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| Simplified Scientific Christianity |
The Rosicrucian Fellowship Temple Service draws from Corinthians 1: “For now we know in part, and we prophecy in part. But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away.” Things in the concrete worlds are always in part. Even the most accurate physical measurement is only an approximation. Things of the transcendental, spiritual worlds are wholes. Spirit is indivisible in its perfection. Our current focus of consciousness, in the depths of matter, is partial—just as St. Paul says. However, in our inmost being, we are spiritual beings; we sense the spiritual wholes within, and behind, partial things—just as St. Paul did.
When spiritual creations become manifest in concretion, they must accommodate for limitation, incompletion, and partial existence. This accommodation is accomplished by delineation in time. Treating a cycle as a whole, gives us a sense of a delineation of a whole in time. A year is a cycle, a whole as we are looking at it. While living in it, we do not immediately understand a year as a whole. We experience and understand, a year as it unfolds around us, in the seasons, each with its own qualities, and a few exceptions. We do not understand a year as a whole until it is completed, and we can look back at it. We do not understand a lifetime until it has been experienced, the experience has been processed, and we have the overview from third heaven, which is a transcendental spiritual world.
The process of manifesting, experiencing, and understanding a whole, through delineation in time, is universal. For example, a life (or a life cycle), whether in general, or in specific, is a delineation of a creative assertion of a spiritual Ego. It is a whole. Understanding wholes in this manner also applies to other things such as the evolution of a religion, or religion as a whole. Max Heindel clearly delineated an evolution of religion, from the religion of fear and obedience, to the religion of rewards according to behavior, to the religion of deferred rewards laid up in heaven, to the religion of Christ wherein behavior is born of love, to a future religion of the Father, beyond our current capacity to conceive. In the Christianity of today, we are in the position of St. Paul in Corinthians 1. We sense the wholeness of the religion of love in spirit. We long for it, but we are not there yet. The longing impels us forward.
There are other valid ways to view the evolution of religion. Before the Christian era, religious psychology was much different from what it is now. Involuntary, involutionary clairvoyance was more of a factor than it is today. Some of what is now belief was then quasi-experiential. There was no need for reasons to believe, because there were few doubts. If we contrast that with the religious psychology of today, the difference is almost shocking. Atheism was almost unheard of then, now twenty-six percent of Americans are atheistic. Now we believe, because there are doubts, and those doubts are answered. Now religion is more rational, and it is becoming more so. Religions then did not have theologians, now religions are rife with them. They are all seeking answers to spiritual problems. The philosophy of the Rosicrucian Fellowship is for the most advanced spiritual seekers of our time. It is loaded with reasons to believe, almost too many (Rosicrucian seekers are sometimes prone to sit back in smug satisfaction with the abundance of reasons, and thereby fail to develop greater faith.) Part of the reason for religion becoming more rational is that we are moving progressively into the Mercury half of our current Earth Period of evolution. Consequently the mind is coming more to the forefront of all of our activities. It is becoming dominant as an evolutionary tool.
The first coming of Christ came just past the time of the turning point from involution to evolution. As involution ends and evolution begins, we are becoming more expressive and outwardly giving. “Freely have ye received, freely give.” We are becoming more creative. We are becoming divinities, as intended in the divine plan. In this, the influence of Christ is tremendous, and it, too, is increasing. However, the Christ influence cannot account for the questioning and doubt of our time. Christ came to give us life “more abundantly,” not atheism. To find the source of the change from blind acceptance to open questioning, we must look elsewhere in the evolution of religion.
In the centuries immediately before the appearance of Christ, and for several centuries after, there were the Gnostics. There was no single gnostic religion. There were numerous gnostic sects, some quite different from others; some pre-Christian and some post-Christian; some Christian and some non Christian. Though not monolithic, gnostic sects did share some things in common. For one, they were more esoteric than exoteric. The word Gnostic is taken from the Greek word gnosis, which means to know. The gnostics claimed to have essential, immediate spiritual knowledge based on experience. If they didn’t, they weren’t gnostics. One facet of that experience, was conscious awareness of the divinity within. They knew the divinity within, is spirit as much as the Universal Spirit is spirit. Some thought they were equals with the Universal Spirit. Another thing they shared in common, was that they were highly Luciferic in their questioning. They were rebellious to orthodoxy, and they were willing to challenge anything, even divinities. Some, when they studied astrology, did so to see what the gods were up too, so they could do the opposite. The Demiurge was the Gnostic name fo the Creator—Jehovah in Judaism. To them, He was an imperfect being, who broke every one of his own commandments, and produced a flawed creation. To the Gnostics, He was at least as responsible for the eviction of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden, as they were themselves, for breaking the laws.
