The Rosicrucian
Christianity Lectures
by Max Heindel
(Part 3)
Lecture Seven
Birth: A Fourfold Event
When we left the Ego in its pilgrimage through the invisible worlds,
we had reached the point where it entered the Third Heaven after having
discarded the dense body at death, the vital body shortly afterwards, the
desire body upon leaving Purgatory and the First Heaven, and finally before
leaving the Second Heaven it also left the sheath of mind behind, and Then
entered the Third Heaven absolutely free of any encumbrance. All the
discarded vehicles decay, only the Spirit persists, laving for a while in
the great spiritual reservoir of force which we call the Third Heaven, in
order to fortify itself for the next rebirth into Earth-life.
Sir Edwin Arnold has put this idea so poignantly and beautifully in
his "Song Celestial," where he says:
Never the Spirit was born
The Spirit shall cease to be never;
Never was time it was not,
End and beginning are dreams;
Birthless and deathless the spirit remaineth forever,
Death has not touched it at all,
Dead though the house of it seems.
Nay but as one layeth
His worn-out robe away,
And taking another sayeth:
This will I wear today,
So putteth by the Spirit
Lightly its garment of flesh;
And passeth on to inherit
A residence afresh.
The Law of Consequence determines our existence after death in
accord with the life we have lived here. If in Earth-life we were mostly
given to low desires and passions our purgatorial existence is the most vivid
part of our post-mortem state; the existence in the various heavens will be
insipid. If we lived in the higher emotions, life in the First Heaven will
be the richest of the different stages. Did we love to plan improvements
and was our mind constructive in Earth-life? Then we shall have great
benefit from our stay in the Second Heaven, where concrete thought is the
basis of concrete things on Earth, but in order to have a conscious
existence in the Third Heaven we must have given time and effort to
abstract thought which had no relation to time or space.
Most of us are incapable of thinking abstractly and therefore we
lack consciousness in the Third Heaven. If we think of "Love" we associate
it with some person. We dislike mathematics because it is dry, unemotional
and abstract. There is no feeling connected with the statement that twice
two is four, but it is this very fact which is of value, for when we rise above feeling we leave bias behind and truth is at once apparent. No one
would say that twice two is five, or quarrel over the proposition that the
squares of the hypotenuse equals the sum of the squares of the other sides
of a triangle. That was the reason why Pythagoras and other esoteric teachers
demanded that applicants for tuition should first have a knowledge of
mathematics. A mind used to grappling with mathematics is trained in
sequential thought, capable of testing truth apart from bias, and only such a
mind can safely be given esoteric training.
The great majority of people are not yet past the stage where
they properly progress along what is called "practical lines," and for them
the Third Heaven is simply a waiting place where they are unconscious, as
in sleep, until the time is ripe for a new birth. The man, for instance,
who had lived a low life of sense-gratification, who had been utterly
destructive, would have a painful existence in Purgatory, as he had been very
bad. He would rapidly and unconsciously pass through the First Heaven because
he had done no good. His destructiveness would render his life in the
Second Heaven almost unconscious and he would have absolutely no existence in
the Third Heaven, where advanced Egos evolve original ideas which later
manifest as genius in Earth-life. Hence such a backward Ego would remain
asleep until the time for a new birth would awaken it to another day in
Life's School, another chance of improvement.
We often hear people say, upon first hearing this doctrine: "Oh, but
I don't want to come back." That is the cry of the weary and tired body, the
consequence of a hard life; but as soon as the experience of that life has
been assimilated in heaven, the Law of Consequence and desire for more
knowledge draws the Ego back to Earth, as a magnet draws a needle, and it
begins to contemplate a re-embodiment.
Here again the Law of Consequence is the determining factor, the
new birth is conditioned by our past lives. Having lived many times it
is evident, of course, that we have met many different persons and had
varying relations with them, affecting them for good or ill, or we have been
thus acted upon by them. Causes were thus generated between them and us,
and many were left fallow, as it were, unable to produce their sequential
effect, for one reason or another.
The invariableness of Law requires that these causes should find
their consummation some time, and so the Recording Angels who are the Great
Intelligences in charge of the law of adjustment, look up the past of each
man, at the time he is ready for a new birth, and find out who among the
friends or foes are living at that time, and where they are. As we have
made an enormous number of such relations in our past, there are generally
several groups of such people in Earth-life, and if there are no special
reasons why one of them in particular should then be taken, the Recording
Angel gives the Ego its choice of the opportunities offered. They select in
each case the amount of ripe causation that the Ego is thus to work out, and
show to the Ego in a series of pictures a panorama of what the coming life
will be in each of the proposed lives, any of which the Ego may then choose.
These panoramas run from the cradle to the grave, and give the great outline
of the life, but leave room for the Ego to fill in the details by new
or free-will action.
Thus, the Ego has a certain latitude as to the place of birth, and it
may therefore be said that in the great majority of cases we are where we are
by our own choice; it matters not that we do not know it in our brain, the
Ego is yet weak, and not able to freely penetrate the veil of flesh, is
largely dependent even upon the lower personality to help it grow, and the
more we determine in our brain-mind to live for the higher self, the sooner
the day will come when the Ego will shine through, and we shall know.
When the Ego has made its choice, it is bound by that choice to
go through with the adjustment of debts contracted in former lives and now
ripe for liquidation. That then forms the destiny, or the hard and fast
conditions of life, which cannot possibly be changed. Any attempt to do so
will surely be frustrated, but let no one fall into the delusion that his destiny compels him to do wrong at any time. The law works only for good, and
as we have seen, the evil in any life is the first thing purged after death,
and only the tendency to do this particular wrong remains, with the feeling
of aversion, generated by the suffering experienced in the process of
expurgation. When the temptation to commit a similar evil act comes in a
later life, this feeling of past pain, which we call conscience, warns and
repels us from yielding to the temptation. If we fall in spite of this
warning voice, the suffering we experience in Purgatory will add to and
strengthen the previous feeling, until our conscience develops the necessary
stability to resist the particular evil involved, and from that moment it
ceases to be a temptation to us.
Thus we see that no man is ever fated to do wrong, that at least
every evul act is an act of free-will, committed even against the resistance
of whatever amount of conscience we have previously developed regarding
that particular phase of evil.
The question as to the coming rebirth having been decided, the Ego
descends first into the Region of Concrete Thought, and begins to draw to
itself the materials for a new mind.
As said previously, the man withdraws from his different bodies in
the course of his post-mortem career, these bodies go to decay, but there is
an atom saved from each, one from the mind also, and it is those so-
called "seed-atoms" which are the nuclei of the new vestures in which the
Spirit will appear in its coming life.
When now, the Ego descends into the Region of Concrete Thought, the
latent forces in the seed-atom of the mind of its previous lives are aroused
into activity, and it begins to draw to itself the materials for a new mind,
as a magnet draws iron filings around its poles. If we hold a magnet over a
heap of shavings of brass, iron, gold, lead, silver, wood, etc., we shall
find that it will only take the iron filings, and also that it will take
only a certain quantity, according to its strength. Its attractive power is
limited to a certain quantity of a particular kind. So with the seed-atom,
it can attract in each region only such materials as it has affinity for,
and only a certain definite quantity. This material then forms itself into a
great bell-shaped thing, open at the bottom and with the seed-atom at the
top.
This may be likened to a diving-bell, diving into a sea of gradually
increasing density. The materials taken from each realm and woven into the
bell add to its weight, so as to make it sink farther and farther until it
reaches the bottom.
Thus the returning Ego sinks through the Region of Concrete Thought
and in the passage the seed-atom gathers the materials for the new mind.
