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In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God,

and the Word was God.

The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him;

and without him was not any thing made that was made.

In him was life; and the life was the light of men.

And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.

[Max Heindel recommended that the beginning verses of Saint John’s Gospel be used for the Rosicrucian students’ morning concentration exercise.  The following book review appeared in a 2002 Rays from the Rose Cross magazine.]

Becoming Aware of the Logos — Book Review

According to the Gospel of John, the Word already was at the beginning.  At the beginning of what? Of anything and everything, made or not made, in any place, at any time. The Word that is all-creating and all-signifying, that is creation and creativity, significance and signifier, already was in God as that which God before time willed in superabundant love to “speak” out from Himself as God the Son, the Logos. Before He spoke forth from darkness brighter than all created light, the Alone-Begotten was in dialogue with the Father, and the Father with Him.

Two Owls – Thomas Moran 1837 – 1926

          This Word is the foundation for all and any meaning. Physical forms, their etheric matrices, astral structures, mental archetypes, and the languages that convey their meaning and their reason for being—all originate in and by the Word. The mind that conceives and even the identity that carries on conceptual activity and knows itself purely as I, even this, and especially this, is rooted in the Word, for the I AM is the Word, and each human Spirit was in the beginning in and with the Cosmic I AM, the Logos—but knew it not.

          Meditation on St. John’s Gospel, especially the first eighteen verses, is the subject of George Kühlewind’s Becoming Aware of the Logos (Lindesfarne Press, 1985). In the book’s preface the author writes that our everyday consciousness may find the text of the John’s Prologue “incomprehensible, even contradictory,” unless our understanding can be illuminated by “experiences on the plane of consciousness corresponding to” this text.  Which is why Max Heindel and other spiritually evolved persons recommend concentration on this passage as particularly favoring both the search for higher knowledge and the awakening of faculties for acquiring that knowledge first-hand.

          Three words serve as nuclei around which Kühlewind’s meditative exposition centers and from which his insights emanate: the central term Logos and what the Logos makes possible—grace (Greek, cháris) and truth (Greek, alétheia). For grace and truth came with the Word incarnate.

          While academic philology may be seen, with some justification, as largely an exercise in pedantry, etymologically and actually the “love of words” is the response of a call in the heart to know the soul of things, their life, their meaning. It is a yearning for the original ever-sounding Word, evinced in a study of the Word’s “fall” into things, Its fissioning into innumerable orphaned syllables that carry a resonance of their supernal home.

          Alétheia means “not to forget” (a, not + lethe, forget), which suggests, as Plato teaches, that prior to embodiment the human spirit is irradiated by the presence of universal forms or Ideas. When the spirit takes on a physical body, it forgets the Truth, it suffers amnesia and must make an effort to remember, for which Plato employed the term anamnesis (literally, to bring again to mind, mens), and others the Latin cognate reminiscence. Since the science of spirit describes Ideas or Archetypes as living spirit beings whose lowest “body” consists of thought substance, we can appreciate the conception of artists who depict the aura of divinity as composed of countless celestial beings. In other words, the Idea of all ideas, the Word comprising all possible words, is the Logos Who was in the beginning, the Alpha and Omega of all alphabets.

          Greek mythology describes the river Lethe in the underworld whose water induces forgetfulness.  This is an effective symbol for the human inability to remember former incarnations, which nescience gives “one-life” advocates what they think is lethal “proof” for their contention. The point is that in becoming aware of the Logos we are unforgetting, we re-member truth, alétheia, into our conscious being. When we are ignorant of the truth, we are in a state of spiritual lethargy. Then the invisible light shines into the darkness of our material minds and we do not comprehend it, we cannot see it, we do not re-cognize the Christ, the Word, living in creation and, most fully, in human beings.

          Christ came not to teach the way of truth.  Rather, being its embodiment, he came to show it, to demonstrate that truth is here (Emmanuel, God with us). Before Christ lived in Jesus, eye had not seen nor ear heard what God had planned for those that love him—that Christ abides and speaks His Word in individual human being. John’s Gospel states that no man has seen God at any time, but the Son declares him. In response to Philip’s request to “show us the Father,” Christ is more positive: “he that hath seen me hath seen the Father.”  Christianity announces the revelation of God in man; through Christ humans are called to know their Logos-bearing nature, as it has ever been known by God in Whose image He created them.

          Christ affirms, I in thou and thou in me. Yet, he comes unto his own, who have been His from the beginning, and His own know him not. When as Jesus He was face to face with them, His was simply the face of the son of Mary and Joseph; at most, He was the Messiah, the emancipator of the Jewish people, esoterically, the liberator of the Spirit in man from the domination of race-consciousness and the bondage to things. The seeing that discovers Christ is not physical sight. It is based on a prior Self-seeing, prior Self-conceiving.  Knowing the Word does come from coupling a percept with a concept, sense data with its defining thought. To know spirit we must know that flesh and blood are, at most, media of understanding, not its message. Mortal flesh is the glass through which we see, darkly. If we see true, we see in spite of the flesh. It does not obscure the spirit because other eyes, eyes of the spirit, are open. John the Baptist had attained to a certain level of supersensible vision. His preaching of repentance was actually a charge to change thinking, in Paul’s words, to be not conformed to the world. But John says of the Lamb of God, “I knew him not.” John could see the Spirit that alighted like a dove on Jesus. He had attained to an apprehension of the region of abstract thought, the domain of the Human Spirit, whose cosmic counterpart is the Holy Spirit; but the Logos, the Son of God, typically has His lowest manifestation in the World of Life Spirit.

          The witnessing given by the author of John’s Gospel is of a higher order.  For it is primarily he who speaks of the Logos. It is John the Beloved who listened at the heart of his Master. John’s testimony is given by the Greek word martyría. It implies such an understanding of what is encountered that the witness’ report compels belief. Such testimony is often given in the face of opposition to its content, as in the phrase “martyrs for the Word.” The individual human spirit is the martyría, the inner witness that seeks to bring truth to the too often skeptical or scorning lower mind that is in and of the world and would not be unseated.

          Christ’s words of truth are also words of grace (cháris), which signify discourse that has the power to convince, power over “unclean spirits,” and power to bring about “signs and miracles.” The word of cháris is always a doing, a doing that gives above what is asked, or above what is merited.  Cháris comes from above. It is full of grace.  It issues from love and “unconditioned intuition.”  Grace, as used by John, pertains to what ultimately issues from the world of Life Spirit, the realm of seminal reality. From here love precipitates into human affairs from the future, as truth or alétheia refers to the living present, and “this world” refers to the past, the dying present, to what we think we know and prefer to perpetuate as forms through which the new is experienced as the familiar.

          The student can meditate on John’s Gospel without having recourse to any aid or commentary.  Kühlewind’s book shows how fruitful such meditation can be, thus strengthening one’s desire and resolve to become more aware of the Logos.

—C.W.

54 RAYS 02

Tags: concentration, Gospel of John, Logos

             By William Ernest Henley

          Out of the night that covers me,

          Black as the pit from pole to pole,

          I thank whatever gods may be

          For my unconquerable soul.

          In the fell clutch of circumstance

          I have not winced nor cried aloud.

          Under the bludgeonings of chance

          My head is bloody, but unbowed.

          Beyond this place of wrath and tears

          Looms but the Horror of the shade,

          And yet the menace of the years

          Finds and shall find me unafraid.

          It matters not how strait the gate,

          How charged with punishments the scroll.

          I am the master of my fate:

          I am the captain of my soul.

Henley, the poet, was hospitalized for tuberculosis. One of his legs was amputated in order to save his life; it was said to be very painful. Immediately after the amputation, he received news that another operation would have to be done on his other leg. However, he decided to enlist the help of a different doctor named Joseph Lister. Under Lister’s care he was able to keep his other leg by undergoing intensive surgery on his remaining foot. While recovering from this surgery in the infirmary, he was moved to write the words of this poem Invictus. This period of his life, coupled with the reality of an impoverished childhood, plays a major role in the meaning behind the poem. [Wikipedia]

Tags: Invictus, unconquerable, undefeated, William Ernest Henley

I wish to augment my previous submissions on the topic of mind as creative of, behind, and independent of matter inasmuch as I have come across additional corroborating viewpoints articulated mostly by theoretical physicists, who, being at the forefront of scientific investigation into the nature of reality, seem almost uniformly to be more open to new ideas and less inclined to myopically defend ideological turf and fortify the redoubts of dogma, at whatever cost to notions of established “truth.”

