as Samson’s hair was allowed to grow, his strength would increase; Samson is the Sun, and its rays represent Samson’s hair. From the winter solstice in December to the summer solstice in June the Sun’s rays grow, and he gains in strength with every day. This frightens the “powers of darkness,” the winter months, the Philistines, for if this Light-bringer continues to reign their kingdom will come to an end; and they counsel together against Samson to discover wherein his strength lies. They secure the cooperation of the woman DELILAH, which is the sign Virgo, and when Samson, the Sun, passes through that sign in September he is said to have laid his head in the woman’s lap, and to have confided his secret to her. She shears him of his locks, for at that time the rays of the Sun grow shorter, and lose their strength. Then the Philistines or winter months come and carry the debilitated giant into their prison: the southern signs where the Sun is in winter. They put out his eyes or deprive him of his light and at last bring him to their temple, their stronghold, at the winter solstice; there they subject him to infamous indignities, believing they have vanquished the light completely, but with his last remaining strength the fettered solar giant shatters their temple and although he dies in the effort, he overcomes his enemies and thus leaves the way clear for another Sun-child to be born to save humanity from the cold and famine which would result if he had remained bound in the toils of the powers of darkness, the Philistines, the winter months.

The lives of all the saviors of mankind are also founded upon the passage of the Sun around the circle of the zodiac, which pictures the trials and triumphs of the initiate, and the fact has given rise to the erroneous conclusion that these saviors never existed, that the stories are merely Sun-myths. This is wrong. All divine teachers sent to man are cosmic characters, and the ordering of their lives is in accord with the marching orbs, which contain, as it were, an anticipated biography of their lives. Each came with divine spiritual light and knowledge to help man to find God, and therefore the events in their lives were in accord with the events which the physical light-bearer, the Sun, encounters on his pilgrimage through the year.

The Saviors are all born of an immaculate Virgin, at the time when darkness is greatest among mankind, as the Sun of the coming year is born, or begins his journey, on the longest night of the year, when the zodiacal sign Virgo, the Virgin, stands on the eastern horizon in all latitudes between 10 and 12 P.M. She remains as immaculate as ever, after she has given birth to her Sun-child; hence we see the Egyptian goddess Isis sitting on the crescent moon nursing her divine Babe Horus; Astarte, the immaculate lady of Babylon, with her babe Tammuz and a crown of seven stars over her head; the lady Devaki in India with her infant Krishna, and our own Virgin Mary giving birth to the Savior of the Western World under the star of Bethlehem. Everywhere the same story: the immaculate Mother--the divine Babe--and the Sun, Moon, or stars.

As the material Sun is weak and has to flee from the powers of darkness, so all thee divine light-bringers are searched for and forced to flee from the powers of the world; and like the Sun, they always escape. Jesus fled before King Herod. King Kansa and King Maya re his counterparts in other religions. The baptism occurs at the time when the Sun passes through the sign Aquarius, the Waterman, and when he goes through the sign of the Fishes in March we have the fast of the Initiate, for Pisces is the last of the southern signs, and all the stores laid by from the bounteous gifts of the Sun of the previous year and nearly exhausted, and man’s food is scant. The fish-food of Lent which occurs at this time is a further corroboration of this solar origin of the fast.

At the vernal equinox the sun “CROSSES the equator” and at that time the “CROSSification” or crucifixion occurs, for then the Sun-god commences to give his life as food for his worshipers, ripening the corn and the grape, which is made into the “bread and wine.” To do that he must leave the equator and soar heavenward. Similarly it would benefit humanity nothing spiritually if their saviors stayed with them, therefore they soar heavenwards as “sons (or suns) of righteousness,” ministering to the faithful from above, as the Sun does for man when high in the heavens.

The Sun attains its highest point of north declination at the summer solstice; he then sits upon “the throne of his father,” the Sun of the previous year; but he cannot remain there more than three days, then he is carried downwards towards his western node. Likewise the Saviors of mankind ascend to the throne of the Father, to be reborn from time to time for the good of mankind, which truth is embodied in the sentence of the Nicaean creed: “thence he shall return.”

The movement known as the “precession of the equinoxes,” whereby the Sun crosses the equator on the 21st of March at a different point each year, determines the symbol of the Savior. At the time of the birth of Jesus the Sun crossed in about the 5th degree of the sign Aries, the Ram. Consequently Christ was “the lamb of God.” There was a dispute, however. Some thought that owing to what is called the orb of influence, power of the Sun was really in the sign Pisces, the fishes, and that the symbol of Christ should have been a fish. As a relic of that dispute we see that to this day the Bishop’s miter is in the form of the head of a fish. At the time of Mithras, the Persian Savior, the Sun crossed in the sign of the Bull, hence we find Mithras riding on a bull, and this was also the foundation for the worship of the Bull Apis in Egypt. At present the vernal equinox is in about 10 degrees of Pisces, the fishes, so that if a savior were born now he would be a “Fish-man” like Oannes of Nineveh, corrupted into Jonah and the whale by the Bible.

The four letters said to have been on the cross of Christ and the method of fixing Easter in commemoration of the event, also go to show the cosmic character of the occurrence; these letters, I.N.R.I., are commonly supposed to have meant Jesus Nazarenus Rex Judaeorum, but they are also the initial letters of the Hebrew names of the four elements: Iam (water), Nour (fire), Ruach (air or spirit), Iabeshah (Earth). It would be foolish to fix the anniversary of the death of an individual as Easter is fixed by the Sun and Moon, but it is the proper thing in respect of a solar festival and a cosmic character, related to the sun as spiritual light-bringer to physical luminary.

When the Sun leaves his throne at the summer solstice, June 21, he passes into the sign Leo, the Lion of Judah. Then we have the Catholic feast of the “Assumption” on August 15, in Leo. Thence, onward to his western node, he enters the sign of the Virgin about August 22. Thus the Virgin is born from the Sun as it were.

This brings to mind the astronomical solution to that passage in Revelation, “I saw a woman clothed with the sun and the moon under her feet.” That phenomenon happens every September just after the new Moon; for viewed from our Earth, the Sun covers or clothes the sign Virgo all through September, and as the Moon is leaving the conjunction of the Sun, that appears to be beneath the Virgin’s feet. When John the Baptist is represented as saying concerning Christ that “he must increase, but I must decrease,” he is symbolizing the Sun at the summer solstice when it must decrease in light for the coming half year, while Christ by his birthday at Christmas is identified with the newborn Sun which increases the length of the day until the middle of summer.

Thus we see that the contest of Light and Darkness in the physical world is closely connected in the scriptures of the different religions with the contest of the powers of spiritual light and life against those of darkness and ignorance; that this truth is universally spread among all peoples in all ages. The myths of the dragon-slayers embody the same truth, where the Greeks tell of the victory of Apollo over Python, and of Hercules over the dragon of the Hesperides, the norseman tells of the contest of Beowulf slaying the fire-drake, of Siegfried slaying the dragon Fafner, and of St. George and the dragon. In our materialistic age these truths are temporarily relegated to oblivion or regarded as fairy stories without any basis in truth; but the time will come and is not far distant when these relics will again be restored to honor as embodiments of great spiritual truths.

10. Astrology: Its Scope And Limitations

In modern times the Science of Astrology has come to be regarded as an exploded fallacy, and, like the clairvoyant, the astrologer is looked upon as a charlatan, and not without reason; for such advertisements as are found in almost any paper offering to cast a horoscope telling one’s fortune from the cradle to the grave for the magnificent sum of ten cents or even for a postage stamp are enough to give a certain justification for the appellation “fakir,” and this lecture is given to show another side, not popularly known, to this ancient and misjudged science; to show its uses and its limitations.

There are two kinds of astrology and two kinds of astrologers: those who do not even cast a horoscope for their patrons but only ask the month of birth, which information tells them what sign the Sun was in at the time of the person’s birth. Then they copy from a book or have a set of twelve mimeographed forms telling the person’s “fortune.”

It is evident to any reasoning mind that there are more than twelve classes of people in the world, and according to that method there would be a similarity of line if the case of every twelfth person, whereas we know that no two persons have the same experience; that every life is different from all others, and any method that does not make such a difference must be false upon the face of it.

The ten-cent astrologer is a good business man. His mimeographed “READING,” stationery and postage do not cost more than two cents, so he has a profit of eight cents for every horoscope (?). Commercially that is an enormous profit, but it fades into insignificance before the fact that every time the astrologer (?) gets an order he gets the name of a fool, and he has a regular “follow up” system whereby he notifies his customers from time to time that certain very important developments are due to take place in a near future which he will reveal for a dollar. He will work his victim systematically until at last experience has taught him how worthless are the prognostications he receives, and then such people cry down astrology as fraud or folly.

The scientific method demands first, MONTH, DAY, AND YEAR, from the applicant, because it takes into consideration all of the nine heavenly bodies in the solar system, and it knows that they have at that time a certain relative position to one another. That same position will not occur again until a sidereal year has passed, and that is 25,868 of our ordinary years in length, so that if a child is born today it would take 25,868 years before another child could be born with the same horoscope. But even that is not enough, for it is estimated that a child is born every second; that would give 86,400 whose experience in life would be alike if only the day of birth were taken into consideration. Therefore the scientific astrologer demands both the HOUR and PLACE or birth in addition to the DAY, MONTH, AND YEAR, for there are seldom two people born in the same place at the same hour and minute; even twins come from twenty minutes to a number of hours apart, and that makes a great difference. Where they are born from the same sac and alike, they will have been born when the same zodiacal sign was rising in the East, for that is an important factor in giving form to the body, but where they are born from separate envelopes and dissimilar, calculation will bring out the fact that the end of one sign was rising at the birth of one, and the beginning of the next when the second was delivered, or, where there are several hours between, there may be more signs between, for as the Earth turns on its axis through the day, a new sign rises every two hours at the equator, but nearer the pole some signs are passed quicker on account of the inclination of the Earth’s axis, so that at times there may be several signs between the birth of twins, which would make their lives very different.

When, however, it happens that two children are born in THE SAME PLACE AT THE SAME TIME, there is also a marked similarity in their lives. There are such cases on record. One instance will suffice: A Mr. Samuel Hemmings was born in the same parish in London, at the same hour and near the same minute as King George the Third, June 4, 1738. He went into business as an ironmonger on the same day the King was crowned; he was married the same day as his majesty, died on the same day, and also other events in the two lives resembled each other. The difference in station precluded both being kings, but on the same day when one became the monarch of a kingdom, the other also became an independent business man.

Astronomy stands in about the same relation to astrology as anatomy to physiology. Anatomy gives the dry facts as to the location and the structure of the constituent organs of the body, and astronomy gives like dry data with regard to the heavenly bodies. But, as it is reserved for physiology to enunciate the utility of the different organic parts of the body, which alone makes such knowledge of value, so it is the part of astrology to explain the significance of the changing relative positions of the heavenly bodies in regard to the actions of mankind.

It will need no argument to prove that the chemical condition of the Earth’s atmosphere is different in the morning from what it is at noon or evening. We also see the changes produced in the different seasons, and we recognize that these changes are due to the Sun’s changed position. We also recognize the effect of the Moon on the tides, etc. These bodies move fast, yet are constantly producing changes in the atmospheric conditions of the Earth; and in these days of wireless telegraphy it should not be hard to conceive that the other heavenly bodies also produce an effect. As we have already seen, these changes are so numerous that the same chemical condition could not occur except at intervals of 25,868 years. Thus we see that the electrostatic condition of the atmosphere at the moment a child draws its first breath would give to each atom of the little sensitive body AN INDIVIDUAL STAMP. It is as if we were charging a new electric battery, and any change in the atmospheric condition will affect that brain differently from all others, for its original stamp varied from all others.

There is in the mind of many people the idea that astrology is fatalistic; and while it may so appear, a deeper study will show that this idea is erroneous; that as all our sorrows and pains are the result of ignorance, so knowledge will avert misfortune IF APPLIED in time; and in order to understand the scope of our free will we must recognize the fact that the result of our past deeds goes through a threefold process of ripening.

In the first place there are causes which have been allowed to run their course unchecked by other acts and have so nearly worked themselves into effects that they are like the ball shot from a pistol--they are beyond our power of interference and must be allowed to run their course for good or ill. They are called “ripe” causation in occultism, and they are clearly shown in the horoscope when properly cast. Of course it would do us no good in one sense to know them when we cannot avert them, but sometimes we may alter the conditions under which such a ripe cause spends itself, and then there is the hope. We see the passing cloud, we know when it will have spent its fury, and that gives us a hope we should not have save for the prognostications of astrology.

The second kind of causes is that generated and worked out from day to day; a sort of “pay as you go transaction.” This kind may often be avoided or rectified by a knowledge of astrology. The tendencies are also shown in the horoscope.

The third kind of causes is that which we are making but which we cannot work out now. That is saved up for adjustment in later years or later lives. In regard to this class we have absolute freedom. The horoscope will aid us by showing the tendencies, so that we may be particularly careful at critical times, working with all our might to catch the good opportunities and taking extra pains to avoid an evil tendency.

To illustrate the working of the Law of Consequence in relation to prediction we may cite some cases within our own experience.

Mr. L., a well known and popular lecturer, had never studied astrology, but was interested and was offered tuition. In order to lend interest to the study his own horoscope was used as a basis of instruction, as he would thus be able to check the interpretations of the past and thus arrive at a better understanding than if someone else’s nativity had been used. In the course of the calculations it came out that Mr. L. was subject to frequent accidents. Previous accidents and happenings were figured out to the very day they happened, which impressed Mr. L very much.

It was further seen that on the 21st of July, 1906, another accident was due and would affect the upper part of the chest, arms, and neck to the lower part of the head; also that it would result from a short journey. Mr. L. was warned that as the new Moon, occurring on that day, was the factor in bringing about the event, he must stay in the house on that day and also on the seventh day after, the latter being even more dangerous than the original. He was much impressed and promised to obey the injunction carefully.

Just previous to the critical time we wrote Mr. L. from Seattle to insure remembrance of directions and received a letter in reply that he was mindful and would be careful.

The next communication was from a mutual friend, stating that on the critical day, July 28, Mr. L. had gone to Sierra Madre in an electric car and at a railway crossing had come in collision with a train, was hurled out through a window and sustained injuries in the placed mentioned in the prediction; also a lesion to a tendon which had not been seen.

It was a sore puzzle, of course, to know why Mr. L. had disregarded the injunction, as he was very much impressed with the reality of the danger. The answer came three months later, when he was able to write himself. He said: “I thought the 28th was the 29th.” This was plainly a case of “ripe” causation that could not be avoided. In other cases people have been warned of accidents, have followed instructions and escaped, and said afterwards: “But do you really think I would have been hurt if I had not done so?” That is the difficulty! People do not believe unless they get it knocked into them, as Mr. L. did. He wrote: “These accidents have deepened my respect for astrology immensely.” But is that the only way we can learn? If so, the more the pity for us.

It is a true saying that “no man liveth to himself.” We all affect each other. That also is shown in the horoscope. The death of the parents is particularly shown in each one’s horoscope, for they are the source of the body in which we live, and often where the birth hour is unknown the proficient astrologer can find it from the great events in life, particularly if the father’s and mother’s death day is given him. Husband and wife are also so tied that the great events in the life of one are shown in the horoscope of the other. A case in point came under notice a few years ago when a Mrs. F. was warned of a danger of rupture of relations between herself and Mr. F. She was told that an anticipated journey would be stopped and social functions suspended. (They were society people.) The lady acknowledged having contemplated a journey to Europe, but pooh-poohed the idea of giving it up and asked if Mr. F. was in danger of death. The answer was: Worse! But as it was a delicate matter and she a stranger, no more could be said, save that November would be a time of disaster. The 14th of that month her husband was sentenced to five years in the penitentiary for criminal assault on a little girl. The journey was of course suspended and social ostracism followed. This case shows particularly the delicate position of the astrologer. Though he may see and is desirous of helping, conventions debar him from saying outright what he sees. The before- mentioned case is in point. Though anxious to avert suffering it was impossible to warn. Therefore WE ADVOCATE THE STUDY OF ASTROLOGY BY ALL.

Not even the best astrologer who is a stranger can see into the lives of those near and dear to us as we an when we have studied astrology, because of the insight we have already gained into their characters. Conventions do not hinder us to the same extent as they affect a stranger. Besides, a bought horoscope never can engender in us the sympathy for others which comes from the personal knowledge of astrology. When a visitor to Columbus, Ohio, the writer was shown the horoscope of a certain boy cast by his aunt. It was seen at once that the boy was going through a crisis which would last about six years. During that time an enormous amount of evil would surely come to the surface, and all would depend upon what his treatment at home would be--and oh, the pity of it, ignorance of the hidden causes governed the attitude of the parents. Instead of forbearance, love, and sympathy, he was getting lectures and punishments. Regarded as a scapegrace, how could he be expected to be good at that age! A great wave of sympathy swept over the writer at the realization of what that poor boy must suffer, and when a horoscope of the lad’s younger sister revealed the fact that when about 14 she would enter upon a similar crisis, the need was felt of sending an urgent message to those parents, telling them for pity’s sake to lavish love on that child in the few years which would elapse ere the commencement of the crisis, to make home so dear and homelike to her that when the crisis comes she will have so much love and cheer at home that all other companionships and all other places must seem dull by comparison. Only in that way will it be possible to save that child and it has been a frequent prayer with the writer that the advice may be heeded.

We have those mysteries, the children, all around and amongst us. Upon the way we solve the riddle will it depend what we reap as a result of our guardianship. It is not beyond the average intellect to be able to cast an ordinary horoscope and read it for character. Character is destiny, and if we know the character of a growing child we may lay up for ourselves great treasure in heaven by strengthening the good tendencies and helping it by example and precept to weed out the evil.

One of the greatest uses of astrology in the writer’s opinion is in determining the character of children and bringing them up so as to strengthen their weak points and stem the evil tendencies. In character reading astrology is correctly interpreted in 99 per cent of the cases by most experienced astrologers, and no parent can benefit and help a child more than by getting a horoscope for it, except by learning to case it. In the meantime a friend who understands astrology may be utilized to furnish a horoscope for the child.

While astrology is an absolutely true science, it must always be taken into consideration that the astrologer is but human and therefore fallible. Though a conscientious astrologer with the ability to combine and blend the stellar influences will generally give correct forecasts, he is every liable to meet his Waterloo, often where he least expects it. The writer has only once said that a prediction he made would not fail and that time it did fail. There was an escape-clause and it was seen, but the aspects were so strong that it seemed impossible that the predicted event could fail to materialize. It NEARLY happened, but was frustrated at the critical moment, showing the potency of the escape-clause.

That predictions fail at times is due to a factor which the astrologer cannot take into consideration--the free will of man. So long as people drift aimlessly with the time and tide of life, wafted hither and thither by the wind of circumstance the task of prediction is easy, and the careful and competent astrologer can predict accurately for the great majority of people for the horoscope shows their TENDENCIES, and apart from individual effort mankind follows these tendencies unresistingly. But the more evolved the man, the more liable is the astrologer to fail, for he can only see the tendencies; the will of the man as a factor it is beyond him to calculate. In the nature of things there must be this element of uncertainty. If conditions were so hard and fast that no mistake were possible, it would show that inexorable fate governed human life, and there would be no use in making an effort to change conditions, but the very fact that predictions do fail is an inspiration, for it shows that a certain amount of free will does exist.

There is one phase of prediction where astrology is perhaps infallible and of great use, that is in determining the affinity of people, so that instead of making marriage a lottery or chance it can be ascertained before-hand what amount of happiness or sorrow will result from such a union. There would certainly be no need for divorce in cases where a fairly competent astrologer had recommended the union.

In the previous lectures we have seen that human life is governed by a great law of nature, the law of Consequence or Causation; that our every act is causative and will bring its inevitable effect as surely as the pebble thrown into the air returns to earth. under this Great Law we meet again both friends and foes and it seems that it is impossible to come into the closest of all relations--marriage--with a stranger. Therefore it appears that the influences which thus incite people are RIPE causation which cannot be avoided. The writer has noticed that when people ask for an astrological forecast of a proposed marriage, and predictions are favorable, they invariably hurry the ceremony because it is in line with their wishes, but where the astrologer is compelled to predict disaster they invariably conclude that “he does not know as much as he thinks he does,” and they either get married anyway or consult someone who predicts as they wish and then follow his advice.

The greatest of all the uses of astrology is in dealing with sick people, and that is the only use the writer makes of it now. We have spoken of the Law of Consequence, which brings to each at the appointed time the results of his past actions, whether in this or other lives. The stars are the Clock of Destiny, as it were; the twelve signs of the zodiac correspond to the face of the clock with its twelve figures; the Sun and the planets with their slow motions indicate the year when any certain event is due, and the swift-moving Moon will tell us the month.

There is one class of people who are particularly under the influence of Luna--the Moon. LUNATICS we call them on that account. In their lives the changes of the moon are particularly felt and the astrologer can forecast not only to the day, but even to the very hour when rises manifest. A case in point from the writer’s experience will illustrate.

The wife of a friend became mentally ill and was put under the care of two nurses. Warning was given concerning crises at different periods and the precautions taken prevented serious trouble. The lady’s husband always made it a point to be on hand to help the nurses and a straitjacket was used. One such night a warning had been given for two a.m. The gentleman was there as usual in the room with the patient. He lay on the bed fully dressed, and the lady was sitting up in bed during the fore part of the night, talking, mostly rationally, and pleaded to have the wrist- bands of the straitjacket untied.

As she seemed so rational the husband complied, and a little later the lady herself unfastened the straps imprisoning her lower limbs.

About two a.m. she arose and searched the room for something, still speaking quietly and rationally, but Mr. --- got the idea that she was hunting for a knife, so he also arose to watch her, but as he did so she sprang at him, biting his cheek, and a knife fell to the floor. it took the combined efforts of the husband and nurses to get her back into the strait-jacket.

A few days later Mr. --- discovered that his trousers had been pierced in two places by a glancing blow from the knife. The attack occurred at the very hour predicted.

When sickness comes to anyone the crisis is shown by the horoscope, and from that it is possible to see the developments in the case, so as to be able to take advantage of the propitious times. Then the healing remedies will have so much greater effect, and if the healer is unable to make much progress on account of adverse planetary conditions he can at least hold out hope and say when a change will occur.

Such a case happened in Duluth when the writer was asked to attend a lady suffering from blood poison. She had been given up by the doctors. On casting her horoscope it was seen that she had had a similar disease seven years before and that another crisis was due in a few days, when the new Moon would aggravate the condition.

The lady was in great agony, with her relatives around her. She was taking leave of them and expected to die. As the Moon was dark it did not hinder much and in about twenty minutes the patient was resting easy and without pain. In two days the poison had been driven from the abdomen down to the knees; but then the new Moon stopped progress, and the third day itching and pain in the lower part of the limbs commenced again. We fought it for three days, but, while able to stop the pain during treatments, it commenced an hour or two after. The swelling remained as before. it was then plain that no relief was possible till the Moon had turned the full. The patient was told that no relief was possible at once, but on a designated day the swelling would yield to the treatments already given and the pain cease. On the day designated the lady got up in the morning and could put her shoes on with ease. The sickness was past.

In this relation a physician and surgeon in Portland, Oregon, said that his experience had led him to always perform his operations, if at all possible, while the Moon is increasing, as he had noticed that there was greater vitality at that time and wounds healed better than when the operation was performed while the Moon was decreasing.

To the occultist the twelve signs of the zodiac are the visible vehicles of the twelve great Creative hierarchies which helped man to evolve up to his present stage of self-consciousness, the Sun being the vesture of the highest spiritual intelligence manifest in our system at the present time. The seven planets: Uranus, Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Earth, Venus, Mercury, and the bodies of the seven great Star Angels, of whom we hear in all religions as the seven Spirits before the Throne, the seven Archangels of the Mohammedans, the seven Rishis of the Hindus, the seven Amshaspands of the Parsis, etc. They act according to the law of Consequence, and are the Ministers of our Lord, the Sun-God, each taking care of a definite part of God’s will.

From them as Spirits we have all come in seven “rays,” and ONE of them is thus our “Father-Star,” and remains so throughout all our lives. That fact does not preclude that we may be and are born at different times under all the other stars, so as to gather varied experience, and our horoscope will show what particular star is our “ruler” in this life, but we never know our Father-Star until at the last initiation. From this fact comes also the beautiful doctrine of “twin souls” not to be confounded with the coarse and bestial teaching which has been made the excuse for abominable adulterous practices. But all who have emanated from the same father-star are brother, sister, or twin souls in all their lives on Earth, and no one can enter an occult school except the one composed of our brothers from the same ray or star-angel from which we have emanated. This was what Christ Jesus meant when He said to the disciples, “Your Father and my Father,” whereby we may understand that Jesus and his disciples were twin souls emanated from the same ray. To the Pharisees he ascribes a different origin, calling them children of the devil, Saturn or Satan. Yet it must not be supposed that Saturn is evil; he has his beneficent mission to fulfill, like all the other of God’s ministers; he is the subduing influence which brings sorrow to put a damper upon our arrogance; the tempter, to bring out our imperfections that we may be purged of evil and become perfect and virtuous; and his virtues are grand and great, chastity and justice, a rectitude that will never swerve, but it lacks mercy, and love; that comes from the beautiful Venus. From her also come music and art, which serve to turn us to the higher side of nature. Jupiter is the beacon that lures us on to heaven and inspires us with lofty thoughts of devotion to God and altruistic aspirations. Mars is the energizer spurring us on to work in the vineyard of life. Were it not for his prodding influence there would be no vim or vigor in man. In his evil aspects he gives passion, war and strife, but that is because we misuse the energy he imparts. In the same way Venus will give sloth, and Jupiter indolence; but when we allow their good influences to be misdirected by our lower natures, Saturn comes and puts us through the trials of sorrow and tribulation to bring us again to the path of advancement and purity.

Mercury, the messenger of the Gods, is the fount of wisdom whence the human mind gets its tone, the smallest of all the planets, but the kingdom of the star-angel who has the most important mission of all in respect to our human race. Upon its position and configurations in the horoscope will depend whether the coming life will be one of devotion to the higher self or if the lower nature will hold sway, for the mind is the link between the higher Self and the lower nature. If it is so posited that it cares more for the pleasures of sense than the joys of the soul, sorrowful will be the end. Yet it should always be remembered that no man is compelled to do evil, and that the greater the temptation, the greater the reward to him that overcometh the tendencies shown in the horoscope. For let it always be remembered that though the stars impel, they cannot and do not compel. In the final analysis WE are the arbiters of our destiny, and despite all the evil influences it is within our power to rule our stars by the exercise of Will, the badge of our divinity to which all else must bow.

As Ella Wheeler Wilcox has said so poignantly:

One ship sails east and another sails west,

With the selfsame winds that blow,

‘Tis the set of the sail and not the gale,

Which determines the way they go.

As the winds of the sea are the ways of fate,

As we voyage along through life,

‘Tis the act of the soul that determines the goal

And not the calm or the strife.

11. Spiritual Sight And Insight

When we speak of spiritual sight we are not speaking symbolically, or of a vague something, an ecstatic feeling or the like, but of a definite faculty as real as physical sight and as necessary to perception of the spiritual worlds and to true insight into super-physical conditions as physical sight is indispensable to a comprehensive insight into material things.

The spiritual sight of which we speak is not to be confused with clairvoyance developed in spiritualistic circles. The latter depends upon a negative state of mind where the inner worlds are reflected in the consciousness of the sitters, as the surrounding landscape is reflected in a mirror. Such a method gives SIGHT, but INSIGHT concerning the thing seen is lacking in the negative clairvoyant as much as in the mirror. He is in a position similar to that of a man tied on a horse without rein or bridle, who is carried wheresoever the horse pleases. Such a faculty is a curse. The properly trained clairvoyant is not tied; he can get on or off as he pleases, has rein and bridle on his horse; he is master, the other a slave.

Certain negative phases of clairvoyance are also developed by taking drugs, by crystal gazing, etc. In all such cases the faculty is a danger and a detriment, being uncontrolled by the Spirit. Drugs have a fearfully destructive effect on the different vehicles of man. But the most dangerous method of development is indiscriminate breathing exercises. Many a man is in the insane asylum today or his body lies in a consumptive’s grave, on account of having practiced breathing exercises in development classes, taught by persons as ignorant as himself. Breathing exercises, when necessary, are NEVER GIVEN IN CLASSES, as each pupil is differently constituted from every one else; each consequently needs INDIVIDUAL exercises, and different mental exercises also to accompany them. Only through individual instruction from a competent teacher can spiritual sight and insight be developed in perfect safety. The foregoing remarks apply only to breathing exercises for occult development and not to exercises for physical culture, which are excellent when practiced in moderation.

