1915_07_Jul Rays from the Rose Cross.pdf

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THE

KEYNOTE OF CHRISTIANITY

A Talk in the Pro-Ecclesia

Max Heindel

When Christ stood before Pilate, the latterasked him a question which has been askedin all ages ever since man began to seek forknowledge upon the Cosmic problem,namely: What is truth? The bible answers

the question by saying, Thy word is truth.And when we turn to that wonderful mysticchapter of the Gospel of John we read thatIn the beginning was the Word, and theWord was with God, and the Word was God,

without it was not anything made that wasmade, in it was Life, we have a wonderfulfood for meditation upon these synonymousmeanings and relationship of Truth, Godand Life.

The Mystic Light* * * * * *

Vol. 3 Oceanside July 1915 California No 3

Subscription: $1.00 per year; single copies 10c in the U.S.; Canada $1.25 per year and England$1.50 per year post free.

Formerly Echoes from Mt. Ecclesia, and entered under that name as second class matter Nov. 3rd,1913 at the Post Office of Oceanside, California, under the Act of August 24th, 1912.


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A great obstacle to the majority of truthseekers is that they aim to find some faithonce for all delivered, complete and

unchanging. They fail to see that truth is theWord of God. The first syllable of the cre-ative fiat was spoken at the beginning ofEvolution, and every word in that creativefiat which has since sounded for our uplift islike the words of a sentence slowly unfold-ing the meaning of the speaker.

It is still sounding the keynote of alladvancement, and the whole Word will nothave been spoken, the sentence completedand Truth revealed to us in its fullness, untilour own career of spiritual unfoldment hasgiven us the requisite spiritual power tounderstand Truth in the ultimate.

Thus we see that the great creative wordof truth and life is reverberating in the uni-verse today, upholding and sustainingeverything that is and revealing to us asgreat a measure of truth as we are capable

now of comprehending. It is our duty toendeavor to understand this divine truth tothe best of our ability so that we may liveit and fit in with the divine plan, and thatwe are to keep our minds in a state of flex-ibility so that as greater and nobler visionsof Truth unfold themselves before our spir-itual eye, we may be prepared to take upthe new, leaving the old behind, as theNautilus spoken of by Oliver Wendell

Holmes, which builds its little chamber,then one a little larger and so on, untilfinally it leaves the outgrown shell for anew evolution. So let it also be ourendeavor to:

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 lifes

unresting sea!

In pursuance of this divine policy of suit-ing the truth to our capacity for understand-

ing, different religions were given tohumanity at various times, each one fitted tothat particular class of people who were togrow thereby. To the Chinese cameConfucianism, to the Hindus was firsttaught the doctrine of Trinity in Unity:Brahma, Vishnu, and Sivathe creator, thepreserver, and the destroyer were aspects ofthe one all-inclusive Deity and analogous toour own Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Thencame Buddhism, which has been called areligion without a God because it empha-sizes particularly the responsibility of manfor his own conditions.

Ask naught of the Helpless Gods with

prayer or hymn,

Nor bribe with blood, nor feed with fruit

or cake.

Within yourselves deliverance must be

sought,

Each man his prison makes,

Each has such powers as the loftiest ones,

Nay for with gods around, above, below,

And with all things and whatsoever

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breathes

Act maketh Joy or Woe.

As Hinduism affirms the existence ofdivine power above man, so Buddhismaffirms the divinity of man himself. We findalso that Moses the divine leader whoguides a people toward the same attainment,similarly emphasizes this in the so-calledSong of Moses, where he calls their atten-tion to how they have previously been ledby the divine powers, but from thenceforththey are given choice and prerogative thatthey may shape their own destiny.

But he also tells them that they will beheld responsible for the consequences oftheir acts under the laws given by theirdivine, but thenceforth invisible, ruler.Gradually, other religions are evolved inEgypt, Persia, Greece, and Rome; also theScandinavian countries in the northreceived their religious system, foreshadow-

ing in a great measure the latest and themost sublime religion of all, namely theWestern ReligionChristianity.

We have just been celebrating the close ofthe cosmic drama, which recurs annually;the commencement being the mystic birth atChristmas, and the mystic death at Easter,its close. And just before the final act ofcrucifixion in the drama, as portrayed in theGospel, we find the Christ partaking of the

last supper with His disciples. It is statedthat then he took the bread and broke it andgave them to eat saying, This is my body.He also took the wine and they all drank ofthat mystic blood. Then came the injunction

which we will particularly note, namely:This do in Remembrance of Me, until ICome.

As a consequence of this injunction wefind that through the centuries Christiancommunities are every Sunday celebratingthe Lords Death till He comes; they areperforming the sacred mystic rite in remem-brance of Him. Let us now suppose that astranger, unacquainted with the Christianreligion and its customs, came to our landand visited church after church, findingeverywhere these devout communities gath-ered around the table in fond remembranceof their Lord and that this was explained tohim. How would the actions of devotion anddevout remembrance on Sunday comparewith the actions of the same communitiesduring the other six days of the week, whenevery mans hand seems to be against thehand of every other, in direct contraventionof the commandment given by that Lord to

whom we seem to pay homage on Sunday.He said also, and in that commandment

He sounded the keynote of Christianity:thou shalt love thy Lord thy God with thywhole heart, and thy whole mind, and thyneighbor as thyself. It is easy to go to theLords table on Sunday to eat and drink withHim, but alas, alas, how difficult to bear Hiscross on Monday, to deny ourselves that wemay serve and help others, instead of so act-

ing, that we more than merit the accusationof the poet, that mans inhumanity to manmakes countless thousand mourn.

The question, What is love? seems diffi-cult to solve. That wonderful thirteenth

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chapter of first Corinthians gives us an idea,but that is rather abstract, and we needsomething more concrete that we may work

upon it and bring it into our lives. Let ustherefore take as an illustration the brother-ly love in a family. There the children arethe offspring of the same parents and thus inthe actual blood-relationship of brothers andsisters. Within the family circle we may findsome excellent material for guidance in thelarger circle of human fellowship.

One of the most striking facts is, thatalthough sometimes brothers and sisters dis-agree and quarrel among themselves, lovestill remains and they will defend one of thefamily to whom they are offended for thetime being, as readily as any of the rest ofthe family. When one is attacked it seems toact as a call to the rest to rally to the rescue,and they always respond in the normal fam-ily. If one of a family does a disgraceful act,his brothers and sisters do not go out and

publish it, nor do they gloat over his misfor-tune, but they seek to cover up his misstepand to find excuses for him, for they feel aunity with him.

So also would we feel toward the largerfamily, if we were imbued with theChristian sense of love. We would seek toexcuse the missteps of those we speak of ascriminals, to help them, to reform ratherthan retaliate, and we would, should, and

ought to feel that what we call their disgraceis really and truly partly ours as well. Whenone of our countrymen achieves a notablefeat, we feel that we have a right to bask inhis honors. We point with pride to all the

notable sons of our nation, and in the nameof consistency we ought also to feel theshame of those who have failed through

conditions in our national family, for we aretruly responsible for their downfall, perhapsmore, even, than for the honors of thosewho achieved. In the little family, when oneof the members shows talent, usually allunite to give him or her, the opportunity andeducation that will develop them, for all areprompted by true brotherly love. We, in thenational family, generally obstruct andsmother the precocious ones under the heelof the economic necessity of earning a liv-ing. We leave them no leisure for attain-ment. O! That we might understand ournational responsibility and seek out bymeans of commissions those of our littlebrothers and sisters who are talented in anydirection so that we might foster these tal-ents to the eternal welfare of humanity aswell as succor those who we now trample

down as criminals.But love does not consist in indiscrimi-

nate giving. It takes into consideration alsothe motive behind the gifts. Many peoplefeed a tramp at their back door because itmakes them uncomfortable to think that afellow being is hungry. That is not love.Sometimes indeed it may be a greater loveto refuse a professional beggar foodeventhough we suffer at the thought of his pre-

sent predicamentif we refuse for the pur-pose of forcing him to seek work andbecome a useful member of society.Indulgence of bad habits in others withoutdiscrimination may indeed lead a brother or



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sister to the downward path. It may there-fore be necessary, even if distasteful andunpleasant, to restrain such ones from fol-

lowing foolish desires. The point is, thatwhatever our actions may seem from asuperficial standpoint, they should be dictat-ed by the keynote of Christianity: Love.For the lack of this, the Church is languish-ing. The light upon the altar is almost goneout; many have left to seek the light else-where.

