Reflections on the Third Grade
Temple Lectures
ARTICLE IV.
By Raymund Andrea,
F.R.C.,
Grand Master of
AMORC, Great Britain
[From The Mystic Triangle
March 1928]
THE DREAM of mysticism completes and perfects the realization
of the fourfold genius of man. Upon the basis of study and effort sketched in
the former articles the mystical life is to be reared. To express the beauty of
life, to realize the fullness of love in service, and to be conversant with the
noble creations of inspired minds, affords a sound preparation for entering
upon the deeper life of spiritual attunement. As Rosicrucians we are concerned
with the ascension of consciousness under law which is thoroughly sane and
wholesome in character, impairs not the personal self, is eminently practical
at every step and makes for efficiency in all departments of life. That is
practical mysticism; and the Rosicrucian is a practical mystic. So much should
be clear to the aspirant who has reached the Third; yet some have protested
because their work up to this point has appeared to be mainly technical and
foundational instead of experimental. I trust these articles will help them to
see more clearly how much is involved in the early work, how basic and necessary
it is if they wish to become vehicles of the Master's influence and be of real
service in the world of men.
It is not difficult to become a visionary and be carried
hither and thither by every wind of doctrine of ethereal nature, without chart
or compass or any sure foothold upon lawful research. But the silent mystics
who stand behind the thrones of kings, compel governments to act better than
they know, infuse the breath of life into the arts and sciences and impress
their influence upon the metropolises of men, are of another order. They are
men of such a calibre that they have to conceal half their power to justify
their existence; for the world is still unable to recognize its saviours and
wilfully destroys what it cannot understand. Visionaries indeed they are, but
not hothouse visionaries; they are the ripe product of a cultured and storied
evolution and hold their preeminence because they possess a working knowledge
of every aspect of life experience over which they exert their influence. The
literature of Rosicrucian biography reveals this fact on every page. Every
subject portrayed in those unique annals stands out in the bold outline of a
great character, a force to be reckoned with in his chosen sphere, and so
supremely practical, so adaptive, so truly an expression of the life of his
day, as to remain unknown in his mystical nature even to those nearest to him.
There are, and always have been, men of this stamp in the
forefront of our Order. They are complete men; they stand in the light; they
have met and overcome every obstacle of darkness that strikes terror into the
hearts of the multitude. Their perfected realization is a thing of rare beauty
and power and singularly potent in its blessing. Practical to the fingertips,
at heart they are great devotees and their closeness to the Cosmic is the only
secret of their lives. We are to touch upon this attitude of devotion in this
article. In the former articles we dealt with three stages of practical effort,
an active advance, purporting to awaken the aspirant to a strong sense of the
necessity of training his vehicles of expression as a worker in the world; of
dissipating once for all any too sanguine expectations he may foster of
touching the master level without putting forth every ounce of emotional and
mental strength to that end; of making him realize that faith without works is
dead; and of urging him to call forth the latent reserves of all his faculties
and impressing his personality uniquely without the sphere of his daily
activity. All this he will discern in the master mind and in such a degree of
excellence as will no doubt incline him to regard his own life value as very
limited indeed in comparison. His encouragement lies in the thought that by
working steadily and continuously, with patience and perseverance, at this all
round culture of his soul life, latent faculty may unexpectedly emerge into
consciousness and enable him to cover many stages of the path in a very short
time. Many aspirants can bear witness to the demonstration of this law in their
lives. The aspirant can determine just where he stands in evolution only after
he has made prolonged and unfaltering effort to get right down to the
foundations of his soul life and stimulate into activity the latent memories of
former existences. It is for him to find out for himself how much of this
concealed growth is waiting to emerge under the combined stimulus of healthy
introspection and objective application. The growth he has made in the past is
there; nothing can obliterate it; it rests with him whether or not he has at
this point the desire and strength, engendered through daily experience, to
become his own preceptor and bring that Karma quickly to fruition.
The mystical life perfects itself in the deep silences of our
nature. It is the flower of the soul. We intuitively know that its many-coloured
petals are unfolding as we meditate and serve; and no matter what the stress of
thought, the agitation of circumstances, or the swift retribution of Karma
which we have consciously or unconsciously demanded, the fragrance of the
divine bloom will ascend and pervade the temple of being and evoke the
compassion of the Master. Yone Noguchi, the Japanese poet and disciple of
Buddha, in a beautiful description of a Japanese
Temple of Silence in which he
experienced his third spiritual awakening, relates that in this Temple there was a picture
of Dharuma, the ancient Hindoo monk who established the Zen, the religion of
silence; and on this picture Yone wrote these words:
"He is a pseudonym of the universal consciousness,
A person lonesome from concentration.
He is possessed of Nature's instinct,
And burns white as a flame;
For him mortality and accident of life
No longer exist,
But only the silence and the soul of prayer."
For years those lines haunted my soul. It would be difficult
to pen a more beautiful definition of the mystical consciousness. In "the
silence and the soul of prayer" we realize the dream of the mystics,
adumbrated in the Third and consummated in the Ninth Grade. It is the stage of
the sacred retreat into the Peace Profound of the soul. We have lived the
beauty of the world and understand it; we have learned to serve and service has
become the breath of our life; we have communed with great and holy minds until
their contagious fervour has possessed us and made us hunger and thirst after
the sources of power and inspiration; and now, we stand within the temple, if
so be that in wordless prayer we may evoke the mystic consciousness in the soul
and know the divine will. This day the outer man has done his work bravely and
intensely; he has striven mightily to accomplish the greater things; he has
fallen short of much he would have done, but what he has done is well and time
will justify it. Now we put off the outer man and partake of the holy sacrament
of the altar within us. In mystical communion with the eternal we kindle the
sleeping fire that burns away the illusions of finite consciousness; our pledge
with the Cosmic is once again ratified, and its responsive vibration as the
voice of the silence is perfect assurance that we have not sought its aid in
vain.
