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The following is a compilation by Marie-José Clerc

from the writings of Max Heindel and the

Holy Bible which she prepared for a presentation

at Mount Ecclesia

 

 

 

Voluntary and Involuntary

Clairvoyance

 

from the Rosicrucian Point of View

 

       One can realize that he is not sufficiently aware of the influence, the effect, nor the impacts done on one or the other of one’s nervous systems, when he reads a book or attends a lecture.

Transparent Involuntary,

Voluntary Nervous Systems

         We have two nervous systems: the involuntary or sympathetic nervous system, that was first developed during the Moon Period, and the voluntary or cerebro-spinal nervous system, that has been developed, from the involuntary nervous system, during the Earth Period.

Transparent Involuntary,

Voluntary Clairvoyance, Normal Man

         We know that our nervous systems relate to the faculties of clairvoyance: the involuntary clairvoyance is connected with the involuntary (or sympathetic) nervous system, and the voluntary clairvoyance is connected with the voluntary (or cerebro-spinal) nervous system. Both kinds of clairvoyance also relate to the pituitary body and the pineal gland, however by a different way.

         Thus, we shall try to gather pieces of information on these two kinds of clairvoyance in both the Bible—given to humanity by the Recording Angels—and the Rosicrucian Teaching, given to Max Heindel by the Brothers of the Rosicrucian Order.

         Here are some pieces of information given by the Rosicrucian Teaching on both the Old and the New Testaments:

         “The Gospels are not simply stories of the life of an individual; they depict dramatically and in symbol the incidents in the path of attainment; they are formulæ of initiation.” (Q&AI, Q94)

         “Contrary to the ordinarily accepted opinion, the four Gospels are not at all the biography of Jesus, the Christ; they are Formulæ of initiation of four different Mystery Schools, and in order to veil their esoteric meaning, the life and ministry of the Christ is also intermingled.” (Q&AI, Q99)

         “In the first place let it be understood, as previously said in speaking of the Christian mysteries, that the four Gospels are not merely accounts of the life of a single individual, written by four different people, but they are symbolical of different Initiations. Paul says, ‘Until Christ be formed in you’. (Galatians 4:19; II Corinthians 13:5) Everyone will some day go through the four stages that are depicted in the four Gospels, for everyone is unfolding the Christ spirit within himself. And in saying this of the four Gospels, we may also apply the same assertion to a great part of the Old Testament, for it is a wonderful book of occultism.” (TI, pp. 192-193)

         These statements on both the Old and the New Testaments show the great importance that each candidate on the path should give to Bible study and understanding.

         Before reading some excerpts in the Bible, let us refer to The Message of the Stars, (MS, section Taurus-Scorpio pp. 16-25) where the meaning of both the involuntary and the voluntary clairvoyance is given. Here are some explanations concerning the word Naioth, that we read in the Bible, “On looking up the word ‘serpent’ in the Bible, we shall find that there are about seven words that have thus been translated; but one of them, which was borrowed from Egypt, is Naja. This word is found in the old tablets in the ancient temples of Egypt where Osiris, the Sun God, is hailed when arising from the primordial deep. He was then crowned with glory and has the Uræus Naja, an emblem of cosmic wisdom. The Uræus was a part of a serpent’s body, with its head depicted as protruding from a point in the forehead just above the nose, where the human spirit has its seat; and Christ therefore referred to the ancient Serpent Initiates, when He said, ‘Be ye wise as serpents’. ( Matthew 10:16) …The serpent is certainly not sufficiently sagacious to warrant a literal meaning of this saying; but when we understand that when the creative fire is drawn upwards through the serpentine spinal cord (note: that is to say through the voluntary or cerebro-spinal nervous system) it vibrates the pituitary body and the pineal gland, connecting the Ego with the invisible worlds by opening up a hidden sense, the allusion is perfectly clear.

