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Spiritual Aspiration and the Southern Hemisphere

 

            Max Heindel gave us a wonderful body of spiritual literature, rich with information suited to practical application in service.  It is filled with lofty ideas and ideals to inspire us to live in our true spiritual nature.  It is supernally beautiful and it speaks to our hearts.  It is permeated with the love of Christ.  It is comprehensive to all areas of human endeavor.  It is clear — so clear that we often think we know things that actually take many years to really know well enough to be able to live them out in our lives.  As clear as the writings of Heindel are, there are some parts which need even more clarification to fulfill the needs of the modern Rosicrucian Fellowship.  Max Heindel wrote for the Fellowship members of his time, not for the membership that was to come.  Heindel was writing for students living mostly in the northern hemisphere; now many of the members of the Rosicrucian Fellowship live in the southern hemisphere.

            The solstice and equinox services of the Rosicrucian Fellowship are exquisitely poetic, but they require further clarification.  Like much poetry, they are condensed for ease, simplicity and inspirational beauty.  In these services the activity of Christ in the Life Spirit is treated simultaneously with the earthly etheric cycle of activity, the ethers of which are the reflective-projection of the Life Spirit.  In the northern hemisphere the activities in the ethers are synchronous with the activities of the Life Spirit in the earth; in the southern hemisphere they are not.

            The cycle of the efflux and withdrawal of the ethers at the surface of the earth associated with the seasons is very old.  It has been active since the dense physical earth crystallized out of the solar system and was permeated by an etheric body to give the life needed by every living creature on the planet.  Everything that lives on earth has cycles of active expression, and then dormant withdrawal to process the experience gained during activity.  Even in the heart of the tropics there are seasonal changes.  We know from the Rosicrucian Cosmo Conception that these cycles are universal in evolutionary creation all the way to the creative days and cosmic nights.

            In this cycle the ethers are more outward and active in the seasons called spring and summer and are more inward and less active in the seasons called autumn and winter, irrespective of hemisphere.  Mr. Heindel tells us that angle is the primary factor in stellar influence.  The cycle of the ethers is no exception.  The rise and fall of the ethers and the plant sap that follows it is determined by the angle of light from the external sun.  Since the axis of the earth is inclined in its orbital path, the ecliptic, and because the axis constantly points in the same direction in space, the stage of the efflux and withdrawal of the ethers must be opposite in the northern and southern hemispheres.  The earth in this respect resembles birds that sleep standing first on one foot while the other is resting and then the other.  It is a wonderful way of alternate expression within the constant progression of time–areas of greater activity simultaneous with areas of rest and assimilation.  Efficiency.

            The cycle of the ethers is not merely limited to efflux and withdrawal.  There are seasonal coetaneous shifts in emphasis within the four ethers.  In spring and summer activity increases in what might be called the middle ethers, the life and light ethers.  It is warmer and more colorful, functions of the light ether, and there is more growth and propagation, functions of the life ether.  In autumn and winter there is more emphasis in the activities of the extreme ethers, the chemical and reflecting ethers.  The chemical ether is active in the condensing and crystal-forming activities of ice and snow; and any gardener can tell you that when the life and light ethers of spring and summer withdraw, one focuses in the reflecting ether, remembering last year’s garden and dreaming and planning the garden for the coming year.  In this regard the extremes of the cycle of efflux and withdrawal are almost constant at the extremes of the earth.  In the tropics the angle of incidence of the sun is almost always direct.  Consequently it is almost always warm, plants grow year round, it is wet, and color in the plant and animal kingdoms abounds–the life and light ethers are in perpetual activity.  The poles are cold deserts with no growth, everything is crystalline ice and the animals tend towards white and colorlessness.  Thus the seasonal effect of the angle of sunlight is to raise and withdraw the ethers and to shift the emphasis within the four ethers with extremes where the angles are extreme.  This cycle has been active for millions of years and it is one of the things we reverently appreciate in the solstice and equinox services.