The questions then arises: How may the true teacher be found, and how distinguished from the imposter? This is a momentous question, for when the aspirant has found such a teacher, he is in a safe haven and will be guarded against the great majority of dangers which beset those who through ignorance or elfish motives steer their own course and seek spiritual powers without endeavoring to develop moral fiber.

It is an axiomatic truth that men are known “by their fruits,” and as ESOTERIC SCHOLARSHIP DEMANDS FROM THE PUPIL UNSELFISHNESS OF MOTIVE, it is a fair inference that the teacher must possess this attribute in a still higher degree. Thus, if a man proclaim himself a teacher and offer his knowledge for sale at so much per lesson, he falls below the standard set for the pupils. That he must obtain money to live, and similar excuses for charging for tuition, are all sophistries. Cosmic law cares for him who works with it, AND ANY TEACHING OFFERED ON A COMMERCIAL BASIS IS NOT THE HIGHEST KNOWLEDGE, for that is never bartered for an actual or implied material consideration, but in every case comes to the recipient as a right, as a result of merit; and even if the true teacher desired to avoid instructing a certain person, he would be compelled by the Law of Consequence to give him the instruction when earned. Such an attitude would be unthinkable, however, for there is joy inconceivable among the Elder Brothers of humanity over every one who commences to walk along the path of life everlasting. On the other hand, anxious though they are, they may not reveal their secret to any one before he has proved by steadfastness and unselfishness, to be a safe guardian of the resulting immense power for good or evil. If we allow our passions to run riot, if avarice and greed are the mainspring of our actions, we hinder progress instead of helping our fellow man, and until we have learned to use aright the powers we have, we are not fitted to do the greater work demanded of those who have been helped by the Elder Brothers to develop their latent spiritual sight and to gain the spiritual insight which makes this faculty of value as a factor in evolution.

Therefore, “The Path of Preparation” precedes “The Way of Initiation.” PERSISTENCE, DEVOTION, OBSERVATION, AND DISCRIMINATION are means of attainment, for by these the vital body is sensitized. By PERSISTENCE and devotion the chemical and the life ethers become capable of taking care of vital functions in the dense body during sleep. A cleavage takes place between those two ethers and the two higher, the light ether and the reflecting ether. When the latter two have been sufficiently spiritualized by observation and discrimination, a simple formula given by the Teacher enables the disciple to take them out with his higher bodies at will. He is thus equipped with a vehicle of sense perception and memory. Whatever knowledge he possesses in the material world is then available in the spiritual realms, and he brings back to the physical brain, memories of his experience while without the dense body. This is necessary in order to function outside the dense body with full consciousness of both the Physical World and the Desire World, for the desire body is unorganized as yet, and did not the vital body leave its imprint on the desire body at death, we could have no consciousness in the Desire World during post-mortem existence.

Indiscriminate breathing exercises do not effect this cleavage, but tend to lift the whole vital body out of the dense body. Thus, in some cases, connections between etheric sense centers and brain cells are ruptured or strained, and insanity results. In other instances the line of cleavage occurs between the life ether and the chemical ether, and as life ether is the cementing material in assimilation and the particular avenue for specialization of solar energy, this rupture results in consumption. Only proper exercises bring about the right cleavage. When purity of life has turned the unused sex force generated in the life ether upwards through the heart, that force takes care of the limited amount of circulation necessary during sleep. Thus physical functions and spiritual development are carried on side by side along proper and harmonious lines.

Above we have the reason for the vow of celibacy taken by those who devote themselves entirely to the higher life. it is not necessary for a beginner to go into asceticism; absolute celibacy is only for the few as yet. At present, union of the sexes is the method of procreation. There is no other way to provide bodies for incoming egos, and it is the duty of everyone who is of sound mind, morals, and body to provide a vehicle and an environment for as many incoming spirits as his means and opportunities allow. We should approach the act of procreation as a sacrament; not for gratification of the senses, but in a spirit of prayer. The sex force is required but a few times in the life of any person for generation; the remainder is legitimately available for self-improvement.

DISCRIMINATION is the faculty whereby we distinguish that which is unimportant and unessential, separating the real from illusion, and the lasting from the evanescent. In ordinary life we are accustomed to think of the body as ourselves. Discrimination teaches that WE ARE SPIRITS and our bodies are but temporary dwelling places, instruments for use. The carpenter uses hammer and saw; they are important instruments but he does not think of himself as being either. Neither should we identify ourselves with our bodies, but learn to discriminate, to regard the body as a servant, valuable only in so far as obedient to our commands. When thus regarded, we shall find that we can readily make it do many things hitherto thought impossible. Discrimination generates the INTELLECTUAL SOUL, and gives man his first start toward the higher life.

OBSERVATION is the use of the senses as means of obtaining information regarding the phenomena around us. Observation and action generate the CONSCIOUS SOUL. It is of the highest importance to our development that we observe the sights and scenes around us ACCURATELY, otherwise the pictures in our conscious memory do not coincide with the automatic subconscious records. The rhythm and harmony of the dense body is disturbed in proportion to the inaccuracy of our observation during the day. Our activities during sleep partially restore harmony, but the warring vibrations from day to day and year to year are one of the causes which gradually harden and destroy our organism until it becomes unfit for the use of the spirit and must be abandoned to give the Spirit another opportunity for growth in a new and better body. In proportion as we learn to observe accurately we shall gain in health and longevity, and WE SHALL NEED LESS REST AND SLEEP. The latter is an important point in the present discussion, as will presently appear.

DEVOTION to high ideals is a curb on the animal instincts, and generates and evolves the EMOTIONAL SOUL. Cultivation of the faculty of devotion is very essential. In some people this is the line of least resistance, and they are apt to become mystic dreamers. The energies of the desire body are then expressed as enthusiasm and religious ecstasy. There are also some people who develop abnormally the faculty of discrimination, which leads along cold intellectual lines of metaphysical speculation. In either case thee is a lack of balance, a danger. The mystic dreamer, because DOMINATED by emotion, may become subject to all sorts of illusion. That, the intellectual occultist will never do, but he may end in black magic if he pursues the path of knowledge for the sake of knowledge and not for SERVICE. The only safe way is to develop both head and heart.

The OCCULTIST unfolds along intellectual lines; he searches for truth by observation, and discrimination. He observes and reasons upon what he sees. Thus he attains to knowledge, but as Paul says, “knowledge puffeth up but love edifieth,” and before his knowledge can be of the highest use in spiritual unfoldment, he must learn to FEEL IT else he cannot LIVE it. When he has done that he is both mystic and occultist.

The MYSTIC develops particularly the faculty of devotion. He FEELS TRUTH without necessity of reasoning. He KNOWS, but cannot give a reason for his faith or explain to others so as to help them. He must develop the intellectual side of his nature, to be of the highest use in the upliftment of humanity. Then intellect acts as a curb on the emotions and devotion safely guides the intellect. If we go along one line or the other exclusively, we shall have to take up the other at some future time in order to become fully rounded. It is better, therefore, to try to develop NOW the faculty we lack. Thus we shall make the most rapid progress toward the final goal with perfect safety.

The clarity and sharpness of a photograph depend upon the way the lens is focused by the photographer. Once set, it remains in focus. If it had life and a will of its own, if it could change its direction and focus, the pictures would become blurred. The mind is in about that position; it flits about aimlessly, literally in a mental St. Vitus’ dance, and resents a curb most strenuously. But it can and must be tamed, and PERSISTENCE is the chief means of bridling it. In proportion as the mind is stilled, the spirit can reflect itself in the threefold body, on the principle that the sun mirrors itself in a calm sea, but turbulent billows deflect the sun rays.

The vital body is like a mirror or, rather, like the film of a moving picture; it pictures alike the world without according to our faculty of OBSERVATION, and the ideas of the indwelling spirit from within according to the clarity and training of the mind. DEVOTION and DISCRIMINATION, otherwise emotion and intellect, decide our attitude toward these pictures, and their balanced action leads to a well rounded development. When evolved to a certain point they inevitably bring about a process of PURIFICATION. The man will realize that in order to attain the goal he must lay aside whatever clogs the wheels of progress. A good mechanic aims to have the best tools and keep them in perfect order, for he knows their value in producing good work. Our bodies are tools of the Spirit, and in proportion as they are clogged they hinder its manifestation. DISCRIMINATION teaches us what hinders, and DEVOTION to the higher life helps to eliminate undesirable habits or traits of character by superseding mere desire.

Flesh food, obtained at the cost of a fellow creature’s life and suffering, and imbued with its desires and passions, besides being in a state of decay, is not a pure food, and no earnest aspirant to higher powers would choose to feed his body upon such offal. He will study how to satisfy the needs of his body with pure food. He realizes the importance of keeping his brain clear that his waking consciousness may be thoroughly open to spiritual influence, hence he will cease to use tobacco and alcohol which stimulate the brain and then leave it deadened. Moderation is a misnomer in regard to drink; all use of alcohol is excess and disastrous to the quest for spiritual attainment.

Loss of temper is subversive of inner growth; it is dissipation on a large scale of energy which may be profitably used; it poisons the body, wrecks it, and enormously hinders attainment.

Likewise do thoughts of criticism hurt us, and the aspirant will abstain from them as much as possible. Discrimination teaches us IN AN IMPERSONAL WAY what is good and evil, but GIVES US NO FEELING about it, and THAT IS THE IMPORTANT POINT. Examination of a fact, idea, or object, and a decision respecting its worth is necessary and not to be shunned, but harsh thoughts should be avoided for they form arrow-like thought forms, and as they pass outward from us they pierce and obstruct the inflow of good thoughts constantly radiated by the Elder Brothers and attracted by all good men.

Two specific exercises are given the aspirant on the path of preparation. Both lead to a development of spiritual sight and insight. One leads the direct way and will appeal most to the intellectual Occultist, but is of great value to thy Mystic, because it develops the faculty he lacks most, namely, reason. The exercise is called CONCENTRATION, which produces “thought power.” The other brings a similar result in a roundabout manner. It appeals most to the Mystic, but is of prime necessity to the intellectual Occultist, because it supplies a FEELING FOR TRUTH, which is BEYOND REASON. That exercise is RETROSPECTION, which develops “power of devotion.” Both are necessary to secure a thoroughly rounded development.

The philosophy of the attainment of spiritual sight and insight is to compel the desire body to perform the same work INSIDE the dense body WHILE WE ARE FULLY AWAKE, POSITIVE, and conscious as it does OUTSIDE in sleep and in the post-mortem state.

There are certain currents in the desire body of every one. They are strong, well defined, and form seven great vortices in clairvoyants, but are weak, broken, and devoid of vortices in the ordinary man who cannot “see.” Development of those currents and vortices leads to spiritual sight. In the daytime, when we are engrossed in material pursuits, these currents are sluggish; but as soon as man draws out of the dense body during sleep and commences the work of restoration as outlined in Lecture No. 4, the currents revive, the vortices spin and glow, for the desire body is in its native element, free from the clogging weight of the material body.

It depends upon the manner in which we have used our dense bodies in the daytime as to how long the desire body requires to perform the work of restoration of rhythm to the vital body and the dense body. If we have used our bodies strenuously during the previous day, inharmonies will, of course, be correspondingly prominent, and it will take the desire body most of the night to restore harmony and rhythm. Thus the man will be tied to his body day and night. But when he learns SKILL IN ACTION, controls his energy in the daytime, and ceases to waste his strength on unnecessary words and actions, when he commences to govern his temper and to stop inharmony due to incorrect observation, the desire body will not be occupied during the entire time of sleep in restoring the dense body. A part of the night may be used for work outside. If the sense centers of the desire body are sufficiently evolved, as they are with most of the intelligent class, the man may and does then slip the cable and soar into the Desire World. He takes in the sights and scenes there, though he does not usually remember them until he has effected a cleavage between the higher and lower parts of the vital body, as previously explained.

Thus we see the great importance of correct observation, of devotion to high ideals, of pure food, etc. All tend to harmonize the inner and outer vibrations. In proportion to our attainment in these directions, the time occupied in restoration is shortened and we are left free to work in the Desire World.

THE EVENING EXERCISE

The evening exercise, RETROSPECTION, is of greater efficiency than any other method in advancing the aspirant upon the path of attainment. It has such a far-reaching effect that it enables one to learn now, not only the lessons of this life, but lessons ordinarily reserved for future lives.

After going to bed at night the body is relaxed and the aspirant begins to review the scenes of the day IN REVERSE ORDER, starting with the events of the evening, then the occurrences of the afternoon, of the forenoon, and morning. He endeavors to PICTURE to himself each scene as faithfully as possible, seeks to REPRODUCE BEFORE HIS MIND’S EYE all that took place in each pictured scene, WITH THE OBJECT OF JUDGING HIS ACTIONS, OF ASCERTAINING IF HIS WORDS CONVEYED THE MEANING HE INTENDED OR GAVE A FALSE IMPRESSION, OR IF HE OVERSTATED OR UNDERSTATED IN RELATING EXPERIENCES TO OTHERS. He reviews his moral attitude in relation to each scene. At meals, did he eat to live, or did he live to eat, to please the palate? Let him judge himself and blame where BLAME is due, PRAISE where merited.

Probationers sometimes find it difficult to remain awake till the exercise has been performed. In such cases it is permissible to sit up in bed till it is possible to follow the ordinary method.

The value of retrospection is enormous, far-reaching beyond imagination. IN THE FIRST PLACE, we perform the work of restoration of harmony CONSCIOUSLY and in a shorter time than the desire body can do during sleep, leaving a larger portion of the night available for outside work than otherwise possible. IN THE SECOND PLACE, one lives his Purgatory and First Heaven EACH NIGHT, and builds into the spirit as RIGHT FEELING the essence of the day’s experience. Thus he escapes Purgatory and First heaven EACH NIGHT, and builds into the spirit as RIGHT FEELING the essence of the day’s experience. Thus he escapes Purgatory after death and also saves time spent in the First Heaven; and LAST, BUT NOT LEAST, having extracted, day by day, the essence of experiences which make for soul growth, and having built them into the Spirit, he is actually living in an attitude of mind, and developing along lines that would ordinarily have been reserved for future lives. By the faithful performance of this exercise we expunge day by day undesirable occurrences from our subconscious memory so that OUR SINS ARE BLOTTED OUT, OUR AURAS COMMENCE TO SHINE WITH SPIRITUAL GOLD EXTRACTED BY RETROSPECTION FROM THE EXPERIENCES OF EACH DAY, AND THUS WE ATTRACT THE ATTENTION OF THE TEACHER.

The pure shall see God, said Christ, and the Teacher will quickly open our eyes WHEN WE ARE FIT to enter into the “Hall of Learning,” the Desire World, where we obtain our first experiences of conscious life without the dense body.

THE MORNING EXERCISE

CONCENTRATION, the second exercise, is performed in the morning at the very earliest moment after the aspirant awakes. He must not arise to open blinds or perform any other unnecessary act. If the body is comfortable he should at once relax and commence to concentrate. This is very important, as the Spirit has just returned from the Desire World at the moment of waking, and at that time the conscious touch with that world is more easily regained than at any other time of the day.

If the body is uncomfortable the aspirant may rise to relieve it ere he concentrates, but much of the efficacy of the concentration is lost by the delay.

We remember from Lecture No. 4, that during sleep the currents of the desire body flow, and its vortices move and spin with enormous rapidity. But as soon as it enters the dense body its currents and vortices are almost stopped by the dense matter and the nerve currents of the vital body which carry messages to and from the brain. It is the object of this exercise to still the dense body to the same degree of inertia and insensibility as in sleep, although the Spirit within is perfectly awake, alert, and conscious. Thus we make a condition where the sense centers of the desire body can begin to revolve while inside the dense body.

Concentration is a word that puzzles many and carries meaning to but few, so we will endeavor to make its significance clear. The dictionary gives several definitions, all applicable to our idea. One is “to draw to a center,” another from chemistry, “to reduce to extreme purity and strength by removing valueless constituents.” Applied to our problem, one of the above definitions tells us that if we draw our thoughts to a center, a point, we increase their strength on the principle that the power of the sun’s rays is increased when focused to a point by means of magnifying glass. By eliminating from our mind for the time being all other subjects, our whole thought power is available for use in attaining the object or solving the problem on which we are concentrating; we may become so absorbed in our subject that if a cannon were fired above our heads we would not hear it. People may become so LOST in a book that they are oblivious to all else, and the aspirant to spiritual sight must acquire the faculty of becoming equally absorbed in the idea he is concentrating upon, so that he may shut out the world of sense from his consciousness and give his whole attention to the spiritual world. When he learns to do that, he will see the spiritual side of an object or idea illuminated by spiritual light, and thus he will obtain a knowledge of the inner nature of things undreamt of by a worldly man.

When he has reached that point of abstraction the sense centers of the desire body commence to revolve slowly within the dense body, and will thus make a place for themselves. This in time will become more and more defined, and it will require less and less effort to set them going.

The subject of concentration may be any high and lofty ideal, but should preferably be of such a nature that it takes the aspirant out of the ordinary things of sense, beyond time and space; and there is no better formula than the first five verses of St. John’s Gospel. Taking them as subject, sentence by sentence, morning after morning, will in time give the aspirant a wonderful insight into the beginning of our universe and the method of creation--an insight far beyond any book learning.

After a time, when the aspirant has learned to unwaveringly hold before him for about five minutes the idea upon which he is concentrating, he may try to suddenly drop the idea and leave a blank. Think of nothing else, simply wait to see if anything enters the vacuum. In time the sights and scenes of the Desire World will fill the vacant space. After the aspirant has become used to that, he may demand this, that, or the other thing to come before him. It will come and then he may investigate it.

The main point, however, is that BY FOLLOWING THE ABOVE INSTRUCTIONS THE ASPIRANT IS PURIFYING HIMSELF; HIS AURA COMMENCES TO SHINE AND WILL WITHOUT FAIL DRAW THE ATTENTION OF A TEACHER who will depute someone to give help when required for the next step in advancement. Even if months or years should go by and bring no VISIBLE result, rest assured that no effort has been in vain; the Great Teachers see and appreciate our efforts. They are just as anxious to have our assistance as we are to work. They may see reasons which make it inexpedient for us to take up work for humanity in this life or at this time. Sometime the hindering conditions will pass, and we shall be admitted to the light where we can see for ourselves.

An ancient legend says that digging for treasure must be done in the stillness of night and in perfect silence; to speak one word until the treasure is safely excavated will inevitably cause it to disappear. That is a mystic parable which has reference to the search for spiritual illumination. If we gossip or recount to others the experiences of our concentration hour we lose them; they can not bear vocal transmission and will fade into nothingness, until by meditation we have extracted from them a full knowledge of the underlying cosmic laws. Then the experience itself will not be recounted, for we shall see that it is but the husk which hid the kernel of worth. The law is of universal value, as will be at once apparent, for it will explain facts in life, teach us how to take advantage of certain conditions and to avoid others. The law may be freely stated at the discoverer’s discretion for the benefit of humanity. The experience which revealed the law will then appear in its true light, as of only passing interest and unworthy of further notice. Therefore THE ASPIRANT SHOULD REGARD EVERYTHING THAT HAPPENS DURING CONCENTRATION AS SACRED AND SHOULD KEEP IT STRICTLY TO HIMSELF.

Finally, BEWARE OF REGARDING THE EXERCISES AS A BURDENSOME TASK. ESTIMATE THEM AT THEIR TRUE WORTH; THEY ARE OUR HIGHEST PRIVILEGES. Only when thus regarded can we do them justice and reap full benefit from them.

In the Rosicrucian movement the Elder Brothers distinguish between three classes:

First, STUDENTS, those who are merely studying the Philosophy.

People of various denominations enter educational institutions such as Harvard or Yale, and study mythology, psychology, and comparative religion there without prejudice to their religious affiliations. Students may enroll with us on the very same basis. Anyone is eligible who is not a HYPNOTIST, OR PROFESSIONALLY ENGAGED AS A MEDIUM, PALMIST, OR ASTROLOGER.

Second, PROBATIONERS, who are students but who aspire to firsthand knowledge to fit themselves for service. To these, the General Secretary will furnish a pledge wherein the aspirant promises HIMSELF faithfully to perform the two exercises, to keep a daily record of his performance, and send that record monthly to Headquarters. The term of probation is at least five years, and has for its purpose to test the earnestness and persistence of the aspirant, and TO GIVE HIM THE OPPORTUNITY TO PURIFY HIMSELF BEFORE TAKING UP THE MORE DIRECT METHODS OF TRAINING INCIDENT TO DISCIPLESHIP. The report is also designed to be a help to the aspirant in the performance of the exercises. It is human nature to want to make as good a showing as possible, and the aspirant will thus try to do better, knowing that his work is being inspected.

When a person has been a student of the Rosicrucian teachings for at least two years and has become so convinced of the verity thereof that he is prepared to sever his connection with all other occult or religious orders--THE CHRISTIAN CHURCHES AND FRATERNAL ORDERS EXCEPTED--he may assume the Obligation which admits him to the degree of Probationer.

We do not mean to insinuate by the foregoing that all other schools of occultism are of no account--far from it. Many roads lead to Rome, but we shall attain with much less effort if we follow one of them than if we zigzag from path to path. Our time and energy are limited in the first place and are still further curtailed by family and social duties not to be neglected for self-development. It is to husband the minimum of energy which we may legitimately expend upon ourselves, and to avoid waste of the scanty moments at our disposal, that resignation from all other orders is insisted upon by the leaders.

The world is an aggregate of opportunities, but to take advantage of any of them we must possess efficiency in a certain line of endeavor. Development of our spiritual powers will enable us to help or harm our weaker brothers. It is only justifiable when efficiency in SERVICE TO HUMANITY IS THE OBJECT.

The Rosicrucian method of attainment differs from other systems in one especial particular: It aims, even at the start, to emancipate the pupil from dependence upon others, to make him SELF-RELIANT in the very highest degree, so that he may be able to stand alone under all circumstances and cope with all conditions. Only one who is thus strongly poised can help the weak.

When a number of people meet in a class or circle for self- development along NEGATIVE lines, results are usually achieved in a short time on the principle that it is easier to drift with the tide than to breast the current. The medium is not master of his actions, however, but a slave of a spirit control. Hence such gatherings must be shunned by Probationers.

Even classes which meet in positive attitude of mind are not advised by the Elder Brothers, because the latent powers of all members are massed and visions of the inner worlds obtained by anyone there are partly due to the faculties of others. The heat of coal in the center of a fire is enhanced by that of surrounding coals, and the clairvoyant produced in a circle, be it ever so positive, is a hothouse plant, too dependent himself to be entrusted with the care of others.

Therefore each Probationer in the Rosicrucian school performs his exercises in the seclusion and privacy of his room. Results may be obtained more slowly by this system, but when they appear, they will be manifest as powers cultivated by himself, usable independently of all others. Besides, the Rosicrucian methods build character at the same time that they develop spiritual faculties, and thus safeguard the pupil against yielding to temptation to prostitute divine powers for material gain.

The foregoing does not include giving up the whole time of the candidate to spiritual endeavor. If no more time can be given, five minutes in the morning and fifteen minutes at night will suffice. In fact, to give up any time to development of spiritual faculties which should be used in legitimate material endeavor would be decidedly wrong. We must do our full duty in the material world before we may serve in the spiritual realms. Whoever is faithless to his earthly duty cannot be expected to be faithful in spiritual work.

When sixty CONSECUTIVE reports have been sent in the candidate may apply for individual instruction, which will be given if possible.

Third, DISCIPLES, who have completed the term of probation and been accepted by the Elder Brothers, are given individual instruction. Tuition is free.

During the past few years since we first began to disseminate the Rosicrucian teachings, they have spread over the whole civilized world. They are studied with avidity from the Cape of Good Hope to the Arctic Circle and beyond; they have found response in the hearts of all classes of people. They are known in the snow-clad huts of Alaska and in government houses where a tropical wind unfurls the British Lion. In the capitals of Turkish autocracy and American democracy alike, our adherents may be found, all in lively correspondence and close touch with our movement and working for promulgation of the deeper truths concerning Life and Being which are helping them.

12. Parsifal: Wagner’s Famous Mystic Music Drama

As we look about us in the material universe we see a myriad of FORMS and all these forms have a certain COLOR; and many of them emit a definite TONE; in fact, all do, for there is sound even in so-called inanimate Nature. The wind in the tree-tops, the babbling brook, the swell of the ocean, are all definite contributions to the harmony of Nature.

Of those three attributes of nature: Form, Color, and Tone, FORM is the most stable, tending to remain IN STATU QUO for a considerable time, and changing very slowly. COLOR, on the other hand, changes more readily; it fades, and there are some colors that change their hue when held at different angles to the light; but TONE is the most elusive of all three; it comes and goes like a will-o’-the-wisp, which none may catch or hold.

We also have three ARTS which seek to express the Good, the True, and the Beautiful in these three attributes of the World-Soul, namely, SCULPTURE, PAINTING, and MUSIC.

The sculptor who deals with FORM seeks to imprison beauty in a marble statue that will withstand the ravages of time during millenniums; but a marble statue is cold and speaks to but a few of the most evolved who are able to infuse the statue with their own life.

The painter’s art deals pre-eminently with COLOR; it gives no tangible form to its creations; the form on a painting is an illusion from the material point of view, yet it is so much more real to most people than the real tangible statue, for the forms of the painter are alive there is LIVING beauty in the painting of a great artist, a beauty that many can appreciate and enjoy.

But in the case of a painting we are again affected by the changeableness of color; time soon blots out its freshness, and at the best, of course, no painting can outlast a statue.

Yet in those arts which deal with FORM and COLOR there is a creation once and for all time; they have that in common, and in that they differ radically from the TONE-ART, for music is so elusive that it must be recreated each time we wish to enjoy it, but in return it has a power to speak to ALL human beings in a manner that is entirely beyond the other two arts. It will add to our greatest joy and soothe our deepest sorrows; it can calm the passion of the savage breast and stir to bravery the greatest coward; it is the most potent influence in swaying humanity that is known to man, and yet, viewed solely from the material standpoint, it is superfluous, as shown by Darwin and Spencer.

It is only when we go behind the scenes of the visible and realize that man is a composite being: Spirit, soul and body, that we are enabled to understand why we are thus differently affected by the products of the three arts.

While man lives an OUTWARD life in the Form-world, where he lives a FORM life among other forms, he lives also an INNER life, which is of far greater importance to him; a life where his feelings, thoughts, and EMOTIONS create before his “inner vision” PICTURES and scenes that are ever-changing, and the fuller this inner life is, the less will the man need to seek company outside himself, for he is his own best company, independent of outside amusement, so eagerly sought by those whose inner life is barren, who know hosts of other people, but are strangers to themselves, afraid of their own company.

If we analyze this inner life we shall find that it is twofold: (1) The Soul-life, which deals with the FEELINGS AND EMOTIONS; and (2) the activity of the Ego, which directs all actions by THOUGHT.

Just as the material world is the base of supply whence the materials for our dense body have been drawn, and is pre-eminently the world of FORM, so there is a world of the soul, called the Desire World among the Rosicrucians, which is the base from whence the subtle garment of the Ego, which we call the soul, has been drawn, and this world is particularly the world of COLOR. But the still more subtle World of Thought is the home of the human Spirit, the Ego, and also the realm of TONE. Therefore, of the three arts music has the greatest power over man; for while we are in this terrestrial life we are exiled from our heavenly home and have often forgotten it in our material pursuits, but then comes music like a fragrant odor laden with unspeakable memories. As an echo from home it reminds us of that forgotten land where all is joy and peace, and even though we may scout such ideas in our material mind, the Ego knows each blessed note as a message from homeland and rejoices in it.

This realization of the nature of music is necessary to the proper appreciation of such a great masterpiece as Richard Wagner’s Parsifal, where the music and the characters are bound together as in no other modern musical production.

Wagner’s drama is founded upon the legend of Parsifal, a legend that has its origin enshrouded in the mystery which overshadows the infancy of the human race. It is an erroneous idea when we think that a myth is a figment of human fancy, having no foundation in fact. On the contrary, a myth is a casket containing at times the deepest and most precious jewels of spiritual truth, pearls of beauty so rare and ethereal that they cannot stand exposure to the material intellect. In order to shield them and at the same time allow them to work upon humanity for its spiritual upliftment, the Great Teachers who guide our evolution, unseen but potent, gave these spiritual truths to nascent man encased in the picturesque symbolism of myths, so that they might work upon his FEELINGS until such time as his dawning intellect shall have become sufficiently evolved and spiritualized so that he may both FEEL and KNOW.

This on the same principle that we give our children moral teachings by means of picture books and fairy tales, reserving the more direct teaching for later years.

Wagner did more than merely copy the legend. Legends, like all else, become encrusted by transmission and lost their beauty and it is a further evidence of Wagner’s greatness that he was never bound in his expression by fashion or creed. he always asserted the prerogative of art in dealing with allegories, untrammeled and free.