Albert Einstein, regarding the unified field theory he postulated to explain reality, wrote: “If we think of the field as being removed, there is no ‘space’ which remains, since space does not have an independent existence.” “[Objective] reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.” “Hence it is clear that the space of physics is not, in the last analysis, anything given in nature or independent of human thought. It is a function of our conceptual scheme [mind]. Space as conceived by Newton proved to be an illusion, although for practical purposes a very fruitful illusion.” The illusoriness of space was later shown to be correct by physicist Milo Wolff, whose findings are discussed further on. In the present context, space is shown to be a construct of the human mind.

David Bohm, “widely considered to be one of the most significant theoretical physicists of the 20th century” (Wikipedia),  worked closely with Einstein and “contributed innovative and unorthodox ideas to quantum theory, philosophy of mind, and neuropsychology” (ibid.). He wrote in Wholeness and the Implicate Order: “To meet the challenge before us, our notions of cosmology and the general nature of reality must have room in them to permit a consistent account of consciousness. Vice versa, our notions of consciousness must have room in them to understand what it means for its content to be ‘reality as a whole.’ The two sets of notions together should be such as to allow for an understanding as to how consciousness and reality are related” (emphasis added).

Eugene Wigner, theoretical physicist and mathematician, who shared a Nobel prize in Physics in 1963, laid the foundation for the theory of symmetries in quantum mechanics. Wigner wrote that “the very study of the external world [as quantum mechanics] led to the scientific conclusion that the content of the consciousness is the ultimate universal reality” (emphasis added).

In a speech (“The Nature of Matter”) given at Florence, Italy in 1944, Max Planck, Nobel laureate in Physics (1918), considered to be the founder of quantum physics, said:

“As a man who has devoted his whole life to the most clear headed science, to the study of matter, I can tell you as a result of my research about atoms this much: There is no matter as such. All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force which brings the particle of an atom to vibration and holds this most minute solar system of the atom together. We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent mind. This mind is the matrix of all matter.”

And, as quoted in The Observer (25 January 1931), Planck asserts:

I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness.

Thought, then, is not epiphenomenal, but primary, not brain-dependent but brain-building, not contingent on but prior to the brain’s existence.

As to what many contemporary scientists in the pride of their ignorance claim to be the besetting sin of creationists and intelligent design proponents—their faith (though IDers base their assertions on laboratory data and infer to the most plausible explanation)—Planck counters with this assertion in Where Is Science Going? (1932):

“Anybody who has been seriously engaged in scientific work of any kind realizes that over the entrance to the gates of the temple of science are written the words: Ye must have faith. It is a quality which the scientist cannot dispense with.”

Faith in what? At the very least, in the reliability of the rigorous use of mind to seek out and identify the full extent of reality, because the human mind is an instance of that archetypal “conscious and intelligent Mind” that is behind the force that gives rise to the formed universe.

I know that “a man convinced against his will is unpersuaded still,” so matters of belief tend to remain static with each believer, be he atheist, agnostic, or theist. Thus, Planck’s input, and that of his like-minded confreres, may perhaps pique interest but will not likely effect real change. That he was a believer in Deity is clear. That religious belief was increasingly under attack by the “liberated” scientist of his day was the cause for this lamentation in Religion und Naturwissenschaft (1958):

“Under these conditions it is no wonder that the movement of atheists, which declare religion to be just a deliberate illusion, invented by power-seeking priests, and which has for the pious belief in a higher Power nothing but words of mockery, eagerly makes use of progressive scientific knowledge and in a presumed unity with it, expands in an ever faster pace its disintegrating action on all nations of the earth and on all social levels. I do not need to explain in any more detail that after its victory not only all the most precious treasures of our culture would vanish, but — which is even worse — also any prospects at a better future.”

Planck went so far as to maintain that science and religion have the same goal—”recognition of an omnipotent intellect ruling the universe.” http://www.adherents.com/people/pp/Max_Planck.html

Planck refers to the “force which brings the particle of an atom to vibration.” It is vibration that gives rise to creation in it myriad forms in their separate yet interdependent identities. Before vibration was chaos, increate or ur “matter.”  What is this vibration? My studies and thinking suggest actually a hierarchy of vibrations, not simply that range of frequencies that governs material manifestation, but frequencies at ever more intangible and ethereal/spiritual levels. John’s Gospel provides a key: “In the beginning was the Logos” and “the Logos was God.”  All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.” (All foregoing quotes from http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Max_Planck)

Translating Logos as “Word” loses the ancient Greek understanding of thought as truly creative and existing in and emanating out of a real superphysical dimension, the home world of the rational mind. (Those interested might care to read the attached review of George Kühlewind”s On Becoming Aware of the Logos.) Thus, in the creation account of Genesis, when God speaks, “Let there be” (the “creative fiat”), sound or vibration organizes primordial protomatter (what Rosicrucians call “cosmic root-substance”) into the forms corresponding to those vibrations. Created objects have vibratory keynotes or signatures. This was dramatically demonstrated by Royal Rife, the genius who determined the vibratory keynote of a number of pathogenic microbes (including tetanus, gonorrhea, staphylococcus,  pneumococcus, streptococci, typhus, and tuberculosis) by directing that same frequency (what he called the mortal oscillatory rate) back at the microbe with an amplitude sufficient to cause it to self-destruct, which event could be viewed in vivo (impossible with an electron microscope) using his over 2000-part microscope. According to a report submitted to the Journal of the Franklin Institute, it had a magnification of 60,000x and a resolution of 31,000x.

(See the attached file that describes Rife’s simple, direct, and elegant cure for cancer. Also refer to http://www.whale.to/v/rife.html,  and read The Cancer Cure That Worked, by Barry Lynes—astonishing.)

The electromagnetic spectrum, “the range of all possible frequencies of electromagnetic radiation,” depicts (see below), the various properties across the range of frequencies and wavelengths. 

Another suggestive illustration, found in Max Heindel’s Rosicrucian Cosmo-Conception,  published in 1909, was first presented by British chemist and physicist William Crookes, who did research in spectroscopy and was a pioneer of vacuum tubes, inventing the Crookes tube. Driven by the true scientific spirit that is characterized by bold, inquisitive open-mindedness, he studied preternatural phenomena associated with spiritualism and concluded that the phenomena he witnessed could not be explained as conjuring and “point to the agency of an outside intelligence”.

Here is one more startling illustration showing bioelectric man, with active upper chakras, in his electromagnetic universe:

The electromagnetic spectrum encompasses vibratory levels (“octaves” in the above middle diagram) pertaining to the physical world. Yet higher vibratory levels obtain in supraphysical worlds.

As for the organizing powers and properties of vibration, one might recall Plutarch’s misattributed quote: “Plato said God geometrized continually”—from the crystalline mineral world, to the life-imbued plant world with its phyllotaxy (displacement of leaves around a stem) and petal symmetries, to the far more sophisticated and intricate animal and human forms and functions, whose parts and whole derive from and owe their nature to a symphony of architectonic “sounds” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pt5cE2L9kY0). 

The ubiquitous spiral shape found in seashells (here depicted is the chambered Nautilus),

botanical structures, and in DNA itself, demonstrates the mathematical properties of the Fibonacci series, a sequence of numbers in which each term is the sum of the previous two terms, as follows: 0  1  1  2  3  5  8  13  21  34  55  89  etc. The division of any two adjacent numbers gives the “Golden” number; e.g., 34/55 = 0.618, or inversely 55/34 = 1.618, what Kepler calls “the divine proportion”.

One of the most spectacular examples of the Fibonacci Series—and kindred logarithmic spirals—in nature is seen in the head of the sunflower, which displays two spirals, one clockwise, one anti-clockwise.

