Who is a Rosicrucian?
Not infrequently, we find that someone takes the platform to
explain why he is a Baptist, Methodist, or Christian Scientist, and what his
particular faith may be. We often have been asked by our students for something
which would help make plain to their associates why they had embraced the
teachings of the Elder Brothers given through The Rosicrucian Fellowship. We,
therefore, will endeavor to give a succinct résumé of reasons which appeal to
us as sufficient, but students will doubtless find many other reasons equally
good or better, which they may add verbally to what is said here.
It should be made clear in the very beginning that students in
the Rosicrucian Fellowship do not call themselves Rosicrucians. That title
applies only to the Elder Brothers, who are the hierophants of the Western
Wisdom Teachings. They are as far beyond the greatest living saint in spiritual
development as that saint is above the lowest fetish worshiper.
Satisfying Head and Heart
When the bark of our life sails lightly upon smooth summer seas,
wafted along by the fair winds of health and prosperity, when friends are
present on every hand, eager to help us plan pleasures which will increase our
enjoyment of this world's goods, when social favors or political power come to
us to gratify our every wish in whatever sphere our inclinations seek
expression, then, indeed, we may say and seem justified in saying with our whole
heart and soul, "This world is good enough for me." But when we come
to the end of the smiling sea of success, when the whirlwind of adversity has
blown us upon the rocky shores of disaster and a wave of suffering threatens to
engulf us, when friends have failed and every human help is as far off as it is
unavailing, then we must look for guidance to the skies as does the mariner when
he steers his ship over the waste of waters.
When the skipper scans the sky in search of a star whereby to
steer the ship safely, he finds that the whole heavens are in motion. Therefore,
to follow almost any one of the myriad of wandering stars visible to the eye
would be disastrous. To meet the requirements, the guiding star must be
perfectly steadfast and immovable, and there is only one such, namely, the
North Star. By its guiding light the mariner may steer in full confidence
and bring his ship to the haven of rest and safety. Similarly, one who is
looking for a guide which he may trust in days of sorrow and trouble should
embrace a religion founded on eternal laws and immutable principles, a religion
able to explain the mystery of life in a logical manner to satisfy the
intellect. At the same time, a system of devotion should be included that may
satisfy the heart. Thus these twin factors in life will receive equal
satisfaction. Only when man has a clear intellectual conception of the scheme of
human development is he in a position to range himself in line therewith. When it
is made clear to him that this scheme is beneficent and benevolent in the very
highest degree, that all is truly ruled by divine love, this understanding will
sooner or later call out a true devotion and heartfelt acquiescence which will
awaken a desire to become a co-worker with God in the world's work.
When seeking Spirits come to the door of the church to seek
surcease from sorrow, they cannot be satisfied with platitudes that it is the
will of God that sorrow and suffering have come to them, that in His divine will
He has seen fit to scourge them, and that they must take it as an indication
that He regards them as His beloved children and be satisfied no matter what
happens. They cannot see that Deity does justice when He makes some rich and
many poor, a few healthy and many sickly; it is evident only too often that
iniquity is prosperous while rectitude is in rags.
The Rosicrucian Teaching gives clear and logical information
concerning the world and man; it invites questions instead of discouraging them,
so that the seeker after spiritual truth may receive full satisfaction
intellectually; its explanations are as strictly scientific as they are
reverently religious. It refers us for information regarding life's problems to
laws that are as unchangeable and immutable in their realms of action as the
North Star is in the heavens.
Law of Cause and Effect
Though the world whirls upon its axis at the rate of 1,000 miles
per hour, we stand safely anywhere upon its surface because the principle of
gravity prevents us from being hurled into space by the terrific speed. We know
that the Law of Gravity is eternal; it will not act today and suspend action
tomorrow. When we enter a hydraulic elevator we rest safely upon a column of
water because that fluid is more incompressible than most solids, and this
property is the same yesterday, today, and forever. Were its action suspended
for even a few moments, thousands of people would fall to their deaths.
