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The Rosicrucian Mysteries by Max Heindel

III. THE VISIBLE AND THE INVISIBLE WORLD

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The Ameshaspends, however, do not inhabit the lower Regions of the Desire World but influence the Izzards. According to the old Persian legend these beings are divisible into one group of twenty-eight classes, and another group of three classes. Each of these classes has dominion over, or takes the lead of all the other classes on one certain day of the month. They regulate the weather conditions on that day and work with animal and man in particular. At least the twenty-eight classes do that, the other group of three classes has nothing to do with animals, because they have only twenty-eight pair of spinal nerves, while human beings have thirty-one. Thus animals are attuned to the lunar month of twenty-eight days, while man is correlated to the solar month of thirty or thirty-one days. The ancient Persians were astronomers but not physiologists, they had no means of knowing the different nervous constitution of animal and man, but they saw clairvoyantly these superphysical beings, they noted and recorded their work with animal and men and our own anatomical investigations may show us the reason for these divisions of the classes of Izzards recorded in that ancient system of philosophy.

Still another class of beings should be mentioned: those who have entered the Desire World through the gate of death and are now hidden from our physical vision. These so-called “dead” are in fact much more alive than any of us, who are tied to a dense body and subject to all its limitations, who are forced to slowly drag this clog along with us at the rate of a few miles an hour, who must expend such an enormous amount of energy upon propelling that vehicle that we are easily and quickly tired, even when in the best of health and who are often confined to a bed, sometimes for years, by the indisposition of this heavy mortal coil. But when that is once shed and the freed spirit can again function in its spiritual body, sickness is an unknown condition and distance is annihilated, or at least practically so, for though it was necessary for the Savior to liken the freed spirit to the wind which blows where it listeth, that simile gives but a poor description of what actually takes place in soul flights. Time is nonexistent there, as we shall presently explain, so the writer has never been able to time himself, but has on several occasions timed others when he was in the physical body and they speeding through space upon a certain errand. Distances such as from the Pacific Coast to Europe, the delivery of a short message there and the return to the body has been accomplished in slightly less than one minute. Therefore our assertion, that those whom we call dead are in reality much more alive than we, is well founded in facts.

We spoke of the dense body in which we now live, as a “clog” and a “fetter.” It must not be inferred, however, that we sympathize with the attitude of certain people who, when they have learned with what ease soul-flights are accomplished, go about bemoaning the fact that they are now imprisoned. They are constantly thinking of, and longing for, the day when they shall be able to leave this mortal coil behind and fly away in their spiritual body. Such an attitude of mind is decidedly mistaken, the great and wise beings who are invisible leaders of our evolution have not placed us here to no purpose. Valuable lessons are to be learned in this visible world wherein we dwell, that cannot be learned in any other realm of nature, and the very conditions of density and inertia whereof such people complain, are factors which make it possible to acquire the knowledge this world is designed to give. This fact was so amply illustrated in a recent experience of the writer:—A friend had been studying occultism for a number of years but had not studied astrology.