THE PROBLEM OF LIFE.
Among all the vicissitudes of life, which vary in each individual’s
experience, there is one event which sooner or later comes to
everyone—Death! No matter what our station in life, whether the life lived
has been a laudable one or the reverse, whether great achievements have
marked our path among men, whether health or sickness have been our lot,
whether we have been famous and surrounded by a host of admiring friends
or have wandered unknown through the years of our life, at some time there
comes a moment when we stand alone before the portal of death and are
forced to take the leap into the dark.
The thought of this leap and of what lies beyond must inevitably force
itself upon every thinking person. In the years of youth and health, when
the bark of our life sails upon seas of prosperity, when all appears
beautiful and bright, we may put the thought behind us, but there will
surely come a time in the life of every thinking person when the problem
of life and death forces itself upon his consciousness and refuses to be
set aside. Neither will it help him to accept the ready made solution of
anyone else without thought and in blind belief, for this is a basic
problem which every one must solve for himself or herself in order to
obtain satisfaction.
Upon the Eastern edge of the Desert of Sahara there stands the
world-famous Sphinx with its inscrutable face turned toward the East, ever
greeting the sun as its rising rays herald the newborn day. It was said in
the Greek myth that it was the wont of this monster to ask a riddle of
each traveler. She devoured those who could not answer, but when Oedipus
solved the riddle she destroyed herself.
The riddle which she asked of men was the riddle of life and death, a
query which is as relevant today as ever, and which each one must answer
or be devoured in the jaws of death. But when once a person has found the
solution to the problem, it will appear that in reality there is no death,
that what appears so, is but a change from one state of _existence_ to
another. Thus, for the man who finds the true solution to the riddle of
life, the sphinx of death has ceased to exist, and he can lift his voice
in the triumphant cry “Oh death where is thy sting, oh grave where is thy
victory.”
Various theories of life have been advocated to solve this problem of
life. We may divide them into two classes, namely _the monistic theory_,
which holds that all the facts of life can be explained by reference to
this visible world wherein we live, and _the dualistic theory_, which
refers part of the phenomenon of life to another world which is now
invisible to us.
Raphael in his famous painting “the School of Athens” has most aptly
pictured to us the attitude of these two schools of thought. We see upon
that marvelous painting a Greek Court such as those wherein philosophers
were once wont to congregate. Upon the various steps which lead into the
building a large number of men are engaged in deep conversation, but in
the center at the top of the steps stand two figures, supposedly of Plato
and Aristotle, one pointing upwards, the other towards the earth, each
looking the other in the face, mutely, but with deeply concentrated will.
Each seeking to convince the other that his attitude is right for each
bears the conviction in his heart. One holds that he is of the earth
earthy, that he has come from the dust and that thereto he will return,
the other firmly advocates the position that there is a higher something
which has always existed and will continue regardless of whether the body
wherein it now dwells holds together or not.
The question who is right is still an open one with the majority of
mankind. Millions of tons of paper and printer’s ink have been used in
futile attempts to settle it by argument, but it will always remain open
to all who have not solved the riddle themselves, for it is a basic
problem, a part of the life experience of every human being to settle that
question, and therefore no one can give us the solution ready made for our
acceptance. All that can be done by those who have really solved the
problem, is to show to others the line along which they have found the
solution, and thus direct the inquirer how he also may arrive at a
conclusion.
That is the aim of this little book; not to offer a solution to the
problem of life to be taken blindly, on faith in the author’s ability of
investigation. The teachings herein set forth are those handed down by the
Great Western Mystery School of the Rosicrucian Order and are the result
of the concurrent testimony of a long line of trained Seers given to the
author and supplemented by his own independent investigation of the realms
traversed by the spirit in its cyclic path from the invisible world to
this plane of existence and back again.