And therein lies another grave mistake;such conduct is analogous to that of thecrew on a sinking ship which takes to theboats as long as possible to save the ship. Itis all right to seek the light, but there shouldbe the purpose to use it properly. Did youever stand close to a railroad track on a darknight and see a train approaching? Did younotice how the gleaming headlight sends itspowerful rays ahead upon the track for agreat distance? How, when it approaches

you, these rays were blinding to your eyes?How it rushed past, and then in a momentyou were in utter darkness? The light thatshone so bright in front gave not the slight-est ray to the rear and thus the darknessseemed all the more Egyptian. There aremany people who seek the mystic light andacquire a great deal of illumination, but likethe locomotive engine spoken of, they focusand concentrate upon the track which they

themselves are to pursue. They take everypossible care to let no ray stray from thatpath so that every vestige of light may beused to brighten their own way. They workonly to one single purpose; namely, to attain

spiritual powers for themselves. So concen-trated are they upon that object that theynever even suspect the Egyptian darkness

that envelops all the rest of the world. ButChrist commanded us to let our light shine,to place it as a city upon a hill which no onecould fail to see. Never to hide it under abushel, but always to let it illuminate oursurroundings as far as its rays will reach.Only insofar as we follow that injunctionare we justified in seeking the mystic light.We must never keep one single ray for ourown particular use but we should strive dayby day to make ourselves so pure that theremay be no obstruction to the divine lightwithin, that it may flow through us in itsfullness, to all of the human family who aresuffering for Light and Love. Many indeedare called, and few are chosen. Let us takethis to heart and be so zealous for Christ inall our dealings and doings, so that indeedwe may be chosen; chosen to do His work

of Love.

COMMENDATION VS.CONDEMNATION

The Rosicrucian Fellowship lays stressupon actual service to our Fellowmen, andvery often the question is asked, How canI serve my Fellowmen? I do not seem tohave the opportunity. It may therefore be

well to point out that service does not nec-essarily mean a great and spectacular deed,such as getting in front of a runaway horseand carriage and saving the lives of the peo-ple in it, or going into a burning building to



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rescue those who would otherwise burn todeath. Such opportunities do not come toevery one, or every day, but all, without any

exception whatever, have opportunity toserve, no matter what is their environment,and the line of service that we shall indicatein this article is of even greater value thanany one single act of saving someone froma death which must sooner or later be theportion of all, for surely it is of greater valueto help people to live well than to help themmerely to escape death.

It is a deplorable fact that the great major-ity of us are selfish to a degree. We seek thebest there is in life with an almost entire dis-regard of our neighbor. One of the ways thisselfishness expresses itself most frequentlyis in maintaining an attitude of self-satisfac-tion. We are too prone to compare ourefforts, our belongings, our faculties, withthose of others, and where it is manifest thatthey have more than we, that they are more

accomplished, etc., there is a feeling of jeal-ousy and envy that prompts us to speakslight of them or in some way to minimizetheir success or attainments under the delu-sion that by this comparison we arise totheir level, or above it. If, on the other hand,it is manifest that they have not as much aswe, if it appears that their social standing isbeneath our own, and it seems easy to estab-lish their inferiority, we may adopt the

supercilious attitude, we may speak patron-izingly or condescendingly of them, think-ing that by such comparison we raise our-selves greatly above our actual position.

If we hear some one speak evil of another,

we are always ready and prone to believethe very worse because then, by compari-son, we seem to be so much better, so much

holier, and so far exalted above the culprit inthe case. And where merit is so manifestthat praise cannot be withheld, we generallygive it in a most grudging manner, for wefeel as if the praise given to them takesaway from ourselves, or perhaps even exaltsthem above ourselves.

That is the general attitude of the world.However deplorable or lamentable the factmay be, it is a fact, among the great majori-ty of mankindeverybody seems con-cerned to keep everybody else back. This isone of the greatest items of mans inhuman-ity to man, which makes countless thou-sands mourn, and causes them to makeother countless thousands mourn in return.

What greater service can any one renderto everyone else than that of adopting a sys-tematic attitude of encouragement and com-

mendation? There is nothing more true thanthe sentiment of the doggerel, There is somuch good in the worst of us, and so muchbad in the best of us, that it scarcelybehooves any of us to find fault with any ofthe rest of us. In the home, in the shop, inthe office, everywhere, we meet, day by daywith different people, every one of themamenable to a desire for encouragement.

As the sunshine is to the flower, so is an

encouraging word to everybody in theworld. If someone has done well and wespeak a word of appreciation, that word willhelp him or her to do even better the nexttime. If someone has done wrong, or failed,



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a word of sympathy and confidence in theirultimate ability to achieve, or retrieve, willencourage him or her to try again and to

win. Just as surely will the attitude of dis-couragement wither and make a wreck outof the life that might have been saved by aword of cheer. When someone comes alongwith a tale of evil about someone else, bevery slow to believe and be slower still totell anyone else. Endeavor by every meansof persuasion to stop the one who came toyou with the tale from repeating it to others.No good can ever accrue to yourself or toanyone else from listening to and believingin such tales.

This line of service may seem to be veryeasy at the first thought, but you must bearin mind that it will very often require a verygreat deal of self-abnegation to carry on thework because we are all so imbued withselfishness that it is next to impossible formost of us to always put that self away

entirely, and place ourselves in the positionof others and give to them the encourage-ment and commendation for which we our-selves so earnestly long.

But if we persist in this attitude, and carryit out consistently with everyone in ourenvironment, always making it a point tospeak a word of encouragement whereverwe can possibly find an opportunity, weshall presently find that people come to us

not only with their sorrows, but also withtheir joys, and that thus we may gain somerecompense. We shall feel then that wehave had a large share in their attainment,and in all these successes of other people

there will be a joy and a success that legiti-mately belongs to ourselves, a successmoreover that no one can take from us,

something that will go with us beyond thegrave as treasure in heaven.

Let it not be forgotten that every single lit-tle act is engraved upon the seed atom in ourhearts, that the feeling and emotion whichaccompanies that act will react upon us inthe post-mortem existence, and that all the

joy, all the pleasure, all the love that wepour out toward other people will react uponus in the first heaven and give us a sublimeexperience, will inculcate in us a wonderfulfaculty of giving more and more joy to oth-ers, of being of greater and greater service.And let us remember that this is the onlytrue greatness, the only greatness which isworth working for, the greatness that helpsus to be of service. Above everything, evenmore than encouraging others in their work,let us remember the part of the service out-

lined that deals with stopping tales. Whenanyone comes to us with a tale concerningsomeone else, no matter what we may thinkourselves, no matter what may be the justi-fication, repetition does not do any good. Itdoes harm. As a snowball that rolls down amountain accumulates more and moresnow, grows larger and larger, so also thetale which is carried from one mouth toanother becomes exaggerated and much

sorrow and suffering is caused by thetongue of the gossip.

Therefore we can render no greater ser-vice to the parties involved or the communi-ty than endeavoring to get those who carry



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tales of evil to stop the habit. Home havebeen wrecked, communities have been dis-rupted, men have gone to the gallows time

and again, or to a lifelong servitude in someinstitution, which is far worse, because ofidle tales carried about. Therefore we canrender as great a service by refusing to lis-ten to gossip, as by encouraging those whohave failed in their ambition, or commend-ing those who have succeeded. Every dayopportunities are knocking at our door, nomatter where we are or what is our station inlife.

SIDELIGHTS AND VIEWPOINTS

Vita

We often struggle on through life under aprofound misapprehension of some of theclearest truths; truths which, if understood,would help us to solve many deep, perplex-ing problems, and quite clear our mental

skies. To know just how to live, just what tobelieve amid all the bewildering debris ofchanging thought forms, philosophical sys-tems, and religious ideas, is the great prob-lem of today. It is a problem greater thanthe industrial and the social, unless we lookdeep enough to find their roots in the oneuniversal life. These roots bring us all toone planethe spiritual. Not as througherroneous teaching we have understood the

spiritual. Much of our past teaching alongthose lines has led us to regard it as some-thing unreal and vaguethe direct antithe-sis of practical life. As we understand itnow, the sense plane of objective life is the

unreal and the phantasmal.Life and Truth are quite simple, rightly

comprehended. We make them complex by

our illusions and false estimates. Our prej-udices and opinions sway us. We turn ourfaces from the light and amuse ourselveswith our petty toys of sensethe playthings of childish grown-ups. We see somereflected rays of that light in our senseworld of shadowy images. It refracts andfalls in broken gleams here and there on ourplaythings, which we dignify by the nameof business or pleasure. Catching a ray nowand then we fancy, like the foolish childrenwe are, that we see and know.

Self, the personal self, confirms us in ourblind ignorance, for it cries incessantly Me,me. It is so easy to believe that which fallsinto line with our desires. We soon learn toaccept all that self says and worship her inblind frenzy. Here is where all our troublebegins. The beautiful, divine Light is shin-

ing all the time within the centre of ourbeing but we turn our backs upon it andworship our idols. These idols are not evenclay, but mere illusions; so a stupid aspect isgiven to our idolatry.

