{"id":2764,"date":"2010-02-25T18:50:51","date_gmt":"2010-02-26T01:50:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/astrowin.org\/rffriends\/wpx\/?p=2764"},"modified":"2012-12-04T20:07:15","modified_gmt":"2012-12-05T03:07:15","slug":"one-hundred-years-a-philosophical-critique","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/astrowin.org\/rffriends\/wpx\/?p=2764","title":{"rendered":"One Hundred Years: A Philosophical Critique"},"content":{"rendered":"

One Hundred Years: A Philosophical Critique<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Chapel Talk of <\/em><\/strong>January 10, 2010<\/em><\/strong> <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

By Richard K<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

In the second chapter of Corinthians, Saint Paul describes his meeting with the Corinthians as follows:\u00a0 And I was with you in weakness and in fear and with much trembling.<\/em><\/p>\n

That is the way I am feeling, exactly, at this moment.\u00a0 This talk is a \u201cleftover.\u201d\u00a0 It was prepared for the hundredth anniversary, and I didn\u2019t realize how well organized the celebration was going to be, and so the extra talks that I brought along were not necessary.\u00a0 This is the kind of talk that is easily misunderstood, so I didn\u2019t want to give a title other than, \u201cLeftovers,\u201d without being able to explain it.<\/p>\n

The title for this talk is:\u00a0 One Hundred Years, A Philosophical Critique<\/em><\/strong>.\u00a0 Please remember several things.\u00a0 This is a philosophical critique<\/em>; it is not a criticism.\u00a0 It is not political, because there is not room in the Rosicrucian philosophy for politics.\u00a0 It is not personal, because there is not room in the Rosicrucian philosophy for personal things.\u00a0 It\u2019s far from complete.\u00a0 It\u2019s just a few sketchy observations.<\/p>\n

The Rosicrucian philosophy advises us to examine ourselves, to re-experience our lives and to form good clear judgments about our success or failure.\u00a0 We are obligated to do this every day in retrospection.\u00a0 We are advised to do this in a contemplative way at New Moons and at Full Moons.\u00a0 We are advised to do this at turning points, especially at Chrismtas time, which for us IS New Year\u2019s.<\/p>\n

We do this for several reasons: to harvest the experience that we have gotten from our lives so that it is available to us and we can live better lives immediately.\u00a0 \u00a0As soon as we harvest the experience by examination, it is a part of ourselves spiritually and it becomes a power that we can use in our service.<\/p>\n

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

We do this to cultivate the ability to judge and to judge correctly.<\/p>\n

We do this to know ourselves and to become intimate with ourselves, to be friends with ourselves and to grow in an inward communion with ourselves.\u00a0 It\u2019s a very valuable activity, that which we do.<\/p>\n

If it works for individuals there\u2019s a great likelihood that it will work for groups such as our organization.\u00a0 In fact, if we look at the writings of Max Heindel, especially the letters, we find that he reports on the progress of The Rosicrucian Fellowship quite regularly.\u00a0 To the best of my knowledge, this is not a practice that is done in any of our groups at all, and that may be a failing on our part.\u00a0 We do not examine what we are doing.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve traveled around now for several years in the Western Hemisphere, and I\u2019ve met many of the groups, and I\u2019ve met many of the individuals, and I\u2019ve had a lot of conversations with them.\u00a0 What follows after now is the result of those conversations.\u00a0 It\u2019s a feeble history of our little organization.\u00a0 I have been affiliated with The Rosicrucian Fellowship for 46 years, which is almost half of our 100 years.\u00a0 During that time, I have been close with a lot of individuals and have toured around meeting other Rosicrucian students.\u00a0 Because I have the Sun and Moon and Ascendant all in negative signs I\u2019m a little bit sensitive, and with that sensitivity I have tried to feel what we have been doing.<\/p>\n

What I have found in individuals is that almost all of our members have grown.\u00a0 You see someone and then you see them again at another time, and they have grown spiritually.\u00a0 The beautiful part is that when people grow, especially in our organization, they are more humble, and it\u2019s really nice to see that in our organization we have people who are developing humility.<\/p>\n

