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One Hundred Years: A Philosophical Critique

Chapel Talk of January 10, 2010

By Richard K

 

In the second chapter of Corinthians, Saint Paul describes his meeting with the Corinthians as follows:  And I was with you in weakness and in fear and with much trembling.

That is the way I am feeling, exactly, at this moment.  This talk is a “leftover.”  It was prepared for the hundredth anniversary, and I didn’t realize how well organized the celebration was going to be, and so the extra talks that I brought along were not necessary.  This is the kind of talk that is easily misunderstood, so I didn’t want to give a title other than, “Leftovers,” without being able to explain it.

The title for this talk is:  One Hundred Years, A Philosophical Critique.  Please remember several things.  This is a philosophical critique; it is not a criticism.  It is not political, because there is not room in the Rosicrucian philosophy for politics.  It is not personal, because there is not room in the Rosicrucian philosophy for personal things.  It’s far from complete.  It’s just a few sketchy observations.

The Rosicrucian philosophy advises us to examine ourselves, to re-experience our lives and to form good clear judgments about our success or failure.  We are obligated to do this every day in retrospection.  We are advised to do this in a contemplative way at New Moons and at Full Moons.  We are advised to do this at turning points, especially at Chrismtas time, which for us IS New Year’s.

We do this for several reasons: to harvest the experience that we have gotten from our lives so that it is available to us and we can live better lives immediately.   As soon as we harvest the experience by examination, it is a part of ourselves spiritually and it becomes a power that we can use in our service.

We do this in order to be in touch with our lives, to assure that we are on the path and that we do not deviate from the path.

We do this to cultivate the ability to judge and to judge correctly.

We do this to know ourselves and to become intimate with ourselves, to be friends with ourselves and to grow in an inward communion with ourselves.  It’s a very valuable activity, that which we do.

If it works for individuals there’s a great likelihood that it will work for groups such as our organization.  In fact, if we look at the writings of Max Heindel, especially the letters, we find that he reports on the progress of The Rosicrucian Fellowship quite regularly.  To the best of my knowledge, this is not a practice that is done in any of our groups at all, and that may be a failing on our part.  We do not examine what we are doing.

I’ve traveled around now for several years in the Western Hemisphere, and I’ve met many of the groups, and I’ve met many of the individuals, and I’ve had a lot of conversations with them.  What follows after now is the result of those conversations.  It’s a feeble history of our little organization.  I have been affiliated with The Rosicrucian Fellowship for 46 years, which is almost half of our 100 years.  During that time, I have been close with a lot of individuals and have toured around meeting other Rosicrucian students.  Because I have the Sun and Moon and Ascendant all in negative signs I’m a little bit sensitive, and with that sensitivity I have tried to feel what we have been doing.

What I have found in individuals is that almost all of our members have grown.  You see someone and then you see them again at another time, and they have grown spiritually.  The beautiful part is that when people grow, especially in our organization, they are more humble, and it’s really nice to see that in our organization we have people who are developing humility.

Now it’s difficult to tell when people change, what the change is from.  It could be normal maturation.  As the archetype plays itself out we go through different stages which are analogous to the evolutionary creation, and we change.  So, it may be just merely a matter of maturation.  Or it could just be a reaction to the experiences of life.  Life has a way of working on us.  No matter how difficult we may be or no matter how strong we may be; life is stronger.  The third thing that it could be is growth because of our aspirations, because of the application of the Rosicrucian philosophy to our lives.  Hopefully, it is that.

It is probably due to all of these causes and the emphasis varies from individual to individual.  In my observations, the growth of individuals in our society has been appreciable.  It has to do with how they have applied themselves to living out the philosophy.  We are a zealous group.  We are not like the Thessalonians in the apocalypse that are lukewarm.  We’re very intense; we’re zealous about our aspiration, and that’s probably one of the strongest factors.  Because we are intense we are capable of change, and we are capable of great things, especially in healing.