         There is, however, a lower phase of spiritual development, symbolized in ancient times by placing the Uræus or serpent at the navel, to show that the mediumistic faculties in the solar plexus (note: the solar plexus is linked with the involuntary or sympathetic nervous system) had been developed. Mediumship is a negative phase of spiritual sight or hearing possessed by a person who, under the control of an outside intelligence, prophesies. This undesirable phase of seership was represented in the Zodiac by the symbol of the Scorpion, which has the sting in its tail. In the Serpent Initiate, the Creative Cosmic Fire was drawn upward through the head to serve a spiritual end; in the Medium the creative energy is expressed for selfish, sensual ends through the pro creative organ ruled by Scorpio.

         The point between the eyebrows, whence the serpent of wisdom protrudes, is the seat of life, whereas all that opens the womb is subject to the sting of death, contained in the Scorpion’s tail.

         If we now turn with this information to our Bible, we shall find that a great many things, previously obscure, will become clear. As said, the Egyptian word for this Uræus or serpent is Naja and it was borrowed by the Israelites who expressed the negative faculty of mediumship by affixing the feminine ending ‘oth,’ giving Naioth; while those able to function consciously in the spiritual worlds were given the positive, male plural ending ‘im,’ and were called Naim. If we read the nineteenth chapter of first Samuel with this understanding we shall readily see that the incident there narrated was of a mediumistic nature:”

         “And the evil spirit from the Lord was upon Saul, as he sat in his house with his javelin in his hand: and David payed with his hand.” (Samuel 19:9)

         “And Saul sought to smite David even to the wall with the javelin; but he slipped away out of Saul’s presence, and he smote the javelin into the wall: and David fledm and escaped that night.” (I Samuel 19:10)

         “So David fled, and escaped, and came to Samuel to Ramah, and told him all that Saul had done to him. And he and Samuel went and dwelt in Naioth.” (I Samuel 19:18)

 

         The word Naioth is mentioned four times in chapter 19, and once in chapter 20.

         The word Endor is another word to know and to understand:

         “Then said Paul unto his servants, Seek me a woman that hath a familiar spirit, that I may go to her, and inquire of her. And his servants said to him, Behold, there is a woman that hath a familiar spirit at En-dor.” (I Samuel 28:7)

         Already at this time, it is forbidden to consult familiar spirits, as mentioned in Deuteronomy 18:10-11:

         “There shall not be found among you any one that maketh his son or his daughter to pass through the fire, or that useth divination, or an observer of times, or an enchanter, or a witch,

         Or a charmer, or a consulter with familiar spirits, or a wizard, or a necromancer.”

         Let us go back to The Message of the Stars, where we still find other pieces of information on the same subject, “Naioth is supposed by Bible translators to be a place, and maybe a village so named. But if that was the case, it was because the people who lived in that place were Naioth, or mediums. They were called prophets in the chapter before us, and it is significant that as soon as anyone came within their camp, he commenced to prophesy or speak under control. Even Saul, who came there, anxious to get David away that he might slay him, was seized by the spirits and prophesied, to the amazement of all present.

         In the New Testament, (Luke 7:11-17 ) we are told that Christ went to the city of Nain and there raised the Son of a Widow. In the Latin Testament, this city was not called Nain, but Naim. And it is very significant that all three, Naim, Naioth and Endor where the sorceress that assisted Saul is supposed to have lived, are in the same locality by Mount Tabor.

         Every Freemason knows that the brethren of that Order are called ‘Sons of the Widow.’ And it is stated in the Bible that Hiram Abiff, the Master Builder of Solomon’s Temple, was the Son of a Widow, a cunning craftsman… But suffice it to say that in the Bible story to which reference has been made, we have one of the Naim, a Widow’s Son or initiate of the old Serpent School, for the priests of Egypt were ‘phree messen,’ children of light. Each had within, the ancient Serpent wisdom. But a new religion was being inaugurated, and it was necessary to raise the ancient Initiates to the Mysteries of the Coming Age. Therefore the Christ, the Lion of Judah, Lord of the new Kingdom, went to the Widow’s Son of Naim and raised him up by the strong grip of the Lion’s paw. And we may here emphasize that the first Initiate under the new system was Hiram Abiff, the highest Initiate of the old system, who, by this new initiation given him by the Christ, became a Christian, pledged to bear the Rose and the Cross, which were the symbols of the New Mystery Teachings of the Western World and he was then given the symbolical name, Christian Rosenkreuz.” (MS, pp. 23-24)