Now it\u2019s difficult to tell when people change, what the change is from.\u00a0 It could be normal maturation.\u00a0 As the archetype plays itself out we go through different stages which are analogous to the evolutionary creation, and we change.\u00a0 So, it may be just merely a matter of maturation.\u00a0 Or it could just be a reaction to the experiences of life.\u00a0 Life has a way of working on us.\u00a0 No matter how difficult we may be or no matter how strong we may be; life is stronger.\u00a0 The third thing that it could be is growth because of our aspirations, because of the application of the Rosicrucian philosophy to our lives.\u00a0 Hopefully, it is that.<\/p>\n

It is probably due to all of these causes and the emphasis varies from individual to individual.\u00a0 In my observations, the growth of individuals in our society has been appreciable.\u00a0 It has to do with how they have applied themselves to living out the philosophy.\u00a0 We are a zealous group.\u00a0 We are not like the Thessalonians in the apocalypse that are lukewarm.\u00a0 We\u2019re very intense; we\u2019re zealous about our aspiration, and that\u2019s probably one of the strongest factors.\u00a0 Because we are intense we are capable of change, and we are capable of great things, especially in healing.<\/p>\n

Not everything that we have done has been\u00a0from philosophical application.\u00a0 Some of it just has come about spontaneously.\u00a0 Not all of our growth has been along the lines of The Rosicrucian Fellowship, even though we are intent members of that organization.<\/p>\n

In conversations with individuals, for many years now I have never met a single person who is happy with his performance of the retrospection exercise which is the most powerful tool that we have for soul growth.\u00a0 Even though it seems easy at first, it is not.\u00a0 It is not because there are resistances, one of the resistances being that looking backwards takes us out of the body.\u00a0 Another resistance being that the pseudo-ego, the lower nature, will take us out of the body in sleep rather than have us confront things that it doesn\u2019t want us to face because it would then be out of business for itself.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve run into individuals who have striven intensely.\u00a0 I even have a friend, as I have mentioned in one of the philosophical talks, who tried to do it in the shower standing up with the water running\u2014and still fell asleep.\u00a0 It\u2019s not an easy exercise.\u00a0 So, if retrospection is the best, the strongest tool that Max Heindel gave to us from the Elder Brothers, we have not done very well on that.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, most people do gain from the experiences themselves, from the impacts.\u00a0 When we look at the morning exercise, the situation is similar.\u00a0 I have had a lot of conversations with a lot of people, and it seems that not a lot of people are familiar or have made discoveries in cosmogony or cosmology as you would expect for people who are looking at \u201cIn the beginning was the word<\/em>.\u201d\u00a0 You would expect that people would make a lot of personal discoveries and they would be excited about them.\u00a0 That hasn\u2019t been the case, at least in the people I\u2019ve met.<\/p>\n

Now, we are told that we\u2019re not supposed to tell our experiences from when we are doing the exercises, but that we are obligated to share the fruits of our work.\u00a0 And, unfortunately, our fruits, on that account, have not been very good, and I think there\u2019s a reason for it.\u00a0 I think it is because we are all spoiled.\u00a0 In giving us the Cosmo-Conception and the other writings of Max Heindel, we have been given so much<\/em> information that we\u2019re satisfied.\u00a0 Even though Max Heindel, in every one of his lessons, asks us to look more deeply into the subject, we have not.\u00a0 It takes a lot of work.<\/p>\n

When that is done, it is a very rich field.\u00a0 In my personal experience, without talking about exactly what has occurred, an enormous amount of information has come in doing the morning exercise.\u00a0 It\u2019s a fable.\u00a0 It\u2019s like what they call Texas<\/em> tea<\/em>.\u00a0\u00a0 Texas tea is another name for oil.\u00a0 They used to tell the women in Texas, you can\u2019t wear high-heeled shoes, because if you wear high-heeled shoes they will sink into the earth and oil will come gushing out.\u00a0\u00a0 The Rosicrucian philosophy that is given to us is like that.\u00a0 Everywhere we point our attention, it\u2019s filled with wisdom.<\/p>\n