Not everything that we have done has been from philosophical application.  Some of it just has come about spontaneously.  Not all of our growth has been along the lines of The Rosicrucian Fellowship, even though we are intent members of that organization.

In conversations with individuals, for many years now I have never met a single person who is happy with his performance of the retrospection exercise which is the most powerful tool that we have for soul growth.  Even though it seems easy at first, it is not.  It is not because there are resistances, one of the resistances being that looking backwards takes us out of the body.  Another resistance being that the pseudo-ego, the lower nature, will take us out of the body in sleep rather than have us confront things that it doesn’t want us to face because it would then be out of business for itself.

I’ve run into individuals who have striven intensely.  I even have a friend, as I have mentioned in one of the philosophical talks, who tried to do it in the shower standing up with the water running—and still fell asleep.  It’s not an easy exercise.  So, if retrospection is the best, the strongest tool that Max Heindel gave to us from the Elder Brothers, we have not done very well on that.

On the other hand, most people do gain from the experiences themselves, from the impacts.  When we look at the morning exercise, the situation is similar.  I have had a lot of conversations with a lot of people, and it seems that not a lot of people are familiar or have made discoveries in cosmogony or cosmology as you would expect for people who are looking at “In the beginning was the word.”  You would expect that people would make a lot of personal discoveries and they would be excited about them.  That hasn’t been the case, at least in the people I’ve met.

Now, we are told that we’re not supposed to tell our experiences from when we are doing the exercises, but that we are obligated to share the fruits of our work.  And, unfortunately, our fruits, on that account, have not been very good, and I think there’s a reason for it.  I think it is because we are all spoiled.  In giving us the Cosmo-Conception and the other writings of Max Heindel, we have been given so much information that we’re satisfied.  Even though Max Heindel, in every one of his lessons, asks us to look more deeply into the subject, we have not.  It takes a lot of work.

When that is done, it is a very rich field.  In my personal experience, without talking about exactly what has occurred, an enormous amount of information has come in doing the morning exercise.  It’s a fable.  It’s like what they call Texas tea.   Texas tea is another name for oil.  They used to tell the women in Texas, you can’t wear high-heeled shoes, because if you wear high-heeled shoes they will sink into the earth and oil will come gushing out.   The Rosicrucian philosophy that is given to us is like that.  Everywhere we point our attention, it’s filled with wisdom.

Now, there are some things in which our performance has been excellent.  One of them is in the performance of prayer.  A lot of our intense zeal has been poured into prayer, especially healing prayer.  Some might say that this is so because prayer is easier compared to the morning exercise and the evening exercise.  I think that view is a little too cynical.  I think the reason why we have been so good in prayer is because we all realize that we are children of fire and that as children of fire, we need to balance, we need to bring out our loving, mystic side.  In that realization, all of us pray, and we pray intently.  So, in that, in looking back in a critique, I think we have done exceedingly well.  Now, that’s what I have encountered in talking to individuals.

It’s really been a wonderful time.  Friendship is probably one of the greatest things in the world.  One of my favorite passages is in Saint John’s Gospel where Christ says, “Ye are my friends.”  Friendship is a really wonderful thing.  In traveling around and visiting the different groups and visiting the different individuals, the friendships have just been a very heart-filled situation.  I love that very much.

Now, let’s try to look at our collective efforts.  Let’s try to look at what we have done collectively as The Rosicrucian Fellowship, as an association of Christian mystics.  It appears that within the philosophy, we have not made a lot of progress.  In some cases, progress that has been made has regressed.  I want to go into the philosophical basis of that because it is extremely important.  There has been one trial, especially, that has been difficult for us as a group.

In the gospels, Christ Jesus tells us to avoid vain repetitions.  In the Rosicrucian philosophy we do a lot of repetitive prayer, but it is not vain repetition; we are consciously awake.  We are consciously giving ourselves to the prayer as we do it so it is not just an automatic activity that we do and it just happens.  When repetition comes from someone like Christ Jesus, it is exceedingly important.  One of the things that is repeated most in the gospels and is also taken up by Saint Paul is the statement, “It cometh as a thief in the night.”  That has been one of our trials.

