The three pillars of the eternal truth

The three pillars of the eternal truth

The aim of the Spiritual School of the Rosycross is supported by the teachings, the power field of the community and the temple services, through which both the teachings and the power field are dynamised.

The teachings stem from people's experiences on the spiritual path. Hence, they are not inventions of the human brain or an abstract system of beliefs, but above all descriptions of facts and insights. Because these descriptions can evoke the same experiences in other people, they are at the same time a power. And because the teachings are intended to give the listener the same experiences, they are actually a process that must be realised.

We are living in a remarkable age: on the one hand, ever more people are discovering the inadequacy of the limited rational view, dominating public life, which is leading people to seek refuge with the most diverse alternative and esoteric groups, and on the other hand, people's understanding of the Christian message of salvation is increasingly losing its spirituality, not the least of which is because of the loss of the power of faith.

Understanding the Word of God through purification of the soul

Many so-called Christians no longer view the gospel as a divine revelation, but consider Jesus to have been a social revolutionary, an example of the political struggle against misery and degeneration. This is not the first time this kind of reaction has been evoked, but every age has reacted to the gospel in a way closely related to the developments, and consciousness of the people of that age, because for the person whose natural consciousness cannot understand the true essence of the Divine Word, nothing is left but to adjust the Word to his own intellect. Yet, there have always been people who were so cleansed by a long path of purification and initiation, they were able to understand the Word of God and to pass it on to others in the language of their time.

Many were only able to work in secret, for they had been outlawed and were persecuted. Thanks to their courage, their efforts and their love, the truth regarding the origin and destiny of the human being, and the reason for his sad existence here on earth, was not lost. They passed on the universal knowledge from one generation to the next, so that the eternal truth could flow through all ages, as an underground current.

The Spiritual School of the Modern Rosycross also works within this tradition. The Lectorium Rosicrucianum is based on the same spiritual foundation as the classical Rosicrucians and hence is standing on the firm ground of the New Testament.

Europe was deeply moved by the liberating word

At the beginning of the seventeenth century, Johann Valentin Andreae from Calw, Germany, had written some symbolic -- and therefore veiled -- books which, though almost incomprehensible to the unprepared reader, deeply moved Europe at the time. The time was ripe for this spiritual impulse, thus thousands started to search for the mysterious Order of the Rosycross, but, unless they were driven by pure inner longing on a path of insight and change, they were unable to find this order.

The ancient universal teachings being offered in our time, are, living and in unveiled words, transmitted to true seekers by the modern Rosycross. These ancient teachings rest upon three fundamental insights, upon three pillars. They are:

knowledge of the two nature orders; a divine one and a degenerated one;

knowledge of the two natures of man as a perishable personality in an imperishable microcosm;

knowledge of the liberation of man from the cycle of reincarnation, via transfiguration.

The two nature orders

When Jesus speaks about the Kingdom of Heaven, and the Buddha about Nirvana, or Lao Tzu about Tao, they are not referring to the hereafter where the dead sojourn. Earthly life and the hereafter are the two inseparable halves of this fallen nature order, of dialectical nature. In this undivine nature, instability and continuously alternating opposites rule. Whatever originates on earth, its opposite is simultaneously generated. By being, non-being is evoked. Everything created is perishable. Nirvana is the non-being of the world of opposites; of earthly being and non-being. Eternity simply is. Whoever exists in this divine field, is not subject to perishability, decay and death. He lives in harmony with creation, in freedom, as a creative fellow worker. All messengers, all great sons of God and all Holy Scriptures, like the Bible, in which the words of these messengers are recorded and passed on, testify to this divine kingdom. People usually do not believe the divine message, because they cannot see the divine kingdom with their dialectical senses. They turn away from, or even against, the redeeming Word as long as their own distress does not give them ears to «hear», and as long as the state of their own inner being is not a testimony to the truth of this message, contrary to all external manifestations of wilfulness.

The small human world

The human being is part of the earthly undivine nature order, for he has been created from it. His biological body has been built with the atoms of the nature of opposites; his astral and etheric bodies have been shaped from the more tenuous substances. Nothing of this natural human baggage has eternal value. The second pillar of the universal teachings concerns the teachings of human nature and explains them.

All messengers of the Light reveal to us that the human being carries a spark of the eternal Light within him. Jesus called it the kingdom of God within you; oriental philosophy speaks of the jewel in the lotus; the Rosicrucians speak of the spirit-spark atom, the primordial atom or the rose of the heart. The theosophists characteristically call it the last remnant of the once divine human being.

The microcosm tumbles through space out of control

The original fatherland of the human being is not the dialectical nature order, but the kingdom of heaven. There, he was created as one of the sons of God, meant for a life in the eternal divine order. He was a shining microcosm, the expression of all powers and possibilities of the divine macrocosm. The universal teachings state that I-centrality caused his fall. The lights of the microcosm were extinguished; the divine nucleus withdrew from the fallen being; the divine soul sunk into a deep sleep and the out-of-control microcosm tumbled aimlessly through chaos. In order to save the fallen children of God, the earthly human being was built from the forces of nature and implanted in the microcosm as a living, ensouled and conscious being. With the help of this implanted mortal human being, the microcosm was able to acquire a certain form of life and consciousness and gain experience. In this unbalanced pair of microcosm and earthly human being, only the lotus or rose, the sleeping primordial principle, is still divine. Due to the rose, the earthly human being is gifted and plagued. It torments him, it disturbs his peace in this world, but it also grants him the possibility to understand the divine Word.

After an endless chain of incarnations, the microcosm becomes tired of its journey far from home. The soul nucleus wakes up, and through the original atom's longing for its divine fatherland, the human being is disturbed and driven on until he answers its call, begins to seek, and one day will be standing before the gate of the new life asking to be admitted. The whole dialectical nature order was developed to help people, to enable them to listen to the awakening soul and, by obeying this inner voice, purify their microcosm.

Breaking through the cycle of life and death

The teaching of the transformation of what is mortal into what is immortal is the third pillar of the universal teachings: the knowledge of the liberation of the human being from the cycle of birth and death, the gospel of the resurrection of what is eternal in a human being. The earthly, physical human being has been entrusted with the great task of liberating the microcosm he inhabits. Without his insight and his cooperation, this liberation is not possible. But when a human being surrenders, and thus becomes a servant of the process of salvation, he is taken up into what is immortal, through the process of transformation: Death is swallowed up in victory, Paul says. The process of transformation, transfiguration, means the destruction of the old temple and the construction of the new one in three days, as Jesus promises. Through this process, the whole microcosm with its spiritual form, its soul form and its bodily form is renewed and becomes immortal. He becomes an inhabitant of the kingdom of heaven again and a brother of the children of God. This tremendous process can only be accomplished in the power field of a Spiritual School, because this power field makes the forces and possibilities for the birth of a new human being available.

He who decides to walk this path and devotes himself to it with all his strength, will withdraw his attention and longing from the earthly world and will focus ever better on the new genesis. His longing for the new life will give him the strength to neutralise his old being and in this way, the new soul will be awakened out of the dormant divine spark. Through the neutralisation of the I, the microcosm is purified and withdraws from the influence of the rulers of the dialectical world order. The previously extinguished lights of the original microcosm will shine again as in a new firmament. The Spirit can again link itself to this renewed system. When the alchemical wedding has been celebrated, and the Spirit has been reunited with the renewed soul, the microcosm has been saved and has returned home. He who enables this homecoming, has sacrificed his mortal, undivine soul in this process. He is taken up in the new soul, and at death, he discards his physical body as a dead leaf.

Self-realisation or I-realisation?

The human being was created to walk this path, but for a long time he has thought that self-realisation is the same as I-realisation, and that paradise exists on earth. But inevitably, this «belief» is destroyed by the laws of dialectical nature. The fallen world does not allow for the realisation of absolute values. Whoever achieves this insight, will find the explanation of the true coherence and essence of life in the Spiritual School.

Source: Rosicrucians through the ages, Rozekruis Pers, 2005