The descent continues. The Ego, clothed in its bell-shaped garment
of mind-stuff, sinks into the Desire World; the forces of the seed-atom
saved from its former desire body are awakened, and placed inside a top of
the bell. Thence it draws to itself the kind and quantity of the
materials needed to furnish the returning Ego with a new desire body
appropriate to its particular needs, so that when the densest region of the
Desire World has been reached there are two layers in the bell, the sheath
of mind-stuff on the outside and the materials for the desire body inside.
The next step downwards brings the spirit into the Etheric Region,
where the materials for the new vital body are gathered, and from a part of
that material the agents of the Recording Angels fashion a mold or matrix,
which is placed in the womb of the mother, to give appropriate form to the
new dense body, while the seed-atom is placed in the semen of the father.
Without the presence of these two factors no union of the sexes will bring
results, and when a marriage is barren, though both partners are healthy and
desirous of children, it means simply that no incoming Ego is attracted to
them.
As soon as the vital body has been placed the returning Ego, clothed
in its bell-shaped covering, hovers constantly near the future mother.
She alone does the work upon the new dense body in the first eighteen
to twenty-one days after fertilization, Then the Ego enters the mother's
body, drawing the bell-shaped covering down over the fetus, the opening at
the bottom closes, and the Ego is once more incarcerated in the prison-house
of the dense body.
The moment of entrance into the womb is one of great importance in
life, for when the incoming Ego first contacts the before-mentioned matrix
vital body it sees there again the panorama of the coming life which has been
impressed upon the matrix by the Recording Angels in order to give it the
tendencies required to work out the ripe causation due to be liquidated in
the coming life.
At this time the Ego is already so much blinded by the veil of
matter that it does not recognize the good end in view in the same unbiased
manner as when making its choice in the Region of Abstract Thought, and
when a particularly hard life reveals itself to the vision of the returning
Ego at the moment of entering the womb, it sometimes happens that the Ego
is so startled and frightened that it seeks to rush out again. The
connection cannot be severed, however, but may be strained, so that instead
of the vital body being concentric with the dense body, the head of the
vital body maybe above the head of the dense body. Then we have a congenital
idiot.
Under the most favorable conditions it is a great strain for the Ego
to go through the womb, and everything should be done by the parents not
to make it more aggravated than necessary; we never can tell where the
breaking point is; inharmonious relationship between the parents at the
critical periods of gestation, particularly the first, may sometimes prove
the last straw.
Before the event we term birth, the coming man is enclosed in
another body (the mother's), and thus unable to directly contact the sense-
world. This seclusion is necessary to bring the organism to the proper point
of maturity, where it is fit to receive these impressions itself. When
that point is reached, the protective covering of the womb opens and the new
human being enters the arena of the world.
As we have seen, man is a great deal more than the mere dense body,
and it must not be imagined that all his vehicles are equally mature when he
is born into the Physical World. As a matter of fact they are not; the
vital body grows and ripens inside its covering of ether until the seventh
year, or the changing of the teeth. The desire body requires protection from
the onslaughts of the Desire World until about the fourteenth year it is born
at the time we call puberty; and the mind is not sufficiently ripe to
be released from its protective cover until the man reaches his majority
at about twenty-one. These periods are only approximately correct, for
each person differs from all others in regard to exact time periods, but
those given are near enough.
The reason for this slow unfoldment of the higher vehicles lies in
the fact that they are comparatively recent additions to the economy of the
Ego, while the dense body has had much the longest evolution, and is by far
the most perfect and valuable instrument we possess. When people who have
sometimes but recently come to a knowledge of the existence of higher
vehicles are constantly talking and thinking of how nice it would be to fly
off in the desire body and leave the "low" and "vile" physical, it shows
that they have not yet learned to appreciate the difference between "higher"
and "perfect." The dense body is a marvel of perfection, with its
strong articulated skeleton, its delicate sense organs, its coordinating
mechanism of nerve and brain, which makes it superior to any other mechanism
in the world. Looked at in detail, take for instance the large bone of the
thigh, the femur, and examine the thick ends. If we split it open we shall
see that only a thin outside shell is made of compact bone. This is
stiffened by beams and cross-beams of thin cancelated bone, making it of
prodigious strength, coupled with a lightness as far beyond the skill of the
greatest living structural engineer as differential calculus is beyond an ant.
Therefore, though we realize that some day in the distant future
our higher vehicles will attain a perfection far, far beyond that of our
dense body, we must remember that at present they are more or less
unorganized, and are of little value when detached from the perfect
physical organism, and we should in all things give thanks to the exalted
Beings who helped us to evolve this splendid instrument whereby we are now
functioning in the world as self-conscious human beings and working out our
destiny, life after life, becoming each time a little more like our Father in
Heaven.
Thus we see that birth is a fourfold event, and in order to do our
full duty as educators, it is absolutely necessary that we should know this
and the facts that follow from it. We cannot easily tear the unborn babe out
of the womb and expose it to the impacts of the outside world — to do so
would kill it. It is equally dangerous to break through the wombs of the
unseen bodies and expose the immature child to the impacts of the moral and
mental world, and though such a proceeding does not always kill the dense
body it invariably stunts its capacity, for what hurts one body is
detrimental to the other vehicles. To educate the child properly, it is
therefore necessary to have a knowledge of the effect of training upon
the different vehicles, and the right methods to employ, bearing in mind
constantly, however, that general rules do not always apply in individual
cases.
We saw that when the Ego had finished its day in the school of life
the centrifugal force of Repulsion caused it to throw off its dense vehicle
at death, Then the vital body, which is the next coarsest. Next in
purgatory the coarsest desire stuff accumulated by the Ego as embodiment for
its lowest desires was purged by this centrifugal force. In the higher
realms only the force of Attraction holds sway and keeps the goody by
centripetal action, which tends to draw everything from the periphery to the
center.
This centripetal force of Attraction also governs when the Ego is
coming to rebirth. We know that we can throw a stone farther than we can
throw a feather. Therefore the coarsest matter was thrown outwards after
death by the force of Repulsion, and for the same reason the coarsest
material wherein the returning Ego embodies the tendency to evil is whirled
inwards to the center by the centripetal force of Attraction, with the result
that when a child is born all that is best and purest appears on the outside. The latent evil does not usually manifest until after the desire body is born at about the age of fourteen, and the currents in that vehicle commence to well outwards from the liver. At that time the Ego commences to "live" its individual life and show what is within.
The stars are the clock of destiny; they show the hidden tendencies,
and while astrologers are fallible in prediction of events, a good and
careful astrologer will be able to reveal the character of a person accurately
in 99 per cent of all cases. Thus parents may obtain a guide to the hidden
side of a child's nature. But it requires very little ability to cast a
horoscope, and it is always better for the parents to learn than to employ
a stranger. They will then get a much deeper insight into the character of
their child.
With the physical birth the dense body begins to feel the impacts of
the outside world, which act upon it as the forces of the mother's body
previously did. What these did during ante-natal life, the impacts of the
elements continue all through physical life. Up to the time of the seventh
year, or change of teeth, there is one particular activity going on, which
is widely different from the activities of the succeeding epochs of life.
The sense organs take certain definite forms which give them their basic
structural tendencies and determine their line of development in one
direction or another. Later they grow, but all growth follows the lines
laid down in those first seven years, and the mistakes or neglect of
opportunities during this period can seldom be retrieved in after life. If
the limbs and organs have taken the proper forms, the whole after growth will
be harmonious; but if malformation takes place then, the little body will
be more or less misshapen. It is the duty of the educator to give the
proper environment to the little child in this period, as nature does before
birth, for only that can give the sensitive organism the right direction
and tendency of growth.
There are two magic words which denote the manner in which the
child comes into contact with the formative influences of its environment —
example and imitation. There is under the whole heaven no creature so
imitative as a little child, and in this imitation we have the force which
gives tendency and direction to the little organism. Everything in a child's
environment leaves its impress for good or evil, and we should realize that
our slightest action may do incalculable harm or good in the life of our
children, and that we ought never to do anything in the presence of the child which we would not be perfectly willing to have it imitate.
