Essays of a Modern Mystic

H. Spencer Lewis

• Publisher: Muriwai Books
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9781789125146
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Buddhism

The contents of these essays touch the fundamentals of human interest, such as birth, man's mission, his concern with the afterlife, and practical problems of ethics and morals. The author writes as though he were personally counseling one who came to his study for advice as did several thousand persons during his lifetime.Dr. Lewis was the executive officer of the Rosicrucian Order, AMORC, one of the world's oldest and largest fraternities devoted to mystical and metaphysical study. Thousands have read and benefited from his books.This book you will want to refer to often. Though you will find it interesting, it is intended to be helpful and informative. For this reason you will find it a useful reference work pertaining to the mysteries of human existence.

 

Chapter I—GOD AND THE COSMIC

THE ROSICRUCIANS OFFICIALLY speak of God as God of our Hearts. This is because the Rosicrucian knows that each one of us will undoubtedly have a slightly different and therefore more satisfactory interpretation of God. The only way in which we can sense and understand God is through the inner comprehension of our psychic and emotional selves. The God of my heart is undoubtedly different from the God of your heart and from the God of the heart of each individual. The God that recreates Himself and makes Himself revealed to me in my inner self is the only God that I can know. He is the God of my heart as well as the God of the universe. If you or I attempt to adopt the God of someone else’s understanding, He is going to be more difficult for us to understand than the God that lives and throbs and moves and has His being in our own consciousness.

Therefore, I am not going to attempt to interpret God except to say that He is the Supreme Creator, the God of all gods, the Great Architect, the Divine Father of all creatures, the Creator of the uncreated, and the Founder of the universe; omnipotent, omnipresent, and the sole, ever-living God.

The Cosmic, on the other hand, is a divine consciousness or a supreme consciousness composed of laws, rules, and regulations. It is not a ruler but the written or established decrees of the Ruler of the universe. It is not the Creator but the process whereby the Creator’s laws and principles are carried out. It is not God but the consciousness of God extended throughout the universe as a mind power operating and carrying out the wishes of God.

In the beginning, when God created all that exists, He established certain rules, laws, and principles, which are the working processes and methods for the systematic and impersonal operation of this universe. These principles, rules, and processes constitute the Cosmic, and while they are related to God they are not God but rather a separate factor or a separate power so far as identity is concerned. To make this plainer let us presume that some great mind of high power and education entered an undeveloped and unestablished country of the world still in its primitive and virgin nature.

Let us say that this great mind established himself as king or lord over this land and proceeded to create a real civilization in it and to cause things to grow and to live and to carry on in this country with system and order. And let us suppose that from the very moment of this lord’s possession of this country he laid down certain laws and principles that should be eternally immutable and fixed and to which every living thing and every creature would be subject without any evasion whatsoever. Let us say that he wrote all of these immutable laws and all of these statutes and commandments, processes, regulations, and principles in a great book which he called the “Cosmic.” He might have called it the “Book of Laws,” the “Book of Constitution” or the “Divine Plan of the Universal Consciousness.” And let us suppose that he gave this great book the creative power, the vitality, the essence, the energy, the intelligence, and the mind of his own being so that it could carry out the laws thus written in its pages, enforce them, put them into operation and see that they were maintained universally.

Or suppose that this great lord had appointed a supreme executive council to represent him, composed of one hundred intelligent minds with the power to enforce rules and laws and to carry out his fundamental decrees and principles of this new world. Suppose, too, that he called this council or cabinet the “Cosmic.” And suppose that the lord left to this Cosmic the carrying out of everything that he had originally established as an immutable law. You would hardly call the “Cosmic” God, and you would hardly think of the “Cosmic” as being God or an actual part of God, yet the relationship between this “Cosmic” and God would be intimate, indeed.

