The Rosicrucian Mysteries by Max Heindel (best books to read for knowledge txt) π
Note:--
Pages 19 to 26 inclusive, describing Mt. Ecclesia, have been transferred to the back of the book. (Transcriber's Note: They are pages 191 through 200.)
CHAPTER II.
THE PROBLEM OF LIFE AND ITS SOLUTION
THE PROBLEM OF LIFE.
Among all the vicissitudes of life, which vary in each individual's experience, there is one event which so
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Did the reader ever stop to consider the wonderful power of a human word. Coming to us in the sweet accents of love, it may lure us from paths of rectitude to shameful ignominy and wreck our life with sorrow and remorse, or it may spur us on in noblest efforts to acquire glory and honor, here or hereafter. According to the inflection of the voice a word may strike terror into the bravest heart or lull a timid child to peaceful slumber. The word of an agitator may rouse the passions of a mob and impel it to awful bloodshed, as in the French Revolution, where dictatorial [pg 111] mandates of mob-rule killed and exiled at pleasure, or, the strain of βHome, Sweet Homeβ may cement the setting of a family-circle beyond possibility of rupture.
Right words are true and therefore free, they are never bound or fettered by time or space, they go to the farthest corners of the earth, and when the lips that spoke them first have long since mouldered in the grave, other voices take up with unwearying enthusiasm their message of life and love, as for instance the mystical βCome unto meβ which has sounded from unnumbered tongues and brought oceans of balm to troubled hearts.
Words of Peace have been victorious, where war would have meant defeat, and no talent is more to be desired than ability to always say the right word at the auspicious time.
Considering thus the immense power and potency of the human word, we may perhaps dimly apprehend the potential magnitude of the Word of God, the Creative Fiat, when as a mighty dynamic force it first reverberated through space and commenced to form primordial matter into worlds, as sound from a violin bow moulds sand into geometrical figures. Moreover, the Word of God still sounds [pg 112] to sustain the marching orbs and impel them onwards in their circle paths, the Creative Word continues to produce forms of gradually increasing efficiency, as media expressing life and consciousness. The harmonious enunciation of consecutive syllables in the Divine Creative Word mark successive stages in evolution of the world and man. When the last syllable has been spoken and the complete word has sounded, we shall have reached perfection as human beings. Then Time will be at an end, and with the last vibration of the Word of God, the worlds will be resolved into their original elements. Our life will then be βhid with Christ in God,β till the Cosmic Night:βChaos,βis over, and we wake to do βgreater thingsβ in a βnew heaven and a new earth.β
According to the general idea Chaos and Cosmos are superlative antitheses of each other. Chaos being regarded as a past condition of confusion and disorder which has long since been entirely superseded by cosmic order which now prevails.
As a matter of fact, Chaos is the seed-ground of Cosmos, the basis of all progress, for thence come all IDEAS which later materialize [pg 113] as Railways, Steamboats, Telephones, etc.
We speak of βthoughts as being conceived by the mind,β but as both father and mother are necessary in the generation of a child, so also there must be both idea and mind before a thought can be conceived. As semen germinated in the positive male organ is projected into the negative uterus at conception, so ideas are generated by a positive Human Ego in the spirit-substance of the Region of abstract Thought. This idea is projected upon the receptive mind, and a conception takes place. Then, as the spermatozoic nucleus draws upon the maternal body for material to shape a body appropriate to its individual expression, so does each idea clothe itself in a peculiar form of mindstuff. It is then a thought, as visible to the inner vision of composite man, as a child is to its parent.
Thus we see that ideas are embryonic thoughts, nuclei of spirit-substance from the Region of abstract Thought. Improperly conceived in a diseased mind they become vagaries and delusions, but when gestated in a sound mind and formed into rational thoughts they are the basis of all material, moral and [pg 114] mental progress, and the closer our touch with Chaos, the better will be our Cosmos, for in that realm of abstract realities truth is not obscured by matter, it is self-evident.
Pilate was asked βwhat is Truth,β but no answer is recorded. We are incapable of cognizing truth in the abstract while we live in the phenomenal world, for the inherent nature of matter is illusion and delusion, and we are constantly making allowances and corrections whether we are conscious of the fact or not. The sunbeam which proceeds for 90 millions of miles in a straight line, is refracted or bent as soon as it strikes our dense atmosphere, and according to the angle of its refraction, it appears to have one color or another. The straightest stick appears crooked when partly immersed in water, and the truths which are so self-evident in the Higher worlds are likewise obscured, refracted or twisted out of all semblance under the illusory conditions of this material world.
βThe truth shall set you free,β said Christ, and the more we turn our aspirations from material acquisitiveness and seek to lay up treasure above, the more we aim to rise, the oftener we βget in the spirit,β the more readily we βshall know truthβ and reach liberation [pg 115] from the fetter of flesh which binds us to a limited environment, and attain to a sphere of greater usefulness.
Study of philosophy and science has a tendency to further perception of truth, and as science has progressed it has gradually receded from its erstwhile crude materialism. The day is not far off when it will be more reverently religious than the church itself. Mathematics is said to be βdry,β for it doesn't stir the emotions. When it is taught that βthe sum of the angles of a triangle is 180 degrees,β the dictum is at once accepted, because its truth is self-evident and no feeling is involved in the matter. But when a doctrine such as the Immaculate Conception is promulgated and our emotions are stirred, bloody war, or heated argument, may result, and still leave the matter in doubt. Pythagoras demanded that his pupils study mathematics, because he knew the elevating effect of raising their minds above the sphere of feeling, where it is subject to delusion, and elevating it towards the Region of abstract Thought which is the prime reality.
In this place we are dealing with worlds in particular, and will therefore defer comment [pg 116] upon the remainder of the first 5 verses of St. John's gospel:
We have now seen that the earth is composed of three worlds which interpenetrate one another so that it is perfectly true when Christ said that βheaven is within youβ or, the translation should rather have been among you. We have also seen that of these three realms two are subdivided. It has also been explained that each division serves a great purpose in the unfoldment of various forms of life which dwell in each of these worlds, and we may note in conclusion, that the lower regions of the Desire World constitute what the Catholic religion calls Purgatory, a place where the evil of a past life is transmuted to good, usable by the spirit as conscience in later lives. The higher regions of the Desire World are the first Heaven where all the good a man has done is assimilated by the spirit as soul power. The Region of concrete Thought is the second Heaven, where, as already said, the spirit prepares its future environment on earth, and the Region of abstract Thought is the third Heaven, [pg 117] but as Paul said, it is scarcely lawful to speak about that.
Some will ask: is there then no hell?βNo! The mercy of God tends as greatly towards the principle of GOOD as βthe inhumanity of manβ towards cruelty, so that he would consign his brother men to flames of hell during eternity for the puerile mistakes committed during a few years, or perhaps for a slight difference in belief. The writer has heard of a minister who wished to impress his βflockβ with the reality of an eternity of hell flames, and to demonstrate the fallacy of a heretical notion entertained by some of his parishioners that when sinners come to hell they burn to ashes and that is the end.
He took with him an alcohol lamp and some asbestos into the pulpit and told his audience that God would turn their souls into a substance resembling asbestos. He showed them that though the asbestos were heated red hot it did not decompose into ashes. Fortunately the day of the hell preacher has gone by, and if we believe the Bible which says that βin God we live and move and have our being,β we can readily understand that a lost soul would be an impossibility, for were one single soul lost, then [pg 118] logically a part of God Himself would be lost. No matter what our color, our race or our creed, we are all equally the children of God and in our various ways we shall obtain satisfaction. Let us therefore rather look to Christ and forget Creed.
Creed or Christ?
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