It is no use to teach it to mind, or to moralize at this period;
example is the only teacher the child needs or heeds. It cannot help
imitating any more than water can help running down hill, for that is its
only method of growth in this epoch. Teaching of morals and reason comes
later; to apply them now is like taking a child out of the womb prematurely;
all that the child is to acquire of thoughts, ideas, and imagination must
come of itself in the same way that the eyes and ears develop before the birth
of the dense body.
The child should be a given playthings on which it may exercise
its imitative faculty — something with life, or a doll, jointed, so that it
can be put in different positions, and let the child dress it herself; in
that way she exercises her formative force in the right manner. Give the
boys tools and patterns, or molds and clay. Never give them anything finished, where they have nothing to do but look at it. That leaves the
brain no chance for development, and it must ever be the care and aim of the
educator at this time to furnish the means of developing the physical organs
harmoniously.
In regard to food, great care must be taken in this period, for a
healthy or diseased appetite in after life will depend upon how it is
fostered in the first septenary epoch. Here also example is the great
teacher. Highly seasoned dishes spoil the organism; the plainer the food
and the more it is conducive to thorough mastication, the more it promotes a
healthy appetite that will guide the man through life and give him the
health of body and ease of mind that is unknown to the gourmand. Let us
not have one dish for ourselves, however, and another for our child. In
that way we may keep it from eating it at home, but we generate a hankering
that will seek satisfaction when it gets old enough to have a will of its own.
The imitative faculty will then assert itself.
In regard to clothing, let us always be sure that a child's apparel is
of full size, and is replaced before it becomes so small that it
irritates. Many an immoral nature that has spoiled a life was first wakened by
the chafing of a too small garment, particularly in the case of boys.
Immorality is one of the worst and most tenacious plague-spots on our
civilization. To save our child, let us attend to this point, and seek in
every way to keep it unconscious of its sex-organ before the seventh year.
Corporal punishment is also an exceedingly fruitful factor in forcing the sex-nature, and cannot be sufficiently deprecated.
In regard to the education of the temperament it will be found that
colors are of the greatest significance, although the matter involves not
only a knowledge of the effect of colors, but particularly of the
complementary colors, for it is the latter that do the work in the organism
of the child. If we have to deal with a boisterous, hot-tempered nature, it is
soothed and softened by an environment of red. Rooms, furniture and
clothing of red will produce in the child the cooling green effect and calm
its nerves. One who is of a melancholy and lethargic nature will be roused
to action and life by an environment of blue or blue-green, which creates
in the child's organs the warm, rousing red or orange.
Nursery-rhymes are of the greatest importance in this period. It
does not matter so much about the sense they have, as about the rhythm — that
is of supreme importance and builds the organs in a harmony not realized by
any of the other aids; therefore, this, and a cheerful atmosphere are the
greatest of all means of education, and will even make up to a great extent
for the lack of others.
By the seventh year the vital body of the child has reached a
perfection sufficient to allow it to receive impacts from the outside world.
It sheds its protective covering of ether, and commences its free life. An
now the time begins in which the educator may work on the vital body and help
it in the formation of memory, conscience, good habits and a harmonious temperament. Authority and discipleship are the watchwords of this epoch,
when the child is to learn the meaning of things. In the first epoch it
learns that things are, but must not be bothered about their meaning,
except what it picks up of its own accord, but in the second epoch from
seven to fourteen years, it is essential that the child should learn the
meaning of them, but should learn to take things on the authority of
parents and teachers, memorizing their explanations, rather than reasoning
for itself, for reason belongs to a later development, and though he may do
so of his own accord, with profit, it is harmful at this period to force him
to think.
In order that the growing child should derive the proper benefit from
the instruction of parents and teachers, it is of course necessary that
he should have the greatest veneration for them, and admiration for their
wisdom, and it behooves us to comport ourselves so that he may always
retain it, for if he sees in us frivolity, hears light talk and observes a
generally loose conduct, we deprive him of the greatest staff of strength
in life, faith and trust in others. It is in this age that cynics and
sceptics are made. We are responsible to God for the lives committed to our
care, and will have to answer to the Law of Consequence if we neglect,
through slothful conduct, the great opportunity for guiding the early steps
of a fellow-being in the right path, and example is always better than
precept.
There is little use of warnings. Let us show the child living
examples of the effects of virtue and vice, paint before his youthful
fantasy a picture of the drunkard and thief, and others of the saint, that
will affect his vital body in such a way that there will be an abhorrence of
the one and an ardent purpose to emulate the other.
In this period the child should also be instructed in the origin of
his being, so that he may be well prepared for the storm time of passion
which makes adolescence so dangerous; that information should also be given
in mental picture and examples from nature, but in such a way as to
thoroughly impress the child with the sanctity of the function. It is the
bounden duty of the educator to properly enlighten the child. Not to do
this is like putting him blindfolded among innumerable pitfalls, with the
admonition not to stumble. Tear the bandage away at least; he will be
handicapped sufficiently without that.
Let the instructor take a flower, which is the generative organ of
the plant, and teach from that, for one who understands the process of
generation in the plant will understand it in animal and man also. Let
us avoid the mistake of giving the child many names to grapple with, such
as "stamen" and "anthers," or "pistillate" and "staminate" flowers. That
would frustrate our object by making the children tired of the study. They
like fairy tales, and the skillful instructor can make the story of the
flower more fascinating than any fairy tale known, and in addition may throw a
halo of beauty and sanctity over the generative act which will hover over
the child all through life to protect it in temptation and trial when the
fires of passion surge around it.
We know that the stamen and pollen are male, the pistil and ovule
female, also that some flowers have only one kind, others another kind and
still others have both stamen and pistil. We also know that the bees have
pollen baskets on their legs and carry pollen to the pistils of other
flowers. There the pollen works its way to the ovule which then is fertilized
and capable of growing into a new plant and flowers.
With these data and some flowers, let us gather the children, let us
tell them and show them how flowers are like families. In some (the
staminate) there are only boys, in others (the pistillate), there are only
girls, and in some there are both boys and girls. The flower boys (pollen)
are as adventuresome as human boys, they ride away into the wide world on
winged steeds (bees) as the old-time knights did and search for the princess
immured in her magic castle (the ovule in the pistil); the little
flower-boy-knight dismounts from his steed (the bee), and works his way into
the secret chamber where the princess (ovule) is. Then they are married and
have lots of little flower boys and girls.
This narrative may be varied and embellished to suit the fancy of
the educator, and can later be supplemented with stories of birds and
animals. It will awaken in the child an understanding of the genesis of its
own body that will invest the love story of papa and mama with all the
romance of the flower boys and girls and obviate the slightest thought of
odium connected with birth in the mind of the child.
The desire-body is born about the 14th year, at the time of
puberty. That is the time the feelings and passions are beginning to exercise
their power upon the young man or woman, as the womb of desire-stuff which
formerly protected the nascent desire body is removed. This is in most cases
a trying time, and it is well for the youth who has learned reverently to look
to parents or teachers, for they will be to him an anchor of strength
strength against the inrush of the feelings. If he has been accustomed to
take the statements of his elders on trust, and they have given him wise
teaching, he will by now have developed an inherent sense of truth that will
be a sure guide, but just in the measure that he has failed to do so will he
be liable to go adrift.
It is now the time that he should be taught to investigate things
for himself, and thus to form individual opinions. Let us always impress
upon him the necessity of careful investigation before he judges, and also
that the more fluidic he can keep his opinions, the better he will be able to examine new facts and acquire new knowledge. In this way he will reach his
majority at 21, when the mind is also fully free, and will be able to take
his place in the world as a full-fledged citizen, a credit to those whose
loving care shielded him in his years of development, a thoroughbred man or
woman.