The Law of Cause and Effect also is immutable; if we throw a
stone into the air, the act is not complete until by gravitation it has returned
to Earth. "Whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap," is the
way this law is expressed in the realm of morals. "The mills of the Gods
grind slowly, but they grind exceeding small." Once an act has been done,
the reaction will come sometime, somewhere, as surely as the stone that was
thrown into the air will return to the Earth.
The School of Life
It is manifest that all the causes we set going in life do not
ripen in the present existence, and it follows that they must find their
fruition somewhere else at some other time, or the law would be invalidated. The
cancellation of this law would be as absolutely impossible as the suspension of
the Law of Gravitation, for cancellation of either would make chaos out of
Cosmos. The Rosicrucian Teachings; explain this by a statement that man is a
Spirit attending the school of life for the purpose of unfolding latent
spiritual power, and that for this purpose he lives many lives in earthly bodies
of increasingly fine texture which enable him to express himself better and
better. In the lower grades of this school of evolution, man has few faculties.
Each life-day he comes to school in the morning of childhood, and is given
lessons to learn, and at night, when old and gray, the nursemaid of nature,
Death, puts him to sleep, that he may rest from his labors until the dawn of
another life-day when he is given a new child body and new lessons. Each day
"Experience," the teacher of the school, helps him to learn some of
the lessons of life, and gradually he becomes more and more proficient. Someday
he will have learned the entire curriculum of the school, which includes
building bodies as well as using them. Thus when we see one who has few
faculties, we know that he is a young Spirit who has not learned life's lessons;
when we find a beautiful character, we recognize an old Spirit who has spent
much time in mastering its lessons. Therefore we do not despair of God's love
when we see the inequalities of life, for we know that in time all will be
perfect, as our Father in Heaven is perfect.
Meeting Loved Ones
The Rosicrucian Teachings also take the sting of sorrow out of
the greatest of all trials, the loss of loved ones, even if they have been what
is called wayward or black sheep. We know that it is an actual fact that in
God we live and move and have our being; hence, if one single Spirit were
lost, a part of God would be lost, and such a proposition is absolutely
impossible. Under the immutable Law of Cause and Effect, we are bound to meet
these loved ones sometime in the future under other circumstances, and there the
love that binds us together must continue until it has found its fullest
expression. The laws of Nature would be violated if a stone thrown from the
Earth were to remain suspended in the atmosphere, and under the same immutable
laws those who pass into the higher spheres must return. Christ said, "If I
go to my Father, I will return."
Firsthand Knowledge
Although our reason may reach into the mysteries of life, there
is still a higher stage: actual firsthand knowledge. As a matter of fact,
the foregoing propositions are capable of verification. We all have a sixth
sense latent in our being, which will sometime enable us to view the
spiritual worlds with the same distinctness as that with which we see the
temporal. This sixth sense will be developed by all in the course of evolution,
and there are certain means whereby it may be developed now by all who care to
take the necessary time and trouble to do so. Some have done this and have told
of their travels in the land of the Spirit. We believe their testimony
concerning that place just as we believe people who have traveled in Africa or
Australia who tell us of those countries. Just as we say that we know the
Earth rotates upon its axis and revolves in its orbit around the Sun because we
have been thus informed by scientists who have made the investigations and
calculations that establish these facts, so also we say that we know that
the dead live. We know that whether dead or alive, in the body or out of it, we
all are enfolded in the love of our Father in Heaven, without Whose Will not the
smallest sparrow falls to the ground. We know that He cares for all and orders
our steps in harmony with His plans to develop our powers to the highest
possible degree.
Eye has not seen or ear heard the glories that are yet in store
for us, but Oliver Wendell Holmes has expressed a little of what we may expect
in the following lines:
Build thee more stately mansions O 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 thine outgrown shell by life's unresting sea.
We follow the Rosicrucian Teaching in preference to other
systems, because of the logical soul-satisfying philosophy of life given by it,
and invite others who wish to share the blessings thereof to investigate.
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