The ratio of 1.618, known as phi, or the Golden ratio, in evidence throughout nature and the cosmos, is seen by some proponents of intelligent design as a recurring signature of the Designer. This visually rich video gives impressive testimony: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0hvD5kLqjuw

Muslims especially might welcome this video on the prevalence of the Golden Mean (1.618) as a proportional template that structures the objective world, and in particular because it proposes that the Golden Mean point of the Earth is, you guessed it, the Kaaba and Mecca, omphalos and Shekinah of the Mohammedan faith. The calculations are persuasive, seemingly too improbable to be mere chance: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0hvD5kLqjuw

The form-creating property of pitch is an easily demonstrable lab exercise in elementary physics, where chladni figures (named after the German physicist and musician,1756–1827, who identified the phenomenon, though it was observed centuries earlier) are made by sand, sugar, or salt grains sprinkled on a metal plate whose vibration at varying rates produces corresponding geometric patterns. See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qf0t4qIVWF4.

The science of cymatics, (from Greek: ??µa “wave”) is the study of visible sound and vibration as they affect matter. Vibration and resonance determine the form and order of all matter: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ouAUo9jVtAU 

The human voice can also produce these chladni or cymatic figures, as singing a Mozart composition through a long tube (tonoscope): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KU84ckD1AcA

Cymatic imaging of the human voice creates the geometric patterns rendered by a CymaScope: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=stMCW6L5GXA

Water can be regarded as a kind of tabula rasa or palimpsest on which different pitches will create corresponding symmetrical patterns: See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxV0FrFMxUY and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9V11mTNonw 

A similar phenomenon is observed in the geometry of snowflakes http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJDeoah-Cd0. These, however, are not sonic products but the result of atmospheric (etheric) vibrations.

The wave structure of all matter (WSM) was established by Dr. Milo Wolff: “He was the first person to have realized and confirmed the fundamental nature of the Spherical Standing Wave Structure of Matter by mathematically uniting significant parts of Quantum Theory and Relativity” with one simple equation. Already, Erwin Schrödinger had rejected the theory of particle structure when he wrote in 1937; “What we observe as material bodies and forces are nothing but shapes and variations of space. Particles are just appearances.” Schrödinger believed that quantum waves are real, “not probability distributions with a particle hidden inside. He saw that abolishing the discrete point particle would remove the paradoxes of ‘wave-particle duality.'”

Wolff writes that “particle-structured physics….satisfies our human prejudices but does not explain the measured facts.” http://www.spaceandmotion.com/Wolff-Wave-Structure-Matter.htm

Wolff gives a brief account of how he arrived at his finding on the wave structure of matter and provides images of the inward and outward wave movements whose interactions constitute matter: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=Ekp1OKi6e4o 

We are still left with the need to explain the origin of the energy that informs and makes possible quantum waves.

The proximate cause of all apparently material shapes is their vibrating etheric counterpart, called by Anthroposophist Rudolf Steiner “the body of formative forces.”  However, the first cause of the forms we see around us is, as Max Heindel explains, the archetypal force which plays into the archetypes of those forms in the World of Thought, whose very “substance” is supersensible tone. Each material thing has its sonic signature(s). For instance, “There is [writes Max Heindel in Occult Principles of Health and Healing] in the skull at the base of the brain a flame. It burns continually in the medulla oblongata at the head of the spinal cord, and like the fire on the altar of the tabernacle [in the wilderness, described in Exodus 35-40], is of divine origin. This fire emits a singing sound like the buzz of a bee, which is the keynote of the physical body, and is sounded by the archetype. It builds in and cements together that mass of cells known as ‘our body’.”

As to the nature of consciousness itself, physicist Tom Campbell’s book My Big Toe (where “TOE” is an acronym for Theory of Everything) is synoptic. Condensed in his online exposition—”Physics, Metaphysics, and the Consciousness Connection”—it may prove helpful: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akgCb85PG-A  (Have patience as Campbell disposes of preliminaries. His presentation is substantial, lucid, and disciplined. Consciousness, Campbell says, is personal. It must be experienced. It is, in fact, the ground of and precondition for experience. One “operates” within the field of consciousness when one thinks, but consciousness need not have thought content to be registered. Often “mind” and “consciousness” are equated, but technically consciousness subsumes and “extends” beyond mind. Meditative states may initiate in thought but can advance into positive trans-rational states.

A TOE that only explains the objective world, such as advanced by Einstein, is a “little” TOE. Campbell wants a big TOE, one that explains all experience, including, and especially, subjective experience, since the latter, according to Campbell, constitutes virtually all of reality. While most scientists dismiss the subjective world as either unreal or unimportant because it lies outside the purview of contracted scientific inquiry, Campbell contends that subjective is fundamentally more real than objective experience. Campbell seized upon a life-transforming invitation from Robert Munro, who had his first out-of-the-body experience (OBE) in 1958 and wanted to ground and scientifically study these exceptional events under the scrutiny and rigor of laboratory conditions, which Campbell and another scientist were to set up and apply. Most importantly, Munro was instructed to collect importable evidence in order to authenticate the validity of his experiences, which involved the physical world, the nonphysical world, an alternate universe, and past lifetimes (reincarnation is one of the main principles of his cosmology). Monroe came to realize that “we are co-creators with a mysterious and indifferent essence that is definitely not the God of Sunday school lessons.” 

After thirty years of research Campbell arrived at the following conclusions:

   • Consciousness is the media of reality and information is its content.

   • Entropy—the gradual loss of energy in a system—is the evolutionary motivator of consciousness.

   • Fundamental reality is modeled as a system of digital consciousness, with data input, storage (memory), retrieval, and feedback loops (learning).

The  implications of modeling consciousness as digital information, like an organic computer, are perhaps initially disconcerting but gradually disclose their aptness.

While Campbell’s analogy may impact as cold and foreign, the representation of consciousness as a computer system best models its operation and in no way inhibits or diminishes its capacity or capability.

Personal understanding of the nature of consciousness is the only understanding that creates fundamental reality. It cannot be understood theoretically, it must be experienced. One must step into it and know it first-hand, personalize it. One must go from the outside of theoretical comprehension to the inside of actual experience. This realization is Campbell’s important contribution, along with the digital modeling of this experience of consciousness to make it scientifically accessible. 

Over time Campbell became able to experience the nontraditional metaphysical worlds of which this sense-based world is but a small subset. Effort, will, intent, desire, focus, and predisposition all played their part in his achievement.  He experienced psi phenomena, including remote viewing, out-of-body experiences, communicating with nonphysical beings, and telepathy, which are all natural attributes of (accessible to) low entropy consciousness. “Lowering entropy, spiritual growth, increasing the quality of consciousness, and growing up are all expressions of the same thing.” “Love is defined as the fundamental expression of low entropy consciousness.”

Because Campbell has, to a degree, experienced the larger reality, teeming as it does with Life, he is able to report the existence of many different reality frames or dimensions, each containing sentient (conscious) entities that interact according to their own rule sets.

Who is qualified to experience (as opposed to intellectualize about) metaphysical reality? Who better, who, in the last analysis, other than each one so inclined, so desiring. Others may rant, caution, sneer at, dissuade from and deprecate the idea and intention. Evidently it’s not for them. But we choose and make our own experience, though others may participate in like manner and interact with us. Regarding the validity, veracity, and reality of what we experience, we are indubitably the best authority and judge, not some self-constituted or institutionally-legitimized other.

Why is the paranormal so difficult to explain? All former attempts have insisted that physical world parameters be applied to nonphysical worlds, have demanded that the rules governing the subset hold good for those that organize the superset. “We force little picture constraints on big picture phenomena.” It won’t work.

Campbell deliberately avoids the hype, frisson, mystique, and glamour one too frequently encounters in treatments of spiritualism. He doesn’t intrigue and allure. He plays down the phenomenon and doesn’t flaunt his abilities. He’s well grounded, as one must be to be successful in such an endeavor. But our evolution in love, as love, does not require that we seek paranormal experiences. There are abundant fields to harvest right where we are, in the physical world, in our physical bodies. Campbell, being a true scientist, wants to know, is inquisitive, needs to explore and expand his horizons. So he travels elsewhere and logs his otherworld experiences.

While fear will certainly nullify any effort made to experience larger and other dimensions, love will promote it. Love naturally tends to experience in wholes, whereas the merely intellectual, academic approach to reality is fragmented and partial, and therefore subject to distortion. Nevertheless, healthy skepticism and discrimination have their role in guiding one’s intentions in new realms, even as they serve us in our routine lives.

Physics, metaphysics, philosophy, and religion are all partial views of the same reality from different perspectives, holding different beliefs, and based on different assumptions. “In the big picture they are all easily understandable as individual shadows of one whole thing. One can see where and how each got stuck because of their limiting beliefs.”