Evil is merely relative, so the plane onwhich we have arrived settles the questionof our responsibility. The Hottentot is not acriminal according to the higher code ofethics, when he sallies forth to slay. His

moral sense is entirely un-awakened, and hehas no spiritual consciousness whatever. Heis an unevolved or undeveloped creature.Some day he too will awaken; then willbegin his struggle with lifes baffling prob-



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lems. Between him and the intelligenceswho have almost solved these problems lieimmeasurable steps of progress. Each step

taken brings the spiritual consciousnessnearer to its perfect unfoldment, when allthings stand out in their true relations in theclear, white light of truth.

The child is not fully accountable for hislapses until his reason develops. Thegrown-up children of our humanity are onlyrelatively guilty when producing discord inthe symphony of life. They beat the drum inthe cantabile movements, play the bugle inthe low toned reveries, and when the motiverequires a reverent hush, they pound thekeys of life in mad frenzy. Naturally, thehigher souls shiver in agony. But the agonyis a part of the universal pain which thehigher souls must share with all humanity.We do not hold these child souls whollyresponsible for their share in increasing theearths misery. They do not know, hence

they act as blind forces, mischievous ele-mentals.

Who, then, is responsible for all the unrestand confusion of life? Chiefly those whobelong to a higher plane but who do not liveand act thereon; those who are supposed tobe the custodians and dispensers of thehigher truths.

In our Western civilization they are thoseprofessing the Christian faithwho are by

virtue of the impulse received from higherspheres, designed to lighten humanitysdarkness.

It is pathetically tragic that many follow-ers of the Christprofessed followers

should be obstructions to the full shining ofthe light. To cast shadows instead of radiat-ing light belongs to another kingdom than

that of Christ. It has put a sword into thehands of the enemy. It has retarded thework that Christ came to do.

Much of the wrong is owing to a very fatalmisapprehension and misconception of thetruth. The Church, having lost so much ofher priceless heritage through worldlinessand sense worship, is really lost in a maze ofgloom and doubt. Often her ministers andteachers are but blind leaders of the blind.Here and there devoted souls hold aloft theirlittle lamps. They have caught some gleamsof truth and, with love for God and human-ity as a controlling force, they make aneffort to raise the standard of living. Theirwork bears witness to their purity of motive,yet often it is marred by an element ofweakness. A touch of sensationalism, ofappeal to spiritual selfishness, of inchoate

teaching, render it less effective than itmight be.

Instead of well rounded lives with themental and spiritual elements balancing,there is emotional hysteria or cold negation.Instead of reason fully developed and pay-ing supreme homage to intuition, the divineinner light, one finds weak wills fed by arti-ficial stimulants and futile vagaries ofthoughtwhich are not thought. One lis-

tens to weak, stereotyped utterances, bor-rowed from various sources, divorced fromtheir context. One shudders at the platitudesrepeated with profound solemnity, plati-tudes whose ineptness condemns them for



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the thinker. They are contented with narrowvision, centered on half truths, while thesoul longs for the wide outlook, the clear

altitudes, the far-off vistas of truth thatnever narrow down to a horizon line.

The Church, as the custodian of the high-er mysteries, should give this truth to thepeople. Otherwise the candlestick will beremoved from its place. There must betorch bearers; the truth must be proclaimed.Those in the vanguard of the race have afearful responsibility, whether in the Churchor out of it. Merely to let the inner lightshine and to dedicate the life to the highestideal of servicewhich is the Christ idealis the next step in the upward path.

IDEAS AND THINGS

By W. A. Rowdan

The best method of developing a faculty isby using it. Thus, if one continually speaks

a strange language, proficiency in andknowledge of the language are the results.However much it is desired to learn, the lan-guage is useless without actual hard work.It is just the same with ideals. Ideals aresplendid and uplifting when in the mentalworld, but their real usefulness is shownwhen they are crystallized into definiteaction in the everyday material world.

Everything material has first existed in the

realm of ideas, of thought, and was broughtdown to its present material condition bydefinite and sequential action. The dreameris the man of ideas and ideals. His work isin the mental world but descends no lower.

His ideas exist only as ideasthey arethoughts without concrete forms, and from apractical point of view useless. The practi-

cal man goes a step further and precipitateshis ideas into hard material objects, and hisideals into sound working methods orschemes.

But when a thought is thus materialized, itloses a certain beauty. It is more pleasing tothink of many things than to actually havethem. Thus, if a man were to read his auto-biography in the form in which most popu-lar novels are written, he would find itextremely pleasant and gratifying. But hewould know that to think in this fashion ofhis life was infinitely more charming thanthe actual experience of his life as actuallyundergone by him.

The dreamer fears to materialize histhoughts in case he loses their charm,although the material gain would be great.He will not prostitute them for material

gain. The practical man has no such scru-ples, having decided that material gainshould be derived from his thoughts. Thepractical man therefore exercises the facultyof carrying out his ideas, and if he should bea helper of humanity, he would be a moreefficient one than the dreamer because ofhis ability to work and help. Of course, if aman is material in the sense of being entire-ly swayed by profit and selfish desires, then

he would be acting wrongly. It is obviousthat correct development in the dreamer andthe material man should be on the linestaught by the Rosicrucian Philosophy; thatis, by developing head and heart equally.



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CONSCIOUSNESS AFTER DEATH ANDRE-BIRTH

Question: How do you know the Ego isconscious after death? Please refer toJob,Chapter 15:10-12, which reads: He knowsnothing till the heavens be no more.

Answer: When you are reading a bookyou do not take everything it contains liter-ally, if the strain of the book is poetical.You see the absurdity of this literal interpre-tation of the Bible when it comes to suchpassages which say that the trees sing orthat the hills dance, for you know that as amatter of actual fact the hills do not dancenor the trees sing and laugh. You enter intothe sentiment of the poet, but discount such

expressions as poetical terms, not meant tobe taken literally. It is similar with otherstatements that are contrary to what is actu-ally known to be the facts. And when onehas evolved the spiritual sight, it is a factpatent to him that consciousness does notbegin with birth nor end with death. In real-ity the waking consciousness in the physicalworld, which we think so paramount andimportant during life, is really very limited

when compared with the spiritual con-sciousness. We are far more consciousbefore birth and after death, because we aremore closely in touch with the spiritualsource of our being in whom is All-con-

sciousness.The Spiritualists and the Society for

Psychological Research have done a greatdeal towards bringing positive evidencebefore the public that there is a continuanceof consciousness after we pass out of thebody. While there has been much fraud inthese demonstrations, there has also been anoverwhelming mass of truth brought out,under conditions that made deceptions ormistakes impossible. Messages have beenreceived from persons who had passed outof this life and they have shown that such astate as that described in this passage fromJob is absolutelynot true. If you will readMr. Heindels first lecture, The Riddle ofLife and Death, and the second one,

Where are the Dead? you will find thequestion of re-birth very thoroughly dis-cussed.

Both biblical and historical instances,such as that of Joan of Arc, the FrenchLiberator, who was an ignorant peasantmaid, but guided by the Spirit voicesintelligently out-maneuvered the EnglishGenerals and brought victory to the Frencharmies, prove that those who pass out of this

life are not in a state of unconsciousness norlose their intelligence to any degree whatever.

Besides, it is not necessary to rely on spir-its from the other side of the veil of death tocommunicate to us the facts of existence

Question Department* * * * * *


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there. Each one of us has latent within him-self or herself a sixth sense which, whencultivated, enables us to see, know, and

function upon that plane of life and exis-tence together with those spirits who havepassed out of the present life. We may thentalk with them, walk with them, and in allthings enter into their life, so that we mayknow for ourselves, without dependingupon anyone else, that the consciousnesswhich we have in life is augmented, if any-thing, by the shuffling-off of this mortalcoil.

It requires exercise and labor, however, toawaken that spiritual faculty and use thatsense, just as it requires time, labor, andapplication to acquire the art of playingupon a piano or making a watch. But every-one has the faculty latent within and maydevelop if he or she so wills. In the courseof time every human being will have thatfaculty, in addition to our present five sens-

es. And that is what is meant inRevelationwhen it says that in the new Heaven andthe new Earth there shall be no death. Jobspeaks of the body, and the present heavens.These pass away, but Revelation speaksabout a New Heaven and a New Earthwherein dwelleth righteousness, and the lastenemy that is conquered is Death. When wehave evolved that spiritual faculty so that itis possible for us at any moment to focus

our vision upon that plane of existencewhere those whom we call dead, are nowliving, we see them as they were before andwe realize that there is in reality no death.That is the best proof.