At this point a pertinent question
may arise in the mind of the young aspirant. It is this: To whom, or to what,
should I direct my devotion? He has already received the clearest indication on
this matter, but the question is important and may be profitably considered.
Most of our members have been brought up in the nurture and admonition of some
form of the Christian religion; so much is obvious from individual declarations
on entering our Order. And not a few have earnestly stressed in their
subsequent correspondence their profound acquiescence in the teachings of
Christ and their wholehearted acceptance of the way of the Christ in their
studies. Their aim in uniting with us is to acquire that knowledge and
understand that discipline which they behold so wonderfully expressed in their
perfect exemplar. It is well; they have nothing to renounce on this head
through their association with us. It is written in the "Fama":
"But that also every Christian may know of what religion and belief we
are, we confess to have the knowledge of Jesus Christ." That is a most
expressive declaration. Note the content and force of it: "We confess
the knowledge." Now, we see in Christ the perfect expression of
Cosmic illumination, the complete at-one-ment; and our work, from first to
last, is to so prepare the soul, that the false wrappings of many incarnations
may be put off and we may become attuned with this same Christ or Cosmic
consciousness. We are not content with a simple belief in Christ or in any
other great teacher, or our lives would not be more mystical or spiritual than
is the life of the average so-called Christian. We are not content with belief.
Belief can make a man an orthodox Christian at any moment he chooses; it can
never make a Rosicrucian. It is the knowledge of the interior way of the
Christ or the Buddha that we teach, as revealed through the study and
application of the cosmic laws by which alone that way can be trodden. That is
the working faith we have, and it is strong enough to bear the most searching
interrogation and to confront the boldest criticism, whether of those who
believe or those who doubt. And it matters not whether the aspirant is a
follower of Christ or of Buddha, or of any other great leader of the human
race; we raise no issue with him on the matter; we simply point out that if he
desires to know the secret of their knowledge and power and become himself, according
to his capacity, a teacher of men, he must focus attention not upon the
historical figure but upon the interior way which every one of these teachers
epitomizes in himself.
If the aspirant is accustomed to watch the trend of human
thought and affairs in well known organizations such as the Church and, for
instance, the Theosophical Society, he may draw important conclusions for
himself. At the present time he will observe that the Church is seething with
controversies respecting the moral and scientific value of its articles of
belief, and once again thousands within its pale are asking, "What is the
truth?" The reason is not far to seek. It is because their religious life
is founded almost entirely upon theological canons relative to an historical personality
which have given rise to endless contention in the past and will continue to do
so as long as they exist. He will observe something similar, but on a very
small scale, in the Theosophical Society. For years Theosophists knelt down
before the shrine of H. P. Blavatsky, and bitter controversies raged around the
fact of what she actually wrote, what she meant to write, and what her
successors have kindly written for her. Just then, when every well meaning
Theosophist was at his wits' end as to what to believe or whom to worship, the
heavens were opened and a new revelation was vouchsafed; a Christ-Buddha
appeared in their midst, and another phase of hero worship dawned. In both
cases personal salvation is made easy by adhering, in the one case, to narrow
formulae of belief, with little or no emphasis on the urgency for individual
effort toward the essential and mystical life; and, in the other case, in
deliberately and apparently with fullest and highest authority offering a
fictitious Christ for the allegiance of students of the Wisdom Religion, a
substitution which is regarded by a large percentage of those students as a
direct betrayal of the honoured founder of their society.
These facts are not irrelevant to our theme. They reveal the
clearest possible answer to the question of the sincere seeker as to where he
shall look for true progress and enlightenment. The mystical consciousness is
to be sought within, and no where else. The Rosicrucian is the last person on
earth to reject exalted characters; he is a seer and takes the measure of a
personality at sight; his chief work in the world is to exalt human lives by
inculcating that practical knowledge of inherent forces which unfolds the
divinity in humanity and makes men saviours of the world by virtue of the
superiority and versatility of their word and action. If the aspirant looks
deeply enough he will discern at the heart of all our teaching and all our work
in the world, the rapt devotee. We preserve that inner attitude with most
jealous care. The master mind who has trodden the interior way and recorded the
scripture of his cosmic communion, we recognize; and we know the secret of his
greatness. He has explored the infinite solitudes of the soul and beheld the
mystery of his own divinity; he has gazed with fearless eyes upon the unsullied
mirror of the power of God within and reflects the brightness of its
everlasting light. That is the ritual of the Rosicrucian worship. In the Third
the suggestions and adumbrations of it pass in swift review, to be unfolded and
lived and perfected according to the persistent research and experimentation of
the aspirant. All the glorious possibilities of imaginative absorption in the
living beauty of the world, the nobility of ever-extending and sublime service to
humanity's need, the far cry of men of vision who have seen the light on the
heights of literature and art, and the holy offering of every perfected power
and faculty on the shrine of silence within the temple,--such is the fourfold
realization of the genius of man, the goal of all our endeavour.
Raymund Andrea.
|