         Concerning the Lion of Judah, we may gather some pieces of information in both the Old and the New Testaments:

         “Judah, thou art he whom thy brethren shall praise: thy hand shall be in the neck ot thine enemies; thy father’s children shall bow down before thee.

         Judah is a lion’s whelp: from the prey, my son, thou art gone up; he stooped down, he couched as a lion, and as an old lion; who shall rouse him up?

         The sceptre shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, until shiloh come; and unto him shall the gathering of the people be.”(Genesis 49:8-10)

         “And thou Bethlehem, in the land of Juda, art not the least among the princes of Juda: for out of thee shall come a Governor, that shall rule my people Israel.” (Matthew 2:6)

         “And one of the elders saith unto me, Weep not: behold, the Lion of the tribe of Juda, the Root of David, hath prevailed to open the book, and to loose the seven seals thereof.” (Revelation 5:5)

         Thus, among the numerous pieces of information gathered as well in the Bible as in The Message of the Stars, we shall keep the most important ones, that are the key-words of our evolution; that is to say those that enable humanity to pass from the involuntary clairvoyance to the voluntary clairvoyance. And this change may depend on the fact that the spiritual Teaching we study is working—quite unconciously at the beginning of this study—either on the involuntary or sympathetic nervous system, or on the voluntary or cerebro-spinal nervous system. The involuntary or sympathetic nervous system develops our passivity; the voluntary or cerebro-spinal nervous system develops our activity, our will and our dynamism.        

         As mentioned before, the words Naioth and Endor describe the mediumistic faculties developed through the solar plexus which is a nervous plexus of the sympathetic or involuntary nervous system.

         In Astrology, the solar plexus is ruled by Venus, (Q&A II, Q 52) which exerts a magnetic energy which draws to her. (MS, pp.170) Its action is opposite to that of the electric planets which give out their energy. In The Rosicrucian Cosmo-Conception,we are told that it is quite easy to regress to the involuntary clairvoyance:

         “…The latter (who are in the vanguard of evolution) are emerging from the acme of materiality, and are again divisible into two kinds, one of which develops in a passive, weak-willed manner. By the help of others they re-awaken the solar plexus or other organs in connection with the involuntary nervous system. These are therefore involuntary clairvoyants, mediums who have no control of their faculty. They have retrograded.” (CC,  pp. 241-242)

         The words Nain or Naim, and Juda or Lion of Judah describe the positive faculty of voluntary clairvoyance of “those who by their own wills, unfold the vibratory powers of organs now connected with the voluntary nervous system and thus become trained occultists, controlling their own bodies and exercising the clairvoyant faculty as they will to do. They are called voluntary or trained clairvoyants.” (CC,  pp. 241-242)

         In the Bible, we find the same Teaching given by “Christ Himself, when He said, ‘Be wise as serpents.’ (Matthew 10:16) The serpent is certainly not sufficiently sagacious to warrant a literal meaning of this saying; but when we understand that when the creative fire is drawn upwards through the serpentine spinal cord it vibrates the pituitary body and the pineal gland, connecting the Ego with the invisible worlds by opening up a hidden sense, the allusion is perfectly clear.” (MS, pp. 21-22)

         We know that “Leo rules the heart, the dorsal region of the spine, the spinal cord, and the aorta.” (MS, pp. 542 ) Moreover, “The heart and the pons varolii, or vital knot, situated in the brain, are the principal parts of the body ruled by the Sun,” (MS, pp. 545 ) which rules the sign Leo.

         Thus Astrology confirms the pieces of information given in the Bible (the Lion of Judah) concerning the voluntary or cerebo-spinal nervous system.

