CHAPTER XX.

SPIRITUALITY.

There is a spirit pervading the universe, known
under the appellation of God, which is embodied in
man as well as in everything else that exists. But
particularly to man is it given to call the spirit, which
is individualized as himself, "My Spirit." We speak
of our spirits, souls, bodies, etc., as we do of our
property. And so they are. We may lose our spirits
as we do our property.

In the creation of man God is reversed — or He
has turned man loose, to range as he will with his
back towards the Creator. Hence the cry, "Turn
ye ! turn ye ! for why will you die? " This is the rea-
son why man has no knowledge of the future — light
is behind and he has only memory, or experience, as
his guide. God is within him, but he is all uncon-
scious thereof, and looks to outside nature for all that
he can hope for and fear. Truly he must turn — if
he would find the source of his life — and examine
himself.

We all have spirits, but none of us are spirits
— and never will be ; for the moment the body dies,
and the soul has left it, the spirit hovering around,

292 THE TEMPLE OF THE ROSY CROSS.

and enveloping the soul, begins a process of organi-
zation of another form. This other form is material.
True, it is in another condition — and is invisible to
us, but it may not be in an apparitional state at all

— nor in so close a relationship to this earth as to
come under its laws.

Furthermore, the life the person has led has an
effect upon his spirit ; and in most cases the soul has
not attained sufficient consciousness to enable it to
control and better its organization — consequently, it
comes into another state of being in a worse condition
than this. But soul and mind in union — conscious-
ness remains, and the soul has control of the spirit to
enable it to improve a little upon its organization. In
most men soul and mind are too far apart. The mind
wrapped up in mundane affairs is a blind mind — it
dies at death, or shortly thereafter for want of use.
There are no spirits except embodied spirits. Anger
does not exist except in some form — Love is Infinite
Spirit — the creator and sustainer of all that exists.
But such spirits as pride, lust, anger, etc., are simply
love fallen from its pure state. Hence the legend of
a fallen angel is founded in truth. Love reversed is
man's self-love. Without this self-love no spirit of
anger, pride, etc., could exist, for these dark spirits
all spring from self-love.

So it may be readily seen that love is the creator

— the fountain — and all that flows therefrom must
be of the same nature — and all things are love in
some form or other. A man may love himself with

SPIRITUALITY. 293

such intensity as to finally hate himself, and his very
existence. " The sweetest things make the strongest
acid.,,

The warmest friends often become the very worst
enemies. The hottest love, when cold, produces the
deadliest hate. Love is the only creator — our
Father, our providence, our life.

Love being a spirit, he who hath the most of it is
the most spiritual in its highest sense, because this
spirit is boundless — while all other spirits are limited
and finite, for that which falls must find the centre,
where it loses itself in the universal darkness of non-
conditions — inertia.

Lust is Lucifer ("son of the morning") fallen
love — or a fallen angel. How does love fall ? The
same as the sunlight falls into matter — or becomes
matter.

So our spirit centres in an inner sun, from which
it radiates. This stm is self-love. This is the centre
of our individuality. Its light or life is pure at first

— i.e., white, without color or shade — but being in-
volved in circumstances of a sensuous nature, it soon
gets broken or refracted, and we begin to love things
foreign, or outside of ourselves. This draws the cen-
tral sun from a fixed or stationary state into an orbit

— or in other words it has fallen from the soul into
mind.

The love of a virgin soul is a pure, fixed star
of the first magnitude — a sun shedding an immortal
light — which, when it has fallen away to others, has

294 THE TEMPLE OF THE ROSY CROSS.

become of the mind — of thought, calculation, vanity,
pride, etc. — a wandering star of lesser magnitude —
shedding a weaker light — and finally falling into
darkness, or the body — and here known as lust, or
physical love — still sinking lower down it becomes
disgust, hate, and all that is devilish.

Strange that the beautiful Angel Love, Spirit —
should have fallen so low as to become dark matter !
Yet so it is. From mind the descent of spirit into
matter is rapid and easy. Love is not of the mind
until it falls thereunto. The world is full of mental
love — and also of crime ; but soul love is very scarce.