Mind and consciousness are not captive to the mortal, material brain. But final proof of this assertion will never be given until and unless one initiates the process that eventuates in conscious separation from it and maintains the continuity of consciousness without it. Then all gainsaying  is of no account, for one has the certitude of direct evidence in personal experience.

written by CW

Tags: consciousness, mind, science, vibration

INTELLIGENT DESIGN

 by CW

Few of us have not, at least once in our lives, viewed a night sky scattered with myriads of scintillating stars without sensing the work of a Creator, as Psalm 19 expresses it: “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament showeth His handiwork.” As English Jesuit poet Gerard Manley Hopkins writes: “The world is charged with the glory of God”

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/173660).

That’s the large demonstration, the macrocosmic view, through the tele(macro)scope.

How about viewing creation through the microscope? What we see is no less awe-inspiring. Indeed we are given, if possible, an even more impressive demonstration of grand design by a supremely intelligent Designer, because we now see structures that mediate life itself.

Recently, and gradually, I have been exposed to and developed an increasing interest in what has been described by its formulators and proponents as “Intelligent Design.”

The concept has arisen from the scientific observations of microbiologists, geneticists, and, based on their empirical data and postulates, the theoretical proposals of mathematicians, statisticians, physicists, and cosmologists making the case for Intelligent Design.

A gathering body of scientific detail and inference is reaching what for some constitutes a critical mass of evidence that inevitably points not only to the rationality of the universe, but to the existence of a Creator, the source for cosmobiogenesis and life’s stupifyingly intricate and ineffably elegant form and function.

Of course, those already disposed to believe in the existence of a Creator, irrespective of what “science” has to tell them, are yet, many of them, still gratified by the findings of the Intelligent Design movement, which is now seriously challenging what has been the virtual stranglehold of Darwinian evolution taught in our schools and universities—purporting to be science but no less faith-based than creationism.

The heart of this debate, where the Darwinian theory of blind chance and random mutation most egregiously shows its weakness, is in the structure and function of DNA, the informational molecule in each of the human body’s 100 trillion cells, whose length when unfolded is six feet long. If you stretched the DNA in all the body’s cells, end to end, they would extend over 744 million miles, or cover the distance from earth to the moon about 1500 times!

DNA, as you undoubtedly know, encodes genetic instructions of all known living organisms—including single-celled bacteria and many viruses. Its four nitrogenous base pairs (adenine and guanine—called purines—and cytosine and thymine—called pryrimidines—constitute the four living letters of the bioanthropic alphabet. The human genome has three billion base pairs!

It is estimated that there are about 20,000 genes in the human genome, a gene being a molecular unit of heredity consisting of stretches of DNA and RNA that code for a function in the organism.

DNA’s double-stranded helix consists of two long polymers of linked nucleotides, whose “backbone” is composed of alternating sugars (deoxyribose) and phosphate groups, where the nucleobases are the “steps” linked to the sugars on either side.

It is the sequence of the four nucleobases—the amino acids Guanine, Adenine, Thymine, and Cytosine—that encodes the information. The enzyme helicase, a motor protein, moves directionally along a nucleic acid backbone, separating the two annealed nucleic acid strands. It spins the DNA molecule as fast as a jet engine as it unwinds the double helix into two strands. The enzyme RNA polymerase does the copying from the DNA template and produces a RNA strand.

The DNA molecule can be circular or linear and is composed of between 100,000 to over 3 3/4 billion nucleotides—a prodigious feat of nanoarchitecture since it is braided and folded several times in precise and compact ways to form a working and replicable unit.

Intelligent Design proponents call attention to the function of ribosomes, which translate the genetic information in a strand of RNA into a string of amino acids that will become a protein. Transfer molecules transport amino acids to the ribosome, each amino acid having its own transfer molecule with a 3-letter code which is matched with the RNA in the ribosome. 100 trillion molecules of hemoglobin are made by the ribosomes in our cells every second! As well as all the other body proteins.

Twenty amino acids produce over 30,000 different cellular proteins, but their correct assembly in forming functional proteins cannot take place without the instructions provided by the DNA molecule, which must antedate it and is far more complex than any protein. Thus, we confront the problem of the origin of genetic information. What is its source? A living cell is capable of reproducing itself, which requires that it have DNA to encode its structure and function. No DNA, no self-replication. Without self-replication there is no (Darwinian) natural selection. So you can’t use natural selection to explain the origin of DNA. (See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CmB4uLANCBo for an explanation of this conundrum.)

Concurrence of the two requirements for the inference of intelligent design, specificity and improbability, indicate the hand of an intelligent agent. The small probability of an event or structure occurring by chance and the precise specification are the prerequisites for information. Only an intelligent agent can make information.

Though single-celled life began 3.8 billion years ago, nothing advanced beyond that point for three billion years, whereupon, .8 billion years ago, all 34 animal phyla suddenly appeared simultaneously, referred to as the Cambrian explosion, with no apparent antecedents or transitional forms. What gives?

Chemist (Ph.D.) and chess master Jonathan Sarfati has mathematically demonstrated that the random creation of even one living protein is so statistically improbable as to be realistically impossible; or, based on the product of the number of atoms in the universe, the number of atomic interactions per second, the number of seconds elapsed in the universe, according to the (fallacious) “big bang” theory (15 billion years), one arrives at the number of ten to the 110th power interactions possible. The total number of possible interactions of atoms from “big bang” to present is the product of the 20 amino acid letters x 256 enzymes required for the simplest life x 10 conserved amino acids on average, giving the incomprehensible number of 10 to the power of 3330 to get the right sequence for life. (See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sh048UW2Tj4 for Sarfati’s presentation.)

 Yet greater improbability of life’s origin by random chance is given in this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YinrToIKJtg

 No evolutionist has ever demonstrated how life can come from nonliving matter. A living substance is so constituted by its ability to reproduce itself.

 A good general introduction to the theory of Intelligent Design is found here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azMgKrkJ5lA

 Here’s another short version of what is happening inside the cell, with emphasis on the programmed aspect of the cell’s and its organelles’ functions, prepared by the Discovery Institute, whose members propound the Intelligent Design theory: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1fiJupfbSpg

Another presentation, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YO7gV41PNcA , gives a survey of the notable figures in the intelligent Design movement, including Stephen Meyer (Ph.D. in history and philosophy of science from Cambridge, author of Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design); William Demski (Ph.D.s in both mathematics and philosophy and author of many books, most recently Intelligent Design Uncensored); Phillip Johnson ( UC Berkeley law professor and author of, among other books, Darwin on Trial); Michael Behe, biochemist with post-doctoral work on DNA at NIH and author of Darwin’s Black Box,which formulates his views on irreducible complexity; and Michael Denton, English geneticist and biochemist, whose 1985 book Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, presents a systematic critique of neo-darwinism. (Technically, Denton is not a professed member of the ID movement, but has strongly influenced its proponents.)

The video “Genetic Entropy and the Mystery of the Genome” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJ-4umGkgos, featuring an interview of the geneticist Dr. John Sanford, convincingly establishes that creation is a “top-down” process, that the information-dense system that is the human genome is surpassingly sophisticated (sophia, Gr. wise), and that the human genome represents data compression at an exquisite, thought-defying level.

Darwinian evolutionists set great store by the concept of mutation: that’s how changes come about—slight modification of the cell and its host over time. But virtually all cell mutations are deleterious; that is, they degrade, vitiate, and lose the genetic information of the cell, so that, rather than improving the functionality of the cell and its host, the mutation impairs and weakens that cell, absent some rectifying mechanism, some overriding counter influence. Sanford contends

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K8KbM-xkfVk that genetic entropy characterizes all cellular and biological life and that DNA mutation is leading to eventual genomic destruction: a disturbing prognosis for nontheists. “Personal genetic entropy”, says Sanford, “is an incontestable fact that no scientist on the planet can deny, because it is why we die.” “Every gene of every cell in my body is mutated, and so that guarantees my aging and my death.” But beyond that, eventual death of the species is implied; that is, the physical body the human spirit uses to gain experience and consciousness on the physical plane.

