Our Message And Mission

A Sane Mind



A Soft Heart



A Sound Body



Before entering upon an explanation of the teachings of the Rosicrucians,

it may be well to say a word about them and about the place they hold in

the evolution of humanity.



For reasons to be given later these teachings advocate the dualistic view;

they hold that man is a spirit enfolding all the powers of God as he seed

enfolds the plant, and that these powers are being slowly unfolded by a

series of existences in a gradually improving earthy body; also that this

process of development has been performed under the guidance of exalted

beings who are yet ordering our steps, though in a decreasing measure, as

we gradually acquire intellect and will. These exalted Beings, though

unseen to the physical eyes, are nevertheless potent factors in all

affairs of life, and give to the various groups of humanity lessons which

will most efficiently promote the growth of their spiritual powers. In

fact, the earth may be likened to a vast training school in which there

are pupils of varying age and ability as we find it in one of our own

schools. There are the savages, living and worshipping under most

primitive conditions, seeing in stick or stone a God. Then, as man

progresses onwards and upwards in the scale of civilization, we find a

higher and higher conception of Deity, which has flowered here in our

Western World in the beautiful Christian religion that now furnishes our

spiritual inspiration and incentive to improve.



These various religions have been given to each group of humanity by the

exalted beings whom we know in the Christian religion as the Recording

Angels, whose wonderful prevision enable them to view the trend of even so

unstable a quantity as the human mind, and thus they are enabled to

determine what steps are necessary to lead our enfoldment along the lines

congruous to the highest universal good.



When we study the history of the ancient nations we shall find that at

about six hundred years B. C. a great spiritual wave had its inception on

the Eastern shores of the Pacific Ocean where the great Confucian Religion

accelerated the progress of the Chinese nation, then also the Religion of

the Buddha commenced to win its millions of adherents in India, and still

further West we have the lofty philosophy of Pythagoras. Each system was

suited to the needs of the particular people to whom it was sent. Then

came the period of the Sceptics, in Greece, and later, traveling westward

the same spiritual wave is manifested as the Christian religion of the

so-called "Dark Ages" when the dogma of a dominant church compelled belief

from the whole of Western Europe.



It is a law in the universe that a wave of spiritual awakening is always

followed by a period of doubting materialism, each phase is necessary in

order that the spirit may receive equal development of heart and intellect

without being carried too far in either direction. The Great Beings

aforementioned, Who care for our progress, always take steps to safeguard

humanity against that danger, and when they foresaw the wave of

materialism which commenced in the sixteenth century with the birth of our

modern Science, they took steps to protect the West as they had formerly

safeguarded the East against the Sceptics who were held in check by the

Mystery schools.



In the thirteenth century there appeared in central Europe a great

spiritual teacher whose symbolical name was



Christian Rosenkreuz.

or

Christian Rose Cross.



who founded the mysterious Order of the Rosy Cross, concerning which so

many speculations have been made and so little has become known to the

world at large, for it is the Mystery school of the West and is only open

to those who have attained the stage of spiritual unfoldment necessary to

be initiated in its secrets concerning the Science of Life and Being.



If we are so far developed that we are able to leave our dense physical

body and take a soul flight into interplanetary space we shall find that

the ultimate physical atom is spherical in shape like our earth; it is a

ball. When we take a number of balls of even size and group them around

one, it will take just twelve balls to hide a thirteenth within. Thus the

twelve visible and the one hidden are numbers revealing a cosmic

relationship and as all Mystery Orders are based upon cosmic lines, they

are composed of twelve members gathered around a thirteenth who is the

invisible head.



There are seven colors in the spectrum: red, orange, yellow, green, blue,

indigo and violet. But between the violet and the red there are still

other five colors which are invisible to the physical eye but reveal

themselves to the spiritual sight. In every Mystery Order there are also

seven brothers who at times go out into the world and there perform

whatever work may be necessary to advance the people among whom they

serve, but five are never seen outside the temple. They work with and

teach those alone who have passed through certain stages of spiritual

unfoldment and are able to visit the temple in their spiritual bodies; a

feat taught in the first initiation which usually takes place outside the

temple as it is not convenient for all to visit that place physically.