Spirituality is now a mere name. Let me tell you
what it is not. It is not materiality — nor sensuality.
It is not in gold, silver, houses and lands. It is not
in the government of this world — nor in the "big I"
of yourself. It comes not from education — nor is
it morality — nor honesty — nor what the world calls
virtue — nor benevolence — nor the loftiest reason —
nor does it come from justice. It comes not from
a belief in spiritualism, the attending of circles, and
the accepting what any medium or trance speaker
may teach. It cannot be imparted by any preaching,
praying nor sighing. The merits, life, sufferings and
death of Jesus on the cross cannot impart it to any
one. No hearsay or reading can make you spiritual.
You must experience and feel the truth in yourself
in your own soul.

Truth is to be truthful and true to the light of con-
sciousness. But the consciousness not lighted by the

SPIRITUALITY. 295

fires of love is no guide. Intellectual light is not of
love — but if it unite with love, then it is quickened
and made alive by the spirit. This illuminates the
mind. When truth unites with love in the soul there
is a generation — a striking out as of fire — and a
flame is produced. This flame is the comforter and
the guide.

"Love God " ("a spirit " love) "with your whole
mind, might and strength " — and "worship him in
spirit and in truth." The love of God is the love of
one woman — do you know what worship is ? Do you
know how — or can you enter into the Spirit? Is
worship really the praying, singing and preaching we
are taught it is ? To enter into the Spirit is to be
illuminated. We are sunk so low down that we know
of love only in its lowest phase — and here man must
commence to climb the ladder to true love. When
a man truly loves a woman his mind has reached a
lofty plane of thought — for he loves her soul and
spirit, and not her form.

Spirit — God — Love, are synonymous terms, and
the spirit of an unfallen woman is God — Love.
When this love enters a man's soul he loves all that
are born of woman — Nay ! More ! he loves all cre-
ated things, because love hath made them all — and
they are all lovely when rightly viewed.

Love, and worship love, in tntth then, void of all
pretence, for this is spirituality. No pretence can
pass muster within yourself. The all-seeing eye is
there — and the book that contains your life is there

296 THE TEMPLE OF THE ROSY CROSS.

— and the judge is there also who receives no excuses.
Worship God in the spirit of love and in truth — i.e.,
in the conscious enlightened mind — for truth is of
the understanding — in which the voice of love is
heard.

Those who turn within themselves, and pluck the
motes out of the mind's eye become reversed or
turned around in their understanding and very na-
ture, and they see things in a reversed light. This
turning has already given birth to " Christian or
Mental Science' ' —in the practice of which the worst
diseases are healed; with much thought and labor
truly — as if God's spirit was far away and needed
much coaxing to induce it to enter in and heal the
sick. Still, a wonderful advance has been made —
and this class of teachers are the advance guard in
spirituality. But the time comes speedily when dis-
eases of every name and nature will be healed by a
touch, or a word, by the true christian and spiritu-
ally inspired man.

This Metaphysical School teaches that all that
exists is spirit — that matter is only an appearance
of spirit, and has no reality in it — that pain and dis-
ease are simply a disordered mind, and have no exist-
ence outside of mind — that evil has no existence —
that all is good or God ; and much more to the same
effect, which is just the opposite or reverse of our
every-day life, understanding and experience. I need
hardly say that this is true from a lofty standpoint —
and practically true in its application to the healing

SPIRITUALITY, 297

of all who are receptive of spirit, and who can elevate
the understanding.

Who so receptive as those who have languished
upon beds of pain and sickness till hope has wellnigh
fled ? Who so ready to embrace the new as those
who have exhausted the drug stores and the combined
wisdom of the old-school scientific methods ?

If there is any truth in Christianity, it certainly is
in healing the sick. This power dwells in spirituality.