As he says in Religion and Art: “One might say that where Religion becomes artificial, it is reserved for art to save the spirit of Religion by recognizing the figurative value of the mythic symbols, which Religion would have us believe in a literal sense, and revealing their deep and hidden truth through an ideal presentation. . . .Whilst the priest stakes everything on religious allegories being accepted as matters of fact, the artist has no concern at all with such a thing, since he freely and openly gives out his work as his own invention. But Religion has sunk into an artificial life when she finds herself compelled to keep on adding to the edifice of her dogmatic symbols, and thus conceals the one divinely true. . . beneath an ever growing heap of incredibilities recommended to belief. Feeling this, she has always sought the aid of art, who on her side has remained incapable of a higher evolution so long as she must present that alleged reality to the worshiper in the form of fetishes and idols, whereas she could only fulfill her true vocation when, by an ideal presentment of the allegoric figure, she led to an apprehension of its inner kernel--the truth ineffably divine.”

Turning to a consideration of the drama PARSIFAL we find that the opening scene is laid in the grounds of the castle of “Montsalvat.” This is a place of peace, where all life is sacred; the animals and birds are tame, for like all really holy men, the knights are harmless, killing neither to eat nor for sport. They apply the maxim, “Live and let live,” to all living creatures.

It is dawn, and we see Gurnemanz, the oldest of the Grail-knights, with two young squires under a tree. They have just wakened from their night’s rest, and in the distance they spy Kundry coming galloping on a wild steed. In Kundry we see a creature of two existences, one as a servitor of the Grail, willing and anxious to further the interests of the Grail-knights by all means within her power; this seems to be her real nature. In the other existence she is the unwilling slave of the magician Klingsor and is forced by him to tempt and harass the Grail-knights, whom she longs to serve. The gate from one existence to the other is “sleep,” and she is bound to serve who finds and wakes her. When Gurnemanz finds her she is the willing servitor of the Grail, but when Klingsor evokes her by his evil spells he is entitled to her services whether she will or not.

In the first act she is clothed in a robe of snake skins, symbolical of the doctrine of rebirth, for as the snake sheds its skin, coat after coat, which it exudes from itself, so the Ego in its evolutionary pilgrimage emanates from itself one body after another, shedding each vehicle as the snake sheds its skin, when it has become hard, set, and crystallized so that it has lost its efficiency. This idea is also coupled with the teachings of the Law of Consequence, which brings us as reapings whatever we sow, as in Gurnemanz’ answer to the young squire’s avowal of distrust in Kundry:

Under a curse she well may be

From some past life we do not see,

Seeking from sin to loose the fetter,

By deeds for which we fare the better.

Surely ‘tis good she follows thus,

Helping herself while serving us.

When Kundry comes on the scene she pulls from her bosom a phial which she says she has brought from Araby and which she hopes will be a balm for the wound in the side of Amfortas, the king of the Grail, which causes him unspeakable suffering and which cannot heal. The suffering king is then carried on the stage reclining on a couch. He is on his way to his daily bath in the nearby lake, where two swans swim and make the waters into a healing lotion which assuages his dreadful sufferings. Amfortas thanks Kundry, but expresses the opinion that there is no relief for him till the deliverer has come, of whom the Grail has prophesied, “a virgin fool, by pity enlightened.” But Amfortas thinks death will come before deliverance.

Amfortas is carried out, and four of the young squires crowd around Gurnemanz and ask him to tell them the story of the Grail and of Amfortas’ wound. They all recline beneath the tree, and Gurnemanz begins:

“On the night when our Lord and Savior Christ-Jesus ate the last supper with His disciples He drank the wine from a certain chalice and that was later used by Joseph of Arimathea to catch the life-blood which flowed from the wound in the Redeemer’s side. He also kept the bloody lance wherewith the wound was inflicted, and carried these relics with him through many perils and persecutions. At last they were taken in charge by Angels, who guarded them until one night a mystic messenger sent from God appeared and bade Titurel, Amfortas’ father, build a Castle for the reception and safe-keeping of these relics. Thus the Castle of Montsalvat was built ON A HIGH MOUNTAIN, and the relics lodged there under the guardianship of Titurel with a band of holy and chaste knights whom he had drawn around him, and it became a center whence might spiritual influences went forth to the outside world.

“But there lived in yonder heathen VALE a black knight who was not chaste, yet he desired to become a knight of the Grail, and to that end he mutilated himself. He deprived himself of the ABILITY TO GRATIFY his passion, BUT THE PASSION REMAINED. King Titurel saw his heart filled with black desire, and refused him admittance. Klingsor then swore that if he could not serve the Grail, the Grail should serve him. He built a castle with a magic garden and populated it with maidens of ravishing beauty, who emitted an odor like flowers, and these waylaid the knights of the Grail (who must pass the castle when leaving or returning to Montsalvat), ensnared them to betray their trust and violate their vow of chastity, thus they became the prisoners of Klingsor and but few remained as defenders of the Grail.

“In the meantime Titurel had turned the wardenship of the Grail over to his son Amfortas and the latter, seeing the serious havoc wrought by Klingsor, determined to go out to meet him and do battle with him. To that end he took with him the holy spear.

“The wily Klingsor did not meet Amfortas in person, but evoked Kundry and transformed her from the hideous creature who appears as the servitor of the Grail to a woman of transcendent beauty, and under Klingsor’s spell she meets and tempts Amfortas, who yields and sinks into her arms, letting go his hold upon the sacred spear. Klingsor then appears, grasps the spear, inflicts a wound on the defenseless Amfortas, and [but for the heroic efforts of Gurnemanz] he would have carried Amfortas a prisoner to his magic castle. He has the holy spear, however, and the king is crippled and suffering, for the wound will not heal.”

The young squires spring up, fired with ardor, vowing that they will conquer Klingsor and restore the spear. Gurnemanz sadly shakes his head, saying that the task is beyond them, but reiterates the prophesy that the redemption shall be accomplished by a “pure fool, by pity enlightened.”

Now cries are heard: “The swan! Oh, the swan!” and a swan flutters across the stage and falls dead at the feet of Gurnemanz and the squires, who are much agitated at the sight. Other squires bring in a stalwart youth with bow and arrows, and to Gurnemanz’ sad enquiry, “Why did you shoot the harmless creature?” he answers innocently, “Was it wrong?” Gurnemanz then tells him of the suffering king, of the swan’s part in making the healing bath. Parsifal is deeply moved at the recital and breaks his bow.

In all religions the quickening spirit has been symbolically represented as a bird. At the baptism, when Jesus’ body was in the water the Spirit of Christ descended into it AS A DOVE. “The Spirit moves upon the water,” a fluidic medium, as the swans move upon the lake beneath the Yggdrasil, the tree of life of Norse mythology, or upon the waters of the lake in the legend of the Grail. The bird is therefore a direct representation of highest spiritual influence and well may the knights sorrow at the loss. Truth is many sided. There are at least seven valid interpretations to each myth, one for each World, and looked at from the material literal side, the compassion engendered in Parsifal and the breaking of his bow mark a definite step in the higher life. No one can be truly compassionate and a helper in evolution while he kills to eat, either in person or by proxy. THE HARMLESS LIFE IS AN ABSOLUTE ESSENTIAL PREREQUISITE TO THE HELPFUL LIFE.

Gurnemanz then commences to question him about himself; who he is, and how he came to Montsalvat. Parsifal displays the most surprising ignorance. To all questions he answers, “I do not know.” At last Kundry speaks up and says: “I can tell you who he is. His father was the noble Gamuret, a prince among men, who died fighting in Arabia while this child was yet in the womb of his mother, Lady Herzleide. With his last dying breath his father named him Parsifal, the pure fool. Fearing that he would grow up to learn the art of war and be taken from her, his mother brought him up in a dense forest in ignorance of weapons and warfare.”

Here Parsifal chimes in: “Yes, and one day I saw some men on shapely beasts; I wanted to be like them, so I followed them for many days till at last I came here and I had to fight many man-like monsters.”

In this story we have an excellent picture of the Spirit’s search for the realities of life. Gamuret and Parsifal are different phases of the life of the Spirit. Gamuret is the man of the world, but in time he became wedded to Herzleide, heart--affliction, in other words. He meets sorrow and dies to the world, as all of us do who have come into the higher life. While the bark of life floats on summer seas and our existence seems one grand, sweet song there is no incentive to turn to the higher; every fiber in our bodies cries, “This is good enough for me,” but when the billows of adversity roar around us and each succeeding wave threatens to engulf us, then we have wedded heart-affliction and become men of sorrows, and are ready to be born as Parsifal, the pure fool, or the soul who has forgotten the wisdom of the world and is seeking for the higher life. So long as a man is seeking to accumulate money or to have a good time, so miscalled, he is wise with the wisdom of the world; but when he sets his face toward the things of the spirit, he becomes a fool in the eyes of the world. He forgets all about his past life and leaves his sorrows behind him, as Parsifal left Herzleide, and we are told that she died when Parsifal did not return to her. So sorrow dies when it has given birth to the aspiring soul that flees from the world, who may be in the world to perform his duty but is not of the world.

Gurnemanz has now become imbued with the idea that Parsifal is to be the deliverer of Amfortas and takes him along to the Grail-castle. And to Parsifal’s question, “Who is the Grail?” he answers:

That tell we not; but if thou hast of Him been bidden,

From thee the truth will not stay hidden,

Methinks thy face I rightly knew,

The land to Him no path leads through,

And search but severs from Him wider,

When He Himself is not its guider.

Here we find Wagner bringing us back into pre-Christian times, for before the advent of Christ, Initiation was not free to “whosoever will” seek in the proper manner, but was reserved for certain chosen ones who were given special privileges in return for being dedicated to the temple-service, such as the Brahmins and the Levites. The coming of Christ, however, wrought certain definite changes in the constitution of man so that now all are capable of entering the pathway of initiation. Indeed, it had to be so when international marriages took away caste.

At the castle of the Grail Amfortas is being importuned on all sides to perform the sacred rite of the Grail service, to uncover the holy chalice that the sight of it may renew the ardor of the knights and spur them on to deeds of spiritual service; but he shrinks from fear of the pain the sight will cause him to feel. The wound in his side always starts to bleed afresh at the sight of the Grail, as the wound of remorse pains us all when we have sinned against our ideal. At last, however, he yields to the combined entreaties of his father and the knights. He performs the holy rite, though the while he suffers the most excruciating agony, and Parsifal, who stands in a corner, FEELS SYMPATHETICALLY THE SAME PAIN, without realizing why, and when Gurnemanz eagerly asks him after the ceremony what he saw, remains dumb and is thrust out of the castle by the angry, because disappointed, old knight.

The feelings and emotions unchecked by knowledge are fruitful sources of temptation. The very harmlessness and guilelessness of the aspiring soul renders it often an easy prey to sin. It is necessary to soul growth that these temptations come in order to bring out our weak points. If we fall, we suffer as did Amfortas, but the pain evolves conscience and gives abhorrence for sin. It makes us strong against temptation. Every child is INNOCENT because it has not been tempted, but only when we have been tempted and have remained pure, or when we have fallen, repented, and reformed are we VIRTUOUS. Therefore Parsifal must be tempted.

In the second act we see Klingsor in the act of evoking Kundry, for he has spied Parsifal coming towards his castle, and he fears him more than all who have come before, BECAUSE HE IS A FOOL. A worldly-wise man is easily entrapped by the snares of the flower-girls, but Parsifal’s guilelessness protects him, and when the flower-girls cluster around him he innocently asks, “Are you flowers? You smell so sweetly.” Against him the superior wiles of Kundry are necessary, and though she pleads, protests, and rebels, she is forced to tempt Parsifal and to that end she appears as a woman of superb beauty, calling Parsifal by name. That name stirs in his breast memories of his childhood, his mother’s love, and Kundry beckons him to her side and commences to subtly work upon his feelings by recalling to his memory visions of his mother’s love and the sorrow she felt at his departure, which ended her life. Then she tells him of the other love, which may compensate him; of the love of man for woman, and at last imprints upon his lips a long, fervent, and passionate kiss.

Then there was silence deep and terrible, as if the destiny of the whole world hung in the balance at that fervent kiss, and as she still holds him in her arms his face undergoes a gradual change and becomes drawn with pain. Suddenly he springs up as if that kiss had stung his being into a new pain, the lines on his pallid face become more intense, and both hands are clasped tightly against his throbbing heart as if to stifle some awful agony--the Grail-cup appears before his vision, and then Amfortas in the same dreadful agony, and at last he cries out: “Amfortas, O Amfortas! I know it now--the spear-wound in thy side--it burns my heart, it sears my very soul....O grief! O misery! Anguish beyond words! the wound is bleeding here in my own side!”

Then again, in the same awful strain: “Nay, this is not the spear- wound in my side, for this is fire and flame within my heart that sways my senses in delirium, the awful madness of tormenting love....Now do I know how all the world is stirred, tossed, convulsed and often lost in shame by the terrific passions of the heart.”

Kundry again tempts him: “If this one kiss has brought you so much knowledge, how much more will be yours if you yield to my love, if only for an hour?”

But there is no hesitation now; Parsifal has awakened; he knows right and wrong, and he replies: “Eternity were lost to both of us if I yielded to you even for one short hour; but I will also save you and deliver you from the curse of passion, FOR THE LOVE THAT BURNS WITHIN YOU IS ONLY SENSUAL, AND BETWEEN THAT AND THE TRUE LOVE OF PURE HEARTS THERE YAWNS AN ABYSS LIKE THAT BETWEEN HEAVEN AND HELL.”

When Kundry at last must confess herself foiled she bursts out in great anger. She calls upon Klingsor to help, and he appears with the holy spear, which he hurls against Parsifal. But he is pure and harmless, so nothing can hurt him. The spear floats harmlessly above his head. He grasps the spear, makes the sign of the cross with it and Klingsor’s castle and magic garden sink into ruins.

The third act opens on Good Friday many years after. A travel- stained warrior, clad in black mail, enters the grounds of Montsalvat, where Gurnemanz lives in a hut. He takes off his helmet and places a spear against a nearby rock and kneels down in prayer. Gurnemanz coming in with Kundry, whom he has just found asleep in a thicket, recognizes Parsifal with the holy spear and, overjoyed, welcomes him, asking him whence he comes?

He asked the same question on Parsifal’s first visit and the answer was: “I do not know.” But this time it is very different, for Parsifal answers: “THROUGH SEARCH AND SUFFERING I CAME.” The first occasion depicts one of the glimpses the soul gets of the realities of the higher life, but the second, the conscious attainment to a higher level of spiritual activity by the man who has developed by sorrow and suffering, and Parsifal goes on to tell how he was often sorely beset by enemies, and might have saved himself by using the spear, but refrained because it was an instrument of healing and not for hurt. The spear is the spiritual power which comes to the pure of heart and life, but is ONLY TO BE USED FOR UNSELFISH PURPOSES; impurity and passion cause its loss, as was the case with Amfortas. Though the man who possesses it may upon occasion use it to feed 5,000 hungry people he may not turn a single stone to bread to appease his own hunger, and though he may use it to stay the blood that flows from the severed ear of a captor, he may not use it to stay the life-blood that flows from his own side. It was ever said of such: “Others he saved; himself he could not (or would not) save.”

Parsifal and Gurnemanz go into the Grail-castle, where Amfortas is being importuned to perform the sacred rite, but refuses in order to save himself the pain entailed in viewing the Holy Grail, and baring his breast, implores his followers to kill him. At this moment Parsifal steps up to him and touches the wound with the lance, causing it to heal. He dethrones Amfortas, however, and takes to himself the wardenship of the Holy Grail and Sacred Lance. Only those who have the most perfect unselfishness, coupled with the nicest discrimination, are fit to have the spiritual power symbolized by the spear. Amfortas would have used it to attack and hurt an enemy. Parsifal would not even use it in self-defense. THEREFORE HE IS ABLE TO HEAL, while Amfortas fell into the pit he dug for Klingsor.

In the last act Kundry, who represents the lower nature, says but one word: SERVICE. She helps Parsifal, the Spirit, to attain by her perfect service. In the first act she went to SLEEP when Parsifal visited the Grail. At that stage the Spirit cannot soar heavenward except when the body has been left asleep or dies. But in the last act Kundry, the body, goes to the Grail-castle also, for it is dedicated to the Higher Self, and when the Spirit as Parsifal has attained he has reached the stage of liberation spoken of in Revelation: “Him that overcometh will I make A PILLAR in the temple of my God, and he shall go no more out.” Such an one will work for humanity from the inner Worlds; he needs no physical body anymore; he is beyond the Law of Rebirth, and therefore Kundry dies.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, in his beautiful poem, “The Chambered Nautilus,” has embodied in verse this idea of constant progression in gradually improving vehicles, and final liberation. The nautilus builds its spiral shell in chambered sections, constantly leaving the smaller ones, which it has outgrown, for the last build.

Year after year beheld the silent toil

That spread his lustrous coil;

Sill, as the spiral grew,

He left the past year’s dwelling for the new.

Stole with soft step its shining archway through,

Built up its idle door,

Stretched in his last-found home, and knew the old no more.

Thanks for the heavenly message brought by thee,

Child of the wandering sea,

Cast from her lap forlorn!

From thy dead lips a clearer note is born

Than ever Triton blew from wreathed horn!

While on mine ear it rings,

Through the deep caves of thought I hear a voice that sings:

Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul,

As the swift seasons roll!

Leave thy low-vaulted past!

Let each new temple, nobler than the last,

Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast,

Till thou at length art free.

Leaving thine outgrown shell by life’s unresting sea!

13. The Angels As Factors In Evolution

When we speak of evolution, the idea conveyed to the Western mind is mainly a materialistic one. We have accustomed ourselves to look at the matter from the purely scientific standpoint: that our solar system has proceeded from what was once a nebulous fire-mist, in which currents were generated in a spontaneous manner and started it into motion. It assumed a spherical shape and threw off rings as it contracted. These rings broke up and formed planets which cooled and solidified. At least one planet, our Earth, spontaneously generated simple organisms, which later by the process of evolution became more and more complex, ascending through the Radiates (starfish, sea-urchins) to Mollusks (oysters, clam), thence to Articulates (crab, lobster), into the Vertebrate species. After passing through the four classes of vertebrates--Fishes, Reptiles, Birds, and Mammals--this spontaneous evolutionary impulse reaches its highest present stage in man, who is regarded as the flower of evolution: the highest intelligence in the Cosmos.

The materialistic scientist will pooh-pooh all suggestions of a God, or any other external agency, as entirely unnecessary to account for the universe. In support of his position he may take a basin of water and pour some oil upon its surface. The water is to represent space and the oil the fire-mist. He will then commence to stir the oil, which will gather in a ball, and bulging at the equator it will throw off a ring. That will form a smaller sphere and revolve about the central mass as a planet about its sun. Then the scientist may triumphantly turn and ask with a pitying smile: Now, do you see how natural it is, and how superfluous your God?

Truly, it is wonderful how dull the brightest minds may be when influenced by preconceived notions, and it is a marvel that one capable of devising this splendid demonstration should at the same time fail to see that HE HIMSELF represents the author of our system, whom we call God, in this experiment. For the experiment would never have been devised, the oil would never have been poured out or formed into the semblance of sun and planet but for his thought and action in the matter. So that instead of proving God a superfluity his demonstration of the nebular theory proves to the fullest extent the absolute necessity for a FIRST CAUSE--call it God or by any other name--and Herbert Spencer, the master thinker of the nineteenth century, saw this and rejected the nebular theory in consequence. He failed, however, to produce an adequate explanation of the Genesis of a solar system, free from that to him objectionable flaw, and so science, though unwilling to acknowledge it, still retains a theory of the origin of the world that requires the intelligent action of a being or beings extraneous to the universe: a Creator or Creators.

When the scientific theory is properly understood, it is thus in full harmony with the Bible, which tells us of a number of different Beings who have been active in the evolution of the Earth and the creatures upon it. We hear of Angels, Archangels, Cherubim, Seraphim, Thrones, Powers, Principalities, Powers of Darkness, Powers of the Air, etc., and to the enquiring mind the question naturally occurs: Who are they all? what part have they played in the past? and what is their present work? For the enquiring mind cannot believe that Angels are human beings transformed by death to spiritual entities whose sole pleasure and only care is to toot in a trumpet or play upon a harp when they did not know one note from another in Earth-life. Such a supposition does violence to the reason and is out of keeping with all the methods of nature, which require us to work for our faculties.

The occult teaching, in harmony with the Bible and modern scientific theories as explained in the chapter on the “Occult Analysis of Genesis” in THE ROSICRUCIAN COSMO-CONCEPTION, is, that that which is now the Earth has not always been as dense and solid as it is now, but that it has gone through three periods of development previous to the one we are now in, and after the present “Earth period is over, there will be three more periods before our evolution has been completed.”

During the three periods preceding our present state, that which is now the Earth, and man upon it, have both gradually consolidated from a filmy ethereal state to a condition that was much denser than is now the case.

While “Involution,” the process of consolidation, was going on, the Spirit, which is now the Ego in man, was building a body or vehicle for each degree of density. It was unconscious, but helped by different spiritual hierarchies: the Thrones, Cherubim, and Seraphim.

When the acme of density was reached the Spirit came to consciousness as a separate Ego in the material world. That was the turning-point: when conscious he cannot be dragged farther down and as his spiritual consciousness gradually dawns upon him he will spiritualize his bodies, extracting from each the soul, which is the power of the body from which it is extracted.

In that way he will gradually lift himself out of the dense material regions, and lift the Earth with him during the remainder of the Earth Period and the three succeeding periods.

At the beginning of evolution the threefold “Virgin Spirit” was naked and inexperienced. Its Involution involved the BUILDING OF BODIES, which it accomplishes unconsciously with the help of higher powers.

When its bodies have been built and it becomes conscious, Evolution begins. That involves SOUL-GROWTH and must be accomplished by the individual efforts of the spirit in man, the Ego. At the end of evolution it will possess SOUL-POWER as the fruitage of its pilgrimage through matter. It will be a CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE.

Among the Rosicrucians these seven periods of development have been given the names of the planets which rule the days of the week, because they are the seven days of Creation, when that term is used in its widest sense. But THEY ARE METAMORPHOSES OF THE EARTH and have absolutely nothing to do with the planets in the sky except that the conditions they represent are about such as we find upon the planets of the same names. These names are as follows: (1) Saturn Period, (2) the Sun Period, (3) the Moon Period, (4) the Earth Period (of which, for reasons explained in THE ROSICRUCIAN COSMO-CONCEPTION, the first half is called “Mars” and the second half “Mercury”), (5) the Jupiter Period, (6) the Venus Period, and (7) the Vulcan Period.

Our evolution started upon the Earth, as it was in the Saturn Period, dark, hot, and of a gaseous substance, taken from the materials of the Region of Concrete Thought. There “the Divine Spirit” (which is the highest aspect of the triune “Virgin Spirit,” made in the likeness of God) was awakened by the “Lords of the Flame” (called “Thrones” in Christian esotericism), who also radiated from themselves a germinal “thought- form” as a material counterpart of the Divine Spirit. This thought-form has later developed and consolidated into man’s dense body, and thus the highest spirit and lowest body of man are the fruitage of the Saturn Period.

In the Sun Period the Earth reached the density of the Desire World, and became a brilliantly luminous fire-mist. There the “Cherubim” awakened the second aspect of the threefold Virgin Spirit: “The Life Spirit,” and its counterpart, the vital body, was started as a thought-form and made to interpenetrate the germinal dense vehicle which had consolidated and reached the same density as the Earth; it was then built of “desire stuff.”

Thus man had a twofold Spirit and a twofold body when the condition we call the Sun Period was over.

In the Moon Period the density of the Earth increased so that it reached the etheric condition of matter known as the Etheric Region. It had a fiery core, then an envelope of moisture, and outside an atmosphere of FIRE- FOG or hot, steamy gas. When the water was heated by the fiery core it ascended outwards, and when cooled by outside space the steam descended again towards the heated center.

From this moist substance the densest body of these “Water-men” was built. The thought-form for the dense body had consolidated to a moist gas, the thought-form for our present vital body had descended into the Desire World. It was formed of desire matter. To this twofold body the thought-form for our present desire body was added in the Moon Period and the “Seraphim” awakened the third aspect of the Virgin Spirit: “the Human Spirit,” and the Virgin Spirit became an “Ego,” so that at the close of the Moon Period man-in-the-making possessed a threefold spirit and a threefold body.

(1) The Divine Spirit--its counterpart is the dense body.

(2) The Life Spirit--its counterpart is the vital body.

(3) The Human Spirit--its counterpart is the desire body.

The threefold body is the “shadow” of the threefold Spirit, thrown into the Region of Concrete Thought in the three periods preceding our present Earth Period. Since then these thought-forms have all condensed; the desire body, one degree; the vital body, two degrees, and the dense body, three degrees before their present density was reached.

The Lords of the Flame (Thrones), the Cherubim and the Seraphim had worked with man of their own free wills out of pure Love. They could learn nothing from an evolution such as ours. They have withdrawn now, and in the Earth Period the “Powers” (EXUSIAI) of esoteric Christianity, called “Lords of Form” by the Rosicrucians, have particular charge. For this is pre-eminently the period of “Form” and this spiritual hierarchy has given to all things the present definite, sharply defined concrete form, whereas these forms were inchoate and cloudy in the former periods.

Besides the spiritual hierarchies mentioned there were others who helped, but we will mention only the beings who attained to the human stage of development in the three preceding periods. These beings have advanced, of course, so the men of the Saturn Period are now three steps in advance of the human, and are called “Lords of Mind.” The humanity of the Sun Period are two steps ahead of us and are now “Archangels,” and the humanity of the Moon Period are one step in advance of us. They are the Angels.

The periods are DAYS of Creation, and between each two periods there is always an interim of rest or subjective activity, a Cosmic Night analogous to the night of restorative sleep we enjoy between day and day of our Earth-life, and when the evolving life emerges from “Chaos” at the dawn of a new period there is first a RECAPITULATION on an advanced scale of the work done in former periods before the work of the new period is begun; thus the acme of possible perfection is achieved.

Therefore man’s evolution upon the Earth as now constituted is divided into “EPOCHS,” in which he first recapitulates his past, and then goes onward to conditions that foreshadow development which will only reach their full expression in future periods.

In the first or POLARIAN EPOCH, “Adam,” or humanity, was formed of “earth.” He was in that purely mineral stage corresponding to the Saturn Period, where he possessed only a dense body fashioned by himself under the guidance of the Lords of Form. He was imbedded in the dark gaseous planet that was just emerging from chaos, inchoate and void, as the Bible says; in the same way that the raspberry is made up of numerous little berries, so was our “MOTHER-EARTH” made up of the dense mineral-like bodies of all the kingdoms, and the life-streams expressing themselves as plant, animal, and man were working to liberate them.

In the second or HYPERBOREAN EPOCH, God said: “Let there be light,” the hot gas became a luminous fire-mist as it was in the Sun Period, and man’s dense body was clothed with a vital body and it floated hither and thither above the fiery Earth as a large, baggy thing. Man was then plant- like because of having the same vehicles as the plant has now, and the Angels were his helpers in organizing his vital body, and remain so to the present day.

This may seem an anomaly, as the Angels are the humanity of the Moon Period, where man got his desire body. But it is not, for only in the Moon Period did the evolving Earth condense into Ether, such as now forms the substance of our vital body, and there the humanity (the present Angels), learned to build their densest bodies from etheric materials, as we are learning to build ours from the solids, liquids, and gases of the Chemical Region. They became experts at it, as we will be at building a dense body by the time the Earth Period is ended.

Thus they are specially fitted to be the helpers of other later life-waves in the functions which are the important expressions of that vehicle. They help in the building and maintenance of plant, animal, and man, and are thus concerned in assimilation, growth, and propagation. Angels announced the birth of Isaac to faithful Abraham, but destroyed Sodom for abusing the creative function. The angel Gabriel (not Archangel, according to the Bible) foretold the birth of Jesus and John. Other Angels announced the birth of Samuel and Samson.

The Angels are particularly active in the vital bodies of the plants, for the stream of life ensouling that kingdom started its evolution in the Moon Period, when the Angels were human, and they worked with the plants as we are now working with our minerals. There is therefore a particular affinity between Angel and plant Group Spirit. Thus we can account for the enormous assimilation, growth, and fecundity of the plants. Man also grew to an enormous size in the second or Hyperborean Epoch, where the Angels had principal charge. So does the child in its second septenary epoch of life, because then the Angels have full sway, and at the end of that epoch, at fourteen, the child has reached puberty and is able to reproduce its kind; also due to the work of the Angels.