Question: Can you prove from the Biblethat the Ego is born and re-born till it is fitto be in Gods presence?

Answer: There are some people whobelieve that the Bible is absolutely true,word for word, from cover to cover.Moreover, in controversy they seem toargue as though it had originally been writ-ten in English and every word meant justwhat it said and nothing else. As a matter offact, the Bible has been translated, tran-scribed, edited, and re-edited so many timesthat interpolations have, of course, crept in.Some have been inserted unintentionally,due to the fact that a copyist will make a slipwith the pen occasionally. There have beencases where interpolations were put in tosupport a certain doctrine in which thecopyist believed and which was not clearlyenunciated. Among scholars it is well rec-ognized that only a general outline of theoriginal teachings remains with us today.

In all religions an exoteric side wasalways given to the multitude. This con-tained the more elementary teachings; but adeeper phase was given to those who hadfitted themselves by their life for under-standing the deeper mysteries. We may takethe word of Christ to his disciplesUntoyou it is given to know the mysteries of thekingdom of the heavens but unto these inparablesas an indication that there is a

similar arrangement in the Christian religion.Among these mysteries was the doctrine

of rebirth, which you will see He must havetaught from the following conversation.When He asked them, Who do men say



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that I, the Son of man, am? And theyanswered and said, Some say you are Johnthe Baptist, some Elijah, and some that you

are Jeremiah or one of the Prophets. Thesepersonages had all died and their bodiesmust have decayed in the grave. Yet wefind people believing that Jesus was one ofthem reborn. If this principle of rebirth hadbeen wrong, it would have been his duty asa teacher to have set his disciples right andHe would probably have said: What non-sense; how can I be one of those? They aregone centuries ago. But instead He asks:Who do you say that I am? In the case ofElijah He taught this doctrine outright, forhe said to his disciples concerning John theBaptist, This is Elijah, if you will receiveit. There was no equivocation but a straightforward statement, This is Elijah. Andthis statement was reiterated later on whenthey left the Mount of Transfiguration; foron that occasion Christ said to his disciples:

Elijah has come and they have done to himas they listed; then they knew that he spokeof John the Baptist.

In theRosicrucian Cosmo-Conception, onpage 167, you will find the logical reasonwhy this doctrine has been suppressed in theintervening centuriesalso the means thatwere taken to blot it from consciousness.

Question: If, as you say, Jesus body was

scattered to the four winds at the time ofburial, how then did Thomas touch Jesusafter death? How did He say, Handle meand see, for a spirit has not flesh and bonesas ye see me have? Later on it is said that

he ate fish and honey. Is it possible for aspirit without a fleshly body to eat and to betouched?

Answer: This question is one that occursvery often and we might refer you to theback files where it has been answered. Butas so many new people come in constantly,it seems that perhaps it is better to take it upanew. As the writer never refers to backnumbers himself, he will each time take upthese matters from a different angle whichmay give new points, even to those whohave had them answered before, and thusthe reiteration will not be without benefit.

Our latest investigations indicate thatwhere a man spiritualizes his vehicles, theconstitution of the vital body, made of ether,is most materially changed. In the ordinaryman there is always a preponderance of thetwo lower ethersthe chemical and vitaletherswhich have to do with the up-build-ing and propagation of the physical body,

and a minimum of the light and of thereflecting ethers, which are concerned withsense perception and the higher spiritualqualities. After death, the body of the ordi-nary man is laid in the grave and the vitalbody hovers about two feet above themound, gradually disintegrating. The densebody disintegrates simultaneously; butwhen we say it decays, we really mean thatit becomes much more alive than it was

while the man inhabited it, for each littlemolecule is now taken charge of by a sepa-rate individual life. It begins to associatewith its neighbors; the unity of one individ-ual life is superseded by a community of



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many lives. Therefore we speak of such adecaying corpse as alive with worms. Thedenser and more gross this vehicle is, the

longer time it will require for disintegration,because the vital body hovering above has atenacious magnetic hold that keeps thedense molecules in check. The two higherethers vibrate at a much more rapid ratethan the lower, and where a man by spiritu-al thoughts has massed around him a greatvolume of this ether, which then composeshis vital body, the vibrations of the densebody also become more intense, and whenthe man leaves his body at death there is lit-tle or nothing of the vital body left behind tokeep the components of the physical bodyin check. The disintegration is, therefore,very rapid. This we cannot easily provebecause very few people are sufficientlyspiritual to make the difference noticeable;but you will recall that in the Bible it is saidof certain characters that they were translat-

ed; also, that the body of Moses was sovibrant that it shone, and his body was notfound, etc.

These were cases where the body wasrapidly returned to the elements, and whenthe Christs body was laid in the grave itsdisintegration took place almost instanta-neously.

But so long as the archetype of the physi-cal body persists, it endeavors to draw to

itself physical materials which it thenshapes according to the form of the vitalbody. Thus, it is difficult for the InvisibleHelper who passes out of his body to refrainfrom materializing. The moment his will to

keep away from himself all physical imped-iments is relaxed, materials from the sur-rounding atmosphere attach themselves to

him as iron filings are drawn to a magnet,and he becomes visible and tangible towhatever extent he desires. Thus he isenabled to do actual physical work wherev-er it is necessary, no matter if he be thou-sands of miles away from his body. On theother hand, what really brings about death isthe collapse of the archetype of the densebody. Therefore, the spirits who pass awayfrom this earth life are unable to materializesave through a medium where they extracther living vital body, drape themselvestherewith and thus attract the physical sub-stance necessary to make themselves visibleto the sitters.

There is a third class, namely the initiatedInvisible Helpers who have passed out ofthis life. They have learned to attract orrepel physical matter by their wills as said

in the beginning of this paragraph, andtherefore they are able to materialize despitethe fact that their archetype has collapsed.The Christ naturally was at the head of thisclass and consequently able to pass througha wall in His vital body; for as the etherinter-penetrates every physical molecule, soalso the vital body, made of ether, may like-wise pass through physical obstructions.Once in the room with his disciples, He

attracted to himself, by an exercise of will,sufficient physical matter to clothe himselfin a dense body. Then it was possible forHis disciples to touch and handle Him asstated in the Gospels.



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Respecting the eating of the fish andhoney, there is a mystic significance to thiswhich will be taken up in the Astral Ray

department at a later date. You will notethat fish is very prominent in all theGospels. The disciples were fishermen andhad miraculous drafts of fishes; parableswere told of them and people were fed withloaves and fishes. The story of Jonah andthe whale and all other such narratives havean esoteric and astrological significancethat will be brought out in the articles ofwhich we speak, so we will not go into thatpart of the question at the present time. Butwe will just answer the last sentence in yourquestionIs it possible for a spirit withouta fleshly body to eat and drink?by say-ing that in the lowest regions of the desireworld which interpenetrate the ethericregions of the physical world, there areclasses of spirits of whom we hear a greatdeal in spiritualistic literature. They live in

houses, they eat and drink; they have, infact, all relations of life exactly as we havethem here and continue very much the samemanner of existence as they did whenamong us in the visible world. It is alsopossible for a materialized spirit or for aninitiate who materializes, to eat and drink;but it would then be necessary to dispose ofthe materials taken into the body in anothermethod than by the ordinary process of

assimilation.

Question: How do you reconcile thestatement of the Bible that Joseph knew notMary until she had brought forth her first-

born, Jesus, who was thus conceived of theHoly Spirit, with the Rosicrucian teachingthat Jesus was the son of a human father,

Joseph, and Mary, his mother?Answer: If you look at the genealogies of

Jesus given in Matthew and Luke, you willfind that the parentage is traced throughJoseph to Adam; not one word is spokenabout Mary. As was said in answer to anearlier question in this issue, a copyist mayhave interpolated the passage to prove thematerialistic sense of the doctrine of theimmaculate conception.

If you take the esoteric doctrine of theimmaculate conception, no such juggling isnecessary. Jehovah, the Holy Spirit, theleader of the Angels, is, everywhere in theBible, shown as the giver of children. Hismessengers came to Sarah to announce thebirth of Isaac to her; to Hannah to announcethe birth of Samuel; to Mary to announcethe advent of Jesus, whose vehicles were

later given to the Christ. The power of theHoly Spirit fructifies the human ovum aswell as the kernel of grain in the earth andthe original sin occurred when Adam knewhis wife contrary to the approbation ofJehovah. That transgression brought thestain of sin upon a sacred function. Butwhen a holy life has made pure the desires,a man becomes filled with a holy spirit, andit is possible to perform the generative func-

tion without passion; hence the conceptionis immaculate. The child born under suchconditions is naturally superior, because theconception then is a sacred rite of self-sac-rifice and not an act of self-gratification.



