The Rosicrucian Mysteries by Max Heindel (best books to read for knowledge txt) 📕

As the first heaven is located in the Desire World,—which is the realm of light and color,—where matter is shaped most readily by thought, the little ones are given wonderful toys impossible of construction here. They are taught to play with colors which work upon their moral character in exactly the manner each child requires. Anyone who is at all sensitive is affected by the color of his clothing and surroundings. Some colors have a depressing effect, while others inspire us with energy, and others again soothe and comfort us. In the Desire World the effect of colors is much more intense, they are much more potent factors of good and evil there than here, and in this color play, the child imbibes unconsciously the qualities which it did not acquire on account of accident or lamentations of relatives. Often it also falls to the lot of such relatives to care for a child in the invisible world, or perhaps to give it birth and see it die. Thus they receive just retribution [pg 179] for the wrong committed. As wars cease, and man learns to be more careful of life, and also how to care for the dying, infant mortality, which now is so appalling, will decrease.

The Second Heaven.

When both the good and evil of a life has been extracted, the spirit discards its desire body and ascends to the second heaven. The desire body then commences to disintegrate as the physical body and the vital body have done, but it is a peculiarity of desire stuff, that once it has been formed and inspired with life, it persists for a considerable time. Even after that life has fled it lives a semi-conscious, independent life. Sometimes it is drawn by magnetic attraction to relatives of the spirit whose clothing it was, and at spiritualistic seances these shells generally impersonate the departed spirit and deceive its relatives. As the panorama of the past life is etched into the shells they have a memory of incidents in connection with these relatives, which facilitates the deception. But as the intelligence has fled, they are of course unable to give any true counsel, and that accounts [pg 180] for the inane, goody-goody nonsense of which these things deliver themselves.

When passing from the first to the second heaven, the spirit experiences the condition known and described previously as “The Great Silence,” where it stands utterly alone conscious only of its divinity. When that silence is broken there floats in upon the spirit celestial harmonies of the world of tone where the second heaven is located. It seems then to lave in an ocean of sound and to experience a joy beyond all description and words, as it nears its heavenly home—for this is the first of the truly spiritual realms from which the spirit has been exiled during its earth life and the subsequent post-mortem existence. In the Desire World its work was corrective, but in the World of Thought the human spirit becomes one with the nature forces and its creative activity begins.

Under the law of causation we reap exactly what we sow, and it would be wrong to place one spirit in an environment where there is a scarcity of the necessities of life, where a scorching sun burns the crop and millions die from famine, or where the raging flood sweeps away primitive habitations not built to withstand its ravages, and to bring another [pg 181] spirit to birth in a land of plenty, with a fertile soil which yields a maximum of increase with a minimum of labor, where the earth is rich in minerals that may be used in industry to facilitate transportation of products of the soil from one point to another. If we were thus placed without action or acquiescence upon our part, there would be no justice, but as our post-mortem existence in purgatory and the first heaven is based upon our moral attitude in this life so our activities in the second heaven are determined by our mental aspirations and they produce our future physical environment, for in the second heaven, the spirit becomes part of the nature forces which work upon the earth and change its climate, flora and fauna. A spirit of an indolent nature, who indulges in day dreams and metaphysical speculations here, is not transformed by death respecting its mental attitude any more than regarding its moral propensities. It will dream away time in heaven, glorying in its sights and sounds. Thus it will neglect to work upon its future country and return to a barren and arid land. Spirits, on the other hand, whose material aspirations lead them to desire so-called solid comforts of hearth and home, who aim to [pg 182] promote great industries and whose mind is concerned in trade and commerce, will build in heaven a land that will suit their purpose: fertile, immineralized, with navigable rivers and sheltered harbors. They will return in time to enjoy upon earth the fruits of their labors in the second heaven, as they reap the result of their life upon earth in purgatory and the first heaven.

The Third Heaven.

In the third heaven most people have very little consciousness for reasons explained in connection with the Region of Abstract Thought, for there the third heaven is located. It is therefore more of a place of waiting where the spirit rests between the time when its labors in the second heaven have been completed and the time when it again experiences the desire for rebirth. But from this realm inventors bring down their original ideas; there the philanthropist obtains the clearest vision of how to realize his utopian dreams and the spiritual aspirations of the saintly minded are given renewed impetus.

In time the desires of the spirit for further experiences draws it back to rebirth, and the [pg 183] Great Celestial Beings who are known in the Christian Religion as Recording Angels, assist the spirit to come to birth in the place best suited to give it the experience necessary to further unfold its powers and possibilities.