Lecture Eight
The Science of Nutrition,
Health, and Protracted Youth
In the previous lectures we have constantly tried to emphasize the
value of the dense body; it is the most priceless of all our material
possessions, and strange to say, it is the one we neglect most of all. To
protect worthless property we will risk life and limb, throwing away the
wheat to save the tares. But it is not our worse crime that we do that upon
occasion; the greatest trouble arises from the neglect and disregard which
we practice daily, from before birth, to the moment of death.
In the case of our cattle and horses we are very careful regarding
breeding; we see that the animals are in perfect health and seek out the mate
for them which our common sense and experience tell us will bring forth
best strain; we inquire carefully into the pedigree of a dog or a stallion
before we allow it to become the sire of our stock, but our prospective
children get not a thought. We marry for wealth, a home, social standing,
etc., and not to secure a partner mentally, morally, and physically fit to
be a progenitor of a more advanced generation, and worst of all, marriage is
generally regarded as a license to unlimited coition which is in many cases
carried on uninterrupted through the whole period of gestation. What
wonder that passion rules the child from infancy! Marriage and propagation
are social duties for persons in good health and of sufficient means; but
excess is a crime, a cancer which gnaws at the vitals of society as the
vulture at Prometheus' liver, and cannot be too strongly condemned.
Thus our forefathers have brought us into the world with many a
serious handicap in life, and we are hampering our children in the same way
on account of lack of thought and self-restraint, yet wondering why there
is sickness and pain. If we would take half the care in the selection of
mothers and fathers for our children that we do in the case of our animals
there would be a great improvement, particularly if the mother were left unmolested during the period of gestation.
But it is not enough that we bring our children thus handicapped into
the world; from earliest childhood we ignorantly implant habits in them
which are deleterious to health and well-being, particularly by giving them
wrong food; teaching them to live to eat, instead of eating to live; to look
more to the things that please the eye than wholesomeness, inculcating a
taste for highly seasoned dishes which arouse the passional nature most
potently. Suppose a builder should try to erect a house from old rags, tin
cans, offal and refuse of every kind, and live in it. Would we be surprised
if it fell down and hurt him? No! we should be surprised if it did not, and
when the catastrophe occurred, we should say that he had himself to blame for
flying the fact of Nature. So with ourselves, when we employ analogous
methods and build our body from any kind of materials without regard to
their fitness, we alone are to blame for the ills resulting. Sickness,
decreptitude, and infirmity are all effects from causes which may be in
a great measure avoided by a tithe of the thought and care we give to the
thousand and one things of minor importance. Let us try to outline the
underlying causes which produce disastrous effects.
There is no "faith once for all delivered" in any department of
knowledge; truth is many-sided, and new phases are constantly opening to the
investigator. Yet there are certain basic laws and facts which are ever true,
and it is with such facts that we will deal, because they apply to all without
exception, and will be found to be conducive to health in all, though
health is a strictly individual matter, independent of looks only
conditioned by whether the Ego feels "at ease" in the body. If the Ego
feels diseased,, the body is ill, no matter if it looks what we call "the
picture of health."
When the antenatal life of a human being commences as an embryo it is
a small pulpy globule composed of albumen (white of egg). Then a change
occurs: there appear various particles of more solid substance within it,
which grow larger, firmer, and finally touch each other. At points of
contact they form "joints" and gradually the skeleton is formed. At the
same time the pulpy matter becomes more organized and we have the "fetus,"
a child in the womb.
The growth continues and birth reveals the child as a soft little
body, yet immensely more dense and solid than the embryo. Infancy, childhood,
and youth bring increased consolidation and in time the acme of solidity
is reached in old age, and ended by death.
In each of these epochs of human life the body is hardened beyond what
it was previously, the flesh and the bones, the tendons and the ligaments,
every part alike becomes hard and inflexible. The fluids also thicken. The
joints no longer are oiled by the synovial fluid, because it gets too thick
to flow, and the joints become stiff and begin to creak, the blood which in
infancy and youth flowed unimpeded through the arteries, veins, and the
minute capillaries, which in early life are all as elastic as rubber tubes,
flows slowly and stagnates in the contracted, indurated, and inflexible
arteries of old age. In consequence the body bends, the flesh shrinks for
want of nutrition, the hair falls out, and last the tired heart can drive
the blood no longer, so the body dies. The whole course from the womb to
the tomb is one uninterrupted process of consolidation, and infancy,
childhood, youth, maturity, and old age are but so many stages of the way.
The only difference between the body of youth and age is, that one
is soft and elastic, the other hard and rigid, and the vital question is:
What is the cause of this ossification, an it be controlled or at least
minimized so as to prolong the halcyon days of youth?
To the latter part of the question it may be answered without
qualification, that it is possible by knowledge to minimize the consolidating
process and to live our appointed time to greater advantage than if we
live unthinkingly as most people unfortunately do.
In regard to the cause of ossification which hardens the tissue of
our bodies, chemical analysis has proved that any part of tendon, flesh,
blood, urine, perspiration, saliva, and, in fact, any part of the body we
examine, contains an immense amount of calcareous or chalky matter not
present in childhood, so that while, for instance, the bones of a child are
composed of three parts of gelatin and one part of phosphate of lime or bone
matter, in old age the proportion is exactly reversed so that there is only
one part of gelatin to three parts of bone matter, which is the reason why an
old man's bones will not knit when broken. A child's bones knit readily
because there is plenty of the cementing material in its bones, and very
little of the phosphate of lime or bony matter, sulphate of lime or plaster
of paris, and carbonate of lime or common chalk, which are the choking
substances principally causing rigidity and old age.
The question now arises: What is the source? whence do we get
this calcareous choking matter. It seems to be beyond dispute that all the
solids of the body are built by the blood, which nourishes every part of
the system, and that all that the body contains must first have been in
the blood. The blood is renewed from the chyle, the chyle from the chyme
and ultimately from the food and drink. Food and drink then, which nourish
our bodies must therefore at the same time be the source of the earthy
deposits which choke our bodies and produce old age and decrepitude.
Chemical analysis also bears out this inference, for it has shown
that the arterial blood which comes fresh from the heart, pure and red,
is heavier with earthy matter than the venous blood which contains the
impurities of the system. Thus it is proven that the life-giving stream
which flows through every part of the body to renew and build, at the same
time is the bringer of death, for in every cycle it leaves behind a fresh
accumulation of choking lime compounds to harden the tissues.
This is the Waterloo upon which all "perpetual life" theories meet
their doom, for it is necessary to eat to live, yet every morsel of food has
in it both life and death.
While we, therefore, cannot escape taking death-dealing substances
into our system, we may at least regulate our food so that we take as little
of it as possible, for there is a great difference in the amount contained
in different foods; powdered cocoa for instance is one of the most
nourishing foods; but at the same time a most potent clogging agent,
containing three or four times as much ash as the worst of all other foods.
Chocolate on the other hand is still more nourishing than cocoa and contains
no earthy matter at all. Anyone knows that as long as we can supply fuel to
a fire and keep it free from ashes it will burn and heat: so with our body
which is a chemical furnace, as long as we give it proper food and
are able to eliminate the refuse by way of the kidneys, skin, and rectum, we
can keep it in health and vigor. By taking only such foods as contain the
smallest amount of earthy substance we may put off the evil day when rigidity
and old age take the place of the elasticity of youth. It lies with ourselves
to do so, and the tables of food-values sent out by the U.S. Government give
the chemical constituents of the various foods.
Speaking broadly, and from the chemical standpoint, there are two
classes of food (1) the carbonaceous, including the sugars and fats; and (2)
the nitrogenous, including the proteins.
The carbonaceous foods are the fuel whence we derive heat and
muscular power; they come from the starch and sugar in vegetables, also from
butter, cream, milk, olive oil, nuts, fruits, and the yolk of eggs.