Nevertheless, the student is warned that the writer may have misunderstood
some of the teachings and that despite the greatest care he may have taken
a wrong view of that which he believes to have seen in the invisible world
where the possibilities of making a mistake are legion. Here in the world
which we view about us the forms are stable and do not easily change, but
in the world around us which is perceptible only by the spiritual sight,
we may say that there is in reality no form, but that all is life. At
least the forms are so changeable that the metamorphosis recounted in
fairy stories is discounted there to an amazing degree, and therefore we
have the surprising revelations of mediums and other untrained
clairvoyants who, though they may be perfectly honest, are deceived by
illusions of _form_ which is evanescent, because they are incapable of
viewing the _life_ that is the permanent basis of that form.
We must learn to see in this world. The new-born babe has no conception of
distance and will reach for things far, far beyond its grasp until it has
learned to gauge its capacity. A blind man who acquires the faculty of
sight, or has it restored by an operation, will at first be inclined to
close his eyes when moving from place to place, and declare that it is
easier to walk by feeling than by sight; that is because he has not
learned to use his newly acquired faculty. Similarly the man whose
spiritual vision has been newly opened requires to be trained, in fact he
is in much greater need thereof than the babe and the blind man already
mentioned. Denied that training he would be like a new-born babe placed in
a nursery where the walls are lined with mirrors of different convex and
concave curvatures, which would distort its own shape and the forms of its
attendants. If allowed to grow up in such surroundings and unable to see
the real shapes of itself and its nurses it would naturally believe that
it saw many different and distorted shapes where in reality the mirrors
were responsible for the illusion. Were the persons concerned in such an
experiment and the child taken out of the illusory surroundings, it would
be incapable of recognizing them until the matter had been properly
explained. There are similar dangers of illusion to those who have
developed spiritual sight, until they have been trained to discount the
refraction and to view the _life_ which is permanent and stable,
disregarding the _form_ which is evanescent and changeable. The danger of
getting things out of focus always remains however and is so subtle that
the writer feels an imperative duty to warn his readers to take all
statements concerning the unseen world with the proverbial grain of salt,
for he has no intention to deceive. He is therefore inclined rather to
magnify than to minimize his limitations and would advise the student to
accept nothing from the author’s pen without reasoning it out for himself.
Thus, if he is deceived, he will be self-deceived and the author is
blameless.
_Three Theories of Life._
Only three noteworthy theories have been offered as solutions to the
riddle of existence and in order that the reader may be able to make the
important choice between them, we will state briefly what they are and
give some of the arguments which lead us to advocate the doctrine of
Rebirth as the method which favors soul-growth and the ultimate attainment
of perfection, thus offering the best solution to the problem of life.
1) THE MATERIALISTIC THEORY _teaches that life is but a short journey from
the cradle to the grave, that there is no higher intelligence in the
universe than man; that his mind is produced by certain correlations of
matter and that therefore death, and dissolution of the body terminate
existence._
There was a day when the arguments of Materialistic philosophers seemed
convincing, but as science advances it discovers more and more that there
is a spiritual side to the universe. That life and consciousness may exist
without being able to give us a sign, has been amply proven in the cases
where a person who was entranced and thought dead for days has suddenly
awakened and told all that had taken place around the body. Such eminent
scientists as Sir Oliver Lodge, Camille Flammarion, Lombroso and other men
of highest intelligence and scientific training, have unequivocally stated
as the result of their investigations, that the intelligence which we call
man survives death of the body and lives on in our midst as independently
of whether we see them or not as light and color exist all about the blind
man regardless of the fact that he does not perceive them. These
scientists have reached their conclusion after years of careful
investigation. They have found that the so-called dead can, and under
certain circumstances do, communicate with us in such a manner that
mistake is out of the question. We maintain that their testimony is worth
more than the argument of materialism to the contrary, for it is based
upon years of careful investigation, it is in harmony with such well
established laws as _the law of conservation of matter_ and _the law of
conservation of energy_. Mind is a form of energy, and immune from
destruction as claimed by the materialist. Therefore we disbar the
materialistic theory as unsound, because out of harmony with the laws of
nature and with well established facts.
