Cathedral Contacts[From The Rosicrucian Digest January 1936]
| The
"Cathedral of the Soul" is a Cosmic meeting place for all minds of the
most advanced and highly developed spiritual members and workers of the
Rosicrucian Fraternity. It is a focal point of Cosmic radiations and
thought waves from which radiate vibrations of health, peace,
happiness, and inner awakening. Various periods of the day are set
aside when many thousands of minds are attuned with the Cathedral of
the Soul, and others attuning with the Cathedral at this time will
receive the benefit of the vibrations. Those who are not members of the
organization may share in the unusual benefit as well as those who are
members. The book called "Liber 777" describes the periods for various
contacts with the Cathedral. Copies will be sent to persons who are not
members by addressing their request for this book to Friar S. P. C.,
care of AMORC Temple, San Jose, California, enclosing three cents in
postage stamps. (Please state whether member or not--this is important.) |
CHANGES
IN RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
THROUGHOUT the world today there is a very evident,
pronounced tendency on the part of the mass of people to revise and modify
their religious activities and particularly their forms of religious devotion. In
addition to the fact that many new or religious movements are being formed,
particularly in Europe, many of the oldest of
the sectarian religions are gradually making modifications in their creeds and
doctrines and in their general attitudes toward the problems of life.
In the Western World and particularly in the United States,
these changes do not attract the attention that they are attracting in foreign
lands or in other countries where one or two ancient religions have been
dominant factors and fixed institutions. In those countries the slightest
modification in creed, doctrine, or worldly activities excites interest. In
fact, in the United States and some parts of Europe, changes in religious
creeds and doctrines have been so frequent in the past fifty years that even
the newspapers sometimes fail to comment on some of the newer changes recently
made. But the great effect of these changes is becoming manifest in the
increasing interest on the part of younger people and those of intermediate age,
who have lost interest in religious matters in the past ten years or more and
have wandered from their churches.
One of the most keen analyzers of the matter has said
that the deplorable absences from churches in the past ten years or the
reduction in the number of those persons who regularly attend the fixed
meetings of the churches should not have been taken as an indication that the
public was becoming less interested in religion or less religious in its
interior nature. He has said, and many of the religious congresses have agreed
with him, that the absence from church in most cases has been due to two
things: first, an indifferent attitude toward the old orthodox principles which
they believe were too narrow, and secondly, a protest against the church's
insistence upon certain principles which do not fit the consciousness of the
people of today. In either case the neglect of the church on the part of a
portion of the public is more of a protest against the lack of sympathetic
understanding on the part of the churches than anything else.
The term "sympathetic understanding" should
not be taken to mean that the churches have become less interested in the
personal problems of the individual members, or less sympathetic in the sorrows
and griefs that constantly come before them. The very reverse of this is
probably true. Clergymen, ministers, priests, rabbis, and all persons connected
officially with the churches today in the Western World are doing more in a
sympathetic, kindly, constructive manner to help their parishioners to meet
their daily problems and to extend sympathetic understanding to them than at
any other time perhaps in the history of the church. One of the indications of
this fact is that a great majority of churches, especially of the Protestant
denominations, have added healing clinics to their regular activities in an
attempt not only to carry out the healing work of Jesus the Christ and
exemplify it, but to add some practical activities to the schedule and thus
render a real personal service to many who could not afford such treatment
through any other source, or principally to those who have not been healed by
any other method but whose religious nature enables them to attune themselves
with metaphysical and spiritual principles.
The modern church of today has become a more
broadened institution than at any other time since its establishment
particularly in the Western World. The farther east we go the more limited and
orthodox are the preachings and activities of the various churches.
If one stops to consider the enormous change that has
taken place in the consciousness of the church and the consciousness of its
people in regard to an understanding of heaven and hell, one will see at once
what great strides of development and unfoldment the church has passed through.
It was commonly said fifty to a hundred years ago that the churches of the more
orthodox nature preached more "hell fire and brimstone" sermons than
any other kind. Today it is notable that very few of the orthodox churches and
certainly very few of those that have broadened in their scope deal with either
heaven or hell in the materialistic manner with which these places or
conditions were dealt years ago. Another change has been in the nature and
character ascribed to God. The frowning, scolding, wrathful, jealous God of the
past century has been supplanted by a loving, forgiving, sympathetic,
understanding and happy Father of all children. The idea that God may have at
times tempted man to do evil to see if he would yield and then punish him for
yielding, is rapidly giving way to the idea that man tempts himself or that the
artificial, temporal, transitory things that he has created as pleasures for
the flesh tempt him into his evil ways and that he falls into his own web or into
the trap he has set for himself and others and that God extends him every
opportunity to redeem himself. There was a time not many years ago and running
far back into the early period of the church when the phrase in the Lord's
Prayer, "Lead me not into temptation" was emphasized in every
repetition of the prayer with apprehension, fear, and sincere pleading. Today
the phrase is puzzling to all who use the prayer, for they feel intuitively and
inwardly that the thought in that phrase is not correct and is not consistent
with the nature of God. The average person religiously inclined feels that it
is a reflection upon the goodness, mercy, and kindness and fatherhood of God
that insinuates that He at any time deliberately leads His children into
temptation. This is certainly indicative of the changing attitude in the hearts
and consciousness of millions of people.
Perhaps one of the other great changes is that which
is expressed in the idea that God is not only omnipotent and omnipresent and
that His spirit reaches everywhere, but that He can be worshipped at any time
and any place. The old idea that only beneath the towering spires of a great
cathedral or within the dark and cloistered parts of a huge structure, or only
on the marble steps of a glorified altar will be found the real presence of
God, has given way to the idea that one can commune with God on the hillsides,
or in the valley, on the open sea, or in the privacy of the home, and that
where the consciousness is uplifted to God, there God can be contacted, and in
this thought of the upliftment of the consciousness, there is a continually
increasing comprehension of the fact that the upliftment is not a matter of
ascending to heaven to contact God but to lift oneself above the commonplace
things, sordid things, and particularly the material interests of life. To many
thousands of persons the idea has transmuted itself into the belief that
prayers offered in the center of a great and costly cathedral are more or less
surrounded by materialistic influences and that the confining, oppressive
effects and atmosphere of the costly material structure tend to keep the mind
and consciousness from expanding into the great Cosmic space where the
consciousness of God is sure to be found.
In the development of the idea that God may be
reached in holy communion, in a purely mental and spiritual atmosphere devoid
of materialistic inclosures and grandeur, has come the beautiful idea that one
may build a stately cathedral for oneself in the spiritual world created out of
the mental and religious elements of one's nature.
The Cathedral of the Soul, a sublime and transcendent
holy place above the level of the material things of life, has become a real
cathedral in the lives of many thousands who find it an ideal place for the
concentration of their thoughts during their sacred worship.
If you as a member of the organization or a friend of
the Rosicrucian ideals have not experienced the joy and happiness, the real
inspiring and invigorating sense that comes to the inner self through worship
in this ethereal cathedral, then you most certainly are missing some of the
spiritual values of life. By sending for a copy of the free pamphlet, Liber
777, describing this non-sectarian and unlimited cathedral, you will be
brought face to face with an opportunity that may quicken and awaken the search
of your soul. Send for such a pamphlet today and unite in the Cathedral contact
periods when thousands of devoted ones in all parts of the world are united in
combining their spiritual thoughts in communion with God regardless of creed,
nationality, doctrines, or other differences and limitations.
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