Suppose, on the other hand, that the lord had reserved to himself the right and the privilege to intercede or to intervene or to show mercy when he deemed it necessary. And suppose he had not granted to the Cosmic, or his cabinet, or the universal mind of his great book of laws, any privilege of intervention or any privilege of changing or modifying a single law. Here we would have two ruling, governing powers functioning in this country. One would be the lord himself, supreme above all; the other would be his established laws and processes working without modification or partiality and automatically carrying out God’s original and fundamental ideals. There could be no rivalry between these two great powers, for the Creator of all things could instantly disfranchise the Cosmic of all its authority and power.

As this new country or this entire universe advanced and men began to do things, they would either live in accordance with the rules of the Cosmic or disobey them. If they disobeyed them the Cosmic would automatically inflict its rebuke or impress its advice in the form of some suffering or some means of calling attention to the errors made. This would be done independently of the automatically, systematically, and personal attention or consideration of God. On the other hand, if man cared to pray or attune himself with God and seek intervention, seek forgiveness or relief, he would have the privilege of doing so. He might have the rulings of the Cosmic temporarily set aside in his case through the superior wisdom and mercy of God.

In all of the things that we experience from the beginning of life to its close we are in touch with either the mandates, rules, directions, or inclinations of the Cosmic, or of God. Undoubtedly, God intervenes in the life of a great many and directs their courses, and steps in and lifts a ruling of the Cosmic, or a decision made by the Cosmic mind. He allows the individual by Divine Grace to experience something that the Cosmic would not have granted to him. This has been assured to us by God, and prayer and communion with Him are the channels through which we can make our appeals and seek such divine intervention. But in all ordinary affairs the established immutable laws of the Cosmic prevail and affect our lives.

As we do good we build up good for ourselves in the Cosmic records. The Cosmic is then ready at the proper time to reward us and to bestow its blessings upon us as an automatic form of compensation for what we have done. If we do evil it is recorded in the Cosmic records and some time in some manner the Cosmic rules demand automatic compensation or adjustment. Therefore, we see that when an unusual blessing comes into our lives, it must reach us either through God or the Cosmic. It has come through God in the form of divine intervention as an answer to our prayers, or it has come through the Cosmic as an automatic compensation for what we have earned.

This is why we speak of God and the Cosmic in connection with the affairs of the lives of men and women and all living creatures.

 

Chapter II—COSMIC GIFTS

NATURALLY EVERYONE WHO is in need feels that he is qualified and entitled to receive Cosmic help. I think the most difficult thing in the world for any of us to comprehend is why we, or someone else, are not made the recipient of certain Cosmic gifts. First of all, we are blinded by the pressure and influence of our needs. Our desires or the demands made upon us become outstanding and dominating elements in our thinking, and we are much like children who fee l that the least urge within us for something should be satisfied. We feel that the mere fact that there is a need or a desire, is sufficient in itself to warrant a demand on our part for the thing desired.

From the Cosmic point of view, this is unsound and untrue. A desire for something or even a great longing does not constitute a real need; and even those things which we feel we actually need from every human viewpoint may not be actual needs as seen from the Cosmic point of view. We often receive correspondence from persons telling us what they think they need or what they are demanding or asking from the Cosmic, and they seek advice as to how to bring about a Cosmic demonstration. As we sit back and view the brief incidents of their lives and the conditions surrounding their present circumstances, and then read the description of what they are trying to accomplish, and finally note what it is they are demanding of the Cosmic as a necessity, we plainly see that the things selected by a great many of these persons as necessities are not necessities at all. They are but inventions of the human mind based upon illogical reasoning and a false understanding of the real conditions. The average request in this direction is about as greatly in error as the desire on the part of persons years ago for drugs or chemical sedatives for every little ache or pain, instead of a treatment or an adjustment in their lives that would relieve the cause of the pain.