These foods contain very little earthy matter; many of them,
particularly green, fresh vegetables and fruits are entirely free from it.
The proteins are the material we use to repair waste of the body
incident to work and use. They may be obtained from lean meat, such
vegetables as beans, peas, etc., from nuts, milk, and white of egg.
Most people feel that a meal without meat is incomplete, for from
time immemorial it has been regarded as an axiom that meat is the most
strengthening food we have. All other foodstuffs are looked upon as mere
accessories to the one or more kinds of flesh on the menu. Nothing could be
more erroneous; science has proved by experiments that invariably the
nourishment obtained from vegetables has a greater sustaining power, and the
reason is easy to see when we look into the matter from the esoteric side.
The Law of Assimilation is that "no particle of food may be built
into the body by the forces whose task that is (see Lecture No. 6) until it
has been overcome by the indwelling Spirit," because he must be absolute and
undisputed ruler in the body, governing the cell-lives as an autocrat, or they
would each go their own way as they do in decay when the Ego has fled.
It is evident that the dimmer the consciousness of a cell is, the
easier it is to overpower it, and the longer it will remain in subjection. In
Lecture No. 3 we saw that the different kingdoms had different vehicles
and consequently a different consciousness. The mineral has only its dense
body and a consciousness like the deepest trance state. It would therefore
be easiest to subject food taken directly from the mineral kingdom,
mineral food would remain with us the longest, obviating the necessity for
eating so often; but unfortunately we find that the human organism vibrates so
rapidly that it is incapable of assimilating the inert mineral directly.
Sale and the like substances are passed out of the system at once without
having been assimilated at all, the air is full of nitrogen which we need
to repair waste, we breathe it into our system, yet cannot assimilate it or
any other mineral till it has first been transmuted in nature's laboratory
and built into the plants.
As we saw in Lecture No. 3, the plants have a dense and a vital
body, which enables them to do this work; their consciousness we also saw,
was as a deep, dreamless sleep. Thus it is easy for the Ego to overpower the
vegetable cells and keep them in subjection for a long time; hence the
great sustaining power of the vegetables.
In animal food the cells have already become more individualized, and
as the animal has a desire body giving it a passional nature, it is easily
understood that when we eat meat it is harder to overcome these cells which
have animal consciousness resembling the dream state, and also that such
particles will not stay long in subjection; hence, a meat diet requires
larger quantities and more frequent meals than the vegetable or fruit diet.
If we should go one step farther and eat the flesh of
carnivorous animals, we should find ourselves hungry all the time, for there
the cells have become exceedingly individualized and will therefore seek their
freedom and gain it so much the quicker. That this is so is well illustrated
in the case of the wolf, the vulture, and the cannibal which have become
proverbs for hunger; and as the human liver is too small to take care of even
the ordinary meat diet, it is evident that if the cannibal lived solely upon
human flesh instead of using it as an occasional "tidbit" he would soon
succumb, for while too much of the carbohydrates, sugars, starches, and
fats do little if any harm to the system, being exhaled through the lungs
as carbonic acid gas or passing as water by way of the kidneys and the
skin, an excess of meat is also burned up, but leaves poisonous uric acid
and it is being more and more recognized that the less meat we eat the
better for our physical well-being.
Looking at the matter of flesh-eating from the ethical side also it is
is against the higher conceptions to kill to eat. In olden times man went
out to the chase as any beast of prey, rough and callous; now he does his
hunting in the butcher shop, where none of the nauseating sights of
the slaughter-house will sicken him. If each had to go into that bloody
place where all the horrors described in Upton Sinclair's books are enacted
day after day to be able to satisfy an abnormal injurious habit which
causes more sickness and suffering than even the liquor craving; if each
had to wield the bloody knife and plunge it into the quivering flesh of his
victim, how much meat would we eat? Very little. In order to escape doing
this nauseating work ourselves on occasion, we force a fellow being to stand
in that bloody pen day after day killing thousands of animals every day of
the week; we brutalize him to such an extent that the law will not allow him
to sit on a jury in a capital case because he has ceased to have any regard
for life. When he gets into a fight as is often the case in the stockyard
district of Chicago, and other slaughter cities, he always uses the knife
and always unconsciously uses the peculiar twisting cut which makes his stab
fatal.
It is no use to say he need not do it. When hunger drives, a man
will refuse no means of livelihood; and we, society, who demand this food,
force some fellow being to supply it and are therefore responsible for
his degradation. We are our brother's keeper both individually and
collectively as society.
The animals which we kill also cry aloud against this murder; there is
a cloud of gloom and hatred over the great slaughter-cities. The law protects
cats and dogs against cruelty. We all rejoice to see the little squirrels
in the city parks come and take food from our hands but as soon as there is
money in the flesh or fur of an animal, man eases to have regard for its
right to live, and becomes its most dangerous foe, feeding and breeding it
for gain, imposing suffering and hardships upon a fellow being for the sake
of gold. We have a heavy debt to pay to the lower creatures whose mentors
we should be; whose murderers we are, and the good law which works ever to
correct abuses will also in time relegate the habit of eating murdered
animals to the scrapheap of obsolete practices as cannibalism is now.
We are not advocating a vegetarian diet for everyone. Long practice
of flesh eating and particularly the temperamental peculiarities of many
people make it unsuitable for them to do without meat, yet others, like the
writer, find it no trouble to live and grow fat on two meals of meatless
dishes. Eggs, fish, and other low forms are necessary to some, others can
live months or years on fruit. Diet, like health, is determined individually
and no general standard can be set up. At the same time it may be safely
said that the less meat we can along with, the better our general health will
be. But if we want to do without it altogether, it is absolutely essential
that we should study a table of food values so that we get the necessary
proteins from the vegetables we eat. No man can go to the ordinary table
and get sufficient nourishment if he eats only the vegetables provided as
accessories to the meat; he must have beans, peas, nuts, and the like foods
which are rich in protein to take the place of the discarded flesh or he
will starve. As a hint to brain workers it may be said that carrots
contain about four times as much phosphoric acid as any other food. The
leaves can be used as salad and they have three times as much phosphoric acid
as the carrot itself.
More dangerous to man than any food as a clogging and hardening agent
of the system is water. It does not matter how clear and pure it looks,
there is an enormous amount of the lime compounds and magnesia in the best
we have, and neither filtration nor boiling will take it out. The amount
of mineral in the water is easily determined by the way our teakettle
"furs up," and it is a mistake to think that the deposit comes from the water
that we pour out of the kettle to make tea or coffee with, for it is the
solid remains of the water that has evaporated as steam, the water left is
harder if anything. The only thing that enables us to live beyond childhood
is the enormous eliminative power of the kidneys; were it not for them we
should be old in infancy, and if we want to preserve health and youth in old
age we must cease drinking and cooking with this death-dealing fluid, using
for all internal purposes only distilled water which is absolutely free from
the injurious lime-compounds.
The only solvents of a permanent beneficent nature which the
writers knows are buttermilk and the juice of grapes, obtained preferably by
eating the grape or the juice taken unfermented. A systemic course of
treatment with grape juice or buttermilk will open up the closed
capillaries and stimulate the blood, so that even aged persons whose flesh
has dried up and shrunk will again fill out and take on the look of youth,
provided they are not of a too worrying pessimistic nature, for nothing will
avail against such a temperament. That, and fear and ignorance in the
selection of food are in fact the most productive causes of sickness and the
most obstinate foes of the physician.
There are two great aids to health which enable us to get so much
more benefit from our food that all who desire to get health or to keep it,
ought to employ them. Their names are "thorough mastication" and
"enjoyment." They will do more for the welfare of the body than all the drugs
or doctors in the world, and like all other habits, they can be cultivated.
The "Quick Lunch Counter" is one of the greatest sins of our nation.