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THE MEASURE OF AMENABILITYTO PLANETARY VIBRATIONS

(Continued)

As we have seen in the foregoing chaptersof this series, Mars, Venus and Uranus markthree stages in the emotional development ofman. During the stages where he is onlyamenable to Mars, animal passion reignssupreme and he seeks unrestricted gratifica-tion of all his lower desires in the intercoursewith his fellowman, but particularly with theopposite sex. During the stage where hebecomes amenable to the rays of Venus, lovesoftens the brutality of his desires and theanimal passions are somewhat held in leash;

he is even, under the higher phases of thisplanet, ready to sacrifice himself and hisdesires for the benefit and comfort of lovedones. When he has evolved to the pointwhere he can feel the rays of Uranus, the pas-sion of Mars gradually turns to compassion.There the love of Venus, which is only forone particular person, becomes all-inclusiveso that it embraces all human kind, regard-less of sex or any other distinction, for it is

above all material considerations of whatev-er nature.

The mentality also evolves through threestages according to the amenability of theperson to the vibrations of the Moon,

Mercury, and Neptune. While man is onlyamenable to the lunar influence, he is child-like and easily guided by the higher powers,which have led him through the variousstages mentioned in our previous chapters.Under the stellar ray of Mercury he gradual-ly develops his intellectual powers andbecomes a reasonable being. As such, he isplaced under the law of cause and effect,made responsible for his own actions, so thathe may reap what he has sown and learnthereby the experiences that life has to teachhim under the present regime.

Being inexperienced, he makes mistakes inwhatever direction is indicated by the afflic-tions to Mercury in his horoscope, and con-sequently he suffers a corresponding penalty

of sorrow and trouble. If he has not the men-tality to reason on the connection betweenhis mistakes and the sad experiences growingfrom them during his lifetime, the panoramaof life, which unfolds in the post-mortemstate, makes this clear and leaves with him anessence of right feeling which we know asconscience.

This conscience keeps him from repeatingpast mistakes, when the feeling generated

has become sufficiently strong to overbal-ance the tendency to yield to the particulartemptation which caused him suffering.Thus he gradually develops a spiritual con-sciousness which is above and beyond

The Astral Ray* * * * * *


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human reason, but which nevertheless is alsoconnected with reason in such a manner thatwhen the result has been reached, the man

who has this Cosmic Consciousness knowsthe reason why such and such a thing is andmust be, or why he ought to take a certainaction.

This Cosmic Consciousness is developedunder the ray of Neptune and differs fromthat intuitional right feeling developed underthe ray of Uranus in the very important factthat while the person who has developed theUranian quality of intuition arrives at the

truth instantaneously, without the necessityof thinking over the matter or reasoning, he isunable to give anything but the result. Hecannot connect the various steps of logicalsequence whereby the final result wasreached. The man or woman, however, whodevelops the Neptune faculty, also has theresult of any question immediately and isable to tell the reason why that result is the

proper and right one.The Faculty of intuition built up from theMartial base of passion, through theVenusian stage of love, and the Uranian rayof compassion, depends upon the ability ofthe person involved to feel very intensely.By love and devotion the heart is attuned toevery other heart in the universe and in thisway it knows and feels all that may be knownand felt by any other heart in the universe.

Thus it shares the divine omniscience thatbinds Our Father in Heaven to His children,and through the direct heart to heart touchwith the omniscience the person obtains theresult of whatever problem is placed before

him.The noblest men of all ages, Christian

saints of the most transcendent spirituality,

have attained their wonderful developmentthrough the spiritual rays of this planetbecause of the intense feeling of Onenesswith the divine and with all that lives andbreathes in the universe.

But there are others who are not thus con-stituted and they are not able to walk thatpath. These, through the Moon, Mercury,and Neptune, have developed their intellectand attained the same results plus the

Neptunian Power of Ideation.This is a very important point and it is only

brought out in the Western WisdomTeachings, for while it was formerly taughtthat the spirit involves itself in matter andthereby crystallizes itself into form whichthen evolves, the Western Wisdom Teachingstell us that there is in addition a third factorin universal advancement; namely,

Epigenesis, the faculty whereby the spiritmay choose a course that is altogether newand independent of what has gone before. Wesee the expression of this in all kingdoms rel-ative to form, but in the human kingdom epi-genesis expresses itself as genius, a creativeinstinct which makes man more akin to thedivine than any other of his accomplish-ments. This is developed under the Neptuneray when that planet is well placed in the

horoscope. There is, of course, also such athing as an evil genius, a destructive facultydeveloped under an afflicted Neptune.

Only the most sensitive people in the worldfeel the rays of Uranus and Neptune at the



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present time. To feel these vibrations theconnection between the dense physical bodyand the vital body, which is made of ether,

must be rather loose, for where these twovehicles are firmly interlocked, the person isalways of a materialistic turn and cannotrespond to the higher and more subtle vibra-tions from the spiritual world. But when thestellar rays from these two planets impingeupon a person whose vital body is looselyconnected with the physical, we have what iscalled a sensitive.

The direction and quality of this faculty

depends upon the placement and the aspectof the two planets mentioned, however.Those who are particularly under the domi-nation of an adverse aspect of the Uranianray, usually develop the undesirable phasesof clairvoyance and mediumship. They eas-ily become the prey of entities from theinvisible world who have no regard for theirvictims desire, even if in a weak manner

these should protest. Such mediums are gen-erally used in simple trance communicationsand in a few cases known to the writer havelived very beautiful and happy lives becauseof their implicit belief in the spirits that dom-inated them. In these cases the spirit-con-trols were of a better class than usually metwith. But as this Uranian faculty is built upthrough Mars and Venus, passion is promi-nent in such natures and under the influence

of obsessing spirits many of these people aredriven into gross immorality. Vampirism andkindred disreputable practices are alsoengendered by the perverse use of theUranian ray in mediums.

Neptune may be said to represent the invis-ible worlds in their more positive aspects.Those who come under the evil rays of this

planet are therefore brought in touch with themost undesirable occupants of the invisibleworlds. Actual obsession, whereby theowner of a body is deprived of his vehicle,takes place under the ray of Neptune and nomaterializing sance could ever be held wereit not for this stellar vibration. Magic, whiteor black, can never be put to practical usesave under and because of this Neptunianvibration. Apart from this ray it will remain

theory, speculation, and book learning.Therefore, the Initiates of every MysterySchool, spiritual seers who have full controlof their faculty, and astrologers are amenablein varying degrees to the ray of Neptune.

The black magician and the hypnotist, whois a twin brother to him, are also dependenton this stellar ray for use in their nefariouspractices. The highest human development

at the present timenamely, the soul unfold-ment which is undertaken in the mysterytemples through initiationis directly theresult of the Neptune Ray, for just as evilconfigurations make men liable to assault byinvisible entities, so the good configurationsof Neptune are particularly required toenable a man to unfold by initiation hiswhole soul powers and become a consciousagent in the invisible worlds.

Let us remember, however, that good orevil configurations are not the result ofchance or luck, but the horoscope shows thetendencies of the coming life; it shows whatwe have earned by our past living and there-



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fore what we are entitled to in the presentlife.

Moreover, it should always be kept in mind

thatthe stars impel but they do not compel.Because a man or woman has an evil config-uration of Neptune or Uranus, it is notunavoidable that they should go into activeevil mediumship or black magic and therebymake life harder for themselves in the future.Their opportunity to do so and the temptationwill come at certain times when the heaven-ly time markers point to the right hour on theclock of destiny. Then it is time to stand firm

for the good and for the right. Being fore-warned through a knowledge of Astrology,one is also forearmed and may the easierovercome when such an aspect culminates.

Thus we have seen in the three continuedarticles of this series that man is amenable tothe planetary rays in an increasing measureas he advances through evolution, but themore highly developed he becomes spiritual-

ly the less he will allow the planets to domi-nate him, while the younger soul is drivenunrestingly along the tide of life in whateverdirection the planetary vibrations propel him.It is the mark of the advanced soul that itkeeps the true course regardless of planetaryvibrations. Between these two extremesthere are naturally all gradations. Some areamenable to the rays of one planet more thananother, and the bark of life of such men and

women is driven upon the rocks of sorrowand suffering, that they may learn to evolvewithin themselves the Will power that finallyfrees them from all domination by the rulingstars. As Goethe, the great mystic said:

From every power that holds the world in

chains;

Man liberates himself when self-control he

gains.