2) THE THEORY OF THEOLOGY _claims that just prior to each birth a soul is
created by God and enters into the world where it lives for a time varying
from a few minutes to a few score of years; that at the end of this short
span of life it returns through the portal of death to the invisible
beyond, where it remains forever in a condition of happiness or misery
according to the deeds done in the body during the few years it lived
here_.
Plato insisted upon the necessity of a clear definition of terms as a
basis of argument and we contend that that is as necessary in discussing
the problem of life from the Bible point of view as in arguments from the
platonic standpoint. According to the Bible man is a composite being
consisting of body, soul and spirit. The two latter are usually taken to
be synonymous, but we insist that they are not interchangeable and present
the following to support our dictum.
All things are in a state of vibration. Vibrations from objects in our
surroundings are constantly impinging upon us and carry to our senses a
cognition of the external world. The vibrations in the ether act upon our
eyes so that we see, and vibrations in the air transmit sounds to the ear.
We also breathe the ether which is charged with pictures of our
surroundings and the sounds in our environment, so that by means of the
breath we receive at each moment of our life, _internally_ an accurate
picture of our external surroundings.
That is a scientific proposition. Science does not explain what becomes of
these vibrations however, but according to the Rosicrucian Mystery
teaching they are transmitted to the blood, and then etched upon a little
atom in the heart as automatically as a moving picture is imprinted upon
the sensitized film, and a record of sounds is engraven upon the
phonographic disc. This breath-record starts with the first breath of the
newborn babe and ends only with the last gasp of the dying man, and “soul”
is a product of the breath. Genesis also shows the connection between
breath and soul in the words: “And the Lord God formed man of the dust of
the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man
became a living soul” (The same word: _nephesh_, is translated breath and
soul in the above quotation.)
In the post mortem existence the breath-record is disposed of. The good
acts of life produce feelings of pleasure and the intensity of attraction
incorporates them into the spirit as soul-power. _Thus the breath-records
of our good acts are the soul which is saved_, for by the union with the
spirit they become immortal. As they accumulate life after life, we become
more soulful and they are thus also the basis of soulgrowth.
The record of our evil acts is also derived from our breath in the moments
when they were committed. The pain and suffering they bring cause the
spirit to expel the breath-record from its being in Purgatory. As that
cannot exist independently of the life-giving spirit, the breath-record of
our sins disintegrates upon expurgation, and thus we see that “the soul
that sinneth, it shall die.” The memory of the suffering incidental to
expurgation however, remains with the spirit as _conscience_, to deter
from repetition of the same evil in later lives.
Thus both our good and evil acts are recorded through the agency of the
breath, which is therefore the basis of the soul, but while the
breath-record of good acts amalgamates with the spirit and lives on
forever as an immortal soul, the breath-record of evil deeds is
disintegrated; it is the soul that sinneth and dies.
While the Bible teaches that immortality of the soul is conditional upon
well-doing, it makes no distinction in respect of the spirit. The
statement is clear and emphatic that when ... “The silver cord be loosed
... then shall the dust return to the earth as it was and the spirit shall
return to God who gave it.”
Thus the Bible teaches that the body is made of dust and returns thereto,
that a part of the soul generated in the breath is perishable, but that
the spirit survives bodily death and persists forever. Therefore a “lost
soul” in the common acceptance of that term is not a Bible teaching, for
the spirit is uncreate and eternal as God Himself, and therefore the
orthodox theory cannot be true.
3) THE THEORY OF REBIRTHS _which teaches that each spirit is an integral
part of God, that it enfolds all divine possibilities as the acorn enfolds
the oak; that by means of many existences in an earthy body of gradually
__ improving texture its latent powers are being slowly unfolded and
become available as dynamic energy; that none can be lost but that all
will ultimately attain to perfection and reunion with God, each bringing
with it the accumulated experience which is the fruitage of its pilgrimage
through matter._
Or, as we may poetically express it:
WE ARE ETERNAL.