The third, or LEMURIAN EPOCH, presents conditions analogous to the Moon Period, but denser, the fiery core of the Earth is in the center, the boiling, seething water next, and the steamy atmosphere or “fire-fog” outside, for thus “god had divided the land from the waters,” as Genesis says; the dense moisture from the steam, and there man lived on islands of the forming solid crust scattered in the sea of fire or boiling water. His form was then quite firm and solid, it had a trunk, limbs, and the head was beginning to form. The desire body was added, and man brought under the dominion of the Archangels.

Again we have a seeming anomaly, for the Archangels were the humanity of the Sun Period when the vital body was started, at a time when man had as yet no desire body, but the difficulty vanishes when we remember that each of our bodies is the shadow of one of the aspects of the Spirit, as previously outlined, and that the vehicles are not GIVEN by these hierarchies. They are merely helpers of man in training a particular vehicle, because of a special fitness. Thus the Archangels are trainers of our desire bodies, because they became experts at building and using such a vehicle when they were human in the Sun Period, for then they built their densest bodies of “desire stuff,” as we are now building ours from chemical mineral matter.

The Archangels are also the main support of the animal Group Spirit, because the present animals started as minerals in the Sun Period. In the Lemurian Epoch man was situated as they are now: the Spirit was OUTSIDE the body it had to guide, but all man’s bodies had been impregnated with the germ of separate personality presently to be explained, so they were not so easily guided as the animal of today, where the SEPARATE spirit in each animal is yet unconscious. Desire was rampant and needed a strong curb. That was supplied to a few of the most tractable among the nascent humanity in the Lemurian Epoch, and they in time became teachers of the others, but the majority did not become ensouled.

In the fourth, or ATLANTEAN EPOCH, the real work of the Earth Period began. The threefold Spirit was destined to enter the threefold body and become an INDWELLING Spirit, so as to obtain full control of its vehicles, but the link of mind was lacking, and that we owe to the Lords of Mind, who had previously impregnated the bodies with the feeling of separate personality which has overborne the earlier feeling of solidarity with all and made it possible for each to draw individual experience from like conditions.

The Lords of Mind reached the human stage in the Saturn Period. They were not “gods” come here from an earlier evolution like the Cherubim and Seraphim, hence the eastern tradition calls them “Asuras,” (“Not-gods,” and the Bible calls them “Powers of Darkness”; partially because they came from the dark Saturn Period, and partly because it regards them as evil. Paul speaks of our duty of wrestling with them.

Paul is right, but it is well to understand that there is nothing absolutely evil, and that in times past they have been man’s benefactors. Evil is but good misplaced or undeveloped. For instance, suppose an expert organ-builder making a splendid organ, his masterpiece. Then he is the embodiment of GOOD. But if he follows the organ into church and insists upon taking the place of the organist when he is no musician, he is EVIL.

When the Lords of Mind were human in the Saturn Period and the Earth was of the substance of the Region of Concrete Thought, we started our evolution as minerals, and the Lords of Mind learned to build their densest body of these minerals, as we are now building our bodies from the present minerals. Thus they became experts in the use of this “mind stuff,” and also set up an exceedingly intimate connection with US.

Then, when the time came that the threefold body was ready for the Spirit to enter, man needed a mind to link spirit and body. But that the Gods could not give. It would have been too great. The Archangels and Angels could not yet create, but the Lords of Mind just reached the third period beyond the one where they were human, here on Earth, and became Creative Intelligences, so naturally they stepped into the breach and radiated from their bodies the substance from which our mind is formed.

Coming from that source, our mind is naturally separative and prone to resent authority. It should be the tool of the infant Spirit in governing the threefold body; a curb upon rampant desire. But it is masterful added CUNNING to desire, then passion and wickedness and in itself harder to tame than wild horses; it loves more to rule the lower than to obey the higher. It ran high in Atlantis. The race degenerated and it became necessary to start a new race under new conditions.

In the meantime the hot, steamy atmosphere of Lemuria had cooled and condensed to a thick fog during Atlantean times. There the “Niebelungen” or “children of the mist” of the old folk-story lived. They were Atlanteans. Then “God” commanded that “the waters gather in one place and the dry land appear.” The mist gradually condensed to a flood, which filled the valley of Atlantis and caused the wicked race to perish, except a few who were a “chosen people,” chosen to be the nucleus of our present Aryan race, to inherit a promised land: The Earth as now constituted. These few were saved as variously related in the story of Noah and of Moses leading God’s people out of Egypt (Atlantis) through the Red Sea (the Atlantean floods), where Pharaoh (the wicked Atlantean king) perished with all his followers.

The spiritual hierarchies had been seriously hampered in their efforts to help man from the time he received the light of mind, and his understanding was opened. Then he took matters of which he had no real knowledge into his own hands. Propagation, for instance, and as a result of his ignorance of the Cosmic laws in connection, parturition became painful and death a more frequent and disagreeable experience. Therefore it became necessary to take stern measures to check the lower nature. This was done by JEHOVAH, THE HIGHEST INITIATE OF THE MOON PERIOD and ruler of the Angels, supported in his efforts by the Archangels, who are Race Spirits. (Daniel 12:1).

Jehovah helped man to get control over the mind and desire body by giving Law and decreeing punishment for its transgression. The fear of God was pitted against the desires of the flesh. Thus sin became manifest in the world.

The Archangels, as Race Spirits, fight for or against a nation, as required to punish one group which has sinned, by means of another. (Daniel 10:20.)

The Angels cause man’s corn and grapes to grow or wither, his cattle to increase or not, his family to multiply or die out, as required to bless him for obedience to the law of the chief Race Spirit Jehovah, or to punish him for transgression against the law. Under his sway all the Race- Religions: Confucianism, Taoism, Buddhism, Judaism, etc., have flourished and worked in the desire body as RELIGIONS OF THE HOLY SPIRIT. Jehovah helps man to curb the desire body because that was started in the Moon Period.

But Law makes for sin; it is separative, and besides, man must learn to do right apart from fear. Therefore Christ, the Highest Initiate of the Sun Period, came to teach the RELIGION OF THE SON, which works upon the vital body, which was started in the Sun Period. He taught that love is superior to law. Perfect love casteth out fear and emancipates humanity from race, caste, or nation to Universal Brotherhood, which will become a fact when Christianity is LIVED.

When Christianity shall have fully spiritualized the vital body, a still higher step will be the RELIGION OF THE FATHER, who as the Highest Initiate of the Saturn Period will help man to spiritualize the dense body which was started in the Saturn Period. Then even brotherhood will be transcended; there will be neither ME nor THEE, for all will be consciously ONE in God, and Man will have been emancipated by the help of Angels, Archangels, and higher Powers.

14. Lucifer, Tempter Or Benefactor Or Both?
Origin And Mission Of Sorrow And Pain

As we look about us in the world there is no fact more potent than that, as the Hebrew poet expressed it, “Man is of few days and full of trouble,” and naturally we ask why this is so.

The theologian tells us that it is God’s decree that we must suffer because our first parents sinned, being tempted by the devil, and then he attempts to justify God by such doggerel as “In Adam’s fall we sinned all.” But why the eating of an apple as a cause should merit the punishment of painful parturition as an effect has always been a sore puzzle to Bible commentators, and how a wise, loving, and just God could decree so much misery to the whole human Race for the apparently slight fault of one pair is sufficiently hard to understand to excuse Robert Ingersoll in a measure for exclaiming: “An honest God is the noblest work of man.”

The seeming anomaly arises of course from lack of occult knowledge and consequent materialistic interpretations of that mine of occult information, the Bible.

To get at the true explanation concerning pain and sorrow we will first take the purely occult information, and then see what light the Bible gives. We remember that four great Epochs or ages have preceded our present Aryan Epoch: the Polarian, Hyperborean, Lemurian, and Atlantean Epochs.

In the Polarian Epoch man had only a poorly organized dense body, hence he was as unconscious and immobile as the minerals, who are now so constituted. In the Hyperborean Epoch his dense body was clothed upon with a vital body, and the Spirit hovered outside. What the effect of such a nature is we may see by examining the plant, which is similarly constituted now.

There we see constant REPETITION, a building upwards of stem and leaf in alternating succession, that would go on ad infinitum if there were no other influence. But as the plant has no separate desire body, the desire body of the Earth, the Desire World, hardens the plant and checks this intense upwards growth in a measure. The creative force that cannot finds its expression by making one particular plant grow taller, seeks another channel: it builds the flower and imbeds itself in the seed, so that it may grow upwards anew in another plant.

In the Hyperborean Epoch, where man was similarly situated, his vital body caused him to grow to an enormous size. Acted upon by the Desire World, he threw off spore-like seeds which were either appropriated by another human Ego or used by the Nature Spirits to build bodies for the animals who were then beginning to emerge from Chaos. (The highest life-wave starts first at the opening of a period and returns last to Chaos; the succeeding life-waves, animal, plant, and mineral--emerge later and leave earlier.)

Thus, in the Hyperborean Epoch, when man was similar to the plants in constitution, his vital body built vertebrae upon vertebrae, and would have gone on if the individual desire body had not been given him in the Lemurian Epoch. That commenced to harden the structure and checked the tendency to grow taller, and as a result the cranium, the flower upon the stem of the spinal column, was incipiently formed.

Thwarted in its effort to build the one form taller, it became necessary for the creative force in the vital body to seek a new channel whereby it might continue its upward growth in another human being. Then man became a hermaphrodite capable of generating a new body from himself.

In the plant there is no separate desire body, hence it feels no passion. It stretches its creative organ, the flower, chastely and unashamed toward the Sun, a thing of beauty and a delight.

In man the INDIVIDUAL desire body must necessarily cause passion and desire unless subjugated by some ulterior means. Therefore man is the inversion of the chaste plant, both figuratively and literally, for he is passionate and turns his creative organ towards the Earth and is ashamed of it. The plant takes its food by way of the root; man’s nourishment enters his body by way of the head. Man inhales life-giving oxygen and exhales death-dealing carbon dioxide. This is taken by the plant, which extracts the poison and returns the vitalizing principle to man.

In order to check passion and prevent abuse of the creative function, several measures were adopted by the leaders in charge of evolution.

This animal-like creature of mid-Lemurian times, though dreadful to look upon, was nevertheless a diamond in the rough, destined to become in time the perfect tool and beautiful temple of an indwelling Spirit. To that end if needed a controlling mechanism, a brain, and a second nervous system capable of being controlled by “Will” which is the force of the prospective tenant, the Ego.

The whole creative force might have been used to that purpose, but as the use of any tool causes it to wear out, a way must also be devised to replace a worn-out instrument when discarded by a Spirit at death, and so the creative force in each being was divided. One-half was allowed to flow upwards as before, to build a brain and a larynx whereby the Spirit may control its instrument and express itself in thought and word. The other half was turned downwards through the creative organs, for reproduction.

This arrangement has the further merit as a means of preventing abuse, that it made it harder to accomplish generation. Before the sexes were separated each one could create without help; under the present arrangement each must first seek the cooperation of another person who has the opposite half of the sex-force available for reproduction.

That the boy changes his voice at puberty shows a connection between the creative organ and the larynx. Because half the sex-force builds the brain, one who overdraws for sexual excesses becomes an idiot, while the deep thinker, particularly along spiritual lines, feels little or no inclination for coition, as he uses most of his creative force in the brain.

The Angels worked along with man in the Hyperborean Epoch, when he had only a dense and vital body, but in the Lemurian Epoch, when the desire body was added, the Archangels also took a hand, to help the infant human Spirit to control its future vehicles. They neutralized the desire body so that it was only sexually active at certain times of the year. In the latter part of the Lemurian Epoch and the beginning of the Atlantean, the brain and cerebrospinal system were sufficiently evolved so that the link of Mind could be given, and the Ego began slowly to draw into its bodies, and became an INDWELLING SPIRIT in the middle of the Atlantean Epoch, fully conscious of its outside environment. Before the indrawing was fully completed, particularly in the latter part of the Lemurian Epoch, man’s consciousness was turned inwards, and he was mostly conscious in the spiritual world. Thus birth and death were nonexistent to him, as the sprouting out and drying away of a leaf is to the plant. His consciousness went on unbrokenly in the inner World whether he had a body or not, for he was unconscious of it, though he used it equally well for all that, as we use our stomach and lungs unconsciously.

At stated times of the year the Archangels, withdrew their restraining influence on the desire body and the Angels marshaled humanity to great temples where the generative act was performed at the times when the constellations were propitious. Our present-day honeymoon trips are atavistic reminders of those migrations for propagative purposes, and show a connection with the heavenly bodies in the name honey-MOON.

When propagation had been accomplished, the desire body was again neutralized, and in consequence there was no more pain connected with parturition than is the case with the animals at present, where similar conditions obtain now.

This was a carefree state, but man was extremely limited in consciousness, led and controlled by outside agencies willy-nilly. If that condition had continued, man would have remained a God-guided automaton. He can never become a self-conscious Creative Intelligence, as he is destined to become, until he throws off all yokes and works out his own salvation.

Therefore great Leaders from a more advanced evolution were sent to train man and awaken him to knowledge of the material world without, and of course strong measures continued for ages were necessary. The boys were trained to develop “WILL,” which is the spiritual counterpart of their positive creative force. They were taught to carry immense burdens and steel the arm by will. They engaged in brutal fights and their bodies were burned and maimed, impaled upon spits, etc., in efforts to awaken the Ego to consciousness of the dense body and outside world.

The girls were driven out into the immense fern-forests which grew luxuriantly in the moist, hot soil. They were exposed to the fury of the tempests of storm-swept Lemuria and set to watch volcanic outbursts which produced pictures before their inner vision. They likewise watched the fights of the boys, in order to develop their “IMAGINATION.”

Imagination is the spiritual pole of the negative force, and it mirrored the scenes of the outside world in dream-like pictures before their inner consciousness, and in that way the women were the first to become aware of the existence of the Physical World and the dense body, and they started to preach the gospel of the body to men, whom they told of this dimly perceived physical existence. Some among us are now sensing the soul and trying to preach the gospel of the spiritual world where the Spirit lives, and meet unbelief and ridicule such as the Lemurian women encountered when trying to convince their compatriots that they had a dense body.

Among the observations made by these seeresses was the fact that at times a man lost his body, and it disintegrated. She saw him just as before in the spiritual world, but he was gone from material existence, and it troubled her.

From the Angels she could get no information; they work with the dense body, but not directly; they use the vital body as transmitter, and cannot make themselves understood to a reasoning brain-being. They get their knowledge without reasoning, for they send out their whole love in their world and cosmic wisdom flows in in return. Man also creates by love, but his love is selfish; he loves because he desires:--cooperation in generation, for he only sends out half of his creative force in generation, the other half he selfishly keeps to build his own organ of thought, the brain, and he also uses that half selfishly to think, because he desires:-- knowledge. Hence he must work and reason to gain wisdom, but in time he will arrive at a much higher stage than either Angel or Archangel. He will then have passed beyond the need of the lower creative organs, he will create by means of the larynx, and be able to “make the WORD flesh.”

At that stage the woman could not reason either, for the mind was given by the Powers of Darkness, and it was dark, and before it could be of any use in correlating facts it must be illuminated. Only after that has been done can man throw “the LIGHT of Reason” upon his problems.

It is here that we first hear of “Lucifer,” “the Light-bringer,” who speaks to the woman and helps her to solve the riddle by showing her how, with the help of the man, she may exercise the creative function independently of the Angels, and in that way provide bodies when they have been lost, and in that way evade death.

He inquires if God has forbidden them to eat of the tree, and is told that they have been forbidden to eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, under penalty of death.

That the tree of KNOWLEDGE is a symbolical expression for the generative function is readily apparent when we remember how limited the consciousness of man was at that time. He KNEW or was aware of nothing OUTSIDE himself, his eyes had not yet been opened, his consciousness was internal, like the picture-consciousness of our dreams, except that it was not confused, but he was as unaware of the exterior world and beings as we are now of the spiritual world, save at the times when he was conducted to the temples and brought into intimate sexual contact with another; then, for the moment, the Spirit pierced the veil of flesh. Then man and wife KNEW each other in body, and to the initiated the Bible records these facts in a wonderfully illuminating way and continues to use the same expression in many places, such as: “Adam KNEW his wife,” and in Mary’s question: “How shall I conceive, seeing that I KNOW not a man.” The pain of childbirth is also more logically meted out as a penalty for violation of an injunction against sexual intercourse than as a punishment for eating an apple.

The serpent said: “Ye shall not surely die, for the God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof YOUR EYES SHALL BE OPENED, and ye shall be as the gods, knowing good AND EVIL.” The latter was then unknown to man.

Acting upon this advice, the woman secured the cooperation of man and by the power of will they freed their desire bodies. That faculty was then much greater than now, for it is a law that each new faculty is always bought at the cost of weakening some previous power, as when the faculty of thought was bought at the price of half the creative force. Then the man’s will-power was such that the anxiety of the God “lest man eat also of ‘the tree of life’ and become immortal” was well founded, for had he secured possession of the secret of renewing the vital body as well as the dense body, he would have been able to create a body and vitalize it forever. Then there would truly have been no death, but neither would there have been any evolution; as man did not then, and does not yet, know how to build a perfect body, that would have been the greatest possible calamity. Death is not a curse, but a friend when it comes naturally, for it releases us from an environment we have outgrown, and from a body that ties us, in order that we may get a new chance in a new and better body to learn new lessons.

The untrammeled use of the sex-function had the result of making man more and more conscious of his body; “their eyes were opened,” and their attention focused more and more on the Physical World, until by degrees they have forgotten the higher worlds altogether, and many have ceased to even believe that there is an immortal spirit in man. To them the death of the body is of course a terrible thing, a dire calamity despite all assertions, because they think it annihilation. So, although the word of Lucifer was true, and a new body is provided, the word of the Angel was truer still, for there was no sting in death until man lost consciousness of the higher worlds.

As to the curse: “In sorrow shalt thou bring forth thy children,” it was no curse at all, but a simple statement of the effects that must inevitably result from the abuse or ignorant use of the creative function.

While that was exercised under the wise guidance of the Angels, at certain times of the year, when the cosmic lines of force running from planet to planet were propitious, parturition could be accomplished without pain, but man was and is ignorant of these factors, hence he transgressed and pain resulted.

Thus the brain and vocal organ have been bought at the cost of half the creative force; freedom from the rule of the Angels and the power to initiate action, to choose good or evil, and consciousness of the material world are ours at the cost of sorrow, pain, and death.

But all things work for good in God’s kingdom, the world. Even that which is evil is transmuted by the subtlest spiritual alchemy into steppingstones to a higher good than could have been achieved without it.

Having been exiled from the garden of Eden, the Etheric Region, by learning to KNOW the material world, in consequence of repeated sexual abuse which has focused his attention here, this increased use of the desire body hardened the dense body and it began to require food and shelter. Thus man’s ingenuity was taxed to provide for the body. Hunger and cold were whips of evil that called forth man’s ingenuity; they forced him to think and act to provide for his necessities. Thus he is gradually learning wisdom; he provides for these contingencies before they come, because the pangs of hunger and cold have taught him to guard himself, and thus WISDOM IS CRYSTALLIZED PAIN. Our sorrows, when they are past, and we can calmly view them and extract the lessons they contained, are mines of wisdom, and are the wombs of future joys, for by them we learn to order our lives aright, we learn to cease from sin, for IGNORANCE is sin and the only sin, and APPLIED KNOWLEDGE IS SALVATION, and the only salvation. That seems a broad statement, but if we try it out in thought it will be found to be as absolutely true and capable of demonstration as that twice two are four.

As to the question: Who are these Lucifers? (for, although the Bible seems to speak of only one person, that is as wrong as where it uses the singular for God in the first chapter of Genesis)--They are a class of Beings who attained to a stage of evolution far beyond that of our humanity in the Moon Period, but fell short of the development of the Angels. They are demi-gods, and could not take a dense body like man. But neither could they gather experience as the Angels are doing. They needed a brain and spinal cord, and so, when man had built such an instrument, it was to their advantage to prompt him in the use of it.

At that time the opening consciousness of man was turned INWARDS, and he saw his inner organs and built them with the same force that he now turns OUTWARDS to build houses and ships, etc., and the outside muscles of his body; so the woman, who was most advanced in that direction because of having her Imagination trained, saw the intelligence embodied in her serpentine spinal cord, and at a later stage, when man came to record this experience, the serpent appealed to him as the nearest likeness to that which he wanted to tell about.

This idea is carried out right through the Bible. In Isaiah 14 he is called Lucifer (day-star), king of Babel-On (gate of the sun), a city located upon seven hills, and having dominion over the World. There mankind ceased to act in unison and became separated into warring nations. It is the seed-ground of all the ills imaginable, and is called a “harlot” in Revelation, where her fall is described.

In supreme antithesis we hear of another “Light of the World,” a “bright morning-star,” a true light (Christ), who shall rise after the fall of Babylon and reign forever in a city of peace: Jer-u-salem, that is called the “bride.” It comes down from heaven, and has twelve gates, but they are never closed, although the precious tree of life is within. There is no outside illumination. The light is within and there is no night.

Truly a wonderful city, and the greatest imaginable antithesis to the other. What does it mean? for literal interpretation is out of the question in both cases. Allowing that a city of Babylon has existed, it was not LITERALLY as described, and the future “New Jerusalem” is contrary to all laws of nature as we know them. These two cities must therefore be symbols.

In order to unravel the meaning, let us consider that these cities are located upon seven hills or mountains, a position offering special advantages for observation. Moses went “into the mountain” and “saw” and “heard,” so did those on “the mount” of transfiguration. Daniel likens Babylon to the HEAD of the image Nebuchadnezzar saw in a dream, and on the human head there are seven places of observation: two eyes, two ears, two nostrils, and a mouth. Upon these sits the brain, where the “Lightgiver,” REASON, rules the little world, the microcosm, as the Great Light-giver, God, rules the macrocosm.

Reason is the product of selfishness. It is generated by the mind given by the “Powers of Darkness,” in a brain built by selfishly keeping half the sex-force, and prompted by the selfish Lucifers, hence it is “the seed of the serpent,” and although transmuted to WISDOM through pain and sorrow, it must give way to something higher--to INTUITION, which means: teaching from within. That is a spiritual faculty, equally present in all Spirits, whether functioning for the time being as man or woman, but it expresses itself most prominently in those incarnated in a female organism, for there the counterpart of the life spirit--the vital body--is male, positive; and INTUITION, the faculty of the life spirit, may therefore properly be called “the woman’s seed,” whence all altruistic tendencies spring, and whereby all nations are being slowly but surely drawn together in a Universal Brotherhood of LOVE, regardless of Race, sex, or color.

This brain of ours is not a homogeneous whole, however; it is divided into two halves, and it is a fact well known to physiologists that we use principally but one of these cerebral hemispheres--THE LEFT. The right half of our brain is only partially active. The heart also is ON THE LEFT SIDE of our body, but is beginning to move towards “the right” place. The “right” brain will also become more and more active, and in consequence of these two physiological changes man’s whole character will appear different. The LEFT SIDE is under the sway of the Lucifers and is given over to selfishness, but the Ego will gain more and more control as THE RIGHT SIDE of the brain is invested with power to act upon the body as RIGHT judgment.

That there is a change going on in the heart which makes it an anomaly, a puzzle, is not news to physiologists. We have two sets of muscles, one set is under the control of the will, as, for instance, the muscles of arm and hand. They are striped both lengthwise and crosswise. The involuntary muscles, which take care of functions not under control of the will, which cannot be moved by DESIRE, are striped lengthwise only. THE HEART IS THE ONLY EXCEPTION. It is not under the control of desire, AND YET IT IS BEGINNING TO SHOW CROSS-STRIPES LIKE A VOLUNTARY MUSCLE.

In time those cross-stripes will develop fully and the heart will be under our control. When that time comes we will be able to direct the blood where we will to send it. Then we may refuse to send it to the left brain, and BABYLON, THE CITY OF LUCIFER, WILL FALL.

When the blood is sent into the right brain we shall be building the New Jerusalem, and we are now preparing for that time by building the cross-stripes on the heart by altruistic ideals or, in the case of the pupil, by sending the sex current through the RIGHT-HAND PATH of the heart.

We remember that the Cherubim awakened the life spirit, the seat of divine love, whose shadow is the vital body, the medium of propagation, and when man was exiled from the Etheric Region, the garden of Eden, with its four streams of Ether, for the misuse of the sex force, the Cherubim were placed before it with a flaming sword. The right use of the sex force builds an organ which will give man the key to the inner Worlds and help him to create by thought. Then sorrow and pain will cease and he will have entered the path to the city of peace--Jer-u-salem.

Lemuria perished by fire and terrible volcanic cataclysms. In its stead rose Atlantis. In time that was buried beneath the waves and gave way to Aryan, the Earth as we see it at present in the Aryan Epoch, but that is soon past. The salamanders are beginning to stir the fires in the forge to make “a new heaven and a new Earth,” which the Western School of Occultism calls the “New Galilee.”

In the first two Epochs man evolved a body and vitalized it; in the Lemurian Epoch he developed DESIRE; the Atlantean Epoch produced CUNNING; and the fruitage of the Aryan Epoch is REASON.

In the New Galilee humanity will have a much finer and more ethereal body than now, the Earth will be transparent also, and as a result those bodies will be more easily responsive to the spiritual impacts of INTUITION. Such a body will not get tired either, hence THERE IS NO NIGHT, and the twelve cranial nerves, which are the gates to the seat of consciousness, then as now are consequently never closed. Besides, New Galilee will be formed of luminous ether and transmit sunlight. That land will be a land of peace (Jer-u-salem), for Universal Brotherhood will bind all beings of all the Earth together in Love. There can be no death, for the tree of life, the faculty for generating vital force, is made possible by means of the ethereal organ in the head already mentioned, which will be evolved in those who are even now being taken out as forebears for the humanity of that coming Epoch.

That Race is spoken of as “Christ’s Race”; but, be it understood that that is not because of an exterior Christ, but because they will evolve the Christ-principle WITHIN, they will act as dictated by the spirit through Intuition, and all they do will be done in Love. Only by such INDIVIDUAL UPLIFTMENT can the salvation of the Race be accomplished, for as Angelus Silesius put it,

Though Christ a thousand times in Bethlehem be born,

And not within thyself, thy soul will be forlorn,

The cross on Golgotha thou lookest to in vain

Unless within thyself it be set up again.

15. The Mystery Of Golgotha And The Cleansing Blood

All through the past two thousand years in which we have had the Christian religion among us, and since the doctrine of the vicarious atonement and the cleansing blood has come into our Western World, there has been a contention among many people, in the later centuries especially, about whether there is really any efficacy in that cleansing blood, or whether it is only a foolish story. We shall hope tonight to show that there is something vastly grander than ever anyone has imagined, when we come to turn the light of occultism and reason upon this doctrine. Afterwards we may let our hearts have full sway in belief of this grand and glorious idea of the cleansing blood and of the atonement that was effected two millenniums ago at the Place of the Skull, which is called Golgotha in the Hebrew.

When we read our Christian creed, we find the sentence, “Jesus Christ, the only begotten son of God,” and it is assumed by most people that the sentence refers to a single individual called Jesus Christ, who was the only begotten son of God. However, we shall very quickly see that that is not so--that there are three great and glorious individualities concerned in the sentence. They are all worthy of our very greatest veneration, but differ vastly in glory, and have a very, very different career back of them.

When we examine Jesus in the light of the occult records, in the light of that which we have seen in the previous lectures is called “the memory of nature,” then we find that “that Spirit which was in Jesus” from the time of birth, is an Ego which belongs to our human race, and which has incarnated again and again. We can find him under different names and varying circumstances, just as you and I have been and are going to be. So we find that at the time that is stated in our records, at about the beginning of our era, there was born in Palestine a child, and that child was Jesus.

His mother was of an exceedingly pure type--a most beautiful character--and his father was an initiate of high degree, one who, for that one time in his life, forsook the path of celibacy. He had in previous incarnations gone past the time when he should be a householder. In this life he had devoted himself wholly to the occult path; and when the time came that a great teacher was to incarnate among us, he was selected to give the fertilizing seed for that teacher’s body. In that way, there was provided such a wonderful body as has never been before nor since. It was of the purest and most passionless type, and the Ego Jesus who came into it, came into it as a great Spirit, knowing that was his mission in that life to bring up a body in as pure as possible a manner, because it was not to be his for longer than the term of thirty years. At that time he was to give it up to another, much higher than he.

Concerning the early days of Jesus, it might be well to say that he was born there in Palestine; that he went through his early boyhood days in full knowledge of that mission which was his. He was put into the schools of the Essenes, on the shores of the Dead Sea. The Essenes were a community there, who were of the most devout character. They were as opposite as possible to the materialistic Sadducees, and far, far beyond the cynical Pharisees. They were not people who went about in the synagogues and prided themselves on their learning, piety, etc., but were people who stayed in their own community and lived the holy life as they saw it. Among them the growing Jesus found his early training, and he was so marvelously adapted to the life that was led there that in a very short time he distanced them all. Then, at a later period, he went to Persia. This school of the Essenes where he was, was a great center of learning. It had a great library, and he absorbed an immense amount of occult knowledge, regaining what he had learned in previous lives.