One thing is certain, and that is that we, ourselves, are seldom the best judge of what we need. Until we are properly trained to think and understand Cosmic law, we are not capable of deciding whether we can advise the Cosmic in what it should do, or leave it entirely to Cosmic discretion. The average person in need, with abundant faith in God and the Cosmic to understand all of the things, feels that he must tell God and advise God and the Cosmic powers precisely what he needs and why he needs it, and how the need is to be fulfilled. By such an attitude he naturally closes the door against the very Cosmic help he desires.

Today, millions of persons feel that the thing they need above everything else is money. There is a large secondary class that will promptly arise and say that it is not money they desire, but a certain, definite kind of employment by which they can earn money. They will frankly tell you with an air of pride that they do not want charity, that they do not want the gift of money, that they do not want anything dropped into their laps, and they do not ask for any advice, but that they do want a real opportunity to go to work and by the sweat of their brow actually earn every penny that they require. But these persons, you will find, often state very definitely just what opportunity they want opened to them, and what form of employment they want, and how and when and where. They are just as wrong in their demands as though they were sitting at home or lying in a hammock underneath the palm trees of Florida, basking in the sea breezes and waiting for a Cosmic cloud to hover over them and drop a bagful of money into their arms. They are attempting to say how the Cosmic shall help them. The man who has been employed in the past at one line of work in which he feels he is unusually competent, and by means of which he has earned a fair living in the past, now demands that the Cosmic shall reinstate him to that same form of employment, or put him in contact with that same source of income, and no other.

The man who has easily or with great difficulty and labor earned an income through one definite channel in the past feels that the Cosmic should open up to him in that same channel a proper opportunity to continue.

It does not dawn upon these persons that part of the reason for the changes now taking place in the lives of so many, and part of the cause for their personal lack of employment may be an attempt on the part of the Cosmic to force them to change their form of employment. It may be to cause them to adopt another means of earning an income. Therefore, by their insistence upon returning to the same channel or using the same means, and seeking no other and holding themselves steeled against the possible contact with any other means of income, they are combating the free activities of the Cosmic. They are preventing a realization of the very thing they are seeking.

To receive Cosmic help one must be perfectly open-minded, and not only concede to God and the Cosmic a hypothetical omnipotence and universal wisdom, but concede to them also a complete abandonment of personal interference. One must permit God and the Cosmic to move in His own mysterious ways to bring about the desired results, and thereby be ready to yield to every impulse that is good, and accept every urge and suggestion that may come from within or without. In this way only can the Cosmic bring about not only the mighty changes now taking place for the betterment of man, but the changes necessary in the individual to benefit his personal evolution.

 

Chapter III—FREE WILL

FREE WILL IS a term representing a doctrine. While the doctrine may be faintly understood by some, the term free will is misunderstood by the majority. Unquestionably the Cosmic urges us at times to do things just as the material world and its scintillating, tinselled phantasmagoria tempt us to do certain things at times. Between the urges and temptations of both the Cosmic and the material worlds, we have the privilege—we cannot call it the right—of choosing as to how we will yield. It is recorded that when the tempter tried to tempt Jesus, he said, “Get thee behind me, Satan.” I recently heard a man say that nowadays the people are living such reckless lives that it appears they are saying: “Get thee behind me, Satan, and push!”

It seems that the larger part of the world in recent years has been gradually yielding to material temptations and ignoring Cosmic urges and, therefore, we have had a world that exemplifies gloriously—or the very opposite, according to one’s viewpoint—the famous idea of free will. Certainly mankind has had a long spasm of free will. He has freely willed to do all sorts of things that he should not have done and has gradually increased his brazenness and daring to a point where the very evil that he has brought forth and tolerated and fostered and matured, has gradually overwhelmed and struck back at him. Now we have millions of men and women throughout the world who are trying to redeem themselves. They try to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and get out of the quagmire of difficulties into which they plunged as though they were diving into an angelic bath. Free will, indeed!

