The Third Heaven

In the third heaven most people have very little consciousness for reasons

explained in connection with the Region of Abstract Thought, for there the

third heaven is located. It is therefore more of a place of waiting where

the spirit rests between the time when its labors in the second heaven

have been completed and the time when it again experiences the desire for

rebirth. But from this realm inventors bring down their original i eas;

there the philanthropist obtains the clearest vision of how to realize his

utopian dreams and the spiritual aspirations of the saintly minded are

given renewed impetus.



In time the desires of the spirit for further experiences draws it back to

rebirth, and the Great Celestial Beings who are known in the Christian

Religion as Recording Angels, assist the spirit to come to birth in the

place best suited to give it the experience necessary to further unfold

its powers and possibilities.



We have all been here many times and in different families, we have had

relations of varying nature with many different people and usually there

are several families among whom we may seek re-embodiment to work out our

self-generated destiny and reap what we have sown in former life. If there

are no special reasons why we should take birth in any particular family

among certain friends or foes, the spirit is allowed to choose its own

place of birth. Thus it may be said that most of us are in our present

places by our own prenatal choice.



In order to assist us in making that choice the Recording Angels call up

before the spirit's vision a panorama in general outlines of each of the

offered lives. This panorama will show what part of our past debts we are

to pay, and what fruits we may be expected to reap in the coming life.



The spirit is left free to choose between the several lives offered. But

once a choice has been made no evasion is possible during life. We have

free will with regard to the future, but the past "mature" destiny we

cannot escape, as shown by the incident recorded in The Rosicrucian Cosmo

Conception, where the writer warned a well known Los Angeles lecturer

that if he left his home upon a certain day, he would be injured by a

conveyance, in head, neck, breast and shoulders. The gentleman believed

and intended to heed our warning. Nevertheless he went to Sierra Madre to

lecture upon the fateful day. He was injured in the places stated by a

collision and later explained: "I thought the twenty-eighth was the

twenty-ninth."



When the spirit has made its choice, it descends into the second heaven

where it is instructed by the Angels and Archangels how to build an

archetype of the body which it will later inhabit upon earth. Also here we

note the operation of the great law of justice which decrees that we reap

what we sow. If our tastes are coarse and sensual, we shall build an

archetype which will express these qualities; if we are refined and of

aesthetic taste, we shall build an archetype correspondingly refined, but

no one can obtain a better body than he can build. Then, as the architect

who builds a house in which he afterwards lives, will suffer discomfort if

he neglects to properly ventilate it, so also the spirit feels disease in

a poorly constructed body, and as the architect learns to avoid mistakes

and remedy the short-comings of one house when building another, so also

the spirit which suffers from defects in its body, learns in time to build

better and better vehicles.



In the Region of Concrete Thought, the spirit also draws to itself

materials for a new mind. As a magnet draws iron filings but leaves other

substances alone, so also each spirit draws only the kind of mind-stuff

which it used in its former life, plus that which it has learned to use in

its present post-mortem state. Then it descends into the Desire World

where it gathers material for a new desire body such as will express

appropriately its moral characteristics, and later it attracts a certain

amount of ether which is built into the mold of the archetype constructed

in the second heaven and acts as cement between the solids, liquids and

gaseous material from the bodies of parents which forms the dense physical

body of a child, and in due time the latter is brought to birth.