A man runs post haste from his office to the high uncomfortable chair found in
these places. In five minutes he swallows as many courses, rushes back to
his office, and then wonders why he feels uncomfortable and drowsy. Perhaps
he feels forced to employ alcoholic stimulants in order to "brace up."
All that can be avoided by taking time to eat in comfort.
The question is not how much we eat, but how much we assimilate. When
we swallow a large quantity of food nearly whole we get less nourishment
than if we take the time necessary to masticate and enjoy our food. Not that
we should make it a labored process, but that we should regard eating as
the welcoming of a friend into our house, where we are gladly doing all in
our power to make him comfortable. Our bodies are in fact comparable to
large hotels where we are the hosts and the cells in our food are the
guests. They come and go, staying a longer or a shorter time and are a profit
or a loss to the proprietor according to whether he makes them feel at home
or not.
Imagine two hotels, one run on the basis of cordiality and
helpfulness, where the proprietor meets each guest at the door with a
cordial shake of the hand and where an ideal, contented set of servants are
anxious to anticipate the slightest wish of the guests. Of course things
will go swimmingly in that hotel; the guests will feel satisfied and stay
long because they will be loath to leave so kind a host. Similarly, if we
meet our food with "the glad hand," we shall find that it will fit in easily.
If we masticate it in thorough enjoyment, we are making arrangements for its
comfort, as the hotel proprietor does for his guest by having a bath and other
necessaries in readiness. Enjoying the food, our mental attitude is even
more important than mastication. The man who finds fault with his food is
like a hotel proprietor who would meet his guests at the door with a scowling
face and ask: "What do you want here? I don't like you; I have to take in
guest such as you in order to keep my hotel running, but I want you to know
that I don't like it."
What wonder if travelers who were forced to enter such a hotel should
get angry, cause trouble, and try too get away as soon as possible; what
wonder that the man who sniffs and snorts at his food gets indigestion.
Whose the fault for his condition but his own? Faultfinding and hate drive
the good of our food away from us just as much as they estrange us from
friends; enjoyment of food and friend will knit the ties with both closer.
As the amount of work we may do in the world, both spiritual and material,
depends upon the condition of our bodies, it is of the greatest importance
that we cultivate health and prolong youth to the limit of our allotted stay
here if it is possible. By following the general directions here given, it
will soon be perceived that there is an improvement in the bodily condition
which will give fuller and freer scope to the mental faculties.
In the previous lectures we have been considering man as a unit,
showing how man, a Spirit, has several bodies, or vehicles of consciousness
besides the dense body, and how he uses these bodies in gathering experience
as a workman uses tools; how experience is garnered in each life and
assimilated between death and the next birth, so that in each new Earth-life,
we have as faculty the sum of all our experience in our former lives; and
how we are thus progressing towards the glorious goal of perfection, which
all will eventually attain before we cease returning to this Earth, were each
life in a dense body is as a day at school to a child. When we have
learned all that is to be learned here, there are other and higher
evolutions that we may enter, just as a child enters the grammar school
after passing through kindergarten. Endless progress is before the Ego,
limitations are unthinkable, for the human Spirit is a spark from the
Infinite, enfolding all possibilities.
Man is not only a unit, a separate entity, however; at least, he is
that only in a relative sense, for he is a member of a family, a community, a
nation, one of the inhabitants of the Earth, and through that related to other
worlds with their inhabitants, for they are all inhabited, as some
astronomers, arguing from analogy, have asserted. Esoteric science also teaches
that they are inhabited, and this teaching is founded on firsthand
knowledge, gained and verified by means of faculties possessed by some, though
as yet latent in the many.
This view of the Universe and our little Earth, though strange to
most people, should not be nearly as hard to believe as the seven-day
Creation Story, when taken literally, for if God created the Earth in that
brief space of time, He must also have mixed in the fossil remains; twisted
the strata, made the glacier-marks and the mark of erosion by water — all for
His own glory, and to the eternal mystification of man. It is certainly
more logical to hold that the different heavenly bodies are inhabitants
for evolving life and form, than that they are merely lamps hung up in the
firmament to light our little mite of Earth
This relation of the Sun, Moon, and planets is shown in every one of
the different world religions, the Christian religion included, and the
olden temples are monuments to the faith now nearly forgotten in the
Western World; yet as relevant today as in the days of old.
The great Pyramid of Gizeh, which stands upon the edge of the vast
desert of Sahara, at the head of the Delta of the Nile, is one of the oldest
structures on the Earth and one of the witnesses to the knowledge of the
ancients concerning the true cosmic relationship for they built these
cosmic measurements into that monumental pile.
Many theories have been advanced regarding the age and object of
this Pyramid. Astronomers have pointed out that in the year 2170 B.C.,
Alpha Draconis, the pole-star then, pointed directly down the slanted
entrance-way on the north side of the Pyramid. Professor Proctor asserts
that it was also in the required position 3350 B.C.; but Egyptologists say
that this is far too late; and as the latter figure takes into consideration
the relationship then existing between Alpha Draconis and Alcyone, which can
occur only once in a sidereal year (25,868 solar years), and as the Dendera
Zodiac shows that the ancient Egyptians had records of three sidereal years,
the age of the pyramid may be 78,000 years or older. This age has at least
as much claim to scientific belief as Professor Proctor's date.
The esoteric investigations which are based upon the imperishable
records found in the Memory of Nature fix the date of construction at about
250,000 B.C. when it was used as a temple of initiation into the Mysteries,
and was the shrine in which a great talisman was kept.
H. P. Blavatsky in The Secret Doctrine tells us that the construction
of the pyramids was based on the program of the Mysteries and of the series
of Initiations...hence the Pyramids are the everlasting record on Earth
of these Initiations "as the course of the stars are in heaven." The cycle
of Initiation was a reproduction in miniature of that great series of
cosmic changes to which astronomers have given the name of...sidereal year
(25,868 ordinary years).
"Just as, at the close of the cycle of the sidereal year (measured by
the precession of the equinoxes round the circle of the zodiac), the
heavenly bodies return to the same relative positions...so, at the close of
the cycle of Initiation, the inner man has regained the pristine state of
divine purity and knowledge" from which he departed to perform the pilgrimage
through matter, but richer by the experiences he has gone through.
Being a symbol, it must of course embody all, or at least a part of
the most prominent features of the things symbolized; and thanks to the able,
if somewhat narrow-minded works of Professors Piazzi Smith and Proctor,
both astronomers of repute, but ranged on opposite sides in regard to the
question concerning the use of the Pyramid — we have an overwhelming amount
of proof of the relation of the measurements of the different parts of
the Pyramid to terrestrial and cosmic cycles and distances.
Professor Proctor's testimony is the most valuable, because he is a
dissenter from the theory that the Pyramid was constructed by divine
architects; and would do, and does do anything he can, in honor, to refute
such a theory, attributing the numerous measurements which he works out, and
their relation to cosmic measures to "mere coincidence"; a method which
caused Mme. Blavatsky to vent her rare sarcasm upon him, as "the
champion coincidentalist." He admits that "all the theories concerning its
origin leave unexplained the most striking features of the Great Pyramid,
save the one wild (?) theory which attributes its construction to
divine architects"...also that "the theory that it was used for astrological
purposes is supported by all known evidence, and strong though that support
is, it derives greater strength from the failure of all other
admissible theories to sustain the weight against them." In another place
he admits that the only difficulty with the astrological theory arises from
"our inability to understand how men ever had such fullness of faith in
astrology as to devote many years of labor and enormous sums of money to the
pursuit of astrological researches, even for their own interests."