Gnosticism never gained broad acceptance. Few were inclined to, or capable of, becoming gnostics. Though few in number, with their well-developed ideas, they did influence the evolution of Christianity. Significant numbers of the members of the Councils of the early Christian Church, were influenced by gnosticism. Some were pro and some were anti-gnostic but, in either case, they influenced early Christian doctrine. Some scholars trace early alchemy to an origin in gnosticism. The relationship of alchemy to Rosicrucianism, and other mystery schools, is historical fact. In the gnostic influence on the development of Christianity, there is an analogy with the cycle of the year, and this writer’s garden. A few extremely cold days in winter do not change the general tenor, of an otherwise warm year, but they do influence some factors in it. There may be fewer insects because fewer larvae and pupae survive the cold snap. Because of the small cults of gnosticism, we have the birth of questioning in modern Christianity, and even the skeptical rigor of materialistic science, which grew out of alchemy.
The influence of gnosticism is not purposeless. It is important for understanding how some cosmological changes in the evolutionary creation, come about. This essay is about activity performed with a gnostic attitude, its relation to eviction, and how this attitude brings about cosmological change.
Cosmological changes come in large and small sizes. They are the products of creative activity in cycles, within cycles, within cycles, large and small. The change from involution to evolution, i.e., from creature to creator, is likely the largest cosmological change for us in our evolution. The entrance of Christ into our evolution around the time of this change, magnifies the importance of this change. The fact that Christ came to redeem us from our course (which would have resulted in a tangential, materialistic expulsion from the great cycle of creation) increases the importance even more. The origin of our deviate evolutionary course, occurred at a time described in the biblical story of the Garden of Eden. At that time, we accepted the Luciferic influence to become disobedient to divine law, which in the story, is described as a commandment. Therefore, it is important to understand some pertinent things about that event.
We are told that we were evicted, or banished—expelled is the word usually used—from the Garden of Eden. The darlings of Jehovah, who wrote the Bible, stated it that way. The children of fire, under Luciferic influence, would never state things that way. They would likely say, we expelled ourselves, and they would be correct.
The Garden of Eden is a symbol for the inner, spiritual worlds, which are different from the material world of the senses, whereby we only sense the illusory outside of things. The first realm of inwardness is the etheric subdivision of the physical world, the fringe of Eden. The four ethers, in their flowing energy, are represented as the four rivers flowing through Eden. The “commandment” to not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, is not like the command one gives to a dog, such as “stay.” It is more of a statement of a cosmic principle than a decree. It can only be seen as a commandment in the sense that the creative Word is a fiat, because of its power. Our choice to follow the suggestion of the Lucifer Spirits was an act of freedom. In fact, it introduced a unique freedom into the divine plan. However, it was done in partial ignorance. Because of this, we brought an imbalance into the creation, an imbalance of choosing personal experience over understanding. By doing this we brought Luciferic influence into human evolutionary activities. The Luciferic influence, though faint, already existed in the general cosmos from the previous acts of the Lucifers, in the Moon Period. The Luciferic influence cannot be removed from the cosmos, anymore than the influence of a few extremely cold days in winter, can be removed from the writer’s annual garden. It must be dealt with. To do that, we need to know what that influence means in our activity in the evolutionary creation.
Before we can understand the influence of divine dissatisfaction, which we are calling Luciferic, on our activities in the evolutionary creation, we need to clarify our view of the cosmos, in which it occurs. There are many illusions abut the nature of the cosmos. Most of them have developed out of our materialistic outlook, developed over ages. Some people hold illusions of angels with feathered wings flying through the air like so many birds. One prominent illusion is the notion that space is empty as was taught by science in the past. Mystics find that what we call space is not empty at all. It is a plenum, a full space. Space, like its co-factor time, is a potential in which manifestation occurs. One might even say, manifestation defines space, or that space is an accommodation of manifestation, an expandable womb. Even materialistic science now teaches that space is permeated by electromagnetic field (which mystics would call etheric), a lower octave manifestation of Life Spirit. It also now teaches, that space is warped by material manifestation. Mystics see these findings as only a beginning. The etheric world is permeated, by still more subtle worlds, such as the desire world, and the world of thought. There is a procession of worlds within and behind other worlds, all the way to the Supreme Being, the One, the Universal Spirit.