            The other thing we celebrate is the cycle of Christ in the Life Spirit entering into the ethers and into our earth.  The religion of Christ, the religion of the Son, is radical.  It is unlike anything that preceded it in the Jehovistic religions of the Holy Spirit.  Unlike the cycle of the ethers which is as ancient as the earth, the religion and cycle of Christ is new.  It is so new that all attempts to manifest love-wisdom of the Life Spirit have fallen far short of the task and have hardened into distortions from the Christ ideal.  Glimmerings of parts of the teaching of Christ shine beautifully in some pre-Christian religions but there is nothing of the scope and magnitude of grace-filled forgiveness that “makes all things new,” nor of the creative love that “makes all things new” every moment, and all of the other qualities of the Life Spirit made manifest and humanized in the incarnation of Christ-Jesus.  It is that incarnation and the subsequent and mounting reincarnations that we celebrate each year as Christ comes to us and then returns home, leaving us yearning to follow.

            Our language is not adequate to describe the Life Spirit.  Our consciousness is habituated to a fallen, materialistic, three dimensional outlook while the Life Spirit is beyond even the abstract mind; therefore, anything said about the Life Spirit must be only a distant reflection of that sublime reality and grossly inadequate to the task of true expression of its glory.  Moreover, one must have character and soul growth to even speak of such lofty things.  Christ-Jesus may be able to say “God is love” and carry that love in the words, but if we try to say the same thing, it might sound trite and relatively meaningless, depending on our soul growth and strength of character.  The following re-expression of the annual cycle of the Life Spirit returning to and entering our earth may suffer in that manner.

            Max Heindel tells us in the Rosicrucian Cosmo Conception that the being we know as Christ is the highest Initiate of the Sun Period, also known as the Son.  In this office Christ represents the second attribute of the godhead and as the central focus of the macrocosmic Life Spirit, it is Christ’s Life Spirit body so to speak.  After one annual Christ impulse returns to the Father when the sun enters Cancer, a new impulse is given and the cycle begins anew.  A ray or spiritual impulse issues from the Spiritual Sun into the Life Spirit.  It is something like the urge to help we feel when we see someone who is ill, but on a scale beyond our comprehension.  Three-dimensional consciousness cannot do justice to the phenomenon but it can help us, provided we do not get stuck in that limited consciousness and believe it is all that there is; the whole reality.  Pure Life Spirit, unfettered by any form of limited, concrete existence, is found in interplanetary space.  Speaking in the personality of Jesus, Christ could literally and factually say “I am the Light.”   The light referred to in that statement is not outer sunlight but the inner spiritual light one experiences in intuition–when the lights go on with the light of truth.  This very subtle light of truth, subtle beyond even ideas, is a constant in the Life Spirit.  If we can imagine the spirit in this light of divine intellect concentrating itself within its universal being into something like a sphere of special definition and intent, we have a vague three-dimensional picture.  As the sun passes through Cancer, Leo and Virgo this sphere becomes smaller and more concentrated in its loving intent.  When the sun enters Libra it is congruent and coincident with the physical body of the earth and then it begins to draw into the earth and is concentrated until it is a small ball of very intense love-wisdom, a little sun, in the heart of the earth. This process applies the same principle of usefulness Max Heindel describes with the image of a magnifying glass concentrating sunlight into a useful ball of energy able to burn through anything.  At Christmas Eve it has concentrated its sphere of light as far as is possible, transforming it into useable love-wisdom.  It then begins to expand and work its way through all of the vehicles of the earth from within–when we accepted Christ as one of us it was a momentous moment in the history of the earth that allowed this working from within even though Christ had to go through the experience of death to gain such acceptance.