A central concept in the theory of intelligent design is the notion of “irreducible complexity”. Coined by biochemist Michael Behe, an irreducibly complex system is one “composed of several well-matched, interacting parts that contribute to the basic function, wherein the removal of any one of the parts causes the system to effectively cease functioning.” All components of the complex system must be present simultaneously and in the right configuration to enable it to properly function. “Supporters of intelligent design argue that anything less than the complete form of such a system or organ would not work at all, or would in fact be a detriment to the organism, and would therefore never survive the process of natural selection” (Wikipedia).

From a confessedly theistic perspective but still rightly registering the magnitude of wonder and intelligence implicit in human DNA and cell life, this short video is persuasive:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CBeCxKzYiIA

Perhaps nowhere else has the presence of intelligent design been shown more clearly (other than in DNA itself) than in the astonishing biomachine of the bacterial flagellum, as show by computer animation and described by Michael Behe. This video supports the assertion: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ey7Emmddf7Y

Harvard biophysicist Howard Berg maintains that the bacterial flagellum is “the most efficient machine in the universe.” How so? Consider a few of its features:

It self-assembles and self-repairs

It has a water-cooled rotary engine

It is driven by a proton motive force

It has two gears: forward and reverse

It operates at between 6,000 and 17,000 rpm (some flagella can spin at 100,000 rpm) and can reverse direction within 1/4 turn, which change in rotation is brought about in response to chemical stimuli from the cell’s ambiance. These chemical signals are detected by a two-component signal transduction circuit that operates to induce the switch in flagellar rotation. (See

http://www.uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/the-bacterial-flagellum-truly-an-engineering-marvel/ for a detailed description of the flagellum structure and operation.)

Sensory receptors (proprioceptors) on the flagellum nodule relay information about proximate food resources and directional prospects.

The bacterial flagellum is irreducibly complex. Darwinian gradualism does not apply: all components must be simultaneously present (coded by 50 genes).

Geneticist and microbiologist Scott Minnich has worked with bacterial flagellum for ten years and gives an informative, even inspiring presentation of its form and function in this lecture, “A Paradigm for Design”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0NXElnMuTPI

For the sheer beauty and precision of intercellular life, even when vastly simplified for viewing purposes, this video is awe-inspiring. We marvel that what we see is happening. More marvelous yet is how it is happening, by what supreme finesse and intelligence the intricate and delicate processes are orchestrated and integrated, in a medium and ecosystem far more complex than the splendid animation details: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKW4F0Nu-UY. The soundtrack on this video adds to the impact. Should you desire the same visuals, but with a scientific description, try this Harvard Cell Animation equivalent:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GigxU1UXZXo The explanations of what we are seeing give us more understanding, though perhaps somewhat reducing the sheer wonder elicited by solely viewing the aspect and action undiverted by the effort at comprehension.

 What’s the crux of the Intelligent Design movement? The proposition that life shows the handiwork of a Master Designer, of an incalculable Intelligence. It reveals the presence of Mind.

Many theoretical physicists have come (are coming) to the same conclusion:

Awarded the Nobel prize “for the creation of quantum mechanics”, physicist Werner Heisenberg maintained that according to quantum theory the smallest units of matter are not physical objects (subatomic particles) but ideas.

Winning the Nobel prize one year after Heisenberg, Erwin Schrodinger stated that “we are outside material creation (spectators) of which only our physical bodies are a part.” It was his contention that humans are “condensed light beams.” Polymath and clairvoyant researcher Rudolf Steiner, originator of a body of teachings called Anthroposophy (which are a modern form of Rosicrucianism), founder of the Waldorf schools and biodynamic gardening, among other things, calls physical matter “shattered” or degraded spirit.

Nobel prize-winner George Wald, physiologist and biologist, asserted that chance and random combinations could not have produce advanced life. The origin of consciousness in humans and the origin of life from non-living matter are congruent when based on the assumption that mind is the source and condition of physical reality. The stuff of physical reality, Wald maintained, is mind stuff. It is mind that composes the physical universe. In animals the universe begins to know itself.

Mathematician and cosmologist James Jeans believed that “the streams of knowledge are approaching a non-mechanical reality. The universe begins to look more like a great thought than a great machine.” Mind no longer appears to be an accidental intruder into the realm of matter…but the creator and governor of the realm of matter.” “The basis of atoms,” Jeans maintained, “is thought.” “The material universe is derivative from consciousness.” “It seems to me that each individual consciousness ought to be compared to a brain-cell in a universal mind.” 

The foregoing quotes accord with the teachings of Rosicrucian* esotericism, which postulates (based on vision in and conscious comprehension of metaphysical realms by those who have evolved the higher faculties to access these worlds) an occult human anatomy, comprised of a vital body, desire body, mental body and spirit, each body composed of various grades of the “matter” comprising the world to which they belong: the fourfold etheric region of the physical world; the seven-fold desire world; the seven-fold world of thought, consisting of a region of concrete thought and a region of abstract thought; and, finally, the two worlds of Life Spirit and Divine Spirit.

From The Rosicrucian Cosmo-Conception

Presently, our consciousness is directed in the dense physical world where we are gaining, through trial-and-error, suffering, and all variety of experience, an individuality and slowly forging faculties which will enable us to consciously to step into and live in the supra physical dimensions. Physical reality is determined in and organized from the world of thought. Man (Sanskrit, manuh) is the thinker. Man is the mind-bearer. Mind derives from Latin mens, and the Indo-European root men, to think, to remember. In the physical world, the human brain is the mind’s creation and instrument.

Contemporary science is making headway in understanding that thought and mind are at the foundation of the material world, constitute its very stuff. Human evolution, as mental development, is fast approaching the boundary between the physical and the supersensible worlds. Intelligent Design is a significant milestone along this path.

* The Rosicrucian teachings, as promulgated by the Rosicrucian Fellowship, founded by Max Heindel in 1909, are expounded in Heindel’s principal work: 

The Rosicrucian Cosmo-Conception

(http://www.rosicrucian.com/pdf_plaza/Rosicrucian%20Cosmo-Conception.pdf),

and his many other writings, being largely the result of clairvoyant investigation in the supersensible realms. They may be found at http://www.rosicrucian.com/pdf_plaza/ in PDF format. The reader may also be interested in the publication:

Rays from the Rose Cross

initiated and edited by Max Heindel and continuing through 2004. Issues of this publication may be found at http://rosicrucianfellowship.com/ .  [And behind the tab at the top of this web page.]

Tags: God, Intelligent Design, irreducible complexity, mind

If you are depressed, don’t read the following paragraph.  Instead, cut to the chase.

The prelude to Winter Solstice of 2012 brought more than its share of trepidation and adversity.  Real or imagined perils included: a deranged gunman slaughtering innocent children and others; terrorism around the world; war and revolution in the Middle East; radiation unleashed from failed nuclear plants; the rekindling of a cold war; chemical weapons; spooky Mayan calendar; worldwide conspiracy; gangs; an economic fiscal cliff; disagreement and inaction on global warming; political stalemate; strange, destructive weather patterns; growing numbers of poor and homeless people in affluent societies; geological earth changes; genetically modified plants; contaminated food; large people; paucity of largesse; drug cartels; attacks on the religious; religions that attack; child abuse by the church; electronic marvels which only the young understand.

The sky has already fallen. 

Crushed by the news of Sandy Hook Elementary School of Newtown Connecticut we offer sympathy to the bereaved as we look to Heindel’s report on rebirth of children to understand the Glory of God in even the worst of tragedies.

Notes were made of the results at the time of the investigations, but these have been mislaid. Nevertheless, according to our recollection, it was found that out of twenty children we watched who came to rebirth within five years of the time of death, fifteen or sixteen went back into the same family. It can be seen at the time when a child dies whether it will be a long or a short time in the invisible worlds.

…… when a person passes out under untoward circumstances, such as a fire or a railway accident, or suddenly as by a fall from a building or a mountain, or on a battlefield, or when the lamentations of relatives around the bedside of the newly dead make it impossible for him to concentrate upon the life-panorama, then the etching in the two higher ethers: the light ether and the reflecting ether; and their amalgamation with the desire body does not take place. Man does not then lose consciousness, and because there is no etching on the finer vehicles such as is normally the case, he has no purgatorial existence; that is to say, he does not reap what he has sown, there is no suffering in consequence of his wrong-doings and no feeling of joy and love on account of the good he has done. The fruitage of the life has been lost.