At the end of thirty years he had cleansed and purified his body so far that it could be taken by the Great Being whom we call the Christ. We shall next see who that Great Being is.

We said of Jesus that he could be traced back in the Memory of Nature from incarnation to incarnation under different names, and in different environments. But of Christ we find only one incarnation, and that is when he incarnated in the body of Jesus, at the end of the thirty years. To trace Him, let us briefly recapitulate some earlier statements.

We went through the Saturn Period, the Sun Period, and the Moon Period, and we finally came here. We saw also, in previous lectures, that the humanity of the Saturn Period were the lords of Mind; the humanity of the Sun Period were the Archangels; the humanity of the Moon Period were the Angels. Those were the ordinary humanity of these different periods, beings who are working with us invisibly, working upon our vital bodies and desire bodies and minds, helping us to evolve. When we see that there are initiates in this period, that someone like Jesus can progress far ahead of ordinary humanity, we may understand that the same can have been done in previous periods also, and it is these who have gone beyond ordinary evolution that we speak of today as the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

God, as God, is not the creator of our Universe. In the highest world of this Cosmic Plane which we inhabit, He is found as GOD, but below that He is not God. He expresses himself in the different worlds as various kingdoms of man, Angels, Archangels, etc., and therefore we do not see Him in humanity until we get to that great world, the world we call in occultism the World of God. In that World of God. the Triune God IS. The highest Initiate of the Saturn Period has attained to that point where He has become one with the highest aspect of the Triune God, and so He is called THE FATHER--the Father of all those who evolved in our evolution.

The one who came next to Him in glory, the Highest Initiate of the Sun Period, evolved up to the point where he became united with the second aspect of the Triune God, and therefore, He is the Son. That is the Cosmic Christ, and a Ray from Him entered Jesus’ body.

The third Great Being, the Only Begotten, mentioned in that sentence from the Christian Creed, is still greater than Jesus and Christ, but we have not so much to do with that Being at this present time. It may be well to know, however, that the Holy Spirit, the Power of God working with all the nations, is Jehovah, the Highest Initiate of the Moon Period.

By looking at Diagram 14 we shall see that this tallies with what we have learned in previous lectures. Each Being has seven vehicles, and the lowest of Jehovah’s vehicles comes down to the Region of Abstract Thought, where we have our Ego. There we are below the line that divides spirit from matter. there is DIFFERENTIATION. We have seen in Lecture No. 3 that every planet in our system has its three separate worlds, the Physical World, the Desire World, and the World of Thought--that is, SEPARATE vehicles for each planet--but the UNIFYING PRINCIPLE in our solar system is the Life Spirit, and therefore the Son, who is to be the unifying principle in the world, or in the planet, must have that life spirit evolved. Christ, the Highest Initiate of the Sun Period, at the present time ordinarily uses as His lowest vehicle the life spirit.

In the Sun Period, the lowest of the Globes was in the Desire World, and therefore the Archangels have the desire body as their lowest vehicles yet; but Christ has gone beyond. He has raised himself higher, and so He has the life spirit as His lowest vehicle today, and ordinarily uses no denser vehicle. Only by the power of the life spirit can the national tendency be overcome and a universal brotherhood of man become a fact. The vehicles pertaining to the World of Thought, the Ego, and the mind, make for separateness. They have that for their characteristic. But the life spirit is the unifying principle in the universe, and therefore Christ is the only one fitted to bring about brotherhood.

There is the reason why Christ HAD to come to help us. An now about Christ-Jesus. It is a law in the universe that no being, however great, can ever build a vehicle and function in a world that is higher or lower than the world that he has learned to function in. So that when it became necessary to work here in our Physical World, it was an absolute impossibility for any being except our humanity to work here. They alone have been able to build dense human vehicles. They have been helped by others, but THEY have done the work, and therefore it was necessary that one of them, in order to obtain this help from Christ for the race, must give up his body, so that the higher being could enter it, and then help humanity.

We know that at death, or at any time when we have to leave this Physical World, we give up our dense body and our vital body, because they belong to the Physical World. And so Jesus, when he had come to the age of thirty, when he had made his instrument fit for the use of the Great Being, gladly, willingly gave it away. He left it at the baptism as he would have stepped out at death, that the Christ might step in, and that was seen to descend upon him as a dove.

Christ, as an Archangel, had learned to build down to the desire body, but the vital body and the dense body he had never learned to build. The Archangels had worked on humanity FROM WITHOUT before, as Group Spirits do: but that was not enough. The help had to come FROM WITHIN. That was made possible by the combination of Christ and Jesus, and therefore, it is true, in the very highest sense, in the most literal sense, when Paul says:

“There is but one mediator between God and man--Christ Jesus, the righteous.” No other entity in our system possesses the whole chain of twelve vehicles that stretches from the dense body, and right up through all the seven worlds, to the second aspect of the Triune God, the Son. Therefore, he can come to the very throne of the Father; therefore, He can go to the highest possible pitch, and can take the sorrows and sufferings of humanity there, and can cleanse us in a way no other can, and help as no other can.

Now then, we have seen who Jesus is, who Christ is, and who the composite personality is that we speak of as Christ-Jesus. The Only Begotten is yet a much higher being. We hear people speak of the Absolute, and they think of the Absolute then as God, perhaps!. Their ideas are very, very hazy. They could not be otherwise, of course. There has been no definite teaching upon this subject. But God, the Grand Architect of our Universe, as called by the Masons, is described as the Creator of our solar system, and has nothing to do with anything outside our solar system. Beyond the seven worlds where our solar system and all other solar systems are located there are still six other great Cosmic Planes of life and being, and in them there are higher hierarchies of different grades and glories beyond that Great Being we speak of as God. Highest among them, there is what we may call the Supreme Being, the one who includes all the solar systems and all the hierarchies in the whole Universe; and the Word that came out from that great Being--the first Sound or Creative Fiat--the first manifestation from the Supreme Being-- that is the ALONE BEGOTTEN. Other Beings have been “Alone Begotten” in a similar way, but not in the same way that first Sound was. There was nothing but the Supreme Being before that started, and we can speak of nothing beyond that One except the Absolute.

Although this may mean nothing to us at the present time, it is well to know that there is a distinction, so that our ideas are clear at last, as to who God is, who the Son is, and who is the holy Spirit; also in regard to Christ-Jesus.

The Father is the Highest Initiate of the Saturn Period.

The Son is the Highest Initiate of the Sun Period, having reached by initiation the second aspect of God.

Jehovah, the Holy Spirit, is the Highest Initiate of the Moon Period. And the ordinary humanity of the different periods are, respectively, the Angels, the Archangels, and the Lords of Mind. Many of these great hierarchies there are, many that are beyond the evolution of man, and below the evolution of man, but there is none, NONE, “there is none other name given among men” whereby men must be saved, than the name of Christ-Jesus.

Now we have at last come to an understanding of our factors, the factors that go to make this great sacrifice on Golgotha--we know who is who. These lectures are at first analytical in the highest degree, but when we combine their results, and consider the sacrifice in their light, then we shall see something great, something spiritual in it. It is necessary to be analytical for the sake of those who have been put off in the churches. They have questioned, “What good in the world can it do me to believe?”

They are seeking for an answer to that question raised in their minds, “What is the efficacy of the blood?” and therefore it is necessary to be analytical before we come to the spiritual teaching. We have one more factor we must analyze, and that is the Blood.

You have heard me say a number of times that the blood is the particular vehicle of the Ego in the physical world. We find in the Bible that that was well known among those who wrote Leviticus. They said, the life is in the blood. We see blood as a number of little microscopic globules or discs, but blood is not of that nature as seen by the trained clairvoyant in the living human body. Blood is a gas, then, a hot spiritual essence. The heat is caused by the Ego that is within that blood. If the skin is punctured, and the blood exuded, it coagulates, as steam, which is an invisible hot gas, condenses as soon as it comes out into the atmosphere. The blood in our veins is the vehicle through which, by means of the sympathetic nervous system, the subconscious mind carries on all the activities of the body that we are not aware of in the conscious mind. Blood is a most peculiar essence, as shown in the myth of Faust, where he is signing a compact with the Evil One. He is going to sign it in ink. But Mephistopheles says, “Sign it in blood.” Faust questions, “Why? Is that more efficacious?” “Yes,” says Mephistopheles, “blood is a most peculiar essence”--for he knows that the blood contains the Ego, therefore he wants the blood of the man he is trying to get in his power.

The human Ego is more powerful than the Group Spirit of the animal, as we see when we apply the test of science, known as haemolysis. Strange blood of a higher animal will kill if inoculated into a lower species. If we take human blood and inoculate it into a lower animal, the animal cannot stand the high vibration that is in the blood of the human being; it dies. On the other hand, inoculate the human being with the blood of the animal and he will not suffer. We may go as far down in the scale of being as the anthropoids. They can stand inoculations of human blood; all other animals die.

In the days previous to Christ, we remember from Parsifal that there was no initiation for “whosoever will.” It was said as a prophecy, “Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters,” but that was only as a prophecy. After Christ came, we have “whosoever will.” Before that time initiation was reserved for certain castes. They alone could be initiates, or priests. To show that that was abrogated, the body of Jesus was taken--NOT one from a Levite. It came from the strongest mixture in the Jewish nation, the Galileans. In earlier times no one might marry except in his own tribe. We read that Adam and Methuselah lived so and so many years. At that time it was the practice to marry in the family, to marry as closely in the family as possible; then the blood that coursed through the veins of the people in that family contained the pictures of all that had happened to the different ancestors stored in the mind which is now subconscious. Then it was consciously and constantly before the inner vision of man, and each family was united by the common blood wherein their ancestors lived. The sons saw the life of their fathers. Thus Adam and the other patriarchs lived on for centuries.

In those olden times no one would go outside the family to marry, any more that we would go inside the family. It was a horror to marry into a strange family. Even in the Norse mythology, we learn how those who wanted to become part of a family would be obliged to mix blood. it had to be first seen whether that blood would mix or not, so we see haemolysis was known then in some of its phases at least. If the blood did not mix it would bring about “confusion of caste” as the Hindu says. A strict line must be kept, for otherwise those pictures of the inner vision would not be the same, they would become confused.

When Christ came he abrogated that practice when he said, “Before Abraham was, I AM.” I do not care for Abraham, but I glory in the I AM, the Ego that was long before he was. And he said, “Who does not leave father and mother, cannot follow me.” As long as you are keeping up the family, the nation, the tribe, you are siding with the old blood, the old ways, and you cannot amalgamate into a universal brotherhood. That can only come when you marry internationally. Because when you have so many nations, it is like so many houses of brick. As long as you have those houses standing about you, you cannot make one grand building, but when you break them up, you can mold them into one grand structure. Marriage in the family must be done away with; let Abraham die that the “I am” may live; perish Paternalism, Individualism to the fore.

What effect has that change had? The mixture of blood always kills something. If it does not kill the animal, it kills something else., If we mate a horse and a donkey, we have as the outcome a HYBRID, the mule. Is that mule the same as each of those who begot it? Is there not something killed? Yes. The FACULTY OF PROPAGATION IS KILLED, and so it is in all other hybrids. They cannot propagate their species. In the same way, when we marry internationally, something else is killed. And that is--the pictures in the inner vision. The different pictures of different families clash, and so the clairvoyance, the touch with the spiritual world, with the memory of nature, has waned since that time. The Highland Scots who married in the clan, and the gypsies alone retain this second sight in a measure.

If someone had stood for thousands of years upon a distant planet and looked clairvoyantly at our little Earth, he would have seen a gradual change from bad to worse in its Desire World and World of Thought. It was getting more and more filled up with murky and bad vibrations, because man, in the days of his earliest childhood, was not able to control his impulses. He was controlled mostly by the mind and the desire body, and therefore after death he had to stay in Purgatory almost all of the times between incarnations; there was almost no progress. The Second Heaven life, where he learns to do creative work, was almost barren.

The Desire World of the Earth must be cleansed to give man a new start. That was Christ’s mission.

As to the reason for the violent death, we have already heard that when a person is taken violently out of his instrument there is something that clings to it, and that something is the impurities of the lower nature. We have the arterial blood, and the venous blood, and in that venous blood are the impurities that belong to the lower nature; but in the arterial blood we have the purity. The venous blood clings closely to the flesh, and therefore at the time that any person is killed, if the blood flows, there is a distinct cleansing. Whenever the spirit is taken out of the body by accident, and the flood flows, man is cleaner, he is better as a spirit.

The body of Jesus was to be killed, and blood was to flow, in order that by that violent death, the last impurity that might be still clinging to the flesh should be left to decay; that the Christ Spirit, pure and untainted, with none of the impurities of the body it had used, might be diffused over the world.

When that Great Being flowed out through the wounds of Jesus’ body, that luminous Sun Spirit diffused itself all over the Earth. And that is why we hear of that great darkness, because that spiritual light was what men perceived as darkness. But gradually it was absorbed into the Earth, and took its place, permitting everything within its influence to return to its normal condition, so far as man could see; but the vibrations that had been set up there cleansed, purified, and set in rhythmic order the vibrations in the higher world, and gave a spiritual impulse that could not otherwise have been given, and THAT was the way that it cleansed, and “took away the sin of the world” by restoring the rhythmic vibrations in a measure and thus enabling man to progress. That influence is still working and cleansing the world; it is the source of altruism and benevolence which are gradually taking the place of patriotism and selfishness, bringing Universal Brotherhood and Fellowship to the World.

16. The Star Of Bethlehem: A Mystic Fact

More than nineteen hundred years ago in Palestine there was born a little child. Children are born every day, every month, from one year’s end to another, all over the face of the world, but this birth was something very, very different from any other. It was a birth that took place among and amid great spiritual manifestation. Angel choirs heralded this peacemaker, who was to give man the choicest of gifts--Peace on Earth and Good Will among men. How much it is needed!

The Wise Men came and worshiped, they brought gifts to the little child’s cradle, and time passes on. The child grows, becomes a man, and says, “I came not to send peace, but a sword.” A very different story that from the way he was heralded as a peacemaker; a very different career he pointed out for himself in the world than that which had been sung about by the angels on that Holy night. And history goes on to show that this prophecy was fulfilled. That Christian religion he came to found has been the bloodiest scourge the world has ever known, without any exception. The Mohammedan has been somewhat akin to the Christian religion and has been akin in that also, that it has been a religion of blood, of war, and of murder.

The gentle Nazarene spoke also of a time of love beyond, but those who came after him have fought like the Indian, they have outdistanced the Indian in cunning, in devising tortures for their victims, and yet they call themselves by his name--Jesuits. The Christian nations maintain and have maintained all along armies and navies. They pay inventors enormous prices for inventing machine guns and high explosives wherewith to destroy their fellow men. All over the Western World has gone the battle cry and nothing has equaled this religion in fierceness and destructiveness. The religion of Buddha has won its many hundred millions without the cost of a single life, but this religion of the Western World has cost rivers and rivers of blood; has brought untold sorrow and misery into this world. We see it gradually spreading its bloody trail as these Western nations go all over the world, carrying the sword of Christ, overcoming and subjecting the nations of the world.

Even when there is peace within the nations we have every day the war of competition. Every man’s hand is against every other man’s; there is no cooperation in this cruel struggle. We see on every hand the evidence of this in the growth of trust systems. All over there is a great strife and struggle. One must look this fact in the fact when he is a Christian at heart; he feels at heart that there is something wrong when he sees those things and is forced to ask himself, “Was it a lie that was sung by the angels on that Holy night? Was the star of hope that guided the Wise Men a mockery? Was this all a delusion we have heard about, and is it only a cruel religion that we have here in this Western World?”

I hope, friends, tonight to be able to show you that there is a reason for all of this; that there is a good, sound reason for every act of cruelty Christianity has brought in its wake, and that this trouble is only a necessary forerunner for something better, a state of peace, of joy, of love; that the star of hope was indeed a star of hope and is yet a star of hope for all who will seek it, and that the burden of the angel song is but deferred; that the present unhappy condition is just on the same order than when a person cleans house he puts a fairly orderly house in disorder, piling chairs on top of one another, taking up carpets, raising dust, etc. But that is all done with the ultimate idea in view of making the house cleaner, sweeter, better than before. Those historical facts in that past history of the Christian religion are of the same order; a present chaos out of which shall come the brotherhood of love and good will.

In order to understand we must go back in time. We know from the later lectures that man has not always been as he is; that he has lived in different state. We look upon everything in the cosmos not as it is now, but as it has evolved up to the present stage. Above all, we must cease to look at things in a materialistic manner. We must cease to regard ourselves and this Earth as mere forms. We must cease to regard the universe as a vast perpetual-motion machine, and realize that the stars are the organs of a great Being whom we call by the Holy name of God; that these stars are also the bodies of great Spirits and that their motion in the universe means something. When we see a man gesticulate we attach a meaning to it; when we see him hold out his hands with the palms towards us, we attach a meaning to it; he is telling us to go away. We know there is a different significance to it when his palms are turned towards himself; then he is beckoning to us to come to him. So with the stars. As they go around the zodiac year after year every one has a different position with regard to every other, until after countless ages they return to the first position. Every one of them is a feeling, living, thinking organism. The solstices have different meanings. The summer solstice brings about one certain change in the Earth; when the Sun goes to the winter solstice in December there is another influence upon the Earth. So with the vernal and fall equinox. They all mean something; they all have significance in the cosmos.

The Earth itself is a feeling, living organism. When we go out in the summer time and see the harvesters mowing the grain, let us not think there is no feeling about it; the Earth feels it. A cow that gives its life force to its offspring experiences joy and pleasure of having brought forth; it feels relieved when the calf takes the milk. It is so also with the Earth when the grain is taken off by the harvester. It is the same when we pluck flowers. On the other hand, when we pluck plants up by the roots it causes the Earth pain, just as it does us when we have our hair pulled. When we break a stone we give the Earth pleasure, for this Earth is the body of a Spirit, which has incarnated here in our dense Earth in order that we might have the material wherewith to build the dense bodies we function in just now. The Earth Spirit is longing for the day of redemption, when man shall have evolved so far that he shall cease to be under the necessity of having such a dense body and be able to function in a more ethereal vehicle. Then this instrument will have been spiritualized so that we may take the spiritual essence of it and discard the dense body. That is to be gained in a certain way by the initiation we shall hear about later in the lecture.

The Mystery of Golgotha we spoke of the other night, where we heard of this great Christ Spirit going into the Earth. That is only the beginning of the sacrifice. It was not just the death of the body of Jesus, that was over in a moment, but it was the continued incarceration of that Christ, who emanated from the cosmic Christ principle and is now the indwelling Earth Spirit, confined here till He has accomplished the redemption of man.

We remember that at one time we dwelt upon the sun; that is to say, that even in this Earth Period, when we came here to live the last time, we were in that central fire-mist, and we were there up to the time spoken of as the Hyperborean Epoch. There we crystallized until we could not respond to the high vibrations the other solar beings responded to; those who are now the archangels. They could progress in solar vibrations, we could not; therefore we crystallized a part of that fire-mist to shield ourselves, and in consequence we had to be thrown off. Then when we had gone the proper distance away from the Sun we could crystallize again, and later we threw off that part which is now known as the Moon. Those beings who are now on the Moon were too far crystallized; they were behind us; therefore we had to throw them off. From these two sources come two sets of vibrations; spiritual vibrations from the Sun, and hardening tendencies from the Moon. It is the balance between these two sets of vibrations that enables us to hold our bodies together.

At that time man was perfectly unconscious. His eyes had not been opened. He only used his force to build organs INSIDE. Then gradually the Earth crystallized more and more, until in the middle part of Atlantis the Ego had at last drawn into humanity and man had become possessed of all the vehicles that he has now. Then he became conscious of the world, but he was in a far, far different state than now. When consciousness is awakened it begins to work as a leaven in matter. Since we were in Atlantis and had our eyes fully opened, since the atmosphere cleared and we first saw things about us clearly--since then we have worked in the Earth in the materials of our bodies as a leaven works in the loaf and raises it. So we have lightened conditions and are continually lightening them.

In Lemuria man had the three lower bodies--the desire body, the vital body, and the dense body. Outside hovered the Spirit. At that time the Earth was in a condition of fire. There were masses of crust and around them seething, boiling water, and volcanic outbursts were very, very frequent. Man had at that time lungs that were like tubes. He had a bladder like the fishes have now, wherewith he could lift himself and leap great chasms. As the Earth condensed more and more that fire fog atmosphere of Lemuria condensed into a very dense fog in the early part of Atlantis. There those tubes had changed to gill-clefts, and he was breathing more as the fish do. This can be seen now in embryological development, where man goes through the same stages he went through at that time. the embryo lies in the amniotic fluid and has these gill-clefts, such as man had in the early part of Atlantis. He breathed in that manner in the dense watery atmosphere of Atlantis, but gradually that settled more and more, and man began to breathe as we do now.

In the early third of Atlantis there was a brotherhood; separation into nations had not begun. Mankind was a universal brotherhood, and when performing the rite of baptism, which makes us a member of a holy brotherhood, such as the church should be, a community that should be the nucleus for great universal brotherhood, that rite of consecration by water is in remembrance of that time, when man was truly innocent and truly lovable, had no evil in him--the time when he lived in the dense watery atmosphere of early Atlantis.

In the middle third of Atlantis all that is changed. He begins to separate into communities, for the watery atmosphere is clearing somewhat and he is beginning to breathe by the means of lungs. The human Ego was very weak, and had to get help from someone else. Therefore Jehovah, the highest Initiate of the Moon Period, the ruler over the angels and archangels that work with men, breathes into man’s nostrils, gives him lungs, and gives him the Race Spirit in the air that is to curb the hardening tendencies of the desire body and help him to get it under control. The desire body has control of the voluntary muscles, every movement we make is caused by desire, and every exertion breaks down tissue, and hardens more and more every particle of our tissue. Therefore Jehovah aimed to help mankind out of their dense condition, by means of law.

The race religions are all based upon law. “I am a jealous God, and if you fulfill my commandments I will bless you abundantly and make your seed as multitudinous as the sands upon the seashore,” says the Race God, “but if you do not obey I will send your enemies upon you and they shall gain the victory over you.” Jehovah is the ruler of all the races and all the religions. He gave to each of these races an archangel to be their ruler, to be their special Prince. In Daniel 12:1, it is said that Michael is Prince over the Jews, and in the tenth chapter another race spirit says: “I am going to fight with the Prince of Persia, and the Prince of Persia shall come.”

Thus these Race Spirits work with man, punishing him by means of other people, and giving him rewards or punishments for his good or bad deeds. The fear of God and the desire for material reward was pitted against the desires of the flesh and therefore these race religions under Jehovah are such as to build up the national spirit. They subjected, or rather they neglected, the individual for the sake of the nation. The interests of the individual are always made subservient to the interests of the nation. The Jew never thought of himself as Solomon Levi; first and foremost he thought of himself as being of the seed of Abraham. What he wanted most to emphasize was that he was a Jew. If he thought of his status any farther than that he would identify himself with his tribe, but last and least only would he think of himself as an individual.

The Race Spirit took a special care of certain sets of people, for example, the Levites among the Jews, who were destined specially for priesthood and they were herded around the temples and were specially bred to be the forerunners and teachers of their brethren. Their system of mating and regulation of the sex life of these special protégés produced a more lax connection between the vital body and the dense body which was necessary in order that initiation might take place and help man to advance. As long as the Race Spirit works with us we are under the law, we are only overcoming the influence of the desire body; therefore Paul says well that the law was until Christ--not until Christ came 2,000 years ago, but “UNTIL CHRIST BE FORMED IN YOU.” When we release ourselves from the toils of the desire body and live up to the vibrations of the vital body, we become imbued by the Christ Spirit. Then and only then do we rise out of the national, the separating principle. Then do we become capable of being brothers to men.

Now we see why Christ said so emphatically, “Before Abraham was, I am.” The Ego was before the nation and must be exalted over the nation. To that end Christ came, because as long as there were nations, there could not be brotherhood. If we have a number of houses, and they built of bricks, they are unavailable for building one building until torn down. When all the bricks have been separated we may begin building. When all nations have been chopped into individuals we may begin to build the grand Universal Brotherhood of man.

That is why the race religions failed, they separate men into antagonistic groups. So the race religions must be abrogated. We cannot do away with nations except we separate the individual. Therefore, we have wars, therefore we have had revolutions, where men have rebelled against kings and rulers, and have instituted republics. But they are not enough. We want to be free individually. We want to be every man a law unto himself--and this is where a great, great danger lies. We cannot be laws unto ourselves- -WE CANNOT BE FREE, UNTIL WE HAVE LEARNED TO RESPECT EVERYBODY ELSE’S RIGHTS.

So then, under the race religion, men grew by obedience to the law. Under the Christ regime that is to come in, man is to rise above law, and to be a law unto himself. As Goethe says—

From every power that holds the world in chains,

Man frees himself, when self-control he gains.

That is the goal, SELF-MASTERY, which every one must gain, before he is fit to be a law unto himself--to be above the law--for no one except the very undisciplined man, who calls himself an anarchist, will think to improve matters by having the power to shoot down people. By that means he will make conditions far, far worse than they were. The true anarchist, the one who truly seeks to abolish law, is the one who is living the true life, and the clean life. By obeying every law, he rises above all law. We, for example, have risen above the law against theft. It is not necessary for us to have that law, but some people have not risen so far as that, and they must still have that law. We do not wish to steal, and hence, do not need the law that says, “Thou shalt not steal.” By and by, man will rise above the need of all law. Then and only then can he be a law unto himself. In the Christ regime, man will be impelled and guided by love, and “perfect love casteth out fear.” The race religions compel man to do right by means of FEAR, but the Christ religion will impel man through LOVE. Then he cannot do otherwise than right.

All race religions--every one of them, without exception, are looking for someone to come. The Egyptian religion looked forward to Osiris the bright Sun-Spirit; the Persian looked to Mithras; and the Babylonian to Tammuz. All looked for someone to come, to free the Earth. We find the same thing, even in the Norse mythology. We find that the old Norsemen looked for the “Twilight of the Gods,” when the present regime must perish, and then out of the South from Muspelheim, the region of heat, should come that bright Sun-Spirit, Sutar, and he should set us A NEW HEAVEN AND A NEW EARTH. Such we hear of in all religions, and even in the Christian religion we find them looking forward to a Sun-Spirit. At one time, in the ritual of the Catholic church, they used the phrase, “Our Lord of the Sun.” It is from the visible Sun that every particle of physical energy comes. And it is from the spiritual invisible Sun that all of the spiritual energy comes.

At the present time we cannot bear to look directly at the Sun. It would blind us. But we can look at the reflected sunlight that comes from the Moon. In the same way, man cannot stand the direct spiritual impulse that comes from the Sun, and therefore, it had to be sent by way of the Moon, through the hands, and through the mediumship of Jehovah, the Regent of the Moon. That is the origin of the race religions. Later came the time when man could take the spiritual impulse more directly, and Christ, the present Earth Spirit, came to prepare this. The difference between the Christ of the Earth and the Cosmic Christ is best seen by an illustration. Imagine a lamp in the center of a hollow sphere of polished metal. The lamp will send out rays from itself to all points of the sphere, and will reflect lamps in all different places. So the Cosmic Christ--the highest Initiate of the Sun Period--sends out rays. He is in the spiritual Sun. The Sun is threefold. We see the outside--the physical Sun. Behind that, or hiding in that, is the spiritual Sun whence comes the impulse of the Cosmic Christ spirit. Outside the two others is something we call Vulcan--that can be seen only as a half-globe. In occultism, we say that is the body of the Father. There we have the Father, then, the spirit in Vulcan. We have the Christ, the Spirit in the Sun; and we have Jehovah, the Spirit in the Moon, that sends the reflected light both physical and spiritual.

Before the advent of Christ all spiritual impulses came to man by way of the Moon as race religions. Only by initiation was it possible to get into direct touch with the spiritual solar impulse. A veil hung before the temple.

When the time arrived that the Christ Spirit could be entertained on the Earth--when we had risen so far--then a ray from the Cosmic Christ came here, and incarnated here in the body of our Elder Brother Jesus. After the sacrifice on Golgotha had been completed, after the death of that body that he had occupied, he drew himself into the Earth. Take his own words for this. In no other way can we account for that saying, “This is my body.” He showed the bread, it is the Earth Spirit that brings forth that bread. “This is my blood.” The juices that are in the plant make the wine. It was not said, This symbolizes my body or blood; he said unequivocally, “This IS my blood.”