            While the work of the Life Spirit is parallel to some of the work done in the etheric cycle because the ethers are the reflective-projection of the Life Spirit, the work in the ethers is certainly not identical.  The work of the ethers is vital life and the transmission of experience to and from the dense physical world and bodies.  The work of the Life Spirit is new creation, creation from within and not without.  As a result of the acceptance of Christ and the Life Spirit into our earth and our humanity, evolution on earth can proceed more rapidly and more harmoniously because of this new internal activity.  Several special and important things happen because of the three-year mission of Christ in the dense physical and vital bodies of Jesus.  Two are important for our fallen humanity.  First pure life, light, love and truth are brought to us in a humanized form as grace if we accept it into our lives in freedom without any external coercion.  The other thing for us is that when we do our healing prayers in the Healing Service we can bring in the Life Spirit in a manner similar to the way Christ enters the earth every year.  Moreover, because of the sacrifice of Christ it is given to us to transduce Life Spirit into the etheric healing panacea mentioned in the Healing Service.  This marks the beginning of regaining the ability to realize ethers out of the Life Spirit much like plants still specialize the ethers out of sunlight.  Long ago we sacrificed this ability in order to bring motivation into our dense bodies through a desire body.  As we regain this ability, like we try to do in the healing service, we regain it at a higher level, just as Max Heindel said we would.  When we pray and transduce Life Spirit into etheric healing panacea, it is not a passive activity as with plants, it is a free, volitional act driven by love and sacrifice for others.

 

 

 

There is also something for Christ in the original and annual sacrifice into earthly limitation that goes beyond the opportunity to give where it is most needed.  The Rosicrucian Cosmo Conception tells us that the chemical region of the physical world is the reflective-projection of the Divine Spirit, the etheric region is the reflective-projection of the Life Spirit, and the desire world is the reflective-projection of the Human Spirit, with all of the reflective-projection being done through the crux of mind.  The Human Spirit focused through the Holy Spirit, the Highest Initiate of the Moon Period, is self-consciously aware of its reflective-projection (the desire world) from within the desire body of Jehovah.  The Divine Spirit, focused through the Father, is never self-consciously aware of its reflective-projection (the chemical region of the physical world) because it has never incarnated into a dense physical body, it is even incapable of building such a body.  The Life Spirit focused through Christ, the Son, would never have been self-consciously aware within the etheric region if it had not been for the sacrifices of both Christ and Jesus.  The incarnation of Christ at the baptism by John must have been a stupendous self-recognition in the Life Spirit, a déjà vu of cosmic proportions, greatly expanding and enhancing our entire evolutionary creation, as it experienced its reflective-projection for the first time in a way that was never in the cosmic plan.  Such is the way of grace; one sacrifices with no thought of self and then is rewarded beyond one’s conception in ways that one could never plan.

            Even though the way that Christ enters and leaves the body of the earth is not like the way we daily enter and leave our bodies (it is similar to the way we enter our bodies at rebirth), that way is not without perspective.  The perspective is that the North Pole is like the top of the head of the earth so to speak, and the South Pole like the bottom of the feet.  This is why Max Heindel could fuse the cycle of the ethers as seen from the northern hemisphere with the cycle of the Christ in his writings for northern hemisphere students.  This does not mean that the northern hemisphere is better or more right or anything like that — Aries and the head are not more important than Pisces and the feet, both are necessary.  There have to be two hemispheres, or there is no whole sphere.  This observation of the head of the earth did not originate with Max Heindel.  It can be found in the Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri, one of the first to be influenced after the Rosicrucian Order formed in 1313.

            Even though we are one earth and one humanity, there are differences in spiritual aspiration in the northern and southern hemispheres.  Because the cycle of the Christ is asynchronous with the cycle of the ethers, some aspects of aspiration are different in the southern hemisphere.  It is natural to withdraw and turn inward at midwinter, so aspiration at Christmas is enhanced by nature in the northern hemisphere.  It is much more difficult to withdraw and turn inward when it is warm and when natural growth is luxurious and abundant.  Spiritual students in the southern hemisphere swim upstream with regard to the Christ cycle.  This exactly conforms with the Rosicrucian spirit.  In our services we face west and swim upstream.  We are pioneers working to bring in new things in the face of the prevailing westerlies. While it may be more difficult, in terms of the ethers, to turn inward and seek to unite with Christ in midsummer, it is a difficulty whose fruits are commensurate with the effort, similar to the reward to Christ and the Life Spirit for the depth of sacrifice and effort.