To offset this great disaster the Spirit on entering its next earth life is caused to die in childhood so far as the physical body is concerned, but the vital body, the desire body, and mind, which do not ordinarily come to birth until the dense body is seven, fourteen, and twenty-one years old, respectively, remain with the passing Spirit, as that which has not been quickened cannot die. Then in the First Heaven the Spirit stays from one to twenty years, receiving such instructions and object lessons as will teach it that which it would otherwise have learned by the panorama of its past life had it not been interrupted by the accident which terminated it. And so it is reborn, ready to take its proper place on the path of evolution.  Max Heindel

Except for a few Rosicrucian students, many Christians have no such mind-easing words.  Others have little faith to see them through the rough spots of the loss of loved ones, leaving them bereft and without hope. 

As if one did not have enough to worry about in his own back yard, now he has the whole world to ponder; a catastrophe at every turn in vivid detail.  Blessed are the snowed-upon for they get exercise and breathe fresh air.  

Adversity to some; it is the gentle prod of God.

Prod thyself gently to avoid a more rigorous correction.

Goethe: Knowing is not enough; we must apply.  Willing is not enough; we must do.

It may be an old wives’ tale, but the idea is: when there is a death in a family, there will be a birth within the year. 

Demographers inform us; during times of war the birth rate increases.

Observation:  In the 1950’s, during a time of relative peace, women concealed their approaching motherhood under tent-type clothing.  Today, rosy-cheeked, starry-eyed women proudly reveal their expanding midsections with clingy jersey sweaters while they coin the new phrase, “baby bump.”

Polycarp of Smyrna

….ye shall be able to be builded up unto the faith given to you, which is the mother of us all, while hope followeth after and love goeth before–love toward God and Christ and toward our neighbor. For if any man be occupied with these, he hath fulfilled the commandment of righteousness; for he that hath love is far from all sin.  Polycarp of Smyrna.  Circa 110 – 140 AD.

Prod thyself gently, apply what you know, love fervently.

Love casteth out fear during anxiety-producing times.

May the wonders of his love touch you this Christmas and bring you peace, hope, and happiness.

Recommended reading:  LIFE BEFORE LIFE, A Scientific Investigation of Children’s Memories of Past Lives by Jim B. Tucker, M.D.

Tags: 2012, HOPE, NATIVITY, SOLSTICE, TRAGEDY

MAX HEINDEL ON TRANSITIONS

Direct Quotes from the Heindel Writings

1.  Rebirth of Children

2.  Results of Sudden Death

3.  Reunion of Lovers in Heaven

4.  Results of Suicide

5.  Our Responsibility to the Dead

REBIRTH OF CHILDREN

It is stated in the Rosicrucian teachings that children who die in infancy are brought to rebirth in from one to twenty years. Do they return to the same station in life, or do they sometimes return to a different environment, more or less desirable, from wealth to poverty, or vice versa?

Answer: This question was asked years ago when the writer was a novice in the investigation of the spiritual world, and it was answered correctly at that time. But later investigations make it possible to give more detail based upon what has actually happened in a considerable number of cases. Notes were made of the results at the time of the investigations, but these have been mislaid. Nevertheless, according to our recollection, it was found that out of twenty children we watched who came to rebirth within five years of the time of death, fifteen or sixteen went back into the same family. It can be seen at the time when a child dies whether it will be a long or a short time in the invisible worlds. We therefore selected another group of twenty which are still in the invisible world and not expected to take rebirth until ten or more years have passed. But the tendencies are already quite plainly shown, for when a Spirit seeks rebirth it is usually drawn to the prospective mother years before it enters the womb, and sometimes women still unmarried are surrounded by their prospective children even before they have become engaged. Judging from this fact what the results will be, we find that out of the group of twenty only three are staying with their former mothers; the other seventeen are scattered among other families, and two of them are keeping company with small girls, showing that they are waiting for them to grow up and become their mothers.

This tendency of Spirits who are seeking embodiment to follow their prospective mothers around for years sometimes gives rise to laughable and embarrassing situations in connections with mediums who do not understand the conditions. We remember the case of a young lady who went to a seance and was told that she had a child in spirit land who was standing beside her and calling her mother. Naturally she denied the allegation indignantly, and arose and left the meeting. So there was a case where both were right through making diametrically opposite statements; each thought the other dishonest because each lacked the knowledge to reconcile the seemingly irreconcilable.

RESULTS OF SUDDEN DEATH

In the November, 1917, issue of Rays From The Rose Cross there was a story called, “Facing the Firing Squad,” stating how a spy was placed against a wall and shot. Immediately afterwards he, being in full possession of his consciousness, converses with a Rosicrucian and in his company travels thousands of miles to visit his sister. Is not this contrary to what is taught in the Rosicrucian Philosophy? It is there stated that after the seed atom in the heart has been removed and the silver cord ruptured, a period of unconsciousness lasting about three and one-half days follows, during which time the spirit reviews the panorama of its past life.

Answer: Yes, it is so stated in The Rosicrucian Cosmo-Conception, and that holds good under all ordinary circumstances. However, it is also stated in explanation of the law of infant mortality that when a person passes out under untoward circumstances, such as a fire or a railway accident, or suddenly as by a fall from a building or a mountain, or on a battlefield, or when the lamentations of relatives around the bedside of the newly dead make it impossible for him to concentrate upon the life-panorama, then the etching in the two higher ethers, the light ether and the reflecting ether, and their amalgamation with the desire body, does not take place. Man does not then lose consciousness, and because there is no etching on the finer vehicles such as is normally the case, he has no purgatorial existence; that is to say, he does not reap what he has sown, there is no suffering in consequence of his wrong-doings and no feeling of joy and love on account of the good he has done. The fruitage of the life has been lost.

To offset this great disaster the Spirit on entering its next earth life is caused to die in childhood so far as the physical body is concerned, but the vital body, the desire body, and mind, which do not ordinarily come to birth until the dense body is seven, fourteen, and twenty-one years old, respectively, remain with the passing Spirit, as that which has not been quickened cannot die. Then in the First Heaven the Spirit stays from one to twenty years, receiving such instructions and object lessons as will teach it that which it would otherwise have learned by the panorama of its past life had it not been interrupted by the accident which terminated it. And so it is reborn, ready to take its proper place on the path of evolution.

There is in this consideration a great deal of food for thought. The large percentage of infant mortality today has its root in the wars of former ages. The loss of life was comparatively slight, though the toll of national wars must have been greatly increased by the deaths which occurred in duels, feuds, and common quarrels, where deadly weapons were used in those days. Nevertheless, the sum total of these casualties seems insignificant when compared with the awful carnage which is now going on, and if this is to be corrected in the same manner, then a future generation will certainly reap a harvest of tears on account of the epidemics which will devastate the homes of their children. But as we have pointed out at other times, every tear shed because of the loss of some loved one is wearing away the scales from our eyes until one day we shall see with sufficient clarity to penetrate the veil that now separates us from those we mistakenly call dead, but who are really much more alive than we are. Then shall come to pass the victory over death, and we shall be able to exclaim: “O, Death, where is thy sting? O, Grave, where is thy victory?” The Rosicrucian Philosophy in Questions & Answers II, 47 – 49

Children who die before the seventh year have only been born so far as the dense and vital bodies are concerned and are not responsible to the Law of Consequence. Even up to twelve or fourteen years the desire body is in process of gestation, as will be more fully explained in the next lecture, and as that which has not been quickened cannot die, the dense and vital bodies alone go to decay when a child dies. It retains its desire body and mind to the next birth. Therefore it does not go around the whole path which the Ego usually traverses in a life cycle, but only ascends to the First Heaven to learn needed lessons, and after a wait of from one to twenty years it is reborn, often in the same family as a younger child.  Rosicrucian Christianity Lectures, 95

The first heaven is a place of joy without a single drop of bitterness. The spirit is beyond the influence of the material, earthly conditions, and assimilates all the good contained in the past life as it lives it over again. Here all ennobling pursuits to which the man aspired are realized in fullest measure. It is a place of rest, and the harder has been the life, the more keenly will rest be enjoyed. Sickness, sorrow, and pain are unknown quantities. This is the Summerland of the spiritualists. There the thoughts of the devout Christian have built the New Jerusalem. Beautiful houses, flowers, etc., are the portion of those who aspired to them; they build them themselves by thought from the subtle desire-stuff. Nevertheless these things are just as real and tangible to them as our material houses are to us. All gain here the satisfaction which earth life lacked for them.