He who gazes at the stars loses sight of the earth
and what it contains. So it is with one who persist-
ently turns his mind inward (upward). He loses sight
of his surroundings, and his other senses are absorbed
in feelings, and he is conscious only of sights and
sounds born of ecstasy. So he, fixing his thought
upon the realm of spirit, loses himself in spirit, and
becomes charged with greatness and power altogether
different from his nature. His mind becomes cogni-
zant of other than mundane laws ; his memory is sus-
pended, and he is no longer weak, because he has lost
sight of himself — he is no longer under the law of
disease, for he has forgotten the laws of heredity —
he is no longer a sinner, for what he has been led to
do in his blindness he recognizes has been done for
his good, and he is thankful for all things. Piercing
through the gloom and the shadow of mundane things
he senses the great good God who orders all things
well; and in his soul he cries out "Not my will,
Father ! but thine be done ! " He can behold noth-
ing but loveliness and beauty everywhere — and oft

298 THE TEMPLE OF THE ROSY CROSS.

in his contemplation is rendered unfit for the stern
struggle of this demoniac mammon worshipping
world.

" He that putteth his hand to the plow, and looketh
back is not worthy of the kingdom of heaven/ ' "The
kingdom of heaven is within you." Many imagine
that because they are worn out and disgusted with
everything of a sexual nature that they are spiritually
minded — not so, my friends ! The spiritual love all
things, and recognize that Infinite incomprehensible
wisdom has made nothing in vain or unlovely. Infi-
nite charity and mercy has found a lodgement in their
hearts, and they condemn nothing. Man is only half
a man without a woman to love, and the same applies
to a woman. Woe to him or her whose love has
turned to disgust ! Better " turn to the Lord "
quickly. "As a man thinketh so is he." "He that
is born of God (Love) doth not commit sin," etc.,
(John) so love must be the way out of sin — the
strait and narrow way leading to salvation - — salvation
from what ? From our own meanness and weakness !

Love being a spirit, if a man lose his love, he loses
his spirit. Can he regain it ? Not easily. Such go
out of life naked and deformed — to be re-incarnated
as other beings — but he that becomes spiritual,
becomes more and more conscious, as the love ges-
tates within him, and in time is born of the spirit, a
son of God.

The spirit is that which gathers around the soul at
death to form another body like unto the one that died.

SPIRITUALITY. 299

What, if you have little or no spirit from which to
form a divine body ? You become a phantom-shape —
lost in space, without home or a resting place — drawn
here and there by any breath of attraction — to be-
come anything. Vampires are partly of this nature.
Spirituality is our only hope — the only salvation.
Christ taught this. " Not every one that saith Lord,
Lord ! shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he that
doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven."
God's will is that we "love one another.,, Owe no
man anything — not even love — pay it. The mind
filled with love becomes light with spirit — and grad-
ually loses the feeling of mine and thine — there is
no feeling of blame and censure of others, but it
rather weeps great tears of pity and charity over
failures.

There is no turning back of the mind into memory
of past deeds — the stirring up of the rotting filth of
the corpse of the past — thus bringing it along with
the spirit, living it over and over again, forcing the
dead to become the living — or to become the atoms
of the body to its disease and death. In this forget-
fulness of the past is forgiveness possible. Heredity
cannot exist save as memory holds it in the con-
sciousness. It is a wise provision that death wipes
out the past so far as memory is concerned. Some
would like to know what they have been in previous
existences ; but this knowledge is wisely withheld.
In our now unbalanced state insanity would be the
result of such knowledge.

300 THE TEMPLE OF THE ROSY CROSS.

Who are fathe unhappy ? Those who brood over
the past, and are always thinking how "it might
have been ! " Who is it that is morose and sour but
those who recognize no wise providence at the helm
of this ship of life ? These are the sick ones. Spirit-
uality gives hope and cheerfulness — even in the
most adverse circumstances. In proportion as the
past recedes does the future unfold, and an intuitive
feeling of rest, security and safety takes the place of
anxiety and uncertainty. This can only come from
the love of some one of the opposite sex. The reason
is very simple. In the love of another, self-love has
expanded, and self is forgotten in the love of a
"better half." True love is not a selfish love, and
really the love of another of the opposite sex is not a
love of something foreign to yourself, but it is a love
of a larger and better self. Such lose themselves in
the one loved. He that does good for the sake of
attaining Nirvana — will fall far short of it. Why ?
Because his love is only selfAovz — and not a love of
the good — for the good is all. " He that would lose
his life for my sake shall find it " — means more than
many suppose. He that loses himself in love shall
find himself immortal in that love.

