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The Rosicrucian Mysteries by Max Heindel

III. THE VISIBLE AND THE INVISIBLE WORLD

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The Desire World is the abode of those who have died, for some time subsequent to that event, and we may mention in the above connection that the so-called “dead” very often stay for a long while among their still living friends. Unseen by their relatives they go about the familiar rooms. At first they are often unaware of the condition mentioned: “that two persons may be in the same place at the same time,” and when they seat themselves in a chair or at the table, a living relative may take the supposedly vacant seat. The man we mistakenly call dead will at first hurry out of his seat to escape being sat upon, but he soon learns that being sat upon does not hurt him in his altered condition, and that he may remain in his chair regardless of the fact that his living relative is also sitting there. In the lower regions of the Desire World the whole body of each being may be seen, but in the highest regions only the head seems to remain. Raphael, who like many other people in the middle ages was gifted with a so-called _second sight_, pictured that condition for us in his Sistine Madonna, now in the Dresden Art Gallery, where Madonna and the Christ-child are represented as floating in a golden atmosphere and surrounded by a host of genie-heads: conditions which the occult investigator knows to be in harmony with actual facts.

Among the entities who are, so to speak, “_native_” to that realm of nature, none are perhaps better known to the Christian world than the Archangels. These exalted Beings were human at a time in the earth’s history when we were yet plant-like. Since then we have advanced two steps: through the animal and to the human stage of development. The present Archangels have also made two steps in progression; one, in which they were similar to what the angels are now, and another step which made them what we call Archangels.

Their densest body, though differing from ours in shape, and made of desire stuff, is used by them as a vehicle of consciousness in the same manner that we use our body. They are expert manipulators of forces in the Desire World, and these forces, as we shall see, move all the world to action. Therefore the Archangels work with humanity _industrially_ and _politically_ as arbitrators of the destiny of peoples and nations. The Angels may be said to be _family_-spirits whose mission is to unite a few spirits as members of a family, and cement them with ties of blood and love of kin, while the Archangels may be called race and national spirits, as they unite whole nations by patriotism or love of home and country. They are responsible for the rise and fall of nations, they give war or peace, victory or defeat as it serves the best interests of the people they rule. This we may see, for instance, from the book of Daniel, where the Archangel Michael (not to be confounded with the Michael, who is ambassador from the sun to the earth), is called the prince of the children of Israel. Another Archangel tells Daniel, (in the tenth chapter) that he intends to fight the prince of Persia by means of the Greeks.

There are varying grades of intelligence among human beings, some are qualified to hold high and lofty positions entirely beyond the ability of others. So it is also among higher beings, not all Archangels are fitted to govern a nation and rule the destiny of a race, people or tribe, some are not fitted to rule human beings at all, but as the animals also have a desire nature these lower grades of Archangels govern the animals as group-spirits and evolve to higher capacity thereby.