Now, there are some things in which our performance has been excellent.\u00a0 One of them is in the performance of prayer.\u00a0 A lot of our intense zeal has been poured into prayer, especially healing prayer.\u00a0 Some might say that this is so because prayer is easier compared to the morning exercise and the evening exercise.\u00a0 I think that view is a little too cynical.\u00a0 I think the reason why we have been so good in prayer is because we all realize that we are children of fire and that as children of fire, we need to balance, we need to bring out our loving, mystic side.\u00a0 In that realization, all of us pray, and we pray intently.\u00a0 So, in that, in looking back in a critique, I think we have done exceedingly well.\u00a0 Now, that\u2019s what I have encountered in talking to individuals.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s really been a wonderful time.\u00a0 Friendship is probably one of the greatest things in the world.\u00a0 One of my favorite passages is in Saint John\u2019s Gospel where\u00a0Christ says, \u201cYe are my friends.\u201d\u00a0 Friendship is a really wonderful thing.\u00a0 In traveling around and visiting the different groups and visiting the different individuals, the friendships have just been a very heart-filled situation.\u00a0 I love that very much.<\/p>\n

Now, let\u2019s try to look at our collective efforts. \u00a0Let\u2019s try to look at what we have done collectively as The Rosicrucian Fellowship, as an association of Christian mystics.\u00a0 It appears that within the philosophy, we have not made a lot of progress.\u00a0 In some cases, progress that has been made has regressed.\u00a0 I want to go into the philosophical basis of that because it is extremely important.\u00a0 There has been one trial, especially, that has been difficult for us as a group.<\/p>\n

In the gospels, Christ Jesus tells us to avoid vain repetitions.\u00a0 In the Rosicrucian philosophy we do a lot of repetitive prayer, but it is not vain repetition; we are consciously awake.\u00a0 We are consciously giving ourselves to the prayer as we do it so it is not just an automatic activity that we do and it just happens.\u00a0 When repetition comes from someone like Christ Jesus, it is exceedingly important.\u00a0 One of the things that is repeated most in the gospels and is also taken up by Saint Paul is the statement, \u201cIt cometh as a thief in the night.\u201d\u00a0 That has been one of our trials.<\/p>\n

That is one of the most important spiritual trials.\u00a0 The kingdom of heaven, the spiritual worlds, is increasingly more subtle.\u00a0 As we go into the spirit and as we grow, things become more and more subtle.\u00a0 The trials are easier to miss.\u00a0 The spirit is powerful, but the spirit is powerful because it is subtle.\u00a0 The more subtle something is, the more powerful it is.\u00a0 A rolling stone has kinetic energy which is strong, but that\u2019s not as strong as the power released by steam.\u00a0 And that is not as strong as the power in desire such as when it drives our healing prayer.<\/p>\n

When we take this to the spirit, the subtlety becomes infinite and the power becomes boundless.\u00a0 So, in the spiritual life, we don\u2019t look for more dramatic things; we don\u2019t look for fireworks; we don\u2019t look for all kinds of dazzling things.\u00a0 They come as part of the experience, but what is important is the subtlety.\u00a0 The truth in its subtlety is extremely powerful.\u00a0 So, it\u2019s not surprising that we who are all trying to be candidates for initiation miss things because they\u2019re too subtle for us.<\/p>\n

There have been two times in my life\u00a0when\u00a0I have applied for taking the next step forward on the spiritual path.\u00a0 In both cases I was given a trial and the trial was such that in both cases it was at least half a year before I could look back and say, \u201cOh, that was the trial!\u201d\u00a0 It\u2019s like that on the spiritual path.\u00a0 It\u2019s more and more subtle.\u00a0 In the Garden of Gethsemane the disciples fall asleep.\u00a0 Christ was praying, and they couldn\u2019t keep up with that and there was nothing for them to do but wait.\u00a0 And they fell asleep.<\/p>\n

Max Heindel gives a very good explanation of why this took place \u2013 that it wasn\u2019t just boredom, but that in those very deep prayers of Christ at that time the vibrations were extremely high and they fell asleep because they could not keep up with the strength of those vibrations.\u00a0 One of the things is, with regard to subtlety, we have to be constantly alert.\u00a0 It cometh as a thief in the night, and if we are not constantly alert, if we are not wide-awake, we\u2019re going to miss things.\u00a0 We\u2019re going to fall asleep just as the disciples fell asleep.\u00a0 Trials come when we least expect them, and that has\u00a0in my experience been the greatest trial for The Rosicrucian Fellowship collectively and for its members.<\/p>\n