Some early mystics, when describing the spiritual worlds, have occasionally made unfortunate choices in selecting descriptive words. A misleading example is describing the physical world, that we perceive through our senses, as the most dense world. It is the most concrete and the most outwardly manifest world, but not the most dense. In fact, it is the least dense. There is considerable, proportionate distance between physical atoms. Whereas the etheric subdivision, in which the physical is suspended, is both more rare, and more dense, in its concentration. It is almost without gaps. As one proceeds inward and upward through the spiritual worlds, the trend of increasing subtlety and closeness, called density, holds true. The early Greek mystics called the world of Life Spirit, the Crystallium, the place of awakening, and the probable origin of the term Christ, the Rock.
There are other illusions about the nature of the cosmos. One is about life and death. Many think that minerals, such as stones, are dead. Mystics find that everything in the cosmos is alive. Stones might not have the vital life that plants and animals possess, but they do have their own peculiar life, they are abuzz with it. Science now agrees with mystics in this. Where there is life there is consciousness. Everything in the cosmos is conscious. Stones may have only a deep, trance-like consciousness, but it is consciousness; and they are capable of more. Everything in the cosmos is awakening, more and better, consciousness. Awakening consciousness is one of the purposes of evolution.
Where there is life, form, and consciousness, there are beings. All of the worlds within worlds, within worlds, are the bodies of beings within other beings, and so on. Even what we call laws of nature, are really the consciousness of exalted beings. The cosmos is comprised and permeated by Divinity, and divinities. Were it possible to focus on, and consciously penetrate, one cubic meter of space( as we conceive space three dimensionally) we would experience a cross-section, so to speak, of the bodies of many exalted, divine beings with consciousness beyond our current ability to conceive. Emanuel Swedenborg describes a moment, wherein he sees divine beings, only to have them seem to dissolve to his vision, and open to even more grand and holy beings within and behind them. After several replications of this, the reader (almost with hair standing on end) is awe struck, even when reading it three hundred years after it was written.
Between these generations of beings, there are relationships. Most of the relationships are hierarchical. Some seem adversarial, though they all work for the Good. We see, for example, how the divine Beings working through the zodiacal sign Aries, might seem as cross-purposes with those working through Cancer, but both work for the good in different ways. Of the various existent relationships, it is the hierarchical, or vertical, relationships that we are interested, at the moment.
The first, and most prominent, vertical relationship most humans experience is in the family. Our parents were like gods to us. Parents provide a nest, wherein their children can safely grow, mature, and be educated, in preparation for adult life. On a larger scale, strong, developed, nations provide protectorates for fledgeling societies, until they are ready for independence. All of us were under the control of a Group Spirit, before we began to individuate. Even after individuation, we have been under the influence of race, cultural, and religious spirits. Among other things, the worlds and principles within them, are embodiments of divine beings, the protectors and inspirers of all evolving within them.
Vertical evolutionary relationships are functional. The functions are more than providence and protection. A provider can cary out many more intents through its charges than could be carried out by itself alone. The inverse is also true. An apprentice can benefit from the experience of a master artist. In the cosmos, these vertical relationships are necessary and symbiotic. In the One, we all need each other.
Change is essential in the evolutionary creation. The functions for vertical relationships change. Some end. Children grow up, and become adults, with no need for parental protection. At best, the parental relationship can become advisory. In the grand scope of the creation, some divine hierarchies withdraw and pass on to new and higher things, leaving their duties to those coming up behind them in creativity.
Withdrawal is not the only way vertical relationships terminate. The animal kingdom has its own way of termination. When it is time, a mother bear will drive off her cubs; eagles will withhold food from their fledglings, to encourage them to fly. With humans it is opposite. During the third septenary period of life, when the desire body is born, and there is a recapitulation of the Moon Period, the Lemurian epoch, and the animal-like evolutionary stage, the Luciferic influence is reactivated. Thus begins the period of teenage and young adult rebellion. We separate ourselves from our parents, just as humanity separated itself from the control of the hierarchies. Eviction. A reenactment of Eden in other conditions.
