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The Rosicrucian Mysteries by Max Heindel

II. THE PROBLEM OF LIFE AND ITS SOLUTION

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We are not here then, by the caprice of God. He has not placed one in clover and another in a desert nor has He given one a healthy body so that he may live at ease from pain and sickness, while He placed another in poor circumstances with never a rest from pain. But what we are, we are, on account of our own diligence or negligence, and what we shall be in the future depends upon what we will to be and not upon Divine caprice or upon inexorable fate. No matter what the circumstances, it lies with us to master them, or to be mastered, as we will. Sir Edwin Arnold puts the teaching most beautifully in his “Light of Asia.”

“The Books say well, my Brothers! each man’s life
The outcome of his former living is;
The bygone wrongs bring forth sorrows and woes
The bygone right breeds bliss.

Each has such lordship as the loftiest ones
Nay for with powers around, above, below
As with all flesh and whatsoever lives
_Act_ maketh joy or woe.

Who toiled a slave may come anew a prince
For gentle worthiness and merit won;
Who ruled a king may wander earth in rags
For things done or undone.”

Or, as an unknown poet says:

“One ship sails East and another sails West
With the self same winds that blow.
’Tis the set of the sail, and not the gale,
Which determines the way they go.

As the winds of the sea are the ways of fate
As we voyage along through life.
’Tis the act of the soul, which determines the goal
And not the calm or the strife.”

When we wish to engage someone to undertake a certain mission we choose some one whom we think particularly fitted to fulfill the requirements and we must suppose that a Divine Being would use at least as much common sense, and not choose anyone to go his errand who was not fitted therefor. So when we read in the Bible that Samson was foreordained to be the slayer of the Philistines and that Jeremiah was predestined to be a prophet, it is but logical to suppose that they must have been particularly suited to such occupation. John the Baptist also, was born to be a herald of the coming Savior and to preach the kingdom of God which is to take the place of the kingdom of men.

Had these people had no previous training, how could they have developed such a fitness to fulfill their various missions, and if they had been fitted, how else could they have received their training if not in earlier lives?

The Jews believed in the Doctrine of Rebirth or they would not have asked John the Baptist if he were Elijah, as recorded in the first chapter of John. The Apostles of Christ also held the belief as we may see from the incident recorded in the sixteenth chapter of Matthew where the Christ asked them the question: “Whom do men say that I the Son of Man am?” The Apostles replied: “Some say that Thou art John the Baptist; some, Elias; and others Jeremias or one of the Prophets.” Upon this occasion the Christ tacitly assented to the teaching of Rebirth because He did not correct the disciples as would have been His plain duty in His capacity as teacher, when the pupils entertained a mistaken idea.

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