The greatest trial that we have encountered in The Rosicrucian Fellowship has been success.\u00a0 The greatest trial that we have encountered in The Rosicrucian Fellowship has been success.<\/em>\u00a0 When we are down, and when we are suffering, as a consequence of our misdeeds or of our negligence or whatever, we don\u2019t need to be reminded that we\u2019re sinful and imperfect.\u00a0 Our nose is to the grindstone.\u00a0 We are brought to a place where we have to know that we are not perfect.\u00a0 We\u2019re sincere, and in those times there\u2019s no slippage in our life.\u00a0 Our life is very careful, because we know if (suppose we\u2019re very ill), we know that if we misapply ourselves it could be the terminus of our life.<\/p>\n

When we\u2019re on the other<\/em> side of the cycle and everything seems to be going our way, we misinterpret the principle of cause and consequence and we think that we deserve all of this and maybe even more\u2014as if God were a respecter of persons.\u00a0 God is not a respecter of persons, so the trial again, and again, and again is success.\u00a0 We work very hard, we\u2019re patient, we begin to see things, or we begin to have intuitions, we begin to be creative, and we take it true \u2013 we take it in the wrong way, because success is such that we\u2019re instituting new causes that are going to bring us to that low part of the cycle all over again.<\/p>\n

Probably, in the 46 years that I\u2019ve been affiliated with The Rosicrucian Fellowship, the greatest mistake of success is that many, many people have unfolded some clairvoyance or they\u2019ve unfolded some spiritual power of one kind or another, and they believe they are the new Max Heindel.\u00a0 They think everyone should recognize their superiority and follow their lead.\u00a0 I\u2019ve seen this happen again, and again, and again.\u00a0 They\u2019re usually good people, but they\u2019re usually good people that have been carried away with success and with their personal definition of themselves in success.\u00a0 Much better they were humbled and keep on following the spiritual path with the same kind of intensity that got them to their beginnings of inner consciousness.\u00a0 Even if they have the capacity to help, they\u2019re dealing with the children of Cain, and in this group, if you try to say, “I\u2019m the new Max Heindel,” there are going to be a lot of people who will prove to you that you\u2019re not.\u00a0 You know, this is not the way that we unify.\u00a0 We do not unify with one person being the Big Cheese.\u00a0 So, there is slippage when we are at the top.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s look at one more major lesson with regard to The Rosicrucian Fellowship that we have not learned.\u00a0 We fight among ourselves.\u00a0 We fight among ourselves a lot, and I cannot remember a period in the 46 years that I have been with the organization that there was not fighting.\u00a0 That is not the problem.\u00a0 Fighting is not the problem.\u00a0 Fighting is all right.\u00a0 Disagreements are all right.\u00a0 Max Heindel tells us that we are reborn into families to fight it out with someone until we learn to love them.\u00a0 We are also taught that we grow by an internal fight, an internal struggle.\u00a0 So, the fighting is not wrong.<\/p>\n

But it is the proportion of the fighting.\u00a0 Struggle and difference have to be more than matched by unity.\u00a0 In the physical body we do things that break down the physical body, but we have enough capacity to heal.\u00a0 But sometimes that\u2019s not the case, like if you take truck drivers who drive semis across the country back and forth, many of them have very short careers, because in the vibration the connective tissue that holds the organs in place breaks down faster than the body can heal it, and soon all of their organs are at the bottom of their abdomen, and for the rest of their life they suffer accordingly.\u00a0 So, struggle is not what is wrong; it\u2019s that we do not focus enough on the unity so that we can take the struggle and the fighting and the differences and work it out together.<\/p>\n

Another one of the problems is what we fight about.\u00a0 I can think of all the major divisions that have occurred in our society, and when I look at all of them, I can\u2019t think of a single exception that wasn\u2019t a tempest in a teapot.\u00a0 We make big to-do\u2019s about things and it\u2019s like we\u2019re lured into having trials with each other\u2014which is a good thing.\u00a0 This is not something that is new.\u00a0 There has never been a society of spiritual aspirants where there has not been a lot of internal struggle.<\/p>\n

Even in the Pythagorean society with Pythagoras himself being there, there was internal struggle.\u00a0 When Max Heindel was here and was leading The Rosicrucian Fellowship, there was an internal struggle, and there was a faction that wanted to get rid of Max Heindel.\u00a0 So, it\u2019s what we fight about.\u00a0 During the three years that I was here, I never heard a philosophical discussion, even in probationers\u2019 meetings.\u00a0 We would go to probationers\u2019 meetings and there would be no discussion of philosophy and there would be no discussion about how this applies to our daily lives.\u00a0 Never.<\/p>\n