On whistling stormcloud; on Zephyrus wing,
The Spirit-choir loud the World-anthems sing
Hark! Lis’t to their voice “we have passed through death’s door
There’s no Death; rejoice! life lives evermore.”
We are, have always been, will ever be.
We are a portion of Eternity
Older than Creation, a part of One Great Whole,
Is each Individual and immortal Soul.
On Time’s whirring loom our garments we’ve wrought
Eternally weave we on network of Thought,
Our kin and our country, by Mind brought to birth,
Were patterned in heaven ere molded on earth.
We have shone in the Jewel and danced on the Wave,
We have sparkled in Fire defying the grave;
Through shapes everchanging, in size, kind and name
Our individual essence still is the same.
And when we have reached to the highest of all,
The gradations of growth our minds shall recall
So that link by link we may join them together
And trace step by step the way we reached thither.
Thus in time we shall know, if only we do
What lifts, ennobles, is right and true.
With kindness to all; with malice to none,
That in and through us God’s will may be done.
We venture to make the assertion that there is but one sin: _Ignorance_
and but one salvation: _Applied Knowledge_. Even the wisest among us know
but little of what may be learned, however, and no one has attained to
perfection, or can attain in one single short life, but we note that
everywhere in nature slow persistent unfoldment makes for higher and
higher development of every thing and we call this process evolution.
One of the chief characteristics of evolution lies in the fact that it
manifests in alternating periods of activity and rest. The busy summer,
when all things upon earth are exerting themselves to bring forth, is
followed by the rest and inactivity of winter. The busy day alternates
with the quiet of night. The ebb of the ocean is succeeded by the
flood-tide. Thus, as all other things move in cycles, the life that
expresses itself here upon earth for a few years is not to be thought of
as ended when death has been reached, but as surely as the sun rises in
the morning after having set at night, will the life that was ended by the
death of one body be taken up again in a new vehicle and in a different
environment.
This earth may in fact be likened to a school to which we return life
after life to learn new lessons, as our children go to school day after
day to increase their knowledge. The child sleeps through the night which
intervenes between two days at school and the spirit also has its rest
from active life between death and a new birth. There are also different
classes in this world-school which correspond to the various grades from
kindergarten to college. In the lower classes we find spirits who have
gone to the school of life but a few times, they are savages now, but in
time they will become wiser and better than we are, and we ourselves shall
progress in future lives to spiritual heights of which we cannot even
conceive at the present. If we apply ourselves to learn the lessons of
life, we shall of course advance much faster in the school of life than if
we dilly-dally and idle our time away. This, on the same principle which
governs in one of our own institutions of learning.
We are not here then, by the caprice of God. He has not placed one in
clover and another in a desert nor has He given one a healthy body so that
he may live at ease from pain and sickness, while He placed another in
poor circumstances with never a rest from pain. But what we are, we are,
on account of our own diligence or negligence, and what we shall be in the
future depends upon what we will to be and not upon Divine caprice or upon
inexorable fate. No matter what the circumstances, it lies with us to
master them, or to be mastered, as we will. Sir Edwin Arnold puts the
teaching most beautifully in his “Light of Asia.”
“The Books say well, my Brothers! each man’s life
The outcome of his former living is;
The bygone wrongs bring forth sorrows and woes
The bygone right breeds bliss.
Each has such lordship as the loftiest ones
Nay for with powers around, above, below
As with all flesh and whatsoever lives
_Act_ maketh joy or woe.
Who toiled a slave may come anew a prince
For gentle worthiness and merit won;
Who ruled a king may wander earth in rags
For things done or undone.”
Or, as an unknown poet says:
“One ship sails East and another sails West
With the self same winds that blow.
’Tis the set of the sail, and not the gale,
Which determines the way they go.
As the winds of the sea are the ways of fate
As we voyage along through life.