Let not the reader imagine that this initiation makes the pupil a

Rosicrucian, it does not, any more than admission to a High School makes a

boy a member of the faculty. Nor does he become a Rosicrucian even after

having passed through all the nine degrees of this or any other Mystery

School. The Rosicrucians are Hierophants of the lesser Mysteries, and

beyond them there are still schools wherein Greater Mysteries are taught.

Those who have advanced through the lesser Mysteries and have become

pupils of the Greater Mysteries are called Adepts, but even they have not

reached the exalted standpoint of the twelve Brothers of the Rosicrucian

Order or the Hierophants of any other lesser Mystery School any more than

the freshman at college has attained to the knowledge and position of a

teacher in the High school from which he has just graduated.



A later work will deal with initiation, but we may say here that the door

of a genuine Mystery School is not unlocked by a golden key, but is only

opened as a reward for meritorious service to humanity and any one who

advertises himself as a Rosicrucian or makes a charge for tuition, by

either of those acts shows himself to be a charlatan. The true pupil of

any Mystery School is far too modest to advertise the fact, he will scorn

all titles or honors from men, he will have no regard for riches save the

riches of love given to him by those whom it becomes his privilege to help

and teach.



In the centuries that have gone by since the Rosicrucian Order was first

formed they have worked quietly and secretly, aiming to mould the thought

of Western Europe through the works of Paracelsus, Boehme, Bacon,

Shakespeare, Fludd and others. Each night at midnight when the physical

activities of the day are at their lowest ebb, and the spiritual impulse

at its highest flood tide, they have sent out from their temple

soul-stirring vibrations to counteract materialism and to further the

development of soul powers. To their activities we owe the gradual

spiritualization of our once so materialistic science.



With the commencement of the twentieth century a further step was taken.

It was realized that something must be done to make religion scientific as

well as to make science religious, in order that they may ultimately

blend; for at the present time heart and intellect are divorced. The heart

instinctively feels the truth of religious teachings concerning such

wonderful mysteries as the Immaculate Conception (the Mystic Birth), the

Crucifixion (the Mystic Death), the cleansing blood, the atonement, and

other doctrines of the Church, which the intellect refuses to believe, as

they are incapable of demonstration, and seemingly at war with natural

law. Material advancement may be furthered when intellect is dominant and

the longings of the heart unsatisfied, but soul growth will be retarded

until the heart also receives satisfaction.



In order to give the world a teaching so blended that it will satisfy both

the mind and heart, a messenger must be found and instructed. Certain

unusual qualifications were necessary, and the first one chosen failed to

pass a certain test after several years had been spent to prepare him for

the work to be done.



It is well said that there is a time to sow, and a time to reap, and that

there are certain times for all the works of life, and in accordance with

this law of periodicity each impulse in spiritual uplift must also be

undertaken at an appropriate time to be successful. The first and sixth

decades of each century are particularly propitious to commence the

promulgation of new spiritual teachings. Therefore the Rosicrucians were

much concerned at this failure, for only five years were left of the first

decade of the twentieth century.



Their second choice of a messenger fell upon the present writer, though he

knew it not at the time, and by shaping circumstances about him they made

it possible for him to begin a period of preparation for the work they

desired him to do. Three years later, when he had gone to Germany, also

because of circumstances shaped by the invisible Brotherhood, and was on

the verge of despair at the discovery that the light which was the object

of his quest, was only a jack-o-lantern, the Brothers of the Rosicrucian

Order applied the test to see whether he would be a faithful messenger and

give the teachings they desired to entrust to him, to the world. And when

he had passed the trial they gave him the monumental solution of the

problem of existence first published in "The Rosicrucian Cosmo

Conception" in November, 1909, more than a year before the expiration of

the first decade of the twentieth century. This book marked a new era in

so-called "occult" literature, and the many editions which have since been

published, as well as the thousands of letters which continue to come to

the author, are speaking testimonies to the fact that people are finding

in this teaching a satisfaction they have long sought elsewhere in vain.



The Rosicrucians teach that all great religions have been given to the

people among whom they are found, by Divine Intelligences who designed

each system of worship to suit the needs of the race or nation to whom it

was given. A primitive people cannot respond to a lofty and sublime

religion, and vice versa. What helps one race would hinder another, and

in pursuance of the same policy there has been devised a system of

soul-unfoldment suited specially to the Western people, who are racially

and temperamentally unfit to undergo the discipline of the Eastern school,

which was designed for the more backward Hindoos.