That is one of the most important spiritual trials.  The kingdom of heaven, the spiritual worlds, is increasingly more subtle.  As we go into the spirit and as we grow, things become more and more subtle.  The trials are easier to miss.  The spirit is powerful, but the spirit is powerful because it is subtle.  The more subtle something is, the more powerful it is.  A rolling stone has kinetic energy which is strong, but that’s not as strong as the power released by steam.  And that is not as strong as the power in desire such as when it drives our healing prayer.

When we take this to the spirit, the subtlety becomes infinite and the power becomes boundless.  So, in the spiritual life, we don’t look for more dramatic things; we don’t look for fireworks; we don’t look for all kinds of dazzling things.  They come as part of the experience, but what is important is the subtlety.  The truth in its subtlety is extremely powerful.  So, it’s not surprising that we who are all trying to be candidates for initiation miss things because they’re too subtle for us.

There have been two times in my life when I have applied for taking the next step forward on the spiritual path.  In both cases I was given a trial and the trial was such that in both cases it was at least half a year before I could look back and say, “Oh, that was the trial!”  It’s like that on the spiritual path.  It’s more and more subtle.  In the Garden of Gethsemane the disciples fall asleep.  Christ was praying, and they couldn’t keep up with that and there was nothing for them to do but wait.  And they fell asleep.

Max Heindel gives a very good explanation of why this took place – that it wasn’t just boredom, but that in those very deep prayers of Christ at that time the vibrations were extremely high and they fell asleep because they could not keep up with the strength of those vibrations.  One of the things is, with regard to subtlety, we have to be constantly alert.  It cometh as a thief in the night, and if we are not constantly alert, if we are not wide-awake, we’re going to miss things.  We’re going to fall asleep just as the disciples fell asleep.  Trials come when we least expect them, and that has in my experience been the greatest trial for The Rosicrucian Fellowship collectively and for its members.

The greatest trial that we have encountered in The Rosicrucian Fellowship has been success.  The greatest trial that we have encountered in The Rosicrucian Fellowship has been success.  When we are down, and when we are suffering, as a consequence of our misdeeds or of our negligence or whatever, we don’t need to be reminded that we’re sinful and imperfect.  Our nose is to the grindstone.  We are brought to a place where we have to know that we are not perfect.  We’re sincere, and in those times there’s no slippage in our life.  Our life is very careful, because we know if (suppose we’re very ill), we know that if we misapply ourselves it could be the terminus of our life.

When we’re on the other side of the cycle and everything seems to be going our way, we misinterpret the principle of cause and consequence and we think that we deserve all of this and maybe even more—as if God were a respecter of persons.  God is not a respecter of persons, so the trial again, and again, and again is success.  We work very hard, we’re patient, we begin to see things, or we begin to have intuitions, we begin to be creative, and we take it true – we take it in the wrong way, because success is such that we’re instituting new causes that are going to bring us to that low part of the cycle all over again.

Probably, in the 46 years that I’ve been affiliated with The Rosicrucian Fellowship, the greatest mistake of success is that many, many people have unfolded some clairvoyance or they’ve unfolded some spiritual power of one kind or another, and they believe they are the new Max Heindel.  They think everyone should recognize their superiority and follow their lead.  I’ve seen this happen again, and again, and again.  They’re usually good people, but they’re usually good people that have been carried away with success and with their personal definition of themselves in success.  Much better they were humbled and keep on following the spiritual path with the same kind of intensity that got them to their beginnings of inner consciousness.  Even if they have the capacity to help, they’re dealing with the children of Cain, and in this group, if you try to say, “I’m the new Max Heindel,” there are going to be a lot of people who will prove to you that you’re not.  You know, this is not the way that we unify.  We do not unify with one person being the Big Cheese.  So, there is slippage when we are at the top.