The first command is "love God." Why must
this be first ? If the love of your neighbor is in
reality the love of God, the first is altogether super-
fluous, and the love of your neighbor becomes first
and principal. The fact is the two loves are different ;
and here lies the true definition of Spirituality.

SPIRITUALITY. 30 1

" God is a Spirit " — then he is not a personality,

— but is a formless substance ; and absolutely in-
comprehensible to us. Having no form He has no
beauty to lure man into worship, for we all love and
reverence beauty. Having no form, how vain the
making of images, in the likeness of mundane things,
to represent Him. Having no form, how childish do
all forms and ceremonies appear in his service !
Having no form, he has no attributes, such as we
have, wherewith we may clothe a mental image of
Him, to love and reverence ! Forms are eternally
changing — but that which is formless changes not.
We are so constituted that we must see something —
either in the mind or with physical eyes — in order to
love. The mind sees attributes — the eye sees forms

— and John saw the attribute love in his mind,
which he called God — but Jesus saw a spirit which
he clothed to suit the natural mind, with the attri-
butes of Father. But " Gautama,' ' soaring above
all human attributes and passions, stripped creation
bare of all garments of beauty, in the conception of
Indifference. He ignored all emotions, and all
spirits as an ultimate — but yet the road thereto led
through love. We of the Rosy Cross cling to Jesus
because of his humanity. We do not wish any spirit-
uality beyond love — for this is of active, creative use.
To love God then is the first principle — this when
disconnected with human attributes becomes totally
impossible. To love something foreign to ourselves
is repugnant to the very nature of love. Now woman

302 THE TEMPLE OF THE ROSY CROSS,

is part and parcel of our whole nature, and to love
her is very natural — but the love we give her is not
such as we give our neighbor. In the latter there is
no leaping of the heart, as a caged bird leaps for
freedom — no exaltation to total f orgetfulness of self,
arid all surroundings, and consequences — no discon-
nection of self from reason and consideration — no
blending and interchange of our most inner sensibili-
ties — no ecstatic trembling upon the very confines
of a blissful state we call heaven : — but on the
contrary, in our love for our neighbor we become
more considerate, reasonable and thoughtful of con-
sequences ; not impulsive, but deliberate in action —
"to do as we would be done by." In fact to "love
your neighbor as yourself," is to become more truly
human; while to love your wife with "your whole
mind, might and strength," is to become completely
absorbed in her being, and to lose yourself in a con-
templation that speedily destroys all selfish passions
and desires — not because she is yours do you love herf
but because she is woman — your best nature — and
nearer to love (or God) than you are. So out of the
dark abysses of passion — out of the loathsome crypts
of this fallen nature does spirituality takes its rise.
That form of beauty which pleases your eyes, leads
only downward or outward to the losing of your spirit
in things foreign to yourself ; — but mental images,
or ideal attributes of woman, change as the spirit
becomes luminous ; hence there is no idolatry in
this worship — nor adultery either. The Hebrew

SPIRITUALITY. 303

prophets always referred to the worship of false Gods
as "whoring after other Gods." Why should they
apply this term to worship if sex is not involved ?
See Psalms cxxvii. 3, Deut. xxiii. 1, Num. xxxi. 18-35,
I Sam. ii. 22, Gen. vi. 2. Whence came the Jewish
rite of circumcision ? The ancient religions were all
based in the love nature. Jesus inculcated the same
ideas evidently, and made a sweeping and broad dis-
tinction between true and false worship. " But I say
unto you, that whoso looketh upon a woman to lust
after her hath committed adultery already in his
heart." The false is the visual — true worship is in
spirit and in truth — within the mind — without lust
— formless. The mind truly illuminated by spirit,
has no forms in it, either of beauty or deformity ; for
it is vacant of thought. ^

Consequently there can be no judgment of right
and wrong, of good and evil, and no censure of others
in the truly spiritual. Spirituality then takes its rise
from a contemplation — or worship — of the formless
principle of creation as symbolized in the feminine
spirit of ourselves. The spiritual cannot do a wrong
to another, because it is not aggressive nor selfish.

304 THE TEMPLE OF THE ROSY CROSS,