The Rosicrucian Mysteries, Max Heindel [have you read this book TXT] 📗

In the Middle Ages, when many people were still endowed with a remnant of negative clairvoyance, they spoke of Gnomes and Elves or Fairies, which roamed about the mountains and forests. These were the earth spirits. They also told of the Undine or water-sprite, which inhabited rivers and streams, of Sylphs which were said to dwell in the mists above moat and moor, as air spirits, but not much was said of the Salamanders, [pg 071] as they are, fire spirits, and therefore not so easily detected, or so readily accessible to the majority of people.

The old folk stories are now regarded as superstitions, but as a matter of fact, one endowed with etheric vision may yet perceive the little gnomes building green chlorophyll into the leaves of plants and giving to flowers the multiplicity of delicate tints which delight our eyes.

Scientists have attempted time and again to offer an adequate explanation of the phenomenon of wind and storm but have failed signally, nor can they succeed while they seek a mechanical solution to what is really a manifestation of life. Could they see the hosts of sylphs winging their way hither and thither, they would know who and what is responsible for the fickleness of the wind; could they watch a storm at sea from the etheric view-point they would perceive that the saying “the war of the elements” is not an empty phrase, for the heaving sea is truly then a battlefield of sylphs and undines and the howling tempest is the war cry of spirits in the air.

Also the salamanders are found everywhere and no fire is lighted without their [pg 072] help, but they are mostly active underground. They are responsible for explosions and volcanic eruptions.

The classes of beings which we have mentioned are still sub-human, but will all at some time reach a stage in evolution corresponding to the human, though under different circumstances from those under which we evolve. But at present the wonderful intelligences we speak of as the laws of nature, marshall the armies of less evolved entities mentioned.

To arrive at a better understanding of what these various beings are, and their relation to us, we may take an illustration: Let us suppose that a mechanic is making an engine, and meanwhile a dog is watching him. It sees the man at his labor, and how he uses various tools to shape his materials, also how, from the crude iron, steel, brass and other metals the engine slowly takes shape. The dog is a being from a lower evolution and does not comprehend the purpose of the mechanic but it sees both the workman, his labor and the result thereof, which manifests as an engine.

Let us now suppose that the dog were able to see the materials which slowly [pg 073] change their shape, assemble and become an engine but that it is unable to perceive the workman and to see the work he does. The dog would then be in the same relation to the mechanic as we are to the great intelligences we call laws of nature, and their assistants, the nature spirits, for we behold the manifestations of their work as force moving matter in various ways but always under immutable conditions.

In the ether we may also observe the angels, whose densest body is made of that material, as our dense body is formed of gases, liquids and solids. These beings are one step beyond the human stage, as we are a degree in advance of the animal evolution. We have never been animals like our present fauna, however, but at a previous stage in the development of our planet we had an animal-like constitution. Then the angels were human, though they have never possessed a dense body such as ours, nor ever functioned in any material denser than ether. At some time, in a future condition, the earth will again become ethereal. Then man will be like the angels. Therefore the Bible tells us that man was made a little while lower than the angels (Paul's letter to [pg 074] the Hebrews, second chapter, seventh verse; see marginal reading.)

As ether is the avenue of vital, creative forces, and as angels are such expert builders of ether, we may readily understand that they are eminently fitted to be warders of the propagative forces in plant, animal and man. All through the Bible we find them thus engaged: Two angels came to Abraham and announced the birth of Isaac, they promised a child to the man who had obeyed God. Later these same angels destroyed Sodom for abuse of the creative force. Angels foretold to the parents of Samuel and Samson, the birth of these giants of brain and brawn. To Elizabeth came the angel (not archangel) Gabriel and announced the birth of John, later he appeared also to Mary with the message that she was chosen to bear Jesus.

The Desire World.

When spiritual sight is developed so that it becomes possible to behold the Desire World, many wonders confront the newcomer, for conditions are so widely different from what they are here, that a description must sound quite as incredible as a fairy tale to anyone who has not himself seen them. [pg 075] Many cannot even believe that such a world exists, and that other people can see that which is invisible to them, yet some people are blind to the beauties of this world which we see. A man who was born blind, may say to us: I know that this world exists, I can hear, I can smell, I can taste and above all I can feel but when you speak of light and of color, they are nonexistent to me. You say that you see these things, I cannot believe it for I cannot see myself. You say that light and color are all about me, but none of the senses at my command reveal them to me and I do not believe that the sense you call sight exists. I think you suffer from hallucinations. We might sympathize very sincerely with the poor man who is thus afflicted, but his scepticism, reasonings and objections and sneers notwithstanding we would be obliged to maintain that we perceive light and color.