We have all been here many times and in different families, we have had relations of varying nature with many different people and usually there are several families among whom we may seek re-embodiment to work out our self-generated destiny and reap what we have sown in former life. If there are no special reasons why we should take birth in any particular family among certain friends or foes, the spirit is allowed to choose its own place of birth. Thus it may be said that most of us are in our present places by our own prenatal choice.

In order to assist us in making that choice the Recording Angels call up before the spirit's vision a panorama in general outlines of each of the offered lives. This panorama will show what part of our past debts we are to pay, and what fruits we may be expected to reap in the coming life.

The spirit is left free to choose between the several lives offered. But once a choice has [pg 184] been made no evasion is possible during life. We have free will with regard to the future, but the past “mature” destiny we cannot escape, as shown by the incident recorded in The Rosicrucian Cosmo Conception, where the writer warned a well known Los Angeles lecturer that if he left his home upon a certain day, he would be injured by a conveyance, in head, neck, breast and shoulders. The gentleman believed and intended to heed our warning. Nevertheless he went to Sierra Madre to lecture upon the fateful day. He was injured in the places stated by a collision and later explained: “I thought the twenty-eighth was the twenty-ninth.”

When the spirit has made its choice, it descends into the second heaven where it is instructed by the Angels and Archangels how to build an archetype of the body which it will later inhabit upon earth. Also here we note the operation of the great law of justice which decrees that we reap what we sow. If our tastes are coarse and sensual, we shall build an archetype which will express these qualities; if we are refined and of aesthetic taste, we shall build an archetype correspondingly refined, but no one can obtain a better body than he can build. Then, as the [pg 185] architect who builds a house in which he afterwards lives, will suffer discomfort if he neglects to properly ventilate it, so also the spirit feels disease in a poorly constructed body, and as the architect learns to avoid mistakes and remedy the short-comings of one house when building another, so also the spirit which suffers from defects in its body, learns in time to build better and better vehicles.

In the Region of Concrete Thought, the spirit also draws to itself materials for a new mind. As a magnet draws iron filings but leaves other substances alone, so also each spirit draws only the kind of mind-stuff which it used in its former life, plus that which it has learned to use in its present post-mortem state. Then it descends into the Desire World where it gathers material for a new desire body such as will express appropriately its moral characteristics, and later it attracts a certain amount of ether which is built into the mold of the archetype constructed in the second heaven and acts as cement between the solids, liquids and gaseous material from the bodies of parents which forms the dense physical body of a child, and in due time the latter is brought to birth.

Birth and Child Life.

It must not be imagined, however, that when the little body of a child has been born, the process of birth is completed. The dense physical body has had the longest evolution, and as a shoemaker who has worked at his trade for a number of years is more expert than an apprentice and can make better shoes and quicker, so also the spirit which has built many physical bodies produces them quickly, but the vital body is a later acquisition of the human being. Therefore we are not so expert in building that vehicle. Consequently it takes longer to construct that from the materials not used up in making the lining of the archetype, and the vital body is not born until the seventh year. Then the period of rapid growth commences. The desire body is a still later addition of composite man, and is not brought to birth until the fourteenth year when the desire nature expresses itself most strongly during so-called “hot” youth, and the mind, which makes man man, does not come to birth until the twenty-first year. In law that age is recognized as the earliest time he is fitted to exercise a franchise.

This knowledge is of the utmost importance to parents, as a proper understanding of the development which should take place in each of the septenary epochs enables the educator to work intelligently with nature and thus fulfill more thoroughly the trust of a parent than those who are ignorant of the Rosicrucian Mystery Teaching. We shall therefore devote the remaining pages to an elucidation of this matter and of the importance of the knowledge of astrology upon the part of the parent.

The Mystery of Light, Color and Consciousness.

“God is Light,” says the Bible, and we are unable to conceive of a grander simile of His Omnipresence, or the mode of His manifestation. Even the greatest telescopes have failed to reach the boundaries of light, though they reveal to us stars millions of miles from the earth, and we may well ask ourselves, as did the Psalmist of old: Whither shall I flee from Thy Presence? If I ascend into heaven Thou art there, If I make my bed in the grave (the Hebrew word sheol means grave and not hell), Thou art there, If I take the wings [pg 188] of morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there shall thy hand lead me.

When, in the dawn of Being, God the Father enunciated