Let’s look at one more major lesson with regard to The Rosicrucian Fellowship that we have not learned.  We fight among ourselves.  We fight among ourselves a lot, and I cannot remember a period in the 46 years that I have been with the organization that there was not fighting.  That is not the problem.  Fighting is not the problem.  Fighting is all right.  Disagreements are all right.  Max Heindel tells us that we are reborn into families to fight it out with someone until we learn to love them.  We are also taught that we grow by an internal fight, an internal struggle.  So, the fighting is not wrong.

But it is the proportion of the fighting.  Struggle and difference have to be more than matched by unity.  In the physical body we do things that break down the physical body, but we have enough capacity to heal.  But sometimes that’s not the case, like if you take truck drivers who drive semis across the country back and forth, many of them have very short careers, because in the vibration the connective tissue that holds the organs in place breaks down faster than the body can heal it, and soon all of their organs are at the bottom of their abdomen, and for the rest of their life they suffer accordingly.  So, struggle is not what is wrong; it’s that we do not focus enough on the unity so that we can take the struggle and the fighting and the differences and work it out together.

Another one of the problems is what we fight about.  I can think of all the major divisions that have occurred in our society, and when I look at all of them, I can’t think of a single exception that wasn’t a tempest in a teapot.  We make big to-do’s about things and it’s like we’re lured into having trials with each other—which is a good thing.  This is not something that is new.  There has never been a society of spiritual aspirants where there has not been a lot of internal struggle.

Even in the Pythagorean society with Pythagoras himself being there, there was internal struggle.  When Max Heindel was here and was leading The Rosicrucian Fellowship, there was an internal struggle, and there was a faction that wanted to get rid of Max Heindel.  So, it’s what we fight about.  During the three years that I was here, I never heard a philosophical discussion, even in probationers’ meetings.  We would go to probationers’ meetings and there would be no discussion of philosophy and there would be no discussion about how this applies to our daily lives.  Never.

A lot of the discussion on the grounds here was about what we were going to have in the cafeteria to eat – things like that, so what we choose to struggle about is important.  We don’t want to waste our energies.  You know, the adversary has a field day with us if we get involved with petty little things and struggle with each other.  The last thing we want to talk about is how we struggle.  (I’m way away from my notes here.)         In the struggles, and in the arguments that are in the struggles, if I heard it one time I’ve heard it many times.  Somebody will say, it’s a matter of principle.  It’s a matter of principle.  Now, principles are fine.  They come from the world of abstract thought.  They are universal principles; they are high spiritual things, and this is what people are looking at.  They are truths, but they are not the truth.  The truth is beyond the truths.  The truth is from the realm of life spirit; the truth is from the realm of Christ, and that is the realm of love.

When we struggle with each other or when we try to do anything, even in cooperation, it needs to be done with love.  I have never heard in any of the groups or at headquarters, I have never heard anyone ask, well, what do the Elder Brothers want in this?  It’s always a matter of individual principle.  When Max Heindel was alive, he would tell us that he would go to the Elder Brothers and ask what they wanted – what their direction was; I’ve never seen a meeting where a group sits down and says, well, let’s pray and try to understand what comes.  Let’s be receptive to what the Elder Brothers want of our organization in this way.   I’ve never seen it.  I’ve never even seen a board meeting where there is a prayer for love before the meeting begins.  Or if a meeting gets too heated, that the meeting gets interrupted and people sit down and pray for love.

Love is beyond principle.  Love is unifying.  Love brings us together.  We are an association of Christian mystics.  Therefore, we should live like Christian mystics and aspire more and more deeply to love.  Christ gives only one definition in the Bible of a Christian.  He says, “They will know that you are mine in that you love one another.”  “They will know that you are mine in that you love one another.”  Let’s pray that we can live and do our work in love.  That’s not such a hard thing, but every day when we have things that we have to do together, let’s pray to do them in love.  The final words of the poet, Goethe, on his deathbed as he was dying were, “Light, more light.”  Let’s adopt that for our society, please, and say, “Love, more love.”  Let’s not die that way; let’s live that way.  “Love, more love.”

Tags: A Philosophical Critique, The Rosicrucian Fellowship