In John 13:18, in our New Testament, it says: “He that eats my bread hath lifted up his heel against me.” Luther, who translated it in Germany, and was not tied by any of the restrictions of the translators of the King James Bible, put it, “He that eats my bread trampled upon me.” We do trample, at every step we take, upon the Earth Spirit, and that Spirit’s body and blood is consumed among us, and that Spirit waiting for the day of redemption, when we shall be lifted so far from our material conditions that it shall be possible for the Earth Spirit to become liberated from its present cramped and dense existence.

The Christ Spirit, then, is the first incoming of a direct spiritual impulse. We spoke to you of the different motions of the planets, and their various influences at different times of the year. We know that at the time when the Sun’s Spirit is in the northern regions--when we have the sun away up here at the summer solstice, then we have all the physical impacts upon the Earth. We get all the good there is in the Sun along PHYSICAL lines; that is the time when the grain and the grape are ripening, and when everything is bringing forth in the Physical World. The spiritual impulse is abrogated for the time being; but when, on the other hand, the Sun goes into the winter solstice, in December, the spiritual impulse is strongest. Also, we have the spiritual impulse stronger in the night than in the daytime. There were times when the churches were open all night, but closed in the middle of the day, for that was known to be the time of greatest darkness, so far as spiritual influences were concerned. However, when we remember these things we can see that at the time when the days are the shortest and the nights are the longest, on that Holy Night that we speak of, when the Christ was born as a Sun who was to lighten our darkness--the spiritual influence is then strongest, and can be reached easiest. It was this great truth that is at the bottom of the Star in the Holy night, illuminating the longest and darkest night in the year.

When Parsifal started to go with Gurnemanz to the castle of the Grail, he asked Gurnemanz: “Who is the Grail?”

“That tell we not, but if thou hast of him been bidden,

From thee the truth will not stay hidden.

The search but severs from him wider

When he himself is not its guider.”

That means that in the olden times, in the time before Christ came, only a chosen few could follow the path of initiation. Nobody could seek that path--nobody could get beyond the point where the rest of humanity were--save a few chosen ones, such as were the priests and the Levites. These were brought to the temples, and there herded together. They were married to one another in a certain way; certain people were mated with a definite end in view, namely, that they might develop the proper laxity between the vital body and the dense body that is necessary to initiation. A separation has to take place in order that we may lift the two ethers out, and leave the other two. That could not be done with the ordinary humanity. They were yet much in bondage to the desire body. They must wait until a later time.

Even with those people who were around those temples, it was very dangerous work to free them. It could be done best at certain times, and this longest night was one of those times. When the greatest spiritual impulse is here, they had a better chance to get in touch with it, than at any other time of the year. So on the Holy Night, which we call Christmas, it was usual for the Wise Men--those who were beyond the ordinary humanity--to take the ones who were also becoming wise, and therefore entitled to initiation, into the temples. Certain ceremonies were performed and the candidates were entranced. They could not at that time be given an initiation in their full waking state, it had to be done in trance. When the spiritual perception was awakened in them, they could look through the Earth--not seeing any detail, but the Earth became transparent, as it were--and they saw the Star at midnight, the spiritual sun.

Previous to the coming of Christ, the Earth was worked upon from without, as the Group Spirit works upon the animals. Christ came to work from within. Before that, when neophytes were to be brought in touch with him, they could see, in that Holy Night, the Star of the Christ, just as the Immaculate Virgin was on the Eastern horizon, and the little Sun-child of the coming year was starting towards the Northern hemisphere, to save us from the darkness, hunger and want that would result without him. Then these Wise Men could see the Star, in the Holy Night, which is the spiritual hope of man as the physical sun then born is his material savior.

Do not think it shone only at that time; it is easier now than then to see it, for when Christ came he altered the vibrations of the Earth and is changing them all the time since. He “rent the temple veil”--He made the Holy of Holies--the place of initiation--open to “whosoever will!” From that time on, there is no more trance needed--no more subjective states in order to go through initiation. There is a conscious going forth into the Temple, by every one who wills to come.

And in time that religion that He brought to us will drive away all the sorrows; will dry the tears from all eyes. Where there has been war, there will be peace, and sure, as sure as he came to bring that sword that shall liberate man from the national spirit and make him an individual that is capable of being a brother to every man, so surely as He came to do this work, so surely as the first part of His prophecy has been fulfilled--so will that other grand and glorious prophecy be fulfilled, that men shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks.

We have one more thing to consider, and that is the gifts that these Wise Men brought--the gifts that were to be laid at the feet of the Savior, as we hear of in the old legend. This legend tells us that one brought gold, one brought myrrh, and the third brought frankincense. The gold we always hear spoken of in symbology as the emblem of the Spirit. That Spirit is symbolized thus in the Niebelungen Ring, for instance. There in the opening scene, we see the Rheingold. The river Rhein is taken as the emblem of the water, and there the gold is seen shining on the rock, symbolizing the universal spirit in its perfect purity. Later it is stolen and MADE INTO A RING by Alberich, representing mankind in the middle of Atlantis, when the Spirit had drawn into them. Then the gold became debased, was lost, and was the cause of all sorrow in the earth. Later still we hear of the alchemists who tried to transmute base metal into gold; that is the spiritual way of saying that they wanted to purify this dense body, to refine it and extract the spiritual essence.

Therefore, the gift of one wise man is the Spirit. The next one brings myrrh. Myrrh is the extract of an aromatic plant that grows in Arabia, a very rare plant, very rare indeed. Therefore, it symbolizes the thing that man extracts when he cleanses himself. When he has cleansed his blood of passion he becomes plantlike, chaste and pure. He became the inverted plant before he became the pure plant, symbolized by the Rosy Cross, symbolized by the Diamond Soul, and so forth, then his body is an aromatic essence. It is an actual fact--we are not speaking in similes--when we say that there are Holy men, who are so Holy that they emit an aroma from them. It is thus said of some Catholic saints, and it is true. Therefore, the myrrh stands for that soul essence that is drawn out of the experience of the body. It is the soul.

The third gift was incense. Incense is a physical substance of a very light character, that is often used in religious services; it serves as an embodiment for the ministering unseen influences. An illustration of the properties of incense is also found in the story of the Serbian regicides. The Minister of the Interior has issued his Memoirs, and he mentions as a curious circumstance that every time they used a certain kind of incense to get others into the conspiracy, they succeeded: but at times when they used no incense, they failed. It shows--he had on certain occasions, unconsciously, of course, furnished an embodiment for certain spirits who wanted to and did aid the conspirators.

There is the key to the three gifts that were offered up by the Wise Men--the Spirit, the soul, and the body. As Christ said, “If you want to follow me, you must sell all you have. YOU ARE NOT TO KEEP ANYTHING FOR YOURSELF.” You are to give up body, soul, and Spirit, everything, for the higher life, everything for the Christ. Not to an exterior Christ, but to the Christ within. The three Wise Men are said in the legend to be yellow, black, and white, representatives of the three races that we have on Earth, the Mongolian, the Negro, and the White man. Therefore, we see that it is very well shown in the legend that eventually they will all come into this beneficent Christ religion. “To him every knee shall bow.” Each one will in time be led by the star to the Christ. But let us emphasize that very strongly--not to an exterior Christ, but to the Christ that is within. As Angelus Silesius says:

Though Christ a thousand times in Bethlehem be born,

And not within thyself, thy soul will be forlorn.

The cross on Golgotha thou lookest to in vain,

Unless within thyself it be set up again.

17. The Mystery Of The Holy Grail

In this lecture we are to consider one of the old-time Mysteries which existed in many parts of the Western World during the Middle Ages, and which has existed, in different forms, in different countries, ever since the dawn of man’s consciousness.

As stated, in Europe in the Middle Ages there were a number of these Mysteries; in Northern Russia the Trottes taught a certain phase of the World-Mystery; in Ireland the Druids flourished. Where we are told our forefathers worshiped under the oak tree, that implies the direction of the Druids, for Druid means oak, and when we are told that Boniface felled the oak, we may infer that Boniface put an end to the instructions of the Druids. In the northern part of Spain the Mystery of the Holy Grail existed.

This mystery was administered by a band of holy knights, who dwelt in the castle Montsalvat, and it was their purpose to proclaim to humanity great spiritual truths in a manner which it could understand, to give in pictures that which could not be given directly to the intellect.

Man has grown up to his present stage from a state where he had no consciousness at all outwardly in the body; he is to go higher yet and these myths and symbols were the means of preparing him for the intellectual perception of the way he was to go; so those who came in contact with these Mysteries, those who were taught, and those who listened, are the ones who today are inclined to take an interest in these things, while the majority of people, who, of course, did not come under these instructions, are those who cannot yet feel the inner craving to live the spiritual life. Therefore, if we feel at all the spiritual influence within us, it shows that at some time, in some of these Mysteries, we have been prepared for the reception of these truths in an intellectual manner, and it is the repeated impact given by the early teachers which brings humanity to the higher stage; for repetition is not senseless. On the contrary, it is of the very highest importance that a spiritual truth should be given utterance again and again.

It has been stated here that humanity, the largest part of them at least, are working today upon their desire bodies, and trying to curb their desires by means of law. Where occult development is to take place, however, where a man is to become a pioneer, it is the vital body that is to be worked upon, and the vital body is particularly and peculiarly acted upon by repetition.

The vital body is the most important principle of the plant; it is that which makes the plant grow stem and leaf in alternating succession, so that the plant grows taller and taller; but there is no variety, the plant goes on repeating all the time. Stem, leaf, and branch; ever the same.

That is the way everything acts that has only a vital body; so when we wish to act upon the vital body we must do it by this method of repetition. We have the four ethers present in our vital body and the two lower ethers take care of the physical functions, as we remember particularly from the lecture on SPIRITUAL SIGHT AND INSIGHT (No. 11), we saw there that the two higher ethers had to be taken out when we wanted to function in the higher worlds; and this repeated impact is what makes the division between the two lower and the two higher ethers possible. That is where the churches are still factors in spiritual development, because they tell the devotee that he must pray without ceasing. But we are not to pray selfishly, we are to pray unselfishly, and in harmony with the Universal Good. When we pray for rain and our neighbor for dry weather chaos must prevail, if prayers were to be granted. Neither let us imagine that God is to be bargained with, as would seem to be the conception of some who are loudest at prayer meetings. There is a certain spiritual attitude attained which the mystic knows so well when he enters into his closet.

Prayer is like the turning on of an electric switch. It does not create the current, it simply provides a channel through which the electric current may flow. In like manner prayer creates a channel through which the divine life and light may pour itself into us for our spiritual illumination.

If the switch were made of wood or glass it would be of no use; in fact, it would be a barrier that the electric current could not possibly pass, because that is contrary to its nature. To be effective the switch must be made of a conducting metal; then it is in harmony with the laws of electrical manifestation.

If our prayers are selfish, worldly, and inconsiderate of our neighbor, they are like the wooden switch, they defeat the very purpose they wee intended to serve, because contrary to God’s purpose. To be of avail prayer must be in harmony with the nature of God, which is LOVE. The following lines appeared in LONDON LIGHT a number of years ago and have been treasured by the writer as—

AN IDEAL PRAYER

Not more of light I ask, O God,

But eyes to see what is.

Not sweeter songs, but ears to hear

The present melodies.

Not more of strength, but how to use

The power that I possess.

Not more of love, but skill to turn

A frown to a caress.

Not more of joy, but how to feel

Its kindling presence near,

To give to others all I have

Of courage and of cheer.

No other gifts, dear God, I ask,

But only sense to see

How best those precious gifts to use

Thou hast bestowed on me.

Give me all fears to dominate,

All holy joys to know,

To be the friend I wish to be,

To speak the truth I know,

To love the pure, to seek the good,

To lift with all my might

All souls to dwell in harmony,

In freedom’s perfect light.

That is the kind of a prayer that lifts, that ennobles a man, and the more a man or woman cultivates that attitude of mind, and entertains those lofty aspirations the more he is lifting the two higher ethers out of the vital body, and so the churches say, Pray, pray, pray; and they are well within the occult teaching, for in that way the vital body is being worked upon by the constant repetition of lofty aspirations. Before we can proceed along the occult path we must of necessity have laxity between the upper and the lower ethers so that we can function outside, leaving the dense body to be taken care of by the two lower ethers, and herein lies the trouble with the medium, and others who develop a certain phase of involuntary clairvoyance by breathing exercises. When such a person goes out of the body he does it involuntarily; he takes three ethers along with him, and the body therefore is not taken care of. On this road lie mental and moral decline, and ofttimes insanity.

There is only one safe way to develop our latent faculties. No matter what any one may say to the contrary, experience will prove that attainment to spiritual powers depends upon purification and unselfish aspiration; and that is what the mysteries taught in those olden times.

In order to understand the Mystery of the Holy Grail, it is necessary for us to go away back along the different epochs from the time when the Earth first came out of chaos. Then the Earth was dark, and man was embedded in the Earth. Life was working in it to dig him out.--Adam was of the earth earthly, as the minerals are now.

Then we come to the second, the Hyperborean Epoch, where man has a dense and a vital body; that was the plant stage. His food was the plants, and we hear of Cain as an agriculturist. Next comes the Lemurian Epoch, and man gets the desire body. He has three vehicles, like the animals.

Then we have that stage where he is to have food of a nature that will feed all three bodies. This he gets from LIVING animals, as when Abel was a shepherd.

Next we come to the fourth epoch, the Atlantean, where man evolved mind. Thought always breaks down tissue, and causes decay, therefore man must have something in the food line which is prone to decay in his body, and so he begins to eat the decaying carcasses of animals, so we hear that Nimrod was a mighty hunter.

Finally he comes to that stage where he is to forget his spiritual nature, he is to think only of this life as the one life for him, and therefore he must have something to help him to forget. That stage is ushered in by Noah and the few that were saved with him, who were the pioneers in the present Aryan Epoch; and he is the one who cultivates the wine stock, and makes the wine that is to help man to forget. Man is temporarily to forget the spiritual part of his nature in order to fully develop the material aspect, so Christ changes the water to wine, which is symbolically represented in his FIRST miracle.

In the earliest religions only water was used in the temple service. The God of wine, Bacchus, had come in Greece previous to Christ, to prepare the time of material debauch necessary to make man forget. And so man became more and more material. The Christian religion is the only one that sanctioned the use of wine. Man has consequently become more thoroughly immured in this physical vehicle. Now an impulse must be given to lift him out, and we are able to note evidences of this impulse in many directions at the present moment. We see it in the great temperance movement which has been sweeping over this country, this America, which has aptly been called the melting pot.

Wine is being changed back to water. We have accomplished the conquest of the material world, as evidenced in our wonderful progress here in the West. Now we are to return to the use of water, that we may regain on a higher level that spiritual vision which we have lost. That is what this mystery of the Holy Grail aimed at; to purify man so that he might be able to regain that spiritual sight; and as we give our children picture- books today, we were given these myths in previous times, that they might work upon our FEELINGS and prepare us to understand.

There were two characteristics which were very marked about these knights: purity and harmlessness, and these two qualities, purity and harmlessness, go together.

We saw in the later lectures that when an entity, it does not matter whether a group spirit or an individual, is taken out of its body violently, with a jerk as it were, as by killing, then there is always something left behind.

If we take a ripe peach and cut it the kernel falls out freely. It has no more connection with the flesh of the fruit.

On the other hand, if we take a fruit which is unripe, a little of the flesh will cling to the stone. It will exhibit a tenacious tendency which is entirely foreign to the way in which the flesh of the ripe fruit acts. Consider this body the stone, it is the hard, crystallized part, while the Spirit is the subtle part. If we take this subtle part away suddenly, with a jerk, what happens?--The physical body retains a part of that soul, whether it is of a human being or an animal, and that part is always the lowest part. When Christ went out in that violent manner, by death on the cross, something clung to the body of Jesus, that was the lowest part of Jesus’ higher principles, for even he, the most perfect man, had something that was imperfect, and it was necessary that it should be left behind, that only the absolutely pure part should be extracted.

In the sudden killing of the animal the lowest part of the soul clings to the body, the Group Spirit has lost the passions which remain in the flesh which we eat. That Group Spirit is thinking continuously, however, “I must get another vehicle.” That idea is impressed on every cell because of our wholesale murder, and so we have that intense sex craving in every particle of meat we eat, impelling us to satisfy its demand.

It was Nimrod, the Atlantean, who first killed to eat, who inaugurated the social evil. And so we see that although we injure the animals when we kill them, we injure ourselves the more, for we have ever that social evil in consequence, that stays with us, and when we speak of the social evil we do not mean only that which we COMMONLY call the social evil, that unhallowed thing of church and state, but any intercourse whatsoever except that which is performed as a sacrifice to provide a body for an incoming Ego. Other use of the creative function, whether in greater or less degree is nevertheless social evil.

Now when we understand the connection between the social evil and flesh eating, the taking away of life from others, then we can understand why the Knights of the Holy Grail were pure and harmless, and until that time comes, the time when Parsifal breaks his bow, when he will no longer take life, when he says, “I will no longer take these particles into my body that cry out for separate existence, and want to create all the time, but I will live the pure and harmless life”; only when a man comes to that stage in life can he feel compassion. So long as we go out and kill we cannot feel the true compassion.

You and I who live under such complex conditions where killing is concentrated in one place, of course never seethe animals killed, yet we are as responsible for the fear and anguish which ensoul them as if we had a personal hand on it. Could you and I go into that bloody pen and lift the knife, look into those dying eyes, and then go and enjoy our victim’s flesh? We could not. We have gone too far in evolution for that. It is only because we are able to get the flesh without having the noisome sights of the slaughter house before us, and yet you and I are doing a great harm to another fellow being. Because you and I do not want to go there he has to stand there day after day, month after month, and year after year, and kill, and kill, and kill. You and I are escaping the brutality which we see concentrated in him, concentrated to such an extent that the law holds him as an outcast in certain respects; it will not allow him to sit on a jury where capital punishment is involved because he has become so brutalized that he has lost all regard for life.

Friends! let us cease to be destructive. Let us aim to be constructive, and let ALL creatures live. They have as much right to life as we have. Ella Wheeler Wilcox prefers their claim in the following beautiful words:

I am the voice of the voiceless;

Through me the dumb shall speak

Till a deaf world’s ear

Shall be made to hear

The wrongs of the wordless weak.

The same force formed the sparrow

That fashioned man, the king.

The God OF THE WHOLE

Gave a spark of soul

To furred and feathered thing.

And I AM MY BROTHER’S KEEPER;

And I will fight his fight,

And speak the word

For beast and bird

Till the world shall set things right.

Now we have come so far that we begin to see the application of these things more and more that we have seen in Parsifal and the Holy Grail. We see it is the beginning of compassion when we leave off our lower appetites. We become pure in thought, desire, and body, and so we are going onwards. Here we have in this myth as presented by Wagner one of the most wonderful interpretations of the fact that a certain class of us may go forward and become helpers of humanity. Parsifal is the man who has purified himself and has become harmless. That was seen and felt spiritually by Wagner on yon Good Friday morning when he sat by the Zurich Sea and saw all around him life forces operating. Innumerable seeds were sprouting, all around this wonderful flow of life, and Wagner asked himself what connection could there be between the Savior’s death upon the cross and this sprouting forth of everything in nature? And there he struck upon the very heart of the Mystery of the Holy Grail.

We remember from the last lecture particularly how man is the inverted plant.

Plato gave this occult view when he said the World Soul is crucified. The horizontal limb of the cross represents the lines of influence of the animal group spirits which circle the Earth, manifesting through the horizontal spine of the animals--they are between the plants and the human kingdom. The plants are represented by the lower limb of the cross, and man by the upper limb.

We know that the Group Spirits of the plants are in the center of the Earth and that they are radiating lines of force which are continually passing through the trees and plants. Man, on the other hand, receives his spiritual influence from the sun through the head, and is therefore the inverted plant in that sense. We also know that the plant takes its food through the roots and man through the head. The plant is chaste and passionless; it stretches its creative organ chastely towards the sun, a thing of beauty, the flower; man stretches his passion-filled creative organ towards the Earth.

Man exhales the poisonous carbon dioxide, while the plant sends out the life-giving oxygen; so man is the opposite to the plant. Now, in the Mystery of the Holy Grail man was brought to use, or rather he was brought to FEEL these truths. He was told:

“Look around you; see everywhere in nature all these innumerable plants growing, all these seeds sprouting.

“That creative force which you see in them is nothing but what is in you, and in every human being; but in the plants it expresses itself in the opposite way. There is the chasm of passion between the plant and the god.

“The animals are also passion filled; they have the red passion- giving blood; but in the plant we see chastity, and that chastity must be regained.

“There are certain stages of advancement which you are to go through; you are to become pure and passionless again. Therefore, this emblem--the Grail Cup--which you see here, is like the pod of the plant that holds the seed. That is the emblem of purity, which you are to hold before your gaze all the time in order to aspire to that high ideal--that purity which is embodied in the plant.”

This conception is also embodied in the communion cup used in the churches, which is emblematical of the ideal we are to strive for, and in the German the communion cup has the same name as the pod of the flower, KELCH. In different other languages its name has also a similar meaning.

Thus the holy Communion Cup is not a wine cup; but it is a cup which we may look upon as containing the very essence of life in pristine purity-- a quickening spiritual essence. Not the paralyzing spirit that Noah brought, not the fermented spirit of decay, but that life-giving fluid which is the blood of the plant. There we have a description of one of the emblems held up to the pupils of the Mysteries as ideals to be realized in him.

The other was the holy spear, symbolized by the sunbeam that comes down and opens the flower. the sunbeam is the representation of the spiritual power which is working to bring forth all through the universe; a power most potent, but also most dangerous when used without discrimination, or abused, as we see so forcibly accentuated in the legend of Parsifal, where Parsifal, Amfortas, and Klingsor represent three classes--Amfortas, who used the spiritual power without discrimination; Klingsor, who used it for selfish purposes, and Parsifal, who used it in the only way it should be used. The power is the same, but produces different effects as it is variously used. Fire is man’s greatest ally when under control and used for good purposes; but used with evil intent or ignorantly, it becomes dangerous.

Parsifal represents the mystic whose FEELINGS have become aroused. He is not fit to have the spiritual power until he has been tempted and tried, for one whose feelings are intense is very apt to make mistakes. Against the manifestly evil he is secure, because of his very innocence, as when Parsifal fails to perceive anything sensual in the advances of the Flower-maidens. He is so guileless and pure that that does not affect him at all, but INNOCENCE is not by any means synonymous with VIRTUE. Innocence is a negative purity such as we find in all children, and is very, very different from the virtue which has come unscathed through the fire of temptations, and is kept on the path of rectitude, guided by an innate feeling of right. Innocence is untried and inferior to the virtue of the sinner who has repented and reformed and is strong for the right as the path of peace and joy, because he has known the sufferings which are encountered upon the pathway of wrong.

Amfortas is tempted and falls and suffers. Parsifal witnesses his suffering and can sympathize with his pain, because of having broken the bow and become harmless. The man who can kill cannot also feel compassion. The one who is harmless is tender of heart, and sees what a benefit pain is. Usually Parsifal is so glad and joyous he has left Herzleide--Sorrow--behind. See him in the garden with the Flower- maidens, his face beaming with innocent joy. Then comes the temptation of Kundry, and it causes a pain--something Parsifal is not used to, and by the power of association there comes before his inner vision that other scene where he felt pain--the scene in the Grail Castle, where the stricken king was ministering at the sacred rite. He sees and he understands, because of sympathy which his harmlessness has engendered. But for that, he too might have fallen to the subtle temptations of Kundry.

Klingsor is the very antithesis of Parsifal. He is no fool; he has knowledge, and by knowledge he wields his power entirely apart from feeling. He has mutilated himself; HE HAS KILLED ALL FEELING INSTEAD OF SEEKING TO CONTROL IT. When we go along the mystical path the feelings are most potently aroused, and unless we have become harmless also and ceased to live upon food imbued with the lower feelings, we are extremely apt to fall, as witness the well-known fact that ultra-devotional people are exceedingly strongly sexed and have been the cause of great Church scandals, denounced as hypocrites, when in reality they were as true as steel, but were unable to control the intense waves of feeling which swept them away, because of impure food.

Klingsor is not minded to run such chances, so he has mutilated his sex organ and thus made it impossible for him to gratify that craving and lose his power, as Amfortas did when he fell before the charms of Kundry.

Also in the Niebelungen Ring we hear the same principle enunciated-- that the one who desires power must forswear love. Alberich, the Niebelung, does that in order to possess the Rheingold, and it becomes a curse to gods and man.

When the head or the intellect rules apart from the feelings, as it does in the intellectual occultist, the black path lies before that man, but in the blending of head and heart is the true balance, the only safety.

Amfortas could not have fallen if he had been harmless, but he was contemplating a misuse of the spiritual power symbolized by the spear. He was going to use it without due discrimination against Klingsor; therefore, it reached upon him and wounded him. the black and the white magician both use the same force--a spiritual power--and it is as impossible to use a spiritual force to harm a spiritual man as it is to drown a fish in water. Therefore, when Klingsor hurls the spiritual power--the spear--at Parsifal, it floats harmlessly above him and Parsifal directs it against the Castle only, not against Klingsor.

The good cannot use good for direct destruction of evil, but only indirectly by showing them the greater power of Good.

As the flower draws the vital force, the spiritual power, from the sunbeam in a pure and chaste manner as it unfolds its harmless beauty, so must we unfold in purity and harmlessness the spiritual powers latent in man. Neither must we kill or cut ourselves off from the expression of the feelings, as some have done who have taken vows and have entered monasteries or like sheltered environments, where they are out of the way of temptation-- or at least where temptation cannot mature to acts. Desire may be as strong in a monk as in a Knight, but the monk has made it impossible by his vow to gratify desire, while the Knight is free to choose good or evil. If he manfully overcomes the temptation, as Parsifal did, he evokes in his being that higher love which is as far removed from sensual passion as heaven from hell. We as Christians are like King Amfortas--we have lost our spiritual powers temporarily on account of our abuses and impurities; but out of the ashes of that state shall come the New Christianity symbolized by Parsifal, which shall heal the sufferings of the old and take its place. That personal condition of which the Holy Grail is emblematical is the state where the evanescent gives way to the lasting and permanent.

We build our bodies on flesh foods, which leave it very quickly. Even vegetables are not stable. Our bodies change altogether in a few years. The plant, on the other hand, has a body that lasts for ages, even after the life has left it, as seen in wooden buildings that last a century or more. What is the secret?

The tree is almost purely carbon. Where did it get the carbon? From the carbon dioxide exhaled by animal and man. In other words, WE ARE IN EVERY BREATH THROWING AWAY THAT WHICH WOULD BUILD A STABLE BODY IF KEPT. What becomes of that wood? In millenniums it is transmuted to coal--black carbon. The hardest and most durable substance on Earth is white carbon--the diamond.

If we could find a way of retaining that carbon we would become what the Hindu calls the Diamond Soul--the perfect immortal body. We should be manufacturing what the Rosicrucian calls the Philosopher’s Stone, which is the liquor vitae, the panacea for all the world’s woe. We should then know the meaning of the sea of glass in the New Jerusalem and understand the significance of “the molten sea” which was the last work of Hiram Abiff the Grand Architect of Solomon’s Temple, built without hands. For these all express the same truth as the Holy Grail, and are only attainable by those who are pure in heart, who have overcome the world and are helpers of humanity.

18. The Lord’s Prayer

Many people who have thought seriously upon the problems of the higher life have unfortunately forsaken the methods of their earlier days, they have ceased to believe in the teachings of the church regarding the atonement, the saving power of faith, the efficacy of prayer, and kindred dogmas. While from the standpoint of such people, who are honestly and sincerely seeking for truth, these ideas may seem palpably fallacious, we would nevertheless bespeak for the following views an unbiased hearing in order that they may THEN be judged. Thus viewed, the teachings of the Church will appear in a light probably not heretofore perceived which will give them a new, a grander meaning, more satisfactory to the heart and perfectly acceptable to the intellect.

Many among us have been impelled by Reason to withdraw from the Church, although with a bleeding heart. Intellectual conceptions of God and of the purpose of life cannot satisfy, and our lives have since been barren. That the new light may make it possible for those who still feel the heart’s desire for the fellowship of the Church to return and take their places with renewed zeal born of deeper understanding of the cosmic truths embodied in the teachings of the Church is the earnest prayer of the writer and his motive in enunciating the following teachings.