Proclus tells us that according to tradition the pyramid ended at
one time in a platform, with the head of the grand gallery projecting
upward from the center, and Professor Proctor grows enthusiastic over the
possibilities of the Pyramid as an observatory when in that architecturally
unfinished, but astronomically perfect state, closing his eulogy by saying
that "given modern instruments" it might have remained the most important
astronomical observatory in the world. He shows how the opening of the
grand gallery points to the zodiac, so that as the Sun, Moon, and planets
pass around their course in the heavens, they would throw a shadow into the
grand gallery at a different angle for each day of the year or month and
that thus their positions could be measured in a most efficient manner.
The most important measurements embodied in the pyramid are:
Each side measures 913.15 inches at the base; thus the sum of the 4
sides is 36,526 inches. Allowing 100 inches for each day in the year, gives
us 365 1/4 days, or exactly the number of days in a year, even to the
quarter day which we save up for four years and use in the leap year.
The length of one of the diagonals of the base is 12,934 inches, so
the sum of them both is 25,868 inches or 1 inch for every year in the great
sidereal or world-year.
As the base of the Pyramid measures the time it takes the Earth to
revolve around the Sun in its yearly course, it would be a fair inference that
the height of the Pyramid ought to measure the distance of the Earth from
the Sun and it does.
The height of the pyramid is 5,819 inches. That multiplied by a
thousand million inches equals 91,840,000 miles, which Professor Proctor
admits is more likely the true distance of the Earth from the Sun, than any
calculated by the astronomers. Therefore, "wild theory" or not, the evidence
is all in favor of the supposition that divine architects built the pyramid,
and that ought to convince us of this theory.
At a later period in its history, esoteric information tells us that
the Pyramid was the temple of the mysteries which have now degenerated into
"Masonry." In one of the rites called "the gate of death," the candidate
was tied to a wooden cross and carried into a subterranean crypt, where
he remained entranced for three and one-half days. During that time, while
his dense body lay inert, the Ego, clothed in its finer vehicles, was
consciously roaming the Desire World in the hierophant's charge. He was
put through the "trials by fire, Earth, air, and water." That is, he was
shown that when functioning in such a body none of the elements could harm
him; that he could then pass through a mountain as easily as through air; that
he could live in a roaring furnace or on the bottom of the Great Deep in
perfect ease and comfort. At first the neophyte is usually afraid of the
elements, therefore the initiator is present to help and give assurance to the
neophyte.
At sunrise on the fourth day, he was carried to the platform of
the Pyramid, where the rays of the rising Sun woke him from his sleep
(during which he had been visiting Purgatory).
When awakened, he was given "the Word," and was called "first-born."
This rite lingers yet as the third degree in Masonry; the death and
resurrection of Hiram Abiff, the "Widow's son," the Grand Architect
of Solomon's temple and hero of the Masonic legend. Dragon, the eminent
French Masonic authority, says that the legend of Hiram is an astronomical
allegory representing the Sun from the summer solstice downward. "During the
summer the Sun calls forth songs of gratitude from all that breathes, hence
Hiram who represents it, can give the Word, that is to say Life to all. Then
the Sun enters the southern signs at the fall equinox, nature becomes mute,
and Hiram, the Sun, can no longer give the sacred Word; he meets the three
murderers: the zodiacal signs Libra, Scorpio, and Sagittarius, which the
Sun goes through in October, November, and December. The first strikes him
with a 24-inch rule emblematic of the 24 hours the Earth takes to revolve on
its axis. The second strikes him with an iron square, symbolizing the four
seasons, and at last the mortal blow is given by the third murderer with a
mallet, which, being round, signifies that the Sun has completed its circle
and dies to give room for the Sun of another year."
The initiates of the temples in Egypt were called "phree messen"
which means "children of light" because they had received the light of
knowledge, and it is this which has been changed into "Free Mason."
In the religion of Judaism we hear of a God making certain promises to
a man by the name of Abraham. He promised that he would make Abraham's seed
as numerous as the sands upon the seashore; and we are told how he dealt
with Abraham's grandson, Jacob, who was the husband of four wives, by whom
he had 12 sons and one daughter. These are looked upon as the forefathers
of the Jewish nation.
This also is an astronomical allegory dealing with the migration of
the heavenly bodies, as will be evident from a careful perusal of the 49th
chapter of Genesis and the 33rd chapter of Deuteronomy, where the blessings
of Jacob upon his sons show how they are identified with the 12 signs of
the Zodiac; Simon and Levi sharing the sign of Gemini, the twins, and
the feminine sign Virgo being allotted to Jacob's only daughter, Dinah.
The four wives are the four phases of the Moon and Jacob is the Sun.
This is similar to the teaching we find among the Greeks, where Gaia,
the Earth, is the wife of Apollo, the Sun; and among the Egyptians, where
heat and moisture, the Sun and the moon, were personified as Osiris and
Isis. The sacred rivers Jordan and Ganges are also connected etymologically
with the river Eridanus, which is one of the constellations. It means "source
of descent," and for agriculturists such as were these ancient people,
these rivers were the source of the waters of life. Josephus tells us that
the Jews carried the 12 signs of the Zodiac on their banners, and camped
around the tabernacle which held the seven-branched candlestick representing
the Sun and the heavenly bodies which move inside the circle formed by the
12 signs of the Zodiac.
The Jews located their temples so that the four corners pointed
N.E., S.E., S.W., and N.W., and the sides directly North, East, South, and
West, and like all solar temples the main entrance was in the East, so that
the rising Sun might illumine its portal and herald each day the victory
of light over the powers of darkness; this to bring to the nascent humanity
the the message that the contest of light and darkness on the material plane
is but the counterpart of a similar contest in the moral and mental
worlds where the human soul is groping its way towards the light, for the
battle of light and darkness in the material world, like all other
phenomena, is a suggestion of the realities in the invisible realms, and
these truths were given to man as myths by divine leaders who led him until
his growing intellect gave birth to arrogance which caused his benefactors to
withdraw, and let him learn by the hard knocks of experience. Then he forgot
them and has come to regard the ancient stories of gods and demi-gods as
imaginary. Yet, even the early Christian church was imbued with this
knowledge of the significance of the solar myth, for the Cathedral of St.
Peter at Rome is built facing East, like all other solar temples, telling
humanity of the "Great Light of the World" who is to come and dispel the
spiritual darkness which as yet envelops us; the Light-bringer who shall
bring peace on Earth and good will among men, causing the nations to
beat their swords into plough-shares and their spears into pruning-hooks.
The Jews greeted the Sun with the morning-sacrifice; and took leave
of him at sunset in a similar manner by an evening oblation, offering up
on their sabbath and additional sacrifice to the lunar "Race-god,"
Jehovah. Him they also worshiped by sacrifice at the New Moon.
One great feast was Easter, when they celebrated the Passover; the
time when the Sun "passes over" his "easter(n) node; leaving the southern
hemisphere where he winters and commencing his northern journey in his
chariot of fire, hailed with joy by men as their savior from hunger and cold
which would inevitably result if he stayed in south declination always.
The last of the Jewish feasts and the most important is the feast of
the Tabernacles, when the Sun crosses its western node in autumn, having
yielded to man the "bread of life" wherewith to sustain his material being
until the next return of the Sun to the northern heavens.
For the above reasons the six southern signs which the Sun occupies
in winter are always called "Egypt," the "land of the Philistines," etc. —
a name for something that is bad for "God's people"; whereas the northern
signs in which the Sun is in the fruitful season are "heaven," "the promised
land," which "flows with milk and honey."
We see this in such passages as the one where the celebration of
the Passover is enjoined "to remember the coming out of Egypt." This feast is
a rejoicing over the emergence of the Sun from the southern signs, also from
the recorded fact that Jacob was with Joseph in Egypt when he died. At the
winter solstice when the Sun of the past year has completed its journey and
reached its lowest degree of south declination it is in the zodiacal sign
Sagittarius. By reference to Genesis 49:24 where the dying Jacob speaks of
the "bow" of Joseph, it is easy to identify him with the sign Sagittarius
which represents a centaur in the act of drawing his bow, and thus the story
of Jacob dying in Egypt with Joseph, is reenacted each year when the Sun
dies in the sign Sagittarius at the winter solstice.