The fall that followed our auto-eviction from Eden has been hard, but not without a positive side. At the price of suffering in blind, materialistic ignorance, with the possibility of completely dropping out of the creation, we have gained something of inestimable value—freedom. We have acted outside of the divine plan as much as is possible. This outsider status gives us the opportunity of autonomy, unavailable to the other hierarchies. We see things differently, and we can act decisively. As Max Heindel put it in “The Law of Success in Spiritual Matters”: When you have reached the point where you are fully persuaded that you can succeed positively, determined that you will succeed in some pursuit, there is no power on earth or in heaven that can withstand you in that particular pursuit; ….
This applies to more than personal pursuits. It applies to all of our work in the evolutionary creation. We must do things with a unique attitude, a Luciferically tinged attitude. we must exercise our “divine discontent.” However, it must not be applied destructively, or in inane personal rebellion. To paraphrase Max Heindel, we must strive to make two blades of grass grow where only one grew before.
Our work does not mean eviction from the divine plan, but within the divine plan. We do not separate ourselves from the creation. We do not separate ourselves from our fellowmen, in divisive nationalism. For one who has developed a strong individuality, patriotism is unbearable. The heart cries out in the words of Thomas Paine, that Max Heindel loved to quote: “The world is my country and my religion is to do good.” To do this is not easy. When we evicted ourselves from Eden, it wasn’t easy either. For us, merely refusing to stand for the National Anthem, will draw scorn and more, and we must understand that the people doing the scorning are not bad people. We must have the courage of conviction to live in freedom, and commitment to all humanity, simultaneously.
If there is suffering, it isn’t necessarily a disincentive. It can be an asset. Max Heindel points out that contentment on the spiritual path is a major evolutionary drawback, which some call spiritual death. Even discontent about not being as perfect, as we think we should be, is beneficial. Everywhere in nature, we see evolutionary change proceeding, as some have put it, “from perfection to perfection.” In nature, changes in the evolutionary environment, demand change to survive and progress, like the mother bear chasing her cubs away. For us, the demand must come from within, no matter what the cost.
It is important that we sustain inner discontent, because it is so easy to be lulled into contentment. In contentment we eagerly seek to preserve the status quo. After all, what we are in is beautiful and wonderful, and we would love to rest in it as it is, forever. Moreover, with regard to our current condition—everything we are—is a product of the gods, the divine hierarchies. Until now, our work during involution has been to respond to the workings of divine beings. We should be filled with gratitude, for all that we have received. Gratitude does not nullify discontent. We love our parents and are grateful for what they have done for us, but we don’t want to be under their control for the entirety of our lives. Beneficent as their gifts have been, we want and need to change our relationships with the creative hierarchies. We want to evict them, or evict ourselves, from too great of control by them. It is part of our evolutionary work. It is beneficial for them as well. Our parents don’t want us to live at home, dependent on them, forever. They want to go on to other things, to retire from parenting, to do greater and higher things as the Cherubim and Seraphim did.
As spiritual aspirants, we long to unfold spiritual powers, to serve the Good. This is accomplished, in part, in the very activity addressed in this essay. Spiritual dissatisfaction arises when we are uncomfortable with something. Often it arises from discomfort within. In soul growth we become uncomfortable with things in our inner being—spiritual slivers, so to speak. We then turn inward in retrospection, or some form of inner analysis, until we find the source of our discomfort. Then we transform, or expel, the source, as the case maybe. As we advance in consciousness, we find that some sources of inner discomfort arise from our relationships with the creative hierarchies, that helped us to become as we are. These relationships must change, even if it means eviction.
Not all advancement comes through discomfort. Some arises from the urge to create. It may arise from inspiration, or from admiration of something in the creation. In either case, it means we must change, even it it means the status quo must go.
We have been speaking of little, personal, instances and actions of a principle, as that principle applies to our lives at present. The principle also applies to the greater evolution and the distant future. An example may be helpful.