And it may be asked, have we run thegamut of vibrations when we have learned torespond to all the seven planets which aremythically represented as the seven stringson Apollos Lyre? In other words, isNeptune the highest vibration to which weshall yet respond? The Western WisdomTeachings tell us that there are two more

planets in the universe which will be knownin future ages and that these will have aninfluence in developing qualities of so tran-scendent a nature that we cannot now under-stand. The number of Adam, man or human-ity, is nine, and there are nine rungs upon thestellar ladder by which he is ascending toGod. Up to the present time he has onlyclimbed five of these rungs: Mercury, Venus,Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn, and even the vibra-

tions of these he has not by any meanslearned. Uranus and Neptune are slowlycoming into our lives. They will not becomeactive in the same manner and to the samedegree that, for instance, the Moon and Marsare at the present time, until many ages havepassed. But even when we have learned torespond to them, there are two more of whichwe shall know something later on. It is theopinion of the writer that these are probably

not felt by any except those who have gradu-ated from the Greater Mystery School andthe Hierophants of that sublime institution.

In conclusion of this article on theAmenability of Man to Planetary Vibrations,



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we quote from theRosicrucian Mysteries thearticle on Light, Color, and Consciousness.

Truly, God is One and Undivided. He

enfolds within His Being all that is, as thewhite light embraces all colors. But Heappears three-fold in manifestation, as thewhite light is refracted in three primary col-ors: Blue, Yellow, and Red. Wherever wesee these colors they are emblematical of theFather, Son, and Holy Spirit. These three pri-mary rays of divine Life are diffused or radi-ated through the Sun and produce Life,Consciousness, and Form upon each of the

seven light bearers, the planets, which arecalled the Seven Spirits before the throne.Their names are: Mercury, Venus, Earth,Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, and Uranus. Bodeslaw proves that Neptune does not belong toour solar system and the reader is referred toSimplified Scientific Astrology by the presentwriter, for mathematical demonstration ofthis condition.

Each of the seven planets receives the lightof the sun in a different measure, accordingto its proximity to the central orb and theconstitution of its atmosphere, and the beingson each, according to their stage of develop-ment, have affinity for some of the solar rays.They absorb the color or colors congruous tothem, and reflect the remainder upon theother planets. This reflected ray bears with itan impulse of the nature of the beings with

which it has been in contact.Thus the divine Light and Life comes to

each planet, either directly from the sun, or

reflected from its six sister planets, and as thesummer breeze which has been wafted overblooming fields carries upon its silent invisi-ble wings the blended fragrance of a multi-tude of flowers, so also the subtle influencesfromthe Garden of Godbring to us the co-mingled impulses of all the Spirits and in thatvaricolored light we live and move and haveour being.

The rays which come directly from the Sun

are productive of spiritual illumination; thereflected rays from other planets make foradded consciousness and moral develop-ment, and the rays reflected by way of theMoon give physical growth.

But as each planet can only absorb a cer-tain quantity of one or more colors accordingto the general stage of evolution, so eachbeing upon earthmineral, plant, animal,

and mancan only absorb and thrive upon acertain quantity of the various rays projectedupon the earth. The remainder do not affectit or produce sensation any more than theblind are conscious of light and color whichexists everywhere around them. Therefore,each being is differently affected by the stel-lar rays, and the science of Astrology, a fun-damental truth in nature, is of enormous ben-efit in the attainment of spiritual growth.



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THE ORIGIN OF FORM

Last month we studied the Origin of Life

and found that according to the Western

Wisdom Teaching, Life is uncreated. It Was,Is and always Will Be. And it is as indepen-

dent of the form through which it manifests

as we are of the house wherein we live. Aswe may move from one house to another at

will, so also Life takes up one habitat after

another and dwells in different forms ofvarying capacities.

This month we shall study the Origin ofForm, as taught by the Elder Brothers of the

Rosicrucian Order. To this end we turn to

page 540 in the Rosicrucian Cosmo-

Conception and find there in the list of words

under the letter F the word Form.

Opposite is the number 556, which refers to

the page in the index. On that page we findunder the heading Form a considerable

number of references, and even if the studentdid no more but read these references he

would obtain considerable elucidation on the

subject.

We learn from them that all forms arebuilt from one basic substance. The nextone says, Forms are crystallized space; afterdeath they dissolve to spirit. Further on,All form is devoid of true feeling, etc.These references in the index are in them-selves a wonderful help to the student andshould be used very frequently as theyrefresh the memory upon certain points, givethe mind a firm hold on the subject, and fromthat the thought may start out with what ithas learned in previous lessons from thestudy of this book.

One of the references in this index says thatthe Archetypes build forms. Our firstquestion is: What is an Archetype?Therefore, we turn to page 50 as directed, orrather page 49, for the paragraph wherein theArchetypes are described begins on that

page, and there we read that when we speakof the Archetypes of all the different forms inthe dense world, it must not be thought thatthese Archetypes are merely models in thesame sense in which we speak of an objectconstructed in miniature or in some material

Studiesin

The RosicrucianCosmo Conception

* * * * * * *


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other than that appropriate for its final use.They are not merely likenesses or models ofthe forms of which we speak; but they are

creative Archetypes; that is, they fashion thephysical form in their own likeness or like-nesses; for often a number of theseArchetypes work together to form a certainspecies, each Archetype giving part of itselfto build the required form.

We may inquire: But how does thisArchetype build the form? And our indexdirects us to page 123, but we may with prof-it start to read on page 121: The power of

rhythmic vibrations is well known to all whohave given the subject even the least study;for instance, soldiers are commanded tobreak step when crossing a bridge; otherwisethe rhythmic tramp would shatter thestrongest structure. The Bible story of thesounding of the rams horn while marchingaround the city of Jericho is not nonsensicalin the eyes of the occultist. In some cases

similar things have happened without caus-ing the world to smile with superciliousincredulity. A few years ago a band of musi-cians was practicing in a garden close to avery solid wall of an old castle. Thereoccurred at a certain place in the music a pro-longed and very piercing tone, and when thisnote was sounded the wall of the castle sud-denly fell. The musicians had struck thekeynote of the wall and it was sufficiently

prolonged to shatter it.In the heaven worldcolor and sound are both present, but tone isthe originator of color; hence it is said thatthis is particularly the world of tone, and it isthis tone that builds all forms in the physical

world. As geometrical figures are created bydrawing a violin bow over the edge of a glassplate, so the forms we see around us are crys-

tallized figures of the Archetypal forceswhich play into the Archetypes in theHeavenly world.

These Archetypes in the Region ofConcrete Thought are not forms in spacesuch as we see here in the physical world.There the form of physical matter is not seen;the Archetype, however, appears as a cavity,something like a plaster mold here in thisworld. As the plaster is poured into the plas-

ter mold and then form a stature, so the phys-ical atoms pour into this cavity which consti-tutes the Archetype, and the aggregation ofphysical atoms thus attracted one to anotheris that which we see here in this world as aliving form. Whether of plant, animal, orman, the process is the same.

Just as the musical vibrations will movethe sand and spores spoken of into geometri-

cal figures, so also music, sounding in theArchetype, attracts and molds the physicalatoms with which they come in contact.

When we look at a human being with thespiritual vision, we see in the region of themedulla oblongata at the head of the spinalcord, a flame which pulsates and vibrates ina most wonderful manner and it is coloredwith different rays according to the nature ofthe human being in whom it is observed. If

we have evolved the spiritual faculty ofobservation in a sufficient degree, we shallalso hear a soundemanating from the flame.This sound is the keynote of the physicalbody, sounded by the Archetype and is



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responsible for drawing to our vehicles allmaterials wherewith we build them. Thetone of the Archetype changes through life,

and as it changes, so also the body undergoescertain changes.

If we look up Archetype in the list ofwords, we are referred to page 544 in theindex and from thence to page 104 in thebook. There, something is said about the sui-cide being affected by the persistence of theArchetype. The suicide who tries to getaway from life only to find that he is as muchalive as ever, is in the most pitiable plight; he

is able to watch those whom he has, perhaps,disgraced by his act; and worst of all, he hasan unspeakable feeling of being hollowedout. The part of the ovoid aura where thedense body used to be is empty, and althoughthe desire body has taken the form of the dis-carded dense body it feels like an empty shellbecause the creative archetype of the body inthe Region of Concrete Thought persists as

an empty mold, so to speak, as long as thedense body should properly have lived.When a person meets a natural death, even inthe prime of life, the activity of theArchetype ceases and the desire body adjustsitself so as to occupy the whole of the form;but in the case of the suicide that feeling ofemptiness remains until the time comes whenin the natural course of events its deathwould have occurred.

The writer has talked with many suicidesboth just after they had committed their rashact and even after a number of years. Theyall confessed that this dreadful feeling ofemptiness seemed to exist as akin to the feel-

ing of hunger (some described it as hunger)which nothing could satisfy; for the seedatom of the physical body is, of course, rup-

tured; and that was the vibrating key to allthe other atoms in the body. Therefore noatom can stay with this person. So theydescribe it as hunger. Others have said that itmight be likened to the gnawing of a dread-ful toothache, felt over every part of thebody. This continues day and night, yearafter year, until the body should have died inthe natural course of events. Truly it is adreadful thing to contemplate; and yet it is

not an avenging deity that punishes man forhis wrong doings, but the immutable lawwhich acts just the same as a hot stove thatburns us whether we were aware that it washot or not when we laid our hands upon it.