’Tis the act of the soul, which determines the goal
And not the calm or the strife.”
When we wish to engage someone to undertake a certain mission we choose
some one whom we think particularly fitted to fulfill the requirements and
we must suppose that a Divine Being would use at least as much common
sense, and not choose anyone to go his errand who was not fitted therefor.
So when we read in the Bible that Samson was foreordained to be the slayer
of the Philistines and that Jeremiah was predestined to be a prophet, it
is but logical to suppose that they must have been particularly suited to
such occupation. John the Baptist also, was born to be a herald of the
coming Savior and to preach the kingdom of God which is to take the place
of the kingdom of men.
Had these people had no previous training, how could they have developed
such a fitness to fulfill their various missions, and if they had been
fitted, how else could they have received their training if not in earlier
lives?
The Jews believed in the Doctrine of Rebirth or they would not have asked
John the Baptist if he were Elijah, as recorded in the first chapter of
John. The Apostles of Christ also held the belief as we may see from the
incident recorded in the sixteenth chapter of Matthew where the Christ
asked them the question: “Whom do men say that I the Son of Man am?” The
Apostles replied: “Some say that Thou art John the Baptist; some, Elias;
and others Jeremias or one of the Prophets.” Upon this occasion the Christ
tacitly assented to the teaching of Rebirth because He did not correct the
disciples as would have been His plain duty in His capacity as teacher,
when the pupils entertained a mistaken idea.
But to Nicodemus He said unequivocally: “Except a man be born again, he
cannot see the kingdom of God” and in the eleventh chapter of Matthew, the
fourteenth verse, He said, speaking of John the Baptist: “_this __ is
Elijah_,” in the seventeenth chapter of Matthew, the twelfth verse, He
said: “Elijah has come already and they knew him not, but have done to him
whatsoever they listed, ... then the disciples understood that he spoke to
them of John the Baptist.”
Thus we maintain that the Doctrine of Rebirth offers the only solution to
the problem of life which is in harmony with the laws of nature, which
answers the ethical requirements of the case and permits us to love God
without blinding our reason to the inequalities of life and the varying
circumstances which give to a few the ease and comfort, the health and
wealth, which are denied to the many.
The theory of Heredity advanced by Materialists applies only to the
_form_, for as a carpenter uses material from a certain pile of lumber to
build a house in which he afterwards lives, so does the spirit take the
substance wherewith to build its house from the parents. The carpenter
cannot build a house of hard wood from spruce lumber and the spirit also
must build a body which is like those from which the material was taken,
but the theory of Heredity does not apply upon the moral plane, for it is
a notorious fact, that in the rogues galleries of America and Europe there
is no case where both father and son are represented. Thus the sons of
criminals, though they have the tendencies to crime, keep out of the
clutches of the law. Neither will Heredity hold good upon the plane of the
intellect, for many cases may be cited where a genius and an idiot spring
from the same stock. The great Cuvier, whose brain was of about the same
weight, as Daniel Webster’s, and whose intellect was as great, had five
children who all died of paresis, the brother of Alexander the Great was
an idiot, and thus we hold that another solution must be found to account
for the facts of life.
The law of Rebirth coupled with its companion law, the law of Causation
does that. When we die after one life, we return to earth later, under
circumstances determined by the manner in which we lived before. The
gambler is drawn to pool parlors and race tracks to associate with others
of like taste, the musician is attracted to the concert halls and music
studios, by congenial spirits, and the returning Ego also carries with it
its likes and dislikes which cause it to seek parents among the class to
which it belongs.
But then someone will point to cases where we find people of entirely
opposite tastes living lives of torture, because grouped in the same
family, and forced by circumstances to stay there contrary to their wills.
But that does not vitiate the law in the slightest, in each life we
contract certain obligations which cannot then be fulfilled. Perhaps we
have run away from a duty such as the care of an invalid relative and have
met death without coming to a realization of our mistake. That relative
upon the other hand may have suffered severely from our neglect, and have
stored up a bitterness against us before death terminates the suffering.