A lot of the discussion on the grounds here was about what we were going to have in the cafeteria to eat \u2013 things like that, so what we choose to struggle about is important.\u00a0 We don\u2019t want to waste our energies.\u00a0 You know, the adversary has a field day with us if we get involved with petty little things and struggle with each other.\u00a0 The last thing we want to talk about is how we struggle.\u00a0 (I\u2019m way away from my notes here.)\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 In the struggles, and in the arguments that are in the struggles, if I heard it one time I\u2019ve heard it many times.\u00a0 Somebody will say, it\u2019s a matter of principle.\u00a0 It\u2019s a matter of principle.<\/em>\u00a0 Now, principles are fine.\u00a0 They come from the world of abstract thought.\u00a0 They are universal principles; they are high spiritual things, and this is what people are looking at.\u00a0 They are truths, but they are not the<\/strong> truth.\u00a0 The<\/strong> truth is beyond the truths.\u00a0 The<\/strong> truth is from the realm of life spirit; the<\/strong> truth is from the realm of Christ, and that is the realm of love.<\/p>\n

When we struggle with each other or when we try to do anything, even in cooperation, it needs to be done with love.\u00a0 I have never heard in any of the groups or at headquarters, I have never heard anyone ask, well, what do the Elder Brothers want in this?\u00a0 It\u2019s always a matter of individual principle.\u00a0 When Max Heindel was alive, he would tell us that he would go to the Elder Brothers and ask what they wanted \u2013 what their direction was; I\u2019ve never seen a meeting where a group sits down and says, well, let\u2019s pray and try to understand what comes.\u00a0 Let\u2019s be receptive to what the Elder Brothers want of our organization in this way.\u00a0 \u00a0I\u2019ve never seen it.\u00a0 I\u2019ve never even seen a board meeting where there is a prayer for love before the meeting begins.\u00a0 Or if\u00a0a meeting\u00a0gets too heated, that\u00a0the meeting\u00a0gets interrupted and people sit down and pray for love.<\/p>\n

Love is beyond principle.\u00a0 Love is unifying.\u00a0 Love brings us together.\u00a0 We are an association of Christian mystics.\u00a0 Therefore, we should live like Christian mystics and aspire more and more deeply to love.\u00a0 Christ gives only one definition in the Bible of a Christian.\u00a0 He says, \u201cThey will know that you are mine in that you love one another.\u201d\u00a0 \u201cThey will know that you are mine in that you love one another.\u201d<\/em>\u00a0 Let\u2019s pray that we can live and do our work in love.\u00a0 That\u2019s not such a hard thing, but every day when we have things that we have to do together, let\u2019s pray to do them in love.\u00a0 The final words of the poet, Goethe, on his deathbed as he was dying were, \u201cLight, more light.\u201d\u00a0 Let\u2019s adopt that for our society, please, and say, \u201cLove, more love.\u201d\u00a0 Let\u2019s not die that way; let\u2019s live that way.\u00a0 \u201cLove, more love.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One Hundred Years: A Philosophical Critique Chapel Talk of January 10, 2010 By Richard K   In the second chapter of Corinthians, Saint Paul describes his meeting with the Corinthians as follows:\u00a0 And I was with you in weakness and in fear and with much trembling. That is the way I am feeling, exactly, at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,9,5],"tags":[204,203],"class_list":["post-2764","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chapel-talks","category-history","category-philosophy","tag-a-philosophical-critique","tag-the-rosicrucian-fellowship"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/astrowin.org\/rffriends\/wpx\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2764","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/astrowin.org\/rffriends\/wpx\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/astrowin.org\/rffriends\/wpx\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/astrowin.org\/rffriends\/wpx\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/astrowin.org\/rffriends\/wpx\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2764"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/astrowin.org\/rffriends\/wpx\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2764\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2779,"href":"https:\/\/astrowin.org\/rffriends\/wpx\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2764\/revisions\/2779"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/astrowin.org\/rffriends\/wpx\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2764"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/astrowin.org\/rffriends\/wpx\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2764"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/astrowin.org\/rffriends\/wpx\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2764"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}