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The Rosicrucian Mysteries by Max Heindel

II. THE PROBLEM OF LIFE AND ITS SOLUTION

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Or, as we may poetically express it:

WE ARE ETERNAL.

On whistling stormcloud; on Zephyrus wing,
The Spirit-choir loud the World-anthems sing
Hark! Lis’t to their voice “we have passed through death’s door
There’s no Death; rejoice! life lives evermore.”

We are, have always been, will ever be.
We are a portion of Eternity
Older than Creation, a part of One Great Whole,
Is each Individual and immortal Soul.

On Time’s whirring loom our garments we’ve wrought
Eternally weave we on network of Thought,
Our kin and our country, by Mind brought to birth,
Were patterned in heaven ere molded on earth.

We have shone in the Jewel and danced on the Wave,
We have sparkled in Fire defying the grave;
Through shapes everchanging, in size, kind and name
Our individual essence still is the same.

And when we have reached to the highest of all,
The gradations of growth our minds shall recall
So that link by link we may join them together
And trace step by step the way we reached thither.

Thus in time we shall know, if only we do
What lifts, ennobles, is right and true.
With kindness to all; with malice to none,
That in and through us God’s will may be done.

We venture to make the assertion that there is but one sin: _Ignorance_ and but one salvation: _Applied Knowledge_. Even the wisest among us know but little of what may be learned, however, and no one has attained to perfection, or can attain in one single short life, but we note that everywhere in nature slow persistent unfoldment makes for higher and higher development of every thing and we call this process evolution.

One of the chief characteristics of evolution lies in the fact that it manifests in alternating periods of activity and rest. The busy summer, when all things upon earth are exerting themselves to bring forth, is followed by the rest and inactivity of winter. The busy day alternates with the quiet of night. The ebb of the ocean is succeeded by the flood-tide. Thus, as all other things move in cycles, the life that expresses itself here upon earth for a few years is not to be thought of as ended when death has been reached, but as surely as the sun rises in the morning after having set at night, will the life that was ended by the death of one body be taken up again in a new vehicle and in a different environment.

This earth may in fact be likened to a school to which we return life after life to learn new lessons, as our children go to school day after day to increase their knowledge. The child sleeps through the night which intervenes between two days at school and the spirit also has its rest from active life between death and a new birth. There are also different classes in this world-school which correspond to the various grades from kindergarten to college. In the lower classes we find spirits who have gone to the school of life but a few times, they are savages now, but in time they will become wiser and better than we are, and we ourselves shall progress in future lives to spiritual heights of which we cannot even conceive at the present. If we apply ourselves to learn the lessons of life, we shall of course advance much faster in the school of life than if we dilly-dally and idle our time away. This, on the same principle which governs in one of our own institutions of learning.