There is one fact very noticeable to the student of Comparative Religion, namely, that the further we go back in time, the more primitive the race, the more crude is also its religion. As man advances, so do his religious ideas. Materialistic investigators draw from these facts the conclusion that all religions are man-made, that all conceptions of God are rooted in human imagination. The fallacy of that idea is readily seen when we consider the tendency of all that lives toward self-preservation. Where only the law of the survival of the fittest governs, as it does among the animals, where might is right, there is no religion. Not until a higher EXTRANEOUS power makes itself felt can that law be abrogated and the Law of Self-abnegation comes into play as a factor of life, as it does in a small measure in even the most crude religion. Huxley recognized that fact in his last lecture, where he pointed out that while the Law of Survival of the Fittest marks the animal’s line of progression, the Law of Sacrifice is the heart of human advancement, impelling the strong to care for the weak, giving gladly what they might easily withhold, yet growing by such giving.

The reason for this anomaly cannot be found by the materialist; from his viewpoint it must ever remain an insoluble riddle, but once we understand that man is a composite being: Spirit, soul, and body; that Spirit expresses itself in thought, soul in feeling, and body in action; and that is three-fold man is an image of the triune God, we shall readily understand the seeming anomaly, for by his constitution such a composite being would be peculiarly fitted to respond to both spiritual vibrations and physical impacts.

When we see how little the majority care for the higher life today, we may infer that there must have been a time when man was nearly entirely callous to the spiritual vibrations in the universe. He sensed vaguely a higher power in Nature, and being then partially endowed with clairvoyance, he recognized the existence of powers not now perceived, though working as potently as ever.

Man was to be led for his future good, so in order to guide him aright and aid the higher nature in obtaining mastery over the lower nature, the personality, the latter was at first worked upon by FEAR. To have given him a religion of Love, to have tried moral suasion would have been absolutely useless when the human Ego was in its earliest infantile stage and the animal nature of the lower personality was paramount. The God who is to help such a humanity must be A STRONG GOD who can wield the thunderbolt and strike with lightning.

When man had been brought a little further along he was taught to look to God also as THE GIVER of all, he was imbued with the idea that if he followed the LAWS of this God MATERIAL PROSPERITY WOULD FOLLOW. Disobedience on the other hand resulted in FAMINE, WAR, AND PESTILENCE. In order to lead man up higher he must be taught the Law of Sacrifice, but at that stage man prized material possessions highly, and therefore he was prompted to sacrifice his sheep and oxen THROUGH FAITH in the promise that “the lord will repay an hundredfold,” that he who gives to the poor lends to the Lord who always returns abundantly. There was then no promise of a heaven, that was yet beyond man’s capacity of appreciation. It was emphatically stated that “Heaven, even the heavens are the Lord’s, but THE EARTH has He given to the children of men” (Ps: 115-16).

Next man is taught to SACRIFICE HIMSELF FOR A FUTURE REWARD IN HEAVEN. Instead of performing an OCCASIONAL act of sacrificing a material possession, a bull or a sheep which the Lord quickly restores, it was now required that he should give up his evil desires and by “CONTINUANCE IN WELL-DOING” “LAY UP TREASURE IN HEAVEN,” caring nothing for material possessions which thieves may steal or moth and rust corrupt.

Almost anyone may for a short time work himself up to a pitch of exaltation where it is easy to lay down all in one supreme act of renunciation. It is comparatively easy TO DIE for one’s faith, as in martyrdom, but that is not enough; the Christian Religion requires of us the courage TO LIVE our faith from day to day all through life BY FAITH IN A FUTURE REWARD in a heaven which is but very dimly adumbrated. Truly, the labors of Hercules seem small in comparison, and what wonder if doubts come to weigh us down with a burden like that of Atlas, robbing us of faith in the beneficent, all-sustaining power of God.

As a matter of fact, whether we know it or not, we live by faith every minute of our lives, and in proportion that we so live, are we happy or miserable. At night we lie down to sleep secure in the faith that no harm will disturb our slumbers, that we shall wake in the morning and be able to go through our appointed tasks the next day. Were it not for that faith, were doubts on the above points to assail, would we dare to lay our heads upon our pillows? could we close our eyes in calm slumber? Surely not; and in a short time we should be physical and mental wrecks, hastened into a premature grave by the demon of doubt. When we go to the store to buy provisions we have faith in the rectitude of the merchant, we are satisfied that he will give us wholesome viands and not poisoned good. If not, how miserable our lives would be, and instead of enjoying our food, doubt would take away our appetite so that we should be unable to eat a wholesome meal, for even food would be poisoned by out mental state of doubt and fear, as is well known to physiologists.

By faith we leave our homes in the morning trusting to the law of gravity to keep them in the same place till we return at night.

Very few among us have watched the shadow of the Earth when projected upon the Moon at an eclipse of the Moon and realized that that round shadow is the only positive proof of the rotundity of the Earth, yet everyone says he knows that the Earth is round. He knows it BY FAITH in other people’s statements. So with the fact that we are traveling through space at the rate of one thousand miles an hour by virtue of the Earth’s motion on its own axis, and the still more astonishing, scientific fact that this Earth which appears to be so still and motionless is in reality traveling in its orbit around the sun at the rate of 1,600,000 miles in twenty-four hours. These and many other similar facts which we cannot possibly investigate for ourselves we accept and live by every day of our lives; we call them knowledge and we stake our lives and our happiness upon them by virtue of faith.

It has been said in previous lectures that faith is the force in man which opens up the channel of communication with God and brings us into touch with his Life and Power. Doubt, on the other hand, has a most withering and blighting influence on the spiritual life. That such are the effects of faith and doubt can easily be seen by examining their influence in our daily life. We know how expressions of faith and trust buoy us up and how depressing is the effect on us when we are doubted by others. The same holds good in the higher realms, as the following incident will show:

When visiting Columbus, Ohio, in 1907, we heard a lecture on “New Evidences of a Future Life,” by Professor Hyslop. The writer could not find one single scrap of new evidence or anything which has not been adduced in the reports of the Society for Psychical Research in hundreds of similar cases, and wondered why a man like Professor Hyslop, who must know these reports, should call it NEW evidence. The riddle was not solved till a question by someone brought out the fact that MR. HYSLOP HAD NO FAITH in Professor Crook’s experiments or in the results of the researches of any one else for that matter; he was not prepared to believe one iota of which HE was not personally cognizant. and therefore what he had presented was new, it had been NEWLY perceived (by him). But although Professor Hyslop refused to accept the evidence of other investigators he was not in the least backward in asking his audience to accept his testimony as the only reliable brand, and unwittingly he furnished an illustration of his inefficiency as an investigator because of ultra-skepticism when he related how he had one day at a sitting with a medium had a communication from Richard Hodgson (who has died) to meet him at another medium’s where Hodgson was to give certain communications then agreed upon.

At the appointed hour Professor Hyslop “sat” with the medium and Mr. Hodgson commenced to make his communications. Mr. Hodgson seems to be entirely unable to answer questions, and Professor Hyslop asked in a irritated tone: “What is the matter with you, Richard ? when you were in Earth-life you were always ready enough with an answer, why cannot you answer now?” Then, said Professor Hyslop, in telling the story, then came the answer as quick as lightning--’OH! EVERY TIME I GET INTO YOUR WRETCHED ATMOSPHERE I SEEM TO GO ALL TO PIECES.’ . . .Professor Hyslop’s attitude of ultra-skepticism had the same benumbing effect on the communicating spirit of Mr. Hodgson, as for instance, the mental attitude of an examining board has upon a candidate. If the board has made up its mind that the candidate is a dunce he may be ever so well prepared, he will stutter, stumble, and fail while even the dunce may comport himself creditably if supported by the mental encouragement of the board.

Thus we see that doubt and skepticism have a withering and blighting effect upon the object directed against, while faith opens and expands our mental capacity as sunlight unfolds the beautiful flower, and we can thus understand the necessity for faith in approaching spiritual teachings. Met in that manner they show themselves in true light, while doubt, higher criticism, or agnosticism wither and wilt the beauty of spiritual conception as biting frost blights the fairest flower. Christ Jesus said: “Whosoever shall not receive the Kingdom of God as a little child shall not enter therein.” In that sentence is hidden the key to the proper mental attitude. The grown person when confronted with a new teaching either rejects it off- hand because it is something he has not though or heretofore come into contact with, or he accepts it without question if it supports his own theories. He makes his own viewpoint and knowledge the absolute measure of truth whereby he gauges all ideas presented, but however wide his view may be, it must be narrow from a cosmic standpoint.

A little child is unhampered by the limitation of previous knowledge, ITS MIND IS OPEN TO ALL TRUTH, and it takes unhesitatingly every teaching on faith. Time will bring out facts to show whether it is true or not and that test alone is conclusive. The pupil of the occult school cultivates such a childlike attitude of mind, forgetting always when examining a new teaching or investigating phenomena not previously perceived, all else, so as to obviate any bias of mind. Of course, he does not believe offhand that black is white, but he is ready always when a proposition is made to him to admit that there may be a viewpoint he has not hitherto perceived whence an object he thought white might appear black, or vice versa, and that is an exceedingly advantageous attitude of mind, for the man who cultivates it is capable of learning, of increasing his knowledge in the same ratio as does the child which listens rather than argues.

Thus the childlike attitude is particularly conducive to the acquisition of knowledge which is symbolically spoken as the Kingdom of God, in contra-distinction to that ignorance which is the estate of man. Let it be clearly understood that faith which is required is not a BLIND faith, not an unreasoning faith which clings to a creed or dogma contrary to reason, but it is an open and unbiased state of the mind which is ready to entertain ANY PROPOSITION until thorough investigation has proven it untenable.

In a previous lecture, Prayer was said to be an opening up of a channel along which the divine Life and Light may flow into the Spirit, in the same way that the turning of a switch opens the way for the electric current to flow from the power-house into our house. Faith in prayer is like the energy which turns the switch. Without muscular force we can not turn the switch to obtain physical light, and without faith we cannot pray in such a manner as to secure spiritual illumination. If we pray for worldly ends, for that which is contrary to the law of love and universal good, our prayers will prove as unavailing as a glass switch in an electrical circuit. Glass is non-conductor, a bar to the electric power, and selfish prayers are, likewise, bars to divine purposes and must therefore remain unanswered. To pray to a purpose we much pray aright, and in the Lord’s Prayer we have a most wonderful pattern, for it caters to the needs of man as no other formula could do. Within a few short sentences it encompasses all the complexities of the relationship of God to man.

Properly to understand this sublime prayer and to be able to render it understandingly and efficiently, let us briefly state some of the teachings given in earlier lectures.

The Father is the highest Initiate of the Saturn Period.

The Son is the highest Initiate of the Sun Period.

The Holy Spirit is the highest Initiate of the Moon Period.

The Divine Spirit and the dense body of man started their evolution in the Saturn Period and are therefore under the special care of the Father.

The Life Spirit and the vital body started their evolution in the Sun Period and are consequently the particular charges of the Son.

The Human Spirit and the desire body commenced to evolve in the Moon Period and are therefore the special wards of the Holy Spirit.

The Mind was added in the Earth Period and is not cared for by other or outside beings, but is to be subdued by man himself, without any outside assistance.

In the Lord’s Prayer there are seven prayers; or rather, there are three sets of two prayers and one single supplication. Each of the three sets has reference to the needs of one of the aspects of the threefold spirit and its counterpart in the threefold body. The opening sentence, Our Father who art in Heaven, is merely as the address upon an envelope. The student is referred to the chart on page 306 for a key to this prayer, showing diagrammatically the relation between the Trinity, the threefold Spirit, the three-fold body, and the mind, each aspect of the Spirit being connected by a line with the prayer specifically suited to its counterpart in the threefold body and addressed to its guardian aspect in the Trinity.

The Human Spirit lifts itself upon wings of DEVOTION to its parents aspects in the Holy Trinity and intones the opening incantation, Hallowed be Thy name.

The Life Spirit raises itself upon pinions of LOVE and addresses the fount of its being, The Son: Thy Kingdom come.

The Divine Spirit soars with superior INSIGHT to the fountain head whence it sprang at the dawn of time, The Father, and manifests its confidence in that all-embracing Intelligence in the words, Thy Will be done.

Having thus reached the Throne of Grace, the threefold Spirit in man prefers its requests concerning the personality, the threefold body.

The Divine Spirit prays to The Father for its counterpart, the dense body, Give us our daily bread.

The Life Spirit prays to The Son for its counterpart, the vital body, Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.

The Human Spirit utters the supplication for the desire body in the words, Lead us not into temptation.

Then all join in a concentrated appeal concerning the mind, Deliver us from Evil.

The affix, For thine is the Kingdom, and the Power, and the Glory, forever, are not given by Christ and are not prayers.

Looking at the foregoing explanation from the analytical standpoint, we find that there are three religious teachings to be given to man in helping him to attain to perfection. One is the Religion of The Holy Spirit the next is the Religion of The Son, and the last is the Religion of the Father.

Under the regime of the Holy Spirit the human race was divided into nations and peoples segregated by their adherence to one group from fellowship with other nations. Each group was further cut off from the rest because speaking another language. They were all put under certain laws and were taught to reverence THE NAME of their God. One people worshiped him as Lao, another as Tao, others as Bel. Everywhere the name of this LAWGIVER was holy. The method of segregation had the advantage that the Race Spirit in chief, Jehovah, could use one people to punish another who had transgressed his law, but it has the disadvantage that if fosters egotism and separates humanity in a manner detrimental to universal good. It is an axiomatic truth that what does not benefit all cannot really benefit any. Therefore ways and means must be found to reunite the scattered nations and weld them into one universal Brotherhood. That is to be the work of the Religion of the Son--Christianity. The warring of nations is fostered by the Race Spirit, but the Christian Religion will eventually unit them, cause them to beat their swords into ploughshares and bring peace and good will on Earth when THE KINGDOM of the Son has superseded the tribes and races. Then a still higher religious teaching, the religion of the Father, is to unite mankind still closer. In the Kingdom of the Son there will be a Universal Brotherhood of SEPARATE individuals having varying interests, but ready to give and take through love, sinking individual preferences for the common good, but when the religion of the Father becomes a fact in life, the self will be entirely submerged in a common purpose, a single will. THE WILL OF GOD will then be done on earth as it is in heaven, where there is neither me nor thee, but where God is All and in All.

In the meantime a certain work has to be performed by the threefold Spirit upon the threefold body, to spiritualize it and extract the threefold soul.

The dense body is but an irresponsible tool, but, nevertheless, it is a most valuable instrument, to be cared for and prized as a mechanic cares for and prizes a valuable tool. We hold firmly before out mental vision that we are not the body, any more than the mechanic is identical with his tools, or the carpenter is in the house. That is plainly evident when we consider that our body is a constantly changing aggregation of cells, while we keep our “I”-dentity amid and despite all the changes, which would be impossible if we were identical with our dense body. That body is to be valued and cared for. “Give us out daily bread,” says the fourth prayer. Most people eat too much, and for them an occasional fast may be good, but fasting is unnecessary for those who do not feast, but live the simple life from day to day. When the body is over-fed, the Spirit may be ever so willing, but the flesh will be correspondingly weak. Therefore, when a young Spirit gains ascendancy, it seeks to overcome the lower nature by fastings, tortures, etc., as best explained in Hindu Yogis who emaciate the body, causing the limbs to wither, etc., that the Spirit may shine.

That is a mistake as much subversive of true spiritual growth as is the habit of overeating. As said, where a man can control his appetite and feed his body on pure food he need not fast, but may give to his body its daily bread.

In Asia, where the Laws of Consequence and Rebirth are commonly known, and clearly enunciated, people readily see that their action will, in time, raise humanity to a state of supernal glory, but it is necessary to the evolution of accuracy of thought, whereby man will, in time, create, that his whole attention should for a time be focused in the dense Physical World, and his knowledge of spiritual matters must therefore be curtailed. To attain that end, the leaders of man gave the pioneers of the human race the lethal drink--Wine--and they have forgotten temporarily the above. They have come to look upon the present life as the only one to be lived here, and are therefore at the greatest pains to make the most of it; thus occidental energy is conquering the material world by leaps and bounds, while oriental lassitude is looking on. In coming ages they will also have to forget for a time and follow our path of conquest.

But as the Western Religion, Christianity, does not teach how a cosmic law makes haste slowly to purge man and raise him to Godhood through many lives, there must be given him a compensatory teaching, or he would despair, for this intelligence tells him his imperfection and forces him to realize the utter impossibility of spiritual attainment in a single life which he is, by force of circumstance, compelled to devote mainly to material pursuits. Therefore, he was taught the doctrine of the REMISSION OF SINS, by faith in the righteousness of the Christ, the Beacon of Light of Hope, the “Sun of Righteousness.”

It is self-evident that in a universe of law and truth the Great Leaders could not teach a lie to save man from despair which must inevitably have crushed all spiritual effort if he had had only the teaching of the Law of Consequence which decrees that we reap as we have sown. Therefore, the doctrine of the remission of sins must be a law in Nature as much as the Law of Consequence; in fact, it must be a higher law as it is able to supersede the Law of Consequence. Both have a certain scope in human life, and the Catholic Church still teaches the scientific way of obtaining remission of sins when it encourages its members to go over the happenings of the day each evening when retiring, blaming themselves for any wrong deed, substantially as has been taught in our previous lectures where, however, the occult teaching is more clearly enunciated, and the far-reaching efforts of this exercise are particularly set forth in Lecture No. 11. The beneficent action of the Law of Consequence in purging us of evil not repented of and forgiven is also enunciated in the Catholic teaching concerning Purgatory, though they mistake by regarding that state as a PUNISHMENT, and fail to see that even if there were a personal devil to torment us while there, the pain he would cause in cleansing us from sin would be analogous to the pain a surgeon would cause in extracting a bullet from a self-inflicted wound; the devil would be no more vindictive than the surgeon.

The vital body being the storehouse of the panorama of our life, our own sins and the wrong we have suffered at the hands of others are there inscribed, hence the fifth prayer, “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us,” enunciated the needs of the vital body, and be it noted that this prayer teaches the doctrine of the remission of sins, in the words, FORGIVE US, and the Law of Consequence in the words, AS WE FORGIVE, making our attitude to others the measure of our emancipation.

“Lead us not into temptation” is the prayer for the desire body which is the storehouse of energy, and furnishes incentive to action through desire. An oriental maxim says, “Kill out desire,” and the Orientals furnish good examples of the indolence resultant upon the attempt to do that. “Kill out your temper” is the foolish admonition sometimes given those who lose their temper. Desire or temper is a valuable asset, too valuable to be stunted or killed; the man without desire is like the steel devoid of temper-- of no account. In Revelation, while the six churches are praised, the seventh is utterly anathematized for being “neither hot nor cold,” a wishy-washy community. “The greater the sinner, the greater the saint” is a true adage, for it takes energy to sin and when that energy is turned in the right direction, it is as much of a power for good as previously it was for evil. A man may be good because he cannot summon up sufficient energy to be bad, then he is so good that he is good for nothing, like the Nicolaitanes. While we are weak our desire nature masters us and may lead us into temptation, but as we learn to control our desire nature, our temper, we may guide it in harmony with the laws of God and man.

The guiding power which directs this energy of the desire nature is the mind, hence the seventh prayer, “Deliver us from evil,” is made with regard to the mind.

The animals follow desire blindly and commit no sin. To them there is not evil; that only comes to our cognition by and through the discriminating mind which enables man to see various courses of action and to choose. If he chooses to act in harmony with universal good, he cultivates virtue, if the contrary, he becomes tainted with vice. It should be noted that the much-vaunted “innocence” of a child is not by many means virtue. The child has not yet been tempted and tried, therefore it is innocent. In time, temptations from the desire nature will come to test its mettle, and it depends upon the control of the mind over desire whether it will stand for the right or fall by the wayside. If the mind is strong enough to “deliver us from evil” desires, we have become virtuous, which is a positive quality and even if we fall for a time before we realize our wrong, we acquire virtue as soon as we repent and reform. We exchange negative innocence for the positive quality of virtue.

Thus does the Lord’s Prayer cover the various parts of the human constitution and enunciate the need of the all, showing the marvelous wisdom laid down in that simple formula.

19. The Coming Force --Vril Or What?

So much is written and spoken of the inner worlds from the occult point of view, so much stress is laid upon the fact that we possess higher vehicles, are capable of developing them and functioning consciously in them, that it seems needful to emphasize at times the enormous value of the dense body and of the visible world to which it correlates us, to counteract as far as may be done the disdain with which some people regard the world in which we now live.

Let us rest assured, that there are Great and Exalted Intelligences behind evolution who order all things with a wisdom which neglects no factor, and let us try to understand the aim and object of our present mode of existence. Then we shall soon see that all is well, that there are good and sufficient reasons for our placement in the present phase of concrete existence and for the limitations which result in consequence.

We see that at the present time the Western World is going through a phase of material development and many among us who are grappling with the things of the spirit are prone to look down upon the activities of the ordinary man with a feeling of “thank God that I am holier than you” which is entirely gratuitous.

The much despised “Ordinary Person” on his side looks askance at us who talk with glib familiarity of both heaven and hell, but are not very up to date in our knowledge of material affairs. He has a very strong feeling that it is our first and foremost duty to know something about the material world, to do our duty HERE to the best of our ability before we aim to soar into the clouds. To emphasize his argument he will point to India where the people suffer death by famine yet are too indolent to work; they think of “NIRVANA” and forget present conditions. The Ordinary Person will bid us look at the backward condition of these Orientals and attribute it to their belief in the doctrine of rebirth, which inculcates habitual disregard for the present phase of existence in them. He will then contend that spiritual development, particularly outside the methods of the recognized churches, is detrimental in the highest degree, and he is largely right in his assertion, but there is also a deeper view to be dealt with later.

To develop in a safe and a sane manner we must positively have a correct appreciation of the mission of this world in the divine plan of unfoldment which we call evolution, and we must do our full share of the world’s work. On the other hand it may also be said that occult viewpoint gives a deeper insight and a wider scope for usefulness than the mere surface view. Let us therefore examine the path of advancement in the material world from both viewpoints.

It has been stated in Lecture No. 2 that all things in this visible material world are crystallized thought-forms and an illustration was given of how an architect forms a house in his mind, of how from that thought-form he draws the plans and the workmen build the house. Graham Bell’s imagination crystallized into the telephone, Fulton’s to a steamboat, etc. But of course those ideas were not perfect at once; a great deal of experimental work was necessary before the inventions cited were brought to sufficient efficiency to become useful in life.

If we imagine this world in which we live to be a World of Thought wherein we might form IMAGES like mental pictures, but which would provide no way of concreting our images in metal or wood such as we now use, what would have happened in the case of the telephone or the steamboat? The inventor would have been through with his invention in a trice, there would be no material condition to show the imperfections in his thought and consequently he would not have learned TO THINK RIGHT.

IT IS THE MISSION OF THE CONCRETE MATERIAL WORLD TO MAKE OUR MISTAKES MANIFEST. We are developing an enormous power within ourselves and we have in the dense Physical World the most ideal condition for developing the requisite ability to use it properly. Apart from such ability, and given subtler conditions of matter it would work immense harm. What is that coming force will be seen when a backward glance at the past development has given us the gauge of true perspective.

In the earliest dawn of man’s existence he dealt principally with the SOLIDS; his first implements were such stones, sharp or blunt, as he found ready at hand. Later he commenced to trust himself to the LIQUIDS when propelling his first crude craft on water or to turn the primitive water mill. Still later he learned to use a GAS--wind--as a force of propulsion for ships and mills.

That was an immense advancement; it brought the most distant parts of the world into communication, and widened the scope of man’s knowledge immeasurably, but even the progress attained by the use of air power fades into insignificance before the strides we have made wince we started to use the more ethereal gas--steam power. That has turned the wheels of progress at a rate which leaves us dumb with astonishment. Yet even the wonders accomplished by steam are as nothing when compared to the thousand and one improvements in communication and knowledge development by the utilization of that still finer force--electricity, which circles the globe with a message in fewer seconds than the years it would have required by earlier means of propulsion.

Thus we see that human progress has been accomplished by the use of finer and finer forces and that each time we have learned to utilize a subtler energy than heretofore used we have made a wonderful stride in civilization.

This view is one we have not usually accustomed ourselves to take; we usually associate solidity and strength as if they were synonymous terms, but a little observation will readily show us the fallacy of that idea.

The waves of the sea, which are fluid will raze the decks of a ship if a few moments, twist and bent the strongest iron stanchions as if they were but wires. The winds may blow the masts of a ship overboard in the twinkle of an eye, yet winds are but air, a gas. Water, a fluid, is tearing down the hills of Seattle, Washington, and making the city level at a rate impossible to the solid pick and shovel. When we look at the great locomotives with their extremely heavily built trains and we admire their ponderous bulk, do we ever realize that the reason why they have to be so solidly built is because they are to be acted upon by an invisible elastic gas-steam?

The waterwheel was of no use as a power producer except when in direct contact with a stationary source of energy, a waterfall. Wind power was better, it could be used as a force of propulsion all over the world, but was fickle and uncertain. Steam was more nearly ideal, as it is procurable AT WILL almost ANYWHERE, but required ponderous machinery to be moved around wherever the force is to be used, as best illustrated by the locomotive, which is such a movable power plant. Electricity may be transmitted for many miles by means of little wire and can be used anywhere along that line; it may be stored, bottled in fact, and taken along; it may even be transmitted from place to place without wires along the all-pervading ether.

We have not shown that man’s progress in the past has been accomplished by the utilization of forces of increasing subtlety--water, air, steam, electricity--and that the increasing utility of each of these forces is further enhanced by the facility with which it may be transmitted and utilized at various places. The latest advancement is the transmission of energy from a central source to various points without visible material connection as in the wireless telegraphy.

Having reviewed past accomplishments, it must be evident that the FURTHER PROGRESS OF THE HUMAN RACE DEPENDS UPON THE DISCOVERY AND UTILIZATION OF A YET FINER ENERGY TRANSMISSIBLE WITH STILL GREATER FACILITY THAN EITHER OF THE FORCES YET KNOWN.

What is that new force--what will it accomplish in the advancement of the human race--and along what lines are we to look for its discovery? Such is the natural threefold question, and we shall attempt to answer it.

In his “Coming Race,” Bulwer Lytton gave us an inkling of what that coming force will be. Like all other such stories it has never been taken seriously, but regarded only as the fantastic imagination of a clever writer. Jules Verne’s stories met with a like attitude of admiration for this vivid fancy (?) upon the part of the public, yet how much in them has already been realized? “Around the World in Eighty Days” is too slow for the twentieth century globe trotter. Submarine navigation and bird-like flights are facts today.

In truth, THE HUMAN MIND IS INCAPABLE OF IMAGINING ANYTHING THAT CANNOT BE ACHIEVED. That seems an extravagant statement, but it is not justifiable in view of what has been done? And reverting to our main line of argument, something akin to the VRIL of Bulwer must be discovered before man can take the next great step in advancement. True, great and marvelous discoveries lie ahead of us in the further exploitation of the forces we already possess, but the next GREAT STEP depends upon the discovery of and the preparation for the use of the coming force. Attempts at making the steam engine were made many centuries ago by the ancients before we succeeded in the latter days. Electricity was known in a very small way also by them, but it took a long time to ripen these ideas sufficiently to make them directly available for use; similarly, while we go ahead and exploit these forces we know we must also prepare for the coming force and if we can find it we may be able to find the means of using it the quicker. Let us look a little closer at Bulwer Lytton’s Vril, it may be that beneath the fantastic garb a valuable clue is hidden.

Vril was a force generated WITHIN each of the beings of our story; it did not depend upon outside machinery which cost money and could be had by a favored exclusive few but not by the majority; all without exception possessed this power from birth to death.

That is certainly a yet higher ideal than even a central power station. No need for elevators when everybody levitates at will. No need of street-cars or railways when everybody can move swiftly and easily by his own inherent force; no need of ships when man can move through the air without such cumbersome contrivances as those which move upon the surface of earth and water, and see how much less resistance he will have to overcome who flies through the air as the bird does than if forced to depend upon an airplane or similar contrivance.

Like all other forces Vril could be used as a means of destruction; it was swift in that also, so exceeding care would naturally be required of one who used it. He must have self-control in highest degree, for if he were to give way to temper dire disaster would surely happen. If ever we are to use such a force as that we can see how absolutely essential it will be that we be good and kind and make no enemies. Our lives would be in the hands of others to an extent undreamt of now.

When we look within ourselves to see if it is possible that an energy of that description be incipiently growing, we cannot look very far before we are forced to recognize the fact that a power having vast possibilities in there--Thought-power. Our ideas take shape as mental pictures which we form with great facility and afterwards crystallize into material things in an exceedingly slow and laborious manner as cities, houses, furniture, etc. All that is made by the hand of man is crystallized thought.