There is one class there who lead a particularly beautiful life–the children. If we could but see them we would quickly cease our grief. When a child dies before the birth of the desire body, which takes place about the fourteenth year, it does not go any higher than the first heaven, because it is not responsible for its actions, any more than the unborn child is responsible for the pain it causes the mother by turning and twisting in her womb. Therefore the child has not purgatorial existence. That which is not quickened cannot die, hence the desire body of a child, together with the mind, will persist until a new birth, and for that reason such children are very apt to remember their previous life as instanced in the case cited elsewhere.

For such children the first heaven is a waiting-place where they dwell from one to twenty years, until an opportunity for a new birth is offered. Yet it is more than simply a waiting-place, because there is much progress made during this interim.

When a child dies there is always some relative awaiting it, or, failing that, there are people who loved to “mother” children in the earth life who find delight in taking care of a little waif. The extreme plasticity of the desire-stuff makes it easy to form the most exquisite living toys for the children, and their life is one beautiful play; nevertheless their instruction is not neglected. They are formed into classes according to their temperaments, but quite regardless of age. In the Desire World it is easy to give object-lessons in the influence of good and evil passions on conduct and happiness. These lessons are indelibly imprinted upon the child’s sensitive and emotional desire body, and remain with it after rebirth, so that many a one living a noble life owes much of it to the fact that he was given this training. Often when a weak spirit is born, the Compassionate ones (the invisible Leaders who guide our evolution) cause it to die in early life that it may have this extra training to fit it for what may be perhaps a hard life. This seems to be the case particularly where the etching on the desire body was weak in consequence of a dying person having been disturbed by the lamentations of his relatives, or because he met death by accident or on the battlefield. He did not under those circumstances experience the appropriate intensity of feeling in his postmortem existence, therefore, when he is born and dies early in life, the loss is made up as above. Often the duty of caring for such a child in the heaven life falls to those who were the cause of the anomaly. They are thus afforded a chance to make up for the fault and to learn better. Or perhaps they become the parents of the one they harmed and care for it during the few years it lives. It does not matter then if they do lament hysterically over its death, because there would be no pictures of any consequence in a child’s vital body.  The Rosicrucian Cosmo-Conception, 117 – 119

REUNION OF LOVERS IN HEAVEN

Similarly, when the second person passes on, if the first person has progressed into the Second Heaven, his or her shell, so-called (the disintegrating desire body in which he or she lived), will answer the purpose and seem perfectly real to the second lover until his or her life in this realm is ended. Then when they both pass into the Second and Third Heavens, forgetfulness of the past comes over them, and they may part for one or more lives without loss. But some time, somewhere, they will meet again, and the dynamic force which they have generated in the past by their yearnings for each other will unvaryingly draw them together so that their love may reach its legitimate consummation.

This applies not only to lovers in the generally accepted sense of the word, but the love existing between brothers and sisters, parents and children, or friends who are not related by blood will also work itself out in a similar manner. Our life in the First Heaven is always blessed and filled by the presence of those we love. If they are not in the spirit world and thus actually present, their images will be; and it must not be thought that these are pure illusion, for they are ensouled by the love and the friendship sent out by the absent ones toward the person of whose heaven life they are a part.  The Rosicrucian Philosophy in Questions & Answers II, 22 – 23

RESULTS OF SUICIDE

A word must be said here about the suicide, who tries to get away from life only to find that he is as much alive as ever. His is the most pitiable plight. He is able to watch those whom he has, perhaps, disgraced by his act, and worst of all, he has an unspeakable feeling of being “hollowed out.” The part in the ovoid aura where the dense body used to be is empty, and although the desire body has taken the form of the discarded dense body, it feels like an empty shell, because the creative archetype of the body in the Region of Concrete Thought persists as an empty mold, so to speak, as long as the dense body should properly have lived. The archetype–the “model” of each Ego’s dense body, around which the body takes shape–is made of mind-stuff and set to vibrating for a previously determined period of time. When a person meets a natural death, even in the prime of life, the activity of the archetype ceases, and the desire body adjusts itself so as to occupy the whole of the form. In the case of the suicide, however, that awful feeling of “emptiness” remains until the time comes when, in the natural course of events, his death would have occurred. The impression of this particularly unpleasant experience remains with the Ego, and is instrumental in preventing him from falling prey to the temptation of suicide in future lives.

In the Desire World life is lived about three times as rapidly as in the Physical World. A man who has lived to be fifty years of age in the Physical World would live through the same life events in the Desire World in about sixteen years. This is, of course, only a general gauge. There are persons who remain in the Desire World much longer than their term of physical life. Others again, who have led lives with few gross desires, pass through in a much shorter period, but the measure given above is very nearly correct for the average man of the present day.

It will be remembered that as the man leaves the dense body at death, his past life passes before him in pictures; but at that time he has no feeling concerning them.

During his life in the Desire World also these life pictures roll backward, as before; but now the man has all the feeling it is possible for him to have as, one by one, the scenes pass before him. Every incident in his past life is now lived over again. When he comes to a point where he has injured someone, he himself feels the pain as the injured person felt it. He lives through all the sorrow and suffering he has caused to others and learns just how painful is the hurt and how hard to bear is the sorrow he has caused. In addition there is the fact already mentioned before that the suffering is much keener because he has no dense body to dull the pain. Perhaps that is why the speed of life there is tripled–that the suffering may lose in duration what it gains in sharpness. Nature’s measures are wonderfully just and true. The Passing and Life Afterward, 17 – 18

OUR RESPONSIBILITY TO THE DEAD

Will you please tell me just how we may best help those who have passed on?

Answer: We have often expressed our appreciation of the science of birth with its efficient methods of helping both the mother and the child when the latter is entering our earth-life, but we have also heartily deplored the lack of a science of death which would teach people how to help intelligently the Ego that is passing from earth-life into the unseen realms of nature. At such times we usually stand helplessly by, and often do in our ignorance the very things which are detrimental to the comfort of the Spirit then in transition. If people could only know how their moans and hysterical outbursts affect their dear departing ones, unselfish consideration would probably change their attitude and quiet their manner.

So far as the body is concerned it is not really dead until about three and one-half days after the Spirit has passed out of it, for the silver cord still connects it with the higher vehicles. During this time anything in the nature of a post-mortem examination, embalming, or cremation is felt by the Spirit almost as keenly as if still within the body. These are facts well known to all students of the Rosicrucian Philosophy, but they have perhaps not received the emphasis they deserve. We should remember that our attitude after that time continues to affect the Spirit, for our friends do not usually leave their accustomed places right away. Many stay in or near the home for a number of months after they have left the body and can feel conditions there even more keenly than when in earth-life. If we sigh, mourn, and moan for them we transfer to them the gloom we ourselves carry about with us or else we bind them to the home because of their efforts to cheer us.

In either case we are a hindrance and a stumbling block in the way of their spiritual progress, and while this may be forgiven in those who are ignorant of the facts concerning life and death, people who have studied the Rosicrucian Philosophy or kindred teachings are incurring a very grave responsibility when they indulge in such practices. We are well aware that custom used to demand the wearing of mourning and that people were not considered respectable if they did not put on a sable garb as a token of their sorrow. But fortunately times are changing and a more enlightened view is being taken of the matter. The transition to the other world is quite serious enough in itself, involving as it does a process of adjustment to strange conditions all around, and the passing Spirit is further hampered by the sorrow and anguish of the dear ones whom it continues to see about itself. When it finds them surrounded by a cloud of black gloom, clothed in garments of the same color and nursing their sorrow for months or years, the effect cannot be anything but depressing.