The man whose spiritual sight has been awakened is in a similar position with respect to those who do not perceive the Desire World of which he speaks. If the blind man acquires the faculty of sight by an operation, his eyes are opened and he will be compelled to assert the existence of light and [pg 076] color which he formerly denied, and when spiritual sight is acquired by anyone, he also perceives for himself the facts related by others. Neither is it an argument against the existence of spiritual realms that seers are at variance in their descriptions of conditions in the invisible world. We need but to look into books on travel, and compare stories brought home by explorers of China, India or Africa and we shall find them differing widely and often contradictory, because each traveler saw things from his own standpoint, under other conditions than those met by his brother authors, and we maintain that the man who has read most widely these varying tales concerning a certain Country and wrestled with the contradictions of narrators, will have a more comprehensive idea of the country or people of whom he has read, than the man who has only read one story assented to by all the authors. Similarly, the varying stories of visitors to the Desire World are of value, because giving a fuller view, and more rounded, than if all had seen things from the same angle.

In this world matter and force are widely different. The chief characteristic of matter here is inertia: the tendency to remain at [pg 077] rest until acted upon by a force which sets it in motion. In the Desire World, on the contrary, force and matter are almost indistinguishable one from the other. We might almost describe desire-stuff as force-matter, for it is in incessant motion, responsive to the slightest feeling of a vast multitude of beings which populate this wonderful world in nature. We often speak of the “teeming millions” of China and India, even of our vast cities, London, New York, Paris or Chicago, we consider them overcrowded in the extreme, yet even the densest population of any spot upon earth is sparsely inhabited compared with the crowded conditions of the Desire World. No inconvenience is felt by any of the denizens of that realm, however, for, while in this world two things cannot occupy the same space at the same time, it is different there. A number of people and things may exist in the same place at the same time and be engaged in most diverse activities, regardless of what others are doing, such is the wonderful elasticity of desire stuff. As an illustration we may mention a case where the writer while attending religious service, plainly perceived at the altar certain beings interested in furthering that [pg 078] service and working to achieve that end. At the same time there drifted through the room and the altar, a table at which four persons were engaged in playing cards. They were as oblivious to the existence of the beings engaged in furthering our religious service, as though these did not exist.

The Desire World is the abode of those who have died, for some time subsequent to that event, and we may mention in the above connection that the so-called “dead” very often stay for a long while among their still living friends. Unseen by their relatives they go about the familiar rooms. At first they are often unaware of the condition mentioned: “that two persons may be in the same place at the same time,” and when they seat themselves in a chair or at the table, a living relative may take the supposedly vacant seat. The man we mistakenly call dead will at first hurry out of his seat to escape being sat upon, but he soon learns that being sat upon does not hurt him in his altered condition, and that he may remain in his chair regardless of the fact that his living relative is also sitting there.

In the lower regions of the Desire World the whole body of each being may be seen, but [pg 079] in the highest regions only the head seems to remain. Raphael, who like many other people in the middle ages was gifted with a so-called second sight, pictured that condition for us in his Sistine Madonna, now in the Dresden Art Gallery, where Madonna and the Christ-child are represented as floating in a golden atmosphere and surrounded by a host of genie-heads: conditions which the occult investigator knows to be in harmony with actual facts.

Among the entities who are, so to speak, “native” to that realm of nature, none are perhaps better known to the Christian world than the Archangels. These exalted Beings were human at a time in the earth's history when we were yet plant-like. Since then we have advanced two steps: through the animal and to the human stage of development. The present Archangels have also made two steps in progression; one, in which they were similar to what the angels are now, and another step which made them what we call Archangels.

Their densest body, though differing from ours in shape, and made of desire stuff, is used by them as a vehicle of consciousness in the same manner that we use our body. They [pg 080] are expert manipulators of forces in the Desire World, and these forces, as we shall see, move all the world to action. Therefore the Archangels work with humanity industrially and politically as arbitrators of the destiny of peoples and nations. The Angels may be said to be family-spirits whose mission is to unite a few spirits as members of a family, and cement them with ties