In order that we may study the manner inwhich the Ego gathers material about itselfby means of the Archetype and the seedatoms which are the nuclei of its various

vehicles to form the invisible aura which itwears during the physical embodiment, wewill turn to page 133, where we read as fol-lows: Previous to taking the dip into matter,the threefold spirit is naked, having only theforces of the four seed atoms (which are thenuclei of the threefold body and the sheath ofmind). Its descent resembles the putting onof several pairs of gloves of increasing thick-ness, as previously illustrated. The forces of

the mind of the last incarnation are awakenedfrom their latency in the seed atom. Thisbegins to attract to itself materials from thehighest subdivision of the Region ofConcrete Thought, in a manner similar to that



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in which a magnet draws to itself iron filings.If we hold a magnet over a miscellaneous

heap of filings of brass, silver, gold, iron,

lead, and other metals, we shall find that itselects only iron filings and that even of themit will take no more than its strength enablesit to lift. Its attractive power is of a certainkind and is limited to a certain quantity ofthat kind. The same is true of the seed atom.It can take in each nothing except the mater-ial for which it has an affinity and nothingbeyond a certain definite quantity of that.Thus the vehicle built around this nucleus

becomes an exact counterpart of the corre-sponding vehicle of the last life, minus theevil which has been expurgated and plus thequintessence of good which has been incor-porated in the seed atom.

The material selected by the threefold spir-it forms itself into a great bell shaped figure,open at the bottom and with the seed atom atthe top. If we conceive of this illustration

spiritually, we may compare it to a divingbell descending into a sea composed of fluidsof increasing density. These correspond tothe different subdivisions of each world. Thematter taken into the texture of the bell-shaped body makes it heavier so that it sinksinto the next lower subdivision and takesfrom that its proper quota of matter.

Thus it becomes still heavier and sinks yetdeeper until it has passed through the four

subdivisions of the Region of ConcreteThought and the sheath of the new mind ofthe man is complete. Next the forces in theseed-atom of the desire body are awakened.It places itself at the top of the bell, inside,

and the material of the Seventh Region of theDesire World draws around it until it sinks tothe sixth region, getting more material there

and so the process continues until the firstRegion of the Desire World is reached. Thebell has now two layersthe sheath of mindoutside and the new desire body inside.

The seed atom of the vital body is arousedinto activity, but here the process of forma-tion is not so simple as in the case of themind and the desire body, for it must beremembered that those vehicles were com-paratively unorganized, while the vital body

and the dense body are more organized andvery complicated. The material, of a givenquantity and quality, is attracted in the samemanner and under the operation of the samelaw as in the case of the higher bodies, butthe building of the new body and the place-ment in the proper environment is done byfour great Beings of immeasurable wisdomwhich are Recording Angels, the Lords of

Destiny. They impress the reflecting etherof the vital body in such a way that the pic-tures of the coming life are reflected in it. It(the vital body) is built by the inhabitants ofthe Heaven world and the elemental spirits insuch a manner as to form a particular type ofbrain.

But mark this, the Ego itself incorporatestherein the quintessence of its former vitalbodies and in addition to this also does a lit-

tle original work. This is done so that in thecoming life there may be some room fororiginal and individual expression, not pre-determined by past action.

It is very important to remember that fact.



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There is too great a tendency to think that allwhich now exists is the result of somethingthat previously existed, but if that were the

case there would be no margin left for newand original efforts and for new causes. Thechain of cause and effect is not a monotonousrepetition. There is an influx of new andoriginal causes all the time. That is the realbackbone of evolution, the only thing thatgives it meaning and makes it other than anunrolling of latent actualities. This isEpigenesis, the free will that consists of thefreedom to inaugurate something entirely

new, not merely a choice between two cours-es of action. This is the important factorwhich alone can explain the system to whichwe belong in a satisfactory manner.Involution and Evolution in themselves areinsufficient, but coupled with Epigenesis wehave a full triad of explanation.

The vital body, having been molded bythe Lords of Destiny, will give form to the

dense body, organ for organ. This matrix ormold is then placed in the womb of the futuremother. The seed atom for the dense body isin a triangular head of one of the spermato-zoa in the semen of the father. This alonemakes fertilization possible and here is theexplanation of the fact that so many timessex unions are unfruitful. The chemical con-stituents of the seminal fluid and the ova arethe same at all times and, if these were the

only requirements, the explanation of thephenomena of infertility, if sought in thematerial, visible world alone would not befound. It becomes plain, however, when weunderstand that as the molecules of water

freeze only along lines of force in the waterand manifest as ice crystals instead of freez-ing into a homogeneous mass as would be

the case if there were no lines of force previ-ous to coagulation, so there can be no densebody built until there is a vital body in whichto build the material; also there must be aseed atom for the dense body, to act as agauge of the quality and quantity of the mat-ter which is to be built into the dense body.Although at the present stage of developmentthere is never full harmony in the materialsof the body, because that would mean a per-

fect body, yet the discord must not be sogreat as to be disruptive of the organism.

Thus we see that as the slightest act of oursmust be preceded by a thought, which there-fore is the generator of the act, so also thereis behind every visible body an invisiblecause, which is the archetype. This arche-type is molded by man himself during hisstay in the second heaven, during the interval

between death and a new birth, The seedatoms of each body alone remain from life tolife and in them are stored the vibrations ofall the different bodies which man has everpossessed. This may seem very strange andhard to understand but when we rememberthat the phonograph needle reproduces andblends into one single tone the varied soundsof a large orchestra, it is perhaps not so diffi-cult to believe that when the divine builder of

the universe, the designer of everything,from the star to the starfish, undertakes topoint a record of the past, His instrumentscan achieve greater results than such a crudedevice as the human-made phonograph.



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WHY MEN EAT MORE THAN WOMEN

Investigators of the quantity of food usual-ly taken by Men and Women respectively,have shown that men eat more than women;and attempts made to regulate this on thesupposition that it was an abnormal desire forfood on the part of the men that caused this

discrepancy have shown that men generallydo require more food than women, and sci-entists have endeavored to find the reasonwhy. But up to the present time they havenot met with success and are only able torecord the fact. It must be admitted that theyare very ingenious and painstaking in theirefforts to get at the truth from their point ofview with the means at their hands. In theinvestigation under consideration they werecareful to exclude all who were athletes andto select men and women of about the sameheight and weight so that the body surfacewould also presumably be the same. Theirsubjects were in good health and, in everyway, the case of one seemed to be uniformwith that of the other.

It was noted that the women generated1355 heat units in 24 hours as against 1638

heat units produced by the men, or about twopercent more for the latter per pound of bodyweight. The men produced about twelve per-cent more heat than the women and while theinvestigators are not prepared to make any

very decisive or emphatic statements aboutthe result of their investigations, it seems tobe their opinion that the difference in foodconsumption may be due to the fact that menare more active than women, have moreactive tissues in their body, and are more freefrom fat.

This is only another case where they are

doomed to fail because they take into consid-eration only the dense body which they cansee, feel, and measure. Man is, however,most emphatically not this body, but thisbody is a vesture of man. Moreover, it is hisdensest and most inert vehicle. Were it notinterpenetrated by the vital body composedof four ethers, it would be as inert as a stone.In fact, we know and notice the differencebetween dead weight and live weight. Howmuch easier it is to carry a living burden of agiven weight than dead material weighingthe same, because the former has a vital bodycomposed of ether.

The scientific investigators are, of course,right when they speak of the inertia of fattytissues, but there is no ground for the asser-tion that women are more subject to thisimpediment than men. The explanation of

the difference in food consumption lies in thefact that woman has the negative physicaland positive vital body and therefore assimi-lates her food better than man, consequentlyrequiring a smaller quantity; while man,

Nutrition and Health* * * * * *


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whose physical body is positive, has a nega-tive vital body and is therefore not able toassimilate as well as woman. Further, the

heat units which he takes in with the largerquantity of food are quickly radiated by himwhile they are retained for a longer time bywoman. Hence man, as said, generatestwelve percent more heat in a day thanwoman. Man wastes it while woman utilizesit in her economy and is therefore able to getalong with less food.