Nor should we regard its present slow mode of manifestation from thought to thing as an indication of its possibilities, or allow the fact that it escapes and eludes us to cause dismay. It has been the same way with the other forces we have already harnessed to our wheels of progress. For countless ages the waves of the ocean have wasted energy in beating upon the seashore, but now inventors are beginning to harness them as they have coupled the waterfall to the electric dynamo. For a like period the winds swept the land and sea before man learned to use them as carriers of the commerce of the world by appropriate sailing vessels. For ages steam escaped into the air from the camp kettles of primitive humanity before they learned to concentrate its power and use it in the various industries. In like manner as the steam escaped uselessly from the kettles of olden time does the radiant energy of thought escape from humanity of today and as the steam was utilized by concentrating it, so may also this subtler but enormously more potent thought-power be concentrated and used to do the work of man with a facility impossible of imagination even by comparison with the present forces, for they are merely utilitarian, working in, with and upon already existing things, but THOUGHT-POWER IS A CREATIVE FORCE.

We know how dangerous the other forces are when harnessed and concentrated. While the steam is escaping from the camper’s kettle it can do no serious hurt. Electricity generated by the friction of a belt or by rubbing a piece of amber is no danger to anyone, but when steam is generated in quantities and confined in a steam boiler it may burst its bonds in the hands of an incompetent workman and so may electricity under pressure in a wire kill the one who ignorantly meddles with it. Similarly we may infer that Thought-power misdirected or ignorantly used would have a far more disastrous effect, because it is a much subtler force. Therefore it is necessary that man should be placed in a school were he may learn to use this enormous force in a safe and efficient manner. and whether we realize it or not, the wise teachers who work unseen but potently with humanity have already placed us in this concrete existence, the Physical World. Whether we know it or not, every day, every hour we are here learning the lesson of RIGHT THOUGHT and as we learn it, more and more we shall become creatures like our Father in Heaven.

Thus we see what a great mistake it is to despise this concrete existence and live in the clouds of hopes and aspirations which have to do with the higher life and the higher worlds to the neglect of our duties in the present concrete material life.

It should be equally plain, however, that it is also wrong to confine ourselves to the purely material phase of life to the exclusion of the spiritual side of our nature. Extremes are dangerous. If we recognize the two poles of our being, and endeavor to guide our material existence by the light of our spiritual perception we shall learn the lessons so wonderfully provided for us in the school of experience in a far shorter time than required if we go to either of the extremes.

What are the results of the following one or the other of the extremes may be seen by a comparison, from the occult viewpoint, of the Hindus with the Western World.

As stated before, people of a materialistic tendency in order to justify their aloofness from spiritual affairs will point to countries and peoples which are going in that direction, particularly to India, bid us note the backward state of the Hindus, the indolence of the Oriental and attribute it to their religious trend. Others have tried to defend them on the grounds that they are massed together in an arid mountainous country that is unable to feed the millions that populate it and hence disease and famine are inevitable. They point to the scorching sun and the devastating floods of India and contrast them with our own fertile, thinly populated land where abundance is the portion of all, and they almost imply that it is an injustice on the part of God to give to one what he denies to another who is more worthy in the opinion of such critics.

That the condition of the Hindus is such depicted, and even worse than we ever get to know, is a safe assertion. Looking at life from the ordinary Western standpoint of one life only, those people are really to be pitied as victims of the caprice of an unjust God, but when we understand the Laws of Consequence and Rebirth and the activities carried on in the second heaven, we shall readily comprehend the spiritual reason for the different conditions of nations as well as of individuals.

The scorching sun, the arid condition of the soil of India, and the destructive floods are only effects produced in the material world by causes in the spiritual realms as are all other acts of nature and man. There is a spiritual explanation to every phenomenon that goes deeper to the roots than the material facts, there is a spiritual reason for the poverty and the climatic conditions which cause them in India as well as there is a deep purpose in our prosperity. To get at that reason it is necessary to keep clearly in mind the distinction between the body and the Spirit that inhabits it. All Spirits are alike except that some have developed faster than others. The Races are only bodies created by the Spirits and as a class of Spirits evolves it goes from race to race. The most accomplished do the pioneer work and bring the race to its highest perfection. When that is attained they form a new race and the race bodies which they have discarded are taken in turn by less developed Spirits and therefore commence to degenerate. When thus, these become useless to them also, they advance and turn the race bodies over to another and still lower class of Spirits. Under their influence the race degenerates still further and at last, when there is no Spirit so backward that it can gain experience by using the degenerate form any more, the women become sterile and the race does out. It has served its purpose.

We of the Western nations at one time inhabited Hindu bodies; that was the time when India was in its glory, when the race was evolving both physically and spiritually. That was in the so-called GOLDEN AGE, when the sacred writings came into existence, when the great temples were built, when the spiritual and material evolution of India was at its height.

But man was destined to master the material world to the full; while he thought of himself as a Spirit principally and had an absolute and unswerving faith in the continuity of life; while he knew positively that birth follows death as surely as death follows birth, he also felt that there was endless time to progress in, and therefore made only indifferent efforts to develop the resources of the material world.

Therefore it was necessary that he should forget for a time the doctrine of rebirth and think of the life he was living as the only one so that he might concentrate all his efforts on making the most of his opportunities for material advancement. The way that was accomplished has been described in the earlier lectures and more fully in THE ROSICRUCIAN COSMO-CONCEPTION.

Thus we (the Spirits now inhabiting the Western race-bodies) left the Hindu bodies and built in turn the bodies of the succeeding races, gradually attaining higher and higher levels of material development, during Earth-life, and as the life in heaven between incarnations is an outcome of a previous life and a preparation for the next, where we build out future bodies and our future country under the direction of the great Creative Hierarchies as described in Lecture No 6., we have gradually built our present highly organized bodies; our rich and beautiful country with its magnificent natural resources, its propitious climate, etc., and are thus enjoying the fruits of our work in previous existences in heaven and on Earth.

The Hindu race was the first in the Aryan epoch; it has been degenerating ever since we left it, is now inhabited by the most backward Spirits born into Aryan bodies, and as we implanted such strong spiritual tendencies in them, heredity has yet preserved that trait in the Hindu bodies so that they are more amenable to spiritual impacts than the more material bodies of the later races, yet it is not as high an order of spirituality as expressed when we were in the Hindu bodies; the bodies have degenerated and the Spirits are less evolved than we, sot hat the race distinguishes itself more by a highly analytical mind than by true spirituality.

Having retained a full realization of, and an implicit faith in the doctrine of rebirth which the Westerner has lost TEMPORARILY, and being backward, the Hindus are naturally indolent and do not seek to improve their physical conditions in Earth-life nor between incarnations. As a consequence the country also has degenerated with the bodies and the resulting suffering has for its purpose to awaken them to the necessity of concentrating on material things that they may learn to conquer the Earth as we are doing; they are to follow in our footsteps and forget for a time their spiritual being, in order to master the important lessons of this material world. Lack of worldly goods is to drive them to abandon the spiritual side of their development and take up the material phase. Our plenitude and material prosperity has the opposite end in view; it is destined to cause in us the nausea of satiety, to drive us to a realization of the worthlessness of material things, to cause us to turn anew to the spiritual, and in the degree that new inventions and better means of distribution make life easier, will the desire for the higher life overrule the desire for worldly success.

Our concentration upon material things, and our consequent worldly success, has gradually given us such an impetus in the material direction than we are forgetting our spiritual nature as a superstitious fallacy exploded by scientific facts.

Our “scientific” ultra-materialistic attitude is the very opposite to the attitude of the Hindus and as extremes meet, the ultra-materialism of Western thought works destructively on Western lands as Oriental indolence has laid waste the East Indies. There is a connection between materialism and seismic and other disturbances.

In THE ROSICRUCIAN COSMO-CONCEPTION a chapter has been devoted to the description of the different layers of the Earth, so far as that is allowed and possible without initiation, Suffice it here to say that there are nine such layers of different thicknesses and that the core forms a tenth part. This is the seat of the consciousness of the Earth-Spirit.

It is a fact that is patent to the occult investigator that this Earth-Spirit feels all we do. When in the autumn the harvester mows down the ripened grain, there is a feeling of pleasure, of joy in having brought forth, a feeling akin to that felt by the cow when milk is taken from its bursting udders by its offspring. When flowers are plucked it is the same, but when trees or plants are pulled out by the roots the Earth- spirit experiences pain, for the plant kingdom is to it what the hair is to our body.

The Earth-Spirit is not affected by our acts alone, however; it feels our mental attitude as well. There is one particular layer in the Earth that reflects our passions, feelings, and emotions in a most startling manner, and causes them to react upon us as storm, flood, and earthquake.

Materialism causes volcanic eruptions, and the more spiritual conditions prevail, the more such cataclysmic events will cease to startle the World.

That is a statement hard to verify by the ordinary man, and would not have been made, were it not possible to give at least circumstantial evidence of its verity. This evidence is derived from a study of the trend of thought at the times when the eruptions of Vesuvius have occurred. The list of the cataclysms which have taken place in our era begin with the eruption which destroyed Herculaneum and Pompeii, where Pliny the Elder perished A.D. 79; then, 203, 472, 512, 652, 982, 1036, 1158, 1500, 1631, 1737, 1794, 1822, 1855, 1872, 1885, 1891, 1906.

There have been 18 eruptions in 1900 years. The first half (nine) occurred in 1600 years, during the time of the so-called “dark ages,” when man was ignorant and superstitious enough to believe in God and even in elves, fairies, and such foolishness.

Since the advent of modern science has brought enlightenment into the Western World, demonstrated the superfluity of God, and taught us that we are the highest intelligence in the cosmos, “that the brain is a gland which secretes thoughts as the liver secretes bile,” “that we talk with the same force that we use to think,” and much more of the same nature, these cataclysmic reactions have been correspondingly numerous. There have been nine eruptions during the 300 years since modern science has labored for our enlightenment as against the other nine catastrophes which occurred in the “dark ages” in 1600 years. The first six occurred in the first thousand years of our era, the last five within a period of 51 years. If we number the strides taken by science in the last century, and particularly in the last sixty years, the inference is obvious that as materialism increases the volcanic eruptions become more numerous; the more it spreads the more points on the Earth will become affected.

The above is not to be understood to mean that science is detrimental in the eyes of the occultists; it has its legitimate places as an educator of the human race, but where it divorces itself from religion and becomes materialistic, as has been the case in modern times, it becomes a menace to humanity. There was a time when religion, art, and science were united and taught in the mystery-temples, even so late as in Greece, but as this is the plane of separateness and specialization, they have been purposely separated for a time, in order that they might attain a greater perfection than would have been possible if they had remained united. In due time they will all three be united again; and then, and only then, will we get perfect satisfaction through the heart, the intellect, and the senses. The heart will enjoy the religious ceremonial aspect, the intellect will be satisfied by the scientific side, and the esthetic side of man’s nature will be catered to by the various arts as they will be employed in the temple-service of the future.

When man has spiritualized his being under the influence of scientific and artistic religion of the future day he will have learned self-control and have become unselfishly helpful to his fellow-being; he will then be a safe guardian of the THOUGHT-POWER, whereby he will be able to form accurate IDEAS which will be immediately fit to crystallize into useful THINGS. This will be accomplished by means of the larynx, which will speak the creative WORD.

All things in Nature were spoken into existence by the WORD which was made flesh (John 1). Sound or spoken Thought will be our next force in manifestation, a force that will make us creative God-men when through our present schooling we have fitted ourselves to use such an enormous power for the good of all, regardless of self-interest.

20. Fellowship And The Coming Race

Forth from little motes in chaos

We have come to what we are;

No hidden force can stay us,

We shall climb from star to star.

We will break away the fetters

That have bound us heretofore—

For the world today is better

Than it ever was before.

Onward, Upward, Forever! is the battle cry of the conquering Spirit. Ever since “their eyes opened” the human race has been consciously imbued with that divine discontent which is our means of advancement upon the path of evolution. That is true of the great majority at least; there are some who have lagged and “kicked against the pricks,” but continued prodding will and must eventually bring them to the goal of perfection and reunion with God. A “lost soul” is an impossible conception when we consider that we are all a part of God, IN whom as an actual fact “we live and move and have our being.” We could not exist outside God, in a hell, and if a single soul were lost, that would mean that a part of God would be lost.

But then, it may be asked, what may be the meaning of the number of passages which in the New Testament speak of “everlasting” salvation and condemnation? The passages are easily understood when properly illuminated by a directory and a knowledge of the occult teaching.

In the first place such meaning hinges upon the definition of the word “everlasting.” Like all other words in the English Version it is translated from Greek. The original word is “AIONIAN.” By referring to Liddel & Scott’s Greek dictionary it will be seen that this word has many meanings: “An indefinite period of time,” “an age,” “a lifetime,” as for instance when Paul used it in his letter to Philemon to whom he returned Onesimus, a slave who had become converted, with the words: “For perhaps he therefore departed for a season that thou shouldst receive him FOREVER” (verse 15). The word “forever” is a translation of the very same word AIONIAN, which is rendered “everlasting” in connection with punishment or salvation, and as Onesimus and Philemon were both moral men the word AIONIAN must necessarily mean something different from what we usually have in mind when we say “everlasting.” In the case cited it cannot mean a more protracted period than part of a lifetime.

As soon as we understand that this word does not mean ETERNITY, but only an age of indefinite duration, a period of time which has both beginning and end, these passages appear in a vastly different light; instead of EVERLASTING salvation or condemnation--AGE-lasting salvation or condemnation. What does it mean?

In previous lectures we have heard how man started his evolution in the present dense condition in the Polarian Epoch where he made the first attempt at the construction of a body of chemical matter. The quality of this body is inertia. In the Bible he is called Adam. The Hebrew word Admah means “FIRM GROUND” and Josephus’ rendering “RED EARTH” is also illuminating, for that which was then the human body was formed from the same chemical matter which is the FIRM GROUND today, but at that time it was not as solid nor as cool as the earth’s crust of today. The Earth was just coming out of Chaos then and was in a red glow, later to become brilliantly luminous fire mist. In the Hyperborean Epoch that luminosity was attained and man-in-the-making commenced the construction of his vital body, possessing the power to move the dense body.

In the Lemurian Epoch he evolved a desire body, and desire to give incentive to action. In the Atlantean Epoch the mind was added to act as a brake on impulse. Cunning is its inherent quality, but in our present Aryan Epoch the Ego manifests through the mind, evolving the faculty of reason to supersede cunning.

Thus, in each of the previous ages a vehicle having a certain faculty or quality has been evolved to a certain stage of completion, just as in a school the children pass onwards from grade to grade year after year, evolving the faculty of reading, of writing, etc., to a certain stage in each grade.

But there are some who fail in each class every year, there are some who are “weighed and found wanting” in the requisite attainment of knowledge necessary for promotion to a higher grade. Therefore they are CONDEMNED to remain in the same class for another year, to gain the necessary proficiency to enter a new class and obtain more advanced instruction.

Those who have diligently endeavored to master their lessons are SAVED from that necessity and are told to “enter into” a new class. They have not attained once and for all; in the new class there are new lessons to be learned, and unless each one keeps on in patient and persistent well- doing he will certainly be condemned when the next examination comes.

As in the school for children, so in the school of life, constant endeavor is the price of promotion and in each stage there have been those who have lagged behind. We of the Western World are the pioneers, generally speaking, and the other races: brown, yellow, and black, are stragglers at varying stages of inefficiency; nevertheless they are all advancing and they will sometime reach our stage of attainment and we shall have gone higher--if we continue to be diligent.

To understand this matter properly it is necessary to differentiate clearly between the race-bodies and the Spirits who inhabit them. The pioneers are always given race-bodies soft, pliable, and flexible, responsive and capable of attaining a certain height in evolution. Under the sway of the pioneer Spirits the race or nation evolves as far as it may, and when it has reached its zenith of attainment the pioneers leave it to the next class of stragglers and then commences the decline of the race as it is taken in turn by class after class of Spirits of increasingly inferior abilities, until at last it has degenerated so low that there are not Spirits belonging to our human life-wave backward enough to progress by birth in such bodies. Then the women cease to be fruitful, for no fertilizing seed-atoms are deposited and the race dies out.

Such is the divine plan of advancement, but here as everywhere man has the equally divine prerogative of bringing disorder in nature for a time, and so attach himself to a race that he may resist for ages the efforts of the Great Leaders to help him progress, as we shall see has been the case with a certain class of Spirits.

Considering the fact that the task of the Aryan races is to evolve reason, and that we of the Western World are the most Advanced, it is not at all surprising that we analyze everything, religion included. Religion like all else is in a state of growth and becoming, and as the present work of the Western World is principally along material lines its religious teachings are not yet so clearly enunciated as in some of the Eastern religions. The result is that some of the investigators scoff at the Christian teachings, and others have been led to forsake the Christian religion and have adopted Eastern systems.

From the occult standpoint that is a retrogression. The Great Recording Angels who have charge of our present evolution give to each nation the religion suited to its stage of growth, and we may rest assured that those Great Intelligences make no mistakes. They have given to us the Bible containing both the Jewish and the Christian Religions. One would not have been enough, BOTH are absolutely necessary to our evolution as we shall see when we consider the matter thoroughly. When we have done that we shall also find that of all the religious systems in the world, this is positively the only one suited to the needs of the Western World, the only one which is capable of making us “wise into salvation” and enable us to “enter into” the “new heaven and the new earth”; the coming age and the coming race.

As previously stated, we evolved a dense, a vital, and a desire body during the Polarian, Hyperborean, and Lemurian Epoch, but the Spirit had not yet drawn into its vehicles, it hovered outside much as the Group Spirits of the animals do, for there was no connecting mind whereby it could link itself with its vehicles.

In the latter part of the Lemurian Epoch there was a small part of this nascent humanity who were sufficiently advanced so that a germinal mind could be given them and the Spirit could commence slowly to draw into its vehicles. On that account these people were different from all the rest of the to-be-human beings of that time, THEY WERE THE FIRST RACE, a chosen people, selected from the rest on account of special fitness to receive in germ the mind which was to be evolved during the coming Atlantean Epoch.

There are no sudden processes in Nature, however; the Spirit did not draw into its vehicles in a day. It took ages, and was not fully accomplished until the middle of the Atlantean Epoch. In the meantime the mind had also been growing, and for reasons more clearly given in Lectures No. 13 and 14, it coalesced with the desire body which it ruled, as a sort of animal-soul by cunning, using brain rather than brawn to further its ends.

In the Polarian Epoch the Earth was a dark heated mass, “without (definite) form and void.” In the Hyperborean Epoch “God said, Let there be light,” and the dark mass became a luminous fire mist. In the Lemurian Epoch the contact of the heated fire mist with the cold of outside space produced moisture, dense water nearest the fiery core which, being heated, rushed outwards as steam to be cooled and fall back to the central source of heat. Thus “God divided the waters from the waters,” the dense water from the steam.

In that manner incrustations commenced to form in the latter part of Lemuria and upon such crust islands man lived in an atmosphere of fire-fog.

In the early Atlantean Epoch the Earth become fully incrusted and from this damp Earth “there went up a mist from the ground and watered the whole face of the earth.”

This mist grew less and less dense and its extension above the surface of the Earth diminished gradually until at last it ceased to envelop the human beings, who them began to see the clear atmosphere around them at about the same time that the Spirit had drawn fully into its vehicles.

Again there were some who had advanced further than others and were therefore “a chosen people” to become the forbears of a people “multitudinous as the sands upon the seashore” in a “promised land.”

At that time the mist had condensed into water which gradually flooded the valley of Atlantis, situated between the present Europe and America, so it became necessary for “God’s people” to migrate and they were led out of the doomed Atlantis, as variously related in he stories of Noah who first saw the rainbow (for that phenomenon was impossible in the foggy Atlantean atmosphere), and of Moses who led “the chosen people” through the waters of the Red Sea where Pharaoh or the wicked Atlantean kings perished.

The chosen people were the ORIGINAL Semites, the fifth of the Atlantean Races. There were no races prior to the one spoken of in the latter part of the Lemurian Epoch. In the Atlantean Epoch there were seven; seven more there will have been before our present Aryan Epoch is ended and there will be one in the beginning of the Sixth Epoch, which the Rosicrucians call the “New Galilee,” a total of sixteen races.

During Periods, Revolutions, and other Epochs there is such an abundance of time that the Great Leaders manage to get nearly all the spirits in their charge through, but during the periods in which the sixteen races are born and die, conditions are dense and the time of their rise and fall is comparatively very brief so that there is grave danger to the Spirits who may become fettered and crystallized in the dense race-bodies and fail to progress. Salvation is therefore to be striven for more earnestly at this time, for the possibility of condemnation is greater during the Spirits’ passage through the sixteen aces than at any other time. Therefore Occultists call these races THE SIXTEEN PATHS TO DESTRUCTION, and they are a very serious concern to the Great Leaders of humanity.

Race pertains to the body, and when a new race is to be bred a Great Leader selects the most likely among the old stock and regulates their marriage relations with a view to produce the right kind of a body for the coming race. When his “chosen people” marry contrary to his directions they frustrate his object. In the earlier epochs before man become endowed with a mind it was easy to lead him, but at the time when the Original Semites were “chosen” they had already become sufficiently evolved to resent a curb on their liberty; besides, that curb must not be too strong, for it was necessary that they should have a certain amount of free will rather than remain God-guided automatons.

Therefore it was hard to guide such a “stiff-necked people,” and many of “the sons of God married the daughters of men” and frustrated the designs of their leader. It was therefore necessary to segregate them and their offspring from the faithful who were led away from them and thus became “lost” in the estimation of the rebels who do not realize to this day that in reality they are the “lost” ones and are no longer a chosen people.

The faithful ones were secluded in Central Asia and there become the forbears of the Aryan races which have merged thence and are now inhabiting “the promised land,” not insignificant Palestine, but the whole earth as now constituted. The rebels are the Jews.

In the coming Sixth Epoch there are to be no races. Universal Brotherhood is to obtain again, and therefore a new “chosen people” must be taken out to usher in the new dispensation; but now man has progressed so far that no outside influence may be exerted to coerce him, and therefore each must choose himself as dictated to from within; and as he is now a reasoning, intellectual being, what better method could be devised than to bring before him the awful example of how a former pioneer-race, a chosen people, had frustrated the designs for their advancement and had become the “lost sheep of Israel”?

Surely, example is a better teacher than precept, and as these people had kept a record of their choosing and of the dealing of their leader with then, what better could be done than to give to the pioneer-race, whence the nucleus for the coming race is to come, that record? It does not matter that these rebels still think themselves “a chosen people,” or that their records have been mutilated; the lesson is as valid, the example is an awful one, and it is needful for us, for, as Paul says, “If the word spoken by the angels was steadfast, and every transgression and disobedience received a just recompense of reward; how shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation; which at the first began to be spoken by the Lord?” The Christian religion as popularly expounded suffices for the spiritual needs of the great majority of the Western people who are yet working out the material phase of evolution and for those who desire to be among the pioneer nucleus for the coming race it is but necessary to seek and they shall find the esoteric Christianity which will be the universal religion of the Sixth Epoch, superseding the race-religions of Hinduism, Buddhism. Judaism, etc., as Universal Brotherhood will supersede races and nations.

To realize properly the dreadful example of the Jews it must be noted that they have from the beginning become imbued with the idea of being a chosen people, and all other people have been despised by them as Gentiles. Thus, instead of progressing through the races this class of spirits have incarnated again and again in the Jewish race-bodies and have become so crystallized in them that they cannot progress along with the rest of the human race, if they keep on. They were lost by marrying outside the race, and it is probable that at that time there came to them a slight realization of their mistake so that since they have persistently married within their own tribes. The Great Leaders in evolution have tried to help them by exiling them repeatedly among other nations, but in vain; they have always refused to amalgamate, and again and again they have returned to their arid land, happy if they could but shut themselves away from others. Therefore, as a last resort, when the Great Leader Christ Jesus, came to teach that Universal Brotherhood is to supersede nations and tribes He went to those who needed it most, the crystallized Jewish people. Other people may stand lower in the scale of evolution, but none were or are “lost” in the same dreadful sense as they. All other Spirits are progressing from race to race, they alone are continually reborn as Jews, and in time they will be behind all others; may even have to go into Chaos when they have been left too far behind, and they will then have to take up their progression when a future evolution has advanced sufficiently to accord them the necessary facility, as probably is the case with the Lucifer spirits.

To save them from such a fate Jesus was born among them. A stranger could certainly not have helped them, him they would have despised, so he was born among them as Booker T. Washington has been born among the Negroes to help them, for being one of their own from the standpoint of color he can help them as no one in a white body can, and it was for a similar reason thought that the Jews might accept the teachings of Christ Jesus if they could be brought to regard these teachings as coming from one who seemed a Jew. Thus it was said that “He came to his own,” but alas, “they choose Barabbas” and crucified Christ Jesus.

That was the last straw; the Great Leaders saw that henceforth it would be useless to make further attempts to save them in a body. Therefore the Jews have been scattered over the face of the earth, a people without a country. In spite of all, such is the tenacity with which these spirits hold on to their race, that despite all persecutions they are as much Jews as ever, they despise their neighbors as Gentiles yet, and are therefore in turn hated and despised. Besides, they are strongly imbued with the Atlantean faculty of cunning, and that is what holds them back more than anything else. They do not want to amalgamate now any more than they have always wanted to, so far as the Jews of Europe and Asia are concerned, but in America there is now a distinctly observable falling off from Orthodoxy, particularly among the younger generation of Jews. More and more they are marrying among the other nationalities fathered here in the “melting-pot” where the nations are being welded together to form a new race having all the best qualities of all the different race-bodies. In time, as they come here in greater numbers these Jews will do their share and bring their quota of mixed children in the world, furnishing the excarnate Jewish Spirits bodies having less and less of the Jewish race characteristics, and in time these Spirits will be saved by marrying into a higher race as they were temporarily “lost” by marrying into an inferior nation.

As the Lemurians evolved DESIRE through the desire body, the Atlanteans evolved CUNNING through the mind. We are evolving reason by the activity of the Ego which is the threefold Spirit acting solely through its outermost veil, the Human Spirit, and in the Sixth Epoch the Life-Spirit will implant and ripen the faculties of INTUITION and LOVE. Those who aspire to become the pioneers of the coming race must therefore strive to cultivate these faculties within themselves.

As in former cases, the breeding of a race means generation and at the present time that is performed through passion rather than love. Marriages are made for convenience, a home, or other ulterior considerations. Therefore so many who desire to live the higher life seek to escape marriage and parenthood; which is a great mistake, for of all people these who have become imbued with a higher knowledge are the best fitted for the duty of bringing up children; they can best control passion and perform the generative act from love, as a sacrifice laid upon the altar of humanity.

In the coming race the fellowship and this love will also extend to our younger brothers--the animals. Instead of doing as we are at present, hunting, killing, and often tormenting them, we shall care for them and win their confidence. Thus all the glorious prophecies will come into effect. Men will beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning-hooks, they will sit each one under his fig tree and eat the fruit thereof, there will then be peace on earth and good will among men.

It is our privilege to help usher in that glorious age. The age is ready when we are. There is no outside force to bring it about, there is not exterior leader to be expected till a sufficient number have commenced to LIVE Brotherhood. It is vain to look for a second Coming of Christ in any other way than by making ourselves ready to receive Him, for it has been truly said of that coming that “the day and the hour knoweth no man.” It may be long or it may be short, there is no fixed time. As we live lives of selfishness, indulge in passion or vice, we retard His coming, and vice versa do we hasten it by living lives of love that lighten the burdens and bear the sorrows of others. Only when the Christ has been formed within can He be perceived without, for—

Through Christ a thousand times in Bethlehem be born

And not within thyself, they soul will be forlorn.

The Cross on Golgotha thou lookest to in vain

Unless within thyself it be set up again.

THE END

The Rosicrucian Christianity Lectures

Max Heindel

Table of Contents

Foreword

1. The Riddle Of Life And Death

2. Where Are The Dead?

3. Spiritual Sight And The Spiritual Worlds

4. Sleep, Dreams, Trance, Hypnotism, Mediumship And Insanity

5. Death: And Life In Purgatory

6. Life And Activity In Heaven

7. Birth: A Fourfold Event

8. The Science Of Nutrition, Health, And Protracted Youth

9. The Astronomical Allegories Of The Bible

10. Astrology: Its Scope And Limitations

11. Spiritual Sight And Insight

12. Parsifal: Wagner’s Famous Mystic Music Drama

13. The Angels As Factors In Evolution

14. Lucifer, Tempter Or Benefactor Or Both?Origin And Mission Of Sorrow And Pain

15. The Mystery Of Golgotha And The Cleansing Blood

16. The Star Of Bethlehem: A Mystic Fact

17. The Mystery Of The Holy Grail

18. The Lord’s Prayer

19. The Coming Force --Vril Or What?

20. Fellowship And The Coming Race

14. Lucifer, Tempter Or Benefactor Or Both?
Origin And Mission Of Sorrow And Pain