Death and the subsequent removal to another environment does not pay our
debts in this life, any more than the removal from the city where we now
live to another place will pay the debts we have contracted prior to our
removal. It is therefore quite possible that the two who have injured each
other as described, may find themselves members of the same family. Then,
whether they remember the past grudge or not, the old enmity will assert
itself and cause them to hate anew until the consequent discomfort forces
them to tolerate each other, and perhaps later they may learn to love
where they hated.
The question also arises in the mind of inquirers: If we have been here
before why do we not remember? And the answer is, that while most people
are not aware of how their previous existences were spent, there are
others who have a very distinct recollection of previous lives. A friend
of the writer’s for instance, when living in France, one day started to
read to her son about a certain city where they were then going upon a
bicycle tour, and the boy exclaimed: you do not need to tell me about that
mother. I know that city, I lived there and was killed! He then commenced
to describe the city and also a certain bridge. Later he took his mother
to that bridge and showed her the spot where he had met death centuries
before. Another friend travelling in Ireland saw a scene which she
recognized and she also described to the party the scene around the bend
of the road which she had never seen in this life, so it must have been a
memory from a previous life. Numerous other instances could be given where
such minor flashes of memory reveal to us glimpses from a past life. The
verified case in which a little three year old girl in Santa Barbara
described her life and death has been given in the Rosicrucian Cosmo
Conception. It is perhaps the most conclusive evidence as it hinges on the
veracity of a child too young to have learned deception.
This theory of life does not rest upon speculation however, it is one of
the first facts of life demonstrated to the pupil of a Mystery school. He
is taught to watch a child in the act of dying, also, to watch it in the
invisible world from day to day, until it comes to a new birth a year or
two later. Then he knows with absolute certainty that we return to earth
to reap in a future life what we now sow.
The reason for taking a child to watch in preference to an adult, is, that
the child is reborn very quickly, for its short life on earth has borne
but few fruits and these are soon assimilated, while the adult who has
lived a long life, and had much experience remains in the invisible worlds
for centuries, so that the pupil could not watch him from death to
rebirth. The cause of infant mortality will be explained later, here we
merely desire to emphasize the fact that it is within the range of
possibilities of every one without exception to become able to know at
first hand that which is here taught.
The average interval between two earth-lives is about a thousand years. It
is determined by the movement of the sun known to astronomers as
_precession of the equinox_, by which the sun moves through one of the
signs of the Zodiac in about 2100 years. During that time the conditions
upon earth have changed so much that the spirit will find entirely new
experiences here, and therefore it returns.
The Great Leaders of evolution always obtain the maximum benefit from each
condition designed by them, and as the experiences in the same social
conditions are very different in the case of a man from what they are for
a woman, the human spirit takes birth twice during the 2100 years measured
by the precession of the equinox as already explained, it is born once as
a man and another time as a woman. Such is the rule, but it is subject to
whatever modifications may be necessary to facilitate reaping what the
spirit has sown, as required under the law of Causation which works hand
in hand with the law of Rebirth. Thus, at times a spirit may be brought to
birth long ere the thousand years have expired, in order to fulfill a
certain mission, or it may be detained in the invisible worlds after the
time when it should have come to birth according to the strict
requirements of a blind law. The laws of nature are not that however. They
are Great Intelligences who always subordinate minor considerations to
higher ends, and under their beneficent guidance we are constantly
progressing from life to life under conditions exactly suited to each
individual, until in time we shall attain to a higher evolution and become
Supermen.
Oliver Wendell Holmes has so beautifully voiced that aspiration and its
consummation in the lines:
“Build thee more stately mansions Oh! my soul,
As the swift seasons roll,
Leave thy low-vaulted past;
Let each new temple, nobler than the last,
Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast.
Till thou at length art free,
Leaving thy outgrown shell by life’s unresting sea.”