         Now, it would be interesting to find in The Rosicrucian Cosmo-Conception when our two nervous systems have been evolved.

         In chapter 8, The Work of Evolution, we read, in the section The Moon Period, page 214:

         “In the Moon Period it was necessary to reconstruct the dense body or make it capable of being inter-penetrated by a desire body, and also capable of evolving a nervous system, muscle, cartilage and a rudimentary skeleton. This reconstruction was the work of the Saturn Revolution of the Moon Period.

         In the second or Sun Revolution, the vital body was als modified to render it capable of being interpenetrated by a desire body, also of accomodating to the nervous system, muscle, skeleton, etc.

         In the third Revolution the proper Moon work commenced. The Lords of Individuality radiated from themselves the substance which they helped the inconscious, evolving man to appropriate and build into a germinal desire body….”

         In chapter 10, The Earth Period, page 239-240:

         “The reconstruction of the dense body in the Saturn Revolution of the Earth Period was for the purpose of rendering it capable of inter-penetration by the mind. It gave the first impulse to the building of the frontal part of the brain; also the incipient division in the nervous system which has since become apparent in its subdivisions—the voluntary and the sympathetic. The latter was the only one provided for in the Moon Period. The voluntary nervous system (which has transformed the dense body from a mere automaton acting under stimuli from without, to an extraordinary adaptable instrument capable of beinf guided and controlled by an Ego from within) was not added until the present Earth Period.”

         In chapter 17, Acquiring First-Hand Knowledge, in the section The Pituitary Body and the Pineal Gland:

         Page 473, 474, “”In the brain, and in approximately the positions shown in diagram 17, are two small organs called the pituitary body and the pineal gland… They were connected with the involuntary or sympathetic nervous system. Man then saw the inner Worlds, as in the Moon Period and the latter part of the Lemurian and early Atlantean Epochs. Pictures presented themselves quite independent of his will. The sense centers of his desire body were spinning around counter-clockwise (following negatively the motion of the Earth, which revolves on its axis in that direction) as the sense centers of ‘mediums’ do to this day. In most people these sense-centers are inactive, but true development will set them spinning clockwise, as explained elsewhere. That is the difficult feature in the development of positive clairvoyance.

         The development of mediumship is much easier, because it is merely a revival of the mirror-like function possessed by man in the far past, by which the outside world was involuntarily relfected in him, and which function was afterward retained by inbreeding…”

         Page 476, 477, “In the ages that have passed since the Lemurian Epoch humanity has been gradually building the cerebro-spinal nervous system, which is under the control of the will. In the latter part of the Atlantean Epoch, this was so far evolved that it became possible for the Ego to take full possession of the dense body. That was the time (previously decribed) when the point in the vital body came into correspondence with the point at the root of the nose in the dense body and the indwelling spirit became awake in the Physical World but, so far as the greater part of humanity was concerned, lost consciousness of the inner Worlds.

         Since then, the connection of the pineal gland and the pituitary body with the cerebro-spinal nervous system has been slowly building, and is now all but complete.

         To regain contact with the inner Worlds, all that remains to be done is the reawakening of the pituitary body and the pineal gland. When that is accomplished, man will again possess the faculty of perception in the higher worlds, but on a grander scale that formerly, because it will be in connection with the voluntary nervous system and therefore under the control of his Will. Through this inner perceptive faculty all avenues of knowledge will be opened to him and he will have at his service a means of acquiring information compared with which all other methods of investigation are but child’s play.”