God did give us the ability to reason, to reach conclusions, and to use our will power in doing those things which we decide we want to do. But at the same time he made just a little tighter and a little stronger the laws of compensation. Man seems to forget that accompanying his free will is the voluntarily assumed obligation to be responsible for what is willed. As we choose so must we assume certain karmic conditions. Man cannot be saved by any vicarious act nor by the grace of God or His son, Jesus, the Christ, unless man first saves himself. All of the blood that was spilled on Calvary multiplied a thousand fold cannot save the sinner who brazenly and boastfully uses his free will and then seeks to crawl out of his obligation or responsibility and have his karmic debts fulfilled, shuffled off, and hung upon the cross of another. He himself must be crucified upon his own cross and suffer the pain of the nails he made being driven into his own flesh. Upon his brow must rest the thorny crown of his consciousness, and out of the side of his body must flow the blackened blood of his own evil desires.

He who is the greatest exponent of free will and accompanies it by an ever continuous exercise of it is the first to protest against every other individual living according to the same code. Free will means to the exemplifier of it a freedom granted exclusively to him. It is his will and his will alone that must be freely exercised. The moment he runs counter to the demonstration of free will on the part of other human beings he protests, for, forsooth, the free will of all beings freely exercised will act like restrictions and limitations to all. If I freely exercised every worldly judgment and opinion and attempted to freely put into operation every conclusion that my objective mind might decide upon, I would unquestionably trample upon the rights and privileges of others. In fact, I could not freely express my will without forcing others to obey my will and at once inhibit their own.

There can be no such thing as universal free will, and, therefore, the idea is for that reason a false idea. Law and order is the only will that can be freely expressed, and its freedom of expression increases to the same extent as that will is in conformity with Divine will. So long as I conduct myself in accordance with the harmonics of the universe and the Divine universal scheme, I shall find freedom of expression for my soul and for my worldly ego. But the moment I attempt to make that freedom of will and that freedom of expression absolutely mine and free in every sense, I am out of harmony with the universe. I must then either submit to the freedom of expression of all other human beings or dominate their freedom of expression.

For this reason I choose to listen to the Cosmic urge and be in harmony with it, for through it destruction cannot come, and only peace and constructive living result. This is the only free will that is consistent with eternal life, peace, and happiness.

Chapter IV—ABOUT HEALING

PERHAPS WE ARE a little careless at times in the use of words and phrases when we try to briefly express some mystical ideas and fall into the habit of using popular phrases. I know that I have often said that nature will do a great deal of healing if given an opportunity and that nature makes many cures and does many things. But, after all, just what do we mean when we use the word nature in such a way? Let me tell you what I have in mind and then you can decid...

Table of contents

• Title page
• TABLE OF CONTENTS
• PREFACE
• Chapter I-GOD AND THE COSMIC
• Chapter II-COSMIC GIFTS
• Chapter III-FREE WILL
• Chapter IV-ABOUT HEALING
• Chapter V-REINCARNATION
• Chapter VI-PSYCHIC CENTERS
• Chapter VII-PSYCHIC FACULTIES OF CHILDREN
• Chapter VIII-PRENATAL INFLUENCES
• Chapter IX-THE SOUL OF TWINS
• Chapter X-HUMAN AURAS AND SCIENCE
• Chapter XI-HYPNOTISM
• Chapter XII-AMPUTATION AND PSYCHIC DEVELOPMENT
• Chapter XIII-JEALOUSY AND LOVE
• Chapter XIV-SLEEP
• Chapter XV-THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH
• Chapter XVI-ABOUT HUNCHES
• Chapter XVII-DEMONSTRATING PSYCHIC POWER
• Chapter XVIII-TELEPATHIC COMMUNICATION
• Chapter XIX-SWEDENBORG AND JACOB BOEHME
• Chapter XX-MYSTICAL NUMBERS
• Chapter XXI-DO ANIMALS HAVE SOULS?
• Chapter XXII-CREMATION
• Chapter XXIII-TRANSITION
• THE ROSICRUCIAN ORDER, AMORC
• REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER