From the fifteenth century onwards, the Rosicrucian movement has always challenged religious dogmatism as we have said, but more recently, also that of scientific dogmatism. Science, through the argument of the scientific method, affirms that all knowledge is derived from experience, but discards the spiritual and soul realities of the human being, because it’s concepts of ‘man’ are based purely on the physical.
In the past, the Rosycross worked to free a fledgling science from the influences of religious dogmatism and superstitions, attempting to form the bases of a more wholistic science. Today, it again works to reintroduce to science the concept of the wholistic human being and his interaction with the world and life, an approach where the scientific and spiritual can coexist, in the same way as does secular and symbolic language.
However, it is an undeniable fact that the focus on the purely physical aspects of the human being and our world, imposed by science, has contributed to an existential materialism that has proven to be progressively destructive to our planet. For in its eagerness to deny the existence of an anthropomorphic God and Creator, it has also suppressed the knowledge that includes the spiritual side of life, and in so doing, it has also had to deny its own ineffectiveness.
What can be concluded from this is that any attempts by science to counteract the current escalating deterioration of our environment, must fail on all levels, if it does not accept in its calculations the existence of the spiritual dimensions of life that must include the mineral, vegetable, animal and human kingdoms. This new direction must begin by recognising that the earth and the cosmos as a whole, are also living beings, impregnated with the same idea and purpose as the human being, each one individual and differentiated by its own level of consciousness.
At this stage it will be beneficial to further discuss the Rosicrucian philosophy in more detail in order to better understand the foundations that underlie it. We can begin by pointing out that one of the more recent ‘discoveries’ of physics, the ‘Higgs Field’, was already described in the ‘Book of Golden Precepts’ which is one of the treatises of the ‘Kalacakra Tantra‘, a compendium of ancient Eastern wisdom several thousand years old.
Here the description of the famous ‘God Particle’ is done in a clearly symbolic and not a technical language, but it offers no doubt as to the role it plays in maintaining the balance of the universal manifestation. The fact is that penetrating to the very foundations of Reality has been the focus of all great spiritual impulses, and it is not possible to approach an understanding of that Reality without firstly unravelling the mystery of material manifestation.
Long before Einstein, the relationship between energy and matter was well known in the Spiritual Schools. It is an illusion to believe that physical matter and energy only manifest in various vibratory states. Take the Gospel of John, one of the most spiritual of the Christian Gospels, which begins by stating that everything has arisen from the ‘Word’, an action that leads to manifestation, in other words, the Logos. Is a word then, more than just a vibration? The string theory of modern physics would support this view.
This all strengthens the view of the Rosycross that, although one approach to objectively demonstrate a postulate is through a strict methodology and the use of sophisticated apparatus, it is also possible to arrive at the same conclusions through the insight and wisdom of those other most sophisticated instruments, the human mind and body. In the first case the result is almost always held as an absolute by those who formulated the postulate, yet it remains fundamentally subjective and open to debate. On the other hand, the Rosycross works tirelessly to free the individual consciousness from all conditioning, conventions, traditions and external authorities that influence our thinking, so that the mind can come to true Insight and Wisdom.
This is an arduous process in which the use of all of the faculties of human intelligence are engaged, especially their capacity to evaluate and measure each new insight against manifested nature and the lessons learned from practical daily life. This methodology is as demanding as that employed by the scientist in his laboratory, the artist in his studio, or the mystic in his moments of meditation, for it encompasses all three simultaneously. Hence, for those who have reached the highest levels of ‘awakening’, as Gautama the Buddha defined the state of supreme enlightenment, their only recourse to communicate to others what they have discovered, is to employ the language of symbolism and analogy.
For the Rosycross, the normal state of the majority of humanity is a state similar to that of dreaming, a total submission to the illusion of the senses, thus an ignorance of the Real, of ‘what is’. All their efforts therefore are aimed at awakening the Truth, step by step, with a consistent and conscious self-control.
The reality of our plane of existence is quite terrible; the human misery, the ethical and moral degeneration, the daily atrocities committed all over the world, are all only bearable by our psyche if assimilated in small doses. To contemplate the full ‘Reality’, which is the gateway to a deep compassion, requires significant soul growth. This soul maturity cannot be achieved through faith alone, but through reason and experience derived from a fully committed activity and attitude to life. From the past to the present, the door to all initiation into Truth will only be open to those who know themselves, as was made clear by the aphorism inscribed on the pronaos of the Temple at Delphi, ‘Know Thyself’.
Experience has taught Rosicrucians the reality of the intangible worlds, of ‘super’ dimensions, all of them sharing the same infinite space, within our potential reach, yet sealed by vibrationary laws. Although our world is filled with human misery, at the same time there exists an unpolluted domain of life filled with entities that have overcome their duality and have been spiritually reborn, yet maintaining a link with our plane of existence. From the perspective of this new soul consciousness, the Rosycross is guided in both a quantitative and qualitative way in its work to help humanity.
We have now touched upon subjects such as the concept of the soul in relation to the Divine Monad, the existence and role of the more subtle bodies of man, and the functioning and activity of spiritual laws in our material life, which for many may be highly interesting subjects. For Rosicrucians however, they are mere instruments of understanding employed in the development of a new consciousness, and through this a new creative action radius of the soul that reflects the pure ethics of the spiritual laws.
All this is not the exclusive patrimony of a Rosicrucian school, since there have been many Spiritual Schools from both the East and the West, that have brought the same or very similar philosophies. Perhaps the most prominent characteristic of the Rosicrucian philosophy, one shared in the East, is its focus on the ‘teaching of the heart’, or doctrine of the soul, being merged together with the ‘teaching of the eye’, or learning through the senses, the mind.
The ‘teaching of the heart’ aims at the state of connection with the Spirit and its Current of Ideation, while the ‘teaching of the eye’ assimilates the experience of manifestation, our reality and its demands.
The connection of both of these teachings are symbolised in the Rosicrucian manuscripts as the two books found in the tomb of Christian Rosycross; the Book T, the Book of God, and the Book M, the Book of the World. These are the key, the art that allows the Rosicrucian to fulfil that which Hermes Trismegistos described at the beginning of the ‘Emerald Tablet’, that most prominent text of Rosicrucian alchemy:
‘It is true! It is the full truth! That which is below is equal to that which is above, and that which is above is equal to that which is below, so that the miracles of the One are fulfilled.’