The story of Samson is another phase of the solar myth. As long
as Samson's hair was allowed to grow, his strength would increase; Samson
is the Sun, and its rays represent Samson's hair. From the winter solstice
in December to the summer solstice in June the Sun's rays grow, and he gains
in strength with every day. This frightens the "powers of darkness," the
winter months, the Philistines, for if this Light-bringer continues to
reign their kingdom will come to an end; and they counsel together against
Samson to discover wherein his strength lies. They secure the cooperation of
the woman Delilah, which is the sign Virgo, and when Samson, the Sun,
passes through that sign in September he is said to have laid his head in
the woman's lap, and to have confided his secret to her. She shears him of
his locks, for at that time the rays of the Sun grow shorter, and lose
their strength. Then the Philistines or winter months come and carry the
debilitated giant into their prison: the southern signs where the Sun is in
winter. They put out his eyes or deprive him of his light and at last bring
him to their temple, their stronghold, at the winter solstice; there they
subject him to infamous indignities, believing they have vanquished the
light completely, but with his last remaining strength the fettered solar
giant shatters their temple and although he dies in the effort, he overcomes
his enemies and thus leaves the way clear for another Sun-child to be born
to save humanity from the cold and famine which would result if he had
remained bound in the toils of the powers of darkness, the Philistines, the
winter months.
The lives of all the saviors of mankind are also founded upon the
passage of the Sun around the circle of the zodiac, which pictures the
trials and triumphs of the initiate, and the fact has given rise to the
erroneous conclusion that these saviors never existed, that the stories
are merely Sun-myths. This is wrong. All divine teachers sent to man are
cosmic characters, and the ordering of their lives is in accord with the
marching orbs, which contain, as it were, an anticipated biography of their
lives. Each came with divine spiritual light and knowledge to help man to
find God, and therefore the events in their lives were in accord with the
events which the physical light-bearer, the Sun, encounters on his
pilgrimage through the year.
The Saviors are all born of an immaculate Virgin, at the time when
darkness is greatest among mankind, as the Sun of the coming year is born,
or begins his journey, on the longest night of the year, when the zodiacal
sign Virgo, the Virgin, stands on the eastern horizon in all latitudes between
10 and 12 P.M. She remains as immaculate as ever, after she has given birth
to her Sun-child; hence we see the Egyptian goddess Isis sitting on the
crescent moonnursing her divine Babe Horus; Astarte, the immaculate lady
of Babylon, with her babe Tammuz and a crown of seven stars over her head;
the lady Devaki in India with her infant Krishna, and our own Virgin Mary
giving birth to the Saviour of the Western World under the star of Bethlehem.
Everywhere the same story: the immaculate Mother — the divine Babe — and the
Sun, Moon, or stars.
As the material Sun is weak and has to flee from the powers of
darkness, so all thee divine light-bringers are searched for and forced to
flee from the powers of the world; and like the Sun, they always escape.
Jesus fled before King Herod. King Kansa and King Maya re his counterparts
in other religions. The baptism occurs at the time when the Sun passes
through the sign Aquarius, the Waterman, and when he goes through the sign of
the Fishes in March we have the fast of the Initiate, for Pisces is the last
of the southern signs, and all the stores laid by from the bounteous gifts
of the Sun of the previous year and nearly exhausted, and man's food is scant.
The fish-food of Lent which occurs at this time is a further corroboration
of this solar origin of the fast.
At the vernal equinox the sun "crosses the equator" and at that time
the "crossification" or crucifixion occurs, for then the Sun-god commences
to give his life as food for his worshipers, ripening the corn and the
grape, which is made into the "bread and wine." To do that he must leave the
equator and soar heavenward. Similarly it would benefit humanity
nothing spiritually if their saviors stayed with them, therefore they soar
heavenwards as "sons (or suns) of righteousness," ministering to the faithful
from above, as the Sun does for man when high in the heavens.
The Sun attains its highest point of north declination at the summer
solstice; he then sits upon "the throne of his father," the Sun of the
previous year; but he cannot remain there more than three days, then he is
carried downwards towards his western node. Likewise the Saviors of mankind
ascend to the throne of the Father, to be reborn from time to time for the
good of mankind, which truth is embodied in the sentence of the Nicaean
creed: "thence he shall return."
The movement known as the "precession of the equinoxes," whereby the
Sun crosses the equator on the 21st of March at a different point each year,
determines the symbol of the Savior. At the time of the birth of Jesus the
Sun crossed in about the 5th degree of the sign Aries, the Ram.
Consequently Christ was "the lamb of God." There was a dispute, however.
Some thought that owing to what is called the orb of influence, power of the
Sun was really in the sign Pisces, the fishes, and that the symbol of
Christ should have been a fish. As a relic of that dispute we see that to
this day the Bishop's mitre is in the form of the head of a fish. At the
time of Mithras, the Persian Savior, the Sun crossed in the sign of the Bull,
hence we find Mithras riding on a bull, and this was also the foundation for
the worship of the Bull Apis in Egypt. At present the vernal equinox is
in about 10 degrees of Pisces, the fishes, so that if a savior were born now
he would be a "Fish-man" like Oannes of Nineveh, corrupted into Jonah and
the whale by the Bible.
The four letters said to have been on the cross of Christ and the
method of fixing Easter in commemoration of the event, also go to show the
cosmic character of the occurrence; these letters, I.N.R.I., are commonly
supposed to have meant Jesus Nazarenus Rex Judaeorum, but they are also the
initial letters of the Hebrew names of the four elements: Iam (water), Nour
(fire), Ruach (air or spirit), Iabeshah (Earth). It would be foolish to fix
the anniversary of the death of an individual as Easter is fixed by the Sun
and Moon, but it is the proper thing in respect of a solar festival and a
cosmic character, related to the sun as spiritual light-bringer to physical
luminary.
When the Sun leaves his throne at the summer solstice, June 21, he
passes into the sign leo, the Lion of Judah. Then we have the Catholic
feast of the "Assumption" on August 15, in Leo. Thence, onward to his
western node, he enters the sign of the Virgin about August 22. Thus the
Virgin is born from the Sun as it were.
This brings to mind the astronomical solution to that passage in
Revelation, "I saw a woman clothed with the sun and the moon under her
feet." That phenomenon happens every September just after the new Moon; for
viewed from our Earth, the Sun covers or clothes the sign Virgo all through
September, and as the Moon is leaving the conjunction of the Sun, that
appears to be beneath the Virgin's feet. When John the Baptist is
represented as saying concerning Christ that "he must increase, but I must
decrease," he is symbolizing the Sun at the summer solstice when it must
decrease in light for the coming half year, while Christ by his birthday at
Christmas is identified with the newborn Sun which increases the length of the
day until the middle of summer.
Thus we see that the contest of Light and Darkness in the physical
world is closely connected in the scriptures of the different religions with
the contest of the powers of spiritual light and life against those of
darkness and ignorance; that this truth is universally spread among all
peoples in all ages. The myths of the dragon-slayers embody the same truth,
where the Greeks tell of the victory of Apollo over Python, and of Hercules
over the dragon of the Hesperides, the Norseman tells of the contest of
Beowulf slaying the fire-drake, of Siegfried slaying the dragon Fafner,
and of St. George and the dragon. In our materialistic age these truths
are temporarily relegated to oblivion or regarded as fairy stories without
any basis in truth; but the time will come and is not far distant when
these relics will again be restored to honor as embodiments of great
spiritual truths.
Reference: The Rosicrucian Christianity Lectures, by Max Heindel (1865-1919)
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