The influence of divine hierarchies extends into the systems, organs, and even cells, of our physical bodies. The living principles of the hierarchies determine how our bodies function—they are in the very structure and use of it. An excellent example can be found in the kidneys. The kidneys are ruled by the astrological sign Libra, through which the Lords of Individuality and other hierarchies also work. Libra is ruled by Venus, and Saturn is exalted there. Libra is a sign of justice. Its symbol is a representation of the scales of justice. Venus represents love, and St. Paul tells us “the fulfilling of the law is love.” Saturn is more exacting. Saturn is the lord of the law, and its influence is found at the fulcrum of the beam of the scales. It is the point of the law where cause and consequence are linked, the deed. The linkage of cause and consequence, as we progress through life, has been likened to the linkage of a chain. Ghosts in the lower desire world, are sometimes pictured as burdened by the onus of the heavy chains they must bear. Adding another dimension to a chain produces a net, the net of destiny. In effect, the kidneys are a net. The blood rushes through them but the larger molecules do not pass through the net, and they slide into the bladder. In the mechanics of this, we see the workings of the hierarchies of Libra, spiritually, and physically.
The influence of the hierarchies of Libra in our kidneys, is beneficent. The influence of our parents, is beneficent, even long after they have passed away. Benign though these influences may be, we want to be free from them. We are grateful for our parents, but we still want to be good people on our own, with our own kind of goodness. We feel we owe it to the divinity within, to be autonomous, self-reliant, beings. We cannot help others if we cannot help ourselves. We want to experience the purity of freedom.
Freedom is in degrees. In democracies we say we are free because we can choose or elect our government. We have freedom of choice. Creative activity is a deeper degree of freedom, than choice. In creating we are doing something new, not merely choosing between existing options. Some of the hierarchies have even greater freedom by creating opportunities in which others can create.
Freedom is not independence. Freedom and independence can be opposites. To be entirely free from any external influence—absolute independence—is a Luciferic illusion. If it were possible, absolute independence would mean absolute dissociation and loneliness. It would be, by definition, expulsion, or eviction, from the Creation. The truth is, that freedom is not abridged by even the tightest cooperative agreement. Independence is independence from; Freedom is freedom within. One can be free within even the seemingly most externally demanding relationships. Our ideal freedom is that we love God, not because we have to, but because we want to. If it is compelled, it isn’t love.
We free ourselves in the little things of life. We awaken to freedom, for instance, when we realize we want to be at work on time, because it makes it better for everyone. Much of the beauty of music would be lost if the musicians disregarded keeping time, for the sake of “freedom.” This writer’s garden wouldn’t amount to much, if everything in nature didn’t heed the times and seasons. The effects of little deeds, made in freedom, accumulate. Eventually, the etheric effects of our little voluntary acts, made from the goodness of our hearts, will coalesce and enrich the vital body of the Earth in such a way that we can levitate and guide it. In the Rosicrucian philosophy we are told that doing this will liberate Christ from this enormous burden. In this sense, liberation is a form of eviction. The Earth, as we know it now in its chemical state, will no longer be necessary. The minerals will dissolve back into the ethers, and we will meet Christ “in the air.” We will have also evicted ourselves from our earthly burdens. With the same stroke, we evict, or liberate, the hierarchies of Libra, and other astrological signs, from direct influence in our physical bodies. “For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of God in heaven.” Neither will we need kidneys.
The dissolution of the Earth, and the resurrection, are magnum, evolutionary changes, when compared to a frigid winter. Major evolutionary changes create monumental demands. We must struggle to adapt to new conditions, even if only in consciousness. There will be no night, as we know it now, and no need to sleep, or eat as well. Are we ready to adapt to that much “free” time? Do we waste our free time now? We must have awakened enough of a sense of conviction in our urge to create, in order to adapt. We must have the law “written in our hearts,” and we must be founded in perpetual purposefulness. Our bodies will change with the new conditions, and with our new consciousness. The hierarchies working through Libra will be evicted, whether by changes in evolutionary conditions, or by our quest for creative freedom.
We have received more from Libra than filtration. We have received a sense of fairness, justice, and judgment. These qualities cannot be expelled; they have become part of our spiritual character. They can be shared, just as the Librans shared them with us. Sharing is our duty as creative beings. In our spiritual aspiration, we do not rid ourselves of flaws, or negative influences, (and the elementals created by them,) we creatively transform them into living virtues. The things which have been bestowed on us from above, we pass on to our evolutionary charges. We want to become people who find ways to impart principles into our evolutionary work, and sustain them until they take hold. To begin with, it might be something as simple as endowing character to the hue of the minerals applied to a painting. The possibilities are as numerous as the richness of our imaginations. It is a joy and privilege given to us, but it must be done, and the doing must be sustained until effectual.
“Freely ye have received, freely give.”
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Contemporary Mystic Christianity |
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