In the Rosicrucian Cosmo-Conception,where we have taken up this and other points

connected with nutrition, we have given anumber of instances, showing the differencebetween the action of a positive and a nega-tive vital body as possessed by the two sexes.Only by taking into consideration this posi-tive vital body of women can we account forthe fact that she remains warm with lessclothing than man, while man, because of hisnegative vital body, which allows for the

radiation of heat to a greater extent than thepositive vital body, requires warmer gar-ments.

It is a truism that we live not by what weeat but by what we assimilate, and because ofthe positive vital body, woman has certainlythe advantage of man in that respect. It willbe found, however, that men of spiritual anddevotional proclivities, men who are reallyliving the life, are thereby, in a measure,

changing the polarity of their vital bodies sothat it gradually becomes more and morepositive. This is not accomplished in one lifebut in a succession of lives. Eventually therewill come a stage when the distinction will

disappear, which has been noted by the sci-entific investigators. It is the writers belief,or rather knowledge, that, had these scientif-

ic investigations been carried on a few thou-sand years ago, the difference would havebeen much more marked. For, althoughwoman had not then arrived at her presentstandard, neither had man, and he was muchfarther behind in that respect.

The last two thousand years of growingaltruism under the Christian religion havedone wonders in making men less brutal andwomen more refined; and in a few hundred

years, when we get to the cusp of Aquarius,the Son of Man, by precession of theequinox, this distinction will probably haveceased and man and woman will be on anequal footing in regard to the fineness oftheir vehicles.

Remember this, however, that man livesnot by bread alone. The higher the thoughtwe think the less gross and material we shall

be. So we may take time by the forelock, bypure thoughts refining our vehicles; and aswe do this, we shall need less earthly food.This is the line of improvement for both menand women.

VEGETARIANISM vs. MEAT DIET

Herman O. Haugland

The arguments presented by those whofavor the use of meat are:

First, that the proteins of meat are morecompletely digested than the protein fromvegetables.



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Second, that meat stimulates the appetite.Third, that the absence of meat in the

dietary tends to alcoholism (Gautier).

Fourth, that vegetable foods produce adietary too great in bulk.

It is readily to be seen that a completedigestion of proteins would lead to constipa-tion and is therefore undesirable; hence itwould seem more advisable to take proteinsin such form where they are not so complete-ly digested.

In normal people there is no need forincrease or stimulation of appetite. It is evi-

dent that the over stimulation of the appetiteby a meat diet is one of the chief causes ofover eating which, in its turn, opens the doorto the greatest variety of human ailments.

It is true that a sudden and complete ces-sation of the use of meat in the dietary mayseem to favor the development of alco-holism, where a predisposition in that direc-tion exists in the individual. One accus-

tomed to eating meats misses the stimulationwhen he discontinues their use. Meat extrac-tives as produced in the alimentary canal ofthe meat eater belong to the same family ascaffeine and are toxins. An insufficient dietrather than a meatless diet gives a cravingfor alcoholic stimulants. Social workersclaim that the breaking of the alcohol habit ismuch more permanent in individuals using ameatless diet than in those given to a meat

diet.The fourth argument, claiming too great

bulk for a vegetarian diet, applies only to thestrictly vegetarian regime where no animalfood whatever is used. In the Orient and also

in Europe one finds numerous vegetariansocieties and organizations who hold to suchprinciples because of some religious views.

Such dietaries are not based upon scientificprinciples. It is possible, however, by givingcareful thought to the planning of a dietary,to subsist entirely on vegetable foods; but inmost instances this does not seem practicalnor advisable. The addition of milk, cheese(cooked), and eggs to the dietary gives pro-tein in the form which is easy to digest.These products, when used in moderation,are not objectionable on the same grounds as

flesh foods inasmuch as they are not so proneto putrefaction as meats and do not containthe waste products of metabolism.

From these considerations we concludethat absolute vegetarianism does not favor-ably answer all the needs, interests, andactivities of the European races, but that,modified by the addition of milk, cheese,butter, and eggs, it has great advantages. It

alkalizes the blood, accelerates oxidation,diminishes the nitrogenous gases and toxins;it exposes one much less than the ordinarymeat diet to diseases of the skin, arthritis,arteriosclerosis, colitis, and congestion of theinternal organs.

This modified vegetarian diet tends tomake the aggressive and violent peaceful. Itis practical, economical, and rational. Itshould be accepted and commended by those

who strive for ideal eugenics, for it is animportant factor in the production of a racethat is intellectual, artistic, morally strong,and physically gentle.

* * * * * *



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USES OF POTATO PARINGS

Excellent Flue CleansersSave the peelings of the potatoes you use

for food. When the stove does not draw well,place a quantity of these potato skins in thefire and their burning will clean up the sootand clear out the flue to such an extent it willnot seem like the same chimney.

They do not need to be dry. Damp peelingjust cut from the potatoes will burn quitereadily where there is considerable fire, and

it is astonishing how quickly they will do thedesired work.These peelings will also clear a furnace

when slow fires have caused it to becomeclogged up with soot.

Flues of boilers can be cleaned with perfectsafety with potato skins, and little potatoesare useful where the fire is hot and the boilerflues are clogged, as the small potatoes willburn quickly, producing a condition that

clears the place of anything that may bedetrimental to a good draft.

As Kindling and DisinfectantPotato skins will dry easily if spread out in

a warm place, and these make excellent kin-dling to be used in recruiting a sluggish fireor in starting one with paper. It is no difficultmatter to start a fire without wood when drypotato skins are used with a little paper. Theburning of the peelings clears out the fire andno difficulty is experienced that day from thefire not drawing or the stove not acting satis-factorily.

In case of sickness or at times when a room

becomes foul it may be made much better ifa very little piece of potato skin is burned ina room. It is always best to have a window

or door open when this is done, so there willbe an opportunity for the impurities to getaway. The air in rooms so treated is muchpurer.Baltimore American

A MENU FROM MOUNT ECCLESIA

Breakfast, 7:30 A.M.

Fresh StrawberriesDish of Grape-Nuts and Cream

Whole Wheat Gems, Butter and HoneyCoffee or Milk

Dinner, 12:00 Noon

Mixed Vegetable SoupMacaroni with Brown Sauce

Spinach Hot Corn Bread and ButterMilk

Supper, 5:30 P.M.

Cauliflower SaladOlives English Walnuts

Whole Wheat Bread, Butter and HoneyTea or Milk

RECIPES

WHOLE WHEAT BREADScald one cup of white flour with enough

hot water (left over from boiling potatoes) tomake a stiff batter; allow to stand until bloodwarm; add one cake of compressed yeastwhich has been first soaked in lukewarmwater until soft and one-half teaspoon salt.



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Beat well and set in a warm place to rise totwice its size. Slowly stir in enough wholewheat flour to make a stiff dough. Turn it out

onto a floured board (use white flour onboard), and knead it until it is soft and elasticand no longer sticky. Form into loaves ofabout one pound each, place in previouslyoiled pans, cover with cloth, and stand in awarm place until double in size. This maytake about an hour, according to the temper-ature, but be sure not to get the dough toowarm. Bake in a moderate oven for one hourand fifteen minutes. Upon taking out, take a

small cloth dipped in butter and oil the loafvery slightly, as this keeps it from drying outand flavors the crust.

FRIED SPINACHTake fresh, crisp spinach or mixed part

young beet tops, Swiss chard, and lettuce

leaves. Wash carefully in cold water. Let itcome to a boil, or if cooked in a steamer,allow it to steam for fifteen minutes, and

drain. Prepare a saucepan with three table-spoons of butter browned with one table-spoon of flour; fry the drained spinach in thispan until thoroughly browned, season withsalt, and serve hot.

MACARONI WITH BROWN SAUCEBreak one-half package of macaroni into

two inch lengths and cook in boiling saltwater for twenty minutes. Drain and rinse

well under the faucet. Prepare the sauce byfrying one grated onion in two tablespoons ofbutter and one tablespoon of flour, stirring allthe time while browning. Add enough toma-to sauce to make a thin gravy and season withsalt. Place the macaroni into a baking dish,and cover with sauce. Bake for thirty minutes.


MY PRAYER

By George W. WiggsShall make me sad.Let me be gladIn feeling I am still a lad,At least in thought;As Ive been taughtThat selfishness alone has broughtInharmony,And made love flee,

And left me fear, else I would seeWith eyes as clearAs Thine own dearResponsive sacred atmosphere,Is ready toEntrance the few,Who to themselves will just be true.

Dear Lord, grant meSuch harmonyOf mind and soul,That I may seeWith eyes more gladThan theyve been sad,And intuitions of the ladThat I had when

A youth of ten,And that implicit faith in menThat made them feel and with me dealWith thine own righteousness and zeal.I pray that IMay sanctifyMy soul with thought, until no sigh


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AN ADDRESS IN PRO-ECCLESIA

By Max Heindel

One coal will not make a fire, but where an

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