         These excerpts from The Rosicrucian Cosmo-Conception show that it was “in the latter part of the Atlantean Epoch…that it became possible for the Ego to take full possession of the dense body.” (CC, pp. 476) Simultaneously, “the indwelling spirit became awake in the Physical World but, so far as the greater part of humanity was concerned, lost consciousness of the inner Worlds.” (CC, pp. 476) The true meaning of this is that man could not “see” any longer the entities of the Inner Worlds through the involuntary clairvoyance. This probably means that since the latter part of the Atlantean Epoch, humanity should have ceased, as a precaution, to practice involuntary clairvoyance through which contact with the good or evil entities of the Spiritual Worlds is looked for, as now, the greater part of humanity is no longer able to “see” these entities. This is the reason why the Rosicrucian Teaching shows the path of voluntary clairvoyance:

         “The aspirant need never fear, however, that for want of a teacher he will be delayed in taking these steps; nor need he be concerned about looking for a teacher. All that is necessary for him to do is to start to improve himself, and to earnestly and  persistently continue therein. In that way he will purify his vehicles. They will commence to shine in the inner Worlds, and cannot fail to attract the attention of the teachers, who are always watching for just such cases and are more than eager and glad to help those who, because of their earnest efforts to purify themselves, have won the right to receive help. Humanity is sorely in need of helpers who are able to work from the inner Worlds, therefore ’seek and ye shall find,’ but let us not imagine that by going about from one professed teacher to another, we are seeking…

         The time required to bring results from the performance of the exercises varies with each individual and is dependent upon his application, his stage in evolution and his record in the book of destiny; therefore no general time can be set… yet the results will be there, and the aspirant who faithfully persists will some day, in this or a future life, behold his patience and faithfulness rewarded…” (CC, pp. 495-496: “Adoration.”)

         Another encouragement to follow the path of voluntary clairvoyance which is linked with the voluntary or cerebro-spinal nervous system, is the following statement: “There was no initiation prior the end of the Mars half of the Earth Period. The lesser mysteries embrace human evolution in the Mercury half of the Earth Period.” (CC, pp. 413: Diagram 15)

         This statement is confirmed in The Rosicrucian Philosophy in Questions and Answers: (Q&A II, Q 73)

         “… If you read Freemasonry and Catholicism, you will find that Lazarus had previously been Hiram Abiff, the Master Mason, and chief builder of Solomon’s Temple; that Jesus had been previously embodied as the personality called Solomon; and that the Christ Spirit dwelling in Jesus at the time of the recorded raising of Lazarus was the great Initiator who raised him up and made him a Hierophant of the Lesser Mysteries. He is now known as Christian Rosenkreuz, the Head of the Western Wisdom School, and co-worker with Jesus to UNITE humanity and bring them to the Kingdom of Christ.”

         We are given, here, the precious indication that Christ was/still is(?) the great Initiator for those who were/are(?) worthy to be the Hierophants of the Lesser Mysteries.

         In The Rosicrucian Cosmo-Conception, page 523 and 529, we read further:

         “There are upon earth seven schools of the Lesser Mysteries, five of the Greater Mysteries and the whole grouped under one Central Head Who is called the Liberator.”

         “Graduates from the various schools of the lesser mysteries advance into five schools of the greater mysteries. In the first four they pass the four Great Initiations and at last reach the Liberator…”

         After having read the pieces of information on the raising of Lazarus, we may be sure that Christ is the Liberator:

         “The Bible says that the law was supreme until the advent of the great Sun Spirit. Christ started a new phase of evolution under the principle of love, and regeneration. This ended the regime of Jehovah and the sway of Saturn…”

         “The advance guard of humanity, the Initiates who have passed both the lesser and greater Initiations and appear before the Liberator (the great Being in charge of evolution on Earth), are given the choice of staying here and helping their brothers in this world or of going to Jupiter and preparing the conditions under which humanity may evolve in the future Jupiter Period.” (Q&A II, Q 77)

         The last five excerpts are undoubtedly the confirmation—and also the proof—that the four Gospels, and also The Rosicrucian Cosmo-Conception, which is a brilliant comment of the Bible, describe in fact the past, present and future evolution of humanity. Astrology has clearly shown that, through the existing relationship between Christ the Lion of Judah, the Astrological Sign Leo, the Sun (ruling Leo), voluntarily clairvoyance is now the path of evolution for humanity, as voluntary clairvoyance is under the control of the Will and is linked to the cerebro-spinal or voluntary nervous system.