How much better then the attitude to those who have learned the Rosicrucian Teachings and have taken them to heart. Their attitude when a dear one makes the transition is cheerful, hopeful, and encouraging. The selfish grief at the loss is controlled in order that the passing Spirit may receive all the encouragement possible. Usually the survivors in the family dress in white at the funeral and a cheerful, genial spirit prevails throughout. The thought of the survivors is not, “What shall I do now that I have lost him (or her)? All the world seems empty for me.” but the thought is, “I hope he (or she) may find himself (or herself) to rights under the new conditions as quickly as possible and that he (or she) will not grieve at the thought of leaving us behind.” Thus by the good-will, intelligence, unselfishness, and love of the remaining friends the passing Spirit is enabled to enter the new conditions under much more favorable circumstances, and students of the Rosicrucian Philosophy cannot do better than to spread this teaching as widely as possible. According to the Bible the redeemed of the Lord will finally vanquish the last enemy, DEATH, and they will then exclaim “O Death, where is thy sting? O Grave, where is thy victory?” For those who have evolved spiritual sight there is of course no death, but even those who have studied the Rosicrucian Teachings may in a measure be said to have attained this great victory. The Rosicrucian Philosophy in Questions & Answers II, 38 – 41

Tags: caring for the dead, death of children, lovers in heaven, rebirth, reincarnation, sudden death, suicide, when a child dies

A FRIEND FORWARDED THE FOLLOWING LETTER

Namaste,

Many people have asked me to comment on the upcoming much-noted date, Dec 21, 2012, and it’s association with the (supposed) end of the Mayan Calendar, and other various phenomena attributed to that date. For those who have no time for, nor interest in, the details, I will begin with the conclusion: While it is good to pray and meditate on Dec 21, 2012, on Dec 22, 2012 the Sun will rise in the east and set in the west, just like any other day. For those inclined to read on, I will explain in some detail. 

The long-count calendar is one of three calendars used by the Mayans, each differing in length and function. Unlike the Gregorian calendar, with it’s three units of time (year, month, day), the Mayan long-count calendar has 5, namely k’in, winal, tun, k’atun, and bak’tun. There are 20 k’in in a winal, 18 winal per tun, 20 tun per k’atun and 20 k’atun in a bak’tun. The other two calendars are the 260-day tzolk’in round calendar and the 365-day Haab’ year calendar. The tzolk’in calendar cycles through 13 galactic-tones and 20 star-glyphs, each changing every day, and repeating every 260 days.

The use of this calendar is related to personal astrology, a description of each of the 260 combinations of galactic-tone and star-glyph gives insight to people born under that combination. People born 260 days apart, or multiples thereof, will have the same galactic-tone/star-glyph combination.

This calendar was also instrumental for performing of traditional sacred rituals, and is followed to this day in certain regions of Guatemala. There seem to be a couple reasons for the choice of 260 days. The 365 Haab’ calendar will be out of step by about 1/4 day per year, a problem solved by the Gregorian calendar with the interjection of Feb 29 every fourth year, except for century years not divisible by 400 (thus 2000 was a leap year but 1900 and 2100 are not). A cycle of 59 ritual (tzolk’in) years is almost exactly identical to 42 tropical years (59 x 260 days = 42 years of 365.242 days), so this was a way to keep the rituals locked into the true solar year. Another explanation may be that Venus is visible for about 260 days between one combustion and the next, which also closely aligns with the human gestation period. Venus figured prominently in Mayan astronomy, due to its association with fertility, and also because of the interlocking of Venus and the Earth’s orbital periods (8 Earth years is almost exactly the same as 13 Venus years).

Returning to the main topic, the purpose of the Mayan long-count calendar was to record the number of days since the beginning of the “fourth world”, with human beings in it. Legend has it that the first three attempts at creation failed, and the current fourth world began on Aug 11, 3114 BC. Since that date, 12 k’atun have completed, and the 13th, which began Sept 18, 1618 finishes on Dec 21, 2012. On Dec 20, the Mayan long-count calendar date is 12.19.19.17.19, and on Dec 21 it will be 13.0.0.0.0, on Dec 22, 13.0.0.0.1, etc.

The third world was said to have ended after 13 bak’tun, and this has led to the erroneous conclusion that the fourth world similarly would end at this milestone. However, none of the Mayan texts indicate that all worlds end at the completion of 13 bak’tun; only the third world apparently did.

Recent discoveries show the Mayans plotted astronomical tables forward for 17 bak’tun, which implies they expected the world to be around, otherwise why bother calculating astronomical events far into the future? The long-count calendar also has units higher than the bak’tun. 1 pik’tun equals 20 bak’tun, and in turn 1 kalabtun equals 20 pik’tun, then 1 k’inchiltun = 20 kalabtun and finally 1 alawtun = 20 k’inchiltun. One alawtun corresponds to 63,081,429 years, and there are higher levels beyond the alawtun; clearly the Mayan astronomers held a long-term view of the cosmos! In the current cycle, 20th (last) bak’tun will be reached on Oct 13, 4772, which will be the start of a new pik’tun.

You may also have heard that the reason for Dec 21, 2012 being “special” has much to do with the Winter Solstice aligning with the center of the Milky Way, an event which occurs once every 26,000 years. This point requires an explanation of the Ayanamsha, the difference between the Tropical (seasonal) Zodiac used by Western astrologers, and the Sidereal (stellar) Zodiac, employed in Jyotish. On the first day of spring, Aries begins, according to the Tropical Zodiac, even though the Sun does not reach the stars of the constellation Aries until around April 14 (Aries according to the Sidereal Zodiac), making the two zodiacs differ by about 24 degrees. This amount of difference is slowly increasing over time, at a rate of one degree every 72 years.

Currently, the Spring Equinox occurs at about 6 degrees Pisces (the Earth is still in the “Age of Pisces”, which is defined as the period when the Vernal Equinox falls in that sign. The so-called “Age of Aquarius” will take another 400+ years to arrive, as there are 6 degrees left to cover in Pisces, at a rate of 72 years per degree). According to the Lahiri calculation, the most widely accepted measure adopted by Jyotishees worldwide, the Ayanamsha on Dec 21, 2012 is 24:02:32, meaning that the Winter Solstice will coincide with 5:57:28 Sagittarius in 2012. The super-massive black hole at the center of the Milky Way, called Sagittarius A, is at RA 17h 23m 40s | Dec -29° 00′ 28.00, according to recent observations by the Chandra X-ray Observatory. This converts to 266:25:00 or 26:25:00 Sagittarius, as measured from the Vernal Equinox (Tropical). Subtracting the Ayanamsha of 24:02:32, the location of the Galactic Center, in the Sidereal Zodiac, is 2:22:28 Sagittarius, or 3:35:00 degrees from the 2012 Winter Solstice point.

At a rate of 72 years per degree, the true alignment of the Galactic Center with the Winter Solstice will be 258 years from now, in the year 2270. Not that future generations should expect a cataclysm in 2270, as the amount of radiation coming from the Galactic Center is independent of where in particular our Solar System happens to be (ie, we are neither falling into, nor spinning out from the galaxy, merely revolving around the center, in the outer reaches of the Milky Way). Any planet or asteroid passing within 100 million miles of this black hole at the Galactic Center, would be swept into it. As the Earth is 26,000 light years away, or 152 Quadrillion miles (152 followed by 15 zeros), we have a wide safety margin! 

To put it into perspective, it’s 25 times smaller than the width of a human hair of an astronaut on Pluto, as “seen” from the Earth. People readily believe predictions of disaster, without question. In 1993 to 1995, several popular books were published predicting World War III in 1997, based on interpretations of the writings of Nostradamus (these books sold millions of copies). On Jan 1, 2000, all the computers were supposed to crash, being unable to handle the year changing. Now the focus has been on Dec 21, 2012 with the Mayan calendar turning over the equivalent of a new “millennium”. 1997 came and went, without major incident. Jan 1, 2000 arrived without any disastrous consequences, and in the same way, life will go on after Dec 21, 2012. There are no special planetary alignments anywhere near that date.

Neither is there going to be a pole shift, nor the appearance of Nibiru (Planet X), or any other such far-fetched claims. Many groups, teachers, healers, etc. are planning large gatherings to mark the event. If you wish to participate in these happenings, or “ascension” gatherings, by all means do so; the power of group prayer is inestimable, and formidable. However, be realistic, and cognisant of the fact that the only real “ascension” on Dec 21 will be the bank balances of these group leaders. You may participate in this event without leaving your home; tune-in, meditate and pray, knowing millions around the world are joined in bringing in a positive shift in consciousness. You may wish to arrange a group meditation in your home with family/friends. With best wishes,
Prasannan ———— Jyotish Astrologer

Tags: Astrology, sidereal, solstice date