The Bow in the Cloud
by Max Heindel
I have a few preliminary explanations to make, a few reasons
why the subject of "The Bow in the Cloud" is taken up. I recently
dictated the manuscript for a book which I since have been editing. In the
course of the dictation, certain points came up, one of them being the life
force that enters the body through the etheric counterpart of the spleen.
Upon investigating, it was seen that this force manifests in
different colors, and that in different kingdoms of life it works differently;
therefore much was to be looked up before making the information public. A
friend, after reading some of the manuscript, sent to his library in Seattle
for a book published about forty years ago called Babbitts' Principles of
Light and Color. I referred to this book and found it most interesting,
written by a man who was clairvoyant. After spending an hour studying the
book, I turned to investigation myself, with the result that a great deal of
new light was shed upon the subject. It is a deep and profound subject, for the
very life of God seems to be embodied in these colors.
In tracing light and color back through the Memory of
Nature, I came to a point where there was no light, as has been shown in
The Rosicrucian Cosmo-Conception.
Then I followed the different stages of planetary formation and continued on
down to the point where the bow was seen in the cloud. The whole investigation
made such a profound impression upon me as to fill me with devotion.
It is stated in the Bible that "God is Light," and
nothing can reveal to us the nature of God in the same degree as that symbol.
If a clairvoyant went back into the far, dim past and looked upon this planet
as it was then formed, he would see at first, as it were, a dark cloud,
without form, coming out of chaos. Then he would see this cloud of virgin
substance turned by the Creative Fiat into light -- its first visible
manifestation a luminous fire mist. Then he would see a time when moisture
gathered around that fire mist, and later, the period spoken of as the Moon
Period. Still later he would observe the darker and more dense stage
called the Earth Period.
In the Lemurian Epoch of the Earth Period, crustation of the
Earth began when the seething, boiling water was evaporated. We know that when
we boil and reboil water, it incrusts the kettle; likewise, the boiling of
the moisture on the outside of the fiery Earth ball formed the hard and crusty
shell that constitutes the surface of the Earth.
The Bible says, relative to the next epoch, that it did not
rain upon the Earth, but that a mist went forth from the Earth. From the damp
Earth at that time issued a mist that completely surrounded it. Then it was
impossible for us to see the sunlight as we do now; the Sun had the appearance
of a street light of the present time on a dark night; it had an aura around
it. In that misty atmosphere, we dwelt in the early period of Atlantis. Later
the atmosphere cooled more and more, and the moisture was condensed into
water, finally driving the Atlanteans from their land by a flood such as is
recorded in the various religions
When that misty atmosphere enwrapped the Earth the rainbow
was an impossibility. This phenomenon usually occurs when there is a clear
atmosphere in some places and a cloud in others. At last, humanity saw
the rainbow for the first time. When I looked upon that scene in the Memory of
Nature, it was most wonderful. There were refugees who were driven from
Atlantis, which is now partly under the Atlantic Ocean and also included parts
of what are now known as Europe and America. These refugees were driven
eastward till they came at last to a place where the land was high and
where the atmosphere had partially cleared. There they saw the clear sky
above. Suddenly there came up a cloud, and from that cloud came lightning.
They heard the roll of thunder, and they who had escaped peril by water
and had fled under the guidance of a leader whom they revered as God, turned
to him to ask: "What have we come to now? Shall we be destroyed at
last?" He pointed to the rainbow which stood in the cloud and said:
"No, for so long as that bow stands in the cloud, so long shall the
seasons come one after another in unbroken succession;" and the people
with great admiration and relief looked upon that bow of promise.
When we consider the bow as one of the manifestations of
Deity, we may learn some wonderful lessons of devotion, for while we look upon
the lightning with awe and hear the thunder with fear, the rainbow in the sky
must always provoke in the human heart an admiration for the beauty of its
sevenfold path of color. There is nothing to compare with that wonderful bow,
and I wish to call your attention to a few physical facts concerning it.
In the first place, the rainbow never appears at noon; it
always appears after the Sun has passed downward and has traversed more than
half the distance from the meridian to the horizon. The closer the Sun is to
the horizon, the larger, clearer, and more beautiful it is. The bow never
appears in a clear sky. It usually has for its background the dark and dreary
cloud, and it is always seen when we turn our face from the Sun. We cannot
look toward the Sun and at the same time see a rainbow. When we look upon the
bow from below, it appears as a half-circle above the Earth and us. But the
higher we get, the more of the circle we see, and in the mountains, when we
reach a sufficient height above the rainbow, we see it as a sevenfold circle
--sevenfold like the Deity of whom it is a manifestation.
Now with these physical facts before
us, let us go into the
mystic interpretation of the subject. In ordinary life, when we are at the
height of our physical activity, when prosperity is the greatest, when
everything looks bright and clear to us, we do not need the manifestation of
the divine light and life. We do not need that covenant, as it were, that God
made with man upon his entry into the Aryan Epoch. We do not care about the
higher life; our bark is sailing upon summer seas, and we care for nothing
else; everything is so good to us here that there seems to be no reason why we
should look beyond.
But suddenly there comes the tempest, a time in every life
when sorrow and trouble come upon us. The storm of disaster tears away from us
every physical foundation, and we stand, perhaps, alone, in the world in
sorrow. Then when we look away from the Sun of physical prosperity, when we
look to the higher life, we always shall see upon the dark cloud of disaster
the bow that stands as a covenant between God and man, showing that we are
always able to contact the higher life. It may not be best for us then to do
so, for we all need a certain material evolution, which is best accomplished
when we do not contact too closely the higher life. But in order to evolve and
progress and gradually seek a higher and higher state of spirituality,
troubles and trials which will bring us into contact with the higher life must
come to us in time. When we can look upon trials and tribulations as means to
that end, sorrows become the greatest of our blessings. When we feel no
hunger, what do we care about food? But when we feel the pangs of starvation and
are seated before a meal, no matter how coarse the fare, we feel very thankful
for it.
If we sleep every night of our lives and sleep well, we do
not appreciate what a blessing it is. But when we have been kept awake night
after night and have craved sleep, then when it comes, with its corresponding
rest, we realize its great value. When we are in health and feel no pain or
disease, we are prone to forget that there ever was such a thing as pain. But
after recovering from an illness or after we have suffered much, we realize
what a great blessing health is.
So, in the contrast between the rays of the Sun and the
darkness of the cloud, we see in the latter the bow that beckons us on to a
higher life. If we only will look up to that, we shall be much better off than
if we continue in the paths of the lower life.
Many of us are prone to worry about little things. This
reminds me of a story of a little boy who had climbed a ladder. He had been
looking up as he was climbing, and had gone so far up that a fall would have
meant death. Then he stopped and looked down, instantly becoming dizzy. But
someone above called to him and said: "Look up, little boy. Climb up
here. I will help you." He looked up, and at once the dizziness and fear
left him, and he climbed up until taken in at a window.
Let us look up and endeavor to forget the little worries of
life, for the bow of HOPE is always in the cloud. As we endeavor to
live the higher life and climb the sublime heights toward GOD, the more
we shall find the bow of peace becoming a circle and that there is peace here
below as well as there above. It is our duty to accomplish the work we have to
do in the world, and we should never shrink from that duty. Still, we also have
a duty to the higher life.
We should remember that we each have within a latent
spiritual power that is greater than any worldly power, and as it is
unfolding, we are responsible for its use. To increase that power, we should
endeavor to devote part of our leisure time to the cultivation of the higher
life, so that when the cloud of disaster comes upon us, we shall by the aid of
that power find the bow within the cloud. As the bow is seen at the end of the
storm, so also, when we have gained the power to see the bright rainbow in our
cloud of disaster, the end of that disaster has come, and the bright
side begins to appear. The greater the disaster, the greater the needed
lesson. When on the path of wrong doing we sooner or later are kindly but
firmly whipped into line by the realities of life, we are forced to recognize
that the path of truth